[00:00:00] Deirdre: Hello everyone. This is a grandma podcast summit, and I have Hala Taha with you. Now get this Hala is the host of young profiting podcasts. And this podcast is a top 50 podcast with over 4 million downloads. Oh my gosh. And she's also the CEO of yap media. It's a side hustle that was turned into a seven figure business.

Wow. That's amazing. Welcome to the summit, 

[00:00:25] Hala: Hal. Thank you Dre. I'm so happy to be here. 

[00:00:28] Deirdre: Yes, I'm so part, because I know that your growth trajectory is just such an inspiration for all of our audience on this summit. So let's start though with your podcast and your journey, getting it to this 

[00:00:41] Hala: point. So, um, I started my career at hot 97.

It was a radio station. I started my career when I was just in college. I interned at the radio station for three years, learned everything about production. I first honed my on air chops. Recording commercials. Um, after the station, I became a blogger. I had a number one hip hop and entertainment blog site called the sorority of hiphop.

And I led 50 female bloggers. We had online radio shows on the side. It was the precursor of podcasts. Um, that didn't really pan out. I almost got a show on MTV twice. Pretty devastated, got rejected a bunch of times. And then I thought, you know, I'm gonna hang my hat up. Forget about the entertainment industry.

I'm obviously not gonna make it. You know, I didn't get my dream job at hot in a seven. I then didn't get the show on MTV after this like big website that I had. And I like just thought I'd never get back on a mic. But four years after being in corporate marketing, I got the itch again and I started young and profiting podcast.

And at that point I had a lot of skills under my belt to do it right this time, uh, podcasts were, you know, more mainstream. They were a thing. I, I knew enough to get one out the door and do it really well. And here we are four years later. Number one podcast across all apps have interviewed people like Deepak Chopra.

Matthew McConaughy have a team of 60 running, a podcast network and a social media podcast agency and making, you know, seven figures a year. So it's been amazing to say the least. 

[00:02:07] Deirdre: Yeah. So basically not landing those, those MTV roles really. 

[00:02:11] Hala: Did you a favor yeah. In the end, you know, Rejection is redirection that famous saying it's so true.

I'm so thankful for all the news that I got. I was rejected over and over and over again. It wasn't until I started my own thing, that things really took. 

[00:02:26] Deirdre: And this isn't the, this isn't quite what I wanted to ask you on this summer, but I'm just so intrigued. Like how did you pick yourself back up? Because I think this is entrepreneurship, right?

Like you do get rejected over and over and over again. So what, what did you do? How did you, yeah, as I said, pick yourself 

[00:02:41] Hala: back up and just. Keep going, whenever something bad happens to me and I don't get something that I feel like I truly deserved and I'm devastated. I tend to channel my energy into learning something new.

That's what I always do. So when I actually got fired from hot 97, after working for their, for free for three years, and I got fired for like a really. Stupid reason. It was really unfair. I was devastated, but I was just devastated for a couple of days by, you know, I got fired on a Thursday by Sunday. I was figuring out how to create websites and learned how to code websites and create like, you know, custom WordPress sites.

And I launched my blog like the next week and, and it took off right away. So. So just channeling my energy into something new. When I, when I got rejected from MTV, I went and got my MBA that set me up for really nice corporate career. And that's the key it's to focus on something else, to stay busy, to be productive, and to realize that your failures are a good sign, because you know, it, the more opportunities you get, the more opportunities you have to fail.

And so when you fail, that actually means that you got an opportunity, that many people would've been too scared to even get that opportunity to begin. Yes. Wow. 

[00:03:49] Deirdre: I love that. Okay. Now you have a huge audience, 4 million downloads. You have, you've interviewed some really, really cool people, as you mentioned.

But I'm sure that it wasn't, it didn't start out like that. no. So can you take us all the way back to that point? And can you talk us through some of the strategies that you actually credit for the growth of your podcast from the point you started to 

[00:04:10] Hala: now? Yeah. Okay. So when I first started, I decided that I was gonna promote my podcast on LinkedIn and I specifically decided to focus on one channel and not spread myself in, by going on Instagram and Twitter and all these other.

I decided that the people who would like to listen to young and profiting podcasts are gonna be young professionals in corporate or young entrepreneurs. Those people are mostly on LinkedIn. And I did some testing when I first put out content, people on Instagram liked my clothes and my makeup and that kind of thing.

