What I learned at Podcast Movement, the biggest podcasting event in the US
If you’re a podcaster looking for real talk, fresh strategies, and a little bit of encouragement, this episode is for you. I’m Andi Smiley—podcast coach for women—and today I’m sharing my biggest insights from Podcast Movement, the largest podcast conference in the country.
From sustainable podcasting strategies to marketing your show without burning out, these tips are perfect for any podcaster ready to grow without the grind. I’ve wrapped each takeaway with practical advice you can start using right away—and don’t worry, I’ll send you off with just one action step so it doesn’t feel overwhelming.
Topics covered in this podcast episode:
How to grow a podcast audience without relying on social media
Why podcast SEO is your new best friend
Podcast marketing strategies that actually work
What podcast swaps are—and why they’re so powerful
Shifting from competition to collaboration with other podcasters
Creative ways to monetize your podcast beyond sponsorships
Sustainable podcasting strategies that save you time
How Pinterest is driving consistent traffic to my podcast
Links & Resources
Unedited transcript of the episode:
Hi, I’m Andi Smiley, your friendly podcast guide and the podcast coach. For moms who want to grow their podcast without burning out, I share practical podcast tips, stories from my own journey and wisdom from some of the smartest podcasters out there. Today I’m sharing my top five takeaways from the biggest podcast conference in the US podcast movement, and I know that this can feel like a lot all at once, so don’t worry.
At the end of the episode, I’ll wrap things up by pointing you to just one next step so you can feel clear and confident about where to start.
Before we dive into my top five takeaways, I have to tell you about the big aha moment I had this summer around podcast marketing.
This summer, I realized I could go Instagram optional just by leaning into Pinterest, and it was a game changer. I wasn’t stressed about posting and Mom podcasters were still finding my podcast. One Pin has more than 6,000 views, and listeners are still finding my podcast every week. Just from that one pin,
A bunch of people have asked me how to use Pinterest as a podcaster, so I built a Pinterest for podcasters course. My Pinterest magic for Podcasters Marketing Method is simple, takes less than an hour a week and actually works if you want in the wait list, link is in the show notes, and if you’re on the wait list, you’ll get $10 off when it launches.
If you’re ready to trade stressful daily posts for a simple proven marketing strategy that takes less than an hour a week, click the link in the show notes and hop on the wait list. Your future listeners are already on Pinterest looking for you. Let’s make sure they find you.
Now let’s dive into my top five takeaways from Podcast Movement.
my biggest takeaway from podcast movement is podcast. S-E-O-S-E-O stands for search engine optimization, which pretty much means make sure that the words that you use in your podcast name, your show description, your episode titles, and your episode show notes all have words that people are typing into the search bar for your podcast app or Google or Pinterest or wherever you wanna be found so that when people are looking for the answers that you are giving in your podcast, they will find you.
Here’s a quick example of how to do this. So if you have a podcast all about plants and you create an episode about how to take care of monstera plants, you’ll want to make sure that you have phrases like how to take care of a monster. Five Tips for taking care of a Monster Plant,
what to avoid when taking care of a monstera, things like that, so that when people have those questions and they’re typing them into their search bar, your podcast episode comes up.
Don’t worry, I’m going to do an entire episode about podcast SEO this season,
and if you don’t wanna wait for that, I actually had an amazing interview with Brittany Herzberg, the queen of SEO, in my opinion, last season, and I’ll make sure to link that in the show notes.
My second takeaway from podcast Movement is that social media isn’t the place to market your podcast. Social media is awesome for building and connecting with your community, but it is not the place to try and promote your podcast. People are on social media to be entertained and to scroll and to kind of numb out.
To be completely honest, at least that’s how I am and that’s how my friends are. .
So the likelihood of them leaving Instagram and going to a podcast app to listen to your episode is pretty low.
But there are some really great ways to market your podcast that I’m gonna be talking about in takeaway number three.
Takeaway number three is utilize podcast swaps. So a podcast swap is just when you talk to another podcaster about, promoting each other’s podcast. On your podcast. This can look a lot of different ways. This could be you recording a little something and them recording a little something and then you putting it on each other’s podcast.
It could just be, Hey, I’m gonna talk about your show at the end of my episode. How about you talk about my show at the end of your episode, one of the most common ways that people will do podcast swaps is I’ll be a guest on your podcast and then you be a guest on my podcast.
As you can see, there’s a lot of different ways to do a podcast swap and to quote unquote borrow someone else’s listeners. And that is so much better than social media because.
It’s so much easier to convince a podcast listener to listen to another podcast
my fourth takeaway from podcast Movement is that
podcasts with similar niches are not your competitors. They should be seen as your collaborators. I know this one can be really hard and truly it’s something that I’m still working on sometimes, but I’m getting significantly better at it if I do say so myself
so for me, I used to look at other podcast coaches and think, oh, they’re gonna steal my clients. I need to be better than them. But I’m realizing that I do not have to be better than them. I can work with them, and we can both become better.
I’ve started to do this more and more and one of my very favorite podcast coaches is Anna Xavier. She is an absolute delight. I adore her. She has so much energy and she is just so much fun. And I met her at Podcast Movement Evolutions last year and we hung out way more at this podcast movement. And she is one of the people that we would split up.
Um, she would go to one session, I would go to another session and we would. Um, come back together later to swap notes because there are so many sessions at podcast movement, you cannot get to all of them.
And I am so grateful that now I’m seeing Anna and other podcast coaches as collaborators instead of competitors. And not only are we just like sharing notes at podcast movement, but I’m planning on having Anna on my show sometime during season four
Because she has really great insights
that I want all of you to learn about. And then the last takeaway for today, takeaway five from podcast movement. Obviously there’s more than just five takeaways. That I have about podcast movement, but I had to do the cutoff somewhere, so I did five. So takeaway number five from podcast Movement is that podcast monetization can take so many different forms.
It’s not just podcast ads. One of my favorite sessions at podcast movement was talking about how as you’re growing as a show, it is sometimes easier to make money with paid subscribers than it is to have ads from big brands and big sponsors. She talked about how you wanna get on a network and have sponsors through that network, you have to have a lot of downloads. Usually the minimum is like a thousand, and you will get paid roughly $15 for every thousand downloads that your show has. Okay? And that’s per episode.
So let’s say you put out four episodes a week, you’ll make roughly $60.
And that is one way to make money, but there’s also having paid subscribers, if you have just 12 super fans who sign up to be a paid subscriber, you can make that $60 a month with 12 people instead of trying to make sure you get a thousand downloads a month. So this is just one example of podcast ads not being the only way to make money as a podcaster.
There are many more, and I am planning on doing an entire episode about this. So this is just a little taste, but I love that reminder that having ads on your podcast is not the only way to make money with your podcast.
As I’m wrapping up this episode, here’s the one thing you should implement in your podcast if you’re feeling overwhelmed and not sure where to start, and that is podcast, SEO. Take some time to think about what words and phrases people would use to search for your content and incorporate them into your podcast Name, show description, episode titles, and episode show notes.
It takes a little bit of time to set up. But then it’s done and it keeps working in the background for you while you create your awesome podcast.
If this episode helped you, would you mind sharing it with your mom, podcaster friends
who are sick of trying to market their podcast on social media and ready to find some other options
in next week’s episode, I’m gonna cover the four things I would do if I was looking to level up my podcast in 2026. Thanks for being here, and I’ll see you next week.
