By Books Author Denise Turney

Authors get more from podcast interviews by being intentional. Research helps a lot too.

If you’re an author who started publishing books before the 1990s, podcast interviews might be the last thing you think about when you consider ways to market your books. Admittedly, podcasts weren’t the rave before the 1990s, but can you believe it?

Podcasts go all the way back to the 1980s. Back then, the shows were called audio blogging.

Exploring the Power of Story

Think about it. Doesn’t all great development involve story? If you’re being intentional and working to heal from trauma, you know you have to revisit your trauma story. On the other hand, if you want to fulfill a dream, you do more than see yourself doing what you want.

To strengthen your motivation, you boost the goal by creating a story that’s directly linked to what you want. You see, it’s the story that attracts us. Doesn’t matter if you create and retell the story to yourself or if someone else shares a story with you.

Story is powerful. It digs up deep emotions in the storyteller and the story’s listeners. And it’s this that makes podcast interviews so appealing. So, as an author, when you get a chance to connect with a host and listeners on a podcast, make the most of it.

Linking Interviews and Great Storytelling

To get more from these interviews, share stories that stir deep emotion in the podcast host and listeners. In fact, this may be the single best act that you can take to engage podcast listeners. One way that you could find out that you’ve done this is when a podcast host keeps asking you questions, minutes after your show was scheduled to end.

That or the host might ask you to come back on the show for another interview. For sure, that’s a great end result. But, after you’ve finished the interviews as an author, what can you do to get more from podcast interviews?

As a start, share the link to your podcast interviews at your social media accounts. You could even use a free design tool like Canva, Snappa or a free Adobe to create a unique design that includes the name of the podcast that you interviewed on. Also, add your name, book title and website URL to the design.

11 Ways Authors Get More from Podcast Interviews

Get creative and tag the design with a catchy slogan that links your books to the podcast name. Feeling good? Create three to five designs. Add a different design to your social media accounts each day. That gives you a minimum of five days with unique ways to share the word about your interviews. Talk about a winner.

Check out these 10 additional ways that book authors can get more from podcast interviews. See how many you may already be doing. Take advantage of these ideas you could use to expand your readership, all by getting more from your author podcast interviews.

• This first step actually happens before your podcast interviews. Good news is that you can also use this step with radio interviews. And this first step is to spread the word about your interview before the interview occurs. Fortunately, there are many ways that you could do this. For instance, you could call family and friends and ask them to catch the show. Or you can forward a link to the podcast interview to friends and neighbors. Flyers, social media message designs and postcards are other tools that you could use to ask people to listen to your podcast interviews.

More Ways Authors Get More from Podcast Interviews

• After podcast interviews end, add them to your author website. This shared, it’s a good idea to add a media page to your author website. Use this page to highlight all of the podcast interviews that you do.

• Talk about podcast interviews you do while you’re at work. If you’re a full-time author, share details of the interviews with people in your community while you’re socializing.

• Create a media sheet that features your best podcast interviews. To get more from podcast interviews, include this media sheet with ARCs to introduce your books to book clubs, book bloggers and bookstore book buyers.

Podcasts as Virtual Discussion Backgrounds

• Similar to the media sheet, develop an interview sheet to share with other podcast hosts. This action could help you to get more from podcast interviews in the future. Another reason that this might prove helpful is that hosts will see that you continue to spread the word about podcasts you’ve interviewed on long after the interview ends. That, in turn, demonstrates that they could gain more leverage from interviewing you as you continue to tell others about their shows.

• Post an image that you designed of the podcast interview on your website background. Furthermore, you could use the design as a social media background. For example, you could use the design on your Facebook author page.

• Speaking of background designs, use a design tool to develop a Zoom background that spotlights your most recent podcast interviews. Always include your book author website URL on the background designs to get more from podcast interviews.

Share Great Stories to Get More from Podcast Interviews

• Write and send a press release that showcases your last interview. There are free press release distribution services around. As a tip, you could try a few of these sites and see what you gain from the press releases.

• Blog about interviews that you conduct at your personal author blog. If you’re looking for an example of this, you could hop over to Write Money Incorporated. The blog features interviews from my literary podcast, Off The Shelf Books Talk Radio.

• Finally, you can mention the last online interview that you’ve completed on the next upcoming podcast interview that you have. However, don’t talk about past interviews during current podcast interviews for too long. Simply mention the last interview that you did, making sure to tie it to the messaging that you’re covering during your current interview.

As a last tip, actually enjoy author interviews. Have fun. A good podcast host will make this easy. You might even find yourself laughing during the interviews. Also, as was shared at the top of this blog, to get more from podcast interviews, be sure to share great stories. You could even share great stories that highlight parts of your novels.