The First Annual (Virtual) G+ Bloggers Conference - Developing New Markets through Podcasting

Hi everyone, I'm Chef Dennis Littley and we're here with the G+ Bloggers Conference, the first virtual conference. And today we're at our second session, and our second session is dealing with podcasting. Now I'm not a podcaster, I really don't know much about it other than what I've heard, but I think it's probably an area that a lot of food bloggers and a lot of bloggers in general are gonna wanna look into because it's gonna open up a whole new market for you, an area of people that can be potential readers, potential viewers of what you do, and get the information that you wanna put out. So we're gonna turn it over. First, I'm gonna introduce everybody, and we will start with Ryan on the one side. This is Ryan Hanley, and he's a podcaster, Content Warfare Podcast. Ryan?

It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you so much.

My pleasure. And then we have a food blogger who's interested about podcasting, Dion Baldwin from Try Anything Once.

Hey everybody, how you doing?

And then we have Autumn Giles, which is half of the Alphabet Soup podcast that she does with another friend of mine, and she's here today to talk to us about her podcast. Welcome.

Hi, thanks so much for having me.

Thank you. Alright, so we're gonna get into the second session. If you have questions, please leave them in the comment bar. We have that running and we'll get to them as soon as we can. And we're gonna start the broadcast. Each of the podcasters is gonna talk about what they do. We are expecting a third podcaster as well. Chris Strucker, so either something happened to him and he's unable to come in, or he may show up later. If he does, we'll add him into the mix too. So right now I'm going to turn over to Ryan, and Ryan, you can tell us a little bit about your podcast, how you started it, what's it about, and, you know, what are some of the specifics about it.

Well, Dennis, first I just want to say thanks for putting this conference together. I was able to attend your earlier session, and it's absolutely fantastic to be part of this and just The conversations here have been good so far. So I started podcasting in August of 2012, so we're almost coming up on a year now, and I started it mostly just because I'm, I'm a big-time content marketer, so my expertise is in content marketing, specifically the insurance industry, but my actual blog kind of focuses on content marketing in general terms. So I got involved with podcasting really just as an experiment. I had seen a lot of people doing it, a lot of big names in the internet marketing world and in different industries, and I thought, geez, there's this whole audience, there's a whole group of people who don't like going online, they don't like reading blog posts, they don't like watching YouTube videos, they like listening to audio-based content while they're going through their day on the treadmill, in the car, while they're doing work at their desk. They enjoy this audio format because it allows them to consume content away from their computer, which is unique to the podcasting format. If, you know, we write a blog post or we do a YouTube video or, you know, create an image infographic slideshow, the person who's consuming that content has to be in front of some sort of screen. So they either have to be, you know, they have to be in front of their cell phone, iPad, laptop, computer, what have you. And that is a limitation to sharing your message. And what podcasting does is if you have earbuds and any type of MP3 player, you can, you know, your audience can take your message with them wherever they're going. So it started as an experiment. I ended up immediately falling in love with the format and just kind of being able to talk through different things that in a video, which for the most part you want to keep relatively short, or on a text-based blog post, you just can't dive as deep, or you can't dive as deep as often and, you know, still have a regular 9-to-5 job, which is what I do. So I absolutely love podcasting. I think that— and we'll probably talk about this in a little more detail as we go, but I find it to be the most intimate form of content marketing, and that's my personal opinion. But I feel like if any audience member is willing to give me 30 minutes of their time, 30 minutes of their attention on my content, and they're willing to kind of listen to what I have to say and invest themselves, that really becomes an intimate connection. It feels like they know me, and then Through their questions and comments, I feel like I know them better, and that part of it has been very rewarding. So anyone who's interested in kind of building a second-level connection, I feel like podcasting is a really good medium to build kind of that second-level connection with your audience. You'll never have the same numbers as your blog, just as far as sheer counting numbers, but the people who do listen tend to listen consistently and tend to be much more invested in who you are and what you're talking about.

Great. Very good, very good. All right, Autumn, tell us a little bit about what you do.

Sure. You probably saw me smiling and nodding to what a lot of what Ryan was saying, but, um, so definitely like I'll hit on those, some of those same points. But, um, my name is Autumn Giles, and like Chef Dennis Littley said, I am a food blogger. My blog is Autumn Makes and Does, and my podcast is The Alphabet Soup. Soup Podcast. I do it now with Kelly Vass from the blog Kelly Bakes, but I wanted to share a little bit about my path with podcasting. I started it in September 2011 by myself, and it had a quite different format. It was just long, unstructured interviews. If you listen to or are familiar with Marc Maron, that would be an example of probably the most famous example of sort of what I was doing. And Alphabet Soup is a show about food and words, so we set that sort of very general framework for ourselves and sort of, you know, work within that. It definitely started out as a more distant companion, I would say, to my blog. It was related in that it touched on food and writing. I interviewed other food bloggers. I think some of you probably know Marisa McClellan from Food in Jars and Casey Barber from Good Food Stories, folks like that. And it was really— and like, exactly like Ryan said, as soon as I started doing it, I loved it. I absolutely loved it, and I knew it was a medium and a format that I wanted to stick with. I also, after I've been doing it for, I guess, about a year, started feeling like I was seeing places for improvement. I wanted a more dynamic format. I wanted to be able to build episode to episode, and I wanted to be, um, have a little more control over the content so I could employ things like content that was going to bring people in and like Ryan mentioned, keep them listening consistently and loyally. So in January 2013, I brought Kelly on board and we now do Alphabet Soup together and it's been great. Bringing the second person on there and making some changes in our structure really corrected some of those issues that I just mentioned, but I think it also— and And I'll just speak from my perspective, not Kelly's. It really helped me shape the podcast into something that felt like it was becoming more of a really nice supplement to my blog and my brand and a really unique space on like— it's very different from, you know, Ryan mentioned sort of all the different forms of social media. Different from that because, um, you know, it's not just somewhere as a blogger. If you're thinking about doing a podcast, you shouldn't approach it— I wouldn't recommend approaching it as sort of another place where you're pushing out content. Um, it's a really, it's a really unique space in that way. And, um, something I really like about it is, um, I think Ryan mentioned, uh, you know, it being like a very intimate way to communicate with your audience. Something I like about podcasting is I think, um, there's a lot of conversations online, I think, among bloggers right now about authenticity in the content that we're putting out on, um, you know, Instagram, Facebook, or even on our blogs, the images we're putting out. And for me as a writer, authenticity is something, you know, that doesn't come naturally. It's something that I really have to cultivate. And the same thing is true, I think, when I'm, you know, taking pictures. But with podcasting, I think it's a very easy space to kind of— it feels very natural to be yourself, and it's a place where if you're looking sort of to build as you're building a brand online to sort of like try to maintain that authenticity. I think that's something people struggle with. I think a podcast is a really, really great place to do that. I was happy— oh, one more thing. I was happy that Ryan mentioned the issue of not expecting your entire audience to transfer over, and that's absolutely true. If you're a blogger a blogger, you shouldn't expect that your whole audience for your blog will transfer over to your podcast. And I was actually very pleasantly surprised to see folks who are maybe on the periphery of my blog audience or my social media network really be drawn in. And there are folks who, like Ryan said, don't comment regularly on my blog. The very engaged readers of my blog are not the same people as the very engaged listeners of my podcast. So there have been definitely concrete examples of how it's really helped engage a different audience that just might not be one that's likely to be engaged in a blog.

