There are two things you can master on your journey to the next level of podcasting: knowledge of your craft (audio editing, software, marketing, etc.) and knowledge of your audience. And the harsh reality, my friends, is that nearly every podcaster I talk to spends all their time in column A and none at all in column B.

No one is guaranteed an audience, and no one deserves one, no matter how passionate they are about their topic. Now, you may not be entitled to an audience, but that doesn’t mean you can’t earn one.

it doesn’t matter how passionate you are about audio, or video, or whatever content area you specialize in. If you don’t understand the human at the other end of the screen or speaker, you will never succeed.

what I am going to teach you is an idea engine—an infinitely repeatable, endlessly sustainable workflow to build deeper relationships with your listeners that will have them telling their friends about your podcast.

most of the marketing advice podcasters are offered revolves around social promotion—because it’s easy. Easy doesn’t mean effective.

The only way to get people to recommend your show is to have a recommendable show.

The audience has always been in control. It is a fickle beast, but not an inscrutable one. You only need to spend some time with them, learning from them, and their secrets become a little less mysterious. It is this arcane knowledge that can turn your podcast, an audio enclosure delivered by RSS syndication, into a show, a thing people care about

The only path to getting more recommendations is to be recommendable. And the only path to “recommendability” is to know as much as possible about what the recommenders—your potential audience—are looking for, lacking, loving, and hating. And this, my friends, involves doing some decidedly unglamorous work: learning as much about your audience as y

a podcast stops growing because people stop recommending it.