Podknows Business Network

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Podknows Business Network episodes

August 21 Smart CMOs Take This 90-Second B2B Podcasting Test
Everybody puts their energy into the open. By the time you reach the end, the interview's done, the narration's delivered, the energy's gone, and somebody has to say something to close it out. Low vibe. Not going to convert.
I'm Neal Veglio, and in this episode of B2B Podcasting Insights, I'm breaking down the three mistakes that turn a perfectly good episode into a dead end — and the two tests that tell you within seconds whether your ask is real or just polite noise.
We look at why asking a 20-minute listener for a 30-minute call is the equivalent of proposing marriage in a LinkedIn comment, why "follow, rate and review" is a favour to you dressed up as help for them, and why the reason your call to action isn't landing probably isn't the offer at all — it's that you're asking for a rung four action on the end of a rung one episode.
There's also the placement point almost nobody gets right: the strongest moment for your ask is roughly two-thirds in, not in an outro most listeners never reach.
Plus a Founder FAQ from Tom in Norwich, who can hear himself rambling and wants to know how to tighten it up — and a quick tip that will turn an hour of hunting for good takes into about ten minutes of clicking.
Useful links
Podknows Website https://podknows.co.uk
B2B Podcast Growth Diagnostic https://podknows.co.uk/diagnostic
Podcast Audits https://podknows.co.uk/audits
Leave me a voicemail question https://podknows.co.uk/voicemail
Or email me directly: [email protected]
Timestamped summary
00:00 Is this how your podcast episodes end? 00:12 "Wherever you get your podcasts" is not a call to action 01:10 Welcome, and what we've built over the last few episodes 01:36 Mistake one: the availability announcement 02:52 Mistake two: the size mismatch 03:25 Mistake three: the favour dressed up as an ask 04:21 Fifty episodes in? Stop asking for vanity metrics 05:18 What a call to action actually is 05:45 The 90-second test 06:10 The better off test 06:58 The ladder of loyalty: four rungs, four different asks 08:51 Why your call to action isn't landing 09:05 One ask per episode, and where to put it 10:12 Say it twice and spell it 11:18 Recap, and my own email ask 12:05 Founder FAQ: Tom in Norwich on rambling 14:54 Quick tip: the three-second pause that saves your edit 16:42 Final thoughts and your homework 17:37 Next time: how you'll know if any of it worked
18 min
August 17Your Podcast Has A Second Name. Someone Else Might Own It.
I typed my own podcasting agency's brand name into Google. Spelled wrong, completely on purpose, because transcription services keep hearing "Podknows" and writing "Podnose."
Something was living there. A whole podcast network. Twenty-odd shows. Says it's been going since 2013.
I was already writing the angry LinkedIn post.
And then I did the thing I keep telling everybody else to do. And for a good few minutes back there, I was the villain in this story.
Which is where the actually useful bit starts.
Because the mistake I made wasn't the accusation. That was just ego pain.
The mistake was made years earlier, and I suspect you have made exactly the same one without ever finding out.
In this episode: why nobody discovers a podcast the way we imagine they do, what actually happens when a bloke at a barbecue in Fareham recommends your show out loud, and the reason you will never, ever see this problem in your analytics.
And then one thing to go and do about it, which takes ninety seconds and costs nothing.
Chapters
01:02 Obviously I checked the name
02:42 I was the villain in this story
03:36 Your brand has two names
04:31 How people actually hear about podcasts
05:23 The listener you'll never know you lost
07:26 What do you do about it?
08:17 Why a trademark won't save you from this
08:57 Podmastery Community Member trailer
The bloke I accused of nothing:
Podnose, an independent UK entertainment podcast network founded in 2013 by George Grimwood. A couple of the shows are genuinely good but the majority of them seem to no longer be publishing. podnose.com
Podmastery goodies you can grab:
Treat yourself to a PodmasteryPodcast Audit
Founding member doors for thePodmasteryPodcast Communityopen soon
Everything else:podmastery.co
11 min
August 14 B2B Podcasting: The Only Listener You Actually Need
If you've got a B2B podcast and you're waiting for the feed to do the work, this episode reframes the whole thing.
