Speaker 1 00:00:05 Hey there. Let's talk about the explosive growth of podcasting throughout the year 2020, and now into 2021. There's so many shows. There's so many podcasts. There are now millions. We can actually say that 2 million plus podcasts out there for folks to choose from. How do you stand out or at the very least, how do you build structure around your show so that you have a chance to stand out, see recording and publishing a podcast is just step one in this sort of game of podcasting. It's everything else you do around the show that is going to make it successful and successes different in everyone's eyes. Everyone has a different objective to their podcasting journey, but it's not just record the episode, upload the episode we're done. And the show is off to the races. I'm going to approach today's conversation, almost like a mini crash course in podcasting.
Speaker 1 00:00:55 It's going to be slightly different. I think then our typical podcast episodes, uh, let us know what you think. Shoot us an email.
[email protected] and let us know what you think about today's episode. You're listening to the audience podcast, your home to stories and lessons for podcasters, looking to take their show to the next level. For people just getting started with podcasting to brands and celebrities monetizing their audio experience. This the audience podcast has it all never missed another show by subscribing at castles.com/subscribe that's cast dose.com/subscribe chapter one, the explosive growth of podcasting. So as I mentioned, there are now 2 million plus podcasts available for us to download, consume, listen, to share. You can see this stat, uh, the place that I like to turn to for just the quick number count is a website called listen, notes.com. This actually might be helpful to you.
Speaker 1 00:01:50 This might be even something you've never heard of before this website, listen, notes.com. It's a great place to search for shows. See some statistics behind shows and naturally find that statistic of how many podcasts there are available at the time that I am recording this. In fact, it was just over 2 million podcasts listed over at listen notes, and you can see that at listen notes.com/datasets/solutions, but here's another tip. If you're not already a subscriber, check out pod news.net. It's a fantastic podcasting news newsletter. And I use this to, uh, start my days, most days consuming all of the, all of what the industry has to offer me, but the folks over there, they recently highlighted Edison research dot coms. Most recent survey of podcasting showing continued growth for podcast consumption. The study reports that 41% or 116 million of us adults 12, and over now listen to podcasts every single month.
Speaker 1 00:02:51 It's a staggering statistic. That's why it's important that we can sort of come up with a process to make sure that our podcast makes it into the, the podcast players of at least in the U S 116 million folks. Now they had an interesting breakdown in this newsletter. And again, please subscribe to pod news.net. They do a fantastic job and then pull out a couple of their comments here based on that number. Again, just in the U S 116 million of us, adults 12 and over here's some of their notes great for reaching young people for the first time, more than half 50, 6% of the 12 to 34 year olds. Now listen to podcasts every month. They form half of the 50% of all monthly podcast consumers. Okay? So if you want to reach young people, or if you're a young person, I no longer qualify, I'll be 40 in a month.
Speaker 1 00:03:41 This is a fantastic medium. And you might already know this is probably why you're already doing this stuff. So you get it there. Next note is no growth from 35 to 50 year olds, 54 year olds. This is an age group not seeing significant growth and actually drop the percentage point. We wonder why my first gut check here is that because of the pandemic, you know, maybe people in this range are the ones that are most affected by the economy, the jobs having to deal with homeschooling now, their, their children. And on the flip side, the children and I listen to more podcasts because now they're home, right? So this is a great way to maybe listen to educational podcasts, but also entertainment podcasts. So maybe that's why we're seeing this flip. I don't know, I'm not a data science researcher, but just pulling from my own experiences with my young children and my friends, young children.
Speaker 1 00:04:28 This is maybe a reason. And they also make this funny little Quip. You're not addictive enough, 162 million listened to podcasts every month, but only 80 million million listen every week. How can we convert more monthly listeners to weekly listener as well, again, very crazy year. And it's hard too, to try to find any kind of rhythm or metric when you have a global pandemic. Again, it's this double-edged sword here. We saw a lot of growth in podcasting because of it, especially private podcasting for brands and organizations, but maybe people are now just, you know, maybe this is something that's going to catch up, right? Maybe now we have this huge rush of people getting interested in a podcast. And now they're, you know, of that 162 million, only half of them listen to weekly. Well, maybe that, that other half will catch up. They sort of dip their toe into podcasts.
