Driving Your Podcast to the Top of the iTunes Charts (VidSummit 2017 Presentation)

The law of free media services is I call it TLO F M s. Do what's good for the service and the service will do what's good for you. If you do what's good for Apple, they will promote you. So what's good for Apple? What Apple wants is consumers of Apple products. This is where podcasting comes into play. Your market is consumers of Apple products. What does Apple want? Apple wants? Consumption. The best consumption are subscribers. You are listening to the podcast report with Paul Colligan. Here's Paul There is a lot to.

Say about the VidSummit event and I can't say it all here, but a couple of details. Number one, when I went in 2016.

I did not expect it to be.

As fantastic as it was. Truth be told, if I wasn't asked to speak, I would probably most definitely come back and attend to get the content. The only reason I wouldn't attend would be scheduling issues and that kind of thing. It's a great event. 2016 was amazing. I was asked to come back in 2017 and present and that presentation is actually today's episode. It was called Driving youg Podcast to the top of the iTunes charts. And it's all about. Yeah, as you can guess it, driving your presentation, driving your podcast to the top of the itunes charts. And now a couple of things. Number one, the audio isn't as good as it should have been. A couple of technical issues does not reflect the show in any way. The show was absolutely first class and I really recommend attending highly. There was some Q and A at the end of the presentation. The people asking the questions were not mic'd in the audio, but I answer them in such a way that you can get the full thing. But here's what's interesting about the presentation.

I did it.

I was happy with it. The audience enjoyed it. But perhaps the most telling moment was I'd brought a client of mine with me. And this is the type of event that you actually bring clients to. And at the end of the event, she said, hey, Paul, can I make a recommendation? Can I make a suggestion? And the fact of the matter was, you know, wow. Yeah, I mean, the people who pay me are the ones who get to direct me. And whatever she had to say, I needed to take like a big boy. And so I said, sure, tell me. And she said, hey, Paul, all the stuff you've told us about running up the charts, and I'd done a chart run with them.

It's.

It was good and it was solid, but from the future I really recommend that you make people watch this before you send them up the charts and wow, I thought that was pretty cool. So pretty excited about the recording and I've got it. And now all my clients get the video. You can buy the video if you want. Over at VidSummit, they have the whole package. I am able to give you the audio with special permission from Darrel. So pretty happy about that. A couple of links and then we'll get to the content and we'll close things up. I do mention slides and you can get access to the slides just like every everybody in the presentation did. That is@paulculligan.com vidsummit and by the way, all of these links will be@the podcastreport.com 135 but paulculligan.com VidSummit will get you the slides from VidSummit. And I mentioned a very powerful YouTube tool that you can hack and utilize to do some pretty great things with. And that's called TubeBuddy. If you go to tubebuddynow.com it's a special link the guys have set up for me that actually gets you the trial that you can get elsewhere, but it's also the advanced trial with some features that the other trial people don't get. That is@tubebuddynow.com so let's get to the tip of the week and let's get the presentation and I will greet you on the other side. Hey Paul, how do I get people to subscribe to my podcast?

Hey Paul, how do I get people.

To visit my website? Hey Paul, how do I get people to sign up for my email newsletter? The trick to all these and more, following you on social, buying your book, getting your free download, whatever it is, it's simply give them a reason to. Your audience is listening, your audience is consuming, your audience is interacting, which is good. But most of them are really, really happy with what they've got right now, what they're consuming. When you ask them to do something and you think about it, they're in the car, they're on a run, they're going for a walk, they're in the office with this in the background and suddenly you say, do something and there's no reason for them to do it.

Or, well, why will they do it?

The second you give them a reason to do it, the second you tell them what is in it for them? W I I F m what's in it for me? You go that route and you'll get the signups that you're looking for and you'll grow your audience even more.

