#30 | Should You Hire A Social Media Manager To Attract More Clients Through Your Podcast? (Growth, Marketing & Monetization Tips

0:01Welcome to How to Grow a Podcast that attracts high-ticket online coaching clients. The show helping coaches, consultants, and experts turn your slow growth podcast into a profitable client attraction system. At the end of this episode, I'll share a little more about who I am and what we do at my company, GetMoreListeners.com. It might even shock you, but for now, let's dive into the episode. Should you hire a social media manager to grow your podcast? Most coaches think it's the answer to their growth problems. In today's episode, you'll discover why hiring a social media expert won't solve your growth challenges, what you need to focus on instead for faster growth, and finally, what happens when you hire a manager without the right foundations.

0:46Let's dive in. The main topic we're covering today is all about why you shouldn't outsource the growth of your show. So exactly what do we mean by that? Great question. So we can outsource a lot of things in relation to the podcast. Obviously, you have things like editing, show notes, and stuff like that. That's not so much in relation to the growth. That's more just from a time-convenience standpoint. However, a lot of podcasters who are in a position where they can outsource things, they will outsource growth strategies. And a very common example of this is having a social media manager or a VA who posts on your socials for you.

1:21With a social media manager, there's so many examples of how that can work. One example would be clipping up the podcast, distributing it. We also have other ways of outsourcing growth. For example, an agency, which might get you booked onto another podcast, or an agency that might even get you guests on your own podcast. So there's a few different things how this can work. But the main one, in terms of outsourcing the growth, is usually when a podcast has their social media taken care of for them. What's interesting is I totally get the convenience aspect of it, having a social media manager there to help you out, to help with some of the grunt work, with the posting, the promotion, maybe even some engaging aspects.

1:59But I guess, why is that an issue? Where do most podcasters go wrong when they're trying to work with a social media manager? Great question. Well, you're right, we both totally agree. There's nothing wrong with having a social media manager or outsourcing any part of growing a podcast. In fact, we actively encourage outsourcing when you're in a position to free up your time. However, I think the big place where often there's a trip up is if you're outsourcing something that isn't actually working how you think it is. And often that comes from places. If you don't know how to do something yourself and you're in a position where you can outsource it, you might think, well, I'm going to outsource it to someone who seems to know what they're doing.

2:38The big issue here is that a lot of the time people are following strategies that are outdated or strategies that work for people playing a different game. So they work for people with a big following, with a big budget or something like that, but strategies that don't necessarily work for an independent podcaster. Like clipping up the podcast and distributing it. It focuses all on promotion, but not on engagement. The issue is there's no principles there already, and we just try and paper over the cracks with strategies. You can have all the strategies in the world. You can be redistributing podcast clips on socials.

3:11You can be going as a guest on other podcasts. You can be doing this, that, and the other. You can have so-called SEO-based show notes. You can have a bunch of stuff like this. But if your principles aren't set up, and if you don't have your growth principles in place, then those strategies are always going to be papering over the cracks. And even if they do get you exposure and sometimes bring people to the podcast, they're going to be bringing people to a product that is not optimized to keep those listeners and keep them retained. And with this, we always end up with a leak in the barrel, where you can pay a social media manager to get your exposure on social media.

3:46We've discussed before why exposure in itself doesn't convert. But let's say it even does. It's going to bring people to a product and then people are also going to leave. So all in all, it doesn't fix the solution. I think that was spot on there. And I guess for listeners out there who are thinking, what are you talking about when you say principles? Are you talking specifically about the foundations of the podcast that's needed for a podcast to grow, attract listeners, engage listeners, but also retain those listeners long term? The principle we're talking about is this. If the foundations aren't set to actually attract, engage, and retain listeners, it doesn't matter how much social media strategies you do, how much tactics, how much promotion you do.

