How to get more subscribers for your podcast on Soundwise

Unlike conventional, “one-way-street” podcasting, Soundwise allows you to finally get hold of your listeners and use your podcast to grow an interactive audience community. When listeners subscribe to your podcast via Soundwise, you’ll get each subscriber’s name and email, be able to track each subscriber’s listening records, and know exactly who your most avid fans are.

We give you several powerful ways to share your podcast with potential listeners, so that you can build your subscriber base and better take advantage of everything else Soundwise offers.

Note that everything below also applies if you’re publishing an audio course or training program on Soundwise.

1. Share Your Podcast Landing Page

Each podcast you publish on Soundwise gets its own landing page. Our landing page template is optimized to showcase the value of your podcast to potential listeners and convert more people into subscribers.

You can view your podcast’s landing page on the web by clicking on the “landing page” button on your dashboard, under the “soundcasts” tab.

People can also view your landing page on the Soundwise mobile app and subscribe there.

You can help more people find you by sharing your podcast landing page—

• On your own website: If you already have a personal/business website set up, you can add a “podcast” tab on your navigation bar, and link it to your podcast landing page on Soundwise. You can also mention your podcast in your website’s “about” page or blog posts, and create a link there to your podcast landing page.
• On social media: Create a pinned post on your twitter profile that links to your podcast landing page. Add your podcast landing page link to your Instagram profile, LinkedIn personal summary, and Facebook profile.

2. Share Your Track Pages

Each track you publish has its own page on Soundwise, where people can listen to your track, and more importantly, be reminded to subscribe to your podcast. So whenever you publish a new track, make sure you share the track page with your potential audience as well.

From your track page, listeners can click on the “access entire series” button and subscribe to your podcast. When a listener plays the audio on the page, a popup modal with your podcast information will show up to nudge the listener to subscribe. You can check out this example episode page to see this in action.

To view the track pages of your podcast, click on the “tracks” button from your dashboard under the “soundcasts” tab, and then click on the “view” button under a particular track:

Note that this option is only available if your podcast track is set to be “publicly shareable”. You can adjust the publicity setting of an episode on the track editing/creation page.

3. Share Your Podcast's Signup Form

An alternative to sharing your podcast’s Soundwise landing page is to direct people to your podcast’s subscription form. If you have already set up page(s) for your podcast on your own website, and want a straightforward way for people to directly subscribe, this option is great. The subscription form includes a short description / content highlight of your podcast to give people some context on what they’re signing up for. We find this additional bit of information on the sign up form helps increase the opt-in rate. Here is an example soundcast signup form.

You can view your podcast’s signup form on your dashboard, under the “soundcasts” tab.

4. Spice Up Your Social Media Sharing

Social media platforms are noisy and crowded. To help your podcast catch more attention in social sharing, we created a free sound wave video maker for you. The tool creates short videos from your audio tracks. Simply upload a snippet of your audio file and the cover graphic of your podcast or track. We’ll generate a video, like the example below, from those inputs, which you can share on social media, along with links to your podcast or track pages.

Do These To Double Your Subscribers

In addition to diligently sharing your podcasts and tracks across various platforms, there are many things you can do to encourage subscriber signups. Here are a few.

5. Offer Exclusive Content only for subscribers

People are more likely to tap on that subscribe button after listening to a track they like, if there are materials they can get only after subscribing. For example, you can

• make mini-tracks that you don’t include in your main podcast feed. And only those who subscribe to your Soundwise channel will get them. You can set this up easily by switching off the “make this track publicly shareable” button on your episode editing page.
• include “action steps” in your episodes. You can use this optional entry in your track creation page to include “homework assignment” or additional resources to support your listeners. Since this entry can only be seen by your subscribers, use it as an additional incentive for encouraging people to subscribe.
• include “notes” in your tracks. These are supplementary materials you upload in image or pdf format along with your track. And similar to action steps, only people who subscribe to your Soundwise channel will see them.

And if you add some or all of these exclusive content items to your podcast, don’t forget to mention them in your tracks!

6. Offer An Ad-Free Version

Most people don’t like hearing ads in their podcasts. If you have ad sponsorship in your normal tracks, but want to get more subscriber signups on Soundwise, you can offer an ad-free version of your podcast only available to your subscribed listeners.

7. Build Audience Community

Soundwise gives you multiple ways to connect with your listeners beyond the audio broadcasting, i.e. via emails, comments on tracks, and group messages sent to your subscribers’ phones. When someone subscribes to your podcast, they also join an audience community where they have the opportunity to interact with you, the host, and other listeners. If you’re actively present in your community— dialoguing with your listeners, asking people’s feedback on your tracks, encouraging people to express themselves— you’ll help your listener group thrive, and that in itself can be a huge attraction for people to subscribe to your podcast.

How do you go about getting people to subscribe to your podcast? Share your success experience with us at support@mysoundwise.com, and we may feature you and your podcast in our next newsletter.