Naturally, your goal is to make it as easy as possible for your audience to find you. A well-crafted landing site can help you direct potential listeners to your podcast while simultaneously building your newsletter or mailing list.
Regardless whether you’re integrating your podcast into a larger content strategy that includes a blog, social media, or perhaps a website, you’ll want to create a stand-out landing page that captures attention and converts a visitor into a listener.
This is often called the “home page” for your podcast – the place you’ll direct your traffic so they can learn more about you and your show.
All well-designed landing pages typically includes many of the following components:
- A keyword-centric description of your show and who should listen to it. You’ll want to be as clear as possible with your description while including relevant keywords that can help your landing page rank in the search engines.
- Multiple subscribe links, one for each major listening directory.
- Your social media contact information so new listeners can follow you on other platforms.
- A list of your recent episodes.
- A way to collect email addresses for your newsletter.
This may sound intimidating, but it’s not once you break it down and take it one step at a time.
Let’s take a closer look:
Title and Description:
People landing on your landing page need to know why they’re there and what’s in it for them. This means you’ll need a compelling title and an attention-grabbing description that paints a clear picture as to what your podcast is all about.
The title of your landing page can be the title of the podcast, or a catchy phrase or tagline you use in conjunction with your show. For the description, you need to answer the two main questions a viewer will have – “What is this?” and “Is This for me?”
These things may seem obvious to you but look at it from a new visitor’s point. They don’t know you, or know what your podcast is about, or what type of listener it’s meant for. This is your chance to tell them that in a few lines.
Remember that attention spans – especially online – are very short. You may only have a matter of seconds to “hook” a visitor and get them interested in your podcast. Keep in mind that your goal is to have them subscribe to that podcast.
Make the title and initial description compelling, interesting and short enough so a visitor can glance at it and get a good idea what your podcast is about and why they want to subscribe to it.
This will take some thought and a bit of work, but you can create a great title in the end.
Multiple Subscriber Links:
Apple Podcasts may be king, but it’s not the only rodeo in town. You should give your listeners the option of finding your podcast on the directory and mobile app of their choice.
Castos has a great list of 30 podcast directories. In fact, Castos has a lot of “How To” articles on podcasting.
You’ll need to submit your podcast’s RSS Feed Link (which is generated by your podcast hosting provider) to each of the directories you choose.
This will take you some time, because your aim is to be on as many of those directories as possible. But with that done, the podcast will automatically update whenever you post a new episode.
The top directories are Apple Podcasts, Google, and Spotify. There are mobile apps, desktop only sites, and combinations of all the above. It may take a few hours to get everything set up, but the results will be worth it.
Once your show is approved by those directories, it’s time to set up your landing page. You could use plain text links, but that’s a bit amateurish.
Why not jazz it up a bit and use a button for each directory?
There’s a great little plug-in from SecondLine Themes called Podcast Subscribe Buttons that makes this easy.
Once you have your subscribe buttons set up, it’s time to look at the next step.
Displaying Recent Episodes:
Castos has a great plugin called Seriously Simple Podcasting that will basically do the work for you on your WordPress site.
Their “Podcast List” block will let you show all your podcast episodes on your site (on any page of your site) with only a few clicks.
The default podcast page is harder to set up, but still workable if you’d like to play around with the plug-in and see which you like better.
The Podcast List block has several options which allow you to configure the following components on your landing page: the featured image of that episode, an excerpt from the episode, and the episode’s metadata.
Social Media Sharing Buttons:
Castos recommends the Grow plug-in by Mediavine for sharing your podcasts with social media, but there are several other options on a WordPress site for either static or sidebar-floating buttons. You’ll probably want a sharing button on each episode’s page.
The point of these social media sharing and connecting buttons is to have your subscribers follow you over to your social media sites and connect with you there as well.
Be sure you have a pinned post on each site asking your followers to subscribe to your podcast by visiting your landing page.
Collecting Email Addresses for Your Newsletter:
Email marketing has consistently been the highest engaging way to communicate with your followers. If you’re not producing a newsletter, you should start as soon as you possibly can.
This is one of the easiest ways to advertise and connect with your followers in a meaningful way. You don’t have to publish a frequent newsletter – once a month or so is fine. So long as you’re communicating, your followers will remember you.
Use an email service provider like MailChimp, Drip, or Active Campaign. They’ll help you collect email addresses and send messages to your subscribers whenever you have a new episode available, or have anything new to share with them.
