Except in the case of podcasts on websites, blogs, or ecommerce sites that already attract traffic, the beginning of the podcast journey always starts with having no listeners – only an idea.

Things develop from there, of course, and the next stage should hopefully be an incremental increase in listeners over the first few episodes. For this to work though, you need to create a serviceable podcast that people actually want to listen to.

But it cannot go on in this incremental way forever. In fact, there needs to come a point where resources are sufficient for some serious listener-boosting investments to be made. This is the point where things need to be actively taken up a level. There are many ways to do this.

Even before that though, one of the trickiest things is to learn when this point has come along. It works the same way as any business enterprise – stagnation is death, but so too is taking this leap before you are ready. Therefore, success in podcasting takes recognizing when the time has come and then seizing it.

Diversification

A “step up”, a “leap” –in whichever way you want to conceptualize it, making this change is all about getting new listeners. However, at this point you need to ask yourself“what listeners”? Moreover,it is also a question of whether it is time to diversify your listener base or to simply expand the one you have. This might require some explanation.

Thank of it this way:when you start out a podcast, the first thing you will (or should) do is to decide what listener niche you are hoping to target. Plurawl are a company producing an Hispanic podcast for the Latino community that cover issues which are relevant to that listener base. This is an example of a solid niche. But there is another way of doing it.

Say you have your listener niche, and it has been garnering you listeners for some time. What’s the next stage? You could follow the example of Plurawl and get more of the same types of listeners. Or you could start tackling new topics and create more podcasts shows with different presenters (all under your brand) that appeal to different listeners.

In other words, you could start expanding into other niches. This is a terrific way to expand your listeners, and it is a good example of diversification.Indeed, we see the self-same phenomenon in the business world all the time. After all, a podcast is a sort of business, just with listeners instead of customers.

Tips for Increasing Your Listeners

These are some of the broad methods for increasing listenership and the theories behind them. Here follows then a couple of practical tips to help you along the way:

Network

The use of networking is that you can also meet new people with new ideas, which might work very well for your podcast. You could potentially gain some new recruits for your team there. You could also meet some great new potential guests (or people with their contacts) or you could meet the right person to lead you to a lucrative sponsorship deal. The potential of networking is limitless.

Upgrade Your Equipment

You could decide to give your podcast a visual element with anew camera, you could improve the quality of the sound with new audio equipment, or you could make your podcast more attractive with new graphic design or audio-editing software. Getting better tools is always a good idea.

When the time comes, you need to know how to take your podcast to the next level. Do not miss it!