Very good. Alright, well, that's a lot of good information. We did have one question before we move on, and it was from Rebecca Forstad Olekowski. I hope I got that right. And she wants to know, what sites do you prefer to host your podcasts and how do you distribute them?

Sure, I can say that I use a service called Libsyn to host my audio Unlike an image that you just upload to your— if you're using WordPress, you actually need— well, I would recommend a separate host for your audio. I use Libsyn. I've used that from the beginning. I went with them. You can do research. There's a lot of places out there, but it seems like a lot of the big podcasters use Libsyn. You upload your audio. To that, and that takes care of the distribution to places like iTunes and Stitcher. And we also do a— we just have a WordPress, a free WordPress blog where we put our show notes, and we also embed a player there.

I use the same format. I use Libsyn to host the podcast, I actually use my FeedBurner feed as the feed that I use for iTunes and Stitcher and stuff like that, only for tracking purposes, because straight out of Libsyn's analytics are good, but I find that Libsyn with FeedBurner and we— or I'm saying FeedBurner, I mean FeedBlitz, I'm sorry, FeedBlitz, which is an alternative to FeedBurner, which I highly recommend only because Google— FeedBurner is owned by Google, and Google has kind of stopped updating the software behind FeedBurner. So though FeedBurner was kind of the best tool available for a period of time, it's kind of been outpaced by services like FeedBlitz. And there's a lot of this— people have varying opinions on this, but what I found is FeedBurner has updating issues, so you may post a podcast and not see it update in iTunes for 3 or 4 days. It doesn't happen all the time, but I was starting to see that, so I transferred over to FeedBlitz, no problems. The stats between FeedBlitz and Libsyn allows me to really get a good feel for what's going on with my podcast and who's listening to it, where, how often, what services. And then I use— I just embed as a blog post on my blog. I don't have a separate blog for the for the podcast, and I use a PowerPress, which is a free WordPress plugin that basically handles the entire functionality of the podcast itself. So it's actually much simpler process to put in place than a lot of people— than you would think if you had never done it before.

Are there any costs associated with either of those services?

There's a hosting cost for Libsyn. So it's just like, I don't know if anybody self-hosts video like on a service like Wistia, Libsyn is the same premise. You're uploading the files and then based on how many, how much memory or, you know, how many megabits of space you want to hold, then there's a cost associated with that.

Okay.

But it's minimal. I mean it's—

Minimal, yeah, and there are very different plans so you can start very, very basic. $7 a month.

If you were going to do maybe a monthly or even a bimonthly podcast, you could probably get away with the $7 a month program, which is, you know, nothing.

So great. All right, excellent. Dion, did you have any questions before?

I think I have quite a few questions, but I'll kind of narrow this down because I've never had my own podcast before. But with my experience with podcasts, it seems like you, you're not necessarily driving for quantity, but otherwise quality because you can actually talk to, you know, kind of directly to your listeners. They can hear you, and like you guys are saying, not everybody transfers over. It seems like it would appeal to maybe some of your readers that are like, "Oh, I've got to hear this podcast." People that tend to listen to podcasts, like you said, Ryan, but won't sit down in front of a blog or video to watch would probably really want to hear what, you know, we have to say, and we can really develop our niche, or niche if you will, the specific thing that you want to say instead of these general topics, we can touch on some detailed things. But one of my questions is, is it important how frequently you post, or that you have a schedule and you just, you consistently update your content so your listeners know when to expect fresh content?

I have found, and I'll be interested to hear what Autumn has to say on this as well, that Consistency in podcasting, because you're dealing with a different type of audience, so you referenced just a couple of minutes ago, you know, you're dealing with people who want the deep dive. So often with our blogs, especially our text-based blogs, people are looking to skim, right? They come, they have a specific piece of information that they need, they find it on your blog, they appreciate it, and boom, they move on. That's what most people who come to your website are doing. The podcast is really a tool for the people who want the deep dive. They want you to go into every minute detail of how you do whatever the topic is, and they want to hear you talk about it, and they want to hear the passion in your voice, so it's a different type of person. So they're willing, from what I found, to wait once a month. So once a month is what your podcast schedule is, I've, you know, they're perfectly okay with that if that once a month is very valuable. Now personally, I got, I loved producing them so much that I've gone to weekly, and I've also streamlined the process for creating them. So the actual editing and post-production stuff is very minimal, and I do it all myself, even though you're probably not, you know, if We were, you know, if you talk to anybody who's kind of really advanced, they probably would tell you not to do it yourself because you can get it done so cheap. But I would say that bi-monthly, if you wanted to get involved, per se, you know, bi-monthly, saying every Monday or every other Monday you're going to get a podcast from me would be a good schedule to start with and then see how your audience responds.