Publishing gets the episode into the world.
It doesn't get it into the one pair of ears that matters.
Because your podcast's most valuable listen this year won't come from someone discovering you. It'll come from one prospect, three or four weeks into a decision, who gets sent one specific episode on a Tuesday morning because of something they said on Monday afternoon.
That person doesn't follow your show. They're not on your YouTube channel. They've never seen a single one of your clips. And their one listen is worth more to your business than a thousand downloads.
I'm Neal Veglio, and in this episode of B2B Podcasting Insights I'm finally explaining the secret sauce I hinted at back in episode 44 — why a branded podcast is a joint venture asset between sales and marketing, and why almost every B2B show is quietly stranded between two teams who each think it belongs to the other.
We look at the one document that fixes it (and why it has to live in the CRM, not a marketing folder), why "here's our episodes, help yourself" is a buffet nobody's hungry for, the three-part message that actually gets an episode listened to, why you should timestamp every single send, and why it has to come from sales rather than marketing to work at all.
There's also the loop this creates: sales conversations produce the episodes, the episodes go back into the sales conversations, and the replies tell you which arguments are landing. Which is a far better signal than any dashboard is ever going to give you.
Plus a Founder FAQ from Fiona in Dundee on hating the sound of your own voice, and a quick tip that fixes the flattest thirty seconds of most podcasts.
Useful links
Podknows Website https://podknows.co.uk
B2B Podcast Growth Diagnostic https://podknows.co.uk/diagnostic
Podcast Audits https://podknows.co.uk/audits
Leave me a voicemail question https://podknows.co.uk/voicemail
Or email me directly: [email protected]
17 min
August 14Opinion: Podcasters, You’re The Landlord. The Platforms Are Just Tenants.
Alex Cooper's company Unwell took its first outside investment, from Patrick Whitesell's WTSL, at a $500 million valuation. Every podcast expert on LinkedIn immediately pointed out that this is more than iHeartMedia. I went to check that, because I don't repeat numbers I haven't checked, and I got several different answers from several perfectly respectable financial sources on the same day. Turns out iHeart has multiple classes of share and the best part of $6 billion of debt strapped to its back, so depending which bit you measure you can have whichever number you fancy. It's less a valuation and more a horoscope.
But here's what survives all of that, and it's the bit nobody's saying.
The story doing the rounds is "creator wins, platforms lose."
That's rubbish.
I'll explain why.
In this episode:
— What a humming shed in a field had to do with your career for 100 years
— Why "it's worth more than iHeart" is a number nobody quoting it has checked
— Barstool, Spotify, SiriusXM: three tenancies, one landlord
— The bit where I admit I didn't clock any of this for years
— Why you've been feeling rubbish about yourself on the wrong scoreboard
— One number to look at instead, today
Note:
Unwell has been the subject of reporting this year, including a Vanity Fair investigation, alleging a difficult workplace culture. Cooper disputes it. Nothing in this episode is a comment on that either way — the point here is structural, about who owns what, and it would hold regardless of who the owner turned out to be.
This is Podmastery: Podcasting Opinions — the spinoff from Podcasting Insights. Insights is where I think properly about something. Opinions is where something's happened in the industry and I've got a view.
Podmastery goodies you can grab:
Treat yourself to a PodmasteryPodcast Audit
Founding member doors for thePodmasteryPodcast Communityopen soon
Everything else:podmastery.co
💬 Work with me one-to-one — https://podmastery.co
I'm Neal Veglio, the Podmaster — podcast producer and consultant, 25+ years in radio and audio, founder of Podknows Podcasting.
12 min
August 10Podcasters, should we all boycott Spotify?
Last week I suggested, in a LinkedIn comment, that podcasters should all walk off Spotify together and keep them honest.
Then I went and looked into how you'd actually do it. And that's when the truth of the situation emerged. And OMFG is it a situation.
So this episode was going to be the good news about organising a walkout. Instead it's the honest version of why we can't.
