Audience

Putting out the best podcast possible is the goal of every host. It typically starts with refining a show’s content and structure. But honing in on the mistakes and finalizing a game plan is where a podcast consultant comes in.

To help figure out the right path forward, it may be worth turning to a professional. Typically an auditing service, podcast consultants take both a high-level and detailed look at your podcast. The goal is to fix the pain points and elevate the pieces that are working.

Ahead, we sit down with Mathew Passy who is a professional podcast consultant. He specializes in training those launching new shows and comprehensive audits for others in the midst of producing a podcast.

We ask him the tough questions around his client’s successes and struggles and whether you should consider a professional for your own show. Tune in above for the full interview with Mathew then read on as we build upon some burning questions.

Mathew is undeniably an expert in what makes for a successful podcast so we couldn’t resist asking for his secret sauce. And what is all boils down to is being honest and realistic about your podcasting goals.

First, analyze your approach. If you’ve uttered “I want to start a podcast but I don’t know what to talk about” or “I want to sound like Podcast X”, you may not be on the right path. With this mindset, you won’t produce a show that fills an audience’s needs. Or worse, you’ll try a create a podcast already exists. In both cases, Mathew suggests taking a step back and rethinking podcasting altogether.

But if you’re someone who is bursting with ideas and curiosity, that is the time to explore if audio is the right medium to convey the information. Think about the dramatic effects like pauses or intonation changes audio story-telling provides. Weigh each creative avenue and take a pragmatic look at whether podcasting is the right path for you and your topic.

Next, be realistic about your goals. Many hosts want to build the biggest following possible without dissecting whether that audience even exists. It’s difficult to start a podcast about a niche topic and aim for 50K followers. There simply may not be 50K people interested in that information. Instead, go into audience growth with a more realistic mindset.

Mathew’s advice is to focus on an audience of one. While it may sound counter-intuitive, the most successful podcasts have hosts who craft an intimate listening experience. When it feels like the speaker is sitting in your passenger seat, the listener will develop a closer bond with the show. That personal connection transforms listeners into advocates who will help organically spread the word. It’s these word of mouth recommendations that are the foundation of an engaged network of followers.

The last big ingredient is being honest about the quality of your show. It’s difficult to objectively critique your own creative work. You’re too close to the subject matter and can easily miss things that are hindering your growth. While a podcast consultant is the perfect person to shine light on those areas, also take feedback from your audience and collaborators. Take each piece of advice with a grain of salt but use it to improve.

A common mistake Mathew sees is the difficulty in finding, subscribing, and listening to his client’s podcasts. Either the lack of subscribe buttons all together or only accounting for Apple Podcasts, there’s room for improvement.

He argues there are two types of people who will find your podcast: habitual listeners and those new to the medium. Given their past experiences either consuming podcasts or not, you need to encourage these listeners differently.

For the newbie listeners, they may have never tuned into a podcast ever. You need to educate these users on how to subscribe and make it easy for them to do so. To help push them along, include subscribe links to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Play. These three podcast directories have brand name recognition and the user will likely be familiar with how to interact with their preferred platform.

On the other hand, the habitual podcast listener doesn’t need education. Instead, they want to consume your podcast on whichever platform they already use. Many power listeners use more niche listening platforms so it’s important to include those subscribe links as well. From Pocket Casts to Overcast, you’re doing yourself a disservice by only thinking about the bigger directories.

All together, you’re aiming for the least friction between landing on your podcast’s website and subscribing to the show. That means including these subscribe links on the podcast’s landing page and each individual episode page. The easier it is to find, listen, and subscribe, the easier it will be to grow your audience.

If you feel like you’re missing some nuances to podcast production or continue wondering why your show isn’t growing, it may be time for a podcast consultant.

Mathew’s approach is diving into what shows are doing right and wrong, then how to correct things moving forward. The goal is to provide a game plan to make the right fixes. Oftentimes, podcasters just don’t know where to start so a podcast consultant can get you on the right track.

While an audit won’t guarantee explosive growth, it’s a chance to spot why listeners may be overlooking your show.

• Learn more at The Podcast Consultant
• Follow @MathewPassy on Twitter
• Follow Mathew Passy on LinkedIn
• Subscribe to Podnews
• Subscribe to Podcast Business Journal
• See past research from Edison Research

Putting out the best podcast possible is the goal of every host. It typically starts with refining a show's content and structure. But honing in on the mistakes and finalizing a game plan is where a podcast consultant comes in.

To help figure out the right path forward, it may be worth turning to a professional. Typically an auditing service, podcast consultants take both a high-level and detailed look at your podcast. The goal is to fix the pain points and elevate the pieces that are working.

Ahead, we sit down with Mathew Passy who is a professional podcast consultant. He specializes in training those launching new shows and comprehensive audits for others in the midst of producing a podcast.

We ask him the tough questions around his client's successes and struggles and whether you should consider a professional for your own show. Tune in above for the full interview with Mathew then read on as we build upon some burning questions.

Mathew is undeniably an expert in what makes for a successful podcast so we couldn't resist asking for his secret sauce. And what is all boils down to is being honest and realistic about your podcasting goals.

First, analyze your approach. If you've uttered "I want to start a podcast but I don't know what to talk about" or "I want to sound like Podcast X", you may not be on the right path. With this mindset, you won't produce a show that fills an audience's needs. Or worse, you'll try a create a podcast already exists. In both cases, Mathew suggests taking a step back and rethinking podcasting altogether.

But if you're someone who is bursting with ideas and curiosity, that is the time to explore if audio is the right medium to convey the information. Think about the dramatic effects like pauses or intonation changes audio story-telling provides. Weigh each creative avenue and take a pragmatic look at whether podcasting is the right path for you and your topic.

Next, be realistic about your goals. Many hosts want to build the biggest following possible without dissecting whether that audience even exists. It's difficult to start a podcast about a niche topic and aim for 50K followers. There simply may not be 50K people interested in that information. Instead, go into audience growth with a more realistic mindset.

Mathew's advice is to focus on an audience of one. While it may sound counter-intuitive, the most successful podcasts have hosts who craft an intimate listening experience. When it feels like the speaker is sitting in your passenger seat, the listener will develop a closer bond with the show. That personal connection transforms listeners into advocates who will help organically spread the word. It's these word of mouth recommendations that are the foundation of an engaged network of followers.

The last big ingredient is being honest about the quality of your show. It's difficult to objectively critique your own creative work. You're too close to the subject matter and can easily miss things that are hindering your growth. While a podcast consultant is the perfect person to shine light on those areas, also take feedback from your audience and collaborators. Take each piece of advice with a grain of salt but use it to improve.

A common mistake Mathew sees is the difficulty in finding, subscribing, and listening to his client's podcasts. Either the lack of subscribe buttons all together or only accounting for Apple Podcasts, there's room for improvement.

He argues there are two types of people who will find your podcast: habitual listeners and those new to the medium. Given their past experiences either consuming podcasts or not, you need to encourage these listeners differently.

For the newbie listeners, they may have never tuned into a podcast ever. You need to educate these users on how to subscribe and make it easy for them to do so. To help push them along, include subscribe links to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Play. These three podcast directories have brand name recognition and the user will likely be familiar with how to interact with their preferred platform.

On the other hand, the habitual podcast listener doesn't need education. Instead, they want to consume your podcast on whichever platform they already use. Many power listeners use more niche listening platforms so it's important to include those subscribe links as well. From Pocket Casts to Overcast, you're doing yourself a disservice by only thinking about the bigger directories.

All together, you're aiming for the least friction between landing on your podcast's website and subscribing to the show. That means including these subscribe links on the podcast's landing page and each individual episode page. The easier it is to find, listen, and subscribe, the easier it will be to grow your audience.

