I thought that I was doing what everyone else did, and I was taking the advice that I saw online about how to promote a podcast. Why weren't my posts and soundbites getting people interested? Of course, I blame myself, and I compared myself to other people that were posting, and they were better than me. They were prettier than me. People just like them more. What I wouldn't learn for another year and a half is that there's so much noise on social media. Everyone is trying to get their followers to go somewhere else and do something. Because of this, people don't automatically trust us, and it's easier for them to detect when you're trying to get them to do something. That just makes them tune us out. We have to prove ourselves to them and show them that it's worthwhile if they make the commitment to leave the app and spend their time on something else. An announcement of what your episode, video, or course is about is not going to do it. You have to show them inside social media that you can help them. Pat calls it giving them a quick win, and quick wins are essential in the sneak attack method. We try to model our promotional strategy off big successful podcasts and influencers, but giant shows like Huberman Lab, for example, can make a new episode as outpost, and everyone just goes and listens to it. Dr. Huberman has over 2 million followers, so of course, a ton of people are going to listen. We can't look at the biggest shows as an example of what to do. They don't have to be creative in their marketing. Their audience is so large that they can make an announcement, and lots of people will give their show a chance. Then these people begin sharing it, and the show naturally grows. If you have 2,000 followers, or you are brand new and you just made a new page like I did, not many people are going to automatically give your show a chance. We have to do more to build their trust than just showing up. So I started out, just like most other people do, I made announcement posts and soundbites. I thought the soundbites would be a great teaser to make them want to go listen to the rest of the episode, but how many random strangers are going to sit there, click on a boring looking soundbite, and listen to it. Soundbites are so obvious that everyone is going to scroll right past it. So never post a soundbite ever again, please. Even if you think you're taking the most impactful moment of the episode, it's still not a quick win for someone. They have to sit there and listen to the teaser, and watch the waveforms go across the post. I know it's frustrating if you observe big accounts, just randomly start a podcast, and they make their new episode as outposts, and they shoot up the charts, and just everyone listens to it and shares it, and you are not having the same response with your work, but it is what it is. Some people have an advantage and other people don't. And if you don't have an advantage and you're starting out from zero, then you have to get really creative with your marketing, and you have to be willing to analyze what you're doing. You can't just simply show up and expect people to move off the app and go do whatever you're asking them to do. So first, you have to identify where your people hang out so you know where to post. So are they on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or somewhere else? So this is a really important step, so don't skip it by making a quick assumption. So for example, everyone's going really crazy over LinkedIn marketing right now, because not too many people are utilizing it, but I can't promote my sober podcast over there. The nature of LinkedIn is to show any post you like or comment on with your entire network. No one wants every colleague they've ever worked with to see that they're liking sober content. If I tried to promote my show on LinkedIn, it would be unsuccessful because of the platform choice, not necessarily because of my posts. I settled on Instagram because there's a huge community of sober influencers over there, and although Instagram is rough and the algorithm can be very depressing, that's where my people hang out. When I first started my Instagram account, I could not understand why people would not go listen to my show. It's the exact information that they're looking for, but they would not give it a chance. So I thought if only they knew what they would learn in the episode, then maybe they'd go listen to it. So I started playing around with new episode is out posts with text on the image. I started with the entire episode description, which didn't have much of an impact, and then I moved to putting the main four points from the episode on the picture. That started working better, and this was when I began to see a little bit of traction. And these posts were even shared once or twice too, but there was still one major problem. I wrote episode on the post. It would say the episode number and the title. So I was still revealing that this was an announcement post about a new episode for a podcast that most people didn't listen to. As soon as someone detects that your content doesn't apply to them, they will leave. And that's what you're doing by telling them it's a new episode.