Speaker 1 00:05:17 And as they find podcasting more entertaining, at least just from listening, they'll start PL listening every week. So I think w w we'll hopefully see this trend change over time. Again, the idea here is lots of podcasts. Now, over 2 million, lots of people listening again, just in the U S alone, 116 million, how do we stand out? How do we build a process so that we don't fall off the radar chapter two, when it takes us sustain your podcast journey? Okay. So consistency plus audience, this section here, this is the mindset. So if you're not into mindset, just skip it. But there's a lot that has to be said about the mindset of a podcast or because does become work. Everything else that I'm going to mention from here on out is it takes work to make a podcast work, and you have to be willing to invest that.
Speaker 1 00:06:07 Now there's, there's ways to go about this. So you don't sit back and say, Oh, Matt, geez, doing the podcast is already a lot of work. Well, yes, yes it is. And I applaud you for doing it. You've already made the step. You've already made the leap, but in order to keep it going, you have to put in more effort, you have to find and try new things and have the stuff that we'll talk about today. This is just what I would say are the most fundamental pieces you should invest in to get this podcast going. If you're a seasoned podcaster, you might hear some of the things I'm saying, well, yeah, but you also have to do this, that, and the other thing, and I would agree with you. There's a lot of things that you can do. I'm going to highlight the most fundamental pieces you should do, which I found success, and I've helped find other folks success with their podcasts.
Speaker 1 00:06:48 Okay. So mindset sustaining your podcast, keeping this thing going it's fun at first. And then it becomes work number one's consistency. Plus audience, you just having to show up is what's going to generate the audience. Now, if there's the numbers change, depending on who you are as a host, what kind of content you're putting out. But I can guarantee you as somebody who's been doing this for eight years, podcasting and YouTube, over a thousand plus pieces of content, which is kind of small and the creator's journey for a lot of these big craters that are out there, staying consistent will build that audience. But at the flip side is you have to stay consistent to grow that audience. You can't just give up, you got to find some consistency and the audience will forgive you. You know, your true fans, your super fans, they'll forgive you if you fall off every couple weeks or so, not a big deal, but they want to be there with you.
Speaker 1 00:07:38 They want to hear this content. So staying consistent, evolve your premise over time, you can kind of see me doing that here with this audience podcast, as I shape the intro and try to meet more of you in the audience and understand what you're looking for out of the show, but evolving your premise over time. So there's lots of schools of thought of you have to have a great premise before you get into a show. You have to have all of this stuff sussed out. Look, I mean, I agree with that. You have to have a goal, which we're going to talk about in about half a second. And then you have to have this premise of what makes your show different. I interview entrepreneurs. Okay. But entrepreneurs, from what category, from what business do they have maybe particular products that they sell, right? Golf ball entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs that, you know, just create golf balls and maybe for what the PGA for high school leagues like, where's that, where's that line really getting hyper-focused on your premise so that people know when they tune in, this is the content that they want.
Speaker 1 00:08:33 Fantastic episode that was just released two episodes ago. I think from when you are hearing, this is my interview with chip close restaurant strategy.com. You know, here's a gentleman that's producing a show to help other restaurant owners and specific restaurant owners, not only through the pandemic, but obviously just in restaurant marketing and growing restaurant in general. So hyper-focus, and he could even maybe even double down on people who just make burgers. I don't know, like he could get even deeper. Number three, setting, measurable goals, just pick a goal. I know no one wants to hear the gold part. Just pick a goal before you start is in the amount of downloads. Is it you just getting four episodes out in a month just to have something you don't even have to write it down. I won't even stress you out about that. Just think about it.
Speaker 1 00:09:18 What's that goal for me, it's it's email subscribers, which we'll talk about in a moment to me, that means that if I'm verbally telling people to subscribe to my newsletter and they're doing it, I can kind of measure that. And I feel good because if they took action, I know I have whatever it is. 10 listeners who took action this month, a hundred listeners that took action this month. And I look at my downloads, I see them going up and that's great. But of those listeners who are the ones that are really taking actions, and that's how I get my, my North star for, okay, the show's doing well, right? Moving in a direction where things are going. And even folks listening to this, you listening to this, I see you
[email protected]. I see you listening to our private podcast, right? So I see all these things in motion.
