The Best 5 Ways to Distribute Your Podcast

Determining an effective distribution plan for your podcast is a necessity when trying to find your audience. After spending long hours writing, recording, and editing your podcast, you want to ensure that your hard work reaches as many listeners as possible. Consider these five podcast distribution methods below to help ensure that future potential listeners will find your content.

1. Get an RSS feed: An RSS feed enables you to efficiently distribute your podcast to many podcast directories at once, including a variety of popular podcast platforms such as Apple Podcasts or Spotify. In short, RSS feeds contain a link to your podcast episodes and all of their encompassing data, including episode titles, the author and date of publication.
    
   It is important to note that when you create a podcast for distribution, you do not upload it directly to popular podcast players such as Spotify or Apple Podcasts. These platforms access the RSS feed that you submit. When listeners subscribe to their favorite podcast on Spotify, they are subscribing to the RSS feed. The RSS feed enables listeners to know when a new episode of a podcast has been released and added to the feed. See more on how to acquire an RSS feed below.
2. Sign up for a hosting site: As we have established, when uploading your podcast for distribution, you will not upload it directly to podcast apps and players. Instead, you will upload it to a hosting site. Hosting sites help streamline the podcast distribution process. They will often provide you with the all important RSS feed mentioned above, and store your podcast files as mp3s.
    
   These sites provide ample storage space and bandwidth for all of your podcast files that you have created. Sites such as Squarespace or SoundCloud are able to host your podcast. Other popular hosts include Libsyn and Podbean. Do your research and see which ones are right for you based on the features offered and your budget. There are a variety of hosting options that provide different benefits at various monthly or yearly price points.
3. Upload a video podcast to YouTube: During the infancy stages of podcasting, listeners predominantly listened to strictly audio podcasts. However, many podcasts are now readily available on Youtube with accompanying video of the show. Determine how much time you have and whether you deem it worth it to create a video podcast. However, placing your podcast on YouTube is a great way for new potential fans to find your work as suggested videos.
4. Create Clips on Social Media: In an increasingly saturated content market, the more ways potential fans can stumble upon your podcast the better. Consider making short, punchy minute or less clips to post on social channels such as Instagram, TikTok and Twitter. This can be especially beneficial if you are creating video podcasts. Be sure to caption your clips and choose the best, most interesting and/or most culturally relevant moments so that people will be intrigued to watch more and follow your podcast.
5. Post in Newsletters: Creating a weekly or monthly newsletter where you also promote your podcast can be a great way to engage with your followers, while subtly reminding them to continually look out for new podcast episodes. Be sure to provide a link to your most recent podcast and subtly tie it to a topic addressed in your newsletter so that your presentation of content feels cohesive and intentional.

For more information, tips and tricks visit www.mnn.org/learn for free workshops, professional courses, media bootcamps, and more resources to make your productions successful.