Amelia Hruby: 00:04

Welcome to the softer cast, a podcast for small business owners and creatives who want tender podcast advice without any tech bro bullshit. I'm Amelia Hruby and I'm the founder of Softer Sounds, a feminist podcast studio for women and non binary entrepreneurs. On this show, I answer your questions about podcasting. Things like, should I put my show on YouTube? Can I just record it on Zoom?

Amelia Hruby: 00:26

How much do editors really cost? And how many downloads should my podcast be getting? Yeah, I'll even answer that question. Every episode of the softer cast is really practical, a little magical, and less than ten minutes long. If you like what you hear, please subscribe to the show and share it with your podcast bestie.

Amelia Hruby: 00:47

Then head to the show notes to check out our free resources. No matter where you're at in your podcasting journey, we're here to support you. Join us on the softer side of podcasting. Hello, and welcome to the softer cast, a show full of podcast advice for small business owners and creators and people who just love making their podcast, but don't love having to read a million SEO optimized AI generated articles on the internet to get any of their podcast questions answered? I'm Amelia Frooby and I am the host of this show, your resident question answerer and the founder and executive producer at Softr Sounds Podcast Studio.

Amelia Hruby: 01:38

At the studio, we offer full service production support for shows of all sizes. And I do advising sessions for beginners and pros, where we go deep into your podcast questions and help align your show with your goals. And on this show, you get a tiny dose of what those advising sessions are like, because I take questions from lovely listeners and I answer them typically in ten minutes or less. If I can make that happen. Some days I go a little long, but I do my best.

Amelia Hruby: 02:13

In this episode, I am answering a question from someone who's launching a new show and wants to know what I think about podcast trailers and podcast launch parties. Let's go ahead and hear the question, and then I'll give you all my advice.

Caryn: 02:29

Hi, Amelia. Couple questions about launching a new podcast. One is, what are your thoughts on trailers? How important are they? Is it important to, like, pull clips from episodes I've already recorded or just do, like, a short thing?

Caryn: 02:44

Any tips you have about trailers? And then my second question is about a launch party. Do you see merit in having, like, an online event or, like, a big to do around launching? Does it matter if people listen right away? Does that really help, like, algorithmically that having, like, a launch team or, like, launch things?

Caryn: 03:08

Any thoughts you have on launching? So, obviously, I'm getting ready to get a new podcast together, and I've got some things recorded, but I'm curious about trailers and launch parties. Thanks.

Amelia Hruby: 03:20

Alright. I love this question so much. I'm a big fan of a strategic podcast launch, and let's start with podcast trailers. So, typically with my clients, we create a trailer for one of two reasons. One is that maybe their show is a sort of general interest show and could be a right fit for a whole lot of people.

Amelia Hruby: 03:46

And so we create a trailer so people can get a sense of the show in just a couple minutes and decide if this is a podcast for them. I think that trailers are really great at getting people interested and excited about your show and helping them get a very quick sense of if it's a podcast they wanna listen to. That's like a great use of a trailer and can be a really great reason, especially for a brand new show to create a trailer. That said, more often when I'm making a podcast trailer with a client, we're doing it for logistical reasons. And that reason is because we need there to be audio on the podcast feed so that we can submit it to Apple and Spotify.

Amelia Hruby: 04:32

I did an episode a while ago about how to get your show listed on Apple and Spotify. And in that episode, you'll hear me say that you have to have an MP3 uploaded to your podcast feed for it to go on those platforms. And so if you are planning a big launch, it's good to make sure your feeds are all working correctly by uploading your trailer in advance. And that way, when you have your big launch day, where you drop your first episode, you already know that the feed is there. It's ready.

Amelia Hruby: 05:01

You have the direct link to it. You're not like going down to the wire and we really never wanna see somebody plan a huge podcast launch. And then the day that they've prepped their audience that the show is launching, suddenly, Apple Podcasts didn't get things live in time or took seven days to respond to you about your show going live, which can happen sometimes, unfortunately. So I think that the purpose of a trailer is really to help yourself prepare for your launch and get everything ready that you need to have ready to launch your show really well. But I don't think a trailer has to be a super involved thing.

Amelia Hruby: 05:41

I really love a trailer that basically is two minutes of hopping on the mic, telling people what the show is about, who you are and why you host it, and what they'll get from listening. And in terms of, should you include quotes from episodes in the trailer or not? To be honest, I typically don't because if your show goes on for a long time, those quotes may come from episodes that came out years ago. And so they may not feel super relevant to the podcast if somebody's listening to the trailer in the future. And again, if they're just finding the show, they might listen to that trailer years from now, so it should feel pretty evergreen.

