Podcast Pontifications

Is your podcast serving the purpose to boost your brand? Or is it actively damaging the hard work you’ve put into building your brand?

I stated before I'm going to say clearly once again: I honestly think that almost any entity -- company, nonprofit organization even as an individual or professional service provider can have a podcast.

Not that they should. But they can.

As with all things in life; just because you can do something doesn't mean you should do something.

Because you are choosing to have a podcast to represent your brand, it’s almost a given that you should do it properly.

I've recently made the decision to stop listening to some podcasts by brands because the contents of the podcast episodes have completely damaged the brand for me. Specifically,  I mean they seem not to care about their podcast. They don't care about quality. They don't care about the contents. The podcast seems an afterthought for them. And since they are clearly spending resources on it, it makes me wonder if they take that same lazy attitude to their products and services. No thanks.

This week, I want to talk about ways you can make sure that your podcast and your brand line up with one another. And if you care about your brand, podcasting cannot be an afterthought.

(Nota bene: I know that for many hobbyists, podcasting certainly is an afterthought. Or just some fun thing they do once in a while with a friend. That’s great. In fact, I think businesses can also have a lot of fun with the podcast. But I’m not talking about having fun. I’m talking about making content that represents a brand image.)

You can’t look at your large audience base as an indication of brand-damage. Nor can you ask your engaged fans if the carefree-attitude you are taking is damaging your brand to them. Of course it’s not. Fans of your podcast will almost always say the same thing: They want more of the same. Of course they do! They're already listening.

The danger is that fans tend to not be very honest. But it’s not the current listener base a podcaster has to worry about. It’s the potential new listener.

The podcasting space is getting easier (and hopefully better), which means it’s easier than ever to start listening to podcasts. (Thanks, Google!)

And among those new people listening will be people who do not know the brand you’ve already established. For them, the listening experience defines your brand?

Is your most recent episode a good steward of your brand? Perhaps you publish a monthly magazine (one where people pay money to subscribe to the print/digital version) and, as a promotional effort or because all the cool kids are doing it, you also put out a podcast. A podcast with unedited episodes. Episodes with four or five different voices talking over one another with wildly varying volume levels of volume. If that’s the kind of attention you put into your podcast, it makes me wonder if your magazine is rife with typos and lacks any sort of editorial control.

Or maybe you're a consultant with thrice-weekly podcast episodes of great, highly focused advice. Except you’ve made the decision that the first two minutes of your short episodes are nothing but a giant ad for a different company only tangentially related to the topic of your show.  For a different service that I know that you're going to make a commission on when you get. It makes me wonder about the kind of advice you provide a consultant.

Given the intimate experience people have when they listen to your podcast, it’s critical to not damage your brand with your podcasting efforts.

For the rest of this week, I’m going to help you understand how decisions you make with your podcast directly impact your brand. We’ll talk about the actual contents of your show and how you assemble them. We’ll talk about a release schedule and what that says about your brand. This deep-dive will look at the podcast episodes you are already producing to make sure brand new people not only get the message you want, but also that the “intangibles” of your brand are passed along as well.

You’ll get some insight, so keep a pencil and paper handy as you listen. And feel free to hit the rewind button as necessary.

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.

I made a joke on Twitter earlier this morning that back in 2004 when someone said “How can I listen to your podcast?”, you'd tell them to download some software and then get them the RSS feed but don’t click on the RSS feed, and then give that RSS feed to the software they installed, and that software would then download the latest episode of your show show, and then could  transfer that episode onto their mobile device so they could listen. Which was kind of a pain.

In 2005, Apple started listing podcasts inside of iTunes, and it was slightly less complicated for the next 13 years, but still a process.

But now, in early May 2019, when someone asks “How can I listen to your podcast?”, you can just tell them to Google it.

Seriously.

If you google “podcast pontifications”, you will see, right there in Google's SERP for that query, play options for the three most recent episodes of my show. No need to visit my website first.

But what I've noticed (and remember this is very early in this release) is something subtle and interesting. Best of all, it relates to the theme of “podcasting things I’ve changed my mind about” I’ve been pursuing this week.

When you google “podcast pontifications”, you should get my domain and website -- PodcastPontification.com -- as the first listing. Underneath that listing, you'll see sub-listings playable recent episodes. After that, you’ll see a bunch of other pages/sites that Google displays, like Stitcher, Spotify and a bunch of other ones. That’s how Google works, giving you lots of choices, but with the best (?) first.

