Your Summer Podcast Strategy

Pinterest: The Summer Podcast Marketing Strategy You Need

Let me just say it right away — Pinterest is my number one recommendation for podcast marketing strategies this summer, and I think it will be for a while. Here’s why it’s such a good fit: Pinterest is an evergreen platform, which means the content you create today can keep working for you weeks and months from now. That’s the total opposite of Instagram or TikTok, where posts disappear into the void within 24 hours.

I’ve been using Pinterest to grow my podcast audience for the past year, and the results have honestly surprised even me — 74% podcast growth and over 200 new email subscribers. And the wildest part? I deleted Instagram off my phone completely because it was taking a toll on my mental health, and I haven’t seen any drop in downloads. That’s the beauty of Pinterest.

This summer, you can batch a month’s worth of pins in one sitting, schedule them out, and then go enjoy your family vacation without thinking about marketing your podcast a single time. If you’ve been wondering how to grow a podcast without social media, Pinterest might genuinely be the missing piece.

Not sure if Pinterest is the right fit for your show? I made a free checklist called Is Pinterest Right for Your Podcast? to help you figure it out — grab it at the link in the resources below!

Podcast Swaps: Two Birds, One Stone

If you haven’t heard of a podcast swap before, you’re in for a treat — because this is one of my favorite strategies for growing a podcast audience without creating a ton of extra content.

Here’s how it works: you and a fellow podcaster exchange trailers or episodes. They play yours on their show (with a quick intro so their listeners know what’s going on), and you play theirs on yours. That’s it! You both get introduced to a new audience, you both fill your feeds without recording a brand-new episode, and you get to celebrate another podcaster doing something awesome. It’s genuinely a win-win.

Podcast swaps are also one of the best podcast tips for women who want to network with other creators in a way that actually feels good — it’s collaborative, not competitive. And for the summer months especially, it checks two boxes at once: marketing and content creation, all wrapped up in one.

Shorter Episodes and “Best Of” Content

Two more ideas that I love for summer: shorter episodes and best-of replays.

If your episodes normally run 45 minutes or longer, summer is a great time to experiment with 10–15 minute episodes. Your listeners are also in a different groove — they’re on road trips, at the pool, running errands with the kids — and a shorter episode might actually serve them better right now. Plus, it takes less time to record and edit, which is a gift to you.

And then there are “best of” episodes, which I think are wildly underrated. If you have a popular episode from a year or two ago, chances are a big chunk of your current audience hasn’t heard it yet. Bring it back! Record a quick intro explaining that it’s a fan-favorite replay, and let that content work for you again. Your listeners get something genuinely helpful, and you get a week off from creating something brand new.

Taking a Podcast Break Is a Strategy — Not a Cop-Out

Okay, here’s the part I really want you to hear: taking a break from your podcast is a completely valid, intentional podcast marketing strategy. I know there’s a lot of noise out there about consistency and showing up every single week, and for a long time I believed that too. Then I burned out and almost quit podcasting altogether.

Now I take seasonal breaks, and it’s honestly the reason I’m still doing this. My breaks are about three months long, but yours can be whatever you need them to be — two weeks, one month, all summer. The only rule is that you tell your people.

Here’s how I recommend doing it:

In your last episode: Let listeners know this is the final episode for the season and when they can expect you back.

In an email: Send a quick note to your list so they know what’s happening and can catch up on past episodes in the meantime.

On social media: Post a reminder so anyone who follows you there knows you’re taking a break and when you’ll be back.

That’s it. Keep your listeners in the loop, give yourself the rest you need, and come back recharged. That’s what sustainable podcasting strategies actually look like in practice.

Links & Resources

• “Is Pinterest Right for Your Podcast?” Free Checklist
• Pinterest for Podcasters episode
• Podcast Swaps episode
• Follow me on Threads

Unedited Transcript

My kids are done with school in a little more than a month, which feels insane, but here we are. My podcast strategy looks completely different in the summer, so I figured I could share some tips on how you and I can both thrive during the summer months.

Hey, I’m Andy Smiley, and I’m obsessed with helping you grow your podcast without letting it rule your life. I share strategies that actually work, the stuff I wish someone had told me earlier, and conversations with the smartest podcasters I know.

