Podcast Pontifications

Growing your podcast’s audience isn’t as easy as you want it to be. Even if you do all the marketing and promotional things right, you’ll likely find that your podcast will only attract a tiny fraction of people who are interested in the topic of your show.

It’s desire mixed with medium preferences that determine whether someone listens to your podcast or not. 

I love cooking and have been (and enjoyed being the cook in my family for 31 years. Yet I’ve never listened to a cooking podcast.

I use email but I don’t subscribe to any cooking newsletters. 

I’m quite active on social media, but I don’t follow any cooking-related content providers.

I have a TV and subscribe to more than one OTT streaming service. But I don't watch cooking shows on any channel. Not even YouTube videos.

Content providers on those mediums reach me all the time. But I don’t engage with that reach. I’m not going to take the action they want me to take. I’m not going to subscribe. I’m not going to watch. I’m not going to listen. I’m not going to click through. 

I simply do not have the desire to do so.

This is what we’re up against in podcasting. Even if we reached thousands or millions of people with highly targeted and customized messages that extol the benefits of listening to our podcast, we’d only ever going to convert a small fraction to become listeners of our podcast.

Time is a big factor. Someone might have a high interest in the topics you cover on your show, but do they have the time to listen? 

Need is another. It doesn’t matter how much your podcast scratches a particular itch if the would-be-listener is already getting that itch scratched by another podcast. Or five other podcasts. 

Or it could be an issue of taste. The content you create on your podcast or the way you cover your topic may not fit the desired flavor profile of someone else interested in that very same topic. 

Most likely, assuming you’re making a top-notch show that is worthy of growth, is the harsh reality that the person with high interest in the topic may have no desire to consume content about that topic in podcast form. 

Accepting the fact that interest in a topic does not equate desire to listen to a podcast on that topic is key.

Repurposing content can help. Those same people into the thing may have a desire to consume content about the thing in a different medium.And maybe you’ll find that the growth you were looking for expressed in one of those other mediums. Wouldn’t that be interesting? 

In the meantime, you need to continue to activate your existing listeners. Your existing listeners already have the desire to listen to your show. That's why every episode of this podcast includes a short plea to my own listeners - and my readers - that they take a moment to share it with a friend. Because the only way Podcast Pontifications grows is when one working podcast shares the show or newsletter with another working podcaster. 

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Read the full article and share with a friend: https://podcastpontifications.com/episode/accepting-podcast-listeners-interest-vs-desire-conflict

Follow Evo on Twitter for more podcasting insights as they come.

Buy him a virtual coffee to show your support.

And if you need a professional in your podcasting corner, please visit Simpler.Media to see how Simpler Media Productions can help you reach your business objectives with podcasting.

Podcast Pontifications is published by Evo Terra four times a week and is designed to make podcasting better, not just easier.

Mentioned in this episode:

Support For Abortion Rights

While Americans overwhelmingly support the right of an individual to make their own decisions about abortion, unfortunately, that right is no longer protected everywhere in the U.S. The Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade on June 24th.

Being a podcaster changes you. It’s certainly changed me. The changes podcasting has on you come in many forms, but the important ones can be categorized into the following:

1. Resource Allocation: It takes two types of resources to make a podcast: time and money. And both of those are in balance with one another. Both money and time are scarce resources. You’re limited to the funds available to you, so every dollar or dime spent on your show is a dollar or dime you don’t spend on or save for some other aspect of your life. You’re limited to the same 24 hours as the rest of us, so every hour or minute you spend on your podcast is an hour or a minute you don’t spend with friends, family, or doing literally anything else. 

Not that any of that is a bad thing. It’s just a thing. And the things you choose to spend your time and your money on changes you.

2. Personally and Personality: Generally speaking we podcasters are speaking our true and authentic selves when we podcast. But still... just the process of having a podcast and knowing your voice will be heard by other people will affect your personality. Sometimes that new personality or persona you adopt when you get behind the microphone starts to leak out into the real world. Does that work for you? Do you like the changes you notice when you’re not behind the microphone? Do the other people in your life like the person you’ve become now that you’re a podcaster?

