ScottMurray Scott Murray is the Social Learning Evangelist for TrainUp.com, the web’s largest career marketplace.  He is also a contributor to the Training Insights Blog, a series of blogs dedicated to career and professional development.

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Podcasting is what finally forced me to create a Twitter account for the first time. When I produced my first show over two years ago, I knew I needed to be there in order to market the podcast and announce new episodes. This belief was reinforced when I immediately noticed other podcasts promoting their recent episodes. Those postings usually looked something like this:

“The Latest Episode of The Podcast is now LIVE! (Insert link)”

“Episode 234 of The Podcast is now available. Check it out! (Insert link)”

So, in the early going, I tweeted about my latest show in a very similar fashion. As I began to add more shows, I did a little more research. I came across a few blogs that wrote about being creative with your tweets. Promoting a podcast episode definitely applies to the creativity rule because, like I said, I see plenty of podcast tweets like the ones above. So, the point is to make yours stand out by not tweeting the way everyone else does. So, I started to tweet about things that were in the podcast episodes themselves.

One of the best examples of how this type of approach works for podcasts came when I was hosting & producing The Beyond the Screens entertainment podcast. One day I posted a show dedicated to 80s movies and my guest was Anthony Michael Hall. It’s possible at one time I tweeted something about him being a guest, but the biggest response I got is when I tweeted this:

That got people’s attention. The listens for that particular show went way up shortly thereafter, and Kelly LeBrock herself retweeted it and started following the show.

When I started building a Twitter page for TrainUp.com, I researched how different companies choose to tweet and creatively engage with customers and followers. I found that sometimes, a company might create a company mascot that tweets in the name of the company. Roger from Moz comes to mind, for example.

While that wasn’t an ideal fit for TrainUp, it was a great fit for my latest podcast. More often than not, when it comes to a podcast’s Twitter account, the show itself will have a page and the hosts will link to it from their personal accounts. I had done that in the past and was on the verge of doing that again with my new show. That is, until I created a unique character that would join in our conversations.

His name is GANNIN (The Geek & Nerd News Intel Network) and he is kind of like Jarvis from the Ironman movies. He is a key figure now in the Assembly of Geeks podcast. I decided to make him be the Twitter presence for the show. It allows for a consistent creative and “interpersonal” presence that talks to listeners, promotes the show and shares news stories (just like he does on the program).

Making him the Twitter voice gives me even more opportunities to be creative. My hope is that he becomes a listener favorite that creates a lot of listener engagement on Twitter.

Promoting a podcast on Twitter should be approached like anything else. Think of how many tweets you see a day and what makes you click on a link. Be different, be unique and be creative. You have to give people a reason to read and react.

 

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