And people on LinkedIn cared about my brain and what I had to say. And so I really focused on LinkedIn for that point. So I was consistent every single. I posted every single day and I made it part of my routine. So I used to have to commute from Brooklyn, into the city, to my job at Disney streaming services.

And I would write my post every morning on the train and I would do my engagement every day on the way back from work. And that was my routine every single day. And I made it a point to be like, you're one job on the train is to get out. Right. And, and that is important. The consistency. So that's something that I did wanna like, kind of put a light on.

And, um, I also just leveraged the DM. So one of the first things that I did was I just DMed every single follower that I had. So I started with like 2000 followers today. I'm one of the most popular influencers on LinkedIn. I have 160,000 followers. Very engaged community. And so I just messaged everyone.

Hey, like what's up? It's Hola. Like, you know, we met each other XYZ ago. Now I have a podcast. Here's the link I'd love for you to listen. And because I had all this experience, my first episode was great and it took me months to put out my. First three episodes. They were masterpieces. People still love them.

And most people are embarrassed of their first episode, but mine got people hooked and people were really excited and I got very good reception from my episodes. And so I would just copy and paste, copy and paste DMS. By episode two, I got a message from who's. Now my business partner, Timothy tan, my first volunteer for the show.

And he basically was like, are you copying and pasting these messages? Cuz you could be automating. And I was like, what are you talking about? And so he taught me all about LinkedIn automation and he became my business partner. And you know, now he owns 10% of yep. Media and he taught me how to do automation.

Then I started to do it at scale. So what I did was target Gary V's followers and. I thought that Gary V had a very lookalike audience, meaning that anybody who would like his stuff, his podcast, he talks about marketing. They're gonna like my stuff too. So I messaged people who liked and prompted on his post through automation.

And I said, Hey, what's up? My name is Hala. I noticed you engage on Gary V's content. If you like his stuff, you're gonna love my too. Let's connect. Then nine outta 10 people would connect. I acquired like 10,000 of his fans. Then I was always a top comment on his stuff with a hundred likes and got even more visibility because he, I was always like that girl on Gary V's posts and then I did it with Tony Robbins and Lewis house and like the, the next one after the next one.

And. All of a sudden I started going viral and I didn't need to really do that anymore. And I've used those same strategies to grow other people on LinkedIn as well. Now that I have a social media agency. So that's some of the ways that I grew, you know, as a LinkedIn influencer. And then I actually leveraged that influencer to get featured in podcast apps.

And that's how I blew out my podcast. Wow. 

[00:07:24] Deirdre: Okay. That was . That was ingenious. How did, okay, so it, okay. Step stepping back. So for someone who maybe isn't as familiar with LinkedIn, like in terms of content, is there a difference between the content that you would put on Instagram, Facebook, other places and LinkedIn, and what, what is the difference between that content and why is it so important to be as consistent 

[00:07:44] Hala: as you were.

Yeah. So content definitely varies on platforms. So like the size of your images, what type of content, videos, pictures, text only what actually works on that platform. And so whatever platform that you're using, you wanna study the platform, you wanna learn all of its features, right? You wanna really explore the different things and understand what the app is actually pushing because a lot of these apps they're pushing certain features.

So on LinkedIn for a while, they were pushing poles, but they're no longer doing that. And so we don't post polls anymore because they're not working now on LinkedIn, like big portrait photos work. So I call them poster size. It's I think three, like by five is like the dimension. And if you look on my page, you'll see that like most of our pictures are always in this portrait size because the bigger, the real estate, the better it's gonna perform on LinkedIn and a static picture performs better than a video performs better than a slider, just a.

Catchy caption and ecstatic, uh, graphic works the best on LinkedIn. Now we've seen our, our most popular posts this year at, yeah. Media got a hundred thousand like likes and 8 million views on LinkedIn. Wow. And that was actually a text post. And so we are testing text posts now because we're like, why did this get a hundred thousand likes and 8 million views?

And so sometimes things change and you need to try to see like, well, is this a trend? Is this just a fluke? Should we lean into this? And, and that's how you gotta go about it. 

[00:09:10] Deirdre: Wow. Okay. All right. So you started on LinkedIn and then you mentioned that you did blow up on podcast players and there was another human strategy that you used to grow your show, um, on podcast players.