If you feel like you're missing some nuances to podcast production or continue wondering why your show isn't growing, it may be time for a podcast consultant.

Mathew's approach is diving into what shows are doing right and wrong, then how to correct things moving forward. The goal is to provide a game plan to make the right fixes. Oftentimes, podcasters just don't know where to start so a podcast consultant can get you on the right track.

While an audit won't guarantee explosive growth, it's a chance to spot why listeners may be overlooking your show.

• Learn more at The Podcast Consultant
• Follow @MathewPassy on Twitter
• Follow Mathew Passy on LinkedIn
• Subscribe to Podnews
• Subscribe to Podcast Business Journal
• See past research from Edison Research

Content marketing has long been a primary way for brands to increase their website traffic and customer bases. And one of the best in the game is CoSchedule.

This software as a service (SaaS) tool allows marketers to organize, execute, and analyze every promotional campaign to get more done. To introduce CoSchedule to potential users, they create educational content about industry best practices and their product.

In this episode, we discuss how CoSchedule uses podcasting within their broader content marketing activities.

Framed as “what is the biggest mistake most content marketers make?” led Craig and Ben to discuss what makes a good podcast.

The answer: quality over quantity. Often times, creators are in a rush to produce as much content as possible. Thinking the more I put out there, the more chances people will have to interact with my podcast. But in reality, spending more time creating engaging content is the better strategy.

Creating a good podcast comes down to investing more resources in-depth and useful pieces that don’t just scratch the surface. Ben suggests asking yourself “is this the best resource available on this topic?” for every new piece of content. If your answer is no, it’ll likely fall flat because users will go elsewhere to solve their problem.

For every episode of their Actionable Marketing podcast, the CoSchedule team aims to provide real-world insights and actions marketers can apply to their own work. If the episode has no takeaway, it’s scrapped. Simple as that.

But remember, making a great podcast has a learning curve. It’ll take more time to research, produce, and polish episodes that go deeper but there’s a payoff. CoSchedule’s content sees passive visits and listens for months and even years after it’s published because they we were willing to invest the time upfront. That ongoing engagement is what it takes to bring a podcast from good to great.

Focusing on evergreen content is a great way to squeeze more engagement over time from a single episode. Timeless content stays fresher longer, driving more listens long after it’s first published.

Content marketing historically only included written mediums but audio content has recently entered the scene. Craig and Ben dug into how CoSchedule thinks about their podcast content and it differs from their other channels.

At a high level, CoSchedule creates content for marketers. Across written, spoken, and social content, the common theme is helping marketing professionals solve a problem. But their podcast content ideas have a slightly different spin than their other channels.

Content ideas for written and social platforms are typically focused on their SEO value or virality. The goal is to capitalize on keyword search volume or lead a trending social conversation to reach new customers. But podcasting allows CoSchedule to explore questions that can’t be positioned against these standard measures of success. Oftentimes, episodes solve problems listeners don’t know how to search for or answers questions they didn’t think to ask.

“Podcasts are a powerful way to connect with an audience for 20, 30, even 40 minutes,” Ben says. Compared the minutes it takes to engage with an article or social post, podcasts establish a stickier connection. There’s more opportunity to explore a topic in a conversational way with added personality. By not focusing on traditional marketing metrics, the Actionable Marketing Podcast helps produce brand loyalists and keep CoSchedule top of mind for potential customers.

Podcasts offer the opportunity to become part of someone’s routine. They may not visit your site each time a new article is published but they might habitually tune in to your new podcast content.

A common struggle for marketers leveraging podcasts as part of a content marketing strategy is attribution. Meaning, how can we assess if the podcast is driving customers to our business?

How do we track someone who tunes into an episode, visits the website, and ultimately purchases the product. Moving between platforms and the amount of time between each action adds to the challenge.

One way that Ben suggests to look at this is simply the “are we better off now than before the podcast?”. This is a binary, more simplistic way of looking at your organization’s objective. But it does provide a clear yes or no answer and can be applied to any business metric.

Given the complexity of the problem, we don’t have the perfect answer. So this is where we throw it back to you, the listeners. What are you doing to attribute podcast listenership to activities happening on your site, in your business, or with your brand? Tell us in the comments below!

• Subscribe to the Actionable Marketing Podcast
• Read more from CoSchedule’s blog here
• Subscribe to Audience

Content marketing has long been a primary way for brands to increase their website traffic and customer bases. And one of the best in the game is CoSchedule.

This software as a service (SaaS) tool allows marketers to organize, execute, and analyze every promotional campaign to get more done. To introduce CoSchedule to potential users, they create educational content about industry best practices and their product.

In this episode, we discuss how CoSchedule uses podcasting within their broader content marketing activities.

Framed as "what is the biggest mistake most content marketers make?" led Craig and Ben to discuss what makes a good podcast.

The answer: quality over quantity. Often times, creators are in a rush to produce as much content as possible. Thinking the more I put out there, the more chances people will have to interact with my podcast. But in reality, spending more time creating engaging content is the better strategy.

Creating a good podcast comes down to investing more resources in-depth and useful pieces that don't just scratch the surface. Ben suggests asking yourself "is this the best resource available on this topic?" for every new piece of content. If your answer is no, it'll likely fall flat because users will go elsewhere to solve their problem.

For every episode of their Actionable Marketing podcast, the CoSchedule team aims to provide real-world insights and actions marketers can apply to their own work. If the episode has no takeaway, it's scrapped. Simple as that.

But remember, making a great podcast has a learning curve. It'll take more time to research, produce, and polish episodes that go deeper but there's a payoff. CoSchedule's content sees passive visits and listens for months and even years after it's published because they we were willing to invest the time upfront. That ongoing engagement is what it takes to bring a podcast from good to great.

Focusing on evergreen content is a great way to squeeze more engagement over time from a single episode. Timeless content stays fresher longer, driving more listens long after it's first published.

Content marketing historically only included written mediums but audio content has recently entered the scene. Craig and Ben dug into how CoSchedule thinks about their podcast content and it differs from their other channels.

At a high level, CoSchedule creates content for marketers. Across written, spoken, and social content, the common theme is helping marketing professionals solve a problem. But their podcast content ideas have a slightly different spin than their other channels.

Content ideas for written and social platforms are typically focused on their SEO value or virality. The goal is to capitalize on keyword search volume or lead a trending social conversation to reach new customers. But podcasting allows CoSchedule to explore questions that can't be positioned against these standard measures of success. Oftentimes, episodes solve problems listeners don't know how to search for or answers questions they didn't think to ask.

"Podcasts are a powerful way to connect with an audience for 20, 30, even 40 minutes," Ben says. Compared the minutes it takes to engage with an article or social post, podcasts establish a stickier connection. There's more opportunity to explore a topic in a conversational way with added personality. By not focusing on traditional marketing metrics, the Actionable Marketing Podcast helps produce brand loyalists and keep CoSchedule top of mind for potential customers.

Podcasts offer the opportunity to become part of someone's routine. They may not visit your site each time a new article is published but they might habitually tune in to your new podcast content.

A common struggle for marketers leveraging podcasts as part of a content marketing strategy is attribution. Meaning, how can we assess if the podcast is driving customers to our business?

How do we track someone who tunes into an episode, visits the website, and ultimately purchases the product. Moving between platforms and the amount of time between each action adds to the challenge.

One way that Ben suggests to look at this is simply the "are we better off now than before the podcast?". This is a binary, more simplistic way of looking at your organization's objective. But it does provide a clear yes or no answer and can be applied to any business metric.

Given the complexity of the problem, we don't have the perfect answer. So this is where we throw it back to you, the listeners. What are you doing to attribute podcast listenership to activities happening on your site, in your business, or with your brand? Tell us in the comments below!