Hello, everybody around the world. We are here in Los Angeles, California. It is time for our next presenter. We're so excited to have him here today. You know, video, video, video. Well, he's going to tell you a little bit about audio and video, but on a different platinum. It's called itunes. Let me tell you a little about him. Paul Cooligan is a passion about helping others expand his reach and revenue with reduced stress and no drama. Sign me up. His lifestyle and business strategy are designed to tackle the challenges and opportunities of today's ever changing information economy. He is an 11 time number one Amazon best selling author and the secret weapon behind a number of top iTunes, podcasts and YouTube channels. And previous projects have included work from story brand, the US Department, the state department, traffic geyser, Rubicon International, Piranha Marketing, Microsoft, Pearson Education, about 500 more companies. The presentation is driving your podcast to the top of the itunes charge. Ladies and gentlemen, big round applause for Paul Cooligan.

Thank you. Thank you. All right, we got a lot of stuff to do. If we could bring me down a little bit so I don't peek as much, that'd be great. Who saw Gary yesterday? Who was blown away by Gary? Who heard that thing where Gary said voice and podcasting is probably something you.

Want to think about.

Who went upstairs last night and changed a bunch of his content based on what Gary said last night for y'? All? That's right. No, you didn't change your content. I changed my content. He spoke to Alexa and he spoke to Google. I have an entire presentation on getting your podcast on Alexa and Google. I'm not going to do that for you today. But at the end when I let you sign up for the slides, I will send you that presentation as well. Sound good? All right. You don't know me. You don't know jack. Anybody know who this is? This is Leo Laporte. One of the original way, way, way back when. That's Leo holding my business podcasting bible. The business podcasting bible's still for sale. Here's what's funny. It came out before the iPhone. It's that old. There's a week goes by where somebody says, hey, I read your book. I like your vision. I like what you're doing. But this whole iPhone thing, why don't you talk about that? Well, read the copyright date. This is one of my clients, Brendan. Brendan's a YouTuber. You can see numbers. 3.2 million, 2.9 million. 2.4 million. Brendan plays the game. Brendan asked, can we do the podcast thing? Let's see how we do. Made number one, number one of all of itunes. Who'd like to get to number one of all of itunes? Yeah, it's an interesting space to be and even cooler really than being number one that all of itunes is sticking your nose at this American Life, Freakonomics, Radio, Radiolab, Ted stuff. You should know all that stuff. It was a fun time. The attention you get from being number one, agencies start to reach out to you. In itunes, you have that click to contact button. You have that website button. It's a very interesting place to be. What's fun with Brendan was it wasn't just run on the American charts, as you can see here. Austria, he was number one. Belgium, number two. Sorry, Canada, number one. Denmark, we didn't make it until number three. And then, of course, Finland, the big market of Finland. Who's number one in Finland? You should be number one. Finland. It's awesome. So Brendan is a client. I do his work. Okay, so about the slides. Everybody wants to copy the slides. Everybody takes pictures of the slides. I appreciate that. At the end of this, I'm going to give you a web address and you're going to be able to download all the slides. So don't worry about that. Another one with benefits. Doing an itunes run is not just an issue of feeling good about yourself. And we'll talk about some options if that's all you're into this for. But this was an interesting one. Jj, Virgin client number one health. Good place to be. JJ and Chalene have a very. They're friends, but they're competitive friends. And JJ was really, really happy when she could beat her competitive friend. Who here wants to be the competitive friend? Yeah, it's a good, good, good feeling. Now, what's interesting is she made it number one in her category, which is very doable, and we'll chat about that with everyone here. But what's interesting is she also made it to number four of all of itunes. She wasn't able to beat Radiolab, but being listed right after Radiolab is not bad for a gal with a diet book. But what was really interesting was not the placement, was not the positioning, was not the bragging rights, but was this new to podcasts? You open up the iOS device, it says you're new to podcasts, you say yes, it makes recommendations. Recommended JJ twice, both in health and in fitness and nutrition. Getting recommended for new podcasters by itunes is a life goal for all of you. Okay? That's a very, very strong position. That's a very, very good place to be. There are a lot of podcasts. There are a lot less podcasts than there are YouTube channels, I'll tell you that. A lot less podcasts than there are blogs or websites. But when itunes says, yeah, give this podcast a try, that's an incredibly good place to be. So a lot of benefits to being number one. Podcasting is very different. I know, it's weird. I mean, I'm surprised we have this many people. This is vidsummit. What is a podcasting guy doing here? Well, it's kind of what Gary said yesterday. Podcasting, the paradigm for consumption is amazing. My favorite consumption paradigm for podcasting is this. 47 million Americans in their car by themselves with a 30 minute commute to work. Don't clap for that. That's a bad thing, actually. But the audience is there. The audience is there. And all you have to do is be better than drive time radio. Who in this room thinks they have the possibility to be better than drive time radio? The rest of you