Can you talk us through what it is and how you discovered actually advertising on podcast 

[00:09:26] Hala: players? Yeah, it's, it's a really cute story. So. I started growing my influence on LinkedIn. Uh, two years ago, let's say I had like 60,000 followers. And that was a big deal at that time. Like the bigger, biggest influencers had 60, 70,000 followers, like a hundred thousand followers was like so much on LinkedIn.

Right. And so I was getting some notoriety. I had a little cl and I started doing some research. Um, I, I was thinking, you know, how can I leverage my following and cross promote with other podcasts, anything, and, and I'm talking. Anything. So I cross promoted with good pods, which is like a podcast rating. I worked with Podbean, my hosting provider, and, and tried to get like cross promo with them.

I worked with Audrey and they wrote a blog and, uh, just all the, anything podcast related. I'd shoot them on email. Hey, what's up on the biggest podcaster on LinkedIn now. They, you know, I wasn't called the podcast princess yet. I was about to say that, but that, wasn't my name yet. So I was like, I'm one of the biggest podcasters on LinkedIn now.

And you know, I'd love to promote you on LinkedIn in exchange for you writing a blog in exchange for you, featuring me in your app, featuring me on your website. And so I did that. Constantly. And I would just always be looking for new podcast brands that I could reach out to and become this like podcast influencer within this niche.

And it worked, people always said yes, because I really did have something unique. There wasn't a lot of podcasters on LinkedIn. And so I had that community, it was engaged. And so I actually looked up cast box. At one point. And I saw that they were looking for Twitter influencers and that was, they had a whole website about how they're looking for Twitter influencers.

And so I emailed them and I was like, Hey, what's up? I'm Hala. I'm not a Twitter influencer, but I'm on LinkedIn. And I'd love to collaborate. So they said yes. And they started promoting me to their international community every month. And I would do like a review solicit and I'd, and they were really happy with my results.

And so they literally sponsored me for like five or six months. And my podcast just took off like I, and they loved it too because the listeners stayed and retained on their. So they thought it was like a fruitful collaboration and, uh, the lady's name is Valentina at Castbox. Now she's one of my closest friends and she, like, I always, I told her the other day, I was like, you like made me a podcast superstar because you believed in me and featured me in your app.

Then I started doing the same thing with player FM, with Podbean, with podcast Republic, all these different apps started to feature me, Stitcher featured me. And, um, my podcast just took off. I had really stagnant growth for a long time. Way bigger than I seemed. Uh, in fact, I always feel like I I'm way bigger than I seem.

I'm always punching above my weight. And, uh, I went from getting 3000 downloads a month to 10,000 downloads, an episode to 500,000 downloads a month. And you know, now it's crazy. I can't sometimes I, I, I's still growing really fast, so it's just been an amazing. That's amazing. 

[00:12:19] Deirdre: And do you think, uh, in cuz how long ago would that have been, do 

[00:12:23] Hala: you think approximately?

So the cast box thing was started two years ago. Okay. And now I have 235,000 subscribers on cast box. Wow. So 

[00:12:33] Deirdre: it just blew up. And do you think that same strategy could work for others if they were like listening to and like I'm gonna do what she did. Do you think that 

[00:12:40] Hala: oh, could work again today? So the lesson that you want to take from this is to think outside the box, I had no idea what I was doing.

I was just like, I know, like I want visibility and I have something to leverage. So the lesson is grow something that you can leverage, whatever that is, grow a social platform, a YouTube channel, whatever it is. Some, a community, a text community, an email list, anything that you can leverage. Take that and trade that with other people who can also share your message to their audience.

Okay. That's the lesson because it's not that you can necessarily do this anymore. Now I do media buying as a profession, and I actually took all these relationships from the people who sponsored me. And I sell these opportunities to my clients because they're actually very expensive to do or not very expensive, but they cost money.

So it's like a typical run will cost anywhere from. From like 4,000 to $10,000 and you usually have to do it every month if you're gonna do it. Right. And so usually it's networks like Wondery and iHeart, who are buying these opportunities for their original content podcast. So for the average podcaster it's out of their league, it was out of my league when I was a podcaster.

