How to Grow a Podcast: Product, People and Promotion

Hi, this is Beers and SEO with Barry and Steve. I'm Barry.

I'm Steve.

And we're going to be talking about podcast SEO on this podcast. So if you're just starting out in podcasting or an experienced podcaster, want to grow your audience, if you're independent, if you're part of a publishing group, this is the podcast for you. We're going to be talking in depth about how to optimize your podcast, how to increase your audience, how to increase engagement. And if you need a large audience to monetize your podcast. But first, this is Beers and SEO. So let's start by talking about beers. Steve, what are you drinking right now?

Well, Barry, I've actually opted for an alcohol-free one today, partly because I've got, because we're recording this at 2:00 PM in the afternoon and I've got a client to talk to after this podcast. But yeah, I've, yeah, I've gone for Wingman by BrewDog. I tend to, Uh, I'm a bit lost when it comes to alcohol-free beers. Um, I know I like Guinness, um, free, uh, the free alcohol version, and Wingman. I'm, I'm desperate to find other, uh, versions of that. What about yourself?

Um, I'm very aligned with you today. I also chose an alcohol-free beer. This is actually my favorite one. This is Corona Zero, right? Um, and because I like Corona in normal form, and I decided to try their alcohol-free version, and I have to admit it is Probably my favorite alcohol-free beer because it tastes almost identical to normal Corona. And yeah, I just, I love this stuff. If it's on the menu and I have to drive or have another engagement later, this is my go-to alcohol-free beer.

Right, people, I hope listeners don't think that we actually planned this one, but obviously we did not. Honestly, it's just turned out that we've turned up alcohol-free options. So yes, here's to, here's to us and the fantastic topic that we'll be talking today.

Yeah, this really is your wheelhouse, isn't it, Steve? You've done a lot of podcast optimization when you were working at Global, and more importantly, very recently on your Substack, you wrote about podcast SEO. So let's start there. Can you talk us through that particular piece, which is very long and very detailed, and then I'll fire some questions your way afterwards?

