How to Grow a Podcast in This Era

Hey friend,

Every week someone tells me they are starting a podcast. They have a name, a logo, an intro track, and a quote from a videographer. What they do not have is any idea how a single person is going to find it.

That is the whole problem, and it is the opposite of how most people approach it. They start at the show and work backwards to the audience. This playbook starts at the audience and works backwards to the show.

The short version: a podcast grows on social media, not on Spotify. Everything else follows from that one idea.

Inside you get:

• Why a podcast is a bottom-of-funnel product, and what that means for growth
• Why you should treat it as a YouTube show before you treat it as a podcast
• The clip-to-episode system that is working right now, with the exact tools
• Why you build an email list from day one even though it will be small
• Why you should not spend money on production yet
• The weekly loop to run for your first ten episodes

Let’s go.

A podcast is the bottom of the funnel

Here is the thing nobody says out loud when they pitch you on starting a show.

A podcast is a very lower-funnel activity. Someone investing one to two hours of their life listening to you talk has to have a lot of buy-in already. They have to know who you are, like how you think, and believe the next hour with you is worth more than the hundred other things on their phone. Nobody gives that kind of time to a stranger.

So the drop-off from “has heard of you” to “listens to your podcast” is steep. Really steep. You are not going to have a million people listening unless 100 million people know who you are. The ratio is brutal and it does not get kinder because your audio quality is good.

Once you accept that, the question changes. It is no longer “how do I get more listeners.” It is “how do I get a lot more people to know who I am.” Those are different problems with different answers, and almost everyone starting a podcast is working on the wrong one.

The podcast is the thing you make for people who already like you. Social media is the thing you make for everyone else. Plan the social side first, and let the show sit underneath it.

Think social first

If you look at the normal playbook for growing anything, it says things like “run paid ads.” You can do that. It will not work for a podcast, at least not on its own.

Paid can amplify something that already works. It cannot make a show discoverable, because the problem is not that people have not seen an ad. The problem is that a cold viewer has no reason to commit an hour to you. An ad does not create that reason. A hundred short pieces of you being interesting does.

So the key here is distribution, and the reality is you need to figure out how to make it work on social media. Instagram, TikTok, YouTube Shorts, X, LinkedIn, whichever two or three fit the show. That is where the 100 million people are. That is where someone can spend 30 seconds with you at zero cost and decide whether they want more.

The podcast then becomes the “more.” It is the reward for people who already crossed the line, not the bait to get them across it.

I would obsessively start to just think about that. Before the format, before the guest list, before the gear. How does a person who has never heard of me end up spending an hour with me, and what are the three or four steps in between?

Treat it as a YouTube show first

Spotify is not good for discoverability. Neither is Apple Podcasts. People do not randomly stumble onto a podcast in those apps. They search for a show they already know, or they tap one a friend sent them. If your distribution plan is “publish it and the platform will surface it,” you do not have a plan.

YouTube is the only major podcast platform with a real recommendation engine. It will put your episode in front of people who have never searched for you, based on what they watch. It will also surface it in Google. No audio-only platform does that.

So you almost need to think about it as a YouTube show before you think about it as a podcast. That changes a few decisions right away:

• Record video from episode one. Even if the video is two iPhones on tripods or a Zoom window. You can always drop the video later. You cannot add it back.
• Write titles and thumbnails the way a YouTube creator would. Not the way a podcast app lists episodes. “Episode 14 with Jane Smith” is a filename, not a title.
• Think about the clips before you record. Which moments in this conversation will stand alone as a 30 to 60 second vertical video? If you cannot name three before you hit record, the episode plan is not ready.
• Point everything at YouTube. When a clip sends someone to the full episode, it sends them to the YouTube link, because YouTube rewards the watch and feeds it back into recommendations.

The audio feed still exists. Publish it everywhere. Just understand that the feed is a convenience for people who already found you, and YouTube is the place where new people find you.

The clip-to-episode system

Posting clips is not distribution. A clip that gets 50,000 views and sends nobody to the episode did nothing for the show. The clip needs a next step built into it.

A very common pattern that is working right now goes like this:

1. Short clip. A 30 to 60 second vertical cut from the episode, posted natively on Reels, TikTok, and Shorts. It makes sense with zero context.
2. Comment a keyword. The clip ends with a call to action: “Comment PODCAST and I’ll send you the full episode.”
3. Automated DM. A tool like ManyChat watches for the keyword and sends the person a DM automatically.
4. The link. The DM contains the YouTube link to the full episode. Or, in the second version, the DM asks for an email first and the episode link goes out by email.

