Podcast Pontifications

Many early podcasters got into podcasting with the idea of doing something different than was possible with other mediums. And while that’s still the case, many podcasters -- especially businesses just getting started with podcasting -- are choosing a more conservative path, choosing to follow-the-pack instead of doing something bold. 

And I get it. It’s hard to be bold. It’s hard to get fired by following the beaten path. But when you do something wild and weird? Your exposure goes way, way up.

But right now, in mid-2019, I’m convinced that there’s never a better time to go bold and do something different with your podcast.

Before I give you three reasons why that’s truer than ever before -- yes, even for business podcasts -- I’ve a caveat. Before you can make the conscious decision to something different from the status quo, you have to know what the status quo is. You need to do your homework and understand what un-bold podcasts in your particular niche look and sound like. No, you're not going to fulfill that need by listening to one or two shows in your space. This requires a relatively deep study of what's going on right now so you can really break from it.

With that caveat out of the way, let's get into the 3 reasons why I think right now is probably the best time ever to go bold with your podcast.

There's an old saying I’m fond of repeating: It won’t matter what mistakes you make today, because 100 years from now; the world will be filled with all new people. That's the case in podcasting as well. Except we're living through “the all-new” people faze right now. 

Every day, a new flood of people become podcast listeners. Many have never heard a podcast before. Others have had very limited exposure to select shows. New listening apps are attracting new listeners who don't have any (or not very many) preconceived notions of what podcasts should sound like. 

(Of course, they do have some expectations of sound quality from other sorts of audio-based media. So don’t think you can get away with something that sounds like garbage.) 

These “all new people” becoming listeners represent a much bigger slice of the population than the current listening audience. We know that only mid-to-high 20% of the population are regular podcast listeners. That “all new people” pool represents something like 75% of the population. These are “all-new people” who have different expectations than the current listening set. So play to that.

We hear a lot about the discoverability issue in podcasting, which is both real and imaginary. One way to beat discoverability problems in podcasting, now and definitely in the future, is with differentiation. We podcasters don’t have much direct impact on discoverability (other than, you know, just making a great show that well-described, obviously). But we have 100% control over differentiation. 

Once you do your study (see my caveat above) and realize that there are already two, twenty-two, or twenty-two-hundred shows already out there in your niche, each competing for the same audience and presenting the same sort of content, content that you also planned on producing in almost the same way, you quickly understand that the answer to discoverability has a lot to do with differentiation.

“With over 700,000 podcasts out there, the owners of those shows must be making tons of cash. I also would like tons of cash, so I'll follow the proven model that they used so I, too, can get my share of those riches!” - every business-minded person new to podcasting who is soon to be disappointed

Businesses rely on playbooks others have put in place. These playbooks detail how one or more people found success, with the promise that if you emulate those steps, you’ll find success too. 

And while that’s true with podcasting to some extent, there’s one key factor missing. The money. In truth, there’s not a lot of it.

Most podcasts -- even business-focused podcasts -- do not rake in piles of cash. Yes, we do have our standouts. But by and large and especially for my clients -- businesses and professional service providers who want a podcast but don’t want to become podcasters -- the purpose of podcasting is to communicate to clients and prospects rather than selling services directly to the audience like an infomercial.

The good news is you can experiment with formats and styles without risking your share of the easy money if you just followed the well-trodden path. We're not talking about alienating a Facebook-sized audience -- or their checkbooks-- if you have a quirky idea that fails to take off.

For as much as podcasting is growing, we’re still pretty small. That makes it a great time to do bold, interesting, and engaging things. Right now, you're not risking giant piles of cash when you choose to not follow the standard model. So… don't follow the standard model!

Be bold. Differentiate your podcast. Make content that appeals to the new wave of people who are looking for something different when they turn to podcasting for the first time. Surveys tell us that people don't listen to podcasts because they think podcasting has nothing there for them.  So make interesting content for them! 

Don't worry about the piles of money. We don't have those. Yet. Instead, think of the piles of cash that might come in the future if you do something bold and different. Yes, even with your business podcast. 

If you'd like some help figuring out how this works for your business for your professional services form, or just for you if you think podcasting might help you reach your audience; get in touch with me. My firm launches podcasts and keeps them running while keeping my clients out of the technical weeds. 

Email me at [email protected] or go to PodcastLaunch.pro to see a list of all the services we offer.

Happy weekend! I shall see you on Monday with yet another Podcast Pontifications. 

Cheers!

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.

Conventional wisdom in the podcasting world is that the first few episodes of your podcast are going to suck. Conventional wisdom says you just need to get those sucky episodes out of your system, and then you'll be all better on the other side of the suck.

I don’t disagree with that. Where I depart from conventional wisdom is when they translate “out of your system” to “into your podcast feed so everyone sees how much your episodes suck”.

Call me crazy, I'm not sure many businesses can afford to purposely release sucky content. In any form.

Last night I had a conversation with a new prospect about starting a business podcast for there firm. One of the questions they asked was, ”Is the market saturated?”. Of course, my answer was no, there's plenty of room for in the market for another podcast. Even at somewhere north of 700,000 shows, there’s no upper limit and we’ve plenty of room for more podcasts.

However, we may be quickly running out of room for crappy business podcasts.