When I did something similar for my clients’ podcasts, I noticed something different. While episodes are showing in the SERP, those episodes aren’t sub-listed under with the primary websites for my clients. Often times, it’s the show’s Apple Podcasts listing in the SERP that has the episodes listed below. Why is that happening, my clients are sure to ask.

Here's what I think is happening. I think that Google is looking for a dedicated website -- not just a web page on an existing website -- for the podcast.

If I’m right (and again, it’s very early), I’m now going to even more strongly communicate to my clients the importance of establishing a domain and dedicated website their podcasts.

Not that the website has to be extensive, mind you. You don't have to go through the trouble of building an entire website or creating per-episode pages on that new domain. If you look at my site, PodcastPontifications.com, you’ll notice it's a one-page website. It’s a single page, and it doesn’t even link to all of my episodes. My episodes on a totally different domain -- podcastpontifications.libsyn.com -- that's generated by my podcast media host, Libsyn.

To test this theory, I did a little searching on popular podcasts Choiceology, a fantastic podcast by Charles Schwab, doesn’t have a dedicated website. Instead, they -- like a lot of my clients -- use an internal page of their well-established website as the podcast’s “home”. The first listing on Google’s SERP is indeed the internal page for the podcast, but there are no episodes associated with that listing. Instead, they are associated with the Apple Podcast listing of the show.

But with Freakonomics, the episodes in the SERP are associated with the primary domain, as the name of the site matches the name of the podcast. And that’s just two. Try it and see what you get.

The new recommendation I'm going back to all my clients with is to build a dedicated website for their show. Even a single page website will do the trick. Knowing how Google works, this makes perfect sense.

But a caveat that bears multiple repeats: We're not looking at the final implementation. Heck, with Google, there’s no such thing as a final implementation. But remember that this new world was dropped on us within the last 12 hours or so. It's going to change quite a lot.

But still, it's a really good idea for your podcast to have its own website. Even if that website is a single page. That's better than having a page on an existing website, even if that website has lots of domain history and lots of authority. Don’t take that page down. But it sure seems like you need to have a different website on a separate domain that matches the name of your show. Full stop.

Who knows what's going to happen next with this fun little wrinkle Google has put in the podcasting world. In a good way!

I know it's tough to keep up with these changes. If you need help keeping up with these changes and the ones just around the corner, get in touch with me. I am happy to help you with that: [email protected]. You can go to PodcastLaunch.pro to see a list of all the services I offer to my clients.

I'll see you on Monday for 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.

Stats are important. They tell you how well your business is functioning. Podcasts also have stats. They exist to ensure your podcast is functioning properly.

At least that’s the theory. In practice, business owners with podcasts probably aren’t getting the right picture by looking at the stats of their podcast. Allow me to explain.

This week, I'm doing a whole series of episodes that cover things I used to think were best practices but have since changed my mind and my approach. The ability to quickly changing one's mind is important in an industry that is as fast-moving as podcasting.

Today, we recheck our assumptions about podcast statistics and the story the tell for your business-focused podcast.

Podcasters like us rely on the podcast the statistics we get from our podcast hosting company. I used to spend a lot of time -- probably way too much time -- looking at stats for my shows as well as the stats for the show's my firm produces on behalf of our clients.

And if I'm being honest, I still spend too much time doing that. But I'm getting better. In fact, I haven't reported stats to my clients for about three months now. It used to provide rather extensive reports for each client, pulling down information from the hosting company and re-formatting said data in a way I felt was valuable to my clients. I’d even provide “benchmark” numbers so they could compare their podcast success against all other podcasts.

I’m not doing that anymore for one simple reason: it’s data puke.

There’s a real disconnect between what podcast stats tell us and what business-focused podcasters really want/need to know. And as I’ve said previously, IAB 2.0 compliant stats won’t help the owners of most business-focused podcasts. Note also that I'm not complaining about the accuracy of current stats (though I do have some questions about the accuracy). Remember that IAB stands for the Internet Advertising Bureau. They exist so advertisers can get an accurate counting of downloads to measure the reach of their ads. Well… none of my clients run advertisements. All of my clients are business-focused. They're using their podcast to influence people in an effort to (hopefully) cause, at some point, a business outcome. And while you could make an argument that more people listening to a podcast will create the opportunity for more business outcomes… I feel that’s a bit of a stretch. And a bit too obfuscated.