Speaker 1 00:10:07 And that's how I measure the goals. Chapter three, the fundamental parts to your marketing channel. Okay. This is like a typical question. I literally just answered this question this morning, which is why I'm actually recording this podcast because it struck me that I haven't graded a type of content piece of content like this. So what are the fundamental parts you need to market your podcast to stand out against those 2 million plus to get a groove, going to build a process at the very minimum, I'm going to say you need a website or a landing page for your podcast. At the very minimum, you want to have something that you can point to it's, you know, it's great that you're going to produce a podcast is great. You've made that leap. Having a website or landing page is just something that you can point people to so they can listen to past episodes.
Speaker 1 00:10:56 Really that's that's the key to it is the give a potential listener, the opportunity to go into your back catalog of content and listen to what else you've produced. Because you know, you could just tell somebody, I mean, if you said, well, I don't even want a website, Matt, you could just tell people to find you on iTunes, right? You create a Castle's account. You start uploading your podcasts here. You don't need a website. You could just tell people to search for you on iTunes, Spotify, Google play, you know, wherever you want to submit your podcast to. And by the way, castles has a nice, clean, simple landing page for your podcast. So you can do it here for free. You don't need to go out and build a website. But having that website I know was obvious for most is going to be a place where people can consume that past content, learn more about you, and then expand it into part two of chapter three, which is what I said before.
Speaker 1 00:11:43 Build an email list. This can be your goal. You know, Apple is changing, which if you're, if you're, if you watch my YouTube Casos YouTube channel castle, youtube.com/casos. I just did a video on this is changing the podcast, subscribe button. It used to say subscribing, and everyone would say subscribe to my podcast. Well, it doesn't say that on Spotify or Google as, as, as follow. So now Apple is going to change it to follow. So lots of us now are going to be saying, follow our podcast. I break down some of this stuff in the, in that recent video, if you want to, if you want to go watch it on the Castle's YouTube channel, but having an email list, having an email subscribe page is of utmost importance to have it on your website, because then you can verbally, like I say, castles.com/subscribe. You can go there, join the email list, join our private podcasts or whatever else we might have to offer.
Speaker 1 00:12:31 So these two go hand in hand, you don't need it. You can just sign up for a free MailChimp account and have a list point people to, but that list is very important for me, that that says people are taking action. And the third one here that goes hand in hand at you guess that it's attaching a blog to your website, like having a home base. This is what we're getting at here in this chapter three, the fundamental parts of your marketing channel, having a home base to point people to, to peruse archive, to listen to past episodes, to sign up to an email newsletter and a blog. I know it's, you know, if you've already made the technical leap to get a podcast, I'd be like, Oh man, you're asking me into a blog too. Again, we'll link up the, uh, the YouTube video that I did on our press plugins.
Speaker 1 00:13:11 Seriously, simple podcasting plugin is fantastic for what's known as SEO search engine optimization, which is a practice that goes hand in hand with blogging. If you're turning to me and saying, Matt, look, I am in the restaurant industry and I'm doing a restaurant podcast about donuts. Is there a restaurant for donuts? Do you call a restaurant donuts restaurants, or you just call it a bakery? I dunno. And you say, I'm looking for more listeners. I'm looking for listeners. I dunno, in the New York area or the Boston area and where I'm from, I would say, well, first and foremost, have other bakeries on your show. Who's who are making donuts in the Boston area. But also if you made a blog post about the top 10 donuts in the, in the Boston area, that is a fantastic way to drive traffic. It could be a podcast episode that you do called the top 10 donuts.
Speaker 1 00:13:59 And you put that in a blog post, you write up some content around this podcast episode, you have a transcription of your podcast episode. These things are all connecting the dots. Not only are you creating a blog post, that's going to sit in search engine land, and people are going to places like Google and bang and all these other search engines, duck, duck go, they're going to crawl that. They're going to consume that content. They're going to index you. But for the new listener, you know, when your share your podcast episode, you got to remember that not everyone has time to listen to your podcast, but maybe just maybe they see your article of the top 10 donuts in the Boston area. And they click it and they read it and they skim through it. And they say, yes, I love chocolate frosted. I will someday come back to this podcast and listen to their, their future episodes.
