There are many guides and posts out there that promise you that if you take specific steps, you can get your first one thousand listeners. I’m not going to promise you that. I’m going to tell you that if you work on growing your audience and spending the time necessary to do that, you will see your listeners and downloads go up over time. It depends on the time you put in and the content you’re putting out. There’s no magic bullet.

Here are some steps you can take to grow your podcast and gain a loyal community of listeners.

Have a home base.Most podcast platforms like the ones I mentioned in Part II offer a website where your podcast is displayed. However, if you’re offering a product or service or wish to grow a community, you’re going to want a home base of your own. In most cases, a blog site like WordPress or Squarespace is just the thing. WordPress is the most used blog software globally and has many podcast-related plug-ins and other customizable options. Squarespace, the platform I use, is for people like me who don’t want to mess around with coding and get ‘under the hood.’

Instead, you could decide to buy space from a web host like Hostgator or Bluehost and create your own space from the ground up. Whatever route you take, this is a place for you to host all the episodes of your podcast, blog posts, downloads, and other resources for your listeners. When you release a new episode of your podcast, you can embed a web player for that episode, append it with show notes and other resources, and post it to your website. Then, you can create assets for social media accounts and link your listeners back to the post on your website.

Don’t forget to post your new content on social media! It’s the one thing most new podcasters forget to do, and it can significantly affect downloads and engagement at the very beginning. Make sure people know what you have going on and where they can find great content from you.