Latest / Buzzcast / Consistency and Quality vs. Marketing and Promotion: What Really Builds a Podcast Audience?

Transcript

Consistency and Quality vs. Marketing and Promotion: What Really Builds a Podcast Audience? · Buzzcast

0:00
Jordan: I'm so confused.
0:01
Jordan: What's going on?
0:01
Jordan: So you both have your cameras off?
0:03
Jordan: Kevin's audio quality is terrible.
0:05
Jordan: What?
0:05
Jordan: Is happening right now.
0:07
Kevin: There's no way my audio quality is terrible.
0:09
Jordan: It's really bad.
0:11
Jordan: What is happening?
0:13
Kevin: How bad is it?
0:14
Kevin: Unusable?
0:15
Jordan: I wouldn't use it.
0:17
Alban: You're in the car.
0:18
Jordan: Kevin, I swear if you were in the car I'll be so mad.
0:22
Kevin: Yes, I'm going to get you guys.
0:25
Kevin: You wouldn't let me on last week's show because I was gonna be in the car, so I'm doing this week's show from the car oh boy, all right.
0:34
Alban: I was like there's something going on.
0:35
Alban: Kevin's camera isn't working.
0:37
Kevin: I know there's too many things to pull it off.
0:39
Kevin: I couldn't pull it off.
0:40
Kevin: All right, fine, I'm busted.
0:48
Jordan: Welcome back to Buzzcast, a podcast about all things podcasting from the people at Buzzsprout.
0:52
Jordan: So over the past two weeks we've seen some great new data and perspectives on podcast marketing, and this is both in the digital and physical world.
1:04
Jordan: So today we're going to go over some insights from the Podcast Marketing Academy's 2024 Trends Report and then take a look at offline marketing from Tom Webster on Sounds Profitable.
1:17
Jordan: So first let's talk about the Podcast Marketing Academy's marketing trends.
1:21
Jordan: They surveyed 515 podcasters and there's a lot of stuff that they go over, so I'm just going to pull some of the stuff that I thought was really interesting.
1:31
Jordan: So the first thing I want to talk about is the industry-wide growth decline, and I think that all of us have seen this.
1:37
Jordan: A lot of podcasters are feeling this and there's been a lot of questions going around, like Reddit and the Facebook group saying like is anyone else seeing a decline in downloads?
1:46
Jordan: Is anyone else's podcast just tanking?
1:48
Jordan: And I think that this report really backs that up, saying that the median show saw minimal growth and growth was less likely for already established shows.
1:59
Alban: It talked about a few different reasons why this might be happening, and they all seem reasonable to me.
2:04
Alban: Yes, the big one being we saw changes with iOS 17 and how they're not going to download episodes if people aren't listening to the podcast, and so I think we got a little bit more honest numbers.
2:15
Alban: Something I didn't see in the report but I kept thinking is if this talk about YouTube podcasts is real, then there might be some people who are just decided like they.
2:25
Alban: You know they're starting to watch more of it and sometimes when we hear, podcasts are shrinking or staying the same or growing minimally if the show has multiple formats and the other formats, the social posts, are getting engagement.
2:39
Alban: The show's still growing, even if one of the ways it's delivered has kind of plateaued.
2:49
Jordan: That's actually a really good point, Alban, because, especially with the way that YouTube just makes a copy of your episodes, spotify came along and did the exact same thing.
2:54
Jordan: If people swap out for a video on their audio podcast in Spotify, those stats are not going to be reflected in your podcast hosting numbers.
3:04
Kevin: There's kind of waves right in trendy stuff, and I think podcasting went through a pretty big trendy period starting around 2020, when we had the pandemic stuff.
3:14
Kevin: Like a lot of people got introduced to podcasting, a lot of people started podcasting.
3:18
Kevin: Because a lot of people started podcasting, they probably told a lot of people that they started podcasting and then that got people interested in listening to podcasts, and so there's pretty big growth, a wave that kind of hit around that time, and then I think we're kind of at the end of that.
3:29
Kevin: I know there's stuff happening in the video space.
3:32
Kevin: I know there's a lot of chatter around it, I think and I don't want to downplay any of that too much but I feel like, coming off the heels of the election cycle that we just had, I wonder if we're going to start to turn a little bit like.
3:45
Kevin: Just like the stock market, you know, has bear cycles and bull cycles and stuff.
3:49
Kevin: I kind of think that happens across a lot of things, podcasting being one of them, and so I do think the story for the past year the 2024 review has been that podcasting has been listening anyway, has been on the decline, and I'm optimistic that in 2025, we might start to see some of the listening numbers come back up.
4:06
Kevin: I think a lot of people, especially over the past month or so, have just heard a lot of talk about podcasting and I'm hoping that gets a lot more people excited about getting into podcast listening.
4:17
Kevin: It's hard to change habits.
4:18
Kevin: A lot of people still get in the car and just turn on the radio, right, but I don't necessarily think a lot of people are firing up YouTube and I think the car is kind of like the gateway I don't want to use a drug analogy, but like the gateway drug to podcasting because, that's kind of where you do most of your listening.
4:37
Kevin: probably for non-podcast listeners or audio book listeners, they probably start in the car and then they find out yeah, there's all the other opportunities in my life as well that I could be listening to something, and podcasting, as it becomes something that you get more and more into, then starts to fill in those other areas of life as well.
4:47
Kevin: So I'm cautiously optimistic that, yes, we did have a big spike in 2020 and it started to taper off.
4:54
Kevin: And then in 2017, at least from the stat side we did see numbers drop significantly with iOS update.
4:59
Kevin: I'm hoping we're kind of at the bottom of that trend now and now things start to pick up.
5:03
Alban: So, yeah, the numbers are what they are, but I'm also very bullish on the future, and this is not the first of the waves we've been in, I feel, like 2014,.
5:11
Alban: There was a big wave too, maybe that went to like 2016.
5:14
Alban: There was this period where I feel like Apple adding the podcast app as a default app and then serial coming out a few months after that.
5:22
Alban: 2014 was this moment where a bunch of people started paying attention to podcasts and podcasts started picking up, but then it kind of like cooled off 2016.
5:31
Alban: There was a kind of a period like 2004,.
5:33
Alban: It kind of bumped for a bit and cooled off.
5:36
Alban: I think it's totally natural and you see it with all sorts of things whether it be Bitcoin or tech or any industry like sometimes there's a bunch of hype and then people are like, oh, they move on to the next big thing, and then they come back and they're like, oh, this thing's still going well, it's actually gotten better while it was gone, and then they come back and re-engage.
5:54
Alban: One of the things I saw further down the outline you had, jordan, was talking about consistency, and it's why I'm so bullish on consistency, about sticking something out If it's something that's working for you, if you can be one of the people or one of the podcasts, one of the companies that can stick around through both the hype but then the lull for the next hype cycle.
6:14
Alban: Then you're the one who's going to be there early for the wave, rather than the person who's like, oh yeah, yeah, I was into that like seven years ago.
6:20
Alban: Let me get back into it.
6:21
Alban: Yeah.
6:29
Jordan: Well, and the waves and the lulls seem to be seasonal too.
6:31
Jordan: When I was looking at the report, it said that the holiday seasons showed increased back catalog downloads.
6:34
Jordan: So it sounds like people are discovering podcasts or catching up on podcasts during the holiday seasons, and so if they're listening to back catalogs, then exactly what you said, Alban like having that consistency ensures that you have a back catalog to download.
6:48
Alban: Well, Kevin just said it the car is the gateway drug to podcasting.
6:52
Alban: When do Americans drive more than ever?
6:54
Alban: It's Thanksgiving weekend.
6:56
Jordan: Yes.
6:57
Alban: From Wednesday to Sunday, we're all driving around trying to see people and go have a big Thanksgiving meal together, and if you're in the car for a long time with family members and you pop in a podcast, now all these people are getting exposed to it and it could absolutely drive.
7:14
Alban: I mean, not just the individuals who are already listening are going to listen more, but they're going to be exposing your show to other people.
7:20
Alban: It makes total sense to me that one podcasters release fewer episodes around the holidays and listeners are looking for more content than normal.
7:28
Alban: Jordan, one of the other things I saw you wrote in here was talking about quality versus marketing and that some of the shows and again, this is the people who responded, it's not every podcaster, but the highest growing shows said they placed greater emphasis on show quality rather than aggressive marketing.
