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.