It's only because I was innovative and found this little loophole before everybody. Right. And it is it's because I knocked on so many doors before I found that opportunity. I was stagnant for a long time, but I kept trying and trying and trying until I found something that worked. I love 

[00:14:03] Deirdre: that that is such a great lesson.

And so it's so applicable for everyone watching this. So thank you so much for sharing. Um, how, if, if people wanna learn more about what is that you do and about yeah. Media, 

[00:14:12] Hala: how can they do. Yeah. So the best where the best place to go is yeah. media.io. And we've got all our services there. I also launched a new podcast network.

So if you get over 10,000 downloads a week, come talk to me. We have a new podcast network that is absolutely crushing already. Amazing. 

[00:14:30] Deirdre: Wow. Okay. So 

what I wanted her to share with us in this video was really just. Go through and deep dive in her strategy. Like what did she do almost step by step to use LinkedIn to grow her podcast.

So holler over to you, please share with 

[00:14:43] Hala: us everything that you can. Yeah, sure. So why don't we split it up in a couple different things. First let's talk about frequency. So LinkedIn is the type of platform where you wanna post at least five times a week. If not every single. And I would say post in the morning.

So anywhere between nine and 12, that way people can engage on your content all day. So that's frequency post every single day. Be consistent. Once you start, just make sure that you post every single day, even if it does bad, if it does bad, just delete it. That's it. Right. It's not a big deal. Nobody's gonna notice.

Okay. So that's first thing's first consistency. Now let's talk about captions. So LinkedIn likes Broy. So bro, a tree style means that it's this line by line content. You guys, if you follow me on LinkedIn, just search for my name. It's Hala Taha. You'll see that all my posts are this line by line content.

People do not like chunky paragraphs. People do not like to read when they're scrolling on mobile reading chunky paragraphs is just really hard and your sentences will look like paragraphs. So just think about just doing a couple lines. Um, you also wanna start with a hook, so something that really entices them.

Um, and you also wanna end with a call to action and you wanna make sure that your posts have meaning, right? And they provide value. So stay away from promotional content for a long time. You don't wanna sell to your audience too quickly. You wanna be of service. So make sure that you're educational, inspirational, motivational.

Those are the types of things that you wanna post. If you wanna get traction on LinkedIn and any other platform now, the best and highest engagement. On LinkedIn, like likes comments, shares the most valuable engagement is a share, right? So the more that your post gets shared, the more likely it's gonna go viral.

So you wanna optimize everything for shareability. So whenever you're posting something, you wanna think, would somebody share this? Would I share this? So if there's a picture of you on it, And you're dressed inappropriately. No, one's gonna share it. If there's a picture of you and you're smiling and you look professional and, and people are gonna share it.

Right. And people love faces. So big smiles, big eyes, white teeth. That's really important. The bigger the face, the better it'll perform. Okay. So I know I'm spitting out a lot. I just know a lot about, yeah. The other thing is content type. So the bigger the asset, the bigger, the piece of real estate, whether that's video or graphic, the better it's gonna perform, you wanna stop the scroll also the brighter, the better.

So be different stand out, especially on a platform like LinkedIn, people are sharing external links and it's really boring a lot of the times. So the more that you stand out, the brighter, the colors, the more. Even controversial, the better, uh, again, faces, if you have a video, put a thumbnail that has a face on it, it will perform a lot better.

If you have a picture, make the face as big as possible. One face I think is better than many faces and that's really key. So if you notice a lot of my. Post and a lot of my clients, it's just portrait photos and that does the best on LinkedIn with something that's educational, motivational inspirational in the caption.

Uh, the other kind of hacks, uh, that you wanna think about is don't post external links, especially in the caption. So most. Platforms. They don't want you to go to another website. They want you to stay on platforms. So if you point to an external website, they're gonna deprioritize your post. So you can put the link in the comments, or you can retarget anybody who liked or commented in the DMS with your link.

[00:18:09] Deirdre: That will be a lot better clicks happen in the DMS. They don't happen. On the actual content. I love that. Wow. Okay. So in terms of, you know, you mentioned hook in the caption, do you put any text on the images or videos that you, you post as.

Like, do you put any text 

[00:18:26] Hala: Hawks? I guess? Yeah. So the thumbnail definitely should have a very few amount of words, but something that's gonna hook them in. Maybe a question, maybe something that sparks curiosity. Right. Um, and then captions are great, especially if you wanna be accessible. Um, captions are always a good thing.