Okay, that sounds really good. And it also sounds like— and I know when I go to listen to a podcast and for a little while they do great, and then after they stop updating content, and I'm like, well, fine, I'm not going to keep checking. It seems like if you start, you have to commit to at least a certain time period instead of like a month, because I would also think that would help build your listening audience as well. So if somebody was hypothetically going to start a podcast, is it better to not have the attitude of like, hey, I'll try it for a month and do one every week, or is it better to say I'm gonna do this for, let's say, one year once a month and see how this goes and then evaluate what I'm doing here, my strategy? Would that be something that you would recommend to new podcasters?

Yeah, I would go toward option 2. Uh, you know, I, and I, and I was agreeing with what a lot of what Ryan was saying to answer your previous question, and that would be to prioritize consistency and quality over frequency at first. And, um, like, you know, both Ryan and I, you might find that you love it and you're really excited to ramp up from there. Um, but I think I would take, yeah, the second approach that you mentioned.

Um, Diantha, If I could start again, right, so if I had— if I know what I know now and I could start again from day one, what I would have done is scheduled out, kind of wireframed out what I wanted, say, my first 5 podcasts to be on. I would have recorded all of them previous to starting and had them lined up and then let people know what the frequency was going to be. So let's say we're gonna do every other week, and I was like, okay, I'm gonna give this a try. A month is not a long enough time because unless you have an enormous following on your blog or on YouTube or have a large email list already, or are friends with really popular people who can spread your message for you, that first time you publish your podcast, you're going to get like 6 people that listen to it. You know, like, if you haven't done the buildup and the marketing for that podcast, It's— people just aren't going to— it is a large investment in people's time, especially if you're doing a half-hour show, even a 15-minute show. People are giving up 15 minutes of their life or integrating you into 15, 30, an hour of their lives, and that's a large investment. And people aren't going to do that until they hear from other people that it's worth their time, they are already invested in your content in another place. So my— if I could start again, I would have probably prerecorded the first 5 to even possibly 10 episodes and let people know it's going to be every other week. Done a lot of promotion building up to the launch and then launched it maybe like I would a product, even though it's a free, just a new vein of content, right? Launched it in that way so that one, that helps with your rankings in iTunes. Like, iTunes is really crazy. They don't tell anybody how they rank things. Like, there's a lot of assumptions, but they don't necessarily give us any guidance. One thing that I read is your initial— the momentum is probably the best word— the momentum of your podcast is one of the best ways to get ranked in iTunes. So if you can get out of the jump, out of the gate with a huge jump in subscribers and reviews you will be pushed to that top level and you will tend to stay there versus having a soft open and trying to build to that place is much harder to do. So those are things that I know now that I had no clue about when I started, but that's just a few of the things that I would have changed if I had— if, you know, I could reverse time.

Okay, great. We do have a few questions now from the audience, and one was from Adam Holland, and he wants to know podcasting for a food or cooking blog, or any blog for that matter, is essentially part of the supporting cast. Are there podcast subscribers who have no interest in your blog? And I think you've talked about that already.

Yeah, I think there are. I mean, um, I mean, I wouldn't say no interest, but I think like Ryan was saying, they're less likely to engage in that way just because of, you know, their likes and, um, what their day looks like.

Great.

Okay, Rebecca asked another question. She wants to know, do you record using something like Audacity, or is there another platform that you use?

For me, if I'm doing an interview, I usually do it over Skype, and I have a Mac, so I bought, uh, like a $20 call recording program which does a really good job, and I just record the Skype calls, and then I do all my post-production inside of Audacity. If I'm doing an episode that I'm not doing an interview, so it's just me talking on a topic, then I will put it right into Audacity. So basically Audacity, unless I'm capturing an interview, is all my production and post-production.

Mm-hmm. So for folks who are super new to podcasting, Audacity is a free audio editing software, and it's sort of like more or less the industry standard for free software. I, so I record with Kelly, as I mentioned, and she and I live in different places. So we actually record our, we talk over Skype, and we record our audio separately. We each record an MP3 track, and then I combine them and edit them in Audacity. If that makes sense. I use a little program called Audio Hijack Pro to record our Skype conversation and to record my audio on my end, and Kelly has an external portable MP3 player that she uses to record the audio on her end.

Okay.

Do you need any kind of other special equipment to do these, microphones or anything?

Microphone, you could go really high-end with a microphone, but I'll tell you, I use a— and I don't have it in front of me right now— I bought a $60 Samsung Go Mic is what it's called. And one, I like it because it's portable, and two, I also bought a $15 pop filter, which if anyone sees like the recording artists, they talk into like that little circle thing, and you're always like, why are they speaking through that circle thing into the microphone? Like, I never understood that until I started podcasting. And it's because when you say, when you say "pees," it creates a spike on the audio track, and that doesn't sound good when it comes through on the other end. So with this $60 mic and a pop filter, I can get really high-quality sound. Now, not professional, but very high quality, perfectly good for what I'm trying to do. I would say a bigger part of it is picking the right room to do your podcast in. Is if you're in a really echoey room, no matter what mic you have, that's gonna come through and it doesn't sound good. If you can pick a room that doesn't have an echo, or I even know people that put up little, like, tents around their— you know, they have like little portable tents that they'll just put up around wherever they do the recording just for the recording so they don't get any echo, and then they take them down, and that will give you a really nice sounding track, is having no vibration off the walls.

Into your microphone and save you the work later of having to edit that stuff out.

Yes, then you gotta figure out how to remove background noise from Audacity, and that's just like a whole step that you don't want to have to go through.

Right.

Did you say Audio Hijack Pro for the audio track? Is that what—

Yes, that's what I use, and Ryan was saying he has a similar thing that works with Skype.

Ecamm, E-C-A-M-M, is the name of the Skype recorder for a Mac. That's a Mac-specific product. So if you have a Mac computer, ECamm Call Recorder, and I think it's like $19, you know, forever. So it's very cheap, but it does a really good job, and it actually records in stereo if you want it to. I pretty much change everything from stereo to mono just for the purposes of making the files easier to handle with, which basically means instead of having one, instead of having different sound in each earbud, the sound is the same, which I just found works better because, you know, there's so many people listen to your podcast on so many different types of devices that producing it in mono for me just tends to work a little better.

That makes sense.

I actually have a— oh, sorry.

That's alright, go ahead.

Oh, I just wanted to add, I have a very— I have about a $60 external mic as well. It's a Blue Snowball. Which is just, you know, very basic. And like Ryan said, it's definitely good. Kelly's recorder is higher quality, and I mean, you notice the difference. There's less background noise, that sort of thing. But you can definitely produce something, a good quality podcast with a pretty, you know, standard $60 mic.

Yeah, great. I know I just did one recently with another podcaster, and we did it because I, I don't like Skype because I'm so embedded with Google Hangouts, and I hate putting it on and then taking it off because every time you open a window, it pops on. Now I gotta turn it off. It just annoys me. So I said, I don't do Skype. And he says, alright, we can do it on Hangouts. So we did record it on, on the Hangouts, and he used it that way. So I don't know what else he did. He also had me change my microphone from my headset microphone to a, I think it was a $30 Audio-Technica.

Mm-hmm.

And that, I can really tell the difference in my sound quality with that.

So it's not a bad idea. Yeah, it'll be a big upgrade, pretty much, I mean, not pretty, not everything, but most things will be a really awesome upgrade from your built-in mic or your headphone mic.

Yeah, the headset, the sound from a headset is very harsh. Everything is like— and the only reason I can tell you that is because I can see it on Audacity. The spikes in the sound are really high when you use one of these, so— and that comes across like, uh, if you ever heard like really bad radio, like, uh, like AM radio, like through the mountains, and you get like those really high weird spikes, um, that's what you get through one of these if you were to do it through a podcast. And having that external mic, pang, $30 to $60 is well worth the investment if it's something that you're going to take even a little seriously. It's well worth that investment.

Great.

Okay, we had another question here from Leslie Teles, and she wants to know if either— we answered part of it already— but either you, Ryan, or Autumn can take us through the process of beginning a podcast for all of us that may never have done it before. She asked about what kind of recording equipment, but we did talk about that. So someone would like to give us an idea how they start their podcast or what goes into it?

Let me think if there's something we haven't really touched on. Uh, well, since we were just talking about Audacity, I will say for myself, um, that was— there was a pretty steep learning curve. Um, it was a challenge at first to learn to use So I, I would say, you know, be patient with yourself at first and maybe record a little shorter episodes because I did. It was a challenge for me to learn, but it's free. And, you know, other than that, like, I think like Ryan was saying, sort of get things in place, you know, got your audio hosting in place, figure out if you want to do show notes. If so, you know, figure out where you're going to put those. And I really felt like when I started my podcast, I felt like it was very important to have a very set structure. And I really felt like, you know, I need to be putting out a finished product. And in some ways, I think that worked against me a bit because it was the moments that where I really stepped back and took a look at, you know, my segments, took a look at the content I was putting out there, that really led me to improve. So I mean, that doesn't answer it completely directly, but those are definitely some like beginning things that I think I haven't mentioned yet that would have been very helpful for me to—

Yeah, I think that from a technical standpoint, I would actually refer you to smartpassiveincome.com. Pat Flynn put together an extremely robust tutorial on the kind of technical side of like, do this, then this, then this, then this. And it's just really not worth rehashing, you know, for me creating my own or anyone else. He put together probably what I think is the best technical side of getting everything in place. I wouldn't necessarily do everything exactly the same way because I think there are some cheaper options than he chose, but the actual steps of putting it together are all there, and you can just look at the different tools that you want to choose. Uh, for purposes of starting a podcast though, I think what's more important than the technical stuff, because really the technical stuff, like I said, is much easier than it seems. It seems a lot more daunting than it really is. It's the strategy. It's what you want it to be. It's have a purpose for it. Like, don't just be like, I want a podcast. What do you ultimately want the goal to be? Do you want to drive people to your website? That could be the goal of a podcast. Do you want more people, you know, say you're a chef or a food blogger, do I want more people to download my recipe PDFs? Do I want more people on my newsletter? Do I want more people to hire me for speaking engagements? Like, what is the purpose of your podcast? And start there because just podcasting, you're— it's easy to meander. It's very easy to like get out into it and then be like, well, jeez, what am I supposed to do this week? Like, what am I going to talk about this week? Where are we going? You know, the goal for me has always been to, you know, I have tons of different types of segments. Like, it's a testing ground for me, so I can't even tell you that I have one distinct format. But ultimately, my goal with the podcast is I just, I want more people to subscribe to my newsletter. It's where, it's how I stay in contact with people. It's how I keep my message going out. And that's what I really want from it. I want people to be invested in my content, invested in who I am as a professional, and subscribe to my newsletter. So that's my personal goal. But I think before you start, understand what you want your goal to be, because that will dictate how you set the whole thing up. Uh, do you want to do a show bumper? Do you want to have advertising on your podcast? Do you want to do interviews? Do you want it to be how-tos? I mean, all these things play into how you ultimately start your podcast. You know, I could see as a food blogger setting up your episodes in a way that you walk people through how to do certain recipes. You know what I mean? That could be a legitimate reason to start a podcast. I'm gonna pop my MP3 player open in the kitchen, start working my recipe, and I'm gonna talk you through in 30 minutes how to make whatever. That, you know what I mean, if that could be your goal is I want more people to be making my recipes then there it is. That's the reason you start your podcast. So before you start, think about what you ultimately want people to do with it. Otherwise you're gonna get 5, 10 episodes in and you're either gonna stop or you're gonna find that it really has no purpose and it seems more like work than something that you really enjoy doing.

Okay, great. We have another question here from Mona Holmes, and she brought up a good point. She says, you might have addressed this already, "But it seems like Google+ is the new podcast. It seems easier and requires less cost, equipment, hosting. Your thoughts on this?" And I know there is something you can strip the audio out of a Google+ Hangout. So would that be an option to record it in that and then just strip it out?

