Fiona Fraser: Using guests to boost your podcast

How bringing people onto your show can help increase your audience and add depth to your discussions

by PodPod 18 April 2023

There are many ways to increase the listenership of a podcast and to get it in front of a bigger audience, but while social media posts, video clips and even out-of-home advertising all have a potential role to play in podcasters’ growth strategies, one of the most reliable tools in a podcasters’ belt is guest appearances.

Whether you bring guests onto your own show or appear on other people’s podcasts, guest spots are a fantastic way to increase the visibility of your show and generate more buzz around it, as well as potentially adding a greater level of expertise on complex topics. In this week’s episode, Matt Hill and Rhianna Dhillon are joined by Fiona Fraser, founder of podcast PR agency Pow PR, to discuss the power that a good guest appearance can have in boosting a show’s performance, as well as the best way to convince people to join you on your show in the first place.

Key takeaways

People want to be on podcasts

“First of all, just know that you've got that power of having a podcast,” Fraser said; “people want to be on podcasts, so never be afraid to ask somebody. Nine times out of ten… I’ll be like, who's your dream person you want to be on your podcast? And they'll say it. I say, Go and ask them, and they say yes. And they’re like, ‘I can't believe it’. I say, Well, why can't you believe it? Because people want to be on podcasts.”

You don’t need big numbers to get guests

“I'd hate for people to think that they have to have these big numbers to get a good guest. Because it's not true. It's about putting that effort into the personalised outreach, developing the relationships, and kind of putting that effort in.”

“I always try and educate people not to listen to the numbers. Coming from TV, where you'd launch a show, the next morning, go to work: refresh, refresh, refresh, waiting to see what the overnights were. It's like the barometer of podcast success is not the weekly listeners, in my opinion, in terms of from a guest point of view. It's like, is it a good opportunity? Convince them why. Make it easy.”

To pay or not to pay?

“So I'm always of the mindset that promo shouldn't be paid, ever. But I know that obviously in a creator economy, that it gets slightly more complicated. So I've worked with creators who want to get paid for PR and stuff on a project that they're on, or podcast that they're associated with, which for me was at first quite a shock, because I was like, Well, no, of course you don't get paid for PR; it's profile building for you.”