So today we're going to talk about how to succeed in podcasting in 2021.
So Neil night, we've been doing this podcast for, I think
we're coming up on five years.
Actually.
I checked a chartable I think we've been doing this for four
years and nine or 10 months.
Originally we started in Vegas.
Neil's back in Vegas now, ironically, we would do it in do it in his
place and he'd have to turn off the AC and to get really hot.
Yeah.
I personally been doing podcasting for about eight years now, myself.
So we just want to talk about like 20, 21 has changed a little bit.
And so we want to give you a couple of strategies and some hacks.
Neil, you want to go first?
You want me to go first?
Go first, it's funny enough in my new house that I'm building right
now, actually have a podcast room.
There you go.
They added a podcast room.
I might be flying to Neil's place to do it.
Just kidding.
We both have, we both got smarter.
It took us a couple of years to realize that we probably should
have good mix and then that's it.
And we don't need to go to all these podcast studios and things like that.
Yeah.
The first thing is what we realized we were doing
daily episodes are great.
Neil and I, we spend maybe an hour a week or so doing five,
seven minute type videos.
And.
That's a couple of things, five to seven minute podcasts, and then we're
also doing video at the same time.
So we repurposed it and we chop them up as well.
We post them to social.
So there's a couple things in there.
So one if you can do daily aim for daily, cause you get
more reps in there and you're going to compound faster.
The other thing is repurposed.
So right now we're doing this on zoom and we're going to be
repurposing this to other channels as well, because if you're not
going to spend this time, we want to maximize this time.
So those are two things to start off.
I have a lot more and I'm sure Neil does too, but
I'll kick it over to Neil.
Yeah, the other thing I would recommend doing, and I'm going
to focus a lot of this episode on the promotion side while Eric
focuses on things like, mike's how to set things up, et cetera.
But what I've learned.
And this is what we did with our podcast is you got to push it
really hard at the beginning.
So when, push your heart, I'm talking about email
blast social media pushes.
You can try ads.
The biggest thing that's super effective right now in 2021.
And it's really cheap is.
Pay other podcasts for ad spots and the ad spot should
be to follow your podcast.
It's super, super effective.
It's really cheap.
And it has a higher conversion than you probably would think
versus other ad formats because you're not really selling anything.
We're just telling them to go listen to another podcast.
And the other thing that we found that super effective at
the end of every episode, and you don't have to do this.
All the time, but you should do this at least during the beginning, ask
people to rate, review your podcast because the more ratings and the
reviews you have, the higher you're going to climb up on the charts.
Yup.
And so Neil night, we change our call to actions at the end.
So we have different offers.
We have the pro offer.
We had live offers.
Sometimes we say rate, review and subscribe.
Sometimes we say text us and we just try to change
it up every now and then.
So whatever offers you have, feel free to play around with it.
The other thing I'll say is we.
Initially on Apple, we were only showing 50 episodes.
And once we went in and we switched to setting that showed 300 episodes,
we actually ended up getting a lot more downloads that way.
Because you want to be able to show as many as possible.
So people can, oftentimes I get comments from people saying
that they binge on this podcast.
They'll listen to it the whole weekend, which is nuts.
And it is what it is.
What I'll also say is on the, from a retention standpoint, using a tool
like chartable has added the ability to have cohorts retention metrics.
So you can see how you're doing over time and you can
try to continually improve.
So for us right now, we know what this podcast.
If you come in and you listen for the first month, we
basically have a drop-off to about let's call it 25% or so.
So Neil and I are now thinking, okay, how do we bring the retention up?
How do we, can we incentivize people to come back the next month?
And then can we incentivize to come back more and more because that
drives the downloads even higher.
And so how good is your content?
Can you keep people coming back over and over?
And that's what it is.
And the other thing I'll say too, is the mix that we're using.
The sound quality is the most important thing.
So in the very beginning, when Neil and I would record in Vegas
we would use a crappy USB mic.