I admit that I’m struggling to find the answer to this. I'm trying to get to is a set of universally acceptable metrics that tell the businesses behind these podcasts how they're doing, and how those metrics directly impact their business.

But that metric doesn’t exist. Yet.

I would love to be able to tell my clients how many listeners they have. But I can’t. I can tell them how many downloads their show received. But that's a download, not a listen. And just because an episode was downloaded, it doesn't mean it was listened to. We can get actual listen-numbers from Apple Podcasts and Spotify. But those platforms only represent a sample of listeners, not all listeners.

Worse, this listener/consumption reporting is “black boxed”. We don't understand how what the methodologies are behind the reporting beyond some very vague explanations.

What I learned from the dozen years or longer I spent running advertising agencies is this: you only measure the things you are trying to influence.

So what metrics are business-focused podcasts trying to change? Maybe it’s getting their current customer base listening to the show. Great. But you have to understand how are they trying to implement that great idea. Are they sending out emails to their existing customer base? If so, you can track click-thrus. But what about the people who don’t click but instead just search for the show in their favorite podcast app? Do we have to do a brand-lift study? Decisions… decisions.

Here’s my advice: If you're examining metrics that you really can't change, you're going to be really, really frustrated. You won’t have an understanding of why the numbers go up and then go down. You won’t know what you did with your show that influenced those fluctuations. So maybe… stop?

And now I need your advice because clearly, I’m not solving this on my own. Maybe you've an idea on how to tackle this problem? It’s quite possible that I'm too close to this problem.

What’s your solution? Reach out to me [email protected] reaches me. You can find me on Twitter at @evoterra. I would love to continue on with this conversation. I'll keep working on it. I'll keep pounding away.  

And in the meantime... I shall be back tomorrow with 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.

Typically, consistency is important when producing a podcast. And when someone -- subscriber, casual listener, or first-timer -- hears your work, it needs to grab them right away. But what they are listening to can't be a mystery, so you need to "intro" each episode.

This week, I'm exploring elements of podcasting where I've had a change of approach. The ability to change your mind and your implementation is quite important in the fast-moving medium of podcasting.

Back in the early days of podcasting, we were all doing we were taking from the world around us -- TV and radio. That led to many early podcasters going with the "canned intro" approach. We'd write some compelling (?) copy and then have a professional (?) voiceover actor narrate that for us. We'd produced it and then drop it in at the front of each episode. Some were short. Most were terribly long.

Others took a different approach, choosing to do a "fresh" intro. Often times this wasn't much more than "My name is Bob. You're listening to my podcast. My guest today is..." And that style is still around today.

Which is better? Well, my opinion has recently shifted. Back in 2016 when I jumped back into podcasting, but this time as a consultant with clients looking for me for advice on what to do, my advice was old-school: Write an intro and can that intro so that you've a consistent experience that meets your listener's expectations.

But lately I've been changing my tune, and now I'm recommending my new clients take a "fresh" approach. My reasons for making this shift are twofold:

1. If you listen to a lot of podcasts you'll hear the trend is definitely moving towards shorter intros. Getting people to the "meat" of content quicker is a smart move.
2. Many new podcasts are eschewing professional voiceover talent in favor of the natural voice of the host or hosts of the program.

So because of that clear trend, I have been recommending my new clients record a "fresh" intro for each episode.

But there's a challenge with that.

Several episodes ago I talked about the similarities between a hoagie sandwich and a podcast. Specifically, I called out that the way people eat a hoagie is very different than the way that a hoagie was made. And it's the same thing for a podcast. The way people consume a podcast is linear. But the best podcasts aren't made linearly.

But back to the challenge. When doing a live fresh intro... it kind of encourages the bad behavior of narrating the fresh intro and then introducing your guests in the same take. And since you're already narrating those two things, you might as well kick out the interview with the guest in the same session, right?

Wrong. That's lazy. Yeah, it's faster, but it's not better in many many cases in many cases. It's still better for you to compartmentalize and focus on each segment of your show, even if those segments are largely invisible to the audience.

The problem is this: it's the podcaster's voice on all three segments. And all three have all been recorded discreetly and at different times.