Amelia Hruby: 06:21

The one exception to this is if you have a fiction podcast or you are trying to launch a show to a huge audience, like you're putting a ton of promotional dollars behind it. You wanna hit the podcast charts, then I think you absolutely 100% should invest in a really good trailer. But if you are a typical software sounds client and you're like DIY ing all of this, and you have a relatively like thoughtful and slow rollout and you have some time, but you don't need to, like, labor over anything, then I think a pretty simple trailer will work for you. I also will link in the show notes to a podcast from Ariel Niesenblatt, who is like a podcast pro, very well known in the industry for her podcast community work. And she has a podcast full of podcast trailers.

Amelia Hruby: 07:07

So it's called Trailer Park, the podcast trailer podcast. So if you just want some trailer inspiration or you're interested in considering what kind of trailer you might want to create, or if you want to create one at all, I would head there, listen to some other people's trailers, and you can decide if this is the right move for you or not. Okay. Moving on to our second question about launch parties. So again, this relates to our question about trailers, right?

Amelia Hruby: 07:32

Because I think that it could be really cool to publish a podcast trailer and use it to promote your podcast launch party. So maybe your launch party happens the day your first episode or your first few episodes go live, but the trailer's up there in advance. People can already get excited, build that enthusiasm for your show, and also be subscribed when you drop the first episodes. Because that is kind of what we're working toward around a launch is we're trying to get a lot of downloads for the initial episodes, At least if you're putting a lot of promotional effort into your launch. Now, why might you wanna get a lot of downloads of your first episodes?

Amelia Hruby: 08:13

Well, the more downloads that you get in a shorter period of time, the more likely your show is to land on a podcast chart. So what Apple has said about their podcast charts, when I refer to podcast charts, I'm typically referring to Apple podcast charts, and we don't totally know how those charts are determined, but they do seem to correlate to downloads and frequency of downloading. So a show that gets a ton of downloads when it launches might hit the charts for a while. Even if over time, the like average download number is significantly less than some of the other shows on the charts. So for instance, my podcast Off the Grid, when I have a big promotional push or a guest with a big audience on the show, we pop up onto the business podcast chart.

Amelia Hruby: 09:01

I think we've peaked at like number 90 or something around there. Maybe number 40 something. I should know that off the top of my head, but I do not. That said, for most of the time, we are not on the charts because my, like, week over week downloads are not the same as, like, Amy Porterfield or Jenna Kutcher or the guy who runs capitalism.com's podcast. Yes.

Amelia Hruby: 09:21

Quite literally. But when I have a big push, I land on the charts. So if that's something that you want, if you want to build that hype and potentially chart for your show, then I think it is a really good strategy to have that trailer, get people subscribed, and throw a launch party that emphasizes everybody listening and downloading that day. Now, what if you're like, Amelia, I do not care about podcast charts. Let's be real.

Amelia Hruby: 09:45

That's not my goal here. Should I have a launch party anyway? Well, my answer to that is, if you wanna throw a launch party, throw yourself a launch party. Podcasts are a ton of work to put together. They can take a lot of time to produce and to launch, and so creating this big inflection point for your own excitement and to feel support from the people who care about your work is worth doing in and of itself.

Amelia Hruby: 10:11

Again, you can see a boost in downloads from having a launch party, but I think more importantly, you see a boost in support and camaraderie and enthusiasm, and that type of energetic support can really keep a creator going for a long time. I know that from personal experience. So those are some of my thoughts about podcast trailers and podcast launch parties. As you might have picked up from this episode, I think the most important thing is to follow your gut as a creator and then build the strategy off of your creative wisdom and your strategic goals. So the best strategy happens at the marriage of those two things.

Amelia Hruby: 10:52

Right? We have what we know intuitively and creatively, where that meets what we know strategically and based on all the outside things we learn about podcasting, like, when we can have that inner meet outer, that is when our podcasts really shine. So thank you so much to Karen for sending me this question and to you, dear listener, for tuning in. As always, you can send me podcast questions of your own by heading to the link in the show notes where our SpeakPipe studio will guide you through recording a little voice message, sending a note my way. Typically, when you do that, I'll reply within a couple of days with a quick ninety second response or answer to your question, and then I record these episodes and release them over time so that longer ten to fifteen minute response will come through in a few weeks to months.

Amelia Hruby: 11:43

For now, that's a wrap on this episode of the softer cast. Until next time, I will see you on the softer side of podcasting. Thanks so much for listening to the softer Softercast. If you enjoyed this episode, please send it to your podcast bestie. And after you do that, go ahead and drop us five stars on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Amelia Hruby: 12:06

If you'd like to submit a question, head to speakpipe.com/softercast to record a message or email us at hi@softersounds.studio. And last but not least, we made some awesome free things for you. Head to the show notes to download our free podcast launch toolkit or our three step podcast audit. No matter where you're at in your podcasting journey, we're here to support you. Thanks again for tuning in and joining us on the softer side of podcasting.