Introvert or extrovert, high-energy or low-energy… these changes aren’t easily classified into Good vs Bad. But these changes will happen. And are happening. To you.

The first step toward wrestling back the control your podcast exerts on you is recognizing that it’s happening. The second step is making sure you’re OK with those changes.

Start by spending some serious contemplative time with yourself analyzing the “you” you’ve become since establishing yourself behind the microphone. Think about who you are now and compare it to who you were before. 

You may need to get opinions from the people closest to you who aren’t involved with your podcast. Your friends, family, and others in your life who probably don’t listen to your podcast but know you have one. You might be surprised by their answers. They might say that since you started podcasting they now see you in a more positive light. Or they might gently (?) point out some shortfalls or problems they’ve noticed, now that you’ve mentioned it.

Good changes or bad, the time to take control and become in charge of your podcast is now. Before your podcast takes control over you.

We’re less than two weeks before I take Evo’s Long Winter's Nap. That’s the cute (?) name I’ve given my two-month hiatus from producing new episodes of Podcast Pontifications for the rest of the year. But as I did in 2019, I’m opening the platform to other working podcasters who’d like to use this platform to pontificate on their own. If you’ve something you’d like to share with the class, get in touch with me at [email protected] and I’ll give you the easy details of how to make that happen.

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Read the full article and share with a friend: https://podcastpontifications.com/episode/whos-in-charge-here-you-or-your-podcast

Follow Evo on Twitter for more podcasting insights as they come.

Buy him a virtual coffee to show your support.

And if you need a professional in your podcasting corner, please visit Simpler.Media to see how Simpler Media Productions can help you reach your business objectives with podcasting.

Podcast Pontifications is published by Evo Terra four times a week and is designed to make podcasting better, not just easier.

Mentioned in this episode:

Support For Abortion Rights

While Americans overwhelmingly support the right of an individual to make their own decisions about abortion, unfortunately, that right is no longer protected everywhere in the U.S. The Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade on June 24th.

Recently, Spotify removed a seemingly unmovable object that some say has plagued podcasting since the beginning of podcasting: music licensing. From the start, podcasters have wanted to play licensed commercial music - the songs you hear on the radio or have in your personal music library - on their shows. But that has been verboten thanks to the complexity of music licensing rights and hefty fines for copyright violation.

Spotify made all of those troubles go away.

Leaving aside the fact that Spotify somehow managed to find a term that’s less sexy than podcasting, some new “shows with music” are available in Spotify’s app right now. I listened to all of the currently available shows with music last night and I quite enjoyed the experience! Some appealed to me more than others, but all of them were great.

More importantly (to Spotify and the conceit of this article): All of those shows with music were examples of excellent content. Content that I cannot get anywhere else.

This is the first spinoff from podcasting that I can think of that’s demonstrably something different. Sure, we’ve seen lots of efforts tangentially related to podcasting, but none of them have really gained any traction with either creators or listeners on a big scale.

I’m taking a risk betting on the success of a public announcement that’s less than 24-hours old and has a whopping seven shows showcased, but I think we’re in Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok territory here. 

I think more people want to be DJs than want to be talk show hosts. And people listen to WAY more music than they do spoken word, and Spotify is betting that many of them will want to curate their favorite music content on a regular basis, sharing their tastes with the world. And I’m confident Spotify is right in this assumption. 

Spotify’s shows with music will be an influencer magnet. Spotify’s shows with music will allow for a much easier path to monetization, fame, and everything else influencers crave.

As influencers flock - and yes, I truly believe they will flock - to this new offering, the appeal of “hey, I should start my own podcast” will switch to “hey, I should start my own show with music”. Anchor will push new users in this direction, as it’s beneficial for everyone involved - from show creator to music rights holder to Spotify - when Anchor makes it easy to become a real influencer on their platform and within Spotify. And as the real influencers go, so do the would-be influencers, hopefully abandoning (and removing from podcasting directories) their half-baked efforts at podcasting in the process.