I don’t think that we podcasters, especially those of us who've done it for a very long time, have done a good job as stewards of the medium from a professional sense. At least not as it applies to businesses looking to get into podcasting for the first time.

Nota bene: Everything I'm about to cover is going to be highly controversial. If you're just in podcasting for the fun of it, what I’m about to say likely doesn’t apply. But in the vast majority of cases, businesses don’t get into new mediums like podcasting for the fun of it.

Let's go back to correlating a first podcast episode with the first draft of something written. With the notable exception of email and social media posts, the first draft of written content is rarely published. Written content -- annual report, monthly reports, chapters of a book, case studies -- goes through several revisions before it's ready for public consumption.

So true is -- or at least should be -- with podcasting for your business.

The very first time you start talking into a microphone, you're probably not going to be “a natural”. There are many things you need to learn. Proper mic placement, diction, pacing, how to tell a good story... There are many skills, hard and soft, you need to learn to create good spoken-word content.

And yes, as you do more behind the mic, you will get better over time. What you need not do is shine the public spotlight on your content as you work through that “getting better” phase.

That's a tough pill to swallow, and it goes against conventional wisdom in podcasting. I realize that the way to get better most things is learning how to be better at those things. Practice and repetition is a part of that learning. But so is bringing in additional people and mentors who are skilled knowledge workers who know what they're doing. It’s the rare good business podcast that’s staffed by a team of one.

Conventional wisdom in podcasting is to release your early (read: sucky) episodes to the public and get feedback. You will, conventional wisdom says, find out what your listeners like and don’t like about your episodes. This is helpful, it is said, because you're not podcasting for yourself, but for your audience.

As a seasoned business operations guy, I understand the importance of getting early feedback from the user base. But what I don’t buy is that listeners of your show’s early episodes -- or even later episodes -- make for a good focus group. In my experience (which mirrors the experience of many others) any feedback you get from your audience is occasional at best. As much as we talk about podcasting being a great medium for getting instant feedback from your audience, I haven’t seen evidence to back that up.

Worse, I worry about all the people who were going to listen to those early (read: sucky) episodes and decide the content certainly does suck, and that they are not going to listen any longer. Yes, there's a lot of bad podcast episodes out there. But there's also a decent amount of good content available for the listening.

But we can’t ignore the fact that first drafts suck. I think you should be OK with making content for your business that sucks. What you should not be OK with is publishing content that you know sucks.

Content that sucks can be made not to suck. That’s the reason we iterate: to take something that sucks, get it to a place where it doesn’t suck, and then keep refining it until it’s great! Go back and edit. Maybe take another editorial pass on the script. Get back behind the mic if you need to.  

A sucky episode doesn’t mean the concept for the episode sucks. It only means your first execution didn’t work. That’s fine. Just don't publish it!

You'll hear many podcasters repeat the mantra that “Perfect is the enemy of done”, and that it's better to publish than polish. But I'm going to disagree, at least in some cases, and say that if you know that episode is nowhere near perfect, you should not publish.

Another nota bene: You know the difference between something with a few flaws and something that is a rolling train wreck. If you can't; get someone's opinion. Not the public's opinion, but somebody not afraid to give you an honest appraisal.

Fix it. Go back and redo it if that's what's necessary. I don't care if it takes you seven different revisions to get it better. If that’s what it takes, then you do seven revisions. Get it better before it goes out live to the public.

It's your business we’re talking about. It's not just podcasting for fun. Listeners are getting more discerning all the time.

Yes, you will get better at podcasting over time. And yes, your first few attempts at making episodes will suck. Conventional wisdom has that right. Where I disagree is in what you should do with those sucky things.

I think you should learn from your mistakes. You should listen, find out what's not working and go back and tweak it. I don't care if it takes you hundreds of hours to get it right. It probably will take something like that, counting up all the hours spent by all the people necessary, with a lot of those hours tossed out before you've produced an episode dialed in enough to release to the wild. I'm sorry that you find that number shocking and disappointing. But there it is.

However, if you want to buck against my recommendation and publish your first draft, go for it. You can do that. I'm not a gatekeeper. Just keep in mind that here we are, 15 years into the world of podcasting, where the number of leeway listeners will give us for making obviously flawed content is shrinking. The window of forgiveness is closing and fast on your business. So get better at your craft. Do not rush to publish that first draft or that second draft. Wait until it's ready to go and then publish it.

I'll have more to say about this on future episodes, but for now, thank you very much for listening. I shall be back tomorrow with yet another Podcast Pontifications. 

Cheers!

(I didn't even do my normal roll-off ending…)

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 don’t have to be a marketing expert to put out a podcast. But unless you’re doing your show purely for fun, your podcast episodes play a role in marketing. Yes, even if you didn’t intend them to.

This episode will not teach you how to create an effective marketing funnel. Instead, I’ll hit the highlights, sharing a simple metaphor for the marketing funnel with you to help better understand the various states of minds people are in when they encounter your podcast episodes.

That metaphor? See. Think. Do.

Or in the case of podcasting: Listen. Think. Do. And let’s take them one by one, understand where podcast content fits all the way down.

The See (or Listen) level is the very top of the funnel. When you produce content for this level, you achieve success when people -- probably lots of people, yet still within your target audience -- see (or listen) to your content.