• Subscribe to the Actionable Marketing Podcast
• Read more from CoSchedule's blog here
• Subscribe to Audience

Six weeks into this experiment and a handful of data analyses later, we discovered our narrative style episodes were driving the most engagement. More listeners were tuning in the first day the episode dropped and the passive listens over time continue pouring in.

Keeping our eyes on the growth prize, we committed to producing more content our audience showed us they want to hear. But creating a narrative podcast requires a bit more preparation and intention than a standard interview. So in this episode of Audience, we’re unveiling what goes into producing a narrative episode to craft the most engaging story.

To dip our toes into these new waters, we first need to understand what makes a narrative podcast different from other formats.

First things first, a definition. What is a narrative podcast? The Art Of Podcast defines it as an audio documentary that follows a story arch. Rather than including an interview in full, the episode is comprised of clips, scripted segments, and music to tell the story in a non-linear way.

When you think of narrative podcasts, you’re likely referencing a show produced by NPR or Gimlet Media. Both are the gold standards in this style of storytelling. If you close your eyes, you can probably hear Ira Glass or Jonathan Goldstein narrating an episode, cluing listeners into the most interesting parts of the interview.

Given the success of the shows produced by each of these powerhouse networks, narrative podcasts must be a lucrative way to engage an audience. But why?

In 2014, The Harvard Business Review set out to figure out why storytelling is such a powerful way to convey information. Their research found “character-driven stories with emotional content result in a better understanding of the key points and enable better recall weeks later”.

We learned narrative storytelling follows a non-linear path, fleshing out characters and storylines. By ramping up the drama and suspense, the narrative format generates emotions in listeners, wiring them to connect more with the content. Their results mark a common thread between stories that produce engagement and narrative podcasts.

Even outside of the science, podcasters have found success with narrative episodes. As of this publication, 5 of the top 10 podcasts in the US follow this format. As listeners, we gravitate towards shows where hosts lead us through the three acts of their story, playing off our emotions every step of the way.

We think it’s safe say this style of storytelling is here to stay. To try your hand at this episode format, let’s get into how to create a narrative podcast.

Creating a narrative podcast happens at every stage of the process–before you start recording, when you’re actually recording the interview, and especially within post-production. As a host, you’ll need to approach this episode style in a more intentional way. A narrative doesn’t typically come off the cuff.

Instead, you’ll need to manipulate and massage the raw files into the narrative you want to tell. Let’s get started with what to prepare before you even hit record.

Preparing to produce a narrative podcast episode follows similar guidelines you should use for every interview. Use these two tips to get yourself ready:

• Do your homework: research your guest’s past interviews, latest blog posts, or tweets. Have a firm understanding of the topic you’ll talk about from recent news stories to how others in your industry are speaking about it. There’s no such thing as being over prepared here.
• Draft and share your questions: outline your key questions and provide them to your guest so they can fine tune their soundbites. You’ll end up with more quote-worthy content and your guest will feel prepared going into the interview, win/win.

As you’re finalizing the interview details, it’s also a good idea to remind them about the narrative style. Knowing their answers aren’t being repeated verbatim can take the pressure off some guests and make the interview more conversational. It’s then your job to include interjections to clarify miscellaneous points and package everything together.

Use this Interview Preparation–Narrative Podcast template to organize your research and questions ahead of each interview.

Interview preparation in hand, it’s time to head into the interview prepared and ready to capture your story. When you sit down with your guest, follow these tips to set yourself up for success:

• Let your outline guide you: use the content clusters you previously organized to set the scene and provide structure
• Let the conversation have a life of its own: try going off script to probe into the why, how, and who to squeeze more from your guest’s answers
• Let your guest be the storyteller: prop up your guest to take the reins in telling their story. Set them up to tell their story in the most compelling way.
• Don’t be afraid of repeats: if you or your guest isn’t satisfied with an answer, repeat the whole response again until you get it right. Since you’re already planning on splicing the interview into parts, it’s easy to remove the mistakes and take less pressure on getting answers in one take.

But our main tip is one that feels counter-intuitive. In a normal conversation, you acknowledge a person’s answer with your own interjection like ‘uh-huh’. But for a narrative interview, keep those normal conversation cues to a minimum.

Instead, take a beat after each answer and immediately follow it up with another question. It won’t sound like a natural conversation while you’re mid-interview, but the magic you work in post-production will make everything flow together.

This is where the hard work really starts. You’ll cut up the interview, rearrange it, source outside clips, and weave in musical interludes to produce the final product.

In addition to the standard audio mastering work that goes into every episode, crafting a narrative podcast is time heavy.

To start, you’ll import the raw interview and music into your podcast editing tool. Listen to the full recording and take notes with timestamps about where you want to include narration. Approach your narrations as a way to add more color to your guest’s answers or to provide your own take.

Then go back and make all of the narrations in one sitting. You’d be surprised at how much you voice can change throughout the day so to keep it consistent, capture it all at once.

Last, splice together the narrations, interview clips, and music transitions into one engaging story. Use music transitions to signal when you’re narrating versus when you were responding as the interviewer.

In the end, you’ll be left with a captivating narrative podcast that your listeners won’t be able to stop binging.

Our audience’s two favorite episodes to date featured highly produced interviews that featured a narrative storytelling style. In episode 11 of Audience, Creating A Narrative Style Interview, we dig into the details of what this format entails.

At the jump, we highlight clips from our previous episodes that embody a narrative podcast structure. We pick apart why the narrations helped create a more engaging story and reveal the editing process behind creating each clip.

Throughout, Craig also adds color on how to adopt a narrative podcast format for your own show. Starting with how to prepare for an interview then moving to coaxing your guest into telling an interesting story. At the end, we talk through to how to cut, splice, and manipulate your raw recordings into one cohesive narrative podcast. Grab a pen and paper, you’ll want to take notes during this section.

Tune into Audience now and take your storytelling skills to the next level.

• Catch our interview with Jack Rhysider of Darknet Diaries here
• Interview Preparation–Narrative Podcasts template
• Out on the Wire by Jessica Abel
• Additional resources on how to create a narrative podcast
  • Creating A Narrative Podcast: A Step-By-Step Guide
  • How To Create A Narrative Style Podcast: A Look Inside The Process
  • Conduct Better Podcast Interviews
• Podcast Hackers Facebook group
• Subscribe to Audience

Six weeks into this experiment and a handful of data analyses later, we discovered our narrative style episodes were driving the most engagement. More listeners were tuning in the first day the episode dropped and the passive listens over time continue pouring in.

Keeping our eyes on the growth prize, we committed to producing more content our audience showed us they want to hear. But creating a narrative podcast requires a bit more preparation and intention than a standard interview. So in this episode of Audience, we’re unveiling what goes into producing a narrative episode to craft the most engaging story.

To dip our toes into these new waters, we first need to understand what makes a narrative podcast different from other formats.

First things first, a definition. What is a narrative podcast? The Art Of Podcast defines it as an audio documentary that follows a story arch. Rather than including an interview in full, the episode is comprised of clips, scripted segments, and music to tell the story in a non-linear way.

When you think of narrative podcasts, you’re likely referencing a show produced by NPR or Gimlet Media. Both are the gold standards in this style of storytelling. If you close your eyes, you can probably hear Ira Glass or Jonathan Goldstein narrating an episode, cluing listeners into the most interesting parts of the interview.

Given the success of the shows produced by each of these powerhouse networks, narrative podcasts must be a lucrative way to engage an audience. But why?

In 2014, The Harvard Business Review set out to figure out why storytelling is such a powerful way to convey information. Their research found “character-driven stories with emotional content result in a better understanding of the key points and enable better recall weeks later”.