7:48
Alban: I have some feelings about this, but I'd like to know what you guys think.
7:51
Alban: Is that the right way to approach or is this a large enough sample that we think this is probably the right advice to follow?
7:58
Kevin: Yeah, I do think so, but I also think there's a lot of overlap.
8:02
Kevin: So by creating high quality content, you are building a marketing engine.
8:06
Kevin: One of the most popular ways that podcasts spread is word of mouth, and so one of the best ways you can market your podcast is by creating an excellent podcast.
8:14
Jordan: Yeah.
8:15
Kevin: You create something so good that people have to tell other people about it.
8:18
Kevin: That's probably the most effective marketing strategy that any podcaster could have right Now.
8:23
Kevin: Beyond that, your show is going to start off with very few people that are listening to it and you have to do your best to try to get the word out.
8:30
Kevin: But at a certain point you hope to be able to have enough people who are listening to your show that it starts to snowball effect and that those people are telling other people, and then those people are getting into the show and they're telling other people.
8:41
Kevin: None of that works.
8:42
Kevin: The snowball will never start to gain momentum and pick up mass unless the quality of the content is as high as you can possibly create it Right.
8:50
Kevin: So you have to make something worth sharing, and I think that's what they're saying here is that the shows that seem to do the best seem to focus first and foremost and it's kind of like remembering first principles create something compelling, something worth sharing, and then hopefully it will get to the point where it starts to grow on its own without you doing a ton of marketing lip.
9:11
Alban: Yeah, there's a marketing concept called like, the leaky bucket.
9:12
Alban: If you have a bucket that's leaking, it's not smart for you to start filling it with water and you're like, oh, I'm trying to get as much water as I can and I've got a leaky bucket but I should keep pouring water in the top.
9:18
Alban: Well, the first step would actually be to plug the hole.
9:22
Alban: And so if you think about your podcast as this bucket, people who actually get to listen to your podcast pretty quickly leak out because they aren't sticking around for the show.
9:32
Alban: It doesn't matter what kind of marketing you get, it doesn't matter how widely you spend money on billboards and getting promo swaps and whatever.
9:40
Alban: If the small percentage of people that do show up end up going yeah, this isn't very good, I'm moving on Then you'll never be able to keep water in the bucket.
9:49
Alban: You'll never be able to fill it fast enough.
9:50
Alban: But if you can start by plugging that hole, figuring out this is what the show is, so that the people who come stick around, then I mean in the product world you say you have product market fit.
10:01
Alban: Now, if you can get people, they'll stick around.
10:04
Alban: Then it's time to go spend a bunch of money and a bunch of effort on marketing, but if you don't have that locked in this is why people will stick around then no marketing is ever going to give you ongoing, consistent growth because you'll be losing people as fast as you're gaining them Well, and not just with your listenership, I mean.
10:25
Jordan: Additionally, if you have guests on your show, you're going to want them to share the episodes that they're on with their audience, with their social media channels, with their friends and family saying I was on this show, and the only way they're going to do that is if they're proud of guesting on your show and so if you have terrible audio or it's just not a very interesting interview, they're probably not going to share it.
10:45
Jordan: I think that a lot of podcasters will overlook that sometimes and it seems like podcasters who are very intentional about the roundtable discussions that they have on their show and also the guests that they have on their show and then also making sure, like the audio is great and they invest a lot of like research and intentionality into the interview that they're doing, it tends to perform a lot better, especially if they're also spending time, investing time in creating like the social media assets and things like that, and sending it to the people and saying, hey, thanks for being on the show.
11:17
Jordan: Like all these things take a lot of time and effort, but I think that the payoff is really valuable too.
11:24
Kevin: I agree.
11:25
Kevin: So let's get real with some of this stuff.
11:27
Jordan: Okay.
11:28
Kevin: I want to hear from you guys what's your number one tip for creating better content.
11:31
Kevin: Like, what would you tell a podcaster if they say, okay, great, I buy it, I'm into it.
11:35
Kevin: How do I make my podcast better?
11:36
Kevin: What's your number one tip, jordan?
11:38
Kevin: What's your number one tip, Alban?
11:39
Alban: My tip is are you creating something that you can imagine you will listen to, or someone like you will listen to this in two years?
11:46
Alban: Is there any hope that what you're creating is going to be good enough that, two years from now, somebody might listen to it?
11:53
Jordan: Yeah.
11:54
Alban: And I think sometimes I create things that I know for a fact.
11:56
Alban: I'm just getting this out the door and it's not very good.
11:59
Alban: But I think of Acquired.
12:01
Alban: I know I listened to their first episode I think it was about Google Maps and it was awesome.
12:06
Alban: It was dry, the audio wasn't perfect, there were things that could be improved, but they put so much work into it that two years in when I listened to it, I knew that it was still really good and I was like, oh, this is quality stuff.
12:19
Alban: So I stuck around.
12:20
Alban: I remembered the show.
12:21
Alban: There's plenty of podcasts that the content, like the topic, is something I'd be interested in.
12:26
Alban: I would love a good Jacksonville Jaguars podcast.
12:28
Alban: I've never listened to one that I thought was good enough that I'd want to go back and listen to anything.
12:32
Alban: So, yeah, that would be my tip.
12:35
Jordan: I think mine is going to be good audio or passable audio.
12:39
Jordan: Even you can have the most incredible thing to say.
12:43
Jordan: You can have the most incredible thing to say, you can have the greatest content, but if you sound like you're in a tin can at the bottom of the ocean, no one's going to want to listen to it.
12:50
Jordan: It's so easy to get good audio nowadays.
12:54
Jordan: Even if you don't spend money.
12:55
Jordan: You can go down to your local library and rent equipment.
12:59
Jordan: Almost all libraries have microphones that you can use or even like recording spaces that you can use.
13:04
Jordan: Or, you know, hit up a friend that has a better microphone than you have and just get it out there that way.
13:09
Jordan: But I think that audio quality is going to be the most important.
13:13
Kevin: Yeah, no, that's a great tip and we are just a few days away from Black Friday sales and you can find a super high quality microphone and some really good monitoring headphones.
13:22
Kevin: I know that ATR 2100X usually goes on sale and the Q2U goes on sale.
13:27
Kevin: You're probably talking about $40 for a really great microphone and probably $20, $25 for a decent pair of headphones, so you can be in this game with high quality audio on par with the most professional podcasters in the world for about $60, $65.
13:41
Alban: Whenever I hear high quality audio, I want to caveat that with this is just like if you can hit some minimum threshold, you're good and move on with your life and you don't have to think about it again.
13:51
Alban: Nobody has ever listened to a bad podcast because it had great audio.
13:56
Alban: It's just that a good podcast can lose listeners because of bad audio.
14:01
Jordan: Absolutely.
14:01
Alban: I used to tell people it's like deodorant If people notice you're not wearing deodorant, that's a bad sign.
14:06
Alban: But they don't really think, like this guy's awesome, he wears great deodorant.
14:10
Alban: You're not impressed by it, so it's never like the audio has done the thing for you.
14:15
Alban: It's never made you listen, but you do notice it when it's really bad yeah.
14:25
Kevin: I think that every podcaster should always listen back to their final product, and listen back with a critical ear, and you should be able to get to the end of any episode that you release.
14:31
Kevin: And when I say final product, I don't mean oh, I listened to it while I was editing.
14:35
Kevin: That's different.
14:36
Kevin: You're in a different state of mind.
14:37
Kevin: You're trying to make the conversation flow, you're trying to cut out the fluff, you're trying to make the end product.
14:42
Kevin: But then you have the end product and, either before or after you publish it, just listen to it with a critical ear and maybe a notepad, and do your best to come up with one thing that you could do to improve that show every single time you publish.
14:54
Kevin: And so, if you publish on a weekly basis, listen to your show on a weekly basis with the intention of finding one thing that you could have done better.
15:00
Jordan: I love that.
15:01
Alban: The big thing people are going to say I hear that's the point.
15:10
Alban: That is 100% of the point.
15:11
Alban: You cannot correct what you can't see, and if you're trying to become a great dancer, you go to learn to dance in a place with mirrors so that you can see yourself dance and you watch videos of you dance and you every type of performance, every type of thing you're trying to learn.
15:27
Alban: You have to have that feedback and with podcasting it is listening to yourself, and if you don't like it, that's kind of a good sign that you have instantly identified ways to get better.
15:38
Alban: But if you just shy away from it and go, oh, it's too embarrassing, Well then it's going to be very hard for you to identify which of the things should I be improving on, which are the worst, which are the biggest areas for improvement?
15:49
Alban: Right?
15:50
Kevin: Yeah, I think every high level athlete watches themselves perform, whether they're watching game film afterwards or you're watching practice sessions.
15:57
Kevin: If you're a swimmer in the pool, they film you.
15:59
Kevin: If you're a weightlifter in the gym, they film your form and that's how you get better.
16:03
Kevin: If you're a golfer, you're sitting in a golf simulator.
16:06
Kevin: Or if you're on tour, you're watching back how your play, look, how your struggle, look Like every high level athlete does this.
16:12
Kevin: Like I don't buy it when you see celebrities go on these talk shows on Jimmy Kimmel and they're like, yeah, did you watch your movie back?
16:17
Kevin: Oh, I don't like watching myself and I don't buy it, not for a second.
16:21
Kevin: I think they've watched themselves critically and if they don't, they have a highly paid, highly skilled director who is watching them very closely and telling them exactly where they need to improve.
16:32
Jordan: So Josh has been working on starting his podcast.
16:34
Jordan: He like learned editing and he's been working on all this stuff and he edited his first episode and went great.
16:41
Jordan: And then I did the second one, at a third one, and so you know it's a week later.
16:45
Jordan: He goes back to listen to the first episode and he said there's just so many things that didn't occur to me when I was editing it.
16:53
Jordan: And he said there's just so many things that didn't occur to me when I was editing it.
16:55
Jordan: Like they got off topic and started talking about this movie.
16:57
Jordan: That was unrelated and he left it in there because he's like oh, this bit is funny.
17:01
Jordan: But then when he sat back as a listener like a week later and really took it in, he was like man, if I'm getting impatient and wanting us to move on, then like a listener who doesn't know us is definitely going to want us to move on.
17:14
Alban: This is the same advice I get for writing.
17:17
Alban: A lot is the writer, the editor and the audience.
17:21
Alban: Like all three of those are me, and yet those are different parts of me, and so part of me is just the one that wants to write it and get it out.
17:27
Alban: And where I mess up is when I try to be multiple of those things at once.
17:32
Alban: I'm imagining what it will sound like for someone else to read this thing.
17:40
Alban: Well, I haven't even written it, so that's a really bad place for me to be in.
17:41
Alban: Or if I try to edit while I'm writing, that's a different part of me, and now I'm hypercritical and so I try to write and then go do something else, and then come back and edit, do something else.
17:50
Alban: And then the third is just come here as a reader and you're not changing anything anymore, but just look at it and go okay, so next time I could have made these points better, I could have had a better illustration or whatever it may be, and that just goes into.
18:05
Alban: Next time I will attempt this thing differently, I agree.
18:09
Kevin: So I'll share a little personal story.
18:10
Kevin: I just tried not to do it, but a couple of weeks ago I was listening back to one of our episodes and I noticed it seemed like every time I started talking, the first word I said was yeah, I was always piggybacking off of something that one of you two said, and so I would say, yeah, like I'd agree with you, and then I'd go into whatever I had to say.
18:28
Jordan: Yeah.
18:28
Kevin: And so I thought, oh, do I do that all the time?
18:32
Kevin: And turns out I do.
18:33
Kevin: By use of transcripts I was able to figure this out very simply I went to the transcript page for Buzzcast, pulled up an episode and I just command F and type yeah, and I just started going next, next, next, scrolling on the page, and every time it would say Kevin, and then it would say yeah, and then I'd say something and then I'd hit next.
18:55
Kevin: I do that all the time and I didn't even realize it until I listened back to my episode.
18:57
Kevin: So now I'm trying to be more intentional about is there a different word I can use besides yeah, that also shows the same thing, which is I agree with what you said.
19:03
Kevin: Now I want to add on to it.
19:04
Kevin: Yeah, there is, I just have to figure out what they are you know, as the editor, I hear everyone's crutch words.
19:10
Jordan: I hear hear everyone's segue words, like when they're thinking they're filler words.
19:14
Jordan: Mine is always like so, or yeah, kevin always says, yeah, Alban has, and.
19:20
Jordan: And then Priscilla has kind of like she's sprinkles kind of when you do listen to that stuff over and over, even if you don't edit your own podcast, definitely listen to it, because you will find that you have quirks.
19:34
Jordan: You have things that you do that maybe you want to stop doing.
19:39
Alban: Right One that stood out to me was I will often say, wow, that's, yeah, that's really interesting, when I'm like summing up a segment, and especially, I would say, when something was not that interesting.
19:49
Alban: So we would talk about something that I was like, eh, throwaway segment, yeah, it's really interesting, and I'm interested to see what happens next.
19:56
Alban: And I was like, wow, that was such a throwaway sentence, it was totally pointless.
20:00
Alban: So I'm trying to save my that's interesting for things that I find to be actually interesting.
20:06
Jordan: I've been catching myself saying it's funny because to something that's not funny it's mildly amusing, I suppose, or mildly interesting.
20:15
Kevin: I mean, we all need something to fill the space while we're thinking.
20:20
Jordan: Yeah.
20:20
Kevin: Right.
20:21
Kevin: The challenge is just to get ourselves as professional podcasters or semi-pro podcasters, to get us to a place where we have like a repertoire of like five or six different things that we can use to fill a little bit of space while we're thinking, instead of the same one every time, because it does become kind of annoying as a listener to hear every time before this person talks they always say the same thing.
20:41
Kevin: Oh, isn't it funny, or do you know what I mean?
20:44
Kevin: Like, whatever the crutch phrases are that we pull on, it's fine, we need them, but we also just need some variety.
20:51
Alban: Part of this is we're solving a problem that's unique to podcasting, which is there's three of us, we're talking to someone who's not here and isn't here during the recording, and we're noticing okay, I think Kevin's about to wrap this up.
21:03
Alban: I've got a point, I want to jump in, and so I and to signal to Jordan I got it coming.
21:09
Alban: Don't worry, I'm jumping in.
21:11
Jordan: Yeah.
21:12
Alban: Over time you do start to get a better feel for your co hosts, like okay, this is their segment, they've got something.
21:19
Alban: I can see it on their face.
21:20
Alban: Sometimes we'll even stop and say, kevin, I can see you've got something to say here, and like we all just are learning each other and learning our patterns so that we can be a little bit more fluid without having to have the filler words holding a space for us.
21:34
Jordan: Yeah, being mindful of that definitely makes the recording and editing process a lot easier as well.
21:39
Jordan: So if you work on your public speaking or on your conversational skills, it's going to make podcasting a lot easier for you in the long run.
21:47
Alban: Yeah, I agree.
21:47
Alban: So if you just get better at all of it.
21:51
Jordan: If you can just work on being better, you'll be fine with podcasting.
21:55
Alban: I'm glad we got that out of the way.
21:56
Alban: So, jordan, you put this whole segment in here about effective marketing channels.
22:01
Jordan: Yeah, before we hop into that, though, Alban, I have to read this one point because something stood out to me in this report that kind of contradicted itself.
22:09
Jordan: So they said that most successful podcasters were active across multiple platforms, with Instagram and YouTube being notable for follower growth.
22:19
Jordan: But it's really funny because they also have this chart to go with it that has the least effective and most effective marketing trends.
22:26
Jordan: That is funny Jordan.
22:28
Kevin: Thank you.
22:31
Jordan: No, this is funny, though, because down at the very, very bottom is social media as the absolute least effective marketing channel, and then, YouTube is pretty close to it as least effective.
22:45
Jordan: It's not even on the board as a most effective channel, so it was kind of funny yeah.
22:50
Alban: I've got an interpretation of this.
22:52
Jordan: Okay.
22:52
Alban: All evidence is just directional.
22:55
Alban: It's not absolute.
22:56
Alban: A lot of times we'll say things like let me give you some advice.
22:59
Alban: You should sleep more.
23:00
Alban: Well, if the person's sleeping 10 hours a night, it's actually bad for them to sleep more.
23:05
Alban: But you don't know who the person receiving the information is, and so a lot of times we give advice that really applies to ourselves and we know we should go in that direction.
23:15
Alban: We're like, oh, you should work out more, but what if the person works out all the time?
23:19
Alban: You know, whatever it is like, most advice is directional, and when I see the most effective shows are saying things like, hey, we reinvest in the content, not the marketing, and then I scroll down and the most successful shows are active across multiple platforms, with YouTube and Instagram being where they're getting their growth and their high growth shows, and they use Instagram effectively.
23:40
Alban: That sounds like they put a lot into marketing.
23:42
Alban: Now they know the next level for us is a reinvestment into content.
23:47
Alban: But the youngest, brand new podcaster who does zero marketing and is only working on the show might need to hear the opposite advice.
23:56
Alban: You might need to hear some marketing is good for you to start doing.
24:01
Alban: You're doing zero.
24:01
Alban: You should go to one where the really successful show is like we're already doing marketing at 50 and we don't need to go to 52 in marketing.
24:10
Alban: We need to actually take our content to the next level.
24:12
Alban: So, this is my advice.
24:14
Alban: To caveat all advice, remember, like the person who gives it to you is mostly giving advice to themselves, and it's a little bit difficult to apply somebody at a different stage than you their advice to yourself, because they may be just telling you something that they need to hear, not what is most important for you at that stage.
24:34
Kevin: Yeah, one of the most impactful lessons I've learned about advice in general has been, to whatever category of your life that you want advice about or you need a little bit help with the direction that you want to, go seek out somebody who's just like one step ahead of you in that area.
24:48
Kevin: So if you're looking to get a little bit, you know, to become a better runner, don't go seek out advice from the person who just won the Boston Marathon.
24:56
Kevin: Right, like you say oh, I can run a mile or two, but I'd love to run a 5k.
24:59
Kevin: Find somebody who just ran their first 5k and say how did you get there?
25:03
Kevin: Because it's very close to them.
25:04
Kevin: They just were on that journey very recently.
25:18
Kevin: If you go you the best advice, even though they are probably one of the best runners in the world, they might not be the best person to help you get to that first 5k.
25:25
Kevin: So same thing in podcasting.
25:26
Kevin: If you're figuring out how do I go from whatever my 25 downloads per episode to 50, I'd really love to be able to double my downloads per episode in the next year.
25:36
Kevin: That's my goal.
25:36
Kevin: Who's the best person to give you advice on that?
25:37
Kevin: Somebody who's doing 75 downloads an episode, or somebody who's you know Joe Rogan, doing 30 million downloads an episode.
25:43
Kevin: Right, I would say the person who's doing 75, like they just made that journey.
25:48
Alban: And some of the advice you're going to get from the largest podcaster in the world is going to be like try to have as many presidential candidates on your show as possible.
25:55
Alban: It didn't work out.
26:00
Alban: Yeah, it didn't work for us, so it might be more than a few steps ahead of us, but if there's someone who has twice the audience that we have, then their advice might be really, really good for us, because it might be the type of advice we need to get to the next level, not the possibly opposite advice from somebody who's so far ahead.
26:19
Kevin: I hear this all the time in parenting.
26:21
Kevin: You have young kids and then you meet a couple or something and their kids are now grown and successful and you're like how did you do it, how did you?
26:29
Kevin: And they're like I don't know, They'll say something, but it never lands with me.
26:33
Jordan: Yeah, and.
26:34
Kevin: I think it's because it was 20 years ago that they did the things that they did.
26:37
Kevin: I need to find somebody who, like my kids, are in high school.
26:40
Kevin: They're getting ready to go to college.
26:41
Kevin: You have a kid in college.
26:42
Kevin: I need advice from you, even though I don't know yet exactly how your story is going to pan out.
26:47
Kevin: Your kid's story is going to pan out.
26:48
Kevin: Are they going to get a successful job?
26:49
Kevin: Are successful job?
26:50
Kevin: Are they going to find the right spouse?
26:51
Kevin: Are they going to set up for the life that you want for them to have?
26:53
Kevin: I don't know, but they're doing okay now in college, and that's my next step.
26:57
Kevin: So that's who I need advice from.
26:59
Jordan: Well, unlike podcasts, all children are very different and so you have to treat them very differently.
27:05
Jordan: My first child, I was like parenting is easy, I can't believe parents even have any trouble with their kids.
27:12
Jordan: And then I have my second one, and she was an absolute nightmare.
27:15
Jordan: And so I think podcasts are very similar, like even if you have like I've got a few podcasts and they're all completely different and I have to treat them differently, and so I think it's the exact same thing.
27:27
Jordan: It's just case by case basis, all right.
27:30
Jordan: So we talked about some of the least effective.
27:32
Jordan: I will say, even with your caveat, I think I 100% agree with the most effective, like at least the top five most effective methods of marketing your podcast.
27:46
Jordan: The first is consistency.
27:46
Jordan: Second is improved show quality.
27:48
Jordan: Third is guest selection, increased output and promo swaps.
27:53
Jordan: Those are like tried and true.
27:54
Jordan: I feel like you can't go wrong with these.
27:56
Alban: I think they're all good.
27:57
Alban: I'm not saying these are bad things, but consistency is not a marketing channel.
28:02
Jordan: It's something that works for like podcast growth.
28:04
Jordan: It's not marketing.
28:05
Jordan: I misspoke, that was on me.
28:08
Alban: Well, I mean, consistency is definitely good, yeah, but if you're consistently doing something that's not good, then it's not going to be helpful.
28:17
Jordan: Which is probably why show quality is like close behind.
28:19
Alban: Yeah, I think I'm maybe getting more and more skeptical of the advice overall, including my own advice.
28:26
Alban: There's somebody out there who's doing a ton of marketing with a bad show and they need to like improve the show first.
28:32
Alban: But there's also the people that I've met more at conferences and when I talk to pod, the more common is a pretty good show surprisingly good and sometimes and zero marketing at all, like no effort at all to market the show.
28:50
Alban: Maybe a social account that has no followers, where they post once every in a while and new episodes live, which I would count as zero marketing, and I think that you kind of need to look at your own.
29:03
Alban: What am I doing for this show, is it?
29:06
Alban: I think it's really good?
29:07
Alban: Do I think that I'm consistent enough?
29:09
Alban: Do I have decent guests?
29:10
Alban: If I'm doing guests, whatever it is, am I making something that's good?
29:13
Alban: And once you say yes and there's a few listeners who are telling you this is good, I think, then I'm starting to look around and going okay, I've got to start trying something for marketing, not everything, but just something to start filling the bucket once you think that it's not leaking.
29:27
Kevin: Yeah, I do very much agree that the initial burden of the podcaster finding some of their people is on them.
29:35
Kevin: There are a lot of shows that are probably very high quality shows, but I wouldn't recognize it as a high quality show because I'm not into the thing quality shows.
29:44
Kevin: But I wouldn't recognize it as a high quality show because I'm not into the thing.
29:47
Kevin: So, horticulture or gardening or something like that.
29:50
Kevin: I think there's a lot of great podcasts that cover those topics.
29:52
Kevin: I wouldn't necessarily recognize a good one from a bad one.
29:53
Kevin: So when a new one launches, I do think it is on the podcaster to figure out.
29:57
Kevin: I need to find my first hundred fans.
30:00
Kevin: I need to go out and put this podcast in front of people who may be interested in this topic, get them to give it a shot, to give it a listen, and maybe pick up a listener and then hopefully they'll tell other people.
30:10
Kevin: But you've got to find the first at least a hundred or so yourself before you get too far down the road.
30:16
Kevin: And then you've been doing this for two years and you've got 50 episodes published and you're like I'm still only getting you know 15, 20 downloads per episode.
30:29
Kevin: I guess this shows a failure.
30:29
Kevin: Well, this is real time.
30:30
Kevin: But I'm starting to say like I think you should market your podcast Once you get the quality up, once you get the consistency up.
30:33
Kevin: Those things are important to get.
30:34
Kevin: Obviously, get established up front, but get yourself to a hundred downloads per episode whatever way you can telling friends and family, maybe buying an ad, maybe not getting on your social channels promoting your episodes.
30:46
Kevin: Once you get to a hundred, maybe it's time to go back and say, okay, that engine has started right.
30:51
Kevin: It might not be running at the full RPMs yet, but it's started.
30:54
Kevin: Now go back and figure out what else to now.
30:56
Kevin: What do I need to do Like now?
30:58
Kevin: Do I want to try to find this guest that I thought I could never have on the show?
31:00
Kevin: Maybe it's time to reach out to them.
31:02
Kevin: Do I want to cover a topic that stretches me a little bit?
31:05
Kevin: It's going to require a little bit more research than I've done for previous episodes.
31:08
Kevin: Is it time to buy a better microphone?
31:10
Kevin: I've been recording with my laptop mic and I know the audio quality is not that great.
31:13
Kevin: It's time to invest there.
31:14
Kevin: What's the next investment?
31:15
Kevin: I don't know, but I do think sometime early in the process, in your first three or four episodes.
31:19
Kevin: It's your job to go out and find your first hundred listeners.
31:23
Jordan: I actually think that that's a really good segue into the next topic that I want to talk about, which is Tom Webster's article in Sounds Profitable.
31:30
Jordan: It's called the Offline World and he highlights out of home, or he calls it OO advertising.
31:39
Jordan: You have to see it in print, it's capital.
31:41
Alban: O-O-H.
31:42
Alban: This is not on audio.
31:42
Alban: You have to see it like in print.
31:42
Alban: It's capital O-O-H.
31:43
Alban: This is not on audio.
31:44
Jordan: It's capital O-O-H.
31:45
Jordan: Just trust me, I read it as O-O-H advertising.
31:48
Jordan: So if you read it which I highly recommend that you do you'll see what I'm talking about, and I love this because Tom makes a great point.
31:56
Jordan: He says, basically, that we spend so much time thinking about how to grow our audience online that we often overlook the power of offline advertising.
32:06
Jordan: He mentions things like billboards or posters or ads on like gas pumps, but it's also just going out and like talking to people, you know, making connections, going to events, going to festivals, and I think that there is so much power in word of mouth and getting face-to-face with people.
32:26
Alban: Yeah, I think.
32:26
Alban: Combine that with what Kevin's talking about.
32:28
Alban: You're trying to get to a hundred.
32:29
Alban: Yeah, you know a handful of people.
32:32
Alban: There's people in your family, you have some friends and then if you start engaging in the real world, you know long-term you're not going to be able to go one by one and get new listeners.
32:42
Alban: Yeah, if you're in the real world and you're like I'm just trying to get to 100 listeners.
32:46
Alban: You can do that.
32:48
Alban: We did an episode years ago with Botter.
32:51
Jordan: Yeah.
32:51
Alban: Who does the Short Box podcast?
32:53
Alban: It's a comic book podcast and one of the things they did that turned into one of the growth engines was they just made business cards and they were traveling and so every city they're in, they went by a local comic book shop and said hey, I'd love to chat with you about comic books and is it okay if I leave these cards here?
33:15
Alban: You know, if you're a coffee podcast, go by the local coffee shops and say is it all right, want to interview your owner?
33:18
Alban: And now that I've done that, can I leave my cards at your coffee shop?
33:21
Alban: Just think about, like, what are the things that nobody in their right mind is going to do for their 10,000th listener?
33:26
Alban: Those are the things you can do because you've got 50.
33:29
Alban: And it's a real wonderful thing.
33:32
Alban: Like I've wanted to find a Jacksonville Jaguar podcast.
33:34
Alban: I'd love to see like a QR code in the stadium when I went to a game, because you know that the target audience is there.
33:41
Alban: I'd love for one of them to say, hey, this is a great show.
33:44
Alban: And I went around to all the cup holders in this whole section and put in a little business card with a QR code saying listen to this podcast.
33:51
Jordan: Oh, that's smart, you can get a hundred people that way.
33:53
Jordan: Oh yeah.
33:54
Kevin: Yeah, these are some guerrilla marketing tactics that are definitely available to you when you're smaller, and a lot of these things, you know, operate more on forgiveness than permission.
34:03
Kevin: Like, I'm not sure the stadium is going to give you permission to drop cards and cup holders, but they probably won't kick you out for it either.
34:12
Kevin: They might just tell you not to do it.
34:13
Kevin: We'll see.
34:16
Kevin: It does remind me, though, like my son just started giving music lessons and his elementary school music teacher has now left teaching and opened an ice cream shop downtown that we all go to all the time.
34:24
Kevin: This guy loves music, loves my son, and it would be thrilled to know that he's now giving music lessons.
34:29
Kevin: So I just mentioned to him.
34:30
Kevin: I said, hey, you want to find a few more students.
34:32
Kevin: Why don't you ask this guy who owns this ice cream shop now if he'd let you put a flyer with a QR code up at his ice cream shop?
34:39
Kevin: And so he's like, oh yeah, that's a great idea.
34:41
Kevin: Like we want to try to find kids, right, or kids hang out ice cream shops, perfect.
34:45
Kevin: And so I don't have an exact analogy to how that plays into your podcast, but, depending on the type of podcast, again, that you do.
34:52
Kevin: You should be able to do stuff like that.
34:54
Kevin: So again I can go back to the gardening example.
34:56
Kevin: I think it's an easy one for me because I know nothing about it, but certainly there's a local garden center around that you frequent because you're into gardening.
35:02
Jordan: Yeah.
35:02
Kevin: Maybe that's a place to start.
35:04
Kevin: Maybe there's some local gardening clubs that you can go to and meet people and whatever.
35:08
Kevin: Maybe there are people in the landscaping business who would be interested in listening to your show.
35:12
Kevin: So calling them and talking to them or maybe even getting them to say hey, I'm going to talk about your landscaping company on my show.
35:19
Kevin: Would you be interested in sponsoring it?
35:21
Kevin: Give it to them for really cheap, because you know why, because they're going to tell people to listen to your podcast, because they're a sponsor.
35:26
Kevin: Yeah, it's like we tell people all the time.
35:27
Kevin: Listen to Pod News Weekly Review.
35:29
Kevin: It's an awesome podcast.
35:30
Kevin: Why do we do that?
35:39
Jordan: Well, it is a good show, but also we want more people to listen because we sponsor it.
35:43
Jordan: Do that.
35:43
Jordan: Let's say that for whatever reason you're not able to go out and do this boots on the ground style of marketing.
35:48
Jordan: Maybe you can ask your listeners to go tell someone about it for you.
35:53
Jordan: Just saying if you enjoy the podcast, make sure that you share it with somebody else who will also enjoy it.
35:58
Jordan: Make sure you tell a friend about it today at lunch, or something like that.
36:07
Alban: Just put a call to action in your episode asking them to share the podcast with someone that they think would benefit from it.
36:09
Alban: Yeah, I think this is.
36:10
Alban: I've got our sound off question.
36:10
Alban: Am I allowed to do sound off early?
36:12
Alban: No, no, no.
36:13
Kevin: Alban is smart enough to remember a question for a few minutes.
36:16
Alban: All right, we're going to have a great sound off question at the end of this episode.
36:20
Alban: Stick with us, can't wait.
36:22
Alban: At the end of this episode, stick with us, can't wait.
36:24
Alban: Piece of it I'm taking from this is in the beginning, you're going to be doing different types of things than you will once you're a really large, successful show, and part of the journey is embracing.
36:35
Alban: We're small.
36:35
Alban: We get to do things that big companies can't do.
36:38
Alban: This was something we really embraced when Buzzsprout was a lot smaller, because there are certain things we could do that our competitors, some of which were like 50 times larger than us they couldn't do, and so we were like, oh we can actually.
36:52
Alban: Someone wrote in and this is confusing.
36:54
Alban: We can get on a call with them and it's really wild to them, but it's because we're really small.
36:59
Alban: So for a period, getting on the phone was feasible.
37:02
Alban: Sometimes you can mail things like do cool things for a few of your potential listeners that you know you won't be able to do when you have 10,000 listeners, because those are the things that the big shows in your space cannot compete with, and someday you won't be able to write a postcard and send it to every one of your new listeners who fills out a form or some crazy idea you come up with.
37:23
Alban: But that's not the point.
37:24
Alban: The point is, when you're sub 100 listeners, you've got a lot of opportunities to do cool things for them that people who are larger could never ever do.
37:34
Jordan: Yeah, something else I wanted to point out is the benefits of this out of home advertising for podcasters.
37:41
Jordan: The first is that you get more attention.
37:44
Jordan: So when you're online I mean we all know this social media, everything like that it's just constant bombardment of advertising, you know, and product placement and things like that, and you kind of get ad blind.
37:55
Jordan: So offline ads, you know they're not getting just constant advertisements flying at them, and so if you're able to put an ad somewhere that's like contextually relevant, then they're more likely to pay attention to it, they're more likely to be your target audience.
38:09
Jordan: So I think that that's a really good point with the out of home advertising.
38:14
Kevin: I think the word that comes to mind for me when you say stuff like that is intent.
38:17
Kevin: It's why Google AdWords, like the keywords that you can buy around search terms, have been so powerful, is because they're piggybacking on the intent of the searcher, so like they are telling you exactly what they're looking for.
38:29
Kevin: So if you can then provide an ad, that is a solution to what they're looking for.
38:33
Kevin: It's very, very powerful.
38:35
Kevin: Social media ads don't carry that same level of intent.
38:39
Kevin: No, so what they try to do is they try to figure out the interests of the person who's scrolling their newsfeed and then serve them things that kind of match with their interests, but it's not delivered at a time of intent.
38:51
Kevin: It's not high intent anyway, it's low intent.
38:53
Kevin: I'm just looking to be entertained by a cat video or something, and you happen to show me a product that I would probably buy based on what you know about me, but the intent's not there.
39:04
Kevin: I might not be in a purchasing mood that you'd have no idea how many bills I just paid like yada, yada, yada.
39:08
Kevin: They don't work, they're not as effective, and the same is kind of true for podcasts, yeah.
39:12
Alban: But if you go onto Google and you search best mixer, then the mixer company KitchenAid's like oh, we've got them, we know what to buy, right.
39:21
Kevin: And so it's hard to find intent in the podcasting space.
39:25
Kevin: I think some of these podcasting apps actually have a lot of opportunity around this.
39:28
Kevin: Overcast, of course, has done a pretty good job.
39:31
Kevin: They serve ads.
39:32
Kevin: Actually, when you're listening to other podcasts, I kind of think the biggest opportunity is like if somebody taps on that search field, that's the biggest opportunity.
39:39
Kevin: But then podcast ads are also kind of expensive as well.
39:42
Kevin: So the best way to probably capture intent, especially when you're small, it might be this out of home stuff is like we just said, go throw a flyer up in a garden center or find an ice cream shop or whatever kind of matches with your audience, or go to events where other podcasters are.
39:56
Kevin: And here's another thing we didn't really talk about and I don't know what category this fits into.
40:00
Kevin: It's not out of home, but guesting we.
40:02
Kevin: What category this fits into?
40:02
Kevin: It's not out of home, but guesting.
40:03
Kevin: We talk about guesting on other podcasts all the time, and it is such a powerful way to connect with other listeners because they're already listening to a podcast, they like podcasting and if you're guesting on somebody else's podcast, the reason they have you on there is because there's some overlap with their audience.
40:15
Kevin: So that's the closest thing you're going to get to.
40:17
Kevin: A perfect match is seek out other podcasts that are similar to yours and pitch yourself as a guest, try to get on their show, connect with their listeners and I think you'll pick up more listeners that way, it's time for sound off.
40:38
Jordan: So first things first.
40:39
Jordan: We will not be publishing an episode next week because it is Thanksgiving and we'll be spending time with our families and not in the recording studio.
40:43
Jordan: So with that, let's get into our first FAMO message.
40:48
Alban: John Corey sent us a clip from an article by John Marriott from the Times of London said you might enjoy reading the following, no matter who you are supporting, and it's a clip about how Joe Rogan helped Donald Trump win America and it goes into a lot of detail about the podcasting election, and one of the pieces in this that really stuck out to me is this quote anybody who doubts this should take note of Trump's victory rally, which featured a shout out to quote mighty and powerful Joe Rogan.
41:18
Alban: Allies of the 45th and soon to be 47th president evidently believe that he owes at least part of his victory to Rogan, and they're very plausibly correct in that analysis.
41:28
Jordan: Yeah.
41:29
Alban: You know we talked about this for a few weeks before the election happened and I'm seeing more and more people talking about how often Trump went on these podcasts and had pretty incredible reach.
41:39
Alban: So, yeah, I think this will be more of a strategy in the coming elections.
41:43
Kevin: Yeah, it was a crazy run at the end there, the candidates hitting podcasts in the last month on both sides.
41:48
Kevin: They both hit a lot of podcasts and, if the media was accurate in their representation of the race being as tight as it was, going into election day then, what really happened that last week that pushed things over the edge Because, it turns out, the election wasn't as close as we all anticipated it being and in that last week, trump, vance and Elon all hit Brogan.
42:12
Kevin: Yeah, that's true, and I don't know if that was what switched it from being as close as the media was reporting, to it not really being as close as the media reported, but it had to play some part in it, oh yeah.
42:21
Kevin: For Trump to come out and say he actually owes a lot of credit to Joe Rogan.
42:24
Kevin: I mean, that's a lot.
42:25
Kevin: It says a lot for podcasting.
42:26
Kevin: You know, politics aside, it says a lot for podcasting, absolutely.
42:29
Alban: Well, the numbers are there.
42:30
Alban: I mean millions and millions of listens on podcasting apps, millions of views on YouTube videos.
42:37
Alban: Some percentage of those are Americans, and some percentage of those Americans were on the fence and might've been convinced, so it'd be.
42:45
Alban: It's just, it's a.
42:46
Alban: It's a pretty powerful marketing channel and if you're a politician and you're looking at, I'm going to try to get in front of people and especially in a way that seems more authentic or I get to chat for a long time and make people kind of feel a little bit more comfortable with me.
43:00
Alban: I would imagine we're going to see a lot more politicians on podcasts.
43:05
Alban: So stay tuned, buckle up.
43:09
Jordan: All right.
43:09
Jordan: And then Steph from Podcast to Connect said oh love the info on Queue.
43:13
Jordan: Looks like it's not on Android yet.
43:15
Jordan: Could you please mention this when covering tech?
43:17
Jordan: Please hate getting my hopes up, only to wait, wait, wait.
43:20
Jordan: Thanks, sorry, steph, we probably should have looked into that and made sure it was on Android too, that's my fault, you know.
43:26
Kevin: since Alban and Jordan didn't allow me to be on last week's episode, I did listen, of course, to the episode afterward.
43:33
Alban: And I had that same thought.
43:36
Kevin: I had the same thought of gosh.
43:38
Kevin: I don't know if this is available on Android, yet it was never mentioned, turns out it's not, so I think if they would have had me on, we would have covered that.
43:45
Kevin: So pick it up with Alban and jordan.
43:47
Jordan: We really fudged that up, didn't we?
43:49
Jordan: Sorry.
43:50
Alban: it was like when I was listening to the episode, I actually agreed with this criticism and I think I should have been on great 100.
43:56
Kevin: All right.
43:56
Kevin: Lark and her momster wrote in and said loved and appreciated the last podcast episode.
44:01
Kevin: So much, uh, so much insightful inspiration and witty banter and it makes it all that much more fun.
44:06
Kevin: Super informative that's also my jam.
44:08
Kevin: Thank you Also appreciate the shout out and thank you for coming to Nashville.
44:11
Kevin: We had the very best time with y'all.
44:13
Jordan: Yeah.
44:13
Kevin: We had a great time with you too, Lark and her momster.
44:16
Kevin: Really nice to meet you guys.
44:17
Kevin: Thanks for coming.
44:28
Alban: We'd love connecting with people who use Buzzsprout and just podcast fans in general.
44:29
Alban: So wonderful to see you.
44:29
Alban: Somebody in Minnesota reached out.
44:30
Alban: Love, love, the podcast related tips and what works versus what doesn't Started my own podcast recently.
44:32
Alban: After a 30 year broadcast career, we'll listen to more of you three.
44:35
Alban: Wow, we would love to hear some of your tips too.
44:38
Alban: There's so much that podcasters I think we just are discovering and if you talk to old radio people, they're like we knew about this stuff since the 70s.
44:47
Alban: These are well-established best practices so it's really interesting for me when stuff comes from the broadcast world, from radio, terrestrial radio and is breaking into podcasting.
44:59
Kevin: Agreed.
44:59
Kevin: That is high praise.
45:00
Kevin: 30 years in broadcasting that's fantastic yeah.
45:03
Jordan: Jessica Bowser, virginia Outdoor Adventures.
45:05
Jordan: Hi, jessica, agreed, that is high praise.
45:05
Jordan: 30 years in broadcasting, that's fantastic.
45:06
Jordan: Yeah, jessica bowser, virginia outdoor adventures.
45:07
Jordan: Hi, jessica.
45:08
Jordan: Oh, we're getting a lot of love.
45:09
Jordan: Okay, love, love, love.
45:11
Jordan: The pacing chart.
45:12
Jordan: I used to compare episode performance by looking at the number of downloads in the first few days for the last five or so episodes, which was tedious.
45:20
Jordan: The pacing chart takes the work and stress out of tracking episode performance.
45:24
Jordan: Thanks, awesome, kevin.
45:26
Jordan: You have a winner Great.
45:28
Kevin: I agree, I love that pacing chart as well.
45:30
Kevin: I've been wanting it for such a long time, so I'm glad it's here.
45:33
Kevin: Tate from Panda Pen, a storytelling podcast, wrote in and said hey, Buzzcast.
45:37
Kevin: I'm a big fan of the new podcast websites for subscribers.
45:40
Kevin: It's super clean and simple.
45:41
Kevin: But there's always a but.
45:43
Kevin: But I was wondering if there's any chance we could add episode artwork with each episode.
45:48
Kevin: That would make it look more polished and put together.
45:50
Kevin: If you do that, I might actually forget about my paid website and stick with your free option.
45:54
Kevin: Thanks a bunch.
45:55
Kevin: So here's the thing, and maybe you can offer a little clarification if you want to write back.
45:59
Kevin: We do display the episode artwork, maybe not in the mobile view and not like on the index page that shows all your episodes, but if you click on an episode, then that page comes up with the episode.
46:11
Kevin: Detail page is what we call it the specific episode that page.
46:15
Kevin: If you're on a screen that's large enough, we do show the artwork, but if you're like in a mobile view, you probably won't see it.
46:21
Kevin: If you turn your phone to like landscape mode, it gets wider and then you'll probably see the artwork there, but it's like a size constraint thing that the designers you know they have to do trade offs now and then with how much screen real estate we have and what's the most important information to show.
46:33
Kevin: So that's some of the decisions there, but it's good feedback and I'll be sure to pass it along and discuss it with the team.
46:38
Jordan: And our question last episode was have you ever experienced a podcasting pitfall?
46:44
Alban: Yep and somebody from California wrote in.
46:46
Alban: Whenever a guest doesn't share the episode, I lose half my numbers across the board.
46:51
Alban: There's obviously an art to asking, as social media is personal and different for everybody, but it sucks when you have a great interview and the guest's own audience isn't informed about it.
47:01
Alban: I guess the question is if you have a guest who's unlikely to share the pod, how do you reel them in?
47:06
Alban: All right, so my answer here I asked almost the exact same question years ago when I did a show called Buzzsprout Conversations.
47:15
Alban: I think it's an episode with Kate Casey, and she did a podcast where she interviewed lots of people who were on reality shows and so they all had big followings and if she could reach their audience it was going to be awesome.
47:28
Alban: If she couldn't reach them, she got nothing, and she gave me three tips.
47:32
Alban: First is she would ask them on the podcast hey, can you share your favorite photo of yourself, the best photo you have?
47:40
Alban: Because, she said, often people would create like visual sound bites or something with the image.
47:47
Alban: And if it's an image of you that you don't like, we all have one or two on the internet.
47:51
Alban: That's like I don't really like that picture of me.
47:53
Alban: People do not share bad images of themselves.
47:56
Alban: They have to like it.
47:56
Alban: So first ask them for a picture of themselves that they like, and then they've forgotten what they said on the podcast by the time you come back with the edited episode.
48:05
Alban: So, gas them up.
48:06
Alban: Your job is to tell them oh my gosh, you are so good.
48:10
Alban: I loved this specific part.
48:12
Alban: You said it was really smart.
48:14
Alban: I can't wait for everyone to hear it and then give them one option that's the thing you said was great and hand it to them like all of it done, like maybe even a caption written and say I'd love for you to share this exact one thing with your audience.
48:28
Alban: It's the image they like.
48:30
Alban: You pumped it up and said this is actually really smart, good job.
48:34
Alban: And then they have it in their hand and they go oh, so all I do is I just click share and I put it on Instagram.
48:40
Alban: Done.
48:40
Alban: You really want to make all that easy for them, because you're never going to argue your way into it.
48:45
Alban: Once they've said I'm good, I don't really remember this.
48:48
Kevin: That's great advice.
48:49
Kevin: I would just add one little tiny bit of additional info on that.
48:53
Kevin: I would give them all that stuff that Alban said.
48:55
Kevin: Tee it up, make it easy, give them a specific date of which you want them to post.
48:59
Kevin: Hopefully they'll add it to a calendar or they'll put a reminder on or something Like when you do that, like on this date around this time I'm gonna publish episode, I would love for you to publish your social media account on Tuesday the 22nd.
49:10
Kevin: When you do that, you can check on Tuesday the 22nd and if they haven't posted yet, then it gives you like the freedom to do a reminder.
49:16
Kevin: Hey, here's a reminder.
49:17
Kevin: I know you're super busy, but this was an awesome episode and today's Tuesday the 22nd, I would really love for you to publish.
49:23
Kevin: Today, like you're kind of forcing them to write back and say I'm actually not going to publish, for whatever reason I'm not going to post.
49:30
Kevin: Like, set yourself up to give them a reminder, and I think the way you do that is by giving them a specific date.
49:35
Kevin: That's kind of genius, kevin, that's smart.
49:36
Kevin: Maniacal is the word I would use.
49:39
Jordan: Another thing you can do and I've had podcasters do this with me, if I've guessed, on their show on Instagram specifically you can create a post and then invite other people to be a collaborator and what that does is, instead of just them sharing it to like their story or something like that, it actually adds the post to their main feed.
49:57
Jordan: And so it's one of those things where you create the post, you just invite them, they accept and then it appears as their post in their feed too.
50:05
Jordan: So that's another thing you can do.
50:07
Jordan: But the Kate Casey interview is fantastic.
50:10
Jordan: She's got so many great tips in there, and so I'll definitely link to that in the show notes as well.
50:14
Jordan: All right, and then we got a response from Barnabas from the Kids Code podcast.
50:17
Jordan: I have been my own enemy in podcasting a few ways, but mostly when I've lost motivation to keep doing the show.
50:23
Jordan: It's happened a few times recently and I think I may have lost a few listeners from it.
50:27
Jordan: Darn, that happens sometimes, and sometimes you just need a break, and it's really good to just let listeners know like, hey, I'm taking a break and I will be back at this date.
50:37
Kevin: Yeah, and you don't need to feel bad about that.
50:38
Kevin: Usually like, hey, everybody who works at the Buzzsprout company, every three years we take a sabbatical, we take two weeks, we get away from work, we unplug, and the purpose of that, like, how is that beneficial to a company?
50:49
Kevin: Well, because the person gets so like recharged and excited to do their job again.
50:53
Kevin: And that's the same thing holds true in podcasting, barnabas.
50:55
Kevin: So don't feel bad, just like like, listen to your body, listen to how you're feeling, like those are all valid and you have to address it.
51:03
Kevin: So just say like I'm not feeling as motivated to podcast as I used to anymore.
51:06
Kevin: So, instead of like letting that take a toll on you, say I'm going to do something about it and so communicate to your audience.
51:14
Kevin: That here's.
51:15
Kevin: The reality is, I just need a little bit of break.
51:16
Kevin: Been working super hard to bring you guys great content every week.
51:19
Kevin: I'm going to take a couple of weeks off or a couple.
51:21
Kevin: I'm going to skip a couple episodes, but I'm going to come back with even better content.
51:24
Kevin: And so here's some episodes, maybe from my back catalog that you can listen to.
51:28
Kevin: Yeah, catalog that you can listen to.
51:28
Kevin: Yeah, I don't need to give you the whole formula.
51:29
Kevin: You get what I'm saying, but like use it as an opportunity to recharge yourself and then come back with an even better podcast.
51:35
Jordan: That's great advice.
51:36
Alban: And then Barnabas continued that with something that I really don't like.
51:40
Alban: Also, I've always been basically team Kevin on the podcast speed issue.
51:47
Alban: Is this Barnabas talking or you, Alban?
51:49
Alban: This is definitely not me.
51:50
Alban: This is me reading Barnabas's text.
51:52
Alban: I've basically always been Team Kevin on the podcast Speed Issue.
51:56
Alban: I think you could still get all the information you need from an episode of 2X.
51:59
Alban: Personally, I listen at 1.5 to almost everything except the podcast where the hosts talk extremely quickly Thanks, Barnabas.