don't have arms. Okay? It's not that hard. And what's amazing is when someone takes you to work every week on their commute by themselves. When someone takes you to the gym and goes for a run with you. When somebody takes you for a walk on the beach. Podcasting's intimacy. YouTube's awesome. Video's great. Darrel's a dear friend. When darrel said come, I said absolutely. They used to be on stage. I thought he was just selling me a ticket. This is a great event. Video is important, but podcasting is intimacy. Who thinks it would be good if they had an opportunity to be intimate with their audience? Creators. How many creators in the room? Okay, you want to go number one? You want to take your show to number one? All of iTunes. How many brands in the room? You want to take your brand number one in iTunes. And maybe, if not your brand, maybe a show you're associated with. It's number one of all iTunes agencies. Boy, being able to take your brands to number one. Being able to take your creators to number one. This is for all three of the audience members here at vidsummit. Now, there are not one, there are not two, but there are three options for climbing the charts at itunes. We're going to go over all three of them. Number one today is the real climb with the real audience. This is where you play the game completely and totally legit. Number two is a real climb with a Fake audience don't do that. Number three is Photoshop. There are some agencies who will fall for a Photoshop job. You can fiverr that. And if you want to be number one on iTunes, the only purpose is bragging rights. You know, there's ways to do this a lot easier. I am not here for the cheat. I'm not here for the hack. I'm here for the real audience. I'm here for the real run up the charts. That's what we'll be chatting about today. Tom Webster from Edison Research. Edison research does the best studies in this space. The two big research projects they do every year they do a project called Infinite Dial. Infinite dial is a 16 year old study about how audio changes when we no longer have one radio station in town. How does everything change when there's not? Well, there's one sports station, one rock station. We now have literally an infinite dial. They've been tracking this for 16 years. They just started tracking a report called the smart speaker. That Alexa, that Amazon, coming from Microsoft, we have our friends at Cortana Thomas said if you don't pay for a service, you are the product they sell. So it has ever been, this is what you want to think of when you start thinking about running up the charts, when you think about playing these games. Because you know what? You don't pay to be in the itunes directory. You don't pay to be in YouTube. That means you're the product. And if you just think about that, if you go with that intellectually and strategically, you can be at a really, really good place. So the law of free media services is what I call it TLO f m s. Do what's good for the service and the service will do what's good for you. Who saw Darrell's presentation yesterday on the algorithm at YouTube? Hey, this is what YouTube wants. Give YouTube what YouTube wants and YouTube will give you what you want. The people who hack YouTube, the people who simply have a video blog and then they, you know, hide the whole YouTube thing, they don't even make it possible to click because they want free video hosting. The fact that they don't do that well with inside of YouTube, but they're not doing what YouTube wants. And YouTube is providing the video hosting because it's a massive game for them, but they're not going to be good to you. If you play the YouTube game. Do what's good for them, they'll promote you. If you do the Snapchat game what's good for them, they'll promote you. If you do what's good for Apple, they will promote you. So what's good for Apple? I already said this. What's best for YouTube? Time at YouTube. What's best for Apple? See, YouTube sells ads, so time at YouTube is what makes YouTube money. What does Apple sell? Products. Okay, they have Apple music. We'll see where that goes. But Apple sells products. So what Apple wants is consumers of Apple products. This is where podcasting comes into play. You've just spent with the iPhone X people are going to be spending over $1,000 on a phone. Now this is very good for Apple. It's very good for Apple shareholders. But man, when somebody walks in the room and goes, okay, I just spent $1,000 on a phone. What can I do with it? Welcome to the world of podcasting. See if you give Apple a reason to promote what it is that you're doing. Same analogy for everything else that we chatted about today. This is the space we're going to be at. So your market is consumers of Apple products. What does Apple want? Apple wants consumption. The best consumption are subscribers, not one offs. See if Apple knows that. I can rent the next Saw movie on iTunes. It's a one off, it's a buck 99. I can do that on any version of the iPhone and do that on any Apple tv, But when I subscribe, I come back on a regular basis. This is what podcasting does. You get up in the morning, there's a blip on your phone. The latest episode of X is here. Listen to it in your car. With 47 million other Americans on their 30 minute commute to work. And all you have to do is be better than drivetime radio. So Apple wants subscribers. Everybody understand that? Now, if what makes Apple the most money is subscribers, does anyone, buddy, want to guess what Apple promotes in the itunes charts? It rhymes with subscribers. Okay, bunch of gurus out there. A bunch of people who write books will tell you other things. But you see, subscribers come back, regular repetition. They're the ones who sell Apple product. That's what you're looking at. So the best consumers are subscribers. Look at your neighbor, please, and say, the best consumers are subscribers. Okay, this is where we're going.