That’s it. That’s the entirety of the job of content produced at the See (Listen) level. It’s pure awareness building.

A lot of businesses podcasting today are creating podcast content at this level. Perhaps unwittingly. A good chunk of my clients create content at this level, simply as a branding play. More eyeballs (ear holes) on their content is a Good Thing. Hooray for more Listen-designed content!

At the other end of the funnel sits the Do stage of the marketing funnel. This is the payoff. The point at which action is taken. And for a lot of podcasts you listen to (maybe most podcasts that are making money today?), that podcast episode is “the thing” at the bottom of their marketing funnel. No action required on their afterward.

That’s how selling ads often works. Sure, the person who paid the money to run the ad on the show likely wants some action taken. But for the business-focused podcaster, just getting someone to listen is the Do action they are looking for.

But that's not enough for my clients, because my clients aren’t selling ads on their content. And because of that, my clients don’t produce podcast episodes for people at this stage of the marketing funnel. Yes, they want listeners, but they require listeners to do something else to make the podcasting investment pay off.

A growing number of my clients are making podcast episodes that fit in the middle: the Think stage.

The middle part -- you may have heard this referred to as the consideration stage -- of the marketing funnel is where podcasts can really shine. The Think level is when people are actively consuming your content and really considering you and/or your services.

This is where thought leadership reigns supreme, and podcasting often represents a significant advantage over other mediums. Producing podcast content at the Think level isn’t a branding play. It’s not enough to make people aware. To be successful at making content at the Think level, you need the listener thinking about how you, your products, your services, your thoughts benefit them. Not just once, but again and again.

Producing Think-level content on your podcast gives you a chance to really tell your story to an engaged audience. You already know that people like spending lots of time with podcasted content. More time than they like reading your blog posts. And a heck of a lot more than they like spending time with advertisements.

Can podcasting work at the top of the funnel? Absolutely. Can it work at the bottom? You bet! Podcasting has a part to play in all stages of the marketing funnel, but perhaps the biggest play is to be found in that middle Think level. That's where well-thought-out podcast content can be interesting for the listeners and result in big payoffs for business-minded podcast producers.

Do you know someone with a business who needs to know this? Send them this article. Or pass along the podcast version of this episode. Then have them get in touch with me, because my firm launches podcasts for businesses, taking care of all the heavy lifting and technical considerations that go into making a podcast that achieves business goals. [email protected] reaches me. Or you can go to PodcastLaunch.pro to see the services we are currently offering our clients.

I shall be back tomorrow with yet another Podcast Pontifications.

Cheers!

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.

No, this isn’t an article about using Snapchat and Instagram to promote your podcast. This is an article about packaging the contents of a single episode of a podcast by borrowing (read: stealing) a big part of Instagram stories. Which they stole from Snapchat, so turnabout’s fair play, right?

Many podcasts are highly produced, often requiring more than 100 hours of work to put out a single, 30-minute long episode. Other podcasts require almost no extra work, where people just get behind the microphone and start talking. (Stop looking at me.)

Between these extremes is room for many, many different effort-level approaches. One format made popular by newsletter publishers and Instagram influencers hasn’t yet taken off in podcasting. That approach is to create content “on the fly” throughout the day -- or sometimes the week --. Newsletter writers typically save the publishing until the entire “send” has been assembled, where IG stars publish each discrete bit as they go through their day.

I think podcasting might be able to leverage those concepts, either as a new technology play or by Mechanical Turking our way to a new method of creating content that, for some shows, might be actually better than what they are doing today

If you've listened to Podcast Pontifications for a while, you know I'm a big proponent of what I call Advancing Podcasting. That's the idea that software and technology should make podcasting better, not just easier. It also assumes that brand new business models will appear, which themselves necessitate new podcasting formats and approaches.

This idea of assembling and producing content on-the-fly might be one such approach.

Plenty of podcasts gather content on the fly. The work of James Cridland at PodNews.net comes to mind. James dutifully gathers the best podcasting news of the day, writes up his very popular daily newsletter, and also records a short “headlines only” version released as a podcast episode.

He’s not alone. Many podcast producers gather news/information/inspiration throughout the day, write their notes about each element, adding in their own commentary on each or as a whole, create a final script, and then sit down behind a microphone to record the whole thing.

Enter the Instagram Stories approach. What if, instead of only writing about each bit as it happened, the podcaster grabbed the microphone and narrated their thoughts on just that bit. OK, some writing is likely warranted. But once the writing for that bit is done, you’d narrate it. Just that bit.

Were this really an Instagram Story, you’d publish that bit. And that doesn’t really (thankfully) work in podcasting. Instead, you would “publish” the bit in some sort of a queue or draft-mode. Today you could just save it locally. Though this presents an opportunity for some custom software that will enable this to be better.

Rinse, repeat that five or six times throughout the day, and all that’s left to do is assemble those individually produced bits. That could be a simple as dragging your intro into your DAW (Digital Audio Workstation), maybe narrating an overview, dropping in your produced bits, adding a bit of transition music between each if you like, maybe narrating a recap, and then dragging in your outro.

Done.

