16: Selecting Which Categories Your Podcast Will Be Listed Under
Categories determine where your podcast will be visible inside all the major podcast apps and platforms; especially Apple Podcasts.
In this episode, I explain exactly how to choose the best categories for your podcast; including a little-known way you can double your visibility.
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Transcript
Welcome to podcasting for coaches. I'm Britany Felix and I'm a podcast launch consultant who specializes in helping coaches and consultants utilize the power of podcasting as a way to build brand awareness and generate new leads for their business. I realize not every new coach or consultant can afford to hire someone to help launch their show. So I created this podcast as a way to guide you through the process of launching and utilizing your very own podcast to help you grow your business and reach a new audience of adoring followers and potential clients. If you're ready to get your voice and podcast out into the world, head over to podcasting for coaches.com to learn more. Welcome to Episode 16 of podcasting for coaches. In this episode, we are going to talk about choosing your podcast categories. So what I mean when I say that is on the various platforms, your podcast is going to be listed in certain directories. So if you have a business podcast, your podcast will be in the business directory. If you have a podcast about health and nutrition, you'll be in the health directory. And so for this episode, I'm going to specifically talk about Apple directories. So these are the categories you're going to choose for iTunes, which is the desktop version and Apple podcast, which is the mobile app version. And the reason that I'm specifically addressing the apple categories is because this is where the vast vast majority of your listeners are going to come from. And a lot of the smaller podcast platforms that don't have their own directories, they'll actually pull from the iTunes directory in order to display the content. So a lot of the smaller apps when you're looking through there, they're actually literally just pulling from what's available on Apple podcasts and iTunes. So all of the information that you use for that carries over as well. So Apple actually let you select three categories to be listed in you have your main category, which needs to be the most relevant for your show. And then you have two other categories that you can also be listed in. So Apple categories, I'm just going to start off right now and say they are super out of date. And they kind of don't make any sense. They have shopping as a subcategory under business, which seems crazy to me. But it is what we have to work with. And until they update this, we just kind of as Tim Gunn says make it work. So the interesting thing about choosing these categories is that while you get three options, if you're smart about which ones you select, you can actually be listed in six different directories inside iTunes slash Apple podcasts. And the reason for this is because they have main categories and sub categories. So the main categories are just the broad general topics arts, education, business, health, those kinds of things. And then under each of those categories, they have subcategories. So for example, business has business news, careers, investing, management, and marketing and shopping as I mentioned, now, if you select just a main category, say you decided to list business as one of your three category options, you will be listed in the main general directory of business. So when somebody looks for a business podcast, you'll be in that list, you will be buried very, very, very far down in that list, but you'll be there somewhere. However, if you select a sub category, you're not only listed in the main category of business, but you're also listed in the sub category. So you essentially kind of get a twofer one. So if somehow your podcast fits in three sub categories within three different main categories, you can potentially be listed in six different places inside iTunes slash Apple podcast. Now, because our category options are so limited, and so kind of crazy, it's pretty rare that you can actually manage to get different subcategories in different main categories. But an example of how you could do this would be say you are a business coach, specifically for fitness coaches. So you coach fitness coaches on how to be fitness coaches. In that case, if that was the topic of your podcast, you could list your podcast in careers, which would be the subcategory for business. You could also kind of stretch this and listed under training, which is a subcategory under education. And then for your final selection, you could choose fitness and nutrition which is a subcategory under health. Now again, it's not really likely that you'll be able to get a sub category in three different main categories. But if you can, that's the best route to go. And you might find that the most relevant sub categories are within the same main category. Self Help is another pretty popular sub category and it's also under health. So if you are a fitness coach yourself, your podcast could potentially be listed in fitness and nutrition under health and then also self help under help So while you have two subcategories, you will be listed in three different places, which is, of course, still better than two or one for each selection. So again, to recap here, you get three category selections iTunes allows, because not every podcasting app or platform allows for three category selections, make sure that your number one selection is your most relevant. For each of the three selections, you should absolutely choose a subcategory. And then if you can choose a subcategory, in three different main categories, that's going to be the best route to go. Now when it comes time to actually put your RSS feed together, which if you don't know what that is, that's okay, I will explain that. That's when we're actually going to be using these selections. But I want you to go ahead and think about it now as you're in the processing stages and gathering information. So that when it comes time to put your RSS feed together, we have everything ready to go. If you have any questions about this, or if you need some help deciding what the most relevant categories are for your show, please feel free to reach out to me, you can email me at Britany which is br it a ny at podcasting for coaches calm. So Britany at podcasting for coaches.com. I do also have a contact form on my website. And in the show notes for this episode on my website, I will have a link to a page where I have a listing of all of the current iTunes categories and subcategories. So head on over to podcasting for coaches.com to check out the show notes, or to contact me via the contact me page. Thank you so much for tuning in today. And I will see you back here next week, where we will finally be talking about how to record the first item for your podcast. Thank you so much. Have a fantastic day. And that wraps up another episode of podcasting for coaches. If you're wondering if now is the right time to start a podcast for your coaching or consulting business, head on over to podcasting for coaches.com where you can either take a free quiz or schedule a one on one consultation with yours truly, thank you so much for joining me today and I will see you back here for the next episode.