About My Unique Podcasting Concepts - The Podcast Report Episode #66

All about my unique podcasting concepts. It's the podcast report episode six six. And www.thepodcastreport.com six six. It's the podcast report with Paul Colligan. And here's Paul. Look at this. Two big ideas for this episode. First, big idea. The value of your podcast is not how much time you spend producing it. Second, big idea is simple. Activity is not productivity. Hey, my name is Paul, Paul Colligan. Actually, I'm podcaster author. I have a book out called how to podcast 2015. We'll actually be chatting a little bit about that today. Something interesting happened that I thought would be fun. But this podcast, this series, what we're doing here, is not about my book by any means, in any way. I've been part of podcasting since the beginning, over 10 years. I love this industry. I've loved it since day one. You're a podcaster looking to make your podcast a real business or do more real business as a result of your podcast. That's why you listen to the show, that's why you've been subscribed. And I thank you for going with me on this journey. You know, this show has never been a massive play, but it's always been a deep one. The goal here is to take you in the direction that you need to go. So why the topic today? Why chatting about kind of my ideas, my take on the whole podcasting thing? Well, it comes honestly from a review for my book at Amazon. And this struck me not necessarily in a bad way, but just in an interesting way and I wanted to share it with you and basically, you know, three stars out of five. But he says what's interesting here is that I try too hard at times to be a contrarian and give little reason and or evidence for many of my more unique podcasting concepts. And he puts unique in quotes. And this isn't an anti review kind of thing. It's an interesting statement. And here's the thing. You know, I wrote how to Podcast and I've chatted about this before and future versions still have the same focus. I wrote how to Podcast to be easy. My goal is start podcasting. It's not complicated. And if I spend a lot of time on theories and themes and ideas of podcasting, that's going to get in the way of the whole podcasting is simple thing. You know, we don't have to know everything about everything. I got into a plane to San Diego this weekend. I still don't understand aerodynamics, but I knew I could buy a ticket quickly online, get to San Diego, do what it was that I needed to do. We don't always have to know the tech that we're dealing with, especially when it's a book just about how to utilize the tech. But with that said and done, let's chat about this. I thought this would be a fun thing to do this episode. So I want to discuss my unique contrarian points to podcasting. And there are a couple things I say, there are a couple things that I do that are very different from others in podcasting, but there is a method to the madness. The big thing is the big sources is yes, the book was designed to be short, the book was designed to be quick, the book was designed to be complete. And a lot of you have done really well with it. And it's exciting to hear the results of the podcast. But I also have an obsession with elegant ideas I have had for quite some time since I first read Tim Ferriss the Four Hour Work Week. And podcasting is a lot about elegant ideas. And the first one is that first big idea. The value of the podcast is not in how much time you spend producing it. I've chatted about that in different episodes. You commented back on that in different episodes. Yeah, the value is not in the time and activity is not productivity. If you spend 10 hours making a podcast, that doesn't make you 10 times better than somebody who spends one hour making a podcast. So let's talk to the areas where at least I consider I may be contrarian in podcasting. The first one's audio quality. I'm not the one who thinks that we have to recreate the recording studio situation to get the best sounding podcast in the world. This is definitely 9020 issue and a good microphone using an SE Blue for this one under $100 most the time over at Amazon. A good microphone recorded correctly in a smart room and you can get good audio. And even more than that, you know, if you don't necessarily have access to a good microphone, but you have access to good content. Telephones work, Bridgeline recordings work. The purpose of content is content, not the quality of the audio that's done now. Certainly clean it up, certainly take out whatever hums, certainly do whatever you can to make it the best possible experience. But it's the content that's important, not the audio. The only person I've ever heard complain about the quality of an audio is a quote unquote fellow podcaster. You know, contrarian point number one, audio quality. Another one is feed validation. Now this one I get a lot of. I could use different words. I won't. Podcast feeds need to be validated. And here's the thing. What is feed validation? Feed validation is, you know, the code is right and the podcatchers can utilize it. Well, here's the thing. There's really only one feed validator that counts, and that's iTunes. If your RSS feed works in itunes, it's going to work everywhere else. Yes, it might not be the perfect