I mean, so my response to that would be, and I am admittedly someone who is you know, at the learning level with Google+. But I think especially for food bloggers or bloggers, if you're starting a podcast, it's important to not just see it as another place to— like, I think I mentioned this— to push out your content, right? Like Ryan was talking about, it needs to be the place for deeper engagement, right? The folks who want that. I mean, I have, you know, because I spend a lot of time editing audio, I have sort of, I'm maybe a little more picky than some folks. But I don't know about the recording capabilities within Plus. But my concern with that would just be, you know, you can, I mean, absolutely, like, use that as a tool. Quality would be a concern for me.

Yeah, so I would say that it's not the new podcast because the purpose of podcasting is to be able to give your audience a piece of content they can take away from the computer screen. So as much as I love Google Hangouts, and I do, and I love Google+, I mean, it's essentially taken me away from all the other social networks I used to spend time on. Uh, but you still have to be in front of a computer or in front of your cell phone looking at it to consume that content. Now you absolutely 100% can report, uh, report, record a Google+ pod, uh, uh, Hangout and turn it into a podcast. You can do that, a lot of people do that. Uh, the issue that Autumn brought up is real, and that is, uh, you do lose some sound audio quality because now you're pushing your audio through Google+ you're taking— you're either recording that audio on a recording device and you're trying to do a screen capture record, which is not going to be as good. It's not like the Skype recorder, which is actually recording the raw audio from the conversation that's happening. When you record a Google+ Hangout and turn it into a podcast, you're actually using a screen capture record which is not taking the raw file, it's been, it's been chewed up and, and kind of recalibrated through the Google+ platform. The other way to do it is to push it to YouTube, download the YouTube video, and then strip off the audio off of the YouTube video. And again, if you do that, you're getting a compressed audio, which is, which is not going to be as good. Now that may not matter to you because different people have different standards, and I can see someone doing a Google+ Hangout, you know, on a weekly basis and recording it and pushing out on a podcast, and I think it's perfectly fine, but it is not the same thing as recording an actual podcast. Now personally, like the ums and the ahs and the editing stuff, I don't really do much with that. I kind of just, you know, I am who I am and that's what it is. It's supposed to be conversational and casual for my show. I know a lot of other people that will spend hours diligently editing out every um, ah, stumble, pause, and that's just your taste for your show, whatever you want it to be. There's, there's no right or wrong answer there. So I think it all depends on what you want to do. Again, I'll step back, and I know it's not the best answer or exactly what you want to hear, but if you know what you want to do with the show, then you can make that decision. If your show is about Google+, Geez, you would want to put it through Google Hangout and then push it out to a podcast because, you know, you're, you're on the network and, and all that kind of stuff. But if your show's about something else, maybe you want to do Google Hangouts that support your podcast, or, you know, you do a 10-minute Google Hangout on a weekly basis and then tell everybody, for a deeper dive in this topic, I do an hour on my podcast about the same topic. You know, go there, and now you're kind of pushing, you're filtering out your audience from your blog to your Google+ Hangout, and from your Hangout to your podcast. And you know, if 100 people are on your blog and 50 of them listen to your Google+ Hangout, and 10 of those go to your podcast, those 10 are probably the people who will buy your product, who will leave you a testimonial, who will, you know, add value back to what you're doing. That's how I would think about that question. I hope that that answers it.

Excellent, excellent. Alright, we have a question here from Leslie, and she wants to know, just to be clear, does Ecamm, for instance, or these other Skype recorders both record both sides of the conversation if we're interviewing someone?

Yes.

Should first-time podcasters aim to record both sides of the conversation at the same time?

Yes. Yeah, Ecamm is great because basically Skype pops up, I click record, when the conversation is over I click stop, and it automatically downloads an MP3 file to my computer that has in stereo both sides of the conversation. So I have basically the entire conversation in one file, and I just upload that file to Audacity. You know, we could talk about the structure, like you can add an intro bumper, or an intro, then intro bumper, and then I actually put in my file. And then an outro bumper, and now you have what feels like a nice professional show, and it, you know, takes maybe like 15 or 20 minutes to put together.

Okay, Sean Terry just asked a question. He says audio may not be as good as raw in a Hangout, but what about a nice little boost filter in your favorite audio software like GarageBand? Any thoughts on that?

I personally have not had the best of luck with that, mostly because I haven't spent a lot of time in GarageBand. And I also, I played around, someone told me about kind of boosting this, you know, your audio a little bit, and I find that personally it tends to get a little distorted if you really don't know what you're doing, and I have found my method that works well for me, so to be honest with you, I just haven't explored a lot of these other things, I tried them, couldn't really figure them out, found one that worked and stopped, so Uh, but with boosting the audio, I have found that it tends to end up coming out a little distorted. I'm sure that someone that knows how to do that really well could tell you the right way to do it. I just don't have a good answer for that.

That's fine.

Yeah, I, um, I played around a little bit with GarageBand when I first started as well, but I really preferred Audacity much more, so I also can't really speak to GarageBand.

Okay, great. Okay, Adam Holland wants to know if you guys have sponsors for your podcast, or is this something that's even possible?

It's definitely possible, and it all depends on what you want the goal of your podcast to be. So a buddy of mine, Srini Rao, who runs Blogcast FM, which is an incredibly popular podcast— he gets like half a million downloads every month, does a fantastic job, gets some of the not just best and brightest minds in like marketing or whatever, like literally in the world, like people who write New York Times bestsellers. So good podcast, Blogcast FM, to check out if you, if you're interested in that kind of stuff. He just started, so he's been doing this for 4 years, just started adding advertising in like the last 2 or 3 weeks. So I would say that advertisers are— you want to make sure that they're relevant to your audience. So something that he did before he started advertising was he did at least one, possibly two or three surveys of his audience to find out what types of products would you be interested in having advertising about, like what are the genres, you know, what things interest you. Because if you just slap the first person who's willing to give you $50 an episode onto your podcast, you are going to lose people very quickly because it is an overt interruption in the content of that podcast. So you have to be very sure that that advertisement in some way correlates to your audience, or you will lose them. And I've, I've turned off podcasts and stopped listening to them before because I can tell that the person was just like, here's a way for me to monetize this. I don't care, I'm just going to interrupt this show right in the middle and drop an advertisement on it. Um, again, I would listen to the way Sreeni does it. I think he did it very tastefully and it matches his audience. Another good one who advertises, if you want to kind of an idea, is the Social Pros podcast from Jay Baer and Convince and Convert, which is a great marketing podcast as well. And he does a good job of integrating his advertising so it doesn't feel like you're being kind of sold. Autumn, do you have any experience with that?