In this episode:
— Where's the button to leave Spotify
— One tap to skip you, a support ticket to go
— The free rider problem, and why strikes need strike funds
— Why the trade bodies can't help with this one
— What happened when Neil Young actually tried it
— My own conflict of interest, stated plainly
— The one call to action worth changing this week
Podmastery goodies you can grab:
Treat yourself to a PodmasteryPodcast Audit
Founding member doors for thePodmasteryPodcast Communityopen soon
Everything else:podmastery.co
15 min
August 07 These are your branded podcast's next four episodes
If you're planning your next few B2B podcast episodes off a content calendar, you're commissioning content that nobody asked for.
That list isn't a commissioning list. It's a list of things that exist.
Listicles. Generic advice aimed at nobody in particular. Ideas that came from a brainstorm rather than from a buyer.
I'm Neal Veglio, and in this episode of B2B Podcasting Insights, I'm handing you the exact framework I use with corporate clients to generate their next four episodes — and I can guarantee not one of them is on your content calendar, even in draft.
Because they don't come from topics. They come from your ideal buyers and what they're actually trying to find out.
We cover the two questions to ask your three most recent clients, why twenty minutes of back-and-forth is worth more than a quarter of planning, and the four-episode sequence that mirrors the order a belief actually changes in — name the problem, kill the cheaper alternative, kill the objection that kills the deals, and make moving forward feel safe.
There's also a worked example using a real listener's business, three more places your next episodes are already hiding, and the reason you'll end up with six episodes rather than four.
Plus a Founder FAQ from Dawn in Stockport on batch recording twelve episodes ahead, and a quick tip that will change the order you do everything in.
Useful links
Podknows Website https://podknows.co.uk
B2B Podcast Growth Diagnostic https://podknows.co.uk/diagnostic
Podcast Audits https://podknows.co.uk/audits
Ideal Client One-Pager (free download) https://podknows.co.uk/ideal-client
Leave me a voicemail question https://podknows.co.uk/voicemail
Or email me directly: [email protected]
Timestamped summary
00:45 Have you written your one winning sentence yet?
01:27 Why generic advice gets generic results
02:46 The framework: start with your three most recent clients
03:08 The two questions that hand you four episodes
04:10 Two spare episodes, and the most undervalued move in B2B podcasting
05:15 Your email inbox is a data goldmine
05:54 The thing you explain every single week is an episode
06:12 "Oh, I hadn't thought about it like that"
06:43 Listen for sentences, not subjects
07:11 They're not content, they're a sequence
07:36 Episode one: name the problem in their own words
08:19 Episode two: kill the cheaper alternative
09:06 Episode three: the objection nobody says out loud
10:17 Episode four: make moving forward feel safe
10:49 Worked example: Jeremy's four episodes
12:34 Publish in order, then gather the feedback
13:18 Where episodes five and six come from
14:02 Your Monday morning action
14:37 Founder FAQ: Dawn in Stockport on batch recording
17:25 Quick tip: write the description before you record
21 min
August 07Opinion: Spotify Now Decides Which Bits Of Your Show Are Worth Hearing
Spotify has secretly built a button that tells your listener which bits of your episode aren't worth hearing.
It's called Skip Ahead. It's in testing, they haven't announced it, and the excellent podcast industry journalist James Cridland broke it on Podnews. One tap and you're past the entire ad break — not fifteen seconds, everything.
The ad still gets delivered to the device, so the impression still counts and the advertiser still pays. They're just encouraging nobody to hear it. Including, in some cases, ads Spotify sold themselves.
That's the industry story and it's been well covered.
This episode is about the bit that hasn't.
This isn't an advertising story. It's a platform applying editorial judgement to the stuff you made.
And then there's the part where I have to be a little bit honest with you - you might have brought this on yourself.
In this episode:
— What Skip Ahead does, and why "you could always skip" doesn't hold up
— Why "we're not affecting ad delivery" is technically true and completely dishonest
— James Cridland on the terms and conditions nobody read
— The membership pitch that got flagged as skippable
— Why your intro is on the list too
— The one thing a machine can never skip
Clip from Podnews Weekly Review with James Cridland and Sam Sethi, used with thanks. Subscribe at weekly.podnews.net — he does the reporting, I just have opinions about it.
