Episode swaps can be an incredibly effective podcast marketing tactic: I release an episode of your show in my feed, and you release an episode of my show in your feed.

Done right, an episode swap is a gift to your audience: a genuine recommendation of a quality show that’s aligned with your listeners’ tastes.

Done poorly, episode swaps can backfire, and come across as spammy, irritating, and a waste of time. A poorly-executed episode swap betrays trust and spoils the goodwill podcasters work so hard to foster with their listeners.

Let’s look at a well-executed example, shall we?

Darknet Diaries is a podcast series that tells “true stories from the dark side of the Internet.” It’s hosted and produced by produced by Jack Rhysider, a podcaster who is refreshingly transparent about his download numbers and marketing techniques.

In January 2019, Jack ran two episode swaps: one with Malicious Life, and another with Hackable?

(Full disclosure: Hackable? is an original podcast from McAfee, produced in partnership with Pacific Content and the amazing team at Response who arranged the Darknet Diaries/Hackable? swap)

I recently talked to Jack about his experience with this type of podcast cross-pollination, and the importance of making smart, audience-first decisions.

Find shows with the right fit

Jack told me Malicious Life and Hackable? have been on his radar for a while. When he asked listeners on Twitter to name other shows they enjoyed, “People were always mentioning these two,” he says. As the show titles suggest, all three series are about computer security and hacking.

Jack told me he’d tried short-form promo swaps in the past, but the shows weren’t always tightly aligned with Darket Diaries’ subject matter.

For full episode swaps, Jack wanted to be sure there was a strong fit.

“For [Darknet Diaries, Malicious Life, and Hackable?], we talk about the same subjects. We even cover some of the same stories,” Jack told me. “With the episode swaps, I really felt like my audience would love these episodes. Same theme. Same topic. Same style and format. These shows are so close to the way I do my show, you just have to give them a try.”

I asked Jack if he worried that existing listeners might be turned off by the promo swaps.

“Nobody complained about it at all. Not a single one.”

Put a cap on it

A good episode swap is a win-win-win-win: it’s good for both shows, and it’s good for both shows’ audiences.

Of course, not all shows have the same size audience. That’s where setting download (or impression) caps can keep things fair. “That could be for a certain length of time, or a certain amount of downloads,” Jack explains.

For the Darknet Diaries/Hackable? swap, Jack arranged 1:1 downloads swaps. “That was the agreement,” he says. “I was going to let my episode play for the same amount of downloads as they would let my episode play. So if their audience is much bigger than mine, it doesn’t matter because we’re both going to play for the same amount of downloads, and then we’ll take it out of the feed.”

Time your episode swaps to measure effectiveness

Attribution is hard, especially for podcast downloads. When you have lots of marketing happening all at once it’s hard to measure which tactics work.

That’s why timing matters.

Darknet Diaries usually releases new episodes twice a month. Hackable? releases new episodes every other week. Both shows released their swap episodes on “off weeks” when they wouldn’t otherwise have released an episode.

This allowed Jack to gauge Malicious Life and Hackable?’s impact on his non-swap episodes: