Latest / Podcast Growth, Podcast SEO, and Podcast Launch Strategies for Mom Entrepreneurs | Podcasting for Moms / 84. What a Strategic Podcast Review Actually Looks Like

Transcript

84. What a Strategic Podcast Review Actually Looks Like · Podcast Growth, Podcast SEO, and Podcast Launch Strategies for Mom Entrepreneurs | Podcasting for Moms

• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: Let me tell you what most podcasters do when they decide it's time to review their podcast.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: They open their hosting dashboard, they look at the download numbers, they scroll back through their last few episodes, and they think, hmm, that one did okay, that one didn't, and I probably sh and I should probably post more on Instagram.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: And then they close their laptop and go and make dinner.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: That is not a review, that is just a vibe check.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: A real review, the kind that I run on my own client shows, does not start with downloads.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: Honestly, downloads are not even in the first three things that I look at, because downloads tell you how many people showed up, but they tell you nothing about what happened after they got there.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: So today I'm gonna be walking you through what a strategic podcast review actually looks like, the exact layers I go through and the exact order I go through them and what I'm looking for for each one.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: This is the behind the curtain episode.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: So I want you to grab a notebook because you can absolutely run a version of this on your own show this week.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: Let's get into the episode.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Podcasting for Moms, the show for moms in business ready to start, grow, and scale a podcast that turns your listeners into buyers.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Jenny Summeson, a podcast strategist and fellow mom entrepreneur.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: You're in the right place if you want to learn how to start and grow a podcast that attracts your ideal clients and really does the heavy lifting for you when it comes to selling your offers.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: All while balancing life as a busy mom.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: Are you ready to create a podcast that grows your income, impact, and influence?
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: Let's make podcasting work for you.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: Because as moms, we know how to get things done.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: Alright, let's jump into the episode.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, hey, and welcome back to podcasting for moms.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so glad that you're here.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so I want to set this episode up properly because I think there's a real gap between what most podcasters think a review is and what one actually accomplishes.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: Here is a version of a conversation I have all the time.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: A mom entrepreneur books time with me.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: She's been podcasting for a year, maybe two.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: She's consistent, her audio sounds good, her content is genuinely helpful.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: And then she says some version of, I don't know what's wrong, I'm doing everything right, and it's just not doing anything for my business.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: And she's not wrong.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: She usually is doing everything right in the sense that she's doing all the things that people tell podcasters to do: publish consistently, ask for reviews, post video clips, show up consistently.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: But no one ever told her that a podcast is a system and systems fail at specific points.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: Not everywhere at once, but at specific points.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: So when she says, it's not working, my job is not to say, well, let's grow your audience.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: My job is to figure out where it's breaking down.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: Because the fix for a discoverability problem and the fix for conversion problem are completely different.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: And if you guess wrong, you can spend six months solving the wrong problem.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: So that's what a strategic review is.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's diagnostics and finding the exact break point.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: And here's the thing I want you to hold on to for the whole episode.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: I go through this in a specific order for a reason.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: Each layer depends on the one before it.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: There's no point optimizing your call to action if no one can find your show.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: And there's no point in growing your audience if the show that they find doesn't hold them.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: So we go in order of the four layers: discoverability, structure, listener journey, and conversion.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: So let's start at the top with discoverability.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: So the question I'm asking here is can a person who has never heard of you find this show on purpose?
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: This is layer one because it's the widest part of the funnel and it's the one almost no one has handled.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: So here's what I actually look at.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: So the first thing I look at is your show name, not whether it's cute, but whether it contains the words that your ideal listener would type into a search bar.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: Your show name field on most hosting platforms allows for a lot more characters than just your podcast name.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: That extra space is called a keyword extension, and it is one of the most underused pieces of real estate in podcasting.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: So say your show is called the Grow Anyway Podcast.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: Unfortunately, no one is searching for that.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: So no one knows it exists.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: But if it's the Grow Anyway podcast, podcast marketing, and business growth for moms, now you show up when someone searches podcast marketing or business growth and plenty of other variations of those keywords.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: The second thing I look at is your last 10 episode titles, and I'm reading them the way that a stranger would, not the way you would, knowing what's in the episode, but a stranger.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: So what I'm looking for here is whether the title names is whether the title name is a problem or an outcome.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: So something like let's talk about consistency, that names nothing.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: But something like why you keep falling off your podcast schedule names a problem someone is actively feeling and possibly actively searching for.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'm also checking whether the searchable part comes first.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: Podcast apps tend to truncate.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: So if your keyword is sitting at word 11, it's pretty much invisible on mobile.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: Then the third thing I look at is your show description.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm looking at the first two lines specifically because that's what shows before someone has to tap more.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: Most descriptions bury the transformation in paragraph three, and by then you've already lost them.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: The fourth thing I look at, and this is a newer one, is I'm checking whether your content exists anywhere outside of podcast apps because search has changed.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: People are asking AI tools for podcast recommendations now.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: They're typing full questions into Google and ChatGPT and Claude.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: So if your episodes only exist as audio files with no show notes page, no blog post, no transcript, then you are invisible to more than half of how people are currently finding things.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: So let's talk about what a red flag looks like in the discoverability layer.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: So every episode title is a clever phrase that means nothing out of context.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: And your show description opens with welcome to the blah blah blah podcast.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: On the flip side, here's what good looks like.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: I could hand your show name and three episode titles to a stranger, and they could tell me who the show is for and what exact problem it solves.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, next layer is structure.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: So the question I'm asking in this layer is once someone presses play, does the episode hold them and hand them off to another one?