We learned narrative storytelling follows a non-linear path, fleshing out characters and storylines. By ramping up the drama and suspense, the narrative format generates emotions in listeners, wiring them to connect more with the content. Their results mark a common thread between stories that produce engagement and narrative podcasts.

Even outside of the science, podcasters have found success with narrative episodes. As of this publication, 5 of the top 10 podcasts in the US follow this format. As listeners, we gravitate towards shows where hosts lead us through the three acts of their story, playing off our emotions every step of the way.

We think it’s safe say this style of storytelling is here to stay. To try your hand at this episode format, let’s get into how to create a narrative podcast.

Creating a narrative podcast happens at every stage of the process–before you start recording, when you’re actually recording the interview, and especially within post-production. As a host, you’ll need to approach this episode style in a more intentional way. A narrative doesn’t typically come off the cuff.

Instead, you’ll need to manipulate and massage the raw files into the narrative you want to tell. Let’s get started with what to prepare before you even hit record.

Preparing to produce a narrative podcast episode follows similar guidelines you should use for every interview. Use these two tips to get yourself ready:

• Do your homework: research your guest’s past interviews, latest blog posts, or tweets. Have a firm understanding of the topic you’ll talk about from recent news stories to how others in your industry are speaking about it. There’s no such thing as being over prepared here.
• Draft and share your questions: outline your key questions and provide them to your guest so they can fine tune their soundbites. You’ll end up with more quote-worthy content and your guest will feel prepared going into the interview, win/win.

As you’re finalizing the interview details, it’s also a good idea to remind them about the narrative style. Knowing their answers aren’t being repeated verbatim can take the pressure off some guests and make the interview more conversational. It’s then your job to include interjections to clarify miscellaneous points and package everything together.

Use this Interview Preparation–Narrative Podcast template to organize your research and questions ahead of each interview.

Interview preparation in hand, it’s time to head into the interview prepared and ready to capture your story. When you sit down with your guest, follow these tips to set yourself up for success:

• Let your outline guide you: use the content clusters you previously organized to set the scene and provide structure
• Let the conversation have a life of its own: try going off script to probe into the why, how, and who to squeeze more from your guest’s answers
• Let your guest be the storyteller: prop up your guest to take the reins in telling their story. Set them up to tell their story in the most compelling way.
• Don’t be afraid of repeats: if you or your guest isn’t satisfied with an answer, repeat the whole response again until you get it right. Since you’re already planning on splicing the interview into parts, it’s easy to remove the mistakes and take less pressure on getting answers in one take.

But our main tip is one that feels counter-intuitive. In a normal conversation, you acknowledge a person’s answer with your own interjection like ‘uh-huh’. But for a narrative interview, keep those normal conversation cues to a minimum.

Instead, take a beat after each answer and immediately follow it up with another question. It won’t sound like a natural conversation while you’re mid-interview, but the magic you work in post-production will make everything flow together.

This is where the hard work really starts. You’ll cut up the interview, rearrange it, source outside clips, and weave in musical interludes to produce the final product.

In addition to the standard audio mastering work that goes into every episode, crafting a narrative podcast is time heavy.

To start, you’ll import the raw interview and music into your podcast editing tool. Listen to the full recording and take notes with timestamps about where you want to include narration. Approach your narrations as a way to add more color to your guest’s answers or to provide your own take.

Then go back and make all of the narrations in one sitting. You’d be surprised at how much you voice can change throughout the day so to keep it consistent, capture it all at once.

Last, splice together the narrations, interview clips, and music transitions into one engaging story. Use music transitions to signal when you’re narrating versus when you were responding as the interviewer.

In the end, you’ll be left with a captivating narrative podcast that your listeners won’t be able to stop binging.

Our audience’s two favorite episodes to date featured highly produced interviews that featured a narrative storytelling style. In episode 11 of Audience, Creating A Narrative Style Interview, we dig into the details of what this format entails.

At the jump, we highlight clips from our previous episodes that embody a narrative podcast structure. We pick apart why the narrations helped create a more engaging story and reveal the editing process behind creating each clip.

Throughout, Craig also adds color on how to adopt a narrative podcast format for your own show. Starting with how to prepare for an interview then moving to coaxing your guest into telling an interesting story. At the end, we talk through to how to cut, splice, and manipulate your raw recordings into one cohesive narrative podcast. Grab a pen and paper, you’ll want to take notes during this section.

Tune into Audience now and take your storytelling skills to the next level.

• Catch our interview with Jack Rhysider of Darknet Diaries here
• Interview Preparation–Narrative Podcasts template
• Out on the Wire by Jessica Abel
• Additional resources on how to create a narrative podcast
  • Creating A Narrative Podcast: A Step-By-Step Guide
  • How To Create A Narrative Style Podcast: A Look Inside The Process
  • Conduct Better Podcast Interviews
• Podcast Hackers Facebook group
• Subscribe to Audience

In this episode of Audience, I sit down with Jack Rhysider from the Darknet Diaries podcast and dig into his journey promoting his podcast.

With +200K listeners and counting, Jack is not only the host of an insanely popular podcast but he also talks transparently about how he grew a following using strategies any podcaster can leverage.

Ahead, we picked out few key topics from his interview that can help take your show to the next level. We explore Jack's research on audience tipping points, effective podcast promotional strategies to build a loyal following, and what changes after your show starts to grow on its own.

When you're done here, tune in to the full episode for more from Jack Rhysider and his trajectory to building a successful podcast.

A tipping point is a series of small changes that become significant enough to cause large, important change. Some would argue podcasting in general has hit a tipping point, entering into mainstream as over 50% of Americans have listened to a show.

Starting out from scratch, Jack began his podcast promotional brainstorm asking "How much do I have to promote my show until it starts growing itself with its own momentum?". Essentially he wanted to know how many loyal listeners did he need to attract before he hit the tipping point.

Asking marketing experts and fellow podcasters turned up nothing so he set out to discover the "magic" number himself. What he found was at about 150 passionate followers, things started to pick up and the slow growth drip turned into a steady trickle.

Bolstered by evidence found by Malcolm Gladwell, Jack stumbled upon the right number of listeners that would take his show from under the radar to the mainstream. At the 150 person tipping point, he didn't see a dramatic, sudden increase in listeners. Instead, after pushing the boulder of growing a podcast audience on his own, he felt there was now a few extra hands to handle the weight. These hands would help drive incremental growth, provide more legitimacy to the show, and ultimately make Darknet Diaries the go-to podcast on the underbelly of the internet.

But how did he find those 150 engaged fans in first place?

Effective podcast promotional strategies are all based on one common truth. If you're passionate about the topic and believe in the value your podcast provides, it's far easier to promote it. In this episode, we build off that concept and dive into four actionable strategies that helped grow Darknet Diaries into +200K listeners strong.

Tune in at 13:55 to hear Jack explain how he leveraged each of the below strategies to promote his podcast.

You've heard it before, but we're saying it again. The foundation of growing a podcast audience is extraordinary content.

Jack reiterates this point saying, "No one recommends a good podcast, they only the recommend great ones". He charges his audience for setting word-of-mouth recommendations in motion but highlights that can only happen when a podcast is better than the rest.

He recommends reading Out on the Wire and consuming as much information as possible about podcasting. Being intentional about improving your craft will offer long-term benefits and only advance the show forward. Jack iterates his point saying, "You just can't pick up a mic and think that you can be Joe Rogan the next day. There is a long road between here and there." Preparation and practice goes into every great podcast.

Anytime we start something new, there's a learning curve to mastering each skill. Podcasting isn't any different, so use those early days to your advantage. Ask your audience, even if it's only friends and family, questions about what they like and dislike about the show. Process the critical feedback, make tweaks, and continue striving for a more polished show.