Yeah, no worries. So it very much came about from the fact from working with a couple of clients recently. who've approached me around optimizing their podcasts, and the podcasts are all already done and dusted. So it was quite a typical optimization question which we often get in— audience growth specialists will get this. Here's the product, now can you drive the audience to it? We've all been there. So I took a step back and I kind of like looked at all aspects of podcast optimization. And what I published on my Substack publishingstrategies.co.uk is basically how my brain works when it comes to optimizing this, this field. So what I've done is I've split, I've split podcasting into 3 aspects. Product, people, and promotion. So, and then I've tackled each of those aspects. And so I just want to caveat that, that it's, you know, there's lots of other kind of resources out there that are particularly from podcasters, which I'd really encourage anyone to read because they'll have a slightly different take on, you know, the construction of your audio and what kind of guests to book in, etc. It's a just like the SEO community, there's a huge knowledge-sharing community out there on the podcasting. And I will meet many of them this Thursday when I go to the podcast show, which is in London. So yeah, I've sort of looked at many different sort of like people I can talk to about that on many different aspects of podcasting. But okay, so the 3 aspects that I covered: product, people, and promotion. So Really, Barry, what I'm talking about product is that you can't polish a turd, right? So if there's something fundamentally wrong with the way the podcast concept is conceived, it's going to cause you issues further down the line. And what I've called out in my essay is basically there needs to be a goal-setting piece of work done by the team who are launching that podcast. And fundamentally, it's got to be a bit more than, can we drive more reach? Because ultimately, vague goals are going to deliver vague deliverables in the end. And, you know, there can be a lot of money invested in podcasts. So it's good to kind of get clarity from the team on why we're launching this podcast now, who are the listeners, and what needs are we satisfying? That's a kind of classic audience needs thing that we're all used to in audience growth. And why should the audience want to listen to our podcast above our competitors, right? So there's a lot of work just in that. And I think also depending on your team, you know, to align teams internally. So all about product focus there. What I would like— I worked for a while in working with UX teams and dev teams, and it's a classic user needs story of leading with the need. You know, as a so-and-so, I want to blah, blah, blah because of X, you know. And yeah, just having those principles just kind of adds clarity to that podcast because podcasts can be a whole variety of different topics and coverage. And then you mix in who are we going to interview and what platforms should we be on? And it all becomes very busy very, very quickly. So that's kind of like briefly on the product side of it. The other side was digging a little bit more into, well, what are the user needs? What are the people needs behind a podcast? And one thing which is always interesting that really distinguishes it from, you know, text is you really need to consider where the person may be consuming that audio. Is it at work? Is it commuting? Is it at home? What are they doing at that time, and what might what why they might be coming to a podcast in the first place? And that's often because of the mood that that person is. So where they are situated and what their mood is at the time really dictates how you might what kind of podcast they might be interested in. So an example of that, people might just want that kind of relaxation or escapism. They might want to be. in a learning, educational sort of state of mind. They might want to be in a productivity state of mind. So that's either they're doing something, but they want the podcast to listen to as they're building something or working, basically. So there's lots of different moods to consider before you kind of like tackle, okay, what is the topic we're going to do and how we're going to approach it? And then lastly, because I've been talking for a long time here, is just around that promotional, uh, side of it. And, um, yeah, that's a lot to, uh, consider there. And, you know, I think from a podcast SEO point of view there, I think the first thing that people talk about is around titles and descriptions. And my, uh, in the essay, what I, um, talk about is really Just like classic SEO, you need to understand how the platforms work and then work back to, or actually work forward from that principle to what kind of content we're going to do. So you need to sort of like understand that, um, you could almost say that podcast consumption is dominated, uh, by the likes of YouTube, Spotify, and, um, Apple and you know, uh, understanding how those work. They're all slightly different platforms. Apple, um, will, um, it's kind of like, uh, there was a very, very good article, uh, released recently by PodSEO who compared, um, podcasts or Apple to Spotify as very much like the difference between an album and just individual tracks. So With Apple, you can very much lead a lot with the show title. So the show title and the show description really carries a lot of weight in Apple along with artwork. Whereas in Spotify, it's a bit more taken on a case-by-case basis, right? So, and it's really worth going into what Apple— there is an Apple sort of submission process and also a way of featuring that to the editors, the human editors that are behind that platform to get yourself optimized. Whereas Spotify, again, you know, it's less on the power of that show. It's by a case-by-case episodic level. In both cases, titles and descriptions carry a lot of weight. So The way that I would approach that would be very much, again, you'll know this, what I'm about to say, Barry, but it's about primary and secondary keywords. What do I mean by that is understanding what users are punching into various platforms. What are their questions? What is the problem that your podcast is trying to solve? And then understand those primary and secondary keywords. Make sure those primary keywords are in the title. Title. And because you'd be surprised how many podcasts are witty. So they have witty titles. And that there's an argument for and against that. But in majority, just like anything, just like witty headlines on a news website, they're great. But really, can you be witty but also include the main entity or the main keyword topic, right? Um, so the same kind of like rules apply. Um, so yeah, there's a little bit there around sort of like optimizing titles and descriptions. Um, and, uh, you know, obviously paid-for media is also quite critical for pushing your podcast. So, um, absolutely, sometimes people might think, oh no, I've got to do this just by organic, but definitely paid-for media help. the initial boost of your podcast. Um, so yeah, so promotion, um, definitely essential part of what you're, um, trying to do. Um, and that was— yeah, and so that was pretty much the, the cusp of it. Talking— I've been talking a long time here, Barry, but, um, yeah, people, products, and promotion.

And, and YouTube's algorithms, because YouTube of course being Google's platform, uh, they apply to podcasts the same as they do to videos.

