Ep 70: How the Taylor Swift N*des Scandal Affected my Podcast Marketing
You won't believe what happened to my podcast recently!
I released an episode titled "What Taylor Swift Can Teach Us About Podcasting" on January 30th. In it, I used Taylor Swift and her ever-changing music eras as a metaphor for adapting your podcast content and promotion strategies over time.
Little did I know, that same weekend the episode launched, searches for "Taylor Swift" were completely banned on Twitter after some scandalous AI-generated images of her emerged online.
This was really bad timing on my part and here's why: I rely heavily on Twitter for promoting my podcast and driving listeners to new episodes.
A huge majority of my podcast downloads come directly from Twitter, and it's where most of my new listeners find me too. So when people suddenly couldn't search Taylor's name that week, it meant my podcast episode likely wasn't showing up in any Twitter searches either. (And I'd banked on that being a clever way to potentially reach some new listeners).
I couldn't believe such an unforeseen consequence!
As content creators, we can strategize search engine optimization and promotion plans, but we can't always predict what social platforms will restrict access to each day. Whether it's election censorship or COVID misinformation crackdowns, search bans happen more than we realize.
While downloads stayed strong that week (thanks loyal listeners!!), this whole debacle made me realize I need to actively promote old episodes to capture new listeners from searches.
So that's exactly what I'm going to do - rerun a special promotional campaign just for my Taylor Swift episode in case anyone looks her up now that the name ban has been lifted. You never know who may discover and subscribe to the show from it popping up in more keyword searches!
I hope relaying my own podcast visibility challenges gives you some helpful tips and food for thought. When the algorithms seem to work against us, we have to get creative with repeating and repurposing content across multiple platforms. As the saying goes, the show must go on...even when our favorite pop star suddenly disappears from the Twitterverse!
Timestamps:
- 00:00:00 Intro
- 00:00:49 Taylor Swift Searches Blocked on Twitter: A Complete Coincidence
- 00:02:08 Twitter Ban Affects Content Discovery
- 00:04:27 You Can't Always Control What Social Media Does or Doesn't Do
- 00:06:12 Reflections and podcast promotion tips
Highlights:
- The impact of the Taylor Swift AI-generated n*de scandal on my podcast
- Keywords relating to my podcast episode being temporarily blocked on Twitter
- Search engines and social media platforms censoring and blocking information during past events
- The unpredictability of what might be banned or restricted at any given time
- Running campaigns to promote content and potentially reach new audiences
- What I learnt from this whole experience and what it means for podcast marketing and promotion - including some podcasting tips for when a marketing campaign maybe doesn't go as planned
Listen to Episode 66: What Taylor Swift Can Teach Us About Podcasting - https://lazygirlpod.captivate.fm/episode/ep-66-what-taylor-swift-can-teach-us-about-podcasting
📧 Subscribe to the newsletter: https://veritysangan.com/newsletter
Freebies:
- ✅ Podcast Launch Checklist and Episode Planner – https://veritysangan.com/launchchecklist
- 🎉 Grow Your Podcast Audience 5-day Email Challenge – https://veritysangan.com/5daychallenge
- 🙋♀️ Podcasting – Getting Your Business Heard – https://veritysangan.com/podcastwebinar
Transcript
[00:00:15] Verity: So, oh, gosh. I don't even know where to start with this because I don't think I ever thought I would say that sentence on this podcast. In fact, I don't think I ever thought I'd say that sentence at all. But, yes, Taylor Swift's deep fake AI generated nudes affected this podcast. Now before we go into it, I'm going to say, I obviously do not advocate any creating nudes via AI and, like, oh, just I can't imagine.
[: :: [:[00:01:09] Verity: I'm just pulling up on my phone here. I, released an episode 30th January, episode 66, what Taylor Swift can teach us about podcasting. And this was a great episode. Absolutely loved it. If you haven't listened to it, do go back and listen to it.
[: :: [:[00:02:30] Verity: And I have talked about before how I'll look can't have exact the exact episode, but I'll link it down in the show notes, but how I didn't promote anything on Twitter. For 2 weeks, my listeners my listens and downloads dropped by about 78 percent. So I get a lot of my listeners from Twitter. So for me to not be able to have my content found on Twitter easily is a problem. Now, obviously, my contact wasn't being blocked or anything like that.
[:[00:03:40] Verity: I had done it when nobody could search for Taylor Swift's name. Now okay. Don't get me wrong. I'm not going into the ins and outs of SEO and saying this I should do SEO, the site shouldn't, and what have you, because that's a whole other topic. And like I said, I didn't use Taylor Swift's name in the episode title just to get the the listens and what have you.
[: :: [:[00:05:29] Verity: My download numbers for that episode, Bridgette, you know, really good, general I speaking and, you know, obviously, it was Taylor Swift who suffered because that was just an must have been an awful experience for her. But what I am going to do is, do you know what? I'm gonna run a mini campaign promoting that particular episode aside just, you know, now so then if people do search the name Taylor Swift on Twitter or Rex, then you never know. They Might Actually Find the Podcast episode, and then I might end up opening up to a new potential group of listeners. But either way, as I said, you can't always control what social media does or doesn't do on any given day.
:: [:[00:06:52] Verity: If you are on YouTube, also make sure that you are hitting that subscribe and like button. It really does help promote the show in terms of other people see that people are liking it, and they might also want to listen. Otherwise, Thank you so much for tuning in for another episode. I'm Varysie. This is the lazy girl's guide to podcasting, and I will see you next episode.