Podmastery goodies you can grab:
Treat yourself to a PodmasteryPodcast Audit
Founding member doors for thePodmasteryPodcast Communityopen soon
Everything else:podmastery.co
Stuck on something specific? Get your next podcasting challenge solved one-to-one at podmastery.co
Got your own opinion and want to share? Great! I love hearing from you. Here's where to do it - https://podmastery.co/get-in-touch/
16 min
August 03You Only Ever Have To Make One More Episode
It's stupid o'clock in the morning. You've just finished editing. And instead of feeling good about it, one horrible little thought is living rent free in your head where the zzzzzzs should be: do I have to do this forever?
In this episode I troll the consistency doctrine which the gurus peddle. The show-up-every-week-forever commandment that gets drummed into you from day one, usually by someone whose whole business model is selling you the cure for the anxiety they just handed you.
I also make the case that publishing in seasons is one of the worst ideas going for most indie shows. Not for the reason you'd expect.
Seasons aren't a strategy, they're something else entirely.
Podmastery goodies you can grab:
Treat yourself to a PodmasteryPodcast Audit
Founding member doors for thePodmasteryPodcast Communityopen soon
Everything else:podmastery.co
Stuck on something specific? Get your next podcasting challenge solved one-to-one at podmastery.co
Got your own opinion and want to share? Great! I love hearing from you. Here's where to do it - https://podmastery.co/get-in-touch/
13 min
July 31 B2B Founders: Have You Written Your One Winning Sentence Yet?
If you've got a B2B podcast and you're 30, 40, 60 episodes in without much to show for it, the problem probably isn't your microphone, your cadence or your cover art.
It's that nobody ever wrote the sentence.
Most branded podcasts get built like a content marketing task with tickable boxes. Format, length, weekly or fortnightly, video or not video. All of those are construction details, and construction details are only right or wrong in accordance with a wider plan.
I'm Neal Veglio, and in this episode of B2B Podcasting Insights, I'm walking you through the one winning sentence — the single line that everything else in your podcast should be downstream of, and the reason most B2B shows quietly never get anywhere.
We cover why a mission statement is worse than useless for your buyers, the three-part test that tells you whether your sentence actually works, why "build brand awareness" is a horoscope prediction rather than a job, and why your sales team should be hearing every episode before your feed does.
There's also the bit nobody expects: you don't need to relaunch, and you don't need to bin the back catalogue.
Useful links
Podknows Website https://podknows.co.uk
Ideal Client One-Pager (free download) https://podknows.co.uk/ideal-client
B2B Podcast Growth Diagnostic https://podknows.co.uk/diagnostic
Podcast Audits https://podknows.co.uk/audits
Leave me a voicemail question https://podknows.co.uk/voicemail
Or email me directly: [email protected]
Timestamped summary
01:04 Cadence, length and format are only construction details
02:58 The one winning sentence framework
03:29 What it sounds like in the real world
03:51 The podcast test: can your team say it back?
04:12 Could your podcast ever be proven a failure?
05:02 Name one real buyer
06:19 Where your next episodes actually come from
09:11 Why cadence stops being the issue
10:35 Your sales team should hear it before the feed does
11:27 You don't need to relaunch
12:29 How you'll know it's working
14:02 Founder FAQ: the fear of niching down
17:37 Quick tip: the worst speaker you own
21 min
July 28I Use AI to Make This Show. Here’s the Line I Won’t Cross.
Ninety seconds into another consultant’s podcast, I got the 'shiver'. it wasn't over the mic quality. It wasn't because of bad editing.
It was the words. They were tidy, warm... and hauntingly empty, like a very confident ghost had written the lot.
This episode's about the single line that decides whether AI sharpens your show or hollows it out. Plus a confession I fully expect to get grief for...
Podmastery goodies you can grab:
Treat yourself to a PodmasteryPodcast Audit
Founding member doors for thePodmasteryPodcast Communityopen soon
Everything else:podmastery.co
Stuck on something specific? Get your next podcasting challenge solved one-to-one at podmastery.co
Got your own opinion and want to share? Great! I love hearing from you. Here's where to do it - https://podmastery.co/get-in-touch/
15 min

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