It’s an interesting way to think differently about assembling content. Actually, it's really just a shift in how you work. Rather than being in “gathering mode” first, followed by “recording mode” and then finally “editing mode” at the end, now you’re doing all three modes at multiple times during the process of putting out an episode.

Come to think about it, this sounds a lot like how some writing tools like Scrivener work. And it’s exactly how magazines and newspapers are assembled.

Any of us could do this on our own right now, just saving off the pieces. But we need software to help enable this. A new Saas that lets producers record content and store it in a queue in the cloud. That software could even remind you of a looming deadline. You could use the interface to easily re-arrange content. And of course, it’s smart enough to place your intro, outro, and transition elements for you. Heck, done right, it could even automate the “show notes” and/or transcription, assuming you loaded the narrative parts -- and links! -- for each bit.

We need that software. If someone built that software, there would be a lot of would-be podcasters lining up to use such a service. So there you go, hosting providers. Steal my idea and build us a “Stories for Podcasters” product.

Until that time, get in touch with me if you like this idea. Especially if you think something like this could work as a good approach for your business’ podcast. Get in touch with me at [email protected]. And visit PodcastLaunch.pro to see all of the services that my firm currently offers our clients.

I shall be back next week with yet another Podcast Pontifications.

Cheers!

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.

Ask around and you’ll hear a common theme amongst digital marketers and content creators lauding praises on podcasting: There’s no algorithm to try and game/fight/adapt to. Once someone subscribes to your show, they’ll get your episodes. Period. End of story.

If only that was the end of it.

Like so many things the web, too much of a good thing means an algorithmic change.  Algorithms exist for one reason: To surface the best content for the person who is engaging with -- often unwittingly -- the experience controlled by the algorithm.

Many of us were first exposed to algorithms thanks to Google. When you search for something on Google, your query goes through a very complicated algorithm with literally hundreds of different factors at play to determine the information presented to you on the search engine results page (SERP).

Years later Facebook and other social media platforms recognized that literally billions of people all creating and consuming content make too much stuff to be presented chronologically. So now, most social platforms use algorithms to determine which content to show -- and which to hide.

When we have near-infinite choices available, we humans aren't very good at making choices. So algorithms come into play. Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Spotify and more have a vested interest in keeping people consuming the content on their platform. They implement algorithms to keep people engaged with their platform. Not necessarily any particular content from any particular provider.

As an individual, that decision to filter your content through an algorithm might piss you off. It may, in fact, cause you to abandon that platform and use a different service, albeit one with a smaller pool of content that hasn’t (yet) implemented algorithms.

But these platforms aren’t stupid, and you can bet that if there was a real exodus away from them due to their algorithms, they’d either abandon the algorithm or change it. And while changes to algorithms happen all the time, they aren’t abandoned. Because they work at keeping the audience using the platform more.

So what does it have what's this have to do with podcasting?

While I don't see algorithms influencing how podcast episodes are displayed to you once you’ve already subscribed (though there is evidence that might be changing), algorithms will have a big influence on how new content is presented to you.

Spotify is about to relaunch their app (finally), add you can bet your bottom dollar that an algorithm will be a big part of showing you what podcasts you might like. Pandora is about to drop a tsunami of podcasting content in its app, and we already know there Podcast Genome Project will be a big part of their offering. Google Search now features playable podcast episodes in search results, all of them algorithmically placed.

YouTube’s content has been algorithmically controlled for some time now, with smart publishers adapting their content to play to the algorithm simply so they can get more views. And I’m not talking about short-fixes and grey-hat tweaks to titles, descriptions, and keywords. Content produced specifically for YouTube is seeing fundamental changes. Changes in length, style, and approach. This is resulting in better content,  much of it so highly produced that it looks a lot more like something you would expect to see on Netflix than some funny cat video.

If the algorithm is causing YouTube creators to change the content they produce, it’s not a stretch to see that happening in podcasting.

Podcast apps and directories will implement algorithms in their search pages and home pages. They’ll do this not because they think you and I, experienced podcast listeners, need help finding content. No, they’ll dit because they want to make the majority of humans, the 72-ish percent of people who don't regularly listen to podcasts, to have a rewarding listening experience because of their app or directory.

No, we don’t know exactly what factors will go into these algorithms. But it doesn’t take much digging to realize that all algorithms tend to reward “better” content. The existing algorithms tend to reward content that gets people engaged with, commenting on, or just sharing the content with others. Does your podcast compel listeners to do that?

But you may not think in-app or directory-based discovery matters much. Surveys, after all, tell us that word-of-mouth is the number one way people find new podcast content. And there’s no way an algorithm can influence word-of-mouth discovery, right?

Well… not so fast. If better in-app/directory discoverability does actually surface better content, then it stands to reason more people will be talking about the really good content they just found. So… more mouths to spread the message?

The growth of podcasting isn’t likely to stop. As new shows -- good, bad, and somewhere in between, continue to release, new listeners are going to be continually flooded with too many choices. That’s not a trend that will reverse anytime soon. Soon enough, we’ll live in a world where most podcast listeners will be exposed to algorithmically discovered content.

That future fact means you need to be prepared for this change. It means that everything we've done in podcasting today is foundational, and the world of tomorrow might make the quality of content the most important ranking factor. With the rise of all the new podcast production companies with experience in producing exceedingly high-quality content, you can bet these future algorithms will have plenty of high-quality content to chew on.