I desperately want my good friend and beautiful human being, Donna Mugavero to make a show with music much like she does when she occasionally hosts a mid-day radio program filled with her eclectic music choices on her local NPR-affiliate, WDIY.

And I want her next-door neighbor and podcaster George Hrab of The Geologic Podcast. George to make a Spotify-only version of his 13 Songs live video series, this time with the official music track presented along with all of Geo’s deep gushing of musical knowledge setting up each and providing commentary in between. That would be so fantastic.

Here’s the best news to those who don’t care about shows with music: Spotify’s’ shows with music have no negative implications for working podcasters like you and me. There are, however, many positive implications. Some (many?) podcasters will find great benefit by having a Spotify show with music to accompany their podcast, much in the same way that many podcasters find benefit in having Instagram, Snapchat, and Tiktok accounts. 

As a reminder, Evo’s long winter’s nap starts in a few weeks, with no new episodes during November and December. Well… no new episodes from me. I am allowing others to do their own pontificating right here during my absence. If that sounds like something you’ve like to do (and seriously, the size of your audience isn’t at all important to me, only the ideas you’d like to share), please get in touch with me: [email protected].

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Read the full article and share with a friend: https://podcastpontifications.com/episode/why-spotifys-shows-with-music-is-a-big-deal-beyond-podcasting

Follow Evo on Twitter for more podcasting insights as they come.

Buy him a virtual coffee to show your support.

And if you need a professional in your podcasting corner, please visit Simpler.Media to see how Simpler Media Productions can help you reach your business objectives with podcasting.

Podcast Pontifications is published by Evo Terra four times a week and is designed to make podcasting better, not just easier.

Mentioned in this episode:

Support For Abortion Rights

While Americans overwhelmingly support the right of an individual to make their own decisions about abortion, unfortunately, that right is no longer protected everywhere in the U.S. The Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade on June 24th.

Abnormality is not a bad thing. It’s just not normal. Until you normalize it. Here are four different ideas here that might help you embrace a little more abnormality to your podcast.

1. Keep the standards, toss the conventions.  Standards and best practices are there for a reason. Conventions, on the other hand, you can play fast and loose with. Or toss out altogether. 

You don’t always have to record from your perfectly sound-conditioned studio with your fancy-pants microphone. You don’t have to follow someone else’s playbook to determing how many questions to ask of your guests or how many points you should cover in an episode.

2. Make a meaningful distinction between you and everybody else. Have you really checked every other podcast in your niche? That’s still doable today. And make sure your differentiation is a meaningful differentiation. Things like episode length or guest lists aren’t meaningful distinctions.

3. Forgive your relapses and try harder. You're going to fall back onto old habits as you try to be different. Forgive yourself when that happens. Just go back and try and do better next time.

4. Check yourself and check-in with yourself. The process of making abnormal content should feel unfamiliar to you, but it shouldn’t come with a lot of personal discomfort. But it’s the opposite for your listeners. They should feel a bit uncomfortable with the changes you’re making. But those new episodes shouldn't feel unfamiliar to them. 

I know it feels weird to go against the grain. Then again, you should be quite familiar with my offering up of oddball advice like that. If you’re feeling a little uncomfortable about it, I’ve done my job. Your job, now, is to normalize the making of abnormal podcasts… again.

Looking at the calendar, I see that Evo’s long winters nap is coming up. That's what I call the months of November and December when I take a break from the daily release schedule. As a treat, I open up the show to other working podcasts just like you who have their own topics and angles they wish to pontificate about. If you’ve a burning topic and unique take on something related to the future of podcasting or ways to make podcasting better, please send an email to [email protected] and we’ll talk about your idea. And I really am looking for your own ideas and opinions. Even if they run counter to my own.

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Read the full article and share with a friend: https://podcastpontifications.com/episode/normalize-the-making-of-abnormal-podcasts-again

Follow Evo on Twitter for more podcasting insights as they come.

Buy him a virtual coffee to show your support.

And if you need a professional in your podcasting corner, please visit Simpler.Media to see how Simpler Media Productions can help you reach your business objectives with podcasting.