So definitely important. I would say what's more important is your caption making. Short sweet, uh, catchy and meaningful and making sure that your asset has content. That's just, you know, interesting and people actually wanna watch. Now, what I will say is videos on LinkedIn in general, don't perform that well.

Uh, but something that people don't realize is that their impressions are counted differently. So on LinkedIn, A video view is when somebody watches your video for three seconds. Whereas a view on a graphic is somebody just scrolls by. And so it's a lot harder to get video views. So you can basically like times it by four or so to know how many people actually saw your post.

Um, and it's, it's hard cuz people think like videos don't work out all on LinkedIn, but really it's just counted a little bit differently and you have to realize that like, it will always seem like videos perform way. Yeah. 

[00:19:32] Deirdre: Wow. Okay. And so you talked about the frequency of posting every day. What was your content strategy?

As in, in terms of, you know, we talk a lot about content pillars and what did you have a content strategy when you were posting on LinkedIn? Around 

[00:19:45] Hala: that? I mean, it's changed so many times, you know? Yes. But like, I, I think I would have. You know, maybe three posts a week were more like motivational, inspirational personal stories.

Like if something happened to me at work or on the train, I would kind of like share more personal things that would connect me with my audience. And so they'd felt like they knew me as a person. And then two days a week, I would promote my new episode. And so putting out micro content. And here's a tip since everybody's a podcaster, if anybody's liking or commenting on your podcast episode, they're raising their hand and they're saying, Hey, like I would be interested to check out the full episode, that's your opportunity to then DM them and be like, Hey, I noticed you liked my micro clip.

If you wanna catch the full episode, here's the link. And that's how I got a lot of subscribers. So I'd retarget people who liked and commented on my micro content videos, which were about like three minutes long and then would encourage them to listen to the full episode. 

[00:20:41] Deirdre: Love that so much, so much gold there.

Okay, cool. So that was frequency. What's the next, what was 

[00:20:46] Hala: the next part? Well, we went over frequency. We went over content, uh, captions. We went over asset types, cuz I, I mentioned graphics are performing well again, polls are not working well on LinkedIn. So stay away from them. Sliders. Aren't really working well on LinkedIn.

It's really those big. Static posts, text only posts have a little bit of momentum right now and videos. So those are the three things that you should pay attention to. The more shareable, the better, again, the more shares, the more likely you're gonna go viral, even a ton of comments because people can kind of fudge comments.

Now, LinkedIn doesn't really care that much about comments. So you could get hundreds of thousands of comments and knuckle virals. It's all about the shares. Okay. Uh, the next thing I'm gonna talk about. Publishing strategies. So people don't realize that publishing is just as important as the actual content.

And what I mean by publishing strategies is the way that you engage and get other people to engage on your content. So one of the first things that I did when I first started gaining influence on LinkedIn is I decided to team up with my competition. And I was like, who is an upcoming podcaster? That's coming from my neck right now.

It was like mark Metri at the time, Quinton alums, like Jordan Paris. It was like all these, these guys that were bubbling up and also podcasting or doing similar things. And I said, let's join a WhatsApp group. Let's have a monthly mastermind call. Let's change exchange strategies. Since we're both doing LinkedIn and podcasts and let's support each other's links.

And so I got all. Podcasters in a WhatsApp group. And I just had some simple rules. I was like, listen, if you post something today and you post the link, you gotta share on everyone else's link. And I looked it up in LinkedIn's terms with service and it's not against their tos. It's not against terms with service to have an engagement pod.

So I encourage everyone to start your own engagement pod. Because you want people to like, and comment within the first 30 minutes of your post. So I got all these other influencers to do that their audience was very similar to mine. Their audience started to see my stuff. It made me even bigger, made me even go more viral.

So start your own engagement pod, make sure people are liking and commenting within the first 30 minutes of you putting up a post. If you have a team, have the team liking comment. If you have a family that will support you have your family liking comment, it really does help. And it helps kind of boost your visibility in the feed.

So publishing strategies are important. The other thing is like the timing, pay attention to your timing. Um, and then also responding to your comments. There's there's a trick. You don't wanna respond to every comment. There's some psychological things going on in the comments. If you respond to every single comment, people are gonna find it and be like, they're gonna think, oh, she is.