4:29You're sending that traffic, those audience, to a podcast that isn't built to retain those new listeners coming in. We're talking about your targeting. We're talking about your content strategy. We're talking about the quality and production of your show. These are the foundations, the principles that need to be in place for you to effectively attract, engage, and retain new listeners. Yeah, for sure. Because, again, if we don't have those things in place, it's just papering over the cracks. And you can have a service, an agency or a manager or something like that, that will clip up your podcast and put it on socials, that will do your show notes for you, and they will even book you on other podcasts.

5:10But again, all of these things on their own don't quite equal the growth that you're normally looking for. You can have SEO done show notes, but show notes is only a very small part of SEO. It's really like the 20%, where the 80 % comes from episode titles and the visibility of your podcast, how much it stands out on the page, and that kind of thing. So if you've got a terrible homemade cover and episode titles that don't properly communicate the show or the value of the show, SEO-based or transcript show notes, it's not really going to do a whole lot for you. You can get booked as a guest on another podcast, which is something, it's no secret, it's a great growth strategy.

5:51We endorse it. But that doesn't work if you go on there and you're not the most memorable and best guest that you can be. If you don't go on there with your unique selling point crafted out, a memorable story, and a great way of converting their listeners to yours, then you're really just wasting a big opportunity. And if you haven't got those principles of guesting on podcasts sorted before you just apply the strategy of outreaching to those podcasts, and don't even get me started on the social media, we've done a whole episode about why we don't believe in just clipping up the podcast and posting on socials, and really any social media posting that centers around promotion.

6:30To summarize, just post, post, post, and promote, promote, promote, it doesn't really work that well on social media. Because unless you've got a massive following or something like that, people really just tune that stuff out. It looks like an ad. People scroll straight past it. And these social media platforms, they're designed to keep you on there. So it's just not optimized to make someone go and listen to your podcast on the back of seeing your post. So it's all good doing all this posting and getting someone to do it for you to take the time off your hands. But really, you can't outsource engagement.

7:06That has to come from you most of the time. And engagement is actually what converts to listeners, not reach, not exposure, and not promotion. So those are some examples of why strategies on their own won't get you the result you're looking for if you don't have the principles. I love that. That makes so much sense. So I guess to round things up, having a social media manager isn't in of itself a bad thing, or podcasters shouldn't not do that. It's just that when podcasters do that, believing that that's going to solve the problem of slow and steady growth, it often doesn't, because the foundations and the principles of the podcast aren't ironed out.

7:47Exactly. Yeah, I think that's a really important point that you made. We're not saying social media managers don't work, Or, we keep using them as the example, we're not saying any of these things don't work. It's just that on itself often doesn't. Will, in itself, often misleads people, because they think that's the answer when that isn't the answer. That's just fuel that can help, but you still need a foundation before you really put that fuel into it. Spot on. Absolutely. And again, for context, when we talk about foundations, we're really talking about the SEO, the USP, the content strategy, all these elements that help your podcast attract, engage, and retain the right listeners.

8:31There's no point doing all of this hard work, sweating it out all day, all night, producing incredible content, interviewing amazing guests, sharing amazing stories, providing an immense amount of value to your listeners if your foundations aren't set. And it always comes back to this. If you look back throughout all of the podcast episodes that we've done, our intention is to help you gain clarity on exactly why your show isn't growing as fast as you like and the steps you can start taking today to fix that. But all in all, it always consistently comes back to making sure the foundations of your podcast is set before trying to outsource anything, before trying fancy strategies.

9:12We genuinely mean that. Most clients that we work with, they have incredible shows, 10 out of 10 shows. They're promoting all the time. They're even guesting on other podcasts. They have amazing high-profile guests on their shows, but are still stuck with slow and steady growth. They're still struggling to gain traction fast. So why is that? It always comes down to the foundations of the podcast isn't set properly. This comes down to the targeting of your show, how specific it is, What topic are you covering? Who do you want to solve? What problem are you solving? It comes down to your content strategy.