Jack suggests getting specific. General questions or critiques won't help here. His favorite question to dig further is always "When did you stop listening to an episode?". This one question helps him zoom in on exactly where his audience disengages so he can make edits to future episodes.

Connecting with journalists, podcasters, YouTubers, or anyone with a large following in your niche is critical to reaching the tipping point. Pitch your show or specific episodes to the influencers in your industry for the opportunity to be introduced to their audiences.

But remember, it's a numbers game. Jack recalls reaching out to 100 people and only two gave him a shot–but they were two big fish. Getting written up in The Guardian and tweeted by an account with 2M followers gave Darknet Diaries more legitimacy. Even though it didn't immediately bring in thousands of followers, the podcast was now recommended by two influential people in his community. Not bad for a 2% response rate!

Self promotion can feel slimy and uncomfortable. But by all accounts, it's an imperative part to effectively promoting a podcast. But when your podcast is a passion and you genuinely believe in the content, your dedication becomes palpable and your sales pitch turns into an authentic exchange.

Conviction about the quality of your work makes promoting your content much easier for those of who are uncomfortable with promotion. Tune in at 20:50 to hear Jack's process in getting over feeling weird about self promoting his podcast.

It's easy to think that once a podcast hits its tipping point, the work will get easier and you can go on auto-pilot. Jack tell us that isn't so.

While less resources are spent promoting each episode, more time is going into the show's production. Always striving to introduce unique and engaging content to his audience, Jack has started hiring a team to help produce Darknet Diaries. Extra hands handling the production will allow him to focus on telling more interesting stories, whether that means investigative journalism or interviews with hard-to-nail-down experts.

But even with reaching the tipping point milestone, he still connects directly with his loyal fans to continue to stay in tune with what they want to hear.

Jack's interview on Audience is chock full of actionable information on podcast promotion and how to build authority in your niche.

Listen now to learn more about tipping points and how Jack went about discovering how many avid fans he needed to put his growth on auto-pilot.

After chatting through the strategies he used to grow Darknet Diaries, reiterate the importance of engaging content. Jack walked us through how he finds and develops real-life events into interesting episode content. From Google Alerts to getting over the fear of publishing a less-than-stellar episode, he offers legitimate advice on what it takes to find and tell compelling stories.

And if you're curious about how Jack produces Darknet Diaries each week, stick around for answers about his podcasting workflow. He lets us peak behind the curtains of how long it takes to finalize each episode, why he makes certain editing choices, and how pitching a potential guest for 8 months can lead to one awesome story.

At the end, we bring it back to the importance of nurturing a community within your audience. How building street cred within your niche and fostering direct connections with your most loyal listeners can deepen connections and bring a podcast to the next level.

Listen now to hear Jack Rhysider talk Darknet Diaries and podcast promotional strategies.

• Follow @JackRhysider on Twitter
• Subscribe to Darknet Diaries Podcast
• Check out Jack's blog at Lime.Link
• Read Out on the Wire
• Subscribe to Audience

In this episode of Audience, I sit down with Jack Rhysider from the Darknet Diaries podcast and dig into his journey promoting his podcast.

With +200K listeners and counting, Jack is not only the host of an insanely popular podcast but he also talks transparently about how he grew a following using strategies any podcaster can leverage.

Ahead, we picked out few key topics from his interview that can help take your show to the next level. We explore Jack’s research on audience tipping points, effective podcast promotional strategies to build a loyal following, and what changes after your show starts to grow on its own.

When you’re done here, tune in to the full episode for more from Jack Rhysider and his trajectory to building a successful podcast.

A tipping point is a series of small changes that become significant enough to cause large, important change. Some would argue podcasting in general has hit a tipping point, entering into mainstream as over 50% of Americans have listened to a show.

Starting out from scratch, Jack began his podcast promotional brainstorm asking “How much do I have to promote my show until it starts growing itself with its own momentum?”. Essentially he wanted to know how many loyal listeners did he need to attract before he hit the tipping point.

Asking marketing experts and fellow podcasters turned up nothing so he set out to discover the “magic” number himself. What he found was at about 150 passionate followers, things started to pick up and the slow growth drip turned into a steady trickle.

Bolstered by evidence found by Malcolm Gladwell, Jack stumbled upon the right number of listeners that would take his show from under the radar to the mainstream. At the 150 person tipping point, he didn’t see a dramatic, sudden increase in listeners. Instead, after pushing the boulder of growing a podcast audience on his own, he felt there was now a few extra hands to handle the weight. These hands would help drive incremental growth, provide more legitimacy to the show, and ultimately make Darknet Diaries the go-to podcast on the underbelly of the internet.

But how did he find those 150 engaged fans in first place?

Effective podcast promotional strategies are all based on one common truth. If you’re passionate about the topic and believe in the value your podcast provides, it’s far easier to promote it. In this episode, we build off that concept and dive into four actionable strategies that helped grow Darknet Diaries into +200K listeners strong.

Tune in at 13:55 to hear Jack explain how he leveraged each of the below strategies to promote his podcast.

You’ve heard it before, but we’re saying it again. The foundation of growing a podcast audience is extraordinary content.

Jack reiterates this point saying, “No one recommends a good podcast, they only the recommend great ones”. He charges his audience for setting word-of-mouth recommendations in motion but highlights that can only happen when a podcast is better than the rest.

He recommends reading Out on the Wire and consuming as much information as possible about podcasting. Being intentional about improving your craft will offer long-term benefits and only advance the show forward. Jack iterates his point saying, “You just can’t pick up a mic and think that you can be Joe Rogan the next day. There is a long road between here and there.” Preparation and practice goes into every great podcast.

Anytime we start something new, there’s a learning curve to mastering each skill. Podcasting isn’t any different, so use those early days to your advantage. Ask your audience, even if it’s only friends and family, questions about what they like and dislike about the show. Process the critical feedback, make tweaks, and continue striving for a more polished show.

Jack suggests getting specific. General questions or critiques won’t help here. His favorite question to dig further is always “When did you stop listening to an episode?”. This one question helps him zoom in on exactly where his audience disengages so he can make edits to future episodes.

Connecting with journalists, podcasters, YouTubers, or anyone with a large following in your niche is critical to reaching the tipping point. Pitch your show or specific episodes to the influencers in your industry for the opportunity to be introduced to their audiences.

But remember, it’s a numbers game. Jack recalls reaching out to 100 people and only two gave him a shot–but they were two big fish. Getting written up in The Guardian and tweeted by an account with 2M followers gave Darknet Diaries more legitimacy. Even though it didn’t immediately bring in thousands of followers, the podcast was now recommended by two influential people in his community. Not bad for a 2% response rate!

So I've been listening to Darknet Diaries, a podcast about…the kinds of shit I tweet and oh my, you are all going to love it https://t.co/gQ8EaXOiXU

Self promotion can feel slimy and uncomfortable. But by all accounts, it’s an imperative part to effectively promoting a podcast. But when your podcast is a passion and you genuinely believe in the content, your dedication becomes palpable and your sales pitch turns into an authentic exchange.

Conviction about the quality of your work makes promoting your content much easier for those of who are uncomfortable with promotion. Tune in at 20:50 to hear Jack’s process in getting over feeling weird about self promoting his podcast.

It’s easy to think that once a podcast hits its tipping point, the work will get easier and you can go on auto-pilot. Jack tell us that isn’t so.

While less resources are spent promoting each episode, more time is going into the show’s production. Always striving to introduce unique and engaging content to his audience, Jack has started hiring a team to help produce Darknet Diaries. Extra hands handling the production will allow him to focus on telling more interesting stories, whether that means investigative journalism or interviews with hard-to-nail-down experts.

