How you should advertise your podcast

• Exclusive: How should you advertise your podcast? In part 1 of an exclusive series for Podnews, Sean Howard of Fable and Folly Productions, the creators of Alba Salix, Royal Physician and the improvised sci-fi dark comedy, Civilized, gives us the big list of ways to advertise your podcast - 24 ways! - and what to consider when planning your marketing.

• Popular iOS podcast app Overcast has had an update, including a rebuilt Voice Boost function, which boosts the volume of podcasts to make them easier to hear. It promises a significantly better-sounding “boost” to podcasts, and normalises all podcasts to -14 LUFS, a level that developer Marco Arment claims “closely matches the volume of Siri and most iOS turn-by-turn navigation voices”. (Google Podcasts? Please licence this. Thanks.)

• Acast has hired Brian Danzis as Managing Director, Americas. Danzis joins from Spotify, and will “lead the next phase of our expansion”, says Acast’s COO, Oskar Serrander.

• Samsung’s version of Alexa is called Bixby. Here’s how to get your podcast on it - a staggering total of 50 steps. 😲

• Apple Podcasts is looking for a Head of Partner Relations - “you will oversee all new and existing relationships with podcast creators.”

  
  This link is no longer available, as at Aug 20 2023

• Podcast Magazine’s first issue is now available, free - it’s an electronic glossy magazine with a number of long-form articles. We like page 40.

Thank you to our many personal supporters, including our latest, Matt Deegan, one of the British Podcast Awards team. You’ve helped fund us to improve things: for example, when you play a podcast from our podcast pages, you now can control it in your Android notifications, or Chrome’s new media controls.

From the new book Make Noise by Eric Nuzum, available now

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Tips and tricks - with Acast Open

• How do I build an audience for my podcast? Dan Misener reckons that’s not the question you should be asking.

• What are the top 10 podcasts about podcasting? We Edit Podcasts has a list. We assume ours is number 11. Probably.

Reader’s letters

Audio descriptions: A bright idea from Ken Randall on Friday - that TV show soundtracks with audio descriptions would work quite well as podcasts - prompts Daniel Newman to tell us a trick to listen to Netflix with the screen off. I’ve done this while running, and it works great. Agreed that these would work surprisingly well as podcasts! Daniel also points us to this episode from Twenty Thousand Hertz, which he calls an “excellent introduction” to them.

Companies - are they a thing?: Scott Johnson asks: In Podnews, why are some companies referred to as singular, and some plural? Your attention to detail tells me that this is not random or an oversight. For example, from today’s articles - “Apple are hiring” (plural, and just sounds wrong), and “OZY Media has announced…” (singular). Just wondering what grammatical rule is determining this? - Great question! I’m British; and in British English, companies can be singular or plural - in that case, the people within Apple (“Apple”) are hiring more people to join them. However, in US English companies are always singular, and since 74% of Podnews readers are in the US, I try to always refer to companies as “it” not “them”. It’s a hard habit to break: sorry if I forget occasionally.

Correction: Obviously, when we said Paul Bae hosts Podcast Gumbo, what we meant to say was Paul Kondo. It turns out they’re two different people. Our apologies to them, and anyone else called Paul.

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Podcast News

US news network HLN launches its first podcast this week. Down the Hill: The Delphi Murders is launched on Wednesday: a true crime podcast focusing on a crime in Delphi IN, USA. The podcast was previewed at the IAB Podcast Upfront in October.