How to grow your podcast with meme marketing

Today's Lineup 🎙️

• How to Grow Your Podcast with Meme Marketing

  • Quote tweets as distribution

  • Meme marketing for podcast growth

• The Most Important Features We Shipped in 2024

• ICYMI: Drag & Drop List Functionality Now Live

Jason “The Memelord” Levin is the author of Memes Make Millions, founder of meme marketing software Memelord Technologies, and author of the most unhinged viral marketing blog on the planet. You can find him going viral posting memes and marketing hacks on X @iamjasonlevin or LinkedIn here. Jason’s todays guest columnist.

How to Grow Your Podcast with Meme Marketing

It’s Miami, October 2024.

I’m at Peter Thiel’s conference in Miami sitting outside at the pool with 2 founders Jordi Hayes and John Coogan. We’re laughing, catching up, talking about what we’re working on, and they casually mention they’re working on a podcast called Technology Brothers.

I say “What? You guys have a podcast?”

They smile and say, “Yeah it’s the most profitable podcast in the world.”

We go our separate ways. I forget about it for a bit, distracted by an email or whatever. When I get a quick sec, I look up the pod on Spotify to give it a listen. But there’s only 1 episode. Wait, what are these goons up to????

Jordi Hayes was the founder of Party Round, one of the hottest fintech startups in Silicon Valley in 2021 which he sold for an 8-figure exit. John Coogan is the founder of Lucy Nicotine, an exec in residence at Thiel’s Founder’s Fund, and runs a YouTube channel covering tech with 300,000+ subscribers. Both are marketing geniuses. Some of the best in Silicon Valley without a doubt. So what the hell were they talking about this podcast with 1 episode? I knew whatever it was that these guys were up to, I knew it’d be big.

When we get back from the conference, I notice something weird on the timeline.

Quote tweets as distribution

Slowly, I notice they start posting podcast clips from a Technology Brothers X account with barely any followers. But these are not your average podcast clips. 

John and Jordi are both wearing suits in a beautiful studio that may or may not be a billionaire’s private bunker. There’s an American flag in the background. The camera quality is beautiful. But here’s the real kicker. In each clip, they’re discussing printed-out tweets. Like literal tweets printed out. And for each of the tweets they discuss, they quote-tweet the tweet with the clip of them talking. 

It’s a genius distribution mechanism.

Not only is it weird and unique, but by quote-tweeting the original tweets, they gain the attention of whoever the original poster was. The original poster either retweets it or at least drops a comment saying “WTF!”.

All they’re really doing is discussing some of the hottest tweets on the timeline, but because they’re both hilarious, it turns into great content. Plus the real genius here is that it gives them so many more shots on goal to go viral and grow rather just posting 1 long clip. Everyday they’re posting 5-7 of these quick little clips as quote-tweets. Some get 5 likes, some get 500. With so much quantity, the pod quickly starts growing.

People start noticing.

They take no shame in mentioning they’re the most profitable podcast in the world. They talk about the fintech platform Ramp non-stop (which is one of the fastest-growing most profitable startups of all time and John’s VC fund invested in them). Hell, they even made a song about Ramp! Oh yeah and they have no problem admitting they’re funded by corporations and not independent journalism; in fact, they openly tease independent journalists like Taylor Lorenz. And every time they hit another 1,000 followers they break out a bottle of Dom Perignon champagne and celebrate on the timeline. And when they finally hard-launch the podcast, they film a helicopter sequence pretending to be in Succession.

And the reason why it all works so well is because they lean into the funniness of it. They know how ridiculous it all is being in suits talking about printed tweets. They make fun of the fact every podcaster claims to be independent but takes corporate sponsorship. They joke about how podcasting is an elite sport, a slight dig at the AG1 sponsorship health guru podcasters we all know and love. All in all, the Technology Brothers don’t take themselves too seriously. They’re just trolling and making memes and having fun.

And here’s where my work comes in.

Meme marketing for podcast growth

See, I’m the founder of Memelord Technologies, a meme marketing software used by 100s of brands like Coinbase, beehiiv, Morning Brew, and more.

When I first launched my software, Jordi sent me a message saying it was a genius idea. See, he and John are both absolute memelords, posting funny tech memes, witty hot takes, and ridiculous sh*tposts. Like me, they understand that in a world of boring AI writing everywhere, it’s humor that stands out and goes viral!!!

So when I saw my friends blowing up, obviously I had to jump in on the fun.
I turned John into a reusable PNG sticker on Memelord Technologies so anyone could make memes of the Technology Brother himself. And obviously I posted a dank meme of him too. Then me and my users started firing off dank memes about the Technology Brothers and some of the topics of conversation.

Memes are a massive win-win for both the podcast and the listeners. If you run a podcast, you should 100% be encouraging your users to make memes about you.

Let me explain why…

The Most Important Features We Shipped in 2024

2024 was a BIG year for Podchaser Pro!

Here are some of the most important updates we shipped:

→ Massive expansion of demographics coverage
→ Doubled the amount of podcast social handles
→ 3M+ transcripts, expanded coverage to Top 24k shows
→ Released the beautiful, new Podcast Charts Hub
→ Added 180+ podcast networks to enhance discovery
→ 'Tell Me Why' the AI-enabled podcast vetting tool
→ YouTube subscriber count filter
→ Podcast political skew filter
→ New 'card view' for podcast pages
→ Enhanced search across all entities
→ List exports now contain notes
→ Contextual Collections

Whether you're running earned or paid podcast campaigns, each of these features will help you win.

And we're just getting started! Stay tuned for even more updates to come in '25 👀

Watch the feature recap video 👇️ 

ICYMI: Drag & Drop List Functionality Now Live

Say goodbye to the endless up-and-down clicking to reorganize your lists. Drag & Drop is here!

Now you can quickly and effortlessly rearrange you list items by simply dragging them into place. It’s fast, intuitive, and works on desktop and mobile.

Want to see this data (and more) up close? Consider a Podchaser Pro subscription.

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