A Smart Process For Dealing With Podcast Criticism - The Podcast Report With Paul Colligan Episode #77

A smart process for dealing with podcast criticism. It's the Podcast Report, episode number 77. Show notes, links, conversation and more at the podcastreport.com 77. Here's your big idea. Podcasters who care more about their critics than their audience are serving the wrong people. Hey, this is Paul Culligan. This is the Podcast Report, the podcast where I show you the podcast how to reach more with your message and how to profit more with your content. This is episode number 77 of the podcast Report. You can find everything you need over@thepodcastreport.com, i've got a couple things for you with this episode. I have a one sheet PDF type of thing you want to print out and put up at your wall. If this whole issue of podcast criticism is a big deal to you, it's also available in the app. You can download it directly there. Link to the app is also@thepodcastreport.com 77. Or of course, the Podcast Report app. Hey, Paul, this is a wacky topic. How come you're doing this one? Well, a couple of weeks ago I put up at my Facebook page, I said, hey, what types of topics would you like to see in this new season of the Podcast Report? And Byron Friday, he commented, he gave this idea. He's seen podcasters respond to this in different ways. He wanted my thoughts on it, and I thought, gosh darn it, it's an interesting idea. So thank you, Byron, for the idea. This is exactly why I'm doing it. And see, the thing is, understanding what your audience wants is one of the best ways to understand them. And simply saying, what would you like see? What would you like to hear? What would you like to do? Well, Byron responded, we've got this episode. It's a really good process. I recommend you follow it. Why is it so vital to understand this topic? Podcasting is personal. That's one of the things that has attracted so many of us to it. We are usually at our homes, in our den, in our bedroom. Many of us are. This is the passion project. This is us. This is our heart, our soul. And someone comes in to critique it or criticize it or say something mean or bad or whatever. Well, because it's so close, close to us, and because there's so few people involved in the entirety of the process that it begins to feel like an attack on us. And let's face the Internet, it's easier than ever to critique. We know the trolls. We know what people do. We read about it all the time. We criticize it. But the fact of the matter is it's there. And if it's our audience who's listening, should we listen back? Let's face it, when you deal with complainers and criticism, you got three options. You can engage, you can ignore, you can delete. So what I'm going to give you is just a couple thoughts, a couple of ideas on each of these, and we'll go from there. Engage quiet, respectfully. If someone says something that you need to engage with, and we'll chat in a second about whether or not that's the case, engage quietly. Engage respectfully. Obviously, stay away from, you know, name calling and whatnot. A fellow in the industry, a friend, Jay Baer, has worked on this whole project called Hug youg Haters. Hyh. I've got a link to that in the show notes@the podcastreport.com 77 Jay has a whole engine, a whole machine, a whole thing in place for engaging the criticism in some intelligent ways. I don't necessarily agree with it entirely, but it is brilliant. It is Jay. He has done a great job. It's based on a lot of research. And if you're going to engage and you're going to do it with strength and you're going to do it with purpose and mission, you might want to consider taking a look at what Jay has. And again, I got a link to that at the podcast report. 77. If you ignore versus delete, ignore is usually the best. Delete can be a trigger, you know, why did you leave my message? Freedom of the press, blah, blah, blah, blah blah. The fact of the matter is, a lot of times if you delete, it triggers more. It gets more. Now, sometimes you do have to delete for any sorts of reasons. But the big thing basically for deleting, two things you want to think about is serving your audience isn't always easy. And I'll chat more about this. This really is all about serving your audience. And let's face it, deleting isn't always an option. If it's somebody else's website or someone else's social thread or that type of thing, you don't even have that option. But think through it, make sure it's what you want to do, and then go from there. So let's set the facts, the questions. When you engage, when you ignore, and we'll go from there. Fact number one, the purpose of your podcast is to serve your audience. The purpose of your podcast is to serve your audience. The purpose of your podcast is to serve Your audience not serve the critics, not serve the complainers, not serve the people who find fault in all. So that's the very first thing you want to do. Every element of this goes through that lens of serving your audience. Now, your audience, your real audience, is interested in you, not your critic. You know your critic is trying to leverage your platform, your podcast, your website. And that's not what your audience is there for. And this is important. They came to see you. If you give stage time to your critic, you have now done something poorly to them. Another thing to realize just the facts. Some people have nothing better to do. There are people who love to run around the Internet complaining, criticizing, and it comes from a whole bunch of places. And we could examine that until the cows come home. But the fact of the matter is, there are a lot of people who love to complain. More than your show, more than your topic, more than anything else. That's what they do. And they're like that kid in the back of your middle school class used to snap the bras of all the girls. Once people stopped yelling his or her name and stopped giving him or her attention, they went away. Now, complainers are a segment of your audience, not your audience. This is very, very important. They're a segment of your audience, not your audience. Just because somebody complains doesn't mean that everybody else is feeling that way automatically. We'll go through a couple questions to ask, but complainers are a segment of your audience. Complainers are a segment of my audience. They're not your entire audience. And again, your goal is to serve your ENT audience. So think through that. Then final fact is just simple. Episode consumption is very different than web and or social consumption if you're doing your podcast correctly. We've chatted about this in popular episodes. The majority of the listing, the majority of the consumption comes from people on a walk with earbuds on, in the car with the smartphone running this. They are not people