LinkedIn followers aren't listeners. Do the math!

Ladies and gentlemen, please put your hands together for

our 100,000 supporters.

Except it seems only the front row showed up.

That's the reality here. You're grinding away on LinkedIn,

chasing that six figure follower badge. You

don't get a badge for having 100,000 followers, but you know what I mean. You

post, you rack up the likes, you screenshot

those analytics and they look fantastic. And then you

publish a fresh podcast episode and your

download numbers barely twitch. So in this

episode, I'm destroying the Myth that having 100,000

followers on LinkedIn equals having

100,000 potential listeners. In fact,

spoiler alert, you'll be lucky to convert 100 downloads.

Let's explore this funnel and run the actual math, shall we?

Now look, I'm going to say this right now. This episode is going to be

triggering for a few people on LinkedIn, mostly

because it flies in the face of the beliefs they

have that having a large number of followers on LinkedIn

has any bearing whatsoever on how successful

your podcast is going to be, let alone how

successful you actually are having hundreds of thousands of followers on

LinkedIn. But that's another topic for another day.

And by the way, when I say a few people, I mean

a very specific few people. Look, I'm not

going to name names here, but I will tell you a true story to

set this up. Around two or three years ago, I was slowly

building in for myself on LinkedIn as a podcasting expert,

trying to mix it with all the artificially famous podcast

gurus, you know, that were in the engagement pods,

making sure they were seen in the feed. On the

face of it, they all had an unfair advantage.

Every post they wrote about podcasting was

guaranteed hundreds of likes, thousands of

comments because their fake followers and AI triggered

bot accounts were all primed to do so. But what they were

writing was mostly absolute garbage.

So I did what I do. I wrote contrary stuff

that called out the BS and exposed the self

serving lies, and that got the attention of a particular

British LinkedIn person with hundreds of thousands of followers

who jumped into my DMs. We got onto the subject of her

starting a podcast and she said she was keen to do it,

but needed to get organized. Here's the thing. She seemingly

had no interest in engaging the skills of an expert

like myself and just wanted someone to edit it.

Now, that's not my ballpark. I mean, I do edit for my

clients as part of the service offering, but I don't just

edit. There's no point. I know I'm not going to get them results

if I'm simply editing their shows. And a big part of what I

do is helping them market their podcasts. So I asked her

how she was planning on marketing her podcast, how

she was planning on getting audience for a show. She responded

in a rather sassy way with I have more than 100,000

followers, Neil. She then sneered and

seemed shocked when I dismissed that outright and

pressed on again around what plans she had to get audience for

her show. Needless to say, she doesn't work

with me on her podcast, and the person she does work

with is a member of her community group who

is, I'm just gonna say it,

completely clueless. For a start, he's known to use

bot listeners to launch podcasts for new clients and therefore

make it look like the shows are far more popular than they actually

are. Well, of course they look popular. They've got hundreds of

downloads straight away. It takes time to build an audience.

And sure enough, this person's podcast is hosted on

a platform that shows download numbers

publicly, and I feel fully vindicated whenever

I look at them on the landing page. The 100,000

followers has translated to an average of

100 listeners per episode. Well,

frankly, downloads, that doesn't mean they're all listening.

Now, this episode isn't intended as a told you

so or an excuse for me to gloat about how someone

dismissed my expertise and then went on to work with a direct

competitor who sucked because her ego was

bruised. No, that's not the plan. Although

that aspect of this is quite cathartic.

This episode's about helping you understand the reality around one

impact social media has on your ability to grow

an audience for your podcast. And by the end of the

episode, I'll help you understand how you can quickly

and easily make a LinkedIn account with 100,000

followers relatively redundant in any

case, when it comes to growing your show. To do

that, first of all, we need to get out my podcasting

calculator. My

phone will do. Let's calculate the feed exposure.

LinkedIn shows organic posts are roughly 5% of your followers on day

one, so 100,000 times

0.05 equals

5,000 impressions doesn't seem very

high. I mean, I can buy 5,000 impressions on

Meta relatively easily for about a tenner. So of those

5,000, the average outbound link click through

is 0.6%. Let's assume we've ran the tests.

That's 30 clicks to your podcast's landing page

on a good day. What about landing page to audio player

click? Usually around about 50%. So

we're down to 15 actual plays. So Apple

and Spotify complete rate, let's be generous here.

70% to count as a download. So the result,

10 downloads. Reality check here.

10 from 100,000

followers. That's not a funnel, it's a bloody

calendar. By the way, I'm not making these stats up. These stats

are actually from the Social Insider Insider LinkedIn benchmark

report for 2025. Lest you think I'm

just making this all up to prove a point,

let's do a case study. Let's talk about Paula,

someone I have first hand experience of helping. We're gonna call her Paula.

She had 102,000 followers. Now last Tuesday

she posted her episode link with the classic

new podcast is out graphic. Let's audit that

because I have access to her LinkedIn through our CMS

metrical and I can tell you these stats

for a fact. And remember, this is someone with

102,000 followers on LinkedIn

impressions. 4000 link

clicks, 29 attributable

downloads within 24 hours

1212

from 102,000 followers.

Paula, like many thought LinkedIn was a golden goose.

Turns out it's a paper swan playing a

rusty trombone. Sorry, could resist.

Now here's the good news. You can nudge those numbers without buying

fake listeners like our friend managing the other podcast

resorted to doing in order to get the first 1,000

listeners on their trailer.

So here's my advice on how you can use LinkedIn to try and grow a

podcast. Upload a 60 second audiogram.

LinkedIn actually boosts native media three times over

external links, so you might as well stick your call to action

inside the actual visual image so LinkedIn can't hide

that in the comments. Second option is an Auto DM

funnel, so end posts with comment if you want the

link, then auto dm. Those who buy with a direct tap

to subscribe Apple link average clicks jump to about 8%

among warm leads that way. You're going to need to look into those

auto DM softwares though I think ManyChat maybe helps

LinkedIn people. The third option, private RSS

feed for your LinkedIn community. Now it's a bit of

work, but you could offer bonus content only available in a

private feed to people from your LinkedIn

because FOMO can drive audience and if you've got

100,000 followers you might as well. Oh, and

fourthly, UTM the living out of everything

use unique UTM tags so your host analytics

stop lumping LinkedIn traffic under other or get

smart and use a smart link service. We use a really good one

at podnos. I'll pop a link to it in the description. It's called Linkfire

and that won't be an affiliate link. See, so many

people say, oh, I get all my listeners from insert place

here. But that's largely an assumption because most people

aren't even tracking where their audience comes from. And I bet you're

the same. Now. This episode comes with a freebie that is the

LinkedIn podcast promo swipe pack and I've got 10

proven post templates and a fill in the blanks hook

generator for you. You can snag it for free at

podmastery co Math. That's

podmastery co Math.

Download the PDF, copy and paste the stuff and watch the

clicks climb. Remember the stadium scenario I shared with you

at the very start of this episode? 100,000 seats

look epic on paper, but if only the first row

shows up, it's a real indicator that you're desperate for a better

strategy than oh, Neil, I'm just going to share episodes with my

LinkedIn followers. Did I mention I got 100,000 followers?

Because that is only going to end up with egg on your face,

lady. If you found this episode useful and you haven't already, give

the show a follow, leave us a review and share this

episode with someone you think it might help that's also a podcaster.

I've been Neil Velio, your podmaster. Go run the

numbers, keep those expectations real and keep on

your journey towards pod mastery.

Podcasting inside,

Podcasting inside Light.