How to get a good turnout to your live podcast.
Vol. 95 - 5 things to know about doing a live podcast, and the city councilor hooked on The Diary of a CEO.
Shé:kon, fellow Canadian podcasts enthusiast!
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How to get a good turnout to your live podcast:
Summer is finally here, and with summer comes the yearning to be together, whether that’s on a patio, at the beach, at a concert, or even… a live podcast!
The business of live podcasts has grown quite significantly over the last few years. According to reporting from Ashley Carman (Bloomberg) last year, podcasting has become one of the most lucrative spaces in the live events business, with celebrity and mainstream podcasts grossing millions of dollars over the last few years.
For a long time, podcasters have mainly been able to make money two ways: sponsorship and advertising, and crowdfunding. Today, live events for podcasters are not only selling out tickets, they’re booking event sponsorships, deals with streamers, and selling plenty of merch. According to Tom Webster, “the key is thinking beyond traditional sponsorship and into experiential marketing.”
Tom also says live shows aren’t just about the money. Live events have become the “ultimate proof of concept for podcasters”, an opportunity to demonstrate your credibility and deliver an impressive, unedited experience to your loyal audience that leaves them begging for more. From my perview, it’s also an excellent opportunity to wow potential sponsors in person.
After about a decade of podcasting, Helen Zaltzman (THE ALLUSIONIST) decided to put on live shows, but she says the reality is that putting them is “a whole other job”. Especially in an era where people have gotten used to staying in. It’s a big task trying to sell enough tickets to break even when you could “reach far more people just from your living room”.
So how do you know if it’ll be worth it to put on a live podcast event? And how do you even get people to show up? I asked some seasoned event-throwers to find out…
5 things to know about doing a live podcast.
1. Find a collaborative venue.
For Dain Miller and Niall Spain, hosts of F*CK BUDDIES, they decided to take their show live after being approached by the owners of a local bar in Toronto who listened to the show. Using the podcast to help promote the space, the venue offered the guys a regular residency, meaning marketing for the event was also coming from the venue.
According to Helen, that support in marketing can make a massive difference, especially in cities you’re less familiar with; “What sometimes happens is [organizers] charge you like $500 and they put out one Instagram post that gets four likes. But some of them actually have a plan, and that is fantastic because you don’t necessarily know what works for their customers or in their town.”
This might also include joining a convention, which Dane and Niall have also done with their other show, NO QUEST FOR THE WICKED. Though they’ve never actually been paid for performing at conventions (yet), they call convention gigs a Badge of Honour; “Not a lot of people have a chance to do something like this, so it kind of puts you up a tier.” They also tend to see new listener numbers grow piggybaking on massive convention turnouts.
As a best practice, ask your venue or organizers what their promotional plans will be before signing anything. That way you know how much promotional work you’re in for yourself!
2. Be intentional with social media promotions.
It’s no secret that social media plays a massive role in promotions of events. Most of the events I go to these days–music, networking, community, podcasts, etc– I discover and even buy tickets through Instagram.
I talked to Heather Haddock, who spent most of last summer promoting the sold out ZFam BBQ, a local music festival in Brantford, Ontario, to see what podcasters can learn from the music scene. She says the key is to know who your people are and reaching out consistently. Use hashtags on Instagram to tap into specific communities, location tag your content to geo-target, and otherwise, tell your people what they need to know: when, where, who and what.
Heather posted talking-head-style Instagram Stories and Reels, with event updates near-daily, and she focused on promotions that would be easy for bands and vendors to repost and ultimately, reach fans. Once you’ve reached fans, Heather says they’ll “always let each other know” – especially when sharing is as easy as “a click-of-a-button”.
3. Consider an All-Ages and Kid-Friendly show.
It’s no secret finding a true community feel can be difficult these days. Welcoming kids to your event is a truly special way to create togetherness and ultimately see families return to your shows time and time again.
I love hearing about more parents listening to podcasts with their kids, and opportunity now to make it a live experience. This was something the ZFam BBQ did really well. By welcoming kids, they inherently brought new and returning audiences. “Our shows are all-ages and I think that’s super important to the community because we all know what it was like seeing shows when we were younger. It was amazing. And introducing your children to a scene is really cool. As soon as somebody has a good time here, they want to come back for more.”
I remember listening to the Vinyl Cafe in my parents car as a kid. I remember seeing Robert Munsch live. I remember seeing The Hobbit on stage for my 9th birthday. Let’s gift the feeling of Podcast Awe to the next generation!
Not convinced? Please catch these beautiful parting words from our late friend, Nick, who band Sundowner played the ZFam BBQ before his sudden passing late last year.
4. Create a memorable stage show, and be generous:
Once “live and in person” enters the chat, your podcast has become a new beast. Here’s how Tom Webster puts it:
“Your audience doesn’t want to pay $15 to sit in a high school auditorium and watch you record a regular episode. They want an experience they can’t get anywhere else. That might mean a completely different format, guest appearances from people who’ve never been on your show, or content that dives deeper into topics you’ve only skimmed on air.”
This is what Helen, Dain and Niall all had to reckon with. If you have a residency like F*CK BUDDIES, you have plenty of opportunity to test and tweak your live productions. For Helen, who mostly tours her show, it took her 2 years to get her live show to a place that she was happy with. Her trick has been to use location and audience participation to make her shows extra special and best of all, scalable.
“I write an hour and a half long standup-y cabaret, and write local material for every place that I’m in. I think people appreciate the feeling that you did something just for them. [...] Can you get them to play roles? Can you ask them to do questions? I hate doing audience participation, I have an actual fear of it, but there’s usually an element of my shows that involves voluntary – definitely non-compulsory – audience participation.”
