Podcasts come in all shapes and sizes – there are almost five million “registered” podcasts, with a majority of them serving the United States. By 2026, I project there will be around seven and a half million podcasts, and by 2028, almost ten million.
While some don’t go near politics, thousands of them do focus on politics, especially in election years. Those are the podcasts we’ll consider here.
Before going into the steps needed to make maximum use of podcast appearances in a political campaign, a quick review of how podcasts became more newsworthy in 2024 than at any previous election cycle will set the stage for how every candidate for elective office should at least try to do them.
Podcasts have a different role – not always, but often.
Some podcasts are run like extended news interviews – former Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly often conducts her podcast (The Megyn Kelly Show Podcast — Apple Podcasts) interviews that feel more like she’s still a news reporter, except for her “colorful” word choices that would be bleeped by any network, even cable.
She hosts her podcast at Sirius XM, where she has 2.3 million paid subscribers, but she has more than three million followers on YouTube, and has other platforms as well.
Mediaite reports that: “Megyn Kelly singlehandedly had over 30 million more views on YouTube in July (of 2024) than did NBC or CBS News.” That doesn’t include Sirius XM or other platforms which might carry her five-day-per-week podcasts.
Kelly also has some real savvy when it comes to feeding her audiences. Her daily podcast runs between one and two hours, depending on the day’s content. She’s flexible, as is her podcast audience.
But in addition, she takes segments of the show, generally running between eight and fifteen minutes, and packages them on YouTube for those who can’t afford to invest an hour or two at midday.
She also pumps YouTube full of “shorts” – which YouTube loves and encourages – that even further extend her reach.
Finally, each Friday, she posts a list of five or so stories, with links and a brief paragraph of hype, for those who missed a day and want that day’s most important news.
In short, she knows – or has advisors who know – what people on YouTube want. And she has editors and producers who can slice-and-dice each day’s podcast into a whole group of shorter podcasts for the time-challenged or for those who are shopping for specific topics.
Of course, Megyn Kelly isn’t the only podcaster who does this – arguably, she’s not the first podcaster to do so, either – but she does it well, and feeds her audience what they want in content, both length and focused subject matter.
If you’re a conservative who wants to be heard and seen, getting on Megyn Kelly’s podcasts isn’t the worst thing you could do. She’s no Joe Rogan, at least not in terms of reach, but she does reach millions of people every day, and that’s not a bad thing.
To avoid misleading people on the nature of her podcast, she even bills it as “News Commentary.” With her multi-million member audience, she can be useful to a political campaign – but only if the person running is nationally newsworthy. So a powerful and influential Senator in a tight re-election race might make it on Megyn’s podcast, but not a candidate for governor of a relatively un-newsworthy state – not unless the candidate can “create news” that would appeal to her podcast viewers.
Other podcasters in the same audience “league” with Megyn Kelly are the chief podcasters at organizations such as Daily Wire (The Daily Wire – Breaking News, Videos & Podcasts), which reaches more than five million audience members. Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh, Andrew Klaven and Michael Knowles all have multi-million followers. There are other conservative organizations like Daily Wire which play host to content creators who use the podcast format to reach their audiences.
However, the podcast that made the greatest impact in the 2024 election campaign – and one that is more open-ended than Megyn Kelly’s “News Commentary” podcast, was Joe Rogan’s daily three-hour podcast. Based on Spotify, but with many other platforms, Rogan reaches eighteen and a half million viewers on YouTube alone, but is credited with a phenomenal three billion listeners. Not sure if I believe that, but it’s claimed to be true.
His timely interview – more an open-ended conversation than an interview – with Donald Trump was reported to have reached fifty million potential voters. This candid three-hour no-holds-barred conversation clearly had a significant impact on the last minute trend toward more young male voters shifting to Trump in the last weeks of the campaign.
In this three-hour podcast, followed shortly by another marathon conversation with J.D. Vance, reached an audience that proved vital to Trump’s landslide electoral college and overall vote-totals victory.
As an aside, many of her followers maintained that Kamala Harris missed a huge opportunity by not going on Joe Rogan’s podcast, though the invitation couldn’t have been any clearer. However, I take a different view. She proved so inept in conducting unscripted interviews that a candid three-hour conversation with Joe Rogan might have further cemented Trump’s electoral victory. He, like Reagan in ’84, might have won in 49 states, and won decisively.
While hopelessly lame as an on-camera presence, Vice President Harris proved much more adept at controlled, scripted interviews with sycophantic reporters on CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS and MSNBC. Even there, she came across as flat and shallow. To me, a three-hour unscripted conversation with Joe Rogan might have even more drastically torpedoed her campaign. Why? Because they were inauthentic. For someone who built her campaign persona around her inauthenticity and chronic “word salad,” going on Joe Rogan – who demands authenticity – would have been devastating.