I’ve been using Pinterest to grow my podcast for the past year, and the results have honestly gone above and beyond what I expected. In the past year. My podcast has grown by 74%, and I’ve gained more than 200 email subscribers. But here’s the part that still kind of blows my mind. I deleted Instagram off of my phone.

It was taking a toll on my mental health and not really worth it anymore. Honestly, even though I deleted Instagram, I haven’t seen any sort of drop in my downloads. That is the beauty of Pinterest. I’ve been able to grow my show without having to quote, unquote show up every day. I batch all of my pins for the week, or sometimes for multiple weeks, and then I don’t have to think about it again until it’s time to batch more pins.

If you’ve been feeling exhausted trying to be everywhere at once and not seeing your podcast growth match, the effort you’re putting in Pinterest might be the missing piece to your strategy, but it’s not the right fit for everyone. So I made a free checklist called It’s Pinterest right for your podcast to help you figure out if it makes sense for your show.

You can grab it at the link in the show notes. This episode is one that has a bunch of different ideas of what you could do with your podcast this summer to make it easier for you. That doesn’t mean that I think you should do all of these things. Pick the ones that are going to be the best for you and your podcast and just leave the rest.

I’m gonna give you tips on how to market your podcast during the summer and how to create the actual episodes this summer because there’s a distinction there, and both of them, at least in my experience, have to shift a little bit during the summer months.

And then the last tip is, the main thing I will be doing with my podcast this summer.

First I’m gonna talk about how to market your podcast this summer. I think you have a pretty good idea of what I’m gonna say first, but here we are. I still have to say it, and it’s Pinterest. Pinterest is my favorite marketing method. I. Have a feeling that you already know this, but just to reiterate, Pinterest is really amazing for podcasts because it’s evergreen content and most podcasts are full of evergreen content.

So you can batch a month’s worth of pins all in one sitting and then go on your family vacation without having to think about. Marketing your podcast one time. Doesn’t that sound amazing? It definitely sounds amazing to me.

I do have an entire episode about Pinterest for podcasters with way more information about Pinterest and why it’s such a good fit for podcasters. I’ll make sure to link it in the show notes so you can go and listen to that. If you would like. The other marketing method that’s really great for summer is podcast swaps.

If you’ve never heard of a podcast swap, that’s okay. You’re not alone. I have an entire episode that I will also link in the show notes about podcast swaps. But here’s like the reader’s Digest version,

podcast swaps are when you take your podcast trailer or one of your podcast episodes and you send it to one of your podcast friends and, and they play it on their show as like a podcast swap with an intro that they most likely will record so that people know what’s going on, and then they will give you their trailer or their episode depending on what you decided to swap.

And then you’ll play that on your podcast with an intro explaining to your listeners what’s going on so that when they don’t hear your voice, they aren’t completely thrown off. Right. This is great for so many reasons. First of all, it helps you get in front of a new audience that you have, obviously, of course researched to make sure that they’re a good fit and they’re who you want your listeners to be.

And also it’s just a really great way to network with other podcasters and be like, Hey, you’re awesome. You’re doing a really cool thing with your podcast. Can I help you? And you help me and we can work together to both build our own shows. It’s a win-win all around. Okay. So those are my two tips on marketing your podcast in the summer. Now we’re gonna move to creating episodes in the summertime. The first tip is actually podcast swaps again, because not only is it a marketing tool, but also it does. Create an episode, right? You have an episode that you are swapping with someone else, but you don’t actually have to create anything other than the intro.

So not only is it marketing, but it’s also creating an episode. So win-win two birds, one stone.

Another tip for creating episodes in the summer is to plan shorter, more bite-sized episodes. So instead of having a 45 minute episode, that takes a long time to record, it takes a long time to edit. You could just do quick, like 10 or 15 minute episodes, which I already do because I love a short podcast episode.

But that might not be the norm for your podcast. So maybe you try doing shorter episodes. So if you have like a plant podcast where you talk about d plant care and all of the beauties of plants, I love plants. So I definitely listen to a couple of plant podcasts.

Um, but let’s say you have a plant podcast and you wanna do a shorter episode, you’re usually interviewing other people about their plants, and you wanna do some shorter ones for the summer. So it’s a little bit of a lighter load for you. You could have like. Top 10 plants for low light, or you could be like, here are the three things I’m doing this summer to make my plants so happy, or whatever.