Podcast Pontifications is published by Evo Terra four times a week and is designed to make podcasting better, not just easier.

Mentioned in this episode:

Support For Abortion Rights

While Americans overwhelmingly support the right of an individual to make their own decisions about abortion, unfortunately, that right is no longer protected everywhere in the U.S. The Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade on June 24th.

As podcasters, our control ends as soon as we’ve mastered our .mp3 files. After that, we cede control to other entities. Entities with their own goals, incentives, positions, and perspectives on what podcasting should be.

We rely on podcast hosting companies to generate our RSS feed, embeddable players, send automated social media posts, and update some of the bigger listener platforms via direct or API connections.

We podcasters have almost no control or visibility of the technical aspects of this process. That means we’re ceding decisions to the company we’ve chosen as our podcast hosting companies. Not just some decisions. Most of them. Decisions that might impact our listeners. Decisions that might limit our ability to work with partners. Decisions that we don’t get a say in.

With a few notable exceptions, most podcast listening happens via listening apps. And it’s the listening apps and the companies who make them who really own the relationship with the listener. Not us podcasters. Not our hosting providers. The makers of the listening apps have much direct information about and control over what our listeners see than we podcasters do.

If you think that experience is shitty, you have little control over getting your listeners to switch to a listening app you think does a better job of properly displaying your content the way you want your content displayed. 

Conflicts in podcasting’s power dynamics - past, present, and likely future - break down into a few common areas. 

• Privacy and security of listener data is a big and important topic right now. And you, as a podcaster, have almost no control over how your podcast impacts someone’s privacy and security.
• Metrics and analytics are rather important to our success, but we’re stuck just receiving what the hosting companies and apps provide us. Sometimes, when we try to use third party sources to help us better understand, we’re shut down by entities with more control than we have.
• Standards and conventions can influence or inhibit both of the prior points and have a big impact on the listener’s experience. But we’ve no power beyond adding something to a suggestion box.

As podcasters, I think we have to choose a position to take. Specifically, we need to choose what kind of minor role we’re going to play, And then play it as loudly as we can. Here are five I came up with, though I’m sure there are more:

• Activist Podcaster
• Podcasting Apologist
• Podcasting Insider
• Podcasting Outsider
• Uninterested Podcaster

I’m not trying to push you towards one role/position I’ve laid out. Honestly, I think it's a spectrum. I know I ride most of these roles from time to time, and I think you probably do as well. I think it’s a good start to understand where our power limits are, but also what roles podcasters can play to affect some changes in our chosen medium. 

I’m rapidly approaching “Evo’s long winter's nap” time, where I take a much-needed break from the show for the month of November and December. Last year, I opened it up to guest voices who wished to pontificate on my platform. I’m doing that again, so please reach out if you’d like to contribute and we’ll talk about your idea. I’m easy! 

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Read the full article and share with a friend: https://podcastpontifications.com/episode/the-minor-role-podcasters-play-in-podcastings-power-dynamics

Follow Evo on Twitter for more podcasting insights as they come.

Buy him a virtual coffee to show your support.

And if you need a professional in your podcasting corner, please visit Simpler.Media to see how Simpler Media Productions can help you reach your business objectives with podcasting.

Podcast Pontifications is published by Evo Terra four times a week and is designed to make podcasting better, not just easier.

Mentioned in this episode:

Support For Abortion Rights

While Americans overwhelmingly support the right of an individual to make their own decisions about abortion, unfortunately, that right is no longer protected everywhere in the U.S. The Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade on June 24th.

There are a lot of unknowns when it comes to podcasting. Without getting too metaphorical, we swim in a sea of uncertainty as we navigate these podcasting waters. I battle the uncertainty that surrounds every decision by having a bias towards action. Having a bias toward action means I trust myself as a podcaster, as a business person, as a human being, to make the best decisions I can at the moment.

There's a phrase I think sums this up nicely: Trust in the you of now. Let me break those italicized words down for you and show you how they build on one another as you navigate uncertainty in your daily life as a podcaster.

