How can you distribute your podcast to multiple channels using content management platforms?

Sharing your podcast across platforms is like throwing a big, fun party. Pick the perfect hosting platform as your party venue. Spread the word to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and more—share the excitement on social media too! Just like guiding guests to your party, optimize your podcast for easy discovery. Keep an eye on who's joining the fun with analytics and engage your lively audience. Let's keep the podcast party rocking!

In podcasting, your CMS (content management system) is the same thing as your podcast hosting platform. You'll use a podcast hosting tool like Transistor.fm, Buzzsprout, or Libsyn to write your episode title & description, upload your audio files, and publish your episodes to your RSS feed.

My favourite platform to set all my clients up with is Anchor. Spotify bought it not too long ago (I think the stat was 70% of Spotify's podcast catalogue came from Anchor anyway). Now the naysayers out there will bemoan Anchor's inability to tell you the nitty gritty stats, but it does give you enough information to make judgement calls on content - and let's be real, there's a milestone one should strive for before caring about those minutia details anyways. It also spits your pod out to 10 (and counting) different platforms and hooks you up with an RSS feed. It's a great, simple tool before graduating to something like Transistor.

You can use content management platforms like Buffer to distribute your podcast to multiple channels. First, create an account on Buffer and then add your podcast as a new content type. Next, select the channels you want to distribute your podcast. Finally, use the Buffer app to schedule and publish your podcast episodes. The Buffer app is available for both iOS and Android devices.

From my POV, using content management platforms for podcast distribution offers significant benefits, including improved efficiency and time-saving, as it allows for single-upload distribution to multiple channels. This approach broadens the audience reach, ensures consistent release schedules, and provides valuable analytics and insights into listener demographics and behaviors. Additionally, it opens up monetization opportunities and offers enhanced control over podcast presentation, along with community and support resources for podcasters. Overall, it streamlines the podcasting process, maximizes audience engagement, and supports revenue generation.

Content management platforms help save time and can help less-technically focused podcasters with all the technical stuff such as creating an rss feed document with appropriate tags, hosting and posting. Platforms have become much more robust with the addition of editing and publishing tools. Not to mention the fact that some allow you to schedule in advance when an episode will drop.

Most folks who switch to Transistor are looking for the ability to start multiple podcasts on one account, get better customer service (live chat), dynamic ad insertion, private podcasts, automated transcription, and better analytics.

Choosing a content management platform comes down to what you need it to do for you, and the monthly/yearly costs to you. Review each platform's features and pricing. Figure out what your budget is and then evaluate what features are most important to your production process and schedule. Then choose and try. I suggest not switching back and forth between platforms to much as it could interrupt your scheduling and audience listening habits.

Scheduling is a big one for me. With the ability to pre-schedule episode release dates and times is super important. Let's say you want an episode to drop at 4am on a certain day. Enough said. Make sure you utilize the fact that many platforms will automatically submit to all the major streaming platforms like Spotify, Apple, Google and others. One stop shop is what you are looking for.

Before you submit to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and other apps, you'll need to have at least one episode published in your RSS feed. You only need to submit your podcast to each platform once! After that's done, all future episodes will automatically appear on those listening apps.

My favorite way to evaluate an episode's performance is: "how many listener interactions did I get?" If multiple listeners left a comment, sent me an email, sent me a DM, or shared the episode on social media, I know it was a success.

Check analytics weekly. If the platform shows you location maps of where your listeners live that will be a bonus. Tailor your content to the most active areas if possible. Also, remember that sometimes analytics can be a bit deceiving because sometimes there will be multiple people listening to one device at the same time, that is if the device owner is playing the podcast over a speaker for other people, or in the car to their family, or in an office. It's important to gauge the analytics but know they don't tell the whole story.

One thing I found helpful is to stick to a strict episode and production schedule, but, make sure you can actually do it. You can always start out slower or less frequent and ramp up from there. Also, remember that variety is good and to mix up content, guest, and topics frequently.