Two things happen at once here, and both matter.

The first is obvious. The viewer who was interested enough to comment gets a frictionless path to the full episode. You have turned a 30 second interaction into a one hour one.

The second is less obvious and probably more important. Comments are one of the strongest signals the algorithms use. A clip with 200 keyword comments gets pushed to far more people than the same clip with 20 likes. So the mechanic grows the top of the funnel and the bottom of the funnel at the same time. The call to action is the growth tactic.

A few rules for running it:

• Cut three to five clips per episode. Pick moments that work with no setup. A strong claim, a story with a punchline, a number that surprises people.
• Post natively. Upload the video to each platform. Do not post a link in the caption and hope. Links in captions get buried and the platforms deprioritise them.
• Use the same keyword every time. Make it a word people learn. Your regulars will start commenting it before the clip even asks.
• Choose the path per clip. The direct path trades a comment for a view. The email path trades a comment for an address you keep. Use email capture on your strongest clips, where the person is clearly invested, and the direct link on the rest.

Build an email list from day one

The list will not be huge. Build it anyway. There is no reason not to, and it is the only audience you own.

Every other audience is rented. Instagram can change the algorithm. YouTube can change what it recommends. The podcast apps barely show you who your listeners are at all. An email list is the one place where you can reach the people who chose you, on your schedule, without asking a platform’s permission.

Use Beehiiv. It has a lot of built-in tools for podcasting and it is set up for exactly this. Send a blast every time an episode publishes. That is the baseline and it should be automatic.

Where the list really pays off is money, and in ways the download count never will:

• Sponsorship deals get bigger. A sponsor buying a mid-roll will pay more for a mid-roll plus a dedicated email. You can sell bigger packages because you have more than one surface to offer.
• You can launch things. A course, an event, a product, a second show. You launch to people who already opted in to hear from you, instead of hoping a post lands.
• You have proof. “Four thousand people open my email every week” is a sentence sponsors understand. “I have some downloads” is not.

Capture emails from three places. The comment-to-DM flow above. The show notes on every episode. And a simple landing page you mention at the end of every episode, out loud, every time.

Do not spend money on production yet

I would not go heavy into investing in DPs and a crew actually filming it. Figure out a DIY setup first. iPhones on tripods. OBS on a laptop. Even a Zoom call with the recording turned on.

The audience does not leave because of the camera. They leave because the conversation was boring. A beautifully lit show that nobody wants to watch is still a show nobody wants to watch, and now it cost you money.

People often try to make it too big of a project right at the beginning. They go way too far down the funnel. “This needs to be 100% professional and have all the bells and whistles” before a single person has heard a single episode. That is the wrong order.

Really, all you need to be doing at the start is figuring out two things:

1. How to present yourself on camera and on mic.
2. Whether you actually have interesting things to say.

Neither of those is solved by a better camera. Both are solved by reps.

Spend money on production once you know what the show is and people are already watching. Until then, the budget goes to time. More episodes, more clips, more attempts at the format.

Your first ten episodes are practice

Your first 10 episodes are likely not going to be great, and that is okay. You are figuring out the format.

The pacing. The length. How you open. What kinds of guests work and which ones fall flat. Which segments people clip and which they skip. Whether it is better solo, with a co-host, or interview-style. None of that is knowable before you record, no matter how long you plan.

So treat the first ten as a sprint to learn, not a launch. Watch the retention graph on YouTube and see where people drop. Watch which clips get comments and which get ignored. Change the format between episodes and do not apologise for it. The show people eventually find is the one you end up with, not the one you started with.

Here is the weekly loop once the show is running. Obsess over this, not the gear.

• Record one episode on the DIY setup
• Publish the full episode to YouTube first, then the audio feed
• Cut three to five vertical clips and post them natively
• Put the keyword call to action on every clip, wired to the YouTube link through ManyChat
• Send the Beehiiv episode email
• Check clip comments and YouTube retention before planning the next one

Six steps. Same six every week. Most of the shows that make it are not the best produced or the best hosted. They are the ones that ran this loop long enough for the format to click and the social side to compound.

Thanks for reading, friend

If you take one thing from this, take the first section. A podcast is the bottom of the funnel. Nobody listens to an hour of a stranger. Build the top of the funnel on social, make every clip point at the episode, keep the list, keep the gear cheap, and give yourself ten episodes to be bad.

Distribution is the show.

Adam