Podcast.

Yes, there's on demand, yes, there's the pickup. But Apple wants subscribers. You see, where we're going with this itunes algorithm hasn't changed in over a decade. The reason I showed you the copy of that book is I've been doing this for my clients for over a decade. It hasn't changed. Will it change. We'll chat about that in a second. But it hasn't changed in over a decade. The formula. Who wants the formula? There's only a couple. I'm going to wait. Who wants the formula? There we go. As many subscribers as needed during a 24 hour period to get as far as you want. The number one podcast in iTunes got the most amount of subscribers in the last 24 hours. The number two podcast at iTunes got the most amount of subscribers, the second most amount of subscribers, and last WordPress. That's it. That's it. Now I'm seeing light bulbs go off. Wait a minute. So like if I did a concentrated attack and tried to get a lot of subscribers during a 24 hour period, could I beat the big guys? Yes, you can. What itunes wants is as many subscribers as needed during a 24 hour period to get as far as you want. Now, what does the as far as you want mean? Well, let's talk about the formula. You pick a single day. Now remember, at the end I'm going to give you the link to download all this stuff. You can take pictures if you want. This really isn't my best, finest artistic work, obviously. But just know that when this is done, you can sign up for all this. Pick a single day. Promote Subscribes. Don't promote a visit to your website. Oh, I have a new blog. Come to my website to learn about it. No, you have a podcast. Send them to itunes and get them to subscribe. It's the same thing with itunes. It's the same thing with YouTube. It's the same thing with everything. Take there. Now, once you've promoted that, take a lot of screenshots, enjoy the ranking, and then have a fantastic episode too. Because what's going to happen is all of those people who subscribed, when you release the next episode, you know what's going to happen. They're going to get the little blip new episode. Who's going to have episode two? Who's going to make episode two better than episode one? Wow, look at that.

They brought episode two.