Another great option is to play with themed live shows. Ultimately, F*CK BUDDIES decided this was the best way to go about booking and creating their live shows. “We do [live events] where there’s a theme or a celebration of some sort – Valentine’s Day, Halloween, Pride. It gives us a little bit of scope with making the shows more exciting. We can do costume contests or we can have Valentine’s Day candies. Prizes and giveaways, like a ‘Romantic Night-In’ gift bag.
5. Don’t tour or travel until there’s demand.
The most expensive part about touring is easily the expenses that come from travel. As noted by Ashley Carmen, typically it’s been podcasts who’ve already built viral fandoms who are able to regularly tour their shows, and notably already have a little extra money to blow.
The best thing you can do before you decide to take your show on the road is to ask your audience where they are and if they’d come to see you. Whether that’s as part of the podcast or on social media, you’ll likely discover that your fans are in unexpected places. For F*CK BUDDIES, that was at an adult summer camp in the US with an audience just shy of 200 campers; “we were in a log theater built in the middle of the woods. It was such a good vibe because we were all at camp in the woods, it’s open bar, it’s this cool location.”
Helen says that the reality of touring has been “haphazard”. After putting out a call on the podcast asking listeners in Australia and New Zealand for venue or festival recommendations, she ended up hearing from a listener who asked her to come to Wanaka, a small resort town on the South Island of New Zealand; “we weren’t paid, and like five people in the audience knew the podcast was and then there were like a hundred people who just came because it was a free show.” That listener, a chocolatier, made chocolates for the audience and town rustled up meal vouchers for Helen and her team for different spots around town, along with a basket of local goods. “It was so charming and sweet. I just felt really lucky that that kind of thing could happen.”
What’s missing from these tips? Leave your thoughts in the comments!
ICYMI: Canadian Podcasts for Pride Month!
I recently returned to my local CHCH Morning Live to recommend great Canadian podcasts for Pride Month! 🌈 🎙️ 🍁 Check it out!
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More updates from Canada’s podcast ecosystem:
June 21, 2026 — THUNDERPOD is the new comedy show about dating, work and pop culture. If relatable dating disasters and a woman in her mid-thirties who has no direction or filter interests you, check it out!
June 22, 2026 — CALL HER AUNTY has returned with a new mini series highlighting delegates from Miss Indigenous Canada. On the first episode, Qua interviews Jessica Mckenzie who won the inaugural title in 2024.
July 1, 2026 — GLOVES OFF returns in time for Canada Day! Join experts from around the world for lessons Canada could adopt to form a third pole of power in alliance with other middle powers: how Canada’s trade and economy might benefit; our adoption of asymmetric warfare capabilities, the building of digital sovereignty; defense of our cognitive sovereignty; and fending off foreign influence bad actors.
THE DIARY OF A CEO has infiltrated St. John’s FL Councillor, Tom Davis. The city councelor was recently given a 30-day suspection after bring up an episode of the show that featured author, Erica Komisar, who argued that mental disorders in children are linked to how phsyically present a mother is in the child’s first three years of life. St. John’s Councillor-At-Large Lynn Hammond felt that Davis ultimately presented the harmful comments as fact, which was especially striking after he had already made offensive comments to staff in the past. This story is well worth a read, especially as it relates to how podcasts impact our decision-makers at large.
Canadaland is set to pay $885,000 and issued a public apology for THE WHITE SAVIORS podcast. In a short Publisher’s Note on the Canadaland website, Jesse Brown confirmed that the claim that Theresa Kielburger, mother of the co-founders of WE Charity, had placed hundreds of thousands of dollars of donations in a family bank account, was unfounded. In an interview with CBC News, he said he stood by the rest of the story, and in a quote to Podnews, stated that “The WE Charity Scandal was never about anything Theresa Kielburger did. It was about what Craig and Marc did, and what Justin Trudeau did. That’s why Marc and Craig apologized to their donors and why Justin Trudeau apologized to all Canadians.” This wild moment and lesson in fact checking is truly unlike anything I’ve ever seen in Canada’s podcasting industry.
The definition of a podcast “play” has been changed on Spotify. In case you missed it, Spotify now defines a play to at least 30 seconds of content being consumed of a podcast. These updates, along with a redesigned homepage, is hopefully going to give creators a more transparent ideas of their audience size and engagement. Learn more here.
Events:
July 1-31 2026 — Arielle Nissenblatt🎧 is hosting a Free 30-day Challenge for Podcasters. Participants will get one email per day with a prompt, idea, tweak, or resource to test out, with the hope that by the end of the month, you’ll have improved little by little. Each week features a special theme, from marketing and monetization, to ongoing motivation. Sign up here!
Tues, July 7 2026 — [VIRTUAL] Pod the North’s 2nd Town Hall! An open forum to discuss Pod the North initiatives and advocacy, ideas and goals, and what we need for the Canadian podcasting ecosystem. Send a question or comment in advance and/or RSVP here.
Good Reads:
Podcast Bestie | How to Get Podcast Press Without Hiring or Becoming a Full-Time Publicist
Podcast Plunge | Is Your Podcast Building a Brand Or Just Publishing Episodes? Testing Out The Podcast Scorecard
Stuart Coxe | Media to the rescue
The Hollywood Reporter | What Is a Podcast? Podcast Industry Taskforce Forms to Determine Definition and More
Forbes | Inside The ‘Clipping Farms’ Driving Fintech’s Marketing Boom
Sounds Profitable| 61% of Podcast Listeners Discover Their Favorite Shows Through YouTube and Social Media
Just Joe (looking unforgivably cute)…
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Kattie
Principal & Executive Producer, Pod the North
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Pod the North is a production and community resource for Canadian Podcasts.
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