On it right now. And I'm like too embarrassed to comment because she's like actually reading her comments right now. That's one reason why you don't wanna respond to all the comments. The next reason why is because people are gonna be like, oh my gosh, I think the conversation is over because everything's responded to, and they they'll like, so like you wanna leave like the last, like five, 10 comments unanswered at all times, because then people will keep commenting.

So, uh, there's like a little. Art in a science to the . 

[00:23:47] Deirdre: I love these hacks that you're giving us. This is so good. Okay. Yes. Sorry. Keep going. 

[00:23:52] Hala: Yeah. I mean, I'm trying to think hashtags don't work that well on LinkedIn. You wanna keep it to like three? Um, you also don't wanna overdo it with. Uh, very popular hashtags because actually more people will see your post, but less people will engage.

Your engagement rate will go down and you actually won't get boosted in the feed. So you wanna kind of own a hashtag. So for example, I use the same three hashtags. Two of them are branded. One of them is one that I'm owning and that's podcasts. So I, I basically own the podcast hashtag on LinkedIn. I do it for every single post and then I have yap.

Which is my brand and younger profiting, which is, which is my podcast. So, uh, a couple branded hashtags, maybe one that you try to own and you always use is another, is another tactic. So, so 

[00:24:34] Deirdre: awesome. Okay. Um, and then talk us through your whole DM strategy, cuz this was another way that you really blew up.

Uh, and I, you shared one way with, with us, which is, as people are commenting, liking, Hey, DM them and go like, so that you did that. Do you wanna listen to the podcast episode? What, how else did you 

[00:24:53] Hala: use DMing on LinkedIn? There's so many different ways to use. A lot of the different features. So I'll just talk about some of the things that people aren't realizing.

And the other thing I'll say is that automation is against terms of service. And so I did it when I was first coming out, but I would not recommend that anybody do automation. Now you've gotta do everything manually. You can get a VA or something like that, but you have to be careful because you can't log in from a different country or a different city.

It's, it's pretty technical. So what I would say is, if you wanna get into this, you've gotta really know what you're doing and don't just do it. Really studying about it and understanding that you have to be logged in from like the same city. You have to stand a certain amount of action, so you don't get flagged.

And so automation is against terms service. I do not recommend it. It's something I did early in my career before I even knew that it was against linked in terms of service. Okay. So just calling that out, got it. Now, in terms of like just general things that you should be aware of, uh, number one is that LinkedIn is full of dead connect.

So one of the things that you wanna do is you wanna optimize for active connections. And what that means is people who have logged on to LinkedIn for the past six months and people who actively engage, meaning they like share and they comment on posts. Those are the people that you want to invite to your network, because the last thing that you want is somebody who doesn't engage because in your engage, Mary is always gonna be down mm-hmm

So I run a social media agency for celebrities and influencers and things like that. And we always get different types of clients. Sometimes people have no following, which is the easiest thing to grow and like get a really active channel that goes viral because you don't have any dead connections.

Some people have like 30,000 connections. They used LinkedIn from 10 years ago. They added people left and right. And those people aren't on the platform anymore. You need to go in there, you can get access to something like. Navigator, which is a, a, a software from LinkedIn. You can see who's been inactive for six months or more.

You can see who's in India or who's in countries that you don't care for. You don't sell to, and you can start to unfollow people who don't belong in your network. And that's gonna be really key if you wanna go viral because you need a high engagement rate. Mm-hmm so that's a key tactic that some people don't realize is that you actually need to unfollow people so that you can get a better head start, especially if you already have a lot of connections.

If you don't have a lot of connections right now, It's a non-issue you can just focus on active connections. Now, where do you find the active connections? It's not just looking at follower lists. It's looking at who liked and commented on recent posts of people who speak about the topics that you speak about.

And so think about your niche. Come up with a list of lookalike profiles. So for me, it's like Louis House, Jay Shetty, Jordan harbinger, Gary V. Right? Those are the people that I targeted who is liking and commenting on those posts. Send those people an invite. Hey, what's up? I. You're engaging on this so-and-so's post.