Yeah, we don't have sponsors right now. It's definitely something I feel like we're working toward, but right now we're focused, like you were saying, on putting out a quality product that people are going to want to get behind. But I think there are also— because like you were saying, it is definitely different from a sponsor on a blog that you can really— it's in the sidebar or in the bottom of a post. You can kind of just ignore it. And there are some of the bigger podcasters, you know, exploring different models for incorporating or really just generating revenue. That— there's an example is Dan Savage. His podcast, he just created a new longer version of his weekly podcast that is paid and has no ads. So folks opt in, there was enough demand for this that he did it. Folks pay and opt in to an ad-free version of the show. So I think, I think there are, you know, there's a little more freedom in podcasting about sort of how you're going to incorporate it and thinking of new models. And I do think, like Ryan was saying, you have to be intentional about it, um, with really knowing your audience in terms of what advertising, what sponsorships you're going to incorporate.

Yeah, great.

Alright, Dionne, we haven't heard from you for a while. You have anything else for us? Any other questions you'd like to ask?

I'm planning a podcast in my head. No, I'm just kidding. I really appreciate everything you guys are explaining. Explaining to us because as somebody that's only listened to some podcasts, it's kind of like almost a radio show, if you will, that you can actually download. It's obviously not a radio show, but to me it's kind of similar. And it seems like we— you can go from something that I would probably do, like get as clear quality as possible, put it together because it's me, don't edit out the ums and ahs, and put a natural flowing podcast together, or you can even get equipment to where you don't have the sound popping and it sounds really good because if you don't have that visual stimulant, it seems like you really want to get as clear and as best quality of audio as possible so that they can hear you because that's the only way that they're getting what you have to say. They don't have the visual and the audio, they just have the audio and they want to listen to you. So, um, I think— do you think it would be good advice for us to maybe— actually, I want to check out, you know, I want to check out Alphabet Soup and Content Warfare and just kind of see how it sounds and listen to the podcast and kind of look at it from the other side. Do you think it'd be a good idea to maybe obviously check out a couple episodes and kind of look at it from a listener standpoint and then kind of imagine the production side to see what we would be getting into?

Absolutely. Yeah, I was so glad you brought up listening to podcasts because I would absolutely recommend that as a first step. Listen, you know, listen to a lot, figure out what you like. Even, you know, pick bits and pieces from different ones that you like, and it could, you know, really help you get an idea of what— take notes, figure out what's out there and how you want to fit into what's out there.

And definitely come up with your own, your own style of podcasting and your own theme for podcasting too, because I know for me it wouldn't be something very general. I would want to dive into a specific topic that a lot of my readers will get in touch with me and go, but I want to learn more about this. And, and like you said, Ryan, they'll skim and they'll get what they want out of the post, and I'm like, but you didn't read it, it's in there, but they skimmed and they missed it. So I think with the podcast, some of the readers that skim maybe, or even people that don't even read it, they, while they're driving, or like you said, Ryan, while they're working out, or you know, just maybe on a road trip or whatever, they'll plug in the podcast and listen to it, and they could be like, oh wow, you know what, Dionne had a really great guest on the show. They really knew a lot about this, and I really learned a lot, so I can't wait to plug in the next one. So this could be something that would be really good, and it sounds like even if you do start off with 6 to 10 listeners, they're quality listeners. Because from a blogger standpoint, if we see 6 to 10 views, we're like, what? All that work for 6 to 10? Because they, most of them bounce. 'cause they're skimmers. But it seems like with podcast listeners, it may be 6 to 10, but that's quality 6 to 10. They're listening, and like you said, they'd be more willing to subscribe, interact, write reviews. So even a smaller audience at first, if it's a more quality audience, I mean, I would be excited. Yeah.

Yeah.

That'd be something like—

What's funny about, uh, what's funny about podcasts is that they, um, when someone like— so let's say you— what I found is that as you get into this, so I'm— I've done 30 This week will be 36 episodes, I guess. And someone will listen to your 30th episode, and then they'll go back and download and listen to every single episode that you've ever produced because they want to hear how the story progresses. And I know that I've done that. If anyone's familiar with ThinkTraffic.net, Corbett Barr, Chase Reeves, they started a new podcast called Fizzle, and they had done a lot of what we're talking about. They listen to podcasts, they knew there were a lot of interview shows out there, they didn't want to do an interview show, and so they started, they had Caleb, and I always butcher his last name so I'm not even going to try, but the 3 of them come onto the show and they really, it's just a discussion, it's almost like a Table Topics discussion that they have, that's their podcast, that's their style. Well, when I heard the first one, I was like, I gotta listen to every single one of these. And I went back and downloaded every single episode they have. So now I've— I mean, I think they're at 10 episodes now, and I've listened to every one. And I, you know, do you think that if I see in my Twitter feed or Google+ or someone share something by Corbett, Chase, or Caleb, that I'm now not gonna go read that because I'm so invested in their podcast? Absolutely. I mean, that's what you get. You get these really deep connections with people, and I think like Autumn, having someone else come on the show with her, if you're a little nervous about just you and the mic, which, look, you get 15 minutes out into a podcast episode where it's just you, that can be a little scary because it's like, I gotta fill up airtime for another 15 minutes, but it's obvious I can talk. You know, if you have some— if you're worried about that, creating a show with multiple people that are on the show consistently, I think is a fantastic idea. And if you can really get a good rapport— and I would love to hear Autumn's thoughts on this because I only do interviews, I don't have someone that co-hosts the show with me— but to me, when you really get two people who work well together and, and maybe they bring a guest on once in a while, but it's these two people working back and forth. Those tend to be my favorite podcasts versus just a single talking head going on and on and on.