Trust is a small word that’s has lots of connotations. But let’s strip all that away and get to what’s important: having a firm belief that something (or someone, in this case) has the ability to do a thing. For the purpose of this exercise, who can you trust? Well.. you. 

As a podcaster, you already put a lot of trust in other people. You trust the people that write the newsletters about podcasting you subscribe to. You trust your podcast hosting provider to give you the education you need when changes impact your podcast. 

Why then do so many podcasters have a hard time trusting themselves? Uncertainty. The imposter syndrome. Years of being micromanaged and untrusted. Getting past all of that isn’t easy, but you have to do it. And the good news? You can do it. Heck, you do it every day, even though you might forget that from time to time. 

You, right now, are a different person than you were in the past. You, right now, are a different person than you will be in the future. But you can’t talk to the podcaster you were five days ago, let alone five years ago. It’s even worse with you plus five days (or years) in the future. 

That’s what I mean by trust in the you of now. Learning how to do that allows you to trust that you, the person you are right, are the best person to make decisions about your podcast.

When you learn to trust in the you of now, you’re less likely to suffer from analysis paralysis. Yes, uncertainties are still there. But that’s always going to be the case. 

But what if the you of right now is not as well equipped to make that decision as the person you will become tomorrow might be? Trust that you’ll take the necessary steps so that your future self can make the decision. 

Trusting yourself today doesn't mean you're not going to fail. You’re not immune to bad decisions. They will happen. Even if you have all the trust in the world. 

It takes effort to put trust in yourself to make decisions. But once you've learned to trust the podcast or who you are today, a lot of the uncertainty that made it hard to trust yourself in the first place falls away, letting you get back to making amazing content for your podcast.

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Read the full article and share with a friend: https://podcastpontifications.com/episode/learning-to-trust-the-podcaster-you-are-right-now

Follow Evo on Twitter for more podcasting insights as they come.

Buy him a virtual coffee to show your support.

And if you need a professional in your podcasting corner, please visit Simpler.Media to see how Simpler Media Productions can help you reach your business objectives with podcasting.

Podcast Pontifications is published by Evo Terra four times a week and is designed to make podcasting better, not just easier.

Mentioned in this episode:

Support For Abortion Rights

While Americans overwhelmingly support the right of an individual to make their own decisions about abortion, unfortunately, that right is no longer protected everywhere in the U.S. The Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade on June 24th.

Complexity creep happens. Especially in creative endeavors like podcasting where we have at best a set of guidelines and maybe a roadmap, but not a clear, step-by-step set of instructions to follow. 

When things in our lives get too complicated, it stresses us out. It's not good at all for our self-worth (“How did I let this happen?”), and ultimately we may decide to up and quit the show as a way to escape the complexity we put upon ourselves. Maybe you need a little help un-complicating your show. Not necessarily stripping it down to the basics, but stripping out the needlessly complex pieces that aren’t good for you or your audience.

The challenge you’ll face is one of making your show less complex without impacting your livelihood or your audience's enjoyment of the show. 

Start with an examination of wants and needs. Specifically, I mean your wants as a podcaster and your audience’s needs as the consumers of your content. Do this by asking two questions:

1. What Do You Want Out Of Your Podcast, Podcaster? - You’re the most important listener of your show. And if the show isn’t fulfilling to you, you’re not going to keep doing it for long. 
2. What Do Your Listeners Need From Your Podcast? - Try to put yourself in the shoes of your audience as you dig into their needs and how your show fulfills those needs currently. Not what needs of theirs your show could fulfill, but what it's actually fulfilling for them right now. 

Now you’re much better equipped to take a critical look at all of the elements of your show as you seek out needless complexity through all the elements and aspects of your show. Things that should be simple, like your intros and outros. Or maybe the actual contents of your episodes and your involvement with those sections. Look at your production process and all the things that have to be done to make the show, from pre-production all the way to post-production. And again with collaborations with other podcasts and the entire publishing process. Do you want to do all of them? Does your audience need you to do all of them?

Staring at all these discovered complexities, it’s normal to want them all to go away. Now, please. And while the goal is to get rid of all needless complexities for your podcast, you should take it slow and incremental. 

