Podcasts are currently among the most popular and effective ways of content creation. The advantage of leveraging the power of this technique is that you can communicate with your audience directly and more intimately.
However, to gain more out of your podcasts in terms of brand creation and digital marketing, you’ll need to have a target audience. Sharing files or links to your podcasts is the best way of attracting listeners. Social media, as expected, is the leading channel in this department.
Did you know that you can now add your podcast to your Facebook Page? In fact, you can add more than one if you have multiple podcasts!
The benefits are twofold:
First, every time you publish a new podcast episode, Facebook will automatically see that episode and share it to your Page to help drive awareness of your episode with your audience.
That’s podcast promotion 101, right? You’ll still need to share your latest episode to your other channels and with your email subscribers, but now Facebook saves you a step and does it promptly, helping to get more downloads right away.
But to succeed and compete with the best in this field, you must have a multitude of Facebook followership. Fortunately, today there are many ways to gain more followers on Facebook. You can buy them from reliable and popular sites or pay influencers to market your brand and drive traffic to your Facebook page.
Plus, if you have an advertising budget for your show, you can further automate audience growth by setting up Facebook Ads to automatically boost new Facebook Page posts. As a result, when Facebook automatically shares your latest podcast episode, it’ll immediately be used to expand your reach into additional audiences.
Second, your Facebook Page will gain an entirely new tab for all of your podcast content!
Just like Photos and Videos, your fans and target audience will see a “Podcast” tab that lists all of your podcast episodes and makes them super easy to find and listen to!
Note that, because Facebook recognizes that podcast consumption is largely a mobile-first experience, the Podcast tab and automated posts are only visible to mobile viewers of your Page. Desktop podcast fans, I’m afraid you’re out of luck.
UPDATE: Facebook announced that this functionality will be deprecated in June, 2022, and that as of May 6, no new podcasts can be added to Facebook Pages. It’s unclear whether there will be a replacement or alternative option for podcasters in the future, which is a shame, since I had just added my new Virtual Event Strategist podcast to my own Facebook Page.
Let me walk you through the exact steps I took to set up our popular Agency Accelerated podcast onto the Agorapulse Facebook Page.
Get Started With Facebook Page Podcasts
Before you add your podcast to your Facebook Page, it needs to be hosted by a podcast host with at least one published episode, so that you have an RSS link for your podcast which you’ll need in a moment. If you haven’t already set up your podcast elsewhere, start with this guide, then come back once you’re ready. Facebook, like Apple Podcasts, is simply going to be a directory and distributor of your show.
Now all you need to do is follow these easy steps.
First, go to your Page on Facebook and make sure you’re an Admin so that you see the Admin menu down the left side of your screen, and look for Podcast.
Second, click on Podcasts and, assuming no one else on your team has already added it, click on Add Podcast.
Third, copy & paste your podcast RSS link into the form and click on Add.
Fourth, Facebook is going to scan your podcast and retrieve the administrative email associated with it. You’ll see a hashed version of that email address on this next screen and assuming it’s yours or someone’s on your team, click on Continue to have a unique verification code emailed. This ensures that only the owner of a podcast is allowed to associate it with a particular Facebook Page.
Finally, once you’ve received the email confirmation code and provided it to Facebook, your podcast will be authenticated and all you need to do is click Publish. This is where you can choose to enable Clips, which I’ll explain in a moment.
Once you’ve connected and published your podcast, within an hour or so Facebook will have scanned your entire published library of shows and all of them will be available on your new Podcast tab.
Any episodes that you’ve published within the last week will be shared to your Page as a podcast post, and as soon as you publish new ones they’ll be shared too.
Interestingly, the podcast episodes are published as videos, similar to how Headliner.app works. There’ll be the thumbnail of the podcast automatically integrated into a dynamic video that plays the audio from your show.
Facebook Podcast Clips
One other cool feature I need to mention is that you and your audience can easily create and share clips from your podcasts!
Suppose you’re listening to the Agency Accelerated interview with Allen Kay and you absolutely loved one of the fabulous nuggets Allen shared. Tap on the Share button at the bottom of your screen and then tap on Create Clip.
This will open a Create Clip window on your mobile device showing you the podcast episode thumbnail and at the bottom you’ll see a waveform representing the audio, which you can swipe left or right to get to the point of the podcast you want to share. Overlaid on top of the waveform is a blue bracket representing the specific segment of the show you want to share.
Once you’ve found the segment you want to share, tap on Done and then you can decide if you want to share to your personal profile or a Page you manage, what you want to say in the post, and tap Share to publish it.
If you’re a remote live producer or marketing agency, I would absolutely recommend building this into your repertoire and content repurposing services for clients. Let them know that among the 30+ directories and destinations you plan to set up to help promote and distribute their podcast, Facebook will be among them and will even help create and share key audio snippets to further amplify the show and make guests shine.
In Conclusion
As a podcaster, one of the biggest problems you’re likely to face is building a target audience. Fortunately, social media has made it easier by enabling you to reach many people and attract those interested in your content. Adding your podcast on Facebook, for instance, makes your content accessible to a large part of internet users. Hopefully, the information shared in this article will help you enhance your career in podcasting and content creation.
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