52:07
Kevin: I've always been Team Barnabas myself also.
52:09
Kevin: We are big fans of each other.
52:12
Kevin: Thank you.
52:13
Jordan: All right, Alban, so you said you have a sound off question for our next episode.
52:18
Alban: Yeah, I want to flip the script a little bit.
52:19
Alban: So we talked a lot this week about doing in life real marketing, coming up with unique channels.
52:26
Alban: You know, try not to do the exact same thing everyone else is doing.
52:29
Alban: So here's what I would like to do If you are feeling stuck in your podcast marketing, write us and only tell us this is what the show is about.
52:39
Alban: One sentence, what's the show about?
52:40
Alban: And we will answer with a unique marketing idea.
52:44
Alban: I love this so our job will be to find something different for your show, so I want you to be specific.
52:50
Alban: It's a gardening podcast about this exact thing.
52:54
Alban: Give us the exact one Now.
52:56
Kevin: does it have to be a gardening podcast, Because that seems to be only open to have the best advice for gardening podcasts.
53:03
Alban: I think that we all just have in our brain like one or two things that fit like this is a weird podcast and for me it's like knitting.
53:10
Alban: I always talk about knitting podcasts.
53:11
Alban: I've never listened to one but that exists.
53:15
Alban: So click the text button and then text us and say this is what the show's about.
53:20
Alban: Give me a good marketing tip and we will go through all of them and we're, I hope, to get a ton of answers, so that you can kind of get your creative juices flowing and hearing lots of ideas and we can come up with some unique and fun ideas.
53:34
Kevin: It's going to be super tough for me because I never read the outline ahead of time.
53:37
Kevin: So Alban and Jordan will do a little prep work ahead of time.
53:40
Kevin: You're going to get my like on the fly gut response to how you should market your podcast.
53:44
Kevin: I'm glad that you said unique and not really good marketing tips.
53:48
Kevin: Yeah, it's going to be good, but they will be unique.
53:51
Alban: This can be my segment.
53:52
Alban: I feel like I'm committing to it.
53:53
Alban: This is my job anyway, and I will enjoy trying to come up with something different for you to try.
53:59
Kevin: That's not going to be a totally saturated channel, so this will be fun and I'll just throw some wildcard ideas out there.
54:06
Alban: Kevin, it's like six in a row.
54:08
Alban: He's like six in a row.
54:09
Alban: It's like get a tattoo with a QR code.
54:11
Jordan: All right, I'm excited about that.
54:12
Jordan: So to have your response featured on our next episode, tap the Texas show link in the show notes and, as always, thanks for listening and keep podcasting.
54:25
Kevin: Why are you so tired?
54:26
Kevin: What have you been doing?
54:27
Jordan: I don't know, I just I couldn't sleep last night.
54:29
Kevin: You ever have.
54:30
Kevin: That it's not what you've been doing.
54:31
Kevin: It's what you haven't been doing.
54:32
Kevin: Yeah, I just laid there at 4am and just stared at the ceiling until my kids got up at six and I got up.
54:39
Kevin: You know what happened to me last night in the middle of the night.
54:41
Kevin: It has never happened to me.
54:41
Kevin: How long have I been married 20, like over style hard.
54:44
Kevin: I think.
54:44
Kevin: I thought I was on one side of the bed but I was on the other, so I went to do like a rapid flip over and somehow in that moment I smashed her head super hard.
55:05
Kevin: And my first thought cause I was sound asleep was what just smashed my head?
55:11
Kevin: What?
55:12
Jordan: hit me.
55:12
Jordan: I'm a victim.
55:16
Kevin: And then I heard my wife yelling like ah, I'm like, oh, I think I smashed my head into my wife.
55:23
Kevin: I can't believe 25 years, the first time that ever happened.
55:26
Kevin: But I thought for sure I was going to have a big bump on my head this morning.
55:28
Kevin: Again dumb me.
55:30
Kevin: My first thought was what's my forehead look like?
55:33
Kevin: What's her forehead look like?
55:34
Kevin: Or lady just got smashed last night?
55:36
Alban: Okay, kevin, one of the things you said, I didn't know which side of the bed I was on.
55:39
Alban: Do you not have like a designated side of?
55:41
Kevin: the bed?
55:42
Kevin: No Well, I don't think I knew, because I was in deep sleep.
55:45
Kevin: I definitely sleep on the same side of the bed every night.
55:48
Kevin: I do flip-flop a lot at night.
55:50
Kevin: I track my sleep, I see how often I'm awake, how often I'm like unrestful sleep or whatever they call it in the tracking metrics, and I do flip from my left to my right often throughout the night.
56:00
Kevin: So I think I was thinking like, oh, you're on the right side of the bed, you should flip left.
56:04
Kevin: But I was really already on the left and I was like trying to flip more to the left or something.
56:07
Kevin: I ended up just like smashing my head into her head.
56:10
Kevin: Alban not buying it.
56:11
Kevin: I'm not buying this at all because I have no idea what happened.
56:14
Alban: Almost everybody sleeps on the same side of the bed, and so you know which side of the bed you're on.
56:17
Alban: You're saying you thought you were on the other side of the bed for no reason you came up with this and then you use that as the excuse for why you had your wife.
56:24
Kevin: There's a left side of the bed and then there's a right side of the bed.
56:27
Kevin: I sleep on the right side of the bed, but on the right side of the bed there is a left side of the right side, there is a center of the right side and there's a right side of the right side.
56:34
Kevin: How big is this bed?
56:35
Kevin: It's a king size bed, california King.
56:39
Kevin: It's just a king size bed.
56:42
Kevin: But I definitely have three sides of my side.
56:44
Kevin: There's the left side, the center side and the right side, and I sometimes sleep on my left, sometimes sleep my back and sometimes sleep my right.
56:50
Kevin: I never sleep face down, because that's like you're going to suffocate and I already have mouth tape on.
56:54
Kevin: So that's double death.
56:56
Kevin: So um, oh, and that was the other thing.
57:02
Kevin: I was taped up and so I smashed my head into her head and then she's yelling like what the hell is that.
57:08
Alban: What are you doing?
57:09
Alban: And I'm and.
57:10
Kevin: I'm going, I can't talk to her, I can't tell her I'm sorry.
57:15
Jordan: So she's getting more mad You're going to go to bed tonight and it's going to be like I love Lucy style, with like two twins on either side of the bedroom.
57:24
Alban: I did try the mouth tape a few more times since you told us you started doing it, Kevin.
57:28
Alban: What do you think?
57:29
Jordan: Your jawline's looking good, Alban.
57:31
Kevin: Yeah, it's nice and tight.
57:32
Jordan: I meant to tell you that earlier.
57:34
Jordan: I don't feel like I notice any difference.
57:37
Alban: It's a little bit strange if you wake up.
57:41
Kevin: Or if you get headbutted in the middle of the night.
57:43
Jordan: Yeah.
57:44
Alban: I mean, if you've only worn mouth tape like six times and you've headbutted once ever.
57:53
Kevin: I feel like there's at least a little bit of correlation here.
57:54
Kevin: Well, I've been wearing mouth tape for a couple of weeks in since our last episode.
57:57
Kevin: I was two days in when we started our last episode.
57:58
Kevin: But here's the deal.
58:00
Kevin: I think I'm going a little bit too overboard with the sleep stuff now.
58:04
Kevin: Yeah, we agree.
58:04
Kevin: So, now I have the mattress cover that adjusts the temperature automatically throughout the night.
58:11
Kevin: Did you get an eight?
58:12
Jordan: An eight yeah.
58:13
Kevin: And it adjusts the elevation of your legs and your head.
58:16
Kevin: So that's happening.
58:17
Kevin: I have mouth tape on, I have a sleep mask on, yeah, and I also listened to some podcast that said people sleep better when they wear socks.
58:25
Kevin: So now I'm also wearing socks.
58:26
Kevin: So I'm like I'm a freak If anybody comes and sees how I'm sleeping.
58:30
Kevin: I'm on this like a craftmatic adjustable style bed that has temperature control.
58:34
Kevin: I got a sleep mask, the mouth tape, the socks.
58:36
Kevin: I mean it's ridiculous all because I'm just trying to optimize my sleep and you have night terrors or something.
58:46
Kevin: I don't know if any of this is all working, but I'm going broke trying to sleep better.