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: So layer one, discoverability, gets them in the door, but layer two decides whether they actually stay in the building.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: So here's what I'm reviewing in the structure section.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: So the first thing I'm looking at is your first 60 seconds.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: I listened to the opening of three or four episodes back to back.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: And what I'm listening for is how long it takes you to give me a reason to keep listening.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: If your episode opens with two minutes of housekeeping, a weather report, an apology for not posting last week, and then finally gets into the topic, you have lost the new listener.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: They're gone.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: That doesn't mean they hate you.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: They just didn't get a reason to stay and they had somewhere else they wanted to be.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: The fix here is not complicated.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: The fix here is to lead with the hook, do the housekeeping after the intro music, or just skip it entirely.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: The second thing I'm looking at is your episode architecture.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: So is there one or does the episode kind of wander?
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: I'm checking whether there's a clear promise made at the top and a clear delivery of that promise by the end.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: Listeners can feel structure even when they can't name it.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: Structure is what makes an episode feel worth their time instead of just, you know, pleasant.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: The third thing I'm looking at is whether episodes reference each other.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: And this is a big one.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: I want to hear you say things like, I went deeper on this in episode 62.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: Go back and listen to that one after this, because that single sentence turns a one-episode listener into a two-episode listener.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: And a two-episode listener is dramatically more likely to become a subscriber and ultimately a raving fan.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: But if your episodes never mention each other, you've built a library where every book is in a different building.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: And the fourth thing I look at is your episode length versus your episode substance.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna say this: I'm not anti-long episodes, I'm anti-padding.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: So if a 14-minute idea is being stretched into 35 minutes, then your listeners feel it and they start skipping around because it just feels unnecessary.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: So in this section, a red flag looks like every episode is a standalone island and the first two minutes are identical, housekeeping every single time.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: And here's what good looks like.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: I finished one episode and I already know which one I'm listening to next because you told me.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: All right, moving on to layer three.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: And layer three is the listener journey.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: So the question that I'm asking in this section is if I listen to five episodes in a row, am I being moved somewhere or am I just being entertained?
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: And this is the layer where most shows actually break, and it's the one people are least likely to look at on their own.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: So stay with me here.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: So here's what I do.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: I map your last 15 or 20 episodes and I ask one question about each one.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: What job does this episode do in the business?
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: Not what it's about, but what does it specifically do?
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: Because every episode should be doing one of a few things.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: It should be building your authority, it should be introducing a problem your offer solves.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: It should be dismantling a belief that's stopping someone from buying.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: It should be proving that your approach works.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: It should be moving someone from casual listener to warm lead.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: And what I usually find is that 18 of 20 episodes are doing the same job.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: They're all building authority.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: They're all helpful, useful, and generous teaching episodes, which is lovely, but it means that your listener is stuck.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: They're sitting there marinating.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: They've been listening for eight months, they love you, they would recommend you to a friend, but they've never once been walked towards anything.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I call this missing piece the listener to buyer bridge.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's the connection between what an episode teaches and the offer that helps someone go deeper on that exact topic.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: And when that's missing, you don't have a business problem, you have an architecture problem.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody built the bridge.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: And the other thing I look for here is belief gaps.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: I take your main offer and I ask, what does a person need to believe before they buy this offer?
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: Usually there are three or four things.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: Then I check whether any episode addresses each one.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: Almost always there's at least one belief with zero episodes behind it, and that gap is quietly costing you sales.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: So in this section, a red flag looks like every episode being a tip, and there's no version of a listener path from just found you to I'm ready to work with you.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: Here's what good looks like.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: Your episodes have different jobs, they build on each other, and someone who listens in order gets more convinced as they go on.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: So then we have the fourth and final layer, which is conversion.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: The question I'm asking here is when someone is ready to take a next step, is there one and is it obvious?
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: This one is fast to diagnose and fast to fix, which is why it's probably one of my favorites.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: So the thing I'm looking at here is your calls to action.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: So I pull the last 10 episodes and count how many have a call to action at all, how many have more than one, and how many have a call to action that connects to what the episode actually taught.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: There are three failures that I see constantly.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: So the first one is there's no call to action.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: The episode just stops.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: You sat there, you taught for 10, 15, 20 minutes, and then you just say bye and move on.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: So on the other side, you might have way too many calls to actions.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: So things like follow me on Instagram, leave a review, grab the freebie, book a call, and also check out my membership.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: That's not five opportunities, that is zero because a confused listener does absolutely nothing.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: And then the third failure I see is there's one call to action, but it has nothing to do with the episode you just had.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: So say you taught about email list building and then you pitched a morning routine freebie.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: That's a bridge to pretty much nowhere.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: The second thing I look at in this section is your show notes and your description real estate.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: Is the link in the first three lines or is it buried at the bottom under a wall of text?