But even with reaching the tipping point milestone, he still connects directly with his loyal fans to continue to stay in tune with what they want to hear.

Jack’s interview on Audience is chock full of actionable information on podcast promotion and how to build authority in your niche.

Listen now to learn more about tipping points and how Jack went about discovering how many avid fans he needed to put his growth on auto-pilot.

After chatting through the strategies he used to grow Darknet Diaries, reiterate the importance of engaging content. Jack walked us through how he finds and develops real-life events into interesting episode content. From Google Alerts to getting over the fear of publishing a less-than-stellar episode, he offers legitimate advice on what it takes to find and tell compelling stories.

And if you’re curious about how Jack produces Darknet Diaries each week, stick around for answers about his podcasting workflow. He lets us peak behind the curtains of how long it takes to finalize each episode, why he makes certain editing choices, and how pitching a potential guest for 8 months can lead to one awesome story.

At the end, we bring it back to the importance of nurturing a community within your audience. How building street cred within your niche and fostering direct connections with your most loyal listeners can deepen connections and bring a podcast to the next level.

Listen now to hear Jack Rhysider talk Darknet Diaries and podcast promotional strategies.

Audience was born to be an unfiltered, raw look at one brand’s quest to test the most popular podcast growth strategies. To stay true to our word, we’re looking back at our results to date and detailing what lies ahead.

In the 10th episode, Early Results And Our Growth Strategy Looking Ahead, we’re diving into the important growth numbers to see how we’ve done.

Growing a podcast takes diligence, strategic thinking, and an eagerness to keep at it. We’re currently not hitting our goal of at least 1,000 listens per episode but with these strategies, we hope to get there soon.

In terms of the content mix, we’ve focused the format on monologues instead of interviews to start. This was because we wanted to cover a lot of technical and practical advice about podcasting. Our host, Craig, has years worth of podcasting experience to draw upon and we felt he was the perfect voice to get our listeners up to speed on podcasting basics.

We also wanted to get into the groove of our show’s workflow and figure out how to fit this project into the overall work we’re doing at Castos. Audience is one part of our content strategy, so we needed to find the balance of producing the show alongside our larger projects. At episode ten, our workflow looks like this:

We’re operating on a short timeline each week to allow for potential pivots if a more engaging content topic pops up unexpectedly. Outlining, recording, and editing an episode within one week may not work for most hosts but we’re getting our process down to a science. For hosts who are just starting out, we can’t stress enough how important it is to figure out your most efficient workflow from the start. This will help you create new episodes consistently and keep you from podfading.

But now with nine episodes under our belt and the basics covered, we’re ready to transition more into the interview format. Future episodes promise to feature interviews with subject matter experts in key areas of podcasting.

These expert interviews should prove to be “really good radio”, and we hope you enjoy them too.

Here is where Audience differentiates itself from many of the other podcasts about podcasting. We’re transparently laying out our stats, including our successes and missteps.

At the start, our goal was to generate 1,000 listens per episode. We started out on the right foot but we have some major room for improvement to get there. As of publication, we have 3,984 total downloads from our first nine episodes. With a few promotional tactics up our sleeve, we hope to increase the number of downloads to our back catalog and new episodes.

Read on below for more color around how our audience is consuming Audience.

Our most popular episode, Crafting The Narrative, has 646 total listens. This episode was released in our launch week and featured an engaging interview with two expert storytellers. The success of this episode is why we want to lean more into the interview format, offering actionable tips along the way.

A misstep we ran into with this interview was not finalizing how our interviewees would promote the episode after its release. We likely would have seen a higher listen count if we asked our guests to cross-promote the content to their channels.

Luckily there’s always the opportunity to re-promote your back catalog to gain additional listens at a later date! This episode sees a healthy amount of listens, even a month after its initial release. To capture even more listens, we’re planning a roundup of our favorite podcast interviews and see an opportunity to promote the episode within that blog piece.

Learn from our misstep! Whenever you secure an interview for your podcast, be clear in how you’d like the guest to cross-promote the episode to their audience. Detail which channels (Facebook, newsletters, Instagram, etc.) everyone will use to promote. Go as far as providing sample copy points and imagery to make it even easier for your guest to talk about their appearance.

We were also excited to see how much engagement our Teaser episode received. At 630 total listens, it’s our 2nd highest performing episode. It’s a great reminder that promoting a trailer before a show’s official launch can generate buzz for when the first episodes go live. It also acts as the perfect introduction for people who are unfamiliar with Castos to give the show a shot.

While our trailer was 10 minutes long, many shows try shorter durations too. Make your teaser episode just long enough to give an overview of your podcast’s topic and format. And don’t forget to really hammer home exactly why someone should tune into your show by leading with what makes your podcast different from the rest. End the teaser with a call-to-action that encourages listeners to subscribe to the show.

Create a teaser episode to get your RSS feed started. Remember, you can’t submit a podcast to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any other podcast directory without at least one episode live. Use this as an opportunity to publish a trailer so your show is listed on every directory before you launch.

We’ve submitted Audience to every major podcast directory. But the listening habits of our users highlights why having a podcast website is extremely important.

People tuning into Audience are primarily listening via a web or mobile browser like Chrome or Safari. Without a podcast website, we’d miss out on 67% of our total listens!

Learn from our success! A podcast website helps your listeners find and consume your show. If you’re a WordPress user, use Seriously Simple Podcasting to easily feature episodes on your website.

Not a WordPress user? Don’t worry. Every Castos plan includes a customizable Podcast Page that houses all of your podcast content. Make it easy for anyone to listen to your show by using Castos!

Unsurprisingly, even with the recent debate on Apple Podcasts versus Spotify analytics, Apple Podcasts is our most popular podcast directory. We’re also seeing people consume episodes across Overcast, Pocket Casts, and Podcast Addict.

This marks an important piece of advice for new podcasters. Submit your podcast to every platform people consume podcasts on. There is no advantage to making your show exclusive to one directory. Instead, put your show as many places as possible to increase its discoverability and allow potential listeners to tune in from which ever app they prefer to use.

Looking forward, in order to grow the podcast more effectively we are going to do two things:

Starting with adjusting our content strategy, we will commit more resources to producing interview episodes. These episodes will mirror the structure of Crafting The Narrative where we’ll spend time editing the content to feel like a This American Life interview.

For paid acquisition, we recently purchased an ad spot on Overcast. We targeted the business category and spent $675 for a month-long placement. Currently, we have about 100 listeners who consume Audience via Overcast. We think there’s an opportunity to reach their larger user base with these ads.

To set up, we had to submit a simple image and brief description. Overcast forecasts we should 90-100 additional subscriptions from the placement. Taking the lower ranger, at 90 new subscribers we will have acquired them at $7.50 per subscriber. On a future recap episode, we’ll detail the ad’s actual performance and see how many new listeners we attracted.

The last point we discussed in this episode was the importance of building a community around your podcast. Creating a two way dialogue with your audience is a long-term strategy at keeping people engaged. We encourage new podcasters to think about how to cultivate a community for their listeners right out of the gate.