That's my favorite podcaster. I'd love to connect or, oh, I noticed that you're engaging with so-and-so's post. He actually just came on my podcast. I'd love to connect, like then send a DM after they accept and say, Hey, thank you so much for liking my stuff. If you wanna listen to my show, here's the link I'd love to like, you know, provide value on your feed.

Can't wait for, you know, to learn more about you and have genuine conversations with people. I really got to know my followers and then they became my super fans. Some of them worked for me, volunteers and it, everything just took off from there. So definitely pay attention to your community. Wow. 

[00:28:14] Deirdre: I love that.

Okay. Now I know that you you've obviously used other organic means to grow your podcast. Can you share some of 

[00:28:21] Hala: those with. Yeah, I think, um, there there's lots of different ways and a lot of them don't cost any money. So one of my favorite tactics is to guest on other shows. So for a period of time, I went on anybody's show who asked actually this month, I'm going on.

Anybody's show who asks, uh, for a while I had some criteria, you know, you had to have over 5,000 followers on one platform or, you know, but now I. Supporting anybody who sports me, JD style and guessing on shows is a great way to get new listeners because, uh, 50% of people who listen to pod, sorry, 50% of people in America do not listen to podcasts.

So when you're posting on social media, you gotta remember that you're posting to 50% of people who don't listen to podcasts. And most people don't listen to podcasts frequently, but the people who do listen to podcasts, listen, Six or seven at a time. And so that means that if you guess on someone's show, they might be interested to go find you and subscribe and listen to your show.

And so guessing on other shows is a great tactic and it's a free tactic. You just gotta find a swap now in terms of how you actually find those podcasts, uh, 

theSo basically what you wanna do is you can go to something like listen notes. 

[00:29:34] Deirdre: Mm-hmm

[00:29:34] Hala: And you can look up your podcast and see, and this is not entirely accurate, cuz I know that they're not that accurate with me, but it's, I think it's accurate enough. Yes. 

If you go here, you'll see what kind of podcast ranking that you have.

And then you can go look up other podcasts and see if they rank similar. If they rank similar, you can use this as a leverage point and say, Hey, like we have the same global rank on listen notes. Why don't we have a podcast swap? Or you can simply tell them, Hey, I get a thousand downloads an episode. How many, how many downloads do you get per episode?

If it's around the same. You know, range. We have a similar audience, let's have a podcast swap right now. The other thing that you can do is a commercial impression swap. So basically what that means. And I did this with Jordan harbinger. So Jordan Harbinger's show is like five to eight times my size at any given moment.

Right? Right. So it shows much bigger than mine. So when he became my mentor, We had an impression swap where I did eight commercials for his, everyone to promote my podcast. And we did an impression commercial swap. So that's a very creative way to get a commercial on a really big podcast. So if you get 10,000 downloads an episode and somebody gets 50,000 downloads, you're gonna do five commercials for their everyone, and you'll do an even impression swap.

So that's a key thing. A lot of big podcasters do that. A lot of people don't really know about it, and it's something that up in. Up and coming podcasters can kind of replicate. 

[00:30:59] Deirdre: Wow. Okay. This has been so, so cool. Thank you so much, har, this is just invaluable information that you're sharing with our audience. So if people, uh, want to know more about what it is that you doing about Yelp media, uh, and maybe even.

Like what level do they need to be at to even have a conversation with you? can you share with us all of those details? 

[00:31:22] Hala: Yeah. First of all, I think the number one way to thank me would be to listen to younger profiting podcasts. I just put out an episode with whim H today. It's an amazing conversation.

I'd love for you guys to go listen to my episode with whim H then drop me a review on apple podcasts since I'm still actually growing my apple podcast and trying to, so please drop me a review on apple podcast. If. Found value from this session. That would be the number one way to thank me and to subscribe to the show, listen to young and profiting podcasts.

I interview the brightest minds in the world. We unpack their wisdom for actionable advice. 

and then my company. Yeah, media. So it's for CEOs, influencers.

Celebrities. Uh, it has a pretty high, monthly retainer. So if you are, you know, doing really well and you wanna ramp up your personal brand or blow up your company, hit me up. Yeah. media.io. And if you're an up and coming podcaster and you have any questions for me, I have a text community. You can join that by.

To yap to 2 8 46. And that's how you can ask any question that you have for me. So I'd love for you guys to join my text community. And, uh, if you wanna find out more about me or the show, just go to young and profiting.com.