protocol, but that protocol is a protocol for one computer talking to another computer, not one human chatting and talking to another human. I've never validated a feed, and I've been responsible for millions of downloads. You don't have to worry about the feed. I've never been one to make us work for the robots. When we work for the robots, the robots win. It's the basis of every sci fi story out there. My push to simplicity, you know, the book, It's. It's just 50 some odd pages for the how to part. And I did that because it doesn't need to be complicated to podcast. And there are some out there who want it to be complicated, who feel like it needs to be complicated, and that's definitely contrarian, but gosh darn it, I don't know. I don't believe it needs to be complicated. It's funny, it's been that way for a long time. When I started on the Internet, I, you know, I started making my money, if you will, supporting a product called Microsoft frontpage. That was a product that let Ma and Pa create their own websites. And yes, I've heard complaints about frontpage and I've heard other things, but I saw a lot of websites make a lot of people, make a lot of websites and run a lot of businesses because simplicity. Now, the other thing I'm really into is just letting computers do, well what they do well. There's some people feel like feed validation is certainly an example, you know, where they have to fix the feed, they have to fix the code. No, the computers write the code, the computers read the code. We create the content that we use for the computers to do this automated sound editing and fixing programs such as Sound Soap or the Levelator or Auphonic or any of these guys are wonderful. Let the computers do the hard work. Now, there is one contrarian thing that I did in the last edition of the book that I'm actually getting rid of, and I thought I'd speak to that as well. In the past, I've spoken to feedburner as being an option where the benefits outweigh the negatives. Here's the deal. The benefits that feedburner provided have actually gone away. There are just solutions now that we can get elsewhere where we don't have to deal with feedburner. And the fact of the matter is, feedburner obviously has been ignored by Google. It's working fine if you're on it, don't worry about it. But it's just simply not needed anymore. And I used to recommend it. I'm not going to future versions of the book. You're not going to see that there. But simply because it comes back to not because I have stock in Google, which, by the way, I don't. It just comes because whatever helps us get our content out to as many people as quickly and easily as possible has always been my obsession. Now those are the contrarian issues that I see my audio quality, feed validation, push to simplicity, letting computers do what they do in Feedburger, which I've retracted on if you have missed if I've missed anything in my contrarian issues. If you're curious about some things that I say different than the other gurus, please go ahead and visit the podcastreport.com 66list those or follow up with me on Social in any way and we'll chat about how to do that at the end of the show. Would love to hear it, but I think those are the areas that I'm contrarian. Now there are reasons to get upset about a contrarian. Number one reason is if someone's steering you down the wrong path, if there are people out there saying that this causes this and it doesn't, then this is a good thing. Yeah, you can get angry about a contrarian view. If there's someone that feels that this needs to be stopped because of this or this has to happen because of this. And you know, if A, then B. Well, if A isn't true and B is damaging, yeah, yeah, get in the way. If someone's steering you down the wrong path, get upset. If someone's causing damage, get upset. And if someone's abusing their position, definitely get upset. But you know what? I don't feel that I'm doing that. My clients have seen great success in podcasting, I've seen great success myself in podcasting. And it's not a wrong path. It's maybe a different one. It may be a path of simplicity, maybe a path where you can go home and spend more time with your kids at the end of the day, but I'm not steering anybody down the wrong path. I'm not causing any damage, and I'm certainly not abusing my position. Now, why would I suggest these things? I think there's a bit of a hint in the review, and if there isn't, it's still a reason that some could see. You know, sometimes you're contrarian to sell things. You create controversy. I'll tell you right now, I truly believe that this is why Donald Trump is doing what Donald Trump's doing. I think Donald Trump knows that. And this definitely dates this episode. I try not to do that. But if you know anything about American history, you'll know this time. When Donald Trump started running for president, he just started saying crazy things to get crazy press and to get crazy time that he couldn't buy otherwise. And some people just. Sometimes people just say things to get press. Well, it's not what I'm doing. And I certainly have not positioned my how to Podcast book as anything other than how to podcast. I'm not. The book's not called 22 Ways the Gurus are Steering you Wrong and I'm Right or anything like that. So