Speaker 1 00:14:48 It's not always about a one-to-one. You put out a piece content and you'll, you'll get 10 subscribers. Sometimes it takes 10 pieces of content to get one subscriber and a blog plus SEO, fantastic for growing your marketing channel, chapter four, working towards additional content. So in the same vein of content creation, which is what you're doing when you're creating a podcast is you can create original content on YouTube, or you can repurpose your existing podcast on YouTube. This is like one of the top questions that I always get here at Casos, by the way, if you're on our growth plan and above, you can automatically send your podcast episodes to YouTube. Now it'll just be the audio file. You pick the image, generally, it's your podcast cover art. So it doesn't play anything. You know, there's no animation. It'll just, you know, show your, let's say podcast, cover art, but it plays the episode.
Speaker 1 00:15:39 Fantastic way to, to knock it out of the park with just one upload, it goes to, you know, you're, you're satisfying two locations. You're publishing your podcasts and you're getting a YouTube video out of it. Or you create original YouTube videos, you know, which you see at youtube.com/casos. These are fantastic ways to support the podcast. I mentioned videos here. Hopefully you go and click and watch some of them over there. And in those videos, I'm referencing the podcast here. So you get this back and forth. This ping-pong effect. And this is where the rubber really meets the road to those who want to see their podcast succeed. Reminder, lots of work. Yes. And I'm not even, you don't even have to do this from day one. This is something you can work your way towards again, but if you're doing this repurpose podcasts or YouTube, I mean, we do make it super simple to publish it to YouTube.
Speaker 1 00:16:26 So there's not a lot of effort there other than having that service plan, but this is the stuff that really makes or breaks and starts to build the audience. You get some folks who like to watch your content, others who like to listen, and then a healthy combination of the mix. That's me as a consumer. I love video and audio. I love them both. Number two, building community around your show, through a Facebook group or something like a discord server is very popular. These days. Once you start to build the audience up, it doesn't have to be a massive audience. Sometimes community members aren't even listening to the podcast. Maybe they were invited into the community by other podcast listeners, and you start to grow this nice, healthy, organic community around your show. Now. So I do this with, we have podcasts hackers on Facebook, over 2000 members there, but I do this with a local podcast, which, you know, gets a fraction of the audience listening that this podcast does.
Speaker 1 00:17:22 And there's maybe a hundred or so people in that Facebook group, but it's just for my local area. In a hundred people in a Facebook group is, is kinda nice. You know, it's not too loud, it's not too busy. There's just enough people to share things with and have that community interaction. But they all came there through the, through the show, through my local podcasts of me promoting that there. And that's just another Avenue for me to reach out and connect with others and get their feedback. Number one, but also, Hey, there's another episode out of the, of this local podcasts. So you get this nice little injection of, of listenership right away. It takes a lot of work, uh, managing the community, but it pays off in the long run. Number three, live streaming and social audio to push interaction and awareness. Uh, you've heard Craig and I on this podcast.
Speaker 1 00:18:06 Talk about live streaming, the value of last framing and our take on social audio. Look, these are fantastic moments in time. That's the way that I see them. I don't really see them, you know, depending on the structure of the content with your live stream. I see these as great moments to be live, to build awareness around an event. Timing is great. You get to chat with people live. I mean, live streaming. You get that live chat that people can talk to you directly as you're, whatever displaying things on screen or demonstrating something in social audio, social audio, like a clubhouse, you can pull people in and they can actually talk to you, which is, which is great. But to me, I like to use these as moments to build interaction and build awareness, right? This is an evergreen content or foundational content by any stretch of the imagination, but it definitely adds to growing that audience, chapter five promotional pieces.
Speaker 1 00:18:58 So number one, highlighting clips or audio gram for your podcast or from your podcast are phenomenal ways to highlight those awesome moments of your show that you can share out to the world. Now, remember, before I was saying in that donut blog, post example, maybe there's people who don't want to listen to the podcast right away. They don't have time. They're on a train. Well, maybe not now, but as work kind of continues to open up, they're commuting, they're doing something. They don't have time to listen to a half hour podcasts. If they see some texts, they can scan through it, same thing with audiograms or pulling out clips of your show that you share on social media, give them that great stuff that happens right. In that episode, they can punch in. They can hear it in 30 seconds and they can either just like it and say, yes, that was an awesome piece of content. They can read
Speaker 2 00:19:45 A reshare, it retweet it, whatever they're doing, whatever
Speaker 1 00:19:47 Social platform you're using, or eventually they'll become a subscriber. Even it's something in passing. They were like, wow, that was a really cool quote. I'm going to make sure I searched for that podcast later and subscribed to it. By the way, I just did a video about this as well. On our YouTube channel castles will create audio grams for you on our growth plan and above. So it makes this part super simple. And it's great. It's a fantastic way to promote the show. Step two, this is almost like a, or part one a or one B I should say that goes hand in hand with us. This is one of the things I see. A lot of my peers in my peers lacking in is promoting on social media. It's not just copy paste, you know, link to your episode and just throw it on LinkedIn, throw it on Twitter, throw it on Facebook.