Oh, that's yeah, really right. So basically what you're asking there is essentially should all podcasts be on video? Right. So they're different different metrics. They're different metrics, but there's no reason why your podcast should be on on on video. But it helps because there's a massive audience there, right? And it's a big discussion in audio circles at the moment because what What we're finding is that over the last 2 years, there's been a lot of podcasts that have— are now delivering video versions of their productions using tools like Riverside, which we use. But sometimes that is of the detriment to the audio listener. So, yeah, so there's a kind of like a bit of a pushback on video to say, well, Videos all very well, but don't make the audio listener feel like a second-class citizen there. Make sure you cater for each platform. So there's a lot of money. Video is expensive. And my kind of opinion on that is all video— video is worth it, but bad video is just really bad video. And so It's definitely from working with brands in video, do not do it if the video quality is going to be bad. That's extremely— it's going to be extremely damaging to your brand. But yeah, video, particularly YouTube, a great platform over— if you're sucking out data from the API, there's more than 50 metrics. I think it's definitely more than 50+ metrics that you can gain access from YouTube. So they're all really good ways of understanding how your podcast is performing. Um, like I say, um, some companies will go all in on video and some won't. Um, others will take a halfway house where they don't, for instance, upload the whole, um, video of the podcast. They'll just choose short segments, um, the key moments basically, which obviously with tools like Riverside and others you can easily sort of like auto-clip, etc. So there's different strategies, um, for it. Um, there is also, um, podcast platforms are taking advantage of the HLC video format, which, which for instance allows you, um, to toggle between video and audio when you, when you're accessing that video. So it's quite a useful thing for the, for the, for the user. And there's sort of like, um, uh, the argument goes that it's a better streaming format for, for, for video. So yeah, it's definitely the hot topic of the day. Um, I think for, for us as fledgling podcasters, uh, Barry, the, uh, advantage of, uh, YouTube is that it just gives you more data about your podcast and As we all know, it's really critical to hook in the audience within that first 30 seconds or slightly longer for podcasts. So though YouTube is just another way to get more metrics about your audience, particularly around retention. So the kind of, you know, there's nothing more brutal and honest than looking at your retention data and seeing a drop-off at a certain point where you might be talking about something you think is incredibly interesting, but there's a drop-off there, right? So So that's just hardcore information, lots of feedback to come back and say, okay, we now need to re-edit the script or rethink about the topics that we're covering. So lots to talk about in that area.

Yeah, I suppose it's very humbling to see the data and understand that people are dropping off when you are having a fantastic rant about a specific topic.

Which you've never done before, Barry, right?

Me? I'd never rant, Steve. I'm always so composed and calm. I do like the fact that you can use the Shorts to sort of highlight specific sentences, specific areas, and treat it as an extra distribution channel. You mentioned metrics a few times already. And my question then is, what do you think are the most important metrics to look at and take on board when it comes to podcast optimization? I—

well, it's interesting. So there are downloads, But they're not always available depending on where you're hosting your podcasts. Now, the thing about downloads is that it is a metric that's been used in the past to flag up with advertisers and been seen as a success metric. But a download is not a play, right? So, and with the fact that podcasts can be auto-downloaded onto your, into your podcast app, whatever platform you're using. It's kind of like a false sense of how popular your podcasts are. So it's definitely a useful metric to have if you can get it. I tried to get it from Riverside, but it doesn't seem to be available for some technical reason, which I need to investigate. But I'm sure experts like James Cridland will be able to tell me, who I'm seeing in a couple days' time. But yeah, so downloads, but also duration, any form of engagement. So Apple will look at engagement in the form of if you are listening more than 20 minutes or 40% of your podcast. So whatever whatever, whatever that is. So, and then Spotify will look at more than 60 seconds. That's what it looks at as engagement. Again, you've got some like dirty data that can be involved in some of the metrics that you get back because Apple will class a play anytime you click the play button. So you might play, pause it, play, pause, play, etc. that's going to contribute to the overall number. So yeah, so any form of engagement. And then it's quite difficult to find like demographic data. Obviously, you're going to find that more in, you know, platforms like YouTube, etc. But the way around that would be surveys, newsletters, social media. Right, so there are ways of understanding more of your audience because at the moment that's quite limited. Um, so you have to be quite proactive, like using quizzes, um, to build up that audience. Um, particularly if you were to launch your own website to support your podcast, that's all ways of sort of finding out more about your audience. So, um, another metric would be, uh, followers. They're all health— healthy signs. If that, if that's going down, you can have all the engagement in the world, but that's going down, that's, that's something to to be mindful of. Now, there are tools that can help you out there. So what I've been using over the last couple of months, I've been using like keyword tracking tools that you can use, which will— you upload your— or you enter your podcast by RSS feed, identify a number of different competitors, and then it will track the keywords that you put in against how your competitors. So, you know, this is all familiar landscape with anyone that's in SEO. Um, you know, I think it's only part of the, of the story, um, that there is a huge amount of audience that will be searching for podcasts in the, um, in the podcast stores. So you do want to be optimizing for that, but a huge amount of, um, audiences will also be coming in obviously by social media or through PR marketing opportunities. But on the whole, I think those kind of tools are useful because it gets you to think about what are the keywords that you are optimizing for. And also, if just like any kind of like SEO project, if you're having to scratch your head on actually what are, what are the topics and what are the keywords that we are talking about for the last 40 minutes on this podcast. Then that's probably an indication that it's not very focused. So yeah, I think that— and to know and to be aware of your competitors. There's loads of competitors from clients I've worked with that I was not aware of before. And again, just like in classic SEO, they are not the kind of competitors that you think are, or the client thinks. Um, is, uh, you know, you can track your, what your client thinks, uh, is the competitors, but who is actually ranking for SEO or content marketing? Find and do exactly what we've been doing for many years. Learn and listen from your competitors, take notes, um, and, um, and use that information to optimize your own podcast.