How sure are you that your podcast will be loved by these coming algorithms? Get in touch with me. I would love to take a look/listen and talk with you more about where I see your show fitting in our algorithmically-driven future. I firmly believe algorithms will -- eventually -- make podcasting better. [email protected] reaches me, or go to PodcastLaunch.pro for a list of the services my firm offers our clients.

I shall be back tomorrow with yet another Podcast Pontifications.

Cheers!

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.

While we often think about growth of a podcast as a natural progression. Slowly, you’ll gain more audience. Or, with the right application of marketing strategy, you can accelerate that growth.

But that actually runs counter to the history of most things made for the internet. Most things made for the internet start out and end up with tiny audiences.

I think podcast pundits (Hi!) would better serve podcasting if we recognized that fact. Because not every podcast -- either from hobbyists or for businesses -- has designs on growth.

Most people who create content have no aspirations of having that content reach a massive -- or even modest -- audience. At its core, the internet is a communication medium. It was built to facilitate the publishing of information. You could argue that the true “superpower” of the internet is the facilitation that lets people exchange, text, images, video, audio, and have conversations about those items.

This communication platform, though global in nature, does not require the things shared be seen by the majority of internet users. There's no implied success built into the underpinnings of the way that the internet works. The same holds true for podcasting: There is no inherent need for a show to bubble to the top.

Of course, you may want to have your podcast reach a gigantic podcast. Great. Go for it! But on this episode, I want to talk about the merits of podcasting to a purposely tiny audience.

That tiny audience for your podcast could be just the employees of your company. That tiny audience could be just a circle of friends that get together monthly for a happy hour. That podcast might serve a tiny group of people all interested in one very specific, highly-focused interest that you have to be a little weird to deeply enjoy.

Maybe it's a local podcast. Maybe it's something that is so hyper-local that there's only a handful of people in your given city, your neighborhood, maybe only people in your apartment complex would care about.

But I can hear the confusion from here: “Why would I invest all this money in hiring a firm like Simpler Media if my podcast won’t be huge? Why did I buy this $400 microphone if I'm not going to reach a gigantic audience?”  

My answer: We spend a lot of money on things that just make us happy. No ROI required or even anticipated.

Also, consider that there isn’t an inherent value equation between the money (and time) you put into your podcast and the size of your audience. Because unless you’re charging people to access your podcast or already have a big-enough audience to make meaningful money with ads on your show, you aren’t making more money when more people listen to your show.

And the reverse is more applicable: It costs you the same amount of money to produce a show that a person listens to as it does to produce a show that a hundred thousand people listen to.

There are many good examples of creations that are meant to stay purposely tiny. Take online communities and groups as an example. Yes, you can many communities that have built very large audiences. There are even a few podcast support and advice groups exist that have thousands of members.

But for every one of those big groups, you'll find dozens (maybe hundreds?) of much smaller communities that exist to only serve their tiny audience.

Look at newsletters as another example. In fact, there's a service called TinyLetter. It’s designed for tiny newsletters. That's it. That's its whole reason for being. To help creators make a tiny newsletter.

Keeping things tiny on purpose has merit. Sometimes we only want to beta release creations to a handful of people. And sometimes, we know that when our creations reach a very large audience, things change.

When the audience for something gets big, it changes the relationship between the creator and the audience, as well as the tone and tenor of the conversation amongst those who are consuming the content.

Bigger isn't better. Bigger is different.

And as much as I love change, not everyone does. Keeping your podcast tiny on purpose makes it more resistant to unintentional changes from outside forces beyond your control. When things get big accidentally, some of those changes can get a little squishy.

But remember: tiny-on-purpose doesn’t necessarily mean “private”. Making a truly private show comes with some technical challenges that, frankly, aren’t worth it for most people. That means you still need to make your tiny podcast available Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and the other key directories. It’s public, but you just care a whole lot less about discovery issues than anyone else.

Every day I come on this program and talk about ways to make podcasting better in the future. I’m as guilty as the next person at assuming better means bigger. It doesn’t.

You can -- and you should -- absolutely work at making your show better even if you don’t want to make it bigger. Call it pride in ownership or creation if you like. But know that you can make an excellent podcast and keep it’s audience small on purpose for yourself, for your business, or for your community.

There are ways to make podcasting work that do not require a gigantic audience. I would love to help you figure out how to do that for your business or organization. Email me at [email protected] and check out PodcastLaunch.pro (which I'm probably going to revamp completely in the next few weeks) to see a list of the services at my firm currently offers our clients.

I shall be back tomorrow with yet another Podcast Pontifications.

Cheers!

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.

The series finale of Game of Thrones just happened. This coming weekend, the Indy 500 is happening. I know these things, but I’m not (yet) a watcher of Game of Thrones. Nor am I fan of auto racing.

But nonetheless, I'm aware of these things because they are blockbuster events. How can you, the working podcaster, do something similar?

Both NBC and HBO have fostered the public conversation -- nationally and internationally -- about these two events. When you look closely, you’ll see that there's a big difference in the way these events were marketed vs the way podcasters typically go about marketing their shows/episodes.

Granted, big organizations like HBO and NBC have something that most podcasters don't have.  A true network. And they’re in the business of driving either eyeballs (for ads) or keeping you from canceling your paid subscription. Quite a few podcasters, especially business podcasters, don't run ads. And most aren’t relying on paid subscriptions. So there are differences.

But in those differences is where we find the lessons.

Most podcasts -- even business podcasts -- tend to market “after the fact”. The big push for new listeners is done in arrears after the episode is published. From a listener-perspective, that makes sense. Why advertising something that isn’t yet available? Especially when there’s no immediate need to have massive numbers of people listen at the same time. Heck, doesn’t that entire concept break what podcasting is all about?

Leaving that last concern (if it even is a valid concern) aside for the moment, let’s examine the idea of building anticipation in the world of podcasting.

Most podcasters will face challenges in building anticipation. Many podcasters are podcasting too close to the ball and have no idea what’s happening on their next episode. But all it takes is some planning and foresight to solve that problem. Which you have to do it you’re going to build anticipation for a future episode.

But not every episode is worthy of anticipation-building. But events, however, often are. That Game of Thrones episode last week was the end of the series. That's a big deal. If your podcast is also “seasoned”, where you’re producing episodes that build off one another and finally culminate in a final episode, you’ll find it easier to can get people excited about the finale.

Don’t underestimate the power of a “series wrap” to draw in lots of listeners. I have seen several cases where a podcast experiences a big spike in downloads when the final episode is posted. There are many people out there who will wait to subscribe/listen until all of the episodes are available, then they binge.

Can your business-focused podcast play to that audience?

If not, can you create your own event? Or is there an event in your industry that you can build anticipation for?  In the podcasting space, we have a big event each year when Edison releases their Infinite Dial report. Many of us in the business of podcasting -- even hobbyists -- talk up the event for weeks in advance. That’s a good promo for the report release, which builds an even bigger audience.

If we can “manufacture” an event around a report release, surely you can do the same for your business podcast. What event -- or perhaps your take on an event -- can you leverage to build anticipation for your coverage?

Of course, when HBO, NBC, or other networks do this, they have the power of a network behind them. As a business podcaster, you probably are not part of a network. But you could build your own. I've talked previously about the DIY approach to building your own network. And I think businesses can do it a whole lot easier than independent podcasters.

The lesson podcasters can learn from the Game of Thrones series finale and the Indy 500 race is one of anticipation. People like to anticipate things. So if you have a “thing” worth of building anticipation, start marketing it earlier and make those marketing efforts laser-focused.

Think about how you can build anticipation around an event, and utilize that anticipation to bring attention to your business-focused podcast.

Need more business ideas for your business podcast? Get in touch with me at [email protected] or checkout PodcastLaunch.pro to see a list of the services my firm offers to our clients.

I shall be back tomorrow with yet another Podcast Pontifications.

Cheers!

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.

Over the last three episodes, I've convinced you of the importance of making sure your podcast accurately represents your business’s brand. Today, I’m sharing three tips to make sure you’re getting to that crucial alignment.

There’s no doubt that you put a significant amount of effort to make sure your business’,  your organization’s, your nonprofit’s brand is on-point in all public-facing assets produced by your firm.

And it saddens me that all too many of your peers don't do the same thing with their business-focused podcast.

How bad would it be for your company if your business development lead went with a crappy PowerPoint presentation? With the logo of your business all pixelated because it was “upsized” from a thumbnail image and then expanded as the cover image? With crappy and inconsistent font usage (lots of Comic Sans)? Maybe with weird color schemes nowhere near your carefully chosen palette? Or filled with pictures of people with bodies stretched out of proportion? Or with ill-conceived transitions between slides?

You'd fire that business development person and hire someone else who cared about the quality of their pitch deck and respect for the established brand.

The same holds true for the people who are managing client relationships. What would happen if they showed up to a board meeting for a Fortune 500 client wearing ratty jeans and a poor-taste t-shirt?

You'd have issues with that, wouldn’t you?

Well that's might very well be happening with your podcast. Every single day, your podcast is representing your brand. To your customers. To your clients. To your prospects. Maybe to your competitors. Certainly to the public at large. Your podcast is causing those people to make assumptions about your brand.

Are those assumptions the ones you want?

Here are three tips that will help you make sure that you're giving your podcast’s listeners the best chance of making the right assumptions about your brand.

You wouldn’t let a brand new biz dev person pitch to a prospect or client without screening their deck and presentation skills, would you? And you’d likely accompany your biz dev people on key pitches from time to time so you could observe them in action, right?

Just like you’d monitor the real-world interactions between your account management people and your customers. Or just like you’d try your best to see with your own eyes how anybody else in your company is representing your company to the real world.

It’s incredibly easy to monitor your podcast. And not just occasionally. Always.

You are already observing how your people represent your brand in the real world, either by walking around the office, attending a few biz dev meetings, or even sitting in on client update sessions. Because you own the business, and you have a responsibility to make sure the people on your payroll are accurately representing the brand you've worked so hard to build.

So please, listen to your podcast. I am amazed at the number of business owners I have met just in the last six months -- in big companies and small -- who’ve have authorized someone in their organization to make a podcast for the company… yet the business owner has never listened to the final product.