Yeah, Kelly and I complement each other so well. We got so lucky. And I mean, I, you know, I approached her about it because I just connected with her as a person and she had similar interests to me, but we got so, so lucky. And as we've recorded the podcast more together, I think we've, we've realized just how well we complement each other because we're very different in a lot of ways. And that sort of thing makes for— I mean, in speaking with another person, there's like built-in sort of continuity from week to week, you know what I mean? Um, and sort of like how the things that we talk about, how our relationship develops. And, um, I mean, that was sort of the big reason that I wanted to bring another person in, because just doing interviews with a different person every time didn't give— I didn't feel like I was able to build from episode to episode in the way that I wanted to. And having a conversation with another person who really complements me has allowed us to, uh, to really do that and have a more, I think, uh, a more dynamic format to something that's, um, hopefully a little more exciting to listen to.

Yeah, that actually brings us to another question. We had actually two. One was What would you suggest as a starting length for a podcast? And the second question was, which do you find works better or creates more interest, doing interviews or doing like the show, just like you said, Autumn, now the two-person show?

I would say record a practice version or two or three and see sort of what length you're hitting. My personal listening habits, I don't really, you know, my, I live in New York City, my commute is 30 to 45 minutes, and so my podcasts that I subscribe to that are maybe 15 minutes long, under 20 minutes, those aren't the top, at the top of my list. To stuff I listen to because it just, it doesn't fit with my commute. I know it's going to run out when I'm underground and I'm not going to be able to listen to something else. But so my advice would be to sort of figure that out yourself. We try to not go over an hour, but, you know, that's a longer time I think is easier to do with 2 people. What was the second part of the question? Sorry.

Well, one was the time and the other was which one seemed to work better, doing interviews or just doing it with another host.

Sure. I think there are, there are like pros and cons to both sides. If you're bringing in another person to an interview, the plus side of that in terms of audience is you're then sort of drawing on their audience as well. If they're gonna, you know, they're gonna push out through their social media that they were on Alphabet Soup Podcast and go listen. And so there's definitely an audience-building element to having a new person that you're interviewing that is really positive. One of the reasons I moved away from that format, that using solely that format was just my own time commitment and scheduling interviews for even what was a biweekly podcast at that point ended up really being a larger time commitment than I felt like was sustainable for me. So, you know, Kelly and I are really sort of, I feel like, hitting a stride now and are looking to now start incorporating more guests into our show so it's not just us. And I guess if I was gonna say my ideal would be, you know, a conversation, a regular conversation between a number of people that on occasion incorporates guests, interviews.

I have all that same stuff. I think that with— if you're buying into it with a podcast, that the idea is to dive deep and give people a kind of deeper, darker look into who you actually are and the content that you're delivering and all that, then the 10 to 15 minute podcast for me is not something that I'll subscribe to. I actually have unsubscribed from a few podcasts that I used to subscribe to because in an effort to— and I'm going to do air quotes here— "be different," These podcasters went to like these 5 to 8 minute formats because they thought, I think they thought that would differentiate them. And I hated to do it. And a lot of them are very intelligent, very big name people. And I just, I had to unsubscribe because to me, I can get your 8 minute thoughts in your, in your blog. I don't need your 8 minute thoughts on a podcast. For me, I want to really hear you talk about what matters to you and why these topics matter. That helps me— and this is me personally— that helps me formulate my own thoughts in my head because it's almost like you're having a conversation with this person. So I think I would never try to do a podcast less than 30 minutes. Personally, I try not to go over 40. That's just my frame. So once I get to around 30 minutes, if I have one or two questions left for an interviewee, or I know, you know, if I'm just doing a solo episode, I try to kind of get to my point and wrap up at that point. Because being that I don't have someone else on the show with me, an hour tends to be a little long. I 100% agree with Autumn. And less than 30, just my personal taste, is just not enough. Like, I'm really not giving anybody a reason to continue to come back because I'm not being able to dive deep enough. So I do do a lot of interviews. I probably do 3 interviews for every 1 solo show. The solo shows, I've tried to do different formats all the time, so I can't tell you it's me talking about a specific topic or how-to. The other day I just, I had something, I just read a couple guest posts that I had written and I did them like Morgan Freeman voiceover style. I tried to really give them some passion so you could hear like the enthusiasm behind the words. And you know, some of the stuff works, some of it doesn't. You know, you're just trying different things. I think that if you're uncomfortable interviewing people— interviewing is not easy, let me start with that. I know we got just a couple minutes here. Interviewing is not easy, so if you're going to do an interview show, I would do a little bit of research on interviewing people, because when you have someone who's easy to talk to, you feel like you're the best interviewer in the world. But it's that guest that you think is going to be great and shows up and is either having a bad day or has nothing to say. And you're just like trying to get information out of them, you really gotta keep yourself together because I have heard podcasters in— I say here, you can tell that a podcaster is freaking out because they're like, I'm 5 minutes in the show and this person has nothing to say. I'm screwed. And, um, and, you know, and good interviewers can work through that, and that's part of the process, so There are some different resources out there if you Google interviewing people. I think Srini has one. David Seidman Garland, I think, has good research on that. I could be misquoting it, but I would do a little research on interviewing if that's the style show you want to go for.

OK, we have a couple questions before we wrap it up. And actually, we had two that are almost the same. Monique Johnson and Sean Terry were asking about how you How do you go about getting a potential co-host? How do you find that person? How do you approach them? And Monique had asked that, and Sean wants to know the same thing. He goes, how do you find someone that you might have some on-air chemistry? Do you just pick someone you like and run with it until you get it right, or is there any method to the madness?