Yeah, I think you just touched on a very important point about having focus in the podcast that you It's not just a meandering conversation that touches on 100 different things, which maybe we have been a little bit guilty of in the early days of our podcast. And now we're trying to be a bit more focused with this podcast as a great example of that. There's a trend that I see in news and media in general, and also in podcasting, where it becomes an influencer-led endeavor. You know, we have talked about influencer media, influencer journalism before. I think that's probably a topic we want to dig into in more detail in a later podcast. But we see the same happening in podcasts. A lot of them are influencer-led, personality-led, if you will, and some of the biggest podcasts being very much focused on a specific person who is either the interviewer or the main narrator of the podcast. Do you think that is a critical element of a podcast success, or is it not really necessary as long as the content of the podcast itself is really, really good?

Um, I think it is a sensible, um, avenue, particularly if you're launching into the world of YouTube, because YouTube is all about cross-collaboration. Um, uh, it's not essential. It depends. I would go back to your goals and work out what it is. What— who's your target audience? How are they most likely to become more engaged with you? What kind of information do they want from you? Um, Do you think that you're going to add more value to your offering by introducing a guest? Then happy days. You know, sometimes clients might might indicate well, you know, we've had a lot of success on on a podcast, but but the audience seems to not be there. And when you kind of look at the spikes, it's because they've had a celebrity guest on, right? So yeah, it's kind of like it's all too. It does it add value to the conversation and. You know, for instance, we could, for instance, Barry, we could invite Taylor Swift on our podcast, right? Get where I, we'd probably get an absolutely massive audience from that. But are the people that came to watch that or listen to it, are they likely to, to use us as SEO consultants? Probably not, right? So, you know, it's a classic case between sort of like reach Or conversions, what are you aiming for? So yeah, it's not it's not it's not necessary not essential part of things, but used correctly it can really drive the audience to your podcast.

Yeah, I've discovered a few podcasts because they had a guest on that I was already following either on social media or of their own podcast, and then because they were a guest on another podcast, it exposed me to that podcast, and then I looked through the episodes and thought, hey, this is actually really interesting one. I'm going to subscribe. Subscribe to this podcast as well. So yeah, the collaboration, the cross-pollination and cross-promotion is very, very important. So basically we need more celebrity guests, Steve. We need big names in SEO to come to us.

Celebrity guests that are either interested in beer or SEO, right? Yeah, probably get more in the former.

Yeah, probably. We'll have to have a think about that. I see a lot of publishers, especially ones that I work with, also put podcasts behind a subscription paywall, as in you only get access to a podcast if you also are a paying subscriber. And I have seen one particular publisher even experiment with a podcast-only subscription where they have a hard paywall website, but you don't need to pay for the website to get access to the podcast. It's a separate subscription, cheaper subscription option. What do you think about that? You know, we're gonna talk about monetization a little bit more, but I wanna tackle the paywall first because that is something that I think is becoming more and more common.