Speaker 1 00:06 Hello and welcome back to audience. I’m your host Craig Hewitt from Costos. Well it’s been a couple of months since we’ve launched the podcast and today in this episode we’re going to walk through some of our analytics. Uh, that’s kind of the whole point of the podcast here is to follow us on our journey as we build a podcast audience from scratch, uh, with only the resources we have kind of already built in within kind of our business and our brand and in our audience that that’s already existing outside of the podcast. So we have nine total podcast episodes that we’ve released. The first of which was a teaser episode, which I don’t really count as being an official episode. It was about 10 minutes in length and was kind of an episode zero is the terminology that a lot of folks in the podcasting world use. Uh, it was just to kind of set the stage, let folks know what the podcast is all about, uh, what they can expect out of listening to it and a way to kind of promote the podcast ahead of the official launch date.
Speaker 1 00:57 Then on day zero, if you will, on the launch date of the podcast, we launched with three episodes, uh, two of which were monologues like this of me talking. And one was an interview, uh, with actually a customer of ours who, uh, is all about storytelling. So we called that episode crafting the narrative and that was all about how to tell an effective story, engage listeners and keep them kind of coming back for more, uh, and following along with you as you’re telling the story of your brand and the journey that you and your, your listeners are going on together. From there we had kind of a recap of what launch day looked like, how we launched the show, why we launched with three episodes, why we did a teaser episode, uh, why we had two monologues and an interview. Uh, and a little bit of content planning.
Speaker 1 01:36 They’re talking a lot about just why we did what we did. We’ve been podcasting, you know, people in our group and our company and myself been podcasting for, for years. And along the way I’ve picked up, you know, a thing or two and kind of walked through some of the logic around why we did what we did and shared some very early, uh, kind of lessons and results of, of kind of how the, how the podcast launch went from there. We went into another interview was Shreeny Ralph from the unmistakable creative podcast talking about being a content leader. Uh, and so Shreeny really, uh, prides himself and rightfully so, and he should get a lot of accolades for, for standing by kind of what he believes and what he wants his podcast to be all about. Uh, and he mentioned Oprah in his interview and I really think that’s a good, uh, a really good analogy is, you know, she is very steadfast in what she believes in the kinds of people she has on her show and the types of content she creates.
Speaker 1 02:27 And I think Shreeny is the same way and he has a very broad definition of creative and his show is called unmistakable creative, but it’s just really interesting people doing interesting things and again, kind of sticking with their guns. And, uh, and following through on what types of content they want to create and what kind of message they want to share with their audience. And then from there we followed up with a couple of more strategic, uh, content episodes, uh, talking about co effective podcast promotion as the next episode. And then a few tips about how to podcast more efficiently. I think one of the things that we all into is, you know, podcasting is hard work. There’s a lot of hurdles to to get over to get an episode out the door. And the more we can work to minimize those hurdles, make it easier for us to record content, edit it, produce it, get it out the door, uh, schedule guests is just going to make all of our lives easier, going to make our podcasts go out more consistently, which is one of the huge keys to growing our audience.
Speaker 1 03:22 In the last episode before this one, we talked about the four best paid acquisition channels, uh, to grow your podcast audience and listenership and, and kind of when and where each of those paid acquisition channels might be best for you. And growing your show. Uh, and so here we are in episode 10, kind of talking about some of the results from, from our podcast thus far. Uh, I think in our first, uh, recap episode in our launch day episode, we talked about some of the early analytics around the show and want to follow that up today because one of the things when you talk about podcast analytics is it’s not just how many downloads did you get on the day and episode went out. Uh, that that’s an important thing because that’s kind of maybe like a surrogate for, for subscribers. How many listeners you might get say in the first 48 hours or something like that.
Speaker 1 04:09 Something like that is, is a good indicator of how many people are subscribed to the episode. Because if you’re subscribed, the podcast downloads automatically when you’re in wifi. Uh, and so you, if you release a podcast on, you know, January 10th and on January 12th, you see that episode has 200 downloads, then you know, most of those probably are subscribers. Um, and so looking at those peaks that you’ll see in any analytics graph for a podcast of, of the number of downloads on those peak days is an interesting thing to look at. And you know, I think that’s, that’s kinda make it your core listenership or, or some percentage of your core listenership. But then the total listens for a podcast and about six weeks after an episode has been released is the thing that a lot of advertisers look at. You know, the, the number of weeks or the amount of time after a podcast has been released varies depending on which, uh, which sponsor or advertising platform you’re looking at.
Speaker 1 05:05 But, but there is some time that you say, okay, I’m going to get most of the downloads from an episode in say four or six weeks. And you can look at after your podcast episode has been off for that amount of time. Okay, let’s look at kind of how it’s done, if you will. And so that’s why here in episode 10, we’re kind of looking back all the way at, at some of our original episodes and some of the more recent content to see how well things have done overall. And so today our most popular episode has been the, the crafting the narrative, uh, with the folks from storyboard media. Uh, this was a episode all about storytelling, uh, and was really, really interesting, really well done. Uh, from a, from a content perspective, it was really highly produced. I’ll say it was kind of an, an NPR or a Gimlet media style episode, which is really cool.
Speaker 1 05:50 Um, as on the, on the production side, I’ll say it’s very difficult, uh, because what ends up happening there is you, you do the interview and then you basically go back and cut all of your part out because it’s just you asking questions, which are, we’re just kind of boring. And then you coming back in it and recording a bunch of little segments where you give some narrative around something that the guests just said. And then frame the question you asked and the response that they’re about to give. So if you go back to the crafting the narrative episode of the audience podcast, you’ll hear how we did that. And I think the results speak for itself. It’s our most popular episode by, by kind of a lot by say like 25%. And, and so I think the results and the thing that I will take away from this is one, an interview has been our most popular episode to a really highly produced, uh, interview was more popular than the only other interview we’ve done.
Speaker 1 06:41 Um, so that’s interesting. Uh, there was several weeks in between those two. Uh, our next episode after this is going to be an interview and it’s going to be a really super interview with somebody that a lot of, you know, uh, so I’ll be very keen to see, uh, how the, the results of that turnout a few weeks after it’s been released. Um, but, but I’m sure that things are gonna kind of go up and spike after we release this next interview because it’s just with a really big name in the podcasting space and somebody whose show I’m sure a lot of folks listened to. So stay tuned there. Um, subscribe if you haven’t already subscribed to the audience podcast, uh, audience dot dot com so that you get that next episode right when it comes out. Uh, from there, you know, as I’m looking at our analytics, uh, the other thing I will notice is that, you know, obviously the, the most recent episodes have less listens than some of the older ones.
Speaker 1 07:28 I think that’s normal, that long tail, even though the time after the episode has been released, every day they’ll get a few more listens, you know, new people subscribe, want to listen to the back catalog. So the more recent episodes have less lessons than some of the older ones, just by virtue of time. So today, our most popular episode has about 650 listens, which is, uh, which is okay. You know, I have to say, I was hoping that we would hit a thousand Mark here about, you know, six weeks after the podcast has been launched. I was hoping we would get about a thousand listens per episode at this point. And we’re not there, you know, we’re, we’re about halfway there maybe. Um, so that’s, that’s a little discouraging. Um, from a content perspective, I feel like we’ve been doing more solo episodes like this than interviews. And so that’s something we’re going to be changing up here going forward is we have several interviews with really interesting guests, both talking about tactical parts of, of audience building and podcasting and storytelling and creating effective content, um, but also kind of strategic and practical things you can do to be a better podcaster, um, just in terms of running your show.
Speaker 1 08:33 So, so stay tuned there. We’re gonna be having more interviews. So from a content perspective, we’ve only had two of our nine episodes so far have been interviews. Uh, we’ll be having at least half and half going forward. Honestly, a big part of this is scheduling the scheduling interviews is just hard. It takes time. It takes discipline, it takes intentionality to, to get on somebody’s calendar. It’s usually not the next day that you can talk to them. So you have to get on their calendar two or three weeks ahead of time, you know, have your content calendar matching up with their timeline. And so this is something that we need to put a little bit more discipline and effort into to be producing episodes that are, that are interviews on a more regular basis. From a content perspective. I feel like we’ve intentionally been leaning more on the how to side of things.