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: Because most people never scroll.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: Then I also look at your call to action placement inside of the episode, not just at the very end after thanks for listening, when half your listeners have already stopped, but woven in once at the natural moment where it makes sense.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: And the final thing I look at in this section is the one that people tend to forget, where the link actually goes.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: So I click on it every single time when I'm doing these audits.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: And you would not believe how often a podcast is driving traffic to a page that's broken, outdated, or asking for a level of commitment that the listener isn't warm enough for yet.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: So here's what a red flag looks like.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: Your episodes end with leave a review and nothing else.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: And on the flip side, here's what good looks like.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: Each episode has one clear ask.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's the obvious next step from what you just taught, and the link in the description actually works.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to call out one thing before we wrap because it's the belief underneath all of this.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to stop reviewing your podcast by looking at your download numbers.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: I know it is the number that is just right there.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's a number everyone talks about, and it feels like the scoreboard.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: But downloads are simply just an attendance metric.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: They tell you that people showed up.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, they tell you that people showed up, but they do not tell you if anyone stayed, if anyone came back, if anyone trusted you more at the end than the beginning, or if anyone did a single thing that you asked of them.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: You can have a show with a thousand downloads, an episode that generates zero revenue, or show with 150 downloads, an episode that consistently fills a program.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: I've seen both multiple times.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: So when your downloads dip and you spiral, what you're actually doing is panicking about the least useful data that you have.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: So I want you to review the system, not the scoreboard.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: Discoverability, structure, journey, and conversion.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's what tells you what to fix.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: And please do not do this review every week.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: You'll drive yourself insane and you'll make changes way too fast to know what worked.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: Doing this review once a quarter is plenty.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: Put it on the calendar, block out 90 minutes, and treat it like the CEO work that it is.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: All right, so let's pull it all together.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: A strategic podcast review has four layers and you go through them in order.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: First layer, discoverability.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: Can a stranger find you on purpose?
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: Look at your show name and keyword extension, your last 10 episode titles, your show description's first two lines, and whether your content exists anywhere outside of the podcast apps.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: Then the second layer is structure.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: Does the episode hold them and hand them off successfully?
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: Look at your first 60 seconds, whether your episodes have a real architecture, and whether they reference each other.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: Then the third layer is listener journey.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: Are you moving someone or are you just entertaining them?
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: Map your last 15 episodes and ask what job each one does.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: Then check your offer for belief gaps with no episodes behind them.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: And the fourth layer is conversion.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: When someone's ready, is there an obvious next step?
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: Count your call to actions, check that they connect to the episode content, check the placement, and click the link to make sure it's working.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: And the mindset piece underneath it all.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: Stop diagnosing your show with download numbers.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: Fully review the system to see where the breakdown is.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: So here's your homework, and it's honestly doable this week.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: Pick one layer that we talked about today, just one, and run it on your last 10 episodes.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: You will find something.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: I promise you that.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: Now here's the honest caveat.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: Now here's the honest caveat about doing this yourself.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: You can absolutely run this review on your own show, and I do want you to, but there is a real limit to how objectively any of us can look at our own work.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: You know what you meant.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: You know what's in the episode.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: You cannot unknow it, which means that you cannot fully hear your show the way that a stranger hears it.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the entire reason why my podcast audit exists.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's me running exactly this review, all four layers on your show.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: Your discoverability, your structure, your listener journey, and your conversion points.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: And you get back a clear picture of where your show is actually breaking and what to fix first in order.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: Not a 40-page document that you'll never open, but a short, specific prioritized plan.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: Most of the time the fix is smaller than people expect.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's usually not burn it all down and start over.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's usually two or three targeted changes at one specific layer.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: So if you've been feeling like your podcast should be doing more for your business than it currently is, and you're tired of guessing which things to fix, that's what this is for.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: You can book your podcast audit by going to podcasting for moms.co slash audit, and I'll also make sure to drop the link in the show notes for you.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: Your podcast doesn't need to work harder, it just needs someone to tell you where it's leaking.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: All right, that is a wrap on today's episode.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for spending this time with me.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: I will see you back here next week.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: Until then, go review your show like the CEO that you are.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for tuning in to Podcasting for Moms.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: I hope today's episode gave you the tools and inspiration you need to make your podcast work smarter, not harder.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: If you love what you heard, be sure to subscribe and leave a review.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: It means the world and helps other moms in business find the show.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: For more tips, resources, and support, head to podcastingformoms.co.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: Remember, you're not just building a podcast, you're building your legacy.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, friends.