Yes. And Yeah, I mean, if you could talk about 2 brands in the UK, so The Economist do that. They have a free podcast called The Intelligence, and then they have several other podcasts behind their paywall. And I think introduced, announced today, Sky have now in their Sky Insider podcast, what they, I think, if I can remember, there is additional cost to access exclusive episodes on the of that. So it's about different ways of widening or to encourage subscribers. I think it's a great value add, basically, because depend— if you take The Economist, that's access to additional experts, right? So you're paying for The Economist to understand the economy and international politics. So yeah, and it's just that they've got a hard paywall there. It's just another reason to go there as opposed to a close competitor like the FT, etc. So yeah, so quite often it can be a competitive positioning. And ultimately, it's another way of forging that close relationship with the client. It's not text, it's a person talking to you. You know, the key in audio is all about establishing that relationship with the listener. I worked with news podcasts in the past, and one of the things that they would talk about when they had a number of quite dry political things to discuss, it would be, but we need to be warm, you know, here. So it's all about creating that warm, friendly environment when you're dropping quite harsh news stories or the latest from Westminster. Yeah, so it's definitely a well-worth strategy to invest in.

Yeah, and on the topic of monetization, I think there's a bit of a misconception that you need huge audiences to make a podcast profitable. Is that actually true? Do you need a very large audience to make money off of a podcast?

You need a well-targeted audience. So you can make money just by— with ads inserted into audio, which are obviously monetized by CPMs. You need a large volume of listeners to make a decent wedge of money on that. I was very fortunate last week to attend the Flashes and Flames monetizing B2B conference, and podcast was a core conversation there. And we had 2 excellent podcasters from the Media Voices, Esther and Peter Houston, and we talked about monetizing podcasts in there. It's definitely You know, it's definitely on— everybody wants to know how can I make money from this. But the particular interest in B2B, so I would definitely encourage anyone who's thinking of starting a podcast or thinking about how to monetize it, definitely look to the world of B2B because these are often very niche podcasts and some of their volumes will be very low. So it could be like 200 downloads for a podcast, but they are monetizing it and driving a fair bit of revenue. And the reason they're able to do that is because they definitely know their audience and they are providing that information that the maybe high-level decision-makers want. So the advertisers know that and that's why they're interested. But you still need to do a fair bit of work in attracting those advertisers. So, you know, obviously do all the work that we've spoken about today about driving up audience to your podcast. So obviously video is part of that, social media, newsletters, surveys, build that audience up, but also really understand your audience and super serve them. When you are in that kind of like mode of needing to or positioning yourself to advertisers, packaging your podcasts as a series talking about a particular topic often helps. You know, you're going to be talking about a particular topic which is adjacent to what the advertisers is interested in, and it's an exclusive opportunity for them. So And it's also a nice way to frame it for the, for the users, right? If you've got like 6 episodes talking about AI or, or a particular topic, it's a, it's a nice— I think users understand and would appreciate the deep dive on, on that particular topic. Yeah, so, and then, then, you know, it all depends, like I mentioned before, about what the object of that podcast— you might monetizing it might not be the ultimate solution for you, because we'd probably class this podcast, Barry, as a professional services podcast where the ultimate goal, um, apart from us having a great time, having a nice chat, um, is, you know, one very valuable output of that is to generate leads from it. So, you know, you might— that if that's the ultimate value from it, then that you might clash if you've got like an advertiser involved, um, because you might think that actually that might put a other potential leads, you know, I might make them less interested in getting in contact with us. Anyway, I'm thinking and talking at the same time, which is never a good idea. But I can't blame, can't blame the beer. So yeah, there's different, there's definitely money, money there. I would definitely look at the B2B world because they are exceptionally good at monetizing very niche topics.

