This might seem like a simple thing to cover but it wasn't always easy!

And making sure everyone can access your podcast from every link you send out is essential if you want to grow your show.

So in this episodes I share a few of the options you have for a universal link to your podcast that will work for everyone.

This podcast was recorded on the lands of the Wangal people, of the Eora Nation.

I pay my respects to Elders past and present.

EPISODE CREDITS:

Host: Rachel Corbett

Editing Assistance: Josh Newth

LINKS & OTHER IMPORTANT STUFF:

Click here to submit a question to the show

Check out my online podcasting course, PodSchool

Download my free podcasting guide

Email me: rachel@rachelcorbett.com.au

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Welcome to the Pod School Podcast.

Hello.

Welcome to the show.

Today I'm going to be talking about how to share your podcast using a link that works for everybody.

That might seem like a dumb thing to cover, but this has not been an easy thing in podcasting.

When I first started years and years ago, could not believe that you could not share your podcast to everybody on every device just with one link.

Apple podcast links didn't work on Android phone, so you couldn't share those.

But Apple podcasts was the predominant way that people listened to shows and that was usually the way that people would share their link.

Spotify at the time didn't exist.

That link works for both Android and iPhone.

Google podcast exist for a while, but then it went away.

It was just like an absolute dog's breakfast.

Now Apple has finally created a progressive web app that works on an Android phone.

So if you send people to an Apple link, it will open on an Android phone.

So that is fantastic progress.

And you just want to make sure that you are always sharing your show in a way that means everybody can listen to it.

This was more of an issue when Apple did not have any Android presence because it meant that anybody that clicked on your Apple link and a lot of people shared their show via the Apple link, they were taken nowhere.

And the vast majority of phone users in the world are Android users.

So you are leaving a lot of listens on the table if you are not making sure that your link works for everybody.

There are a few options when you are sharing your show that you can use naturally.

You can definitely use a platform link like Apple now that that works on both platforms like Spotify.

The thing I would flag about that is that you are then sending your traffic to one individual platform all the time.

And ideally you want people to be listening everywhere.

And not everybody listens to podcasts on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

They might have a different podcast app that they really like that they want to listen to the show on.

You want to make sure that they have options.

You also want to reduce the friction because as ridiculous as it sounds, we won't do anything online.

We won't click more than once.

We want to be like, take me directly to that thing or I'm going to get bored and move on.

We might have done 20 years ago.

Did the Internet even exist yet?

I mean, social media didn't, but now Our attention spans, forget about it.

So you really need to make the process of sending somebody to your show really easy.

If you are sending them to an app, obviously they're getting sent directly to the show in the app.

If they listen in that app, fantastic, then they can just follow and subscribe straight away and listen in their app of choice.

You can also send them to your website.

So this has an additional benefit of obviously getting a bit of extra traffic to your website.

You can also have a lot more information on your website.

So if people come to your podcast there and then they're like, oh, I wanna check out this person's about page, or oh, look, they've got this thing here, or this thing here or this thing here, it can be a really good way to kind of build your authority and to show people a little bit more than just the episode.

The thing is that you need to make it really easy for them to play the episode if they're going to be finding it on your website.

And ultimately they can't follow and subscribe right there, they will still have to go and find the show in a podcast app, which means they'll either have to click on the link that's in your player and go there or to search.

So there is an additional step there that might mean that you lose people along the way, but there are benefits to sending people to your website if you want the traffic there and if you've got some additional stuff.

Like sometimes if you're sending people to an episode of your podcast and it is embedded in a blog post and you've got a lot of additional content there, but you've also got a link to a great guide that you have there that people could give their email address to you if they want the guide and all those kind of additional resources that can be a very useful place to send people.

And good for you as well.

You can also send people to the show page for your podcast host.

So your podcast host will very often have a show page or a player that people can be sent to.

For a lot of the shows that I have worked with on the networks that I've run, we've used Omni, and they have a really good episode player where it just kind of opens really clearly when somebody clicks on it and you just press play.

It's really simple.

So that can be a really easy way that works on all phones for people to just.

If you just want people to press play on that specific episode or piece of audio.

So that can be a really good way to do it as well.

You just want to have a look at what the design of your podcast host page is and see, like, is that a really simple thing for me to send people to?

Because ultimately, whichever way you use, you want it to be a really simple user journey, and you want to make sure that you've done that user journey yourself, too.

So you can work out, like, what's the friction here?

What is stopping people from actually getting to the point where they're listening to and subscribing to my show?

There's also things like aggregate pages.

So those are websites where you can actually.

They will kind of aggregate all the places that your show can be accessed.

Pod News does an aggregate page where you can kind of type in your show, and then the page that it generates literally has all of the icons for all of the different podcatches that you can find your show on, and people can click on those.

Again, that can be maybe for some people, a step too far if they don't really know what's my podcatcher, or, you know, they might just prefer to go and search for it in their own.

But that is another option.

And then there's also the dynamic link option, which I really prefer and which I use with my shows.

There are a bunch of different platforms that will offer this, and ideally, you want one that's trackable.

So if somebody clicks on it, you want to know, are they listening to that podcast episode for a long time that wasn't actually trackable?

And you would see when people had clicked on the link and you're like, did they listen?

Like, the only way you had to work it out was if I send that out and then I look at my downloads.

But if you are constantly sending out promotion for your podcast, which you should be very hard to understand where things are coming from.

So now are a lot of platforms out there where you can put a little code on your RSS feed, and it can actually determine whether somebody has listened to an episode if they have clicked on that link.

And that can be really useful.

So you can place where you want people to go.

So you can say, if you're on an iOS device, you go to Apple Podcasts.

If you're on an Android, you can send them to, you know, Spotify or your website or another place.

And then if they're on desktop, you can send them somewhere else.

So you can select where they get sent, and then they immediately get sent.

Sent to that.

You can send people to individual episodes within the podcast app.

That can just be a really simple way, depending on which device people are using to be sent to different places, and if you can track those clicks and then whether those clicks lead to downloads, that then can give you much more information about how your social strategy is working and whether there are certain platforms you should concentrate more on and others that you could just let go.

So that's another really good option and just makes it a lot simpler for people.

But again, the right option will be what works for you.

And I think testing all of these and seeing what the experience is like, what looks best, what's kind of easiest thing.

It also depends on what you're trying to get people to do.

Are you trying to get people to come to your podcast, listen to a bunch of episodes and follow or subscribe?

Or do you just want them to listen to this specific episode and you don't mind if they don't follow or subscribe because you've got really topical content that you can share out on social media and if people are interested in this specific story, then you just want them to listen and you'll get the downloads for that.

So it just depends what your strategy is.

But there are a lot of different ways now, and it's just a lot simpler now because if you do just go and send out your Apple link, well, it is going to work now, isn't it?

Which is fan bloody tastic because those poor Android users that just ended up in Internet purgatory when everybody was sending out their Apple links.

Not anymore.

What a world we live in.

If you have a question that you would like answered on the show, please send it through.

You just need to click on the link in the description of the episode.

If you need some more help, make sure that you check out my online podcasting course, pod school@podschool.com that are you.

I would love to help you start your very own show and share it out to the masses and hopefully build a great audience of loving, caring, devoted fans who think that what you dish out every week is bloody fantastic.

Because what a great thing to feel, you know.

I'll see you next week.

That's all for today.