Don't Assume Your Podcast Competition Has A Strategy

It happened to be again today, and I thought I should say a few words about it. A client was speaking about their competition and was saying, but my competition is doing it, which is the true statement. And their competition was doing it. But the thing that was interesting, the thing that is true, the thing that I want to chat about, is that the competition had no idea what they were doing. The competition wasn't doing something smart. The competition was doing it because they had heard somewhere in some article or some blog post or someone trying to sell a $7 ebook about podcasting that this is something they need to do. And what happens is, is because they did it, because they heard it from somewhere, or maybe they saw it from somewhere else, someone sees them do it and does it, and someone sees them do it and does it, and then it goes on and on and on and becomes this. This cascade of misstep and misdirection that is doing, I believe, a tremendous amount of damage in our industry. And so I wanted to just chat about that a little bit. Podcasting at its core is not complicated. It's the creation of digital media. It's the placing online, it's the making it podcast ready, and then it's telling the world that's it. It's not that complicated. It's something that we do to communicate with our audience. And what happens is, is we hear things like, if you do this, more people will come. And let's use both sides of it. One thing, very popular thing that I've heard, use the right keywords and more people will come. Well, if they are coming to your content because of a keyword and you're not speaking about that keyword, you're not speaking about that issue, they're going to stop listening and sure, possibly give you a bad review. But the fact of the matter is, if they listen to 5, 6, 7 seconds of it and then leave, if you don't think the podcast companies are tracking that, you are severely mistaken. You know another thing that happens, and why would it matter if the podcast companies are tracking that? Well, we'll think about it. If one podcast people listen to, the majority of the other podcast people listen to a couple of seconds of which one's going to come up first in search. And of course, the idea that you want to be an authority for a topic that you're not an author authority on is just the basis of communication. That's really, really bad. I've seen people, well, my host is on this platform. Well, there are a lot of platforms out there, but the Fact of the matter is, all of these platforms create podcasts because they are podcasting platforms. So Platform X is not going to do a better job of getting you placed in Apple Podcasts or getting you placed in Spotify. That's something you do yourself. And just because someone's more expensive or someone's more flashy or someone's more fancy or someone has the right, you know, more buzzwords doesn't necessarily mean that they're better. Sometimes the. The old dog that has been doing this for so long just has the upper hand, and it's something that you have to think about. So I have these clients who tell me, well, my competition is doing it. I think I should. Two, why is the competition doing it? Well, they must have done their homework. They possibly could have done their homework. It is quite possible to do some research out there and to get some really epically bad advice that someone call me today speaking to another podcast and, oh, well, this guy's getting XYZ numbers. He wasn't. He isn't. Maybe he's reading his numbers wrong, maybe he misunderstands his numbers, but those numbers weren't there, and the person shouldn't have been getting those numbers because it was very niche, it was very targeted, it was very special. But the fact of the matter is, because he was getting it, he jumps on it. Because he jumps on, he jumps on it. Because he jumps on, she jumps on. And we get this again, this cascading effect that can do a lot of bad things for the industry, cause a lot of problems. But let's go deeper. Strategy. A lot of podcasts, because of the barrier to entry, because really, you can pick up your cell phone and record something on anchor for absolutely free because the barrier of entry is so low. There's this concept that I'm going to spend this time figuring out my strategy, you know, getting my feet wet, figuring out what it is that I'm doing. And there's definitely something to be said for practic, your podcast and your craft. But this idea that if you build it, they will come only worked in that really bad Kevin Costner movie. So if your competition has no idea why you're doing it, this should not be something that you copy. This should not be something that you emulate. This is something that you should think, well, since my competition, you know, is doing this, maybe I can focus on something else and get myself to a situation where I can advance because they're spending all this time wasting all this time on something. Paul, would you possibly say that Someone could be wasting their time on a podcast. Yes, absolutely. It's not for everyone. And if your strategy is no good, it's actually not for even the best of company with the best of service. You got to have the strategy and then you got to have the follow up to figure out if these strategies are working. And just nice little platitudes like, I'm going to find myself, I'm going to let people find me, I'm going to figure out who I am, I'm going to be of benefit, be of service. These things aren't necessarily true, even if the best competition is doing it. I spoke with someone else today and they were telling me they love Podcast X. If you run the numbers on podcast X and podcast X getting crazy amounts of downloads and it is a brilliant show, but if you run the numbers on podcast X with the ads that they're getting and they've got great sponsors and they've got great ads, but if you take the money, multiply it by the downloads, multiply it by the amount of people that they very clearly listed, you know, at the end of the episode in their audio credits, if you will. Nobody's making any money on this. This is a play, this is a game entirely where someone says, hey, I've got this name associated with my network and they're hoping to bring other people in it. So a podcast could be making money, that could be the strategy. But if you run the numbers, you see it's a really bad idea. So in this short episode of the podcast report, I just want to encourage you, suggest to you scream for the mountaintops at you that just because your competition is doing it, doesn't mean that it's a good idea, doesn't mean that they got good direction, doesn't mean that they're being smart, doesn't mean that the numbers add up. You are very capable of running the numbers yourself. You're very capable of adding things up yourself. And if you can't figure out why they're doing it or if something seems too good to be true, it actually might be too good to be true. And you might be in a strategic position to do something very, very different than what they're doing, not emulating what it is that they're doing. This is episode, the podcast report. I recorded this live on Facebook. So if you're watching this on Facebook, if you head out to the podcastreport.com Apple or Google or Pandora, you'll be able to follow the show and subscribe to and get the latest episodes and not find yourself subject to all the Facebook algorithm nonsense. If you want to follow up, you can head out to the Podcast report. Grab this episode Follow up if you want to follow up on social thepodcastreport.com Facebook thepodcastreport.com Twitter Instagram insert the destination of your choice if you want to send me an email the podcast report@outlook.com we're actually playing the Microsoft game. Thank you so much for listening. We'll have another one soon. Between now and then, don't do anything stupid. Thanks much. Bye.