Speaker 1 09:19 And we’ve done this on purpose because we want to lay the foundation for, for how to podcast. Uh, there’s no sense in offering a lot of really advanced advice in interviewing people who are really top notch podcasters if we haven’t covered the basics of gear and storytelling and how to launch a podcast and effective promotional strategies and things like that. So, so we’ve laid some of the groundwork here in the first few episodes and, and I’m glad we’ve done that. I think that people who are already podcasting might see some of those episodes and say, that’s just not for me. So I think we might have alienated some of our audience by focusing more on the beginner aspect of things. Certainly everybody can learn from some of these core lessons, but I think that’s something I take away from, from looking at the numbers here saying like, okay, some of our more basic how to episodes might not have been as popular because some of our audiences just past that potentially.
Speaker 1 10:12 So don’t want to talk about our, our marketing strategy and going forward. I talked a little about content, so we’re going to be inter in doing more interviews here going forward. Also going to be kind of moving the, the content strategy from, from beginners to I’ll say intermediate to advanced podcasters. I think even beginner podcasters can pick up some of these things that we’ll be talking about with more advanced podcasters. Uh, it certainly is more interesting to talk about the really cutting edge things that, that podcasters are doing, uh, as opposed to it’s covering the basics, which a lot of blog posts cover as well. So from a content perspective, more interviews, more advanced topics around growing your audience. And then from the marketing perspective, what we’ve been doing thus far is obviously, you know, poaching the podcasts. They’re in all the directories, Apple podcast, Stitcher, Spotify, Google play, and we’ve been publishing in is our blog as well.
Speaker 1 11:00 So dot com slash podcast you’ll see all of our podcast episodes there. Uh, and then we’ve been sending out dedicated emails to our entire list announcing each of our new episodes. Uh, so the episodes go out on Thursdays. We also typically send out our emails on Thursdays. So the email has been going out to toy list saying, Hey, in this week’s episode of the audience podcasts, we talk about, uh, eight tips to more, uh, efficiently produce your podcast episodes or the four best paid acquisition channels to grow your listenership. Uh, and I think those have gotten really good reception. We have a lot of discussion in our podcast hackers, Facebook group about the episodes and things that I talk about and resources that I mentioned and people saying, Hey, do you use this or I like that better. And that’s really cool. I mean it, to me that tells me that, uh, they were striking a cord and that we’re, we’re hitting on things that people find interesting and useful.
Speaker 1 11:50 And that’s great because honestly that is a big challenge in podcasting is a, it is in a lot of ways a one-way medium. You talk, people listen, unless you have a place like a Facebook group or a Slack channel or a, an in person event that you can go to, um, you’re talking, people are listening but they don’t have a chance to give you feedback. So if you haven’t enabled a mechanism for your listeners to give you feedback and continue to the discussion about your podcast episodes in between episodes, I definitely would do it. I think if you talk to a lot of really successful podcasters, they will say that building a community around their show is the best thing that they’ve done. And the flavor of that will be different for everybody. For us, it’s a Facebook group for you, it might be, you know, an in-person luncheon that you do once a month or something that might be another kind of online group, whatever it is.
Speaker 1 12:43 Again, that will depend on you and your brand and where your audience typically hangs out and, and connects and things like that. Uh, but I definitely would suggest, uh, having a place where you can build a community around your show, uh, to, to kind of continue that engagement. So, so we’ve been publishing, we’re in all the directories, we send dedicated emails for all of our podcasts. We have been creating headliner videos for social media. Uh, we’re experimenting also with a tool called lumen five and I’ll put a link for that in the show notes as well. Um, automatically creates, um, kind of a similar looking video that, that something like headliner uses, but it’s slightly different. Uh, and we’ll put some examples of these in the show notes for this episode as well. I really like these videos. They have a lot, they’re more text heavy, uh, than an audiogram, uh, and they’re automatically generated using the lumen five tool.
Speaker 1 13:32 So, uh, definitely kind of worth considering if you want to take a look at it. Uh, we’re really enjoying kind of doing a bit of both of these and sharing these on social media. The next thing that we’re going to be looking at is paid acquisition for the podcast. So we talked about the four best paid acquisition channels that we think are effective for growing podcast listenership in the last episode and those for our Facebook, the overcast podcasting app and a combination of Cora and Reddit. And the last one was other people’s podcast advertising, your podcast on other people’s shows. And the first one that we’re going to explore is promoting our podcast in the overcast app. Uh, and so we’re going to be promoting the audience podcast in the overcast app. We’re going to buy an ad spot as they’re available. We’re still looking into the availability depending on the category that we want to advertise in.
Speaker 1 14:22 Again, overcast is a podcasting app and you can buy dedicated ad spots for the month in different categories of podcasts that people are listening to. So if you want to advertise in the business section, you, your ad would only show up for people listening to business related podcasts on their phone. Uh, so, so we’re exploring this and this is the first place that we’re going to go for the paid acquisition side of, of growth. Um, and typically they see somewhere between, you know, a couple of thousand impressions and then a couple of hundred new listeners, uh, per advertising cycle, so per month. Uh, and so for us, that would be good. That would move the needle quite a bit. I think if you’re a big podcast and you have 10,000 listeners already, this wouldn’t move the needle that much. And our guest next week, uh, has some experience with this and so we’ll be picking his brain more about how he’s grown his podcast in the organic, in the LSA partnership or collaborative arena and in the paid arena.
Speaker 1 15:16 I think that that middle one, that partnership and collaborative, uh, aspect of, of audience growth, whether it’s for your podcast or any other kind of content that you’re doing is, is probably the most powerful one. So how can you partner with someone else and leverage their audience and them leverage your audience so that you can both grow your listenership, both grow your exposure, uh, and kind of further your brand. So this is the place we haven’t done as much work as, as I would like to and as we probably should have, the two folks that we’ve had on for interviews so far have shared the podcast out with their audience. That’s been great. And I think that’s the reason that the episodes are so popular and we just need to do a lot more of that because honestly that’s the best way to kind of cross pollinate your podcast with other people who don’t know who you are and don’t already follow you and your stuff and your show.
Speaker 1 16:05 So this is a hit. This is a bit of a therapy session. I guess with me talking about how we’re doing, looking at the numbers is really healthy because it says, okay, this is working, this isn’t, we need to do more of this and less of that. And uh, and that’s the plan here going forward. So we’re going to be changing up the content a little bit. We’re going to be investing in some paid acquisition via overcast and we’re going to be really focusing on the guests and the promotion of our content through our guests. So having our guests really, uh, promote the episodes that they’re on as a way to spread the word about the show and hopefully folks in their audiences find it helpful and subscribe and follow along as well. So if that’s been an interesting look at our podcast and really being transparent about kind of how things are going with us so far, um, you know, I always wished the things were going better at, you know, wish we had tens of thousands of listeners already.
Speaker 1 16:55 Uh, but that’s not practical. And I think that’s a, that’s a good lesson here is that building a large podcasting audience does not happen over time. If you plan on doing this for less than a year, uh, and having a big audience, I think you’re fooling yourself. Uh, unless you’re the one in a million that this kind of thing happens to a just out of the blue and poof, you have a big huge audience. It takes time. It takes putting in a effort and publishing the episodes every week and being really practical and strategic about how you go be a creating the content, who it’s for, how you can engage with other people’s audiences and how you can grow your, your listenership, uh, strategically and effectively. So I hope that’s helpful, uh, and entertaining. And, uh, if you have any questions or comments for us about this episode, please drop a comment in the show notes for this episode. dot com slash podcast and as always, our ask is if you’re enjoying the podcast, finding it in informational and entertaining and helpful for you and your podcasting journey. If you could share it with another podcast or you know, uh, that would be great. And help us kind of spread the word about our show and help other folks and follow along with our journey. Thanks so much, and we’ll see you next week.

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