How to Succeed In Podcasting in 2022

So today we're going to talk about how to succeed in podcasting in 2021. So Neil and I, we've been doing this podcast for, I think we're coming up on 5 years actually. I checked Chartable. I think we've been doing this for 4 years and 9 or 10 months. Originally we started in Vegas. Neil's back in Vegas now, ironically. We would do it in, do it at his place and he'd have to turn off the AC and get really hot.

Yeah.

I personally been doing podcasting for about 8 years now myself. So we just want to talk about, look, 2021 has changed a little bit. And so we want to give you a couple of strategies and some hacks. Neil, you want to go first? You want me to go first?

Go first. What's funny enough, in my new house that I'm building right now, I actually have a podcast room. There you go. I added a podcast room.

I might be flying to Neil's place to do it. Just kidding. We both have, we both got smarter. It took us a couple of years to realize that we probably should have good mics and then that's it. And we don't need to go to all these podcast studios and things like that. The first thing is what we realized. We were doing daily episodes are great, but Neil and I, we spend maybe an hour a week or so doing 5, 7-minute type videos. And that's a couple of things, 5 to 7-minute podcasts. And then we're also doing video at the same time. So we repurpose it and we chop them up as well. We post them to social. So there's a couple of things in there. So one, if you can do daily, aim for daily, because you get more reps in there and you're going to compound faster. The other thing is repurpose. So right now we're doing this on Zoom. And we're going to be repurposing this to other channels as well, because if Neil and I are going to spend this time, we want to maximize this time. So those are 2 things to start off. I have a lot more and I'm sure Neil does too, but I'll kick it over to Neil. Yeah.

The other thing I would recommend doing, and I'm going to focus a lot of this episode on the promotion side while Eric focuses on things like mics, how to set things up, et cetera. But what I've learned, and this is what we did with our podcast, is you got to push it really hard at the beginning. So when I push it hard, I'm talking about email blasts, social media pushes. You can try ads. The biggest thing that's super effective right now in 2021, and it's really cheap, is pay other podcasts for ad spots. And the ad spot should be to follow your podcast. It's super, super effective. It's really cheap and it has a higher conversion than you probably would think versus other ad formats because you're not really selling anything. We're just telling them to go listen to another podcast. And the other thing that we found that's super effective At the end of every episode, and you don't have to do this all the time, but you should do this at least during the beginning, ask people to rate, review your podcast because the more ratings and the reviews you have, the higher you're going to climb up on the charts.

Yep. And so Neil and I, we change our call to actions at the end. So we have different offers. We have the pro offer. We had live offers. Sometimes we say rate, review, and subscribe. Sometimes we say text us and we just try to change it up every now and then. So whatever offers you have, feel free to play around with it. The other thing I'll say is we initially on Apple, we were only showing 50 episodes. And once we went in and we switched a setting that showed 300 episodes, we actually ended up getting a lot more downloads that way. Because you want to be able to show as many as possible so people can— oftentimes I get comments from people saying that they binge on this podcast. They'll listen to it the whole weekend, which is nuts. And it is what it is. What I'll also say is on the, from a retention standpoint, using a tool like Chartable has added the ability to have cohort retention metrics. So you can see how you're doing over time and you can try to continually improve. So for us right now, we know with this podcast, if you come in and you listen for the first month, we basically have a drop-off to about, let's call it 25% or so. So Neil and I are now thinking, okay, how do we bring the retention up? How do we— can we incentivize people to come back the next month? And then can we incentivize to come back more and more? Because that drives the downloads even higher. And so how good is your content? Can you keep people coming back over and over? And that's what it is. And the other thing I'll say too is the mics that we're using, the sound quality is the most important thing. So In the very beginning, when Neil and I would record in Vegas, we would use a crappy USB mic. We didn't know better. And then we would record without AC. And then we sounded like we were in— people were like, oh, it sounds like you're recording from a bathroom. And we get comments like that. So now Neil and I, we've upgraded our mics. We use a Heil PR 40, H-E-I-L P-R 40. And we have a mixer as well. So I use a Scarlett mixer. You can use the RODECaster Pro if you want. I travel with that. And then the other thing is Spotify and Apple. They're battling it out so hard right now where Apple has added subscriptions. Spotify has added subscriptions, but Spotify, what's fascinating is they've added an OAuth type of solution where you can just basically, if you have a membership site, you can add, subscribe to your premium podcast and people can just listen to it within Spotify. So I think that's special. That's going to have big implications. And then plus Apple getting subscriptions as well. They're both in it. Neil, I'll turn it back over to you.

One other thing that we did very early on that a lot of people forget to do is look at your analytics. So when you're starting off and you're creating episodes, you're not necessarily sure what's going to hit or what's not going to hit. Podcasting is like blogging in which it's all about the headlines, but your analytics will quickly tell you. Like, we use Libsyn. So in our Libsyn, it'll tell us the listens per episode. And it doesn't matter if you have 10 subscribers or you have a million, Every episode is going to get a different amount of views. And you need to look at the ones that are the most appealing. And the way you can figure out what's the most appealing is looking at your analytics, see what's working, create content more around that, and create less content of the stuff that's not hitting. It's very simple, silly process, but you should be doing that each month because each month that'll help you fine-tune where you should go with your content. And the reason I say you do it monthly versus doing it just one time is trends change over time in every single industry. So by doing it monthly, you'll get a rough idea of what is working, what's not. And I also recommend once you figure out what's not working, don't just push it away and say, hey, we're never going to create content around this subject. For example, with us, CRO topics don't do as well, but Eric and I still create CRO topics every once in a while because by continually testing it, you can see if the market changes and maybe they'll accept it. And if it doesn't, we'll just keep creating less of that content, but go back and retest your assumptions based on the data that you saw in past?

Yep. So Spotify has great analytics. Apple, I just looked at the Apple analytics. They've upgraded them as well. Chartable is great too, because it combines both of them. So you can test your 7-day consumption, 30-day consumption. And for us, for this podcast, SEO and content marketing tends to do a lot better for us. Maybe that's because that's what we're known for. And then if, to Neil's point earlier, you can definitely pay podcasts to promote. If you don't have the money for it, you can just do collabs with other podcasts that are big, do collabs with them and then cross-promote. That, that is your advertisement right there. Instead of spending $20,000, $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 or so with a really big podcast, just do a collab, right? Ideally, what you're aiming for is someone that's a little bigger than you, not too much bigger than you, right? There has to be some type of quid pro quo there. And the final thing I'll say from my side is you don't want to put too much pressure on yourself to say, oh my God, these people are getting millions of downloads a month. Like I want to be there. If you're a real estate agent, let's say Las Vegas real estate agent, and you sell luxury homes. And if you, if you're getting like 1,000 listens a month, Those 1,000 people, who do you think they are? They're probably wealthy people. And you're talking about, oh, this is what all the wealthy people do in Las Vegas, blah, blah, blah. And you're basically creating a resource, a community for them. You don't need millions of downloads a month to make it happen. You don't necessarily need to sell ads. You can create a community or you can drive it to your business. There's a lot of goodwill that you build with your podcast.

Neil?

Oh, you're muted. I'll do it. So go to marketingschool.io/live. Neil and I, we're doing our live event again. It's September 19th through the 22nd. You can apply again, marketingschool.io/live. And please don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe. It helps us grow, and we'll see you tomorrow.