You know what happens after episode two Rhymes with episode three? Episode four, Episode five. And if you keep the content and if you keep aware of your audience and you keep aware of your base and if you give them what it is they're looking for, they will continue to listen. It's a simple situation. It's not that complicated at all. But that is it. That is where we're going. Now. Another surprise benefit of this. Anybody in the room consider themselves sort Of Internet marketers. How cool. Internet marketers. We loves our emails because whenever we want anything done, we send an email, right? That's why we collect emails, because emails make things done. I have a client. His name has been invoked a couple of times at this event. I'm not going to say who is. He puts on the Slack channel. He says, hey, we did an email on the last podcast. What's the delta? What's the difference? Give him the stats. And the response was this. That's shocking for me. Now, anybody who has an ideal client and the client says, that's shocking for me. You're like, shocking in a good way or shocking in a bad way. But the fact of the matter was he was used to. And this guy's doing very well. He's used to getting action by email. But here's the thing. Because everybody had subscribed because everybody liked the show, all the biggest fans had gotten the show anyway. The email almost became, you know, a secondary, maybe even possibly, do I dare say a nuisance, because subscribers come on a regular basis.

Now.

We live in a world of 8 trillion podcasts, you know, 48 billion YouTube channels, 197,000 snaps a day. We've got to remind them on a regular basis. But the subscribers come in, they download the stuff. It's absolutely hilarious to publish a podcast and start to see tweets about the podcast before you're done publishing the podcast, because it comes to the download and people see it. It's a fun, fun place to be. So it turned out, client was positively shocked, in a good way.

Guru talk.

Who's ever read a book about podcasting or an article about podcasting, you know, or heard a guru speak about podcasting? Gurus will tell you things, and that's what gurus do because they're gurus. And one of the things the gurus will say is you got to be in the New and Notable. Who's heard that one? Okay, a couple things about New Notable. A New Notable is broken.

Okay?

I have a health client who launched them over a year ago. He said, when am I going to be a new Notable? When am I going to be a new Notable? Well, they haven't changed recently. About three months into it, I'm like, I took a screenshot just to figure out when they change. We're now 14 months into it, and New Noble hasn't changed for health. Now, back when New Notable was a thing, I actually got a show in New and Notable with a total of two episodes. I'm sorry, two Downloads. One episode, two downloads, and it was me screaming into a microphone going, new and notable. New and notable. New and notable. And I became new and notable and I got next to Micron computers in the new notable area. New and notable doesn't matter. New and notable is broken. New and notable is something that people with a 30 day return policy say takes about 45 days. It's what we call a stick strategy. New and notable doesn't matter. Another guru talk. Ever heard this one?

You have to launch with a lot of episodes.

Okay, Think about that psychology. Now, again, if I'm teaching you how to make podcasts and I have a 30 day return policy, if I tell you you have to make a lot of podcast episodes, you'll probably go over the 30 days. But here's the thing. Anybody ever subscribed to a page with 14 downloads on it, I can come back at any point. See, if there's one episode and they click subscribe now, they got a reason to come back. Okay, multiple episodes on a page is a lesser reason to subscribe. Now, some of you already have a podcast. Some of you are already in a position where I can't start with episode one, that's fine. But realize the less episodes on the page, the more reason they're going to subscribe. To get more. Think about it. If you get two emails. If email number one is, hey, I've had a podcast for the last couple of years, you might want to take a look at it. There's no urgency there. If the email is, I'm launching my podcast Wednesday and I want to be part of something big, there's something huge there. And if episode one says, episodes come in two and you want to be alerted the second it comes out. Email. Email open rates. Who's having a hard time these days getting their emails delivered? A podcast has a 100% delivery for anybody who opens up their podcast app. There's no way to do spam on podcasts. It's absolutely fantastic. Launching with a lot of episodes is actually a bad idea. Guru talk. Who's heard this one? It's all about the reviews. Gotta get a lot of reviews. Reviews are fantastic for social proof. Let's face it, you go to a podcast, it has zero reviews. It means nothing. But here's the thing. Brendan, number one, no reviews to get to number one. JJ number one in health, number four, all vitunes, no reviews. Took another client up the charts. Reviews I begged. Don't do reviews. Don't do reviews. He didn't. But here's the thing, your fans will do them anyway. Don't worry about the reviews. If you do a lot of research on the reviews, it's usually tied to review tracking services. It's nice to have social proof is always good. But don't worry about the reviews. I've seen people like oh come and leave a review. I don't even care if you subscribe. Oh, oh, who's seen those emails though? You know, somebody's been told the big formula is one mix of this, one mix of this, one mix of this. It's 24 hours of subscribes now. The thinking people in the room are going, oh, really? 24 hours? We'll talk about that in a second. The smart question, client answer, 24 hours. Really? Is it really 24 hours? Is iTunes that fast? Is itunes really that crazy? I had a client. We'll leave it up in the air. Did they not believe me or did they make a mistake or was making the mistake not believing me?