We didn't know better.
And then we would, record without AC.
And then we sounded like we were in re people were like, Oh, that sounds
like a recording from a bathroom.
And we get comments like that.
So now that we've upgraded our mix, we use a Heil PR 40 H E I L P R 40.
And we have a mixer as well.
So I use a Scarlet mixer.
You can use the Roadmaster pro if you want.
I travel with that.
And then the other thing.
Is Spotify and Apple, they're battling it out so hard right now
where Apple has added subscription.
Spotify has added subscriptions, but Spotify what's fascinating
is they've added an OAuth type of solution where you can just basically
if you have a membership site, you can add subscribe to your your
premium podcast and, people can just listen to it within Spotify.
So I think that's special.
That's going to have big implications and in plus Apple
getting into subscriptions as well.
They're both in it.
And the alternative back over to you.
One other thing that we did that very early on, that a lot of people forget
to do is look at your analytics.
So when you're starting off in your creating episodes, you're not
necessarily sure what's going to hit, or what's not going to hit.
Podcasting is like blogging in which it's all about the headlines,
but your analytics will quickly tell you, like we use Libsyn.
So in our lips and it'll tell us the listens per episode, and
it doesn't matter if you have 10 subscribers or you have a million.
Every episode is going to get a different amount of views and you
need to look at the ones that are the most appealing and the way you can
figure out what's the most appealing is looking at your analytics.
See what's working, create content more around that and
create less content of the stuff that's not hitting.
It's very simple, silly process, but you should be doing that each
month because each month that will help you fine tune where
you should go with your content.
And the reason I say you do it monthly versus doing it just
one time is trends change over time in every single industry.
So by doing a monthly, you'll get a rough idea of what is working.
What's not.
And I also recommend, once you figure out what's not working,
don't just push it away and say, Hey, we're never going to create
content around this subject.
For example, with us CRO topics, don't do as well.
But Eric and I still create zero topics every once in a while,
because by continually testing it, you can see if the market changes
and maybe they'll accept it.
And if it doesn't, we'll just keep creating less of that
content, but go back and retest your assumptions based on the
data that you saw in past.
Yup.
So Spotify has great analytics, Apple.
I just looked at the Apple analytics.
They've upgraded them as well.
Chartable is great too, because it combines both of them.
So you can test your seven day consumption, 30 day consumption.
And for us, for this podcast, SEO and content marketing tends
to do a lot better for us.
Maybe that's because that's what we're known for.
And then if.
To Neil's point earlier, you can definitely pay podcasts to promote.
If you don't have the money for it, you can just do collabs with other
podcasts that are big do collabs with them and then cross promote that.
That is your advertisement right there.
So instead of spending, 20, 30, 40, 50 grand or so with a really big
podcast, just do a collab, right?
Ideally what you're aiming for is someone that's a
little bigger than you.
Not too much bigger than you, right?
There has to be some type of quid pro quo there.
And the final thing I'll say from my side is.
You don't want to put too much pressure on yourself to say, Oh
my God these people are getting millions of downloads a month.
Like I want to be there.
If you're a real estate agent, let's say Las Vegas, real estate
agent, and you sell luxury homes.
And if you're getting like a thousand listens a month, those thousand
people, who do you think they are?
They're probably wealthy people, and you're talking about, Oh this
is what all the wealthy people do in Las Vegas, blah, blah, blah.
And you're basically creating a resource, a community for them.
You don't need millions of downloads a month to to make it happen.
You don't necessarily need it to sell ads.
You can create a community or you can drive it to your business.
There's a lot of Goodwill that you build with your podcast, Neil.
Oh, you're muted.
I'll do it.
So go to marketing school at the ILS slash live Neil
night, we're doing our live event again in September 19th.
Through the 22nd, you can apply again, marketing
school to IO slash live.
And please don't forget to rate, review and subscribe.
It helps us grow and we'll see you tomorrow.