I mean, Kelly and I met at a food blogging conference around this time last year called Big Summer Potluck. And I sort of, at that time, I was really stepping away from my podcast and saying, you know, I had a feeling I wanted to bring another person on and just sort of, you know, was trying not to rush it in a way, you know, really trying to feel like, think about what I wanted in that second person and When I met Kelly, it was, you know, I think I mentioned this, but like I had, I could really talk to her and I had fun talking to her. And if you're going to be talking to someone week after week, it should definitely be fun. And we, I could tell that we complemented each other very well. I'm a, I'm very reserved and she's much more outgoing and bubbly. And I would, you know, if you're going to approach someone about it, really say, would you wanna try doing this for an episode and see how it goes? You know, I wouldn't sort of say, uh, let's do this thing forever together. It's kind of like asking someone out. But to just kind of you know, say let's try this, let's see how it goes, and maybe it won't be a fit. Maybe, you know, it ends up being something they don't really like to do. But, you know, I think when you find that fit, you'll definitely know.

Yeah, I think the most important thing that Autumn just said is that just because you add somebody doesn't mean that that person has to be part of your show forever. I mean, you could try like 3 or 4 different people until you find the right fit. It doesn't have to— every change you make doesn't have to be a change that is now a forever thing. So if you find somebody you think is cool, try it. If it doesn't work, say, "Hey, it didn't work. We're going to try somebody else," or, "I'm just going to do my own thing for a while and then we'll try someone else later." I really think that the— you can tell when you listen to a podcast whether people have chemistry or not.. And what I wouldn't do is try to force a relationship because you think that person should be a right fit. I would find the right fit and then go with it. Because you can tell, I mean, I don't have experience with it personally, but listening, the podcast where people have chemistry are great. The ones that they don't, it's very obvious.

Yep.

It's like a good on-air radio show. It's the same thing. You know, you get two people that really click and you don't care that they don't play any music because you enjoy listening to them.

Yes.

You get someone else, you go, "Oh my God, they're still talking." Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's one of those. We did have one other question before we wrap it up from Adam, and he said, "Every writer needs an editor.

Do podcasters need a director, someone who will give you honest feedback?" I think that your audience should be your feedback, and I encourage people every episode I take time out of the episode to tell them, you know, write a comment, send me an email, you know, connect with me on Google+, write, tell me something there. Like, if you feel like it's something you don't want to say publicly, hey, send me an email, here's my email address. And, you know, I don't get paid to do it. I do it because I enjoy doing it and I like helping people, and it's part of my audience building. So I'm probably not going to pay an editor, but I think that your audience can be your best editor if you make it seem like you're very open to that feedback, even negative feedback. I mean, I've had people tell me to tweak different things, you know, this is too long, this is too short, and if you think that that's valid advice, then you make the changes, and I think that's how you get better.

I definitely agree, and I think we have a relationship with our loyal listeners that they do feel comfortable and have in the past giving us that sort of advice. I mean, in an ideal world, we would have a producer, but I think you can also, you know, something fantastic about food bloggers is the community. And so I think, you know, if you feel like you want that person, that sort of person for your podcast, ask, you know, a friend who is somewhat, you know, outside of, you know, is not the person that you're talking to on the podcast, is maybe someone who you know to be, you know, is interested, at least listens to podcasts, but is just sort of like whose judgment you trust and just say, you know, be honest with me. I think it, you know, if you, if you feel like you need that, that sort of directorial producer person, seek them out. But I absolutely agree with Ryan in that hopefully your audience— you have that sort of rapport with your audience that they provide that sort of feedback for you.

I think that's good advice, and I think all of us probably have someone that we have become to trust, you know, we've come to trust their opinion. I know I have one I always refer to as my businessman my manager and I don't make any serious decisions without running by her first just to get, you know, she'll go, "Are you crazy?" You know, like—

Yeah.

No, I'm just kidding, just kidding, really didn't mean that but, you know, in other times, "Wow, that's a great idea." And that's actually, she was the one that gave me my Ask Chef Dennis title for my blog so I trust her opinion a lot too so. But yeah, I think if you find that person to give you some good honest feedback and then people just respond to you as a podcaster, you're going to get the real feedback then.— if they're following you, if they're listening to you, if they enjoy what you have to say. That's your real feedback. We're going to wrap it up. It's run a little over an hour now. We're into our second session of our 6 sessions for today for our first annual virtual bloggers conference. I keep wanting to say food bloggers, but this is not just about food. I mentioned in another session that I was, I guess, naive. Naïve when I first thought about blogging as something that only food people did and then I went, "Oh my God, everybody blogs, this is nuts." So most of the sessions really are about blogging and apply to everything that a blogger does. It's just a matter of what you're selling and there's just a couple of sessions food related. So it's been great so far, our second session. I'd like to thank you all for coming today. Ryan, thanks so much for being here with us.

Thank you for having me. This is very much a pleasure, and I enjoyed, enjoyed the chat. It was great to meet Dion and Autumn, and very much appreciate it. Thanks for having me.

Great. Dion, thank you so much for sitting in on this and offering us a blogger's perspective and ask some questions. That was great to have you here with us today.

Absolutely. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate you guys taking the time to teach us a little bit about podcasting so we can decide if this is the right thing that we want to do for us. So thanks, you guys, for having me.

Great. And Autumn, thank you so much for taking time out of your day in New York and coming on to talk about podcasting. It was great having you.

Absolutely. Thanks so much for having me.

Oh, it's my pleasure. And are you going to Big Potluck again this year?

I am.

So I'll see you soon, right?

See you there. Yeah, absolutely. Alright, so guys, thank you so much. I'm Chef Dennis Littley, and this was our second session of our first annual virtual bloggers conference. Thank you so much for coming, and I'll see I'll see you with our next session, which is gluten-free foods. It's how to adapt recipes and how to change recipes into gluten-free, which is— I keep saying it's not a trend anymore. It's not a fad anymore. I think it's just going to become a way of life for a lot of people, so it's good information to know. I'll see you in about 51 minutes, and we'll go for session 3. Thanks so much.