And for the few that do listen to their company's show, that’s the only podcast they’ve ever listened to. Equally bad, because they may think “well, it’s a podcast, and podcasts are supposed to be lower quality than content produced for the radio, an audiobook, television, or any other form of media, right?” Wrong. Very, very wrong. So, please... Listen?

It's not a 30-minute long process to put out a 30-minute long podcast episode. That should not surprise you. It might only take you 15 minutes to read the latest white paper your company put out. But you do recognize it took longer -- much longer -- than 15 minutes for your employees to assemble that paper, right?

That 30-minute sales deck your biz dev person just pitched to your biggest prospect took her days or weeks to assemble. Not minutes.

Quality products take -- and deserve -- time and attention.

As the business owner -- the person that's controlling the purse-strings -- you to allow your people to invest their time (and your money) into making a high-quality product that accurately represents your brand. Give them time to do that.

It's very possible that the people inside of your business cannot do this alone. It might be necessary to partner with someone because the podcasting space is moving crazy fast.

It's very difficult to keep up with all the changes unless your full-time job is making podcasts. Just like it's difficult to keep up with what's happening in digital media, web development, video distribution, or all of the things that are necessary but not central to your business.

You need someone outside of your organization. An expert whose job is to keep track of what's happening today and look forward at the changes podcasting is going to go through and suggest/shepherd changes to your podcasting effort to keep your brand on-point. To make sure that your brand’s message is accurately conveyed in the best way possible in this medium today and tomorrow. To make sure you’re making the right kind of content that accurately represents your brand and the content your customers/prospects/listeners want to hear.

Of course, I’d be happy to chat with you to see if my firm is a good fit in that role. Get in touch with me by sending an email to [email protected]. You can go to PodcastLaunch.pro to see a list of the services my firm currently offers our clients all over the world.

Hope you've enjoyed this little mini-series on how your podcast impacts your brand. I shall be back not tomorrow, but on Monday, with yet another Podcast Pontifications. Cheers!

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.

No, you don't have to release an episode of your business’ podcast each and every week. Or every two weeks. Or even every month.

The myth of “publish or die!” is an ad populum fallacy. Most podcasts are made by hobbyists. Most of those hobbyists are “playing at radio” with their podcast. Or they're inspired by traditional media -- television, newspaper, magazines - that issues new content on a consistent (often weekly) basis. Others were bloggers before they were podcasters,  perhaps published their own newsletter. They’ve gotten used to -- and popularized -- the notion of creating and publishing content for their audience on a regular basis.

That might make sense for a hobbyist. But does it make sense for your business?

Unless you're in the business of publishing, you're going to find that a weekly or even a fortnightly podcast publishing cadence is hard to sustain. If the schedule you set for your podcast episodes doesn't neatly fit into your business' work schedule… expect difficulties meeting your arbitrarily established podcast publishing deadlines.

But even if (as is likely) your business is not built around pushing content each and every week, you can still have a podcast. And a successful one at that!

You need to break out of the mindset of “let's do whatever the other podcasts are doing” and refocus on “let's do what's right for our business.”

Here are three different methods that might fit better in with the way you do business. And as a bonus,  I'm going to share with you three amazing benefits you'll get when you follow a non-traditional podcast episode publishing cadence for your business-focused or brand-based podcast.

Is there an event on your business’ yearly calendar that you or your employees are going to either attend? Or maybe your business is putting on your own event? And even if you aren’t planning on attending, perhaps there's an event that is incredibly popular within your industry, attended by potential customers, existing clients, and even your competitors

If that's the case, you can build a series of podcast episodes that are catered to that pending event. You can produce a series of podcast episodes that culminate either on the day of that event or perhaps just before that event … even a great recap of the event once it’s over. It’s that single event that becomes the focus of your podcast. Doing this can cement your business or brand identity as a (if not the) thought-leader for the event and, by way of association, a thought-leader for the topic of the event.

Think “seasons”. As in, “the seasons”, like Fall or Spring. Now think about the seasons your business or industry goes through on an annual basis. Can you build a series of podcast episodes that coincide with that business cycle?

When are people purchasing equipment? When are they making decisions about business planning? When does the news cycle really ramp up within your industry? What are the natural cycles your industry goes through on a regular basis? Do you have a low season that you can do some demand shaping around? Do you have a high season that you need to take advantage of?

Take inspiration from the way you’ve planned your business for the entire year and tailor your podcast episodes -- production and release -- to that.

Even though you are likely not in the business of publishing like a newspaper or a magazine, there may be some things that you are in fact publishing.

We talked about making podcast episodes more like white papers on yesterday's episode. If you’re publishing actual white papers periodically, you can make podcast episodes that support those publications. Maybe one of your teams is producing a series of videos. Great! Build podcast episodes around those, maybe with some outtakes or with a “the making of” or “director's cut” type content.

When you look, you might find that your business is already producing content that's not in podcast form, but you can make podcast episodes to support that content to help it go even further.

