How to Approach Podcast Swaps as a Writer

If social media really isn’t your thing and you need to expand your reach quickly as an author, podcast swaps might be just the answer you’re looking for, especially if you’re looking to promote an upcoming or recently released book. This is where you and another podcast host agree to appear as guests on your respective shows. But even if you don’t have a podcast as a writer, you can get creative, such as appearing on someone’s show and then having them do a guest post, provide a freebie to your readers, and so on.

But podcast swaps can have their share of headaches, one of which is the temptation to take every opportunity you have to get on a show, particularly if the host doesn’t charge a fee for access to their audience. It’s easy to get overwhelmed in the quest to network and say yes to shows where you really won’t add much value to the audience. If you choose to use services like PodMatch to find people to do a swap with, you can eliminate many issues simply by clarifying in detail topics you need and what you’d like guests to cover, as well as selecting service plans that are realistic for the number and types of shows you can do.

But in the video below, I clarify a key to making podcast swaps work for expanding your author reach — make sure you’re setting up the swaps with a focus on the audience, not the host or one-to-one networking.

In addition to taking this general perspective, here’s what I do to ensure my swaps go smoothly:

• Research your guest’s show or other work — know the size of the show, topics they’ve covered, what their mission is, and where the overlap between your audiences is.
• As a host, prepare a show outline with potential questions in advance to give yourself some structure, but allow your conversation to flow naturally. It’s often in the most unplanned moments that you strike a valuable insight.
• Ask some questions about the guest’s background to get information that’s not available on their general bio. This practice helps listeners better understand why the person who’s on your show is an appropriate guest.
• If you’re going to appear on someone else’s show, send them a link to your media kit. The media kit can include your bio, headshot, book links, news releases, and so on. Include potential topics you can cover for the host.
• Share your intent and workflow ahead of time. What do you hope to accomplish with the show? Where will the conversation be available? What will the marketing look like? When are elements like headshots required?
• Prepare some extras in advance, such as evergreen free downloads. Once you have these assets created, you might be able to use them for many talks, rather than creating new materials or offers every time you do a swap. At the very least, be prepared to share where listeners can find out more — exchange website or book links for the show notes ahead of time!
• Clarify boundaries before the show. If there are certain questions or topics that are off limits, make sure there’s no confusion about it.
• Plan on a two month work window. Sure, a show usually only takes less than an hour to record. But people are busy, and from start to finish (first contact to having the episode live) you’ll need time to accommodate everyone’s schedule, complete editing (including the notes and transcript), and develop your marketing assets and strategy for the episode. Never assume things will go perfectly!

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[Transcript summary]

If you are doing any kind of writing right now, whether it’s books, websites, any other kind of copy, articles, you are probably finding that getting the visibility for yourself is hard, harder than it’s ever been.

But one of the techniques that a lot of writers are finding works is to do swaps. And one of the most effective types of swaps is podcast swaps. And these work by, you go on somebody’s podcast, and if you have your own podcast, then you have a guest. And so, what that does is it allows you to essentially share audiences, so you don’t have to work as hard to get as many people to hear your message. It’s kind of built in that way.

But the one caution or word of advice that I want to give you on this is, please vet your podcast. Just because someone contacts you, maybe they heard about your show or your book, that does not mean that you have to go on their show. Do the legwork, because if the audience is not aligned, you’re not really going to get any benefit from being on that show. It’s going to be a waste of time.

The best kinds of podcast go on as a writer are not the ones where you’re going on the show to impress or build your network with the podcast host. The best podcasts to go on are the ones where the audience for that podcast would actually read your book.

Now, that might depend on the topic, and you gotta make sure that that’s really well matched, but don’t make it just about, okay, well, if I’m on her show and you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours a little bit, and then it becomes about the network between the host and the author. You really want to think writer to the audience.

That’s how you find the right show. Take care, everybody. Bye.