Speaker 1 00:20:29 To me, these are opportunities to promote your show with different headlines for different contexts. I mean, we only get one chance at titling a podcast or titling a blog post. Sure. You can go back and change it, but many people don't because they've sat and they've thought about going to be the most impactful show, title, or headline for this blog post. And that's fantastic that you've spent time. I mean, there's, I think there's like some kind of joke that you spend more time on the headline than you do actually on the content because the headline is what people see first, before they even get to the content. So it has to be a catchy headline, but social media allows you to promote infinitely to the point where you don't drive your audience crazy. But this is your chance to try different headlines for your, for your episode, try different teaser content, have some good visuals that go along with it, you know, on Twitter, pull a quote for one tweet, change the headline on LinkedIn, right?
Speaker 1 00:21:26 Try to find what works in different contexts, right? LinkedIn is kind of like that obvious thing that people are there for more, I don't know, professional setting. So if you change the headline to read something that's more businessy, more career focused, maybe you get a better click through rate, better listenership through LinkedIn than if it were on Facebook, that kind of thing. So give yourself a chance to continue to promote on social. Don't just do it once you have to do it, the healthy cadence without driving everybody crazy, but change the headlines have good visuals, maybe some teaser content, mix it up. This could be a whole episode on promoting on social, just letting you know that, that these are ways that you can keep things fresh on social. And number three on the promotional pieces of this, this chapter here, look at the end of the day, the number one way.
Speaker 1 00:22:14 And this is something that might is, is kind of out of your control, but not at the same time is guest appearing on other shows just like SEO and ranking to be the first on Google or something like that. A lot of it has to do with how many links you have going back to your, your website, still the number one way to grow your show is to appear on other podcasts and have people on your podcast as well. Right? So you have this sort of mix, this Venn diagram of, uh, of audiences overlapping, right? Still hands down the best way to promote it. And this isn't something that you, you know, this is not like creating a, an audio clip or changing a tweet or having good SEO on your blog is something where you have to show up, knock on somebody's door, get on their podcast, have a great show.
Speaker 1 00:22:55 And then hopefully people on that side of the fence come over to your show and become listeners as well, but still hands down the funnel, phenomenal way to promote your podcast amongst the 2 million of podcasts that are available, chapter six back of the house optimization. So lots of stuff goes into podcasting. We've been talking about just like the marketing side of it, the stuff that goes out to the audience, we didn't talk about audio editing or actually creating the podcast today. So there was all that as well, but there's this back of the house optimization that can really save you time and just streamline things a lot more looking for software that automates a lot of your work is a fantastic place to start. And the lowest hanging fruit there is booking guests or booking time for people to appear on your podcasts. And instead of this jousting match that happens with, with calendars, uh, when can you be a can every third, Tuesday of the month is, you know, seven o'clock between seven and nine.
Speaker 1 00:23:49 Like none of that stuff. I use a tool called savvy Cal. Again, I did a video on that. That'll be linked up in the show notes as well. So savvy Cal allows somebody to look at a link of your calendar, pick a time that works for them. They can overlay their calendar on it. So it saves you whatever, 10, 15 minutes of email back and forth. But one of the other fantastic things that you can do with savvy Cal, you know, as you can link up your show recording, you know, if you're using zoom or squad cast or something like that. So that saves you time there, you don't have to create that. It'll automatically create it for you. If you want to ask people questions ahead of time, you can set savvy Calip to do that. So that might be a great way to screen your guests and say, Hey, give me the best three moments of your, of this topic that you're great to talk about or your career or whatever, right?