We'll all decide.

But half the email went out on Wednesday. Half the email went out on Thursday. Wednesday went straight up the charts. Number one in the category. It's like number. It's like number 50 something in iTunes. I can't remember the exact number. And only half the emails went out. Can't wait to see what happens tomorrow. Stayed the same. Double the clicks, double the downloads. Stayed the same.

Why?

Because it only tracks the last 24 hours, which makes concentration easy. I saw the light bulb that went off in your head. I can focus my audience on one 24 hour period. I can do that. So don't see it as, I mean, be awake that day. Maybe don't go to a party the night before. But it is one 24 hour focus where all this goes. Is this sustainable? I get number one. I just went to my list. Can I stay at number one? No, probably not. But you're going to get a bunch of subscribers. But here's where it gets interesting for brands and here's where it gets interesting for agencies. Working with a client who has a million active emails. Who would love to have a million active emails. That'd be a good place to be. Here's the thing. Remember that bit where I said as many as you need to get to number one, open up the gates until you get to number one stop. Next day, open up the gates till you stay at number one stop. Open up the gates. If you have a real high client acquisition process where you got new clients coming in all the time, how about a subscribe on the thank you page. How about the follow up emails a subscribe. If you got people coming through your website on a regular basis, considering them to subscribe is pretty fantastic. If you knows the name Russell Brunson. Russell Brunson right now is running a pretty amazing Facebook campaign. And on the Facebook campaign he's giving away, giving away an MP3 player with the first 200 episodes of his podcast. It's $10 shipping and handling. It's a funnel process, upsells different training programs. He makes a straight profit on it. And the second people say no, I'm not interested in the rest of the funnel, it goes, fine, subscribe to the podcast. By doing that, Russell has stayed in the top five of business for the last nine months. So if you're careful and again, it's only as many as you need to stay. You got to track this stuff now, Paul. And believe it or not, I get emails like this, Paul, how do I know when I'm number one? Open up iTunes, check to see where you are and go from there. It's actually pretty fast. We don't know for sure, you know, we don't have access inside. I'm guessing it's about a 20 minute delay. So the smart marketer could actually take this for a little while and be strategic about it and go from there. But you know how long you need to be on the charts as number one podcast to advertise yourself as a number one podcast? Not that long, you know, and again, if you do the Photoshop, you don't even need to do it at all. But again, I'm into ethics here. When does this not work? Well, if you don't have enough email addresses to get to number one, which is some of us in this room, you're not going to get to number one. When is that okay? It's okay, you know, it's okay. Now I've got a client whose marketplace. It's a big marketplace. It's people who sell multifamily homes in New York City, $50 million or above. Raise your hand if you're in that category. You know, front row, impressive. He doesn't want, he doesn't want to go up the charts. He doesn't need to go up the charts. Everything about intimacy though, when he releases an episode, his niche downloads it instantly. I mean, you could see it on the charts immediately. Now his market is not that big. He's never going to rank, but that's okay. He still has the intimacy, he still has the power, he still has the capacity and everything. We chatted about here. Now, it's always funny to talk about when it doesn't work, when is it not okay in a room where you're talking about it. But the fact of the matter is. There we go. What's coming? Will it all change? I will show you a slide as to what's coming. It's interesting, it's powerful. Who does pay per click ads in the room? Who does Facebook ads in the room? Okay, I'm going to show you something that if you're smart and have some spit left in the mouth, you will be salivating. Will it change? Don't know. I can't tell you. But here's the thing. What does Apple want? Consumers of Apple products Subscribers is the best new active action. Will it change just some sort of how many subscribers they have and