While it is great to be on a major podcast, one where the audience comes “built in,” don’t overlook smaller podcasts. Why? Because, especially for smaller ones, your goal is not to reach a massive direct audience, but to generate a URL that – through your website, your digital newsletter or other news feed, your social media and other digital platforms, you can invite your potential voters to check out your appearance on a given podcast platform. Plus, you gain the added advantage of being able to “ignore” small-platform podcast recordings that were not particularly successful in terms of your campaign by simply not distributing their URLs widely.
Finding podcasts – and finding out how to pitch a given podcast – is at your fingertips. There are dozens – perhaps hundreds – of podcast directories that list current, active podcasts, along with criteria and contact information. All you have to do is Google a query about podcasts in, say, Kansas, or Atlanta, or in other specific geographic areas. That’s one way. But, for instance, conservative political candidates can search out conservative podcasts, once more likely to be open to a pitch.
O.K., so you want to go on podcasts.
First, define your target market, such as conservative podcasts, or podcasts that reach young men who are still defining their own political positions, then search for them on Google (conservative political podcasts — Google Search). Then research the podcasts that look compelling. Ask yourself who do they reach, what do they talk about, how do they select guests, do they charge for an appearance, things of that nature. This is no different than searching out more traditional “legacy” media outlets likely to be open to a specific candidate and campaign.
Beyond Google, there are other sources of lists of podcasts commercially available.
Find Radio Guests (Podcast Guests and Radio Show Guests Finder – FREE Service! – Podcast Guests Finder for Your Radio Show or Podcast FREE Service) offers a variety of lists on their website. Radio Guest List (Broadcast Radio Talk Shows – Radio Guest List.com – Find Podcast Guest Interviews and How to Get Radio Interviews Free Publicity!), for instance, which is affiliated with Find Radio Guests, in addition to weekly feeds of podcasts looking for specific kinds of guests, publishes an annual directory I have used for the past four years, replete with lots of in-depth information on individual podcasts.
PR Leads (www.prleads.com) is an excellent source of custom lists of media targets – and podcasts are now considered a media – that I have used for more than a decade.
Next, develop what we in the PR field call a “pitch kit.” This includes a brief campaign bio that focuses on your strengths, such as your positions on specific issues. Then write a short blog – between 250 and 750 words – focusing on what you bring to any given podcast – what’s in it for their audiences. You should personalize this to each target, especially those targets most likely to be beneficial. Some campaign “experts” think that once-size-fits-all when it comes to pitches. I disagree. Personalize it to one podcast, or to one kind of podcast, such as those who skew male 25-34 who are likely voters. Also include a video link to one or more podcasts – or, if none are available, TV news in-depth interviews that mimic the podcast format.
Finally, shoot the podcast booking agent – usually not the podcaster, unless it’s very new and very small – a brief, “sizzle” email pitch, with a link to your “pitch kit” and a brief statement on why they should want to interview you, and how to schedule you. This sizzle pitch should focus in on a specific topic, on examples of the candidate’s dynamism, and even on the candidate’s campaign bio – an essential tool in campaign success. See: (Writing a Book to Facilitate Winning a Political Campaign — American Thinker).
The key here is to be brief. The subject line should sizzle. The two short paragraphs should sizzle. If you’re not sure what “sizzle” means, heat up your stove and put your hand, palm down, on the glowing coils or dancing flames. You will immediately react to the sound of the sizzle. You want your audience of one (show booker) to react dynamically to the verbal sizzle.
Sometimes, it helps to have a hook – some element that would make a given podcaster more likely to want to interview you. My recent American Thinker article on using books – specifically, campaign biographies – as tools to facilitate election victories noted how such books can be a decisive factor in winning primary campaigns and general elections (Writing a Book to Facilitate Winning a Political Campaign — American Thinker).
Which leads us to how appearing on podcasts can help leverage victory. One way of getting on podcasts is to write a book and appear as both an author and a political candidate. Many hundreds or thousands of podcasts focus on authors, so having a book can help open doors other candidates can’t easily walk through.
Here’s the bottom line. To become widely-known among your target audience – i.e., the electorate you are trying to reach and persuade – don’t wait until six weeks before the election. Start as soon as the previous election cycle has run its course to become known among the electorate, and especially those most likely to support a (conservative) candidate. One way of doing this is by actively seeking out podcasts, then doing your best to present yourself in a way that will interest and influence voters. Then use URLs to get the word out, and to keep the interview “evergreen” during the entire election cycle. If you want to win, start now, and start with podcasts.
Ned Barnett, a conservative political activist and lifelong public relations professional with a focus on causes and candidates. He has been effective in helping candidates secure interviews with news media, and more recently, with podcast media and bloggers. Having managed media and strategy for three Presidential candidates – at the state level – he is used to “playing in the big leagues.” He is also known as a professional ghostwriter, website content writer, blogger and speechwriter for campaigns. Beginning as a speechwriter, he moved into campaign bio mode in the 1976 campaign for President Ford in South Carolina, and continues to help clients with their campaign bios, their podcast appearances and other campaign strategies and tactics. He can be reached at [email protected] or 702-561-1167.
Image: Pixabay / Pixabay License
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