Take away one needlessly complex element at a time, and let it soak for an episode or two. Then another. Then another. 

Also, don’t make a big deal out of this with your audience. In fact, I posit to you that your audience need not know that you’re making these changes. This is about what you want, and what you want isn’t really really something you want to crowd-source to your listeners anyhow.

This is about simplifying the process of podcasting, allowing you to make the podcast you want and the podcast your audience needs. 

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Read the full article and share with a friend: https://podcastpontifications.com/episode/simply-making-the-podcast-you-want-your-audience-needs

Follow Evo on Twitter for more podcasting insights as they come.

Buy him a virtual coffee to show your support.

And if you need a professional in your podcasting corner, please visit Simpler.Media to see how Simpler Media Productions can help you reach your business objectives with podcasting.

Mentioned in this episode:

Support For Abortion Rights

While Americans overwhelmingly support the right of an individual to make their own decisions about abortion, unfortunately, that right is no longer protected everywhere in the U.S. The Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade on June 24th.

People - listeners - are attracted to popular podcasts. Other people - podcasters like us - do very little to promote the popularity of the podcast we produce.

Broadly speaking and en masse, people like to do the things that lots of other people are doing. Lay the blame on evolutionary biology if you like, but humans tend to follow the crowd. It’s safer.

Content may be king, but only if the king is popular. You may not want to admit it, but you’re much more likely to watch a video with a million views than a video with zero. These showcased metrics are meant to show popularity. Or, in the case of the Podcast Pontifications Videos channel on YouTube, a lack thereof. 😢

Every social media site does the same, with indicators showing how many followers an account has, how often their content is re-shared, how many people have left a comment, and how many people liked the content. You may think you ignore these little numbers and focus on the content itself, but you’re either fooling yourself or you’re an outlier.

We’re not immune to this, podcasters. Before investing, would-be listeners want to know one thing we’re not telling them: is this podcast popular?

What about ratings and reviews collected inside a handful of podcast listening apps? I remain skeptical of the efficacy of in-app ratings and reviews. Judging by the way apps treat the display and collection of ratings and review, I think the podcast app makers are skeptical of the value of these data as well.

But we can take matters into our own hands, podcasters. We can take those public-facing ratings and reviews to spread the valuable social proof they offer. To that end, I’m going to modify a long-held position of mine and suggest a two-step course of action that I’m calling R&R Blitz and Harvest.

This strategy starts with some common advice that I’ve never felt quite right about: get a bunch of ratings and reviews for your podcast. Step two, and why I’m feeling better about this, is to harvest those reviews repurposing where they will do additional good for your show beyond the siloed app where the review was left. 

Where? Your website is an obvious place to repurpose screenshots of your reviews. Your social channels are another obvious place. Share the screenshot and, if you’re able to make the connection, tag or mention the person who left the review for you. And include a link back to your show that everyone can use! 

Resist the temptation to push meaningless metrics like “all-time downloads” on your audience. But frequently showcasing “active listener” numbers is super smart. Captivate.fm provides this info to every podcaster on their platform. (Disclosure: I’m on their advisory board.) 

Don’t forget the role you, the podcaster, play in increasing awareness and demonstrating the popularity of your own show. Actively seeking out guest spots on other podcasts (ideally in your niche) is a smart way to do this. 

And don't ignore places where non-audio content rules the day. Writing articles for publications - on and offline - that showcase your expertise or POV helps prove your popularity. As does appearing on live streams, guest lecturing in an educational setting, and even cozying up to the local news stations in your town. 

All of these and more are smart ways to milk your podcast’s popularity for all it's worth. With that, I'm going to make a rare request as I try to eat a little of my own dogfood. Please go to RateThisPodcast.com/PodPont where you will see options relevant to your current operating system where you can rate and review Podcast Pontifications.

I will screenshot your review and put it on my website. I'm going to modify the home page and other relevant pages to accommodate this new “social proof” section, including the audience numbers I mentioned previously. I hope to have that done by the weekend, so don’t miss your chance to be featured. For free!