I don't know. I'm not doing it to sell more books by any means. I certainly am doing it to differentiate myself. I don't believe that podcasting needs to be complicated. I believe that you should go through that book quickly. I believe that you should get your podcast out quickly, and then you should be listening to this show to figure out the items of monetization and list building and marketing and these things. I definitely suggest these things to differentiate myself. And then the last thing, let's admit it, let's face it, someone could suggest these kinds of things to get out of the hard work. And here's the deal. Hard work that doesn't need to be done. Yep. I'm all about getting out of it, and I recommend that you do the same. But there's nothing here that isn't being done with these paths. What do you do with this? I don't know. Maybe you think I'm contrarian, maybe you don't. If you've been listening to this show for a long time, you probably don't. But I wanted to speak to this because this is a good exercise. You know, I know I'm not the only podcast guru out there. You know, John Lee Dumas is out there and David Jackson is out there. And please, if I forget somebody, you know, it's not because they're not there. It's just didn't come to my mind. Cliff Ravenscraft, all those guys, you know, we produce, we recommend, we preach different paths. So here are a couple of questions to ask. Question number one. And you put this, you put this up against anybody. Question number one. If Paul is right about the whole simplicity thing, why are others suggesting complexity? You know, if you're listening to a podcast episode or you're listening to a guru, or you've read something and somebody suggests 27 steps, when I've suggested one, ask why the other person is complexity. And if it's complexity, to get a better answer or to get a better result or something like that, I'm not against that. But sometimes there are people addicted to complexity. I'm not saying any of my contemporaries are anything like that. These are questions that you just put out there. If Paul is right in the simplicity, why are others making it complex? That's a question you need to ask. But then the flip side of the question, the other side of the question is just simply, am I making any element of my podcasting harder than I need to? That's an entirely different question than am I giving everything it's worth? Am I giving it the tension and the time and the love that it needs? But if you're making some part of your podcast or some part of your podcasting process more complicated than you need to, please don't do that. Get more content out, for goodness sakes. You're just much better for it. So where am I going with this? I wanted to respond to this. You know, I wanted to speak to these things. I'm not trying to be contrarian for contrary. I'm just, you know, this stuff works. And the fact of the matter is, I want you to be able to podcast quicker, easier, faster, reaching more people than ever before. And if there's stuff in the way that doesn't need to be in the way, I'm going to kick it out of the way or I'm going to suggest that you do the same. Stand by the book, everything in it. You know, feedburner, the one thing I'm changing, next year is fine, but, you know, life can get a little bit easier. So what I'm doing, I'm actually producing right now. And this is part of why I did this one today. A special edition of the book for 2016. We're going to get that out pretty quickly. That's just the how to podcast stuff. Just the first 67 pages or so in the book. It'll have a few more pages in it, but actually did make it simpler. In the process of Getting that. Going to be handing that out at a big event later this month, actually. But then I'm going to continue to focus on content in my podcasting and I'm going to focus on being productive in my podcasting. And I recommend that you do the same. It's not about the new microphone, it's not about the new editing software, unless of course, it makes your life easier, you know, but it's about getting your content, getting your message, increasing your reach, leveraging these tools to do what it is that you are in this for. That's where I'm going. That's what I recommend you do as well. Ask any questions. If you got any questions for me, head over to the podcastreport.com Six Six would love to answer them. I'm also doing the social thing. ThePodcastReport.com Twitter, ThePodcastReport.com Facebook, they're all there. If you want to do the social thing and if you want to email me, go ahead and email me@the podcastreportoutlook.com now. If you've not subscribed to this show, please subscribe to the show. One of the things, boy, another way people tend to make things more complex is thinking that people want to come out to and I've spoken to this many episodes, but this idea that people are going to want to come out to the website on a regular basis and hit the play button. You don't need to come to my blog. I don't need you to come to my blog. You don't need to come to my blog. But I do believe as a podcaster, especially since you've gotten this far, that you need to get every week about what we're doing here and you need to interact. And that's done by subscribing. 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