Obviously I am not a plant podcaster, so I would have to do some more brainstorming, but. Just some ideas to do shorter episodes because also we have to remember that our listeners are also in a different groove, right? They’re not listening to podcasts in the same way that they usually are. Um, ’cause we’re all taking time off or just, things just shift in the summer.

I feel like even if you don’t have kids before I had kids, things still always just felt a little different in the summertime. So, yeah. It’s a good idea to also not only think about yourself and making sure that your load is a little bit lighter, but also thinking about your listeners, like what do they need in the summertime?

One that you probably already know, but I’m gonna say it anyway, is to do some replays of your most popular episodes. Um, I like to call them quote unquote best of episodes because a lot of people liked it. So not only will it be good for the listeners that have already heard this episode, but if it’s an earlier episode from like a year or two ago, then your listeners that are listening now probably haven’t heard it, so why not show it to them now?

Use this content that that’s really popular, that really helped a lot of people. Bring it back as a best of then you don’t have to do much other than. A quick intro explaining that, that this is the best of episode and you’re giving people content that will help them and you already know. It will help them because it was popular when you originally released it.

So take advantage. I feel like there’s some podcasters who shy away from best of episodes, but honestly I think that it’s a great idea and it’s just a great way to help you use the content that you’ve already created that you know is awesome.

Okay, so those are my tips on how to create episodes in the summertime. My last tip, and this is what I will be doing this summer, is to just take a break. Don’t put out episodes, which I know. It’s so hard to hear because so many podcasting experts say consistency. You have to put an episode out every week.

And that’s what I did for a very long time. And then I burned out and almost stopped podcasting altogether. So now I take breaks. But I will say when you take a break, you need to warn your people that you’ll be taking a break. You can’t just decide that this is the last episode and then not put any episodes out for a couple months.

That is not how it works. But there are several different ways that you can tell your people that you’re taking a break. I recommend all three, doing all three, just so that you can catch your listeners wherever they are. The first thing you can do is talk about it in the last episode of that season, like the last episode that you’re planning on releasing.

Let ’em know. Let ’em know that this is the last episode and that they can catch you in a couple of months or in a couple of weeks, however long your breaks are. Mine are three months, but I know that everyone has their own rhythm. Um, the other one you can do is an email. Send ’em out, send out an email. Be like, Hey, I’m taking a little break this summer.

You can catch up on past episodes that you haven’t listened to yet and catch me. On social media, if you’re on social media. And then speaking of social media, another great option for you is social media. Just tell people, Hey, I’m taking a break. Um, you won’t have any new episodes, but, um, I’ll be back in the fall, or I’m gonna be back on this date.

Just so that people not only know that you’re taking a break, but also know when you’re coming back. And I would do that in your last episode and your email as well. Just tell people, Hey, taking a break and then tell them when you’re gonna come back so that they know when to expect you.

Like for me, at the end of this season, I’m gonna be like, Hey, this is the last episode. Thanks so much for being here and I’ll be back in the fall. Go follow me on threads ’cause that’s where I hang out. Some version of that is what I will be doing on the last episode of this season.

Taking a break from putting out weekly episodes of your podcast is not a cop out. It is a strategy

and truly for me, it’s the only way that I can keep podcasting.

I tried the consistency thing. I tried the, put out an episode every week thing, and it was too much for me. It was too overwhelming. So if that’s the case for you too, don’t. Feel like it’s a failing on your part. Just figure out a new strategy that works better for you and your seasonal break could be two weeks.

Like it doesn’t have to be three months like I have mine. It can be whatever you need it to be, and honestly, it can fluctuate too. As long as you’re keeping your listeners in the loop. It’s your podcast, so you get to choose what happens with your podcast. It does feel a little bit weird to be talking about summer in April, but it’s better to be prepared than have it sneak up on us right now. You can take some time to figure out your summer strategy, and I’d love it if you told me what your plan is over on threads. I hope this episode gave you some clarity on what your summer strategy can look like and some ideas on how to implement it. Would you text this episode to your podcast friend who might need some confidence going into summer next week I’m sharing a conversation I had with Ally Grommet.

She is a brilliant. Businesswoman and she’s teaching us all about email marketing for podcasters. Thanks for being here and I’ll see you next week.