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Read the full article and share with a friend: https://podcastpontifications.com/episode/milking-your-podcasts-popularity-for-all-its-worth

Follow Evo on Twitter for more podcasting insights as they come.

Buy him a virtual coffee to show your support.

And if you need a professional in your podcasting corner, please visit Simpler.Media to see how Simpler Media Productions can help you reach your business objectives with podcasting.

Podcast Pontifications is published by Evo Terra four times a week and is designed to make podcasting better, not just easier.

Mentioned in this episode:

Support For Abortion Rights

While Americans overwhelmingly support the right of an individual to make their own decisions about abortion, unfortunately, that right is no longer protected everywhere in the U.S. The Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade on June 24th.

You need exposure to inspiring podcast content if you want to make an inspiring podcast of your own. But none of us have an abundance of time, so how do we do that?

I have a technique that lets me be an active consumer of over 100 podcasts. 114, to be exact. This technique doesn’t require you to listen at 2x speed, doesn’t require you to change your preferred podcast listening app, a is “non-destructive”. so if it doesn’t work for you, you can go back to the way things were in a matter of seconds. You will not lose a single episode or subscription, I promise.

Start by thinking about your current podcast subscriptions from a high level, mentally sorting shows into one of two groups.

The first group is made up of all the podcasts you listen to that require sequential consumption. Shows that tell a story or present content that builds on the episode that came before. Podcast fiction, educational shows, and journalistic deep-dives. Anything that takes several episodes to get the message across.

The second group is… well, everything else. And I literally mean every other podcast you listen to where sequential listening is not required. 

For now, we’re going to touch your must-be-consumed-sequentially podcast subscriptions. No matter how important they are. Leave them as they were. Instead, we’re going to separate out everything else by creating a brand new station/playlist/channel/filter or whatever word your app uses.

(Apple Podcasts calls these lists Stations, so that’s what I’m going to call them from here on out, so adjust accordingly to whatever your podcast listening app calls them.) 

Give that new station a clever name and add every subscription of yours to it other than the sequential-required content. But with two caveats:

1. Only Include Most The Recent Episodes - Remember: this station is just a filter or logical grouping of your content. It’s a specialized view into some of the episodes from some of the shows you are subscribed to. You’re not losing anything. Go into the settings of the station and tweak it so that this station only includes the most recent episode of the podcasts you’ve added to it. 
2. Sort The List From Newest To Oldest - You have neither the time nor the bandwidth to assign “importance” individually to each episode that drops on your phone. You need to trust the system to do this, and the best system is to always have newer episodes push down the episodes you haven’t listened to yet. Or didn’t finish listening to. I know that sounds really strange, but I promise it will work if you’ll let it.

This new station is going to be your go-to spot when you’re ready to listen, either first thing in the morning (like I do) or when you’re doing a “found time” activity, snatching listening time when you can. 

The power of this Main station is in the automatic prioritization, with a deference towards recency and urgency. It forces me to see new and varied content. It also artificially limits my choices, which is great for when I don’t want to make hard choices. Which is most of the time. I do enough of that as it is.

If an episode keeps getting pushed further and further down the list, or maybe keeps getting replaced with a new episode before I can listen, it probably means that show isn’t all that important to me, or it needs special treatment.

If the Main station is empty - which has happened - it means I have room for more content! So I seek out new podcasts and add them to this Station. It’s important to be exposed to new podcasts all the time. I find this a great way to make that happen on a regular basis, without feeling like I’m neglecting the shows I’m currently subscribed to.

However you use it, this simple trick should help you power through more podcasts in less time. Let me know how it works for you!

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Read the full article and share with a friend: https://podcastpontifications.com/episode/a-simple-trick-to-power-through-more-podcasts-in-less-time

Follow Evo on Twitter for more podcasting insights as they come.

Buy him a virtual coffee to show your support.

And if you need a professional in your podcasting corner, please visit Simpler.Media to see how Simpler Media Productions can help you reach your business objectives with podcasting.

Podcast Pontifications is published by Evo Terra four times a week and is designed to make podcasting better, not just easier.

