All Your Questions About Podcasts on Facebook, Answered

We asked our community of users for the questions they had about getting their podcasts on Facebook–and the Facebook team answered. Don’t see your question here? Shoot us an email with it!

Do you have any general idea about the listening audience on Facebook?

We can share there’s a strong appetite for podcast content on Facebook. On Facebook, more than 170M people are connected to hundreds of thousands of podcast Pages, and more than 35M people are members of podcast fan groups. While we’re still in the early stages of this product, we have launched the podcast listening experience to people in the US. We look forward to launching to more markets in the future.

What are the benefits of distributing your podcast on Facebook?

It’s undeniable that the podcasting industry has seen incredible growth over the past few years. Even before we launched our podcasts product, people were already coming to Facebook to follow, discuss, and share their favorite podcasts. We see more than 170 million people are already connected to hundreds of thousands of podcast Pages on Facebook, and more than 35 million people are members of fan groups around podcasts, but until now, you had to leave Facebook to listen to these episodes.

In building a robust podcast experience on Facebook, we can bridge not only sharing and discovery, but build a social experience around podcasts in a way people can't find anywhere else. With this social experience, podcast creators will be able to reach new fans and interact with a rich, participatory experience to help drive broader discovery of their content.

What are the mechanics of getting shows onto Facebook?

Podcast creators can add their podcasts to eligible Facebook Pages by linking their RSS feed:

• Page admins can do so via the Podcast tab within Page Settings.
• An authorization code is sent to the email address attached to the RSS feed.
• After Page admins input the authorization code, they can publish their podcast and opt in to certain features, such as clips.
• Page admins can unpublish or remove their feed from settings at any time.

For step-by-step instructions, visit our Business Help Center.

Any tips on getting shows into other peoples’ newsfeeds?

There are a few ways podcasts can show up in News Feed:

One feature is clips, which allows you and your listeners to highlight short segments and share them on Facebook. Clips always link back to the full-length content, which will help drive additional discovery and distribution for your podcast. You can opt-in and opt-out of clips at any time on your Page settings. Visit our Business Help Center for more information.

Another tip is to comment on your podcast’s posts. When you engage in the comments section on your own posts, the posts may be shown again in your followers' Feeds, which can further increase reach and engagement. You can also engage with other accounts to reach additional audiences.

For more best practices, download our podcasts on Facebook guide here.

The podcasts product is still very early, and we’ll be building more features over time here, as we know that reaching new and existing listeners is a top priority for podcasters.

How will listening data, and what kind of listening data, be reported back to creators and into the Simplecast platform?

Facebook is not providing native insights on the platform at this time (e.g., within Facebook Creator Studio). However, podcasters can access their insights via their podcast hosting platform, including Facebook attributable listen data from Android users (user agent is FB4A). Facebook attributable listen data from iOS users became available starting in mid-October with the latest release of the iOS Facebook app (user agent is iOS-Facebook). Only iOS listen data from users who've upgraded to that version (and then any thereafter) will appear, so we'll expect to see the Facebook iOS listen data generally available in the coming months.

Can you speak to any privacy concerns podcast creators might have?

Our products are designed with privacy in mind, to provide people with choices and transparency, and to ensure they comply with our legal and regulatory obligations.

Any trouble-shooting/support tips?

You can visit our Business Help Center here for information on how to add your podcast to your Facebook Page and how to manage your podcast on Facebook. If your issue is unresolved, please file a bug by selecting “Report a Problem” from the upper right menu on desktop and via Help & Support within the Menu tab on mobile.

Additionally, download our podcasts on Facebook guide here for best practices on growing your podcast on Facebook and keeping your community engaged.

Anything you can tell us about how the podcasting platform will evolve and change within Facebook?

Our long-term vision is to create a holistic experience that brings together discovery, monetization, and social connection for podcasts in one place. But that’s possible only if we build the foundation for a great product experience. We’re excited for this first chapter of bringing podcasts to Facebook and look forward to working alongside podcast creators to ensure that we’re providing value to them and their communities.