visiting your website because they have better things to do. They're not people going through social media finding out what people are saying for you because they have better things to do. Serving your audience through podcasts means you come to them, not they come to you. So episode conception is very different than Weber's social conception. So that's the facts. So with those facts, a criticism comes in. Three questions to ask. Number one, is the criticism correct? You know that one's not hard. Is the criticism correct? Second question, does it interfere with the goal of your podcast? I manage for my clients a number of large Scale podcasts with millions of downloads and on occasion someone might say something like, the audio was bad. And the fact of the matter, the audio was bad because this was recorded on a cell phone at Fiji by a brilliant person who said some amazing things. That is worth its weight in gold. So the criticism was correct, but it didn't interfere with the goal of the podcast at all. The goal of the podcast was to get out the content, interview the subject expert, connect you the audience with this brilliant mind. Then the last question is, does a response serve your audience? You know, if they are correct and it does interview interfere with the goal of your podcast, then response probably serves your audience. There will be times when that's true, times when it isn't. And then you go from there, just ask those three questions, but they're not correct. Don't worry about it if it doesn't affect the goal of your podcast, doesn't worry about it. And if a response doesn't serve your audience, for goodness sakes, that is who you are performing for. The second you move from serving the criticism to you, the game changes the response only if it serves your audience. When do you engage? Well, you engage when it serves your audience and only when it serves your audience. You engage when you've done something wrong or the criticism is correct and it serves your audience. You know, I stumble over words now and then I'll have some background noise now and then and someone can criticize me about that or criticize you about that, and that's all fine and dandy and that happens. Me responding to that criticism doesn't serve my audience in the slightest, even though it is correct. It certainly interferes with the goal of my podcast, taking time out to deal with the hater. No, not going to happen. So you engage when it serves your audience. You engage when you've done something wrong and or the criticism is correct. Here's when you ignore, you ignore when the critique has no impact on your purpose. You ignore when the critique has nothing to do with what it is that you are trying to pull off. You ignore when the attention is not worth the fix. You know, you can tell it's not that complicated. There are some critics, there are some complainers who, boy, once you open that door, they're going to keep coming through over and over and over again, that unwanted guest. Ignore them when the intention's not worth the fix. Ignore them when the critique. Critique has no impact on your purpose. You see, the facts are you're here to serve your audience. In short, the question is, is it worth it. Engage if it is, ignore if it isn't, and we go from there. Hey Byron, thank you so much for this. I like the idea of engaging with my audience far better than I do engaging with my complain. So this is season two of the podcast report. We're doing some things different. We'd love your input. If you head out to the podcastreport.com 77 let us know what you think about this episode. You'd like more like it, less like it. We'll go from there. As you heard earlier, we like to listen to our audience, not the complainers. You know who you are. Links I've got a link@thepodcastreport.com 77 to Jay Baer's Hug youg Haters project. There's some information about his book, what you get if you pick up the book. All sorts of good stuff. Again, I love JJ's a great guy. The project is not 100% the drawer direction I'd go, but if you're looking at engaging the hater, it's certainly something worth taking a look at. I've also got a link to the thread that got Byron to make the suggestion that led to this episode. I want to encourage all that energy that so many of us spend on dealing with our criticism, dealing with our critiquers, to actually listening to our audience. Also, thepodcastreport.com 77 a new link to the Podcast book I've stopped saying the year of the podcast book because these episodes are getting more and more designed to deal with the ages to be evergreen. Putting a date on that can kind of get in the way. Then the other thing I have over@the podcastreport.com 77 are the two apps. We've got the app for this show, which is one of the ways to download the PDF worksheet that I put together for this. And we've also got the app to the how to Podcast app, which is a companion app to the book. They are great independently of each other, but they also work great together. Would love to have you pick that up. And again, I've got for you a PDF to walk through the issues of today's episode. It's one page. It's nice, it's simple, it's easy. It's the type of thing you can pin up to the wall and kind of think through if you're dealing with criticism and dealing with the critiquers and go from there. I do love listening to an audience that actually cares about the topic at hand. We're all over social, you can head out to the podcastreport.com interact there thepodcastreport.com 77 to interact with this particular episode, you can of course head out to the podcastreport.com Twitter or the podcastreport.com Twitter Facebook to interact there. We'd love to have you be part of the conversation. The other thing I'd love to have is I'd love to have you subscribe to the Podcast Report instead of just taking one episode at a time. I'd like to serve you as we shared in this episode, by simply making sure that every time an episode comes out, it comes to you automatically. Now one really easy way to do that is to pick up the Podcast report app, the podcastreport.com app. But the other thing is the good old fashioned podcast subscription. You can find me in all the traditional places. Go ahead, click, subscribe so that it comes to you automatically if you're an iTunes user. The podcastreport.com iTunes is great. The podcastreport.com Stitcher, TuneIn, PocketCasts, Google, they're all there. Would love to have you join us. Love to have you be part of this and love to have this come to you automatically so that I can serve you better and spend more time with you and not the haters. Thanks for listening to this episode. It was a blast to put together. Would love to have you grab the worksheet either through the app or visiting the website. Either way, more to do chat with you next week. Bye.