19. Want to Ditch Social Media? Podcasting is Your Golden Ticket!

Are you tired of the social media hamster wheel? Me too! In today's episode, I share why podcasting is a better option than social media for creating a relationship with your audience, plus some tips about how to make the transition.

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This episode was produced by me, The Podcast Teacher! Contact me at Hello@ThePodcastTeacher.com.

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Transcript

Hey, hey, and welcome back. I've been teasing an episode about social media for a while, and the day is finally here. We are going to talk about how to use podcasting to get off of the social media hamster wheel. I refer to it that way, as a hamster wheel, because that's how it feels to me. The content is short lived, and by the time you finish hitting submit on one piece of content, it's time to create another. It's never ending. You're at the mercy of a powerful and finicky algorithm, and you're trying to capture people's attention in a fraction of a second. Now I don't hate social media.

On the contrary, like most people, I actually spend way too much time enjoying it. I love passively consuming content that's about cute animals, my favorite celebrities, and of course, updates from friends and family. I even enjoy participating in Facebook groups centered around topics that interest me. But consuming content is one thing, creating content is another beast entirely. I feel like creating content is a way of shouting, look at me. Look at me, Which is the opposite of my introvert personality that prefers to remain out of the spotlight. This is especially true for short form video. I have yet to participate in any trending audios or dances, and I don't foresee myself doing that anytime soon.

The thought of putting myself in the spotlight like that gives me anxiety and is a level of vulnerability that I personally am just not ready for. It also seems very difficult to create that type of content. I mean, maybe it's just because it's so foreign to me. But the idea of plotting how to capture and keep someone's attention in a fraction of a second, give them value, but also be entertaining. It exhausts me just talking about it. I even hired someone to do my social media for over a year. It was just a static image and a caption post. Nothing fancy, and I even came to dread that.

If someone engaged with my post, I was supposed to be happy about that. But in reality, most of the time I groaned because that meant that I would have to use my precious energy to come up with a response to their comment or engage in a DM conversation, always wondering if they were truly interested or if they were going to try and sell me something. Spoiler alert, it was usually the latter. So making social media a significant part of my content strategy gets a big new thank you from me. If you love creating content there, and you light up at the thought of jumping on the latest trend or strategizing about how to capture someone's attention before they can swipe away, then by all means, keep doing what you're doing. The world needs people like you. I'm not here to talk you out of using social media if you love it. But I've heard from countless listeners that you are tired of playing the social media game, and you want another option.

So if that's you, you're in the right place. Enter podcasting. I could probably sit here for an entire hour explaining why I think podcasting is a better strategy than social media, but I'll try and keep it brief. Then we'll talk about how you can transition away from social media and into podcasting as your primary content strategy. In my mind, the number one reason that podcasting is better than social media is that the algorithms are so much less complicated. With podcasting, if you follow a show, the new episode is presented to you in your queue. Your next up list is made up of shows that you said you were interested in. It's not the algorithm giving you a bunch of shows that it thinks you might like and hiding things that you've deliberately followed because the math behind the scenes indicates that you might not really be that into it.

As a podcaster, this means that your content is definitely getting in front of the people who have expressed interest in it. Of course, it's not guaranteed that a listener will press play. You do still need to do your part with an episode title and description to make it enticing, but at least you're in front of their eyes. I can't remember the exact statistic, but I think it's something like only 2% of the people following you on social media are actually shown your content. That's out of the people who already raised their virtual hand and said that they wanted to see your stuff. That percentage might be slightly higher than 2%, but I can't remember. Amy Porterfield quoted it recently when promoting her email list building boot camp, and I remember being shocked at the low percentage. I also think that podcasting is better than social media because the content is long lived.

You can find and listen to this podcast episode today or in 5 years. It's also a medium that you own. Assuming that you keep a copy of your final podcast episode on your own device, which you should, you will forever own that content. Even if a podcast player were to be discontinued, or your hosting site crashed, you still have all of the original material and can just pop it up somewhere else. And the last point that I'll make here in order to keep this why podcasting is awesome section short is that podcasting fosters a deeper relationship of know, like, and trust between the listener and the creator that's unlike any other platform. When was the last time you watched 15 second video of someone dancing and pointing to facts about their industry, and you really felt like you had a connection with them? I'm going to venture a guess that it happens rarely if ever. At least that's the case for me. However, when I listen to podcast episodes, I really feel like the host is a friend or a colleague of mine.

The relationship is so much deeper. I get to know them as a person, hear their stories, learn their viewpoints on different topics, etcetera, etcetera. It may be possible to get there with someone on social media too, but it's usually a heck of a lot faster through a podcast. And when I'm ready to continue my education by a course or a program, Who do you think I'm going to invest my money with? Yep. A 100%. It's the person that has earned my trust already. Okay. So how do you use podcasting to get off of social media if that's what you want? The answer to this partly depends on how active you are on social media to begin with, But in general, you wanna start your podcast and use social media to let people know about the new podcast.

If you're connected with people at all on social platforms, use that to your advantage and shout about your podcast from the metaphorical rooftops. Check out episode 6 if you need more information about how to successfully launch your show and how to use social media to your advantage during that time. Once your podcast is up and running, continue to direct people back to the podcast. Make them aware that the podcast is the best place to connect with you and receive your most valuable information. If you participate in an event, join a new group, or encounter another situation where people ask where they can connect with you, direct them to the podcast, and don't even mention your social handles. From here, you can decide how much of a social media presence you'd like to continue to have, if at all. You might choose to continue to participate in social media, but to concentrate on just one platform. I personally am choosing to continue to show up on Facebook, though it's to a lesser degree than I was a few months ago.

I'm also in the process of bringing my Instagram activity pretty much to a halt because that's where I dread showing up the most. If you're not quite ready to call it quits completely, then you can repurpose your podcast content into material for social platforms. This is something that I'm exploring because the content creation process is a huge energy suck for me. If I can repurpose content, get more use out of the same material that I created for my podcast, and get in front of new audiences, that can be beneficial and might be worth my time and energy that has to go into answering comments and engaging with people on the platform. Repurposing is also a fairly delegatable task if you're able to hire a VA to help you. If you decide to ditch social media completely, you'll want to put up some notices that you're no longer active on the platform and to come hang out with you on the podcast for anybody new that might stumble upon your account and not realize that the transition has happened. The point here is that you get to decide what's best for you. If you want to start a podcast and be super active on social media, go for it.

If your introvert batteries are being drained by social media and you're looking for a way out, then you can use podcasting as a way to reduce or even eliminate your social media content. There's no wrong path here. Just do what feels right for you. That's all for today. Talk to you again soon.