How Do I Get My Podcast Guests to Share Their Episodes?

What do you think is the most common complaint the podcasters have?

Guest Sharing Is a Bonus to the Time They Gave You

As a producer and someone who works in podcast education, one of the most common complaints I hear from podcasters – across all industries and formats – is that they put so much time and energy into creating great swipe copy.
Then the episode goes live…and their guests don’t share it.
These are people who showed up, shared their knowledge, and were fantastic. So yes, I get why that’s frustrating.

It feels like it should be a really win win scenario, right? Someone came on your show, you had a great conversation. You’ve created some materials to help them share it with their own communities. It seems baffling as to why they wouldn’t.

But when you think about it a little more, it actually can make a lot of sense why someone isn’t able to share their content. There’s a couple of reasons and I’d like to get into them.

The first is that people who are on podcasts a lot are probably pretty busy being on podcasts, and they’ve got a lot of content to share.

They may be on four podcasts the week that yours comes out, and they just don’t have room on the promotional calendar to talk about all of them. That’s the reality of talking to other business owners who have active social media presences. Sometimes there just isn’t room to promote your show, even if they enjoyed it and they would like to.

It might also be the case that even though they came on your podcast and shared interesting content, it’s new and fresh and exciting for your audience. Well, they’re an expert in that topic for a reason. They talk to their own audience about that stuff all of the time. So unless they’ve got something totally new that they’ve never said before, that it’s never been revealed to their audience in any way before your show, it might not make sense for them to do it.

First – sharing it might be more repetition than helpful for their own communities and expecting them to do that just because it was new for your audience isn’t necessarily reasonable. On top of that it’s combined with the fact that, simply, people do have busy promotional calendars. Sometimes with other things, with their own products, services, other stuff they’ve got going on. Sometimes it’s just not a fit.

So when someone is on your show and then they do share their podcast episode, consider that a bonus. It’s awesome. But if they don’t, then remember that they gave you half an hour, 45 minutes or an hour of their time to make content for your business completely for free. They don’t need to share in order for that to be a valuable exchange.

Now, if you’ve been guesting at all, you may have noticed that you’ve filled in an application where you have to commit to share or you are required to make a pledge of some kind to show the episode once it’s live. And if you want to do that, you can. It’s your podcast. But it also is sending a message to your guest that you’re not actually interested in what they have to say, you’re interested in how they’re going to promote you, and that may or may not be the type of relationship that you want to be creating with a guest that you’re having on your show.

If your goals for your podcast are all about growth and all that reach and all about, getting in front of new audiences – cool. That could be a strategy that might work for you. But if it is about building relationships, then it might be something to really think twice about before you do. Because the relationship that you have with that person, if it is, you know, kind of flexible and generous and without big expectations associated with it is probably going to be a lot stronger than if they get the sense that you’re only in it for the for the social share.

So again, to recap, it’s great when guests share, it’s fine to ask them to do it, and it’s a great idea to make it really easy for them if they want to, by providing awesome materials that show you care about them and want them to look good. Hope that they do. But don’t be too mad if they don’t.

There are lots of good reasons, none of which are personal.

Watch: Why Don’t Podcast Guests Always Share the Episode They Were On?

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