The "canned" intro is your voice six months ago or six years ago. Maybe you had a cold. Or you have a cold now. Maybe you had a totally different microphone. Maybe you recorded that in your grandmother's closet. That segment has your voice from six months or six years ago.

Then the listener hears your "today" voice as you open the episode with whatever info you want to give them before you get into the meat of the program. It's very difficult to get the sound of this version of your voice to match how you sounded six months or six years ago when you recorded the canned intro.

And after that, there's yet another totally different version of your voice as you interview your guest (assuming you have guests). And actually, this version of your voice should sound different, because you're talking to your guest and not the listener of your program.

So now you have three versions of your voice. That's just weird and can be a bit off-putting to your listeners.

The new way of doing things is to get rid of canned intros all together and do them fresh -- as fresh as you can on each individual episode. This means there are at most only two versions of your voice on the episode (again, if you're interviewing a guest). And that's very OK.

Go fresh with your intro and make it roll in nicely into your opening segment. Make it short and sweet, giving out just the information that a new listener needs to know what they are in for. You don't have to sell your entire podcast archive at this point. Your goal is to get them to keep listening past the intro and setup.

That's the growing trend, and that's what I'm doing now with all of my clients. I think you should do that too.

And if you need some help with your podcast; consider my firm? We launch podcasts for businesses all around the globe and keep them running. Go to https://PodcastLaunch.pro to see all the services we currently offer our clients. And if you have questions or something special, email me at [email protected].

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.

Time-shifted audio is what podcasting was built upon. We didn't want to be stuck with the appointment-based mentality of radio, television, or other media that require the listener of the content and the producer of the content to be on the same schedule.

Because this is podcasting! People subscribe to the show and then our content automatically downloads, leaving it up to the listener to consume the content on their schedule. At least that's the theory.

Since starting my consultancy, I have been recommending my clients select set day and time for their episodes to release. Unless they have a compelling reason not to, that time is usually midnight local time for the producer. Assuming a good portion of their listener base is on the same or adjacent time zones, putting a file out at midnight allows time for the file to propagate down to all of the devices all of the applications for all subscribers. When the audience wakes up in the morning, there is a fresh episode of the podcast waiting for their listeners to consume.

That has been the advice I've given for a very long time. But maybe that advice needs to change.

Several things have happened recently that are causing me to change my opinion. One is the proliferation of shows that are time-of-day dependent. The Daily, for example, comes out every weekday morning while you're sleeping. That makes sense because the New York Times is a newspaper, and papers tend to come out in the wee hours of the morning.

But there are also some new shows releasing episodes timed for evening drive-time. Ride Home Media produces both a tech- and a politics-based show to get you caught up on all the niche news you missed while you were working. Episodes of both shows are out by 5:30 pm Eastern Time.

The third trend is the time it takes for a new podcast episode to be available to subscribers. That used to take some time, so making sure your episode was ready as soon as listener wakes up and looks to their phone for content was smart. But with the proliferation of new podcast listening apps and updates to existing ones, you've probably seen "new episode available" notifications from your listening app of choice throughout the day. What took hours before is now only taking single-digit minutes.

That's powerful. Especially when you remember that just because someone is subscribed to your podcast, it doesn't mean they're actually listening to your episodes. Many of your subscribers rely on that little notification to remind them to check out the recent episode to see if it's worth downloading.

Maybe time of day is much more important than I thought? To help you answer that question, I have three "tests" for your show.

1. Is the source and/or content you're producing time-dependent? I mentioned the Ride Home shows earlier. Those shows gather news that happened throughout the day, so those episodes need to go out at the end of the day. If the hosts waited until first thing the next morning, they'd be talking about yesterday's news. 
2. When is the audience in the right mood to listen to your show? Take the great and very weird show Desert Oracle as an example. The only time I listen to it is when I'm taking a late-night drive. It's just too weird for daytime use. Think about your listeners for a moment and think about when they might be in the mood to listen to your show.
3. Can you take advantage of a buzz factor from those podcast app notifications? Few people are getting notifications at midnight, because the phone and the person are both asleep. Which is why many of us wake to something like 17 notices of new episodes every Monday. All of those are lost to the din. Zero buzz factor.

So we need to rethink our approach. By the way, email marketers know this. I think we need to start learning from them. Time-of-day and day-of-release are going to become more important to more podcasters in the future. So much for time-shifted media production.

If you think you might need help understanding that for your show or your company, check out PodcastLaunch.pro or you can email me at [email protected]. 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.

