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So you’re maybe just getting into podcasting or you’ve been at it a while and want to find new ways to promote your podcast. You might go to facebook and search for podcasting groups. And you might find some that will even let you post about your podcast. This one for example.

Let’s check out some of the posts. We’ll pick 3 at random. Notice anything?

Zero engagement. When I first joined I was puzzled by this. For about 2 seconds. It’s all podcasters in these groups. Other podcasters are actually not your target audience. Sure you’ll meet some pod friends along your journey, I sure have... shout out to discord champion 2017, you know who you are. But you gotta be higher than the Local Love panel during Red light when Rebelskamp is our musical guest to think that the people who join these groups are going to tend to be your listeners. This is not the only group like this, trust me.

It’s like that legend about how boys show up in home economics class in 8th grade thinking they’ll meet girls but come to find out… It’s. All. Dudes. But at least in that class you still get to learn a few things that would help you later in life. No unintended benefits like that are gonna happen to you in these link firehose groups. It’s essentially just a never ending stream of pod-spam. I am not saying your show is spam, but if someone just happened upon the group randomly, that’s what they’d think. Endless links. Next to nobody communicating.

The people who start these groups are probably well intentioned folks who want to help you spread the word. It’s just that there’s no evidence that these groups do that. And with Facebook’s algorithm pushing links to anything that isn’t a page inside their walled garden farther down the priority list by the day, the spray and pray method of promotion that these groups seem to encourage takes up time that could be better spent doing almost anything else.

I don’t have the answer for you if you want to know how you are going to grow the audience for your podcast. Social media can be a grind and sometimes it feels robotic. But I just don’t think shouting into the void with 2000 other podcasters is likely an effective strategy.

Speaking of “effective strategies”, part 2 of this series will be about “podcasting consultants” and other people who claim that they have some kind of secret sauce that you can pour on your project. Most of these people are vultures and their names probably won’t be redacted like the names were in the screenshots in this article.