There are some tangible benefits to non-traditional podcast publishing that work great for your business. Things like:

1. It makes marketing is so much easier.
2. It's easier to build a marketing campaign around a less-frequent publishing cadence. It's hard to come up with marketing content every single week for a podcast the publishes a new episode every single week. It's fatigue, and it’s felt by you, your marketing team, and even for your listeners.
3. You’ll have time for serious promotion.
4. You can plan out your promotions much better when you break the weekly habit. Promotion of individual elements -- episodes -- seems fresher and more important when it’s not something you have to do because a new episode is dropping on Friday.
5. It allows for easy content repurposing.
6. Let's face it: There's a limit on the number of places where re-sharing a weekly podcast episode makes sense. The same “racing against the clock” problems that fatigues marketers and promoters also fatigues those who are trying to repackage and repurpose your content.

As you can see, your business has many more (and even better) options as to when to publish content than conventional podcasting wisdom would have you believe.

There's more to podcasting for businesses and for brands than what bubbles to the top of the larger podcasting landscape.

I'd love to help you think through the right podcast publishing approach for your business. If the info above helped you, fantastic! But if you need personalized help making it happen, this is what we do at Simpler Media Productions. Get in touch with me at [email protected] or visit PodcastLaunch.pro to see a list of all the services we’re currently providing our clients.

I'll be back tomorrow with yet another Podcast Pontifications. Cheers!

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.

Do you know why so many business-focused podcasts are interview-based? For the same reason that the tire ads are in the sports section of your Sunday newspaper. Not because people who read the sports section are more likely to buy tires. No, it's because that's where the tire ads go. After some 50 years of advertising, that's where the tire ads go. It’s become a habit, and businesses are keen to capitalize on ingrained habits of consumers.

But back to podcasting for your business or brand. I promise to you that there is a lot more to podcasting than interview-based show. Consider for a moment what having an interview-based show say about your brand. Think about the story each episode tells about your brand? Even if the conversations you brand and your guests are having are on-point and wonderful that the audience seems to enjoy… those episodes may not be telling your brand story in an effective and meaningful way.

In this episode, I’ll share three ideas for content-generation that will make sure your podcast’s episodes are business-focused by making them business-first. And no, that doesn’t have to mean boring.

Before I list those, forget everything you know (or think you know) about podcasting for a moment and think about your business or brand overall. What kinds of content are you generating? What are you publishing and promoting that shares the story of your brand?

Social media posts are likely. But podcasting isn't social media.

Maybe you’re producing videos and publishing them to YouTube. It’s often touted as the second biggest search engine, so it’s an obvious content play for most brands. But people watch business-focused YouTube videos for very different reasons than they do when listening to a podcast episode from a business or brand.

But there are three types of business-focused content that work really well in podcast form.

People want proof. Especially in business, where talk is cheap. But a well-crafted case study shows how the products or services offered by your business caused a meaningful change on or more of your clients.

If you’re saying to yourself “I don't read those case studies”, then you’re making the classic blunder of using yourself as a sample size of one. Businesses case studies are popular. No, centering your podcast around case studies isn’t going to get you a Webby award. But treating your podcast episodes more like case studies will get potential clients excited about your solution, your business, and your brand.

Again, you probably are saying “Evo, I don't I don't really read white papers.” But once again, I promise you that in the business world, white papers are consumed. A lot! White papers showcase one or more aspects of your business in a deep-dive. It’s not casual. It’s an on-purpose and a rather exhaustive rundown of one or more aspects of your business. And it’s often times just what a potential client needs to get them to commit.

Businesses spend a lot of money to fly employees to conference all around the world. Much of their time is spent in the audience, listening to (or getting inspiration/advice/etc from) people on stage. The person on the stage has not only a captive audience of dozens, hundreds, and sometimes even thousands of people but a highly qualified audience who are choosing to hear what this business/brand has to say.

Scoff at this idea as “PowerPoint in podcast form” if you like. But then think about all those people in the audience at those conferences, many of them paying serious attention and taking copious notes. For them -- the ones that matter -- it's not a boring experience at all. It's exactly what they want to hear.

But I’d be remiss if I didn’t give you a bit of a harsh reality check on the above advice.

1. Taking a business-focused approach to your podcast’s content will likely not get your podcast to the number one placement of any podcast chart.
2. Taking a business-focused approach to your podcast’s content is a lot more work than just doing a casual interview show.

But unless you’re in the business of selling ads against your content, neither audience growth nor speed-to-market is your top priority.

Instead your top priority is simple: attaining measurable business outcomes from your podcast content, either directly or indirectly. Those outcomes should be commensurate with the effort you put into making each episode of your show. Those episodes must appeal to a very specific audience, with ample opportunity for them to easily respond to your content.

Take a business-first approach will result in a very different type of show than you may be used to listening to. And that’s OK. The people who listen to your business-focused content are hungry for something different. Your acknowledgment of this and commitment to making content that appeals to this need will be seen as rewarding for them, which in turn rewards your business or brand. Because you're giving them exactly the kind of content they need to hear to be successful.

Let them be entertained somewhere else. Let that need to just keep listening filler content every week (or perhaps four times a week) be scratched somewhere else.

If you want to be serious about podcasting for your business, you must make sure that your brand is adequately represented in your podcast.

As always, you can email me at [email protected] or you can check out the business-focused podcast services my firm offers our clients at PodcastLaunch.pro.

I shall be back tomorrow with yet another Podcast Pontifications. Cheers!

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.