Speaker 1 00:24:32 You can really start to streamline these things, the saving you minutes here and there, which add up to hours throughout the month or the year, you know, depending on how many podcasts you do, savvy Cal fantastic tool for, for calendar booking. Number two, building out a press kit. Once again, have a video on this as well on the YouTube channel, building out a press kit, or press get downloadable or a section of your website. I like Canva because it's free and it's great. It's easy to use canva.com. They even have press kit templates
[email protected] slash cast dose, I didn't see press kit templates. I used the resume template, but either one works and you just build out a little template of, you know, your show, what your show's about, who you are as a host, maybe some of your top shows from your podcast and this saves time.
Speaker 1 00:25:16 It wants you appear on other shows, right? From chapter five guest appearing on other shows, you just send them this. And as a seasoned podcast, interviewer, I would love that. I would love to have a one sheet that just gives me all the information of this person. I'm about to talk to, especially if it's, you know, there's not, there's no rapport there yet. So build out a little press kit, or just even a section on your website where, you know, we can get that information. Number three, make sure your guests shares your old content or excuse me, their, their content, their podcast episodes, and keep old content fresh. So this is something that usually happens after the podcast. Oftentimes can be overlooked. There's not a lot of emphasis behind it or around it. Once you spend the time interviewing a guest, creating that content, creating that 30 minutes, 45 minutes, an hour's worth of content, make sure they share it.
Speaker 1 00:26:05 This is why having nice artwork with your podcast kind of helps. Especially if you create a featured image with maybe their photo on it, their headshot on it. It's nice. And it's got the episode number and it looks cool. They're more apt to share this out on. Let's say their Instagram or something like that, but encouraging them to share this stuff is so, so important. And you should want them to, or they should want to, because you've spent the time creating this content with them, but making sure that they, that they do it after the fact and following up and I've done it. Yes. I've followed up with you with, Hey, I didn't see you share our episode. You mind sharing that episode out there. That'd be great. And then you can do this with the old content too. It's fantastic opportunity to go back into your archive from even a year ago, two years ago, three years ago, rehash that content and say, Hey, look, remember when, remember when I had this interview three years ago, my God, how time has changed, look where they are now, or maybe they've changed directions.
Speaker 1 00:26:57 Maybe you made a prediction and it came true or whatever. So make sure they share it immediately. And don't forget to use that as a back catalog chapter seven, the wrap-up that's it. I do like the structure of that show. Sort of an interesting take a little mini crash course here. So look lots of work, but there are 2 million podcasts that are out there. You need to stand out. You need to make sure that you're giving your show a fair chance to succeed, to give yourself a chance to succeed your brand, your goals, whatever it is, uh, you have to put in the work. You don't have to do it all at once. You don't have to feel overwhelmed. That's the, that's the great thing about creating this artwork is you can take it in pieces. You can take it in pieces so long as you're putting in the effort so long as you want to get better.
Speaker 1 00:27:37 I think a lot of this, a lot of us will have success with our podcasts. Find a process that works, like define that process. No, out of all of these sections I listed today, I pulled out the three most fundamental parts of those sections, but there's a million other things you can do here. It's not just the stuff I said today. Find a process that works for you. Go at it, repeat it. After six months, take a look back and say, did I do this well? Did this feel good? Was this feeling good that I reached my goals? Can I refine this process? Can I add to this process? Okay, now maybe six months in, I finally turned and I say, you know what? I'll start creating original content on YouTube. Now see the audience is growing. They have an appetite for, for new content.
Speaker 1 00:28:16 That's what I'm going to go after. So work on it. It's an EDS. It's constantly in motion. And that's the that's hopefully the biggest takeaway today. There is no perfect blueprint to this. Even though we have a blueprint in academy.castles.com, there is no perfect blueprint of this. You go at it your own way, slice and dice it. You're the artist here. You're the creator. And that's the most important part is putting out what you love and stuff that's achieving. The goals that that you or your brand has set out to achieve. That's it. cassius.com/subscribe. Join the mailing list. Subscribe to the show. Follow the show, man, I get to change that. Follow the show because that's what Apple is going to say. Follow the show. All right. Thanks for listening. Share it on social media. If you can have any questions,
Speaker 0 00:28:55 Send us an email.
[email protected]. Thanks for listening.
