How to promote a podcast on Spotify, Instagram and YouTube: what works week after week

Promoting a podcast is a weekly job

Almost everyone starts the same way: publish the episode, post an image that says "new episode" with the link, and wait. It almost never works. Nobody gives an hour of their time to a stranger because a graphic asked them to.

What does work is handing people a piece of the episode that makes sense on its own and leaves them wanting the rest. That is why, when people search for how to get a podcast known or how to get listeners on Spotify, the answer is the same: be where your audience already is, with something they can grasp in a few seconds.

In practice, the work starts before you publish. While reviewing the edit, note three or four moments that stand without context: a bold line, a story with an ending, a disagreement between guest and host, a surprising fact. Every piece of the week comes from there.

The other half is consistency. An episode does not live for twenty-four hours: if you spread its pieces over seven days, it keeps bringing people in until the next one comes out. And if you are about to launch, day one has its own rules, which we cover in our article on how to launch a podcast. Here we deal with what comes after: weekly promotion, platform by platform.

How to promote a podcast on Spotify

One of the most common searches is whether you can promote a podcast on Spotify. You can, and almost all of it is free from Spotify for Creators.

The most useful tool is clips: short videos of 15 to 90 seconds, ideally vertical, one per episode. They appear on your show page, and Spotify may recommend them on the home feed, in the podcasts section and on the Now Playing screen. If you do not upload one, Spotify makes an automatic preview of the episode, but a hand-picked clip hooks far better. It has to make sense on its own and relate to the episode.

Then there are polls and comments. Each episode can carry one poll with two to seven answers: use it to ask who they want as a guest or which topic they want next. Comments have replaced the old Q&A, and you decide which ones go live.

You can also share the link to any published episode and embed the player on your website, even starting at the exact minute you choose.

If you want to pay, Spotify Ads Manager has an objective built for this, called streams: it counts one each time someone listens for at least 30 seconds within fourteen days of seeing or hearing your ad. Before you pay, though, make sure the episode is properly uploaded; we explain how in how to upload a podcast to Spotify.

How to promote a podcast on Instagram

On Instagram a podcast is promoted mainly with reels. A vertical cut, the face well framed, captions you can read with the sound off and an opening line that stops the thumb. Reels bring in the most new people, and there is a craft to them: we walk through it in how to turn your podcast into clips for social media. On BioHack-It, the health and longevity podcast we post-produce with our partner Dull Light, we have cut more than 150 reels that way: the hook in the first three seconds and dense information, no filler.

Stories do a different job: they remind people who already follow you that a new episode is out. In the Spotify app, tap share on the episode and choose Instagram Stories, and you get a card with the cover art and the link. It is the quickest way to share a Spotify podcast on Instagram, another question people search for a lot. Save your episodes in a highlight so anyone landing on your profile can find them.

Two more things work. First, post the reel as a collaboration with your guest: the same post appears on both profiles and reaches their audience. Second, a carousel with five or six ideas from the episode, for people who do not watch video. And in your bio, a link to the latest episode, not to a generic page.

YouTube and the other places to get a podcast known

If your podcast is on video, YouTube is where most new people find it, because it both searches and recommends. There the thumbnail, the title and what happens in the first thirty seconds rule, and long single-topic cuts help a lot. We have a whole article on it: how to grow a podcast on YouTube.

Outside the platforms, your guests are your best megaphone. Send them their clip, already edited, on release day, with the caption written, and ask them to share it. They are far more likely to if they do not have to do anything. And the other way round: appearing as a guest on other podcasts in your field puts you in front of people who already listen to podcasts.

If it is a company podcast, LinkedIn usually beats Instagram. A clip with the guest, a client or someone on the team, posted from a person's profile and not only from the brand page, travels further. Add your email newsletter and a direct message to clients.

Your website counts too: a page per episode with the player and a summary helps Google find it. And WhatsApp? In the app, choose share and then WhatsApp. Better with one line saying why it is worth a listen.

How we do it on the podcasts we work on

All of the above goes well when it is planned, not improvised the night before. With Aladetres, one of the most watched conversation podcasts in Spain, we handle the whole post-production and the pieces that promote it: 30 to 45 second intros with motion graphics and original music, clips and reels, thumbnails and promotional visuals. When we started, the channel had around 100,000 YouTube subscribers; today it has more than 800,000, and the episode with José Luis Cava has 2.6 million views.

In La Fábrica, our monthly podcast service, each episode ships with everything it needs to travel: 5 cuts of about ten minutes for YouTube, 7 reels for Instagram, TikTok and Shorts, plus thumbnails and titles. We close it two or three weeks before it goes out, so each week's promotion is ready before the week arrives. Once a month we look at the numbers and change what is not working.

If you have a podcast and feel that you publish it and nothing happens, at Bostak Films we can look at it with you from Barcelona or remotely, wherever you are in Europe. Book a free diagnosis: we review your show and tell you what we would change first. Everything we do is on our podcast production page.

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