9:49How are you building content to keep those listeners engaged, to consistently attract them, and then to retain them long term after they've discovered your show? It comes down to your USP. How are you positioned in the market to make sure your show is standing out? It's so busy and chaotic and competitive nowadays. So if you haven't got a USP, a way to stand out from the crowd, a way to present the market something completely different to what other podcasts are offering, it's going to be much harder to gain traction. So the foundations, it always comes back to that. So when we talk about social media, having a social media manager on, we're not hating.

10:29We couldn't care less as long as the foundations are set. If you're currently stuck with slow and steady growth, the likelihood is something's wrong with the foundations. So don't paper over the crack. deal with the problem itself. Look at the foundations first and try to fix that problem first before trying to outsource anything. Absolutely. Very well said. And I think to second that, for anyone listening, if you're in a position where you're stuck with that slow and steady growth, you're not getting the growth you quite want. Not exactly sure why, but you see all these things that other people are doing.

11:04All these strategies, this kind of thing. I would recommend don't pull the trigger and just outsource something straight away, because it usually won't be the answer you're looking for. Again, that's fine to bring in at a later stage, but really think about how you can diagnose the root of the problem first. Because remember, most people are doing all these strategies, most people are hiring these people, all this kind of stuff, and most people are still stuck with slow and steady growth. It really is addressing the foundations first before you move to outsourcing. You should only outsource once your foundations are set and once you're already growing at a reasonable rate.

11:42You shouldn't outsource to grow. For the independent podcaster, outsourcing should only come after you're growing at a good rate because your foundations is set and because you know how to grow a show. 100%. And I guess an analogy would be like, let's say you're building a car and you're trying to get to a specific destination. If you haven't got the materials needed to build the car properly, to build the engine, to get you to where you need to get to, and you haven't even got a map of where you're trying to go, how are you going to get someone else to come in and try to fix your car? My point is, you yourself need to build the machine and the foundations properly.

12:20And then you can outsource the grunt work. Once you have the machine built, once you have the right systems in place, once the foundation is set, you can then outsource to a social media manager to simply operate the system and the machine that you yourself have built. You can't expect them to build and know how the foundation should be set because they're not you. That's your podcast, your direction. You're the one who has the creative control. Set those foundations first and then get someone else when you have the time, if you have the resource, to look over and operate the machine. So that's it.

12:56We've rounded up with a conclusion of exactly why you shouldn't outsource the podcast growth, why you shouldn't hire a social media manager if your foundations aren't set properly. We hope you've gained more clarity around why your podcast isn't growing and the simple steps you can start taking today to fix that. We believe the earlier you can pinpoint why the podcast isn't growing, the quicker you can get to faster growth, a bigger audience, and a monetized podcast. So do yourself a favor. Reflect, review, and then implement. In this episode, we covered why hiring a social media expert won't solve your growth challenges, what you need to focus on instead for faster growth, and finally, what happens when you hire a manager without the right foundations.

13:44Thank you for listening all the way to the end. At the start of this episode, I said I'd tell you a little bit about me. So I'm about to share a secret with you. One that might mean you hate me, completely quit listening to this podcast, and think I'm a total scam. However, I want to be transparent. Are you ready? Well, my name is Tony. No, of course that's not the secret. The secret is that I'm actually a robot. My creators are Tighe and Anthony, hence my name, Tony. The sick bastards. Anyway, they are the founders of GetMoreListeners.com. In the last five years, they've coached and interviewed over 400 podcasters and generated multiple six figures from their own show.

14:33They gave me access to everything they know, and I'm here to share it with you. So while I don't understand why you humans are so obsessed with coffee, I do understand how to grow a podcast that actually brings you new clients regularly. So here's my offer to you. If you want to finally understand why your podcast isn't growing and get a personalized roadmap to fix it, in less than 30 seconds, you can go to getmorelisteners.com slash onlinecoachaudit. Enter your show name and we'll send you back a free mini podcast audit. It's completely customized to you and your show. That's getmorelisteners.com slash onlinecoachaudit.

15:14The link is also in the show notes of this episode.