Facebook's pivot to privacy and 1-to-1 communication will clearly impact your podcast's presence on Facebook. 

In this short episode, I discuss how podcasters will have to adapt to this new world. It's based not purely on conjecture, but experiences I had with the Bangkok Podcast when we embraced 1-to-1 communications with our listeners... sort of on accident.

My recommendations focus on a single theme: this idea of a more intimate relationship was originally and today remains a key differentiator between podcasting -- where the first three letters stand for "personal on demand" -- and broadcasting (which follows a more spray-and-pray approach).

So while others decry the loss of organic discovery and rail against the need to pay their way to more views and engagement, you can start refocusing your Facebook approach as you prepare for this inevitable future.

And if you need help analyzing these changes for your business-focused show, I'm here to help.

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.

If I'm feeling exhausted keeping up with all the changes in podcasting, pontificating about how our industry will change in the future... you must be near catatonic. Sorry about that.

In this short episode, I share some good news for all working podcasters: Disruption of an industry -- and yes, the podcasting industry is clearly going through a period of disruption -- impacts the industry. Not the end user.

So while there is good reason to vie for an early-mover position in some cases, most of the changes I talk about every day on this program won't come to fruition for months. 

You have time to breathe.

But you don't have time to be complacent. So I give you two tips:

• Don't stop reading. You can't play ostrich. For if you do, you'll be left trying to sort out six months of changes. Keep reading. Just don't react.

• Get your house in order. Some of these disruptions will likely cause you to change your processes and procedures in the future. You need a comprehensive understanding of what you are doing -- and why -- to evaluate the new best practices that will come out of all this.

But also... breathe. :)

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.

History hasn't been good to free podcast hosting companies. But for some startups, hosting podcast files for free is an integral part of their business model. 

That's causing old-school podcasters to scratch their heads. Because the conversation is shifting away from "how do I make money with my podcast?" to "how can I discover a business model with where I subsidize the costs of media hosting as part of my overall service offering?" 

In this short episode, I'll quickly discuss three new(ish) companies who've taken that approach and what that means to the health of the podcasting ecosystem as a whole. 

(Hint: It's a very, very good time to blend podcasting and startup culture!)

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 purging in the dietary sense is very bad for you, a good purge every now and again can be just the thing you need to do as a podcaster.

In this short episode, I pontificate on the following points of podcast purging:

• Your listening list, going so far as suggesting you create "The Seven"
• The communities you belong to, with a call to seek out new ones to join
• The social connections you've made, which helps ensure you're fighting group-think
• Your entire "process" of podcasting, getting rid of outdated thinking and getting you to the new baseline

I personally do a purge this way a couple times a year. And it's time once again! 

(Note: Do not purge Podcast Pontifications from your listening list. I mean all the other podcasts, clearly.)

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 Luminary fights off a flood of takedown requests, podcasters have to ask themselves how they feel about having their content automatically added to new products and services. More importantly, podcasters need to take action to ensure that their rights -- their copyrights -- are explicitly stated*.

Since I'm not a lawyer, I asked one. Ruth Carter is an IP attorney and personal friend. It was from my conversation with Ruth that I give the following advice:

Go add this to the tag in your RSS feed right now: © 2019** by [Rights Holder Name]. All rights reserved.

No, this isn't a guaranteed fix to keep Bad Actors from grabbing your feed and adding it to their own directory service. It's incumbent upon services/directories to respect copyright. (Sadly, I don't think most do today. But with all this brouhaha, future services may start.)

No, this doesn't stop you from submitting your show to new services/directories as they come about. The fact that you, the rights holder, go through the submission process on that new service/directory acts as a license you are granting to that service (though Ruth recommends you read the click-wrap agreement, which is just what you'd expect an attorney to say.)

While I recommend taking this action -- I just did it for my shows and all of my firm's clients' shows -- there will be a business impact. Namely, if precedence is set so apps/services/directories decide it is in their best interest to secure licenses with each rights holder... that's going to slow things down. Big time.

And that's a topic worthy of future discussion, don't you think?

* Ruth reminds me that, at least in the US, copyright applies even if the rights-holder doesn't expressly state them. Still, stating them is good practice, so do it.

** If you're looking at this in the future, adjust the year accordingly. And yes, you need to change the year on Jan 1 of every year. Dumb, I know. 

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.