Podcast promotion copy

What podcast promotion copy is

Podcast promotion copy is the written material that goes out around each episode: the posts on the platforms you use, the section in your newsletter, the caption on the clip, and the note you send the guest so they can share it without writing anything themselves. It is written per episode, from the recording, in the same week it is released.

It is not advertising, and nothing here is paid placement. It is also not the title and description, which do their work inside the podcast app for people who already found you. Promotion copy is aimed outward, at people who do not know the show exists.

When you need it

You need it if you release episodes and then do nothing. An episode with no promotion has an audience of the people who already subscribe, and that number does not grow by itself. Recording is the expensive part and it is already spent; the posts are the cheap part, and skipping them is what makes a show feel like it is not working.

It is also worth buying when the guest is the point. A senior guest will usually share an episode they are in, but only if sharing takes them thirty seconds. Send them a blank link and most will forget. Send them three written posts, a clip and a suggested line, and a good number will use one.

You do not need this if the show itself has no page under each episode; fix that first with show notes, because promotion that sends people to an empty page wastes the click. And if what you actually want is a general social presence rather than episode-by-episode promotion, that is social content strategy, which decides where your time should go before anything is written.

What I write

• Launch-day posts. Three, written differently rather than three versions of one: one opening on the question the episode answers, one lifting a line the guest said, one naming the kind of person it is for.
• Clip captions. Short copy to sit above each cut you post, written so the clip makes sense to somebody who will never hear the rest of the episode.
• A newsletter section. Two hundred words for your own email: what the episode covers, the one thing worth taking from it, and the link. Your list is the most likely place a new listener comes from.
• The guest pack. Two posts written in a voice the guest can use, their name and role checked, the link, and one line of thanks. Sent as a document they can copy from.
• The later posts. Two more, written to go out a fortnight and a month afterwards, because an episode is new to most people long after it stopped being new to you.

Everything is written from the transcript, not from the episode title, so the quoted lines are accurate and the posts contain something the recording actually said.

What you get

A promotion sheet per episode. One document holding every post, caption and the newsletter section, with a suggested day for each, ready to be scheduled or pasted.

The guest pack. A separate one-page document you forward to the guest on release day, written so it needs no editing by them.

A repeat schedule. The dates for the later posts, so an episode keeps working for a month rather than a morning.

A pattern sheet. After the first few episodes, one page describing the shapes of post that work for this show, so the job can be handed to someone in-house.

A worked example

An illustration, not a client. A Halifax marine equipment supplier publishes a fortnightly show for fishing fleet operators. Fourteen episodes exist. Release day consists of one post saying "New episode out now" with a link. The show has about ninety regular listeners, most of them existing customers.

Promotion copy is written for the next six episodes. The episode with a marine surveyor about hull inspection failures produces three launch posts, two clip captions, a newsletter section that goes to the supplier's list of eleven hundred operators, and a guest pack the surveyor posts from the same afternoon. The surveyor's own audience is largely people the supplier has never reached. Two posts go out again three weeks later. The supplier's sales staff start sending the newsletter section rather than the episode link, because it explains in twenty seconds why the hour is worth it.

How it runs

1. A half-hour call. The show, the platforms you actually use, whether you have an email list, and how guests are handled now. No charge.
2. A fixed price in writing. Per episode, or per month for a show on a regular release schedule.
3. What you send. The episode or its transcript, your release dates, guest names and roles, and any clips your editor has cut.
4. The work. Two working days per episode once the recording exists, delivered ahead of the release date rather than on it.
5. Delivery. The promotion sheet, the guest pack and the repeat schedule, with the pattern sheet after the first few episodes.

What it costs

Promotion copy is quoted as a fixed price in CAD per episode after the half-hour call. The price depends on how many platforms you post to, whether clips are being cut, whether there is a guest pack to write, and whether it is one episode or a standing arrangement. A standing arrangement is priced per episode and stated in writing, so the monthly figure is known before the month starts. The pricing page explains how fixed pricing works.

What happens next

Promotion is where most shows quietly stop, so the next steps are usually about making the same work go further. An episode with more in it than six posts can be split properly, the way a long article is split into a fortnight of standalone posts. If the newsletter section is the part that performs, the list itself is worth taking seriously, which is email newsletters. And the fullest version of this is content repurposing, where one recording becomes a transcript, an article, posts and a newsletter together. This work is complete on its own and nothing further is assumed.