Mentioned in this episode:

Support For Abortion Rights

While Americans overwhelmingly support the right of an individual to make their own decisions about abortion, unfortunately, that right is no longer protected everywhere in the U.S. The Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade on June 24th.

I’m aware that most podcast advertising inventory today is priced and purchased based on the number of downloads an episode is projected to receive. And it is with that full awareness that I assure you no advertiser wants to buy podcast advertising inventory that way. Instead, advertisers want to pay when their ads are listened to by the right audience in the right geography at the right time.

Downloads, by themselves, illuminate none of that. Downloads are nothing more than an internal count of computers talking to computers. 

Spotify is changing the game, working with select advertisers to optimize campaign performance around true listening activity. And they’re not alone. I encourage you to read the great dialog between Amplifi Media and Sounds Profitable, where Steven Goldstein and Bryan Barletta walk through the sweeping changes we’re already seeing in podcast advertising. 

Then there’s the fact that downloads of podcast media files can be faked in a way that podcast media hosting companies following IAB 2.0 guidelines cannot detect. Anthony Gourraud details exactly how he faked downloads that were tracked and measured by IAB compliant hosts and tracking services. 

As advertisers gain a better picture of the disparity between actual listener behavior provided by Spotify and file download activity provided by their media host, the inferiority of downloads will become more obvious, eroding the trust placed in that metric. Evnatually, high-trust data (measuring listens) will be sold at a premium. Low-trust data (measuring downloads) will be sold on the cheap, forcing publishers to apply pressure directly on other apps to provide similar data to reclaim the value of their mutli-platform ad inventory. 

Tom Webster of Edison Research published an article that illustrates what  I'm calling “The Serial Problem”. Popularity rankers aren’t smart enough (though they could be) to separate automatic downloads from promotional content by legacy subscribers from actual consumer behavior of the actual podcast episodes. 

The obvious improvement here is to track the actual popularity among consumers against the totality of episodes of the show itself. Which we can do today, getting rid of these out-of-date rankings that are deeply, deeply flawed.

Want to double the number of downloads your podcast gets in a month? Produce twice as many episodes. Even though you’ve not gained a single new listener, you’ll see ~100% growth.

A much better way to measure show growth is by measuring the unique audience of a podcast over a period of time, noting how often each unique person accesses one or more episodes of a podcast. 

Once you have a good handle on active users over various time frames, you’re able to examine and segment on activity. We might find interesting, data-driven learnings on Time To Listen by calculating the amount of time that elapsed from the file request (taking into consideration automatic download vs user-initiated requests) to actual listening. That would be a fascinating study, you know?

Broadly speaking and ignoring the costs inherent with payroll, marketing, and other overhead necessary to run a business, the variable costs podcast hosting companies face are for bandwidth and file storage. That’s it. Yes, more downloads of media files increase their bandwidth cost, but not uniformly. My episodes are about 9 MB each. A 2-hour long episode of another show might be 120 MB. It’s the file size combined with downloads that are the factor.

I get that basing podcast media file hosting pricing tiers on the number of downloads is a convenient shorthand. Candidly, I’m not sure what better solution won’t confuse the heck out of podcasters. What I do know is that basing pricing on downloads is flawed from the start. And it continues to propagate the myth that downloads are an important metric in podcasting. 

For all the reasons I’ve laid out and more, I assure you that tracking podcast downloads is worthless to everyone. 

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Read the full article and share with a friend: https://podcastpontifications.com/episode/tracking-podcast-downloads-is-worthless-to-everyone

Follow Evo on Twitter for more podcasting insights as they come.

Buy him a virtual coffee to show your support.

And if you need a professional in your podcasting corner, please visit Simpler.Media to see how Simpler Media Productions can help you reach your business objectives with podcasting.

Podcast Pontifications is published by Evo Terra four times a week and is designed to make podcasting better, not just easier.

Mentioned in this episode:

Support For Abortion Rights

While Americans overwhelmingly support the right of an individual to make their own decisions about abortion, unfortunately, that right is no longer protected everywhere in the U.S. The Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade on June 24th.