Yeah, I think it helps if you have a very specialized audience that is valuable to specific B2B niches because it makes it easier to monetize and very attractive for advertisers to go on. And on the topic of leads as the core value of a podcast, the same, but probably with both our Substacks. You know, my Substack has over 12,000 subscribers. I've gotten quite a few offers of sponsorship and I've turned them all down. Primarily because I don't want to create a perception of any sort of commercial attachment to any particular toolset, a provider, or whatever it is, which is why I've always said no to sponsorship opportunities, because I want to maintain independence and be able to give advice without any sort of perception of a commercial connection to a tool provider or CMS or whatever it is.

So you're a free bird.

Yeah, also because I swear a lot and, you know, that tends to turn people down a little bit. That was really, really good. I'm going to drop another question on you that you're not prepared for because I want to know the answer. And what are your top 3 favorite podcasts?

So I'm a bit of a news junkie, so I will fill my ears with, I think it's Sam and Annie's podcast on, which is Sky News podcast. So that's like a very brief 20 minutes into, into what's going on in the world. The newsagents and the rest is politics. So I, I'm guilty of long-distance running in the morning. So normally the rest is, the rest is politics is probably about an hour, which is probably does it for me. What about you, Barry?

Yeah, I like the Pivot podcast with Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway. They sort of give a bit of an overview of the state of politics and the tech industry in particular. I really quite like that. I'm a rugby mad fan, so I have quite a few rugby podcasts. My favorite of them is probably For the Love of Rugby with Dan and Ben. I quite like what they're doing. And then I've got some other podcasts that make me feel very intellectual on philosophy and history and stuff, and it really tends to vary on the kind of topic of the podcast. So it's not really a specific podcast, it's more about specific topics, and I hop between several different podcasts on that front.

Yeah, it's interesting. There's also one that is Audiophile, Audiophiles with Jamie Liddell, electronic music artist. And that's sometimes about 2 and a half hours long. And I think that's also key in podcasts. Sometimes people say, what is the ultimate length of the podcast that you should aim for. And I really do think it depends on what that podcast is because I'm quite happy for him to update me about how he is in his own world of making electronic music. He's got a great legacy. It's always interesting to hear about him in the studio. And then he introduces a guest and I would say it's a very informal chat. And I'm absolutely fine to have that whilst I'm running or whilst I'm doing something else in the house. And I really don't care if it's like 2 hours. So yeah, podcasts are great.

Absolutely. Absolutely. I listen to 2-hour, 3-hour podcasts sometimes if it's a very good conversation on a topic I'm interested in. So I think the length is less important as the value of the conversation itself. Yeah.

Also sometimes people, I mean, there is a Sometimes, uh, there's, there, there is a, there is a general rule, which means actually there's just, it's a rubbish rule really, but, um, is that the more frequent your podcasts, the, the shorter they can be, and the more infrequent they can be longer. Um, I would love to see example of publishers that, that do that, but really, I, I really don't care if I, if I'm into a podcast, I don't care what length it is. I'll just ultimately, I want more of it. So it's probably more on the longer podcast, but I would not mind a particular podcast that did 10 minutes, 20 minutes, 50 minutes or longer. So yeah, once I think once you're hooked, you're hooked. It's very, I think podcast audiences are very loyal. And once you're in, I really don't think many people go in and edit their libraries Yeah.

Yeah.

Hopefully, hopefully.

No, exactly. It's very rare I unsubscribe from a podcast, so I have too many to listen to. This was great, by the way, Steve. This is really, really valuable. I think I learned a lot because this really is your wheelhouse and this is very fascinating for me. And I hope our audience also picked up a few tips and tricks for their own podcasts. If you want to read more about podcasts or about Steve's general insight into the world of publishing, I highly recommend his Substack. I will add it to the show notes. It's on publishingstrategies.co.uk. I also want to give a little bit of a shout out to the News and Editorial SEO Summit, which Steve was also a speaker at. And I'm one of the co-founders of it, John Shehata. We have a 3-day program in October. And on day 3, we also have a session on podcasts from the amazing Sarah McDowell. So if you want to learn more about podcasts, that is also an option. And And as always, we'd love for you to review and rate our podcast, give us some feedback, hit that subscribe button, send us suggestions, ideas for guests and future topics and whatever else you want us to tackle. And yeah, nothing else remains but to thank you very much for listening and we'll hear you and see you at the next one.

Cheers, guys.