how long they've listened to the podcast and all these things? Maybe. But if you look at Apple, they've made a lot of decisions lately based entirely on the new consumer who's bought a Mac laptop recently from Apple and said, what the heck are they doing with these things? You know, the whole corporate culture right now is Apple is based on new consumers. So them staying with a legitimate subscription model. I'm betting my money on it right now. Obviously, sign up for the slides at the end and it changes and you're on my newsletter. I will definitely let you know. But I'm betting money on this. Now, one thing Apple will do the two cheat mechanisms I chat about easier, they're tracking that they know who's cheating. And if you paid any attention to the itunes charts, there are some very obvious clear cheaters. There will come a cleaning day. We've seen it at YouTube a number of times. There is a cleaning day, but I truly believe that it's going to stay with subscribes for a long time. So this is the mentality that you want. This is the graphic. We have a show that on August 1st saw 195 people on the podcast page at iTunes. 195 people went up to iTunes. This specific show. 39 of them clicked subscribe. So wait a minute, Paul, 39 divided by 195. That's what we call in the industry a conversion rate. Yes, it is. Now 139 of them streamed, which means they clicked play on that page. So if we had 139 to 39, that's fairly close to 195. So I got action on that page. Now, the downloads, those were subscribers from itunes. Because this is an itunes page, this doesn't include everybody else, but on this page, we got pretty good action on that page. So wait a minute, Paul. If I can track lands to the page and I can track actions, I could do a Facebook buy, couldn't I? Yeah. And then I could see how successful the Facebook buy was, couldn't I? Yeah. And if I determine the value of a listener and what it costs to get a buy, and I know that it's about subscribes, I can make a budget that lets me stay at the top of the charts. Yes, you could. This is from Apple. Very doable. Very, very exciting. Email to subscribes to win. That's how you do it. Who has an email list in this room? The best way to get subscribers is an email series that says, hey, I've launched my show. If you have an existing podcast, Itunes just turned on seasons. Itunes just turned on seasons. I'll say that one more time. Itunes just turned on seasons. So as a result, you can launch season two. My kids right now are counting down the days for season two of stranger things. Seasons are pretty big right now, so you can utilize the seasons. But it's all about the email to subscribe. That is the number one plan. If you got it. This is what Brendan did. Brendan said, paul, itunes just released my new podcast series. Can you download and subscribe today? Brendan said, leave a comment because that's how Brendan is. And if you know Brendan, you'll say amen. In the premiere episode, I discuss how you can overcome fear, blah, blah blah. Described exactly what was in the episode. Great music, great teaching, great format. I love podcasts. Download my new podcast free. And he showed everybody what itunes looks like. Didn't say visit my website. You know, didn't say do this, do that. He said, go to itunes. We didn't talk about Android. You know, there are 11 users out there. We didn't talk about Microsoft phone, all two of them. We didn't give 37 different options. The email was go to itunes. Who would like Brendan's three emails that he sent? Who would like JJ's three emails that she sent? The link at the end of this has all that for you and so you can utilize those and you can model those live to subscribe again. It's a 24 hour period. Who does live video? Okay, good. A good chunk of you live video is about taking your audience to action. So you go live. This is launch day. I need you to help me climb up the charts. Had one client. This was gutsy. He started at 6 o' clock in the Morning. And he went and he stayed live until he made it to number one in his category. You know, it was like a Jerry Lewis telethon. Not a bad idea. You know, if you've got a pretty heavy live following, you can tell them what to do, share screenshots, take them through the process. Not a bad idea at all. So live to subscribe is a technique that the live bloggers here can use. Let me tell you about your audience. Your audience is three things. Your audience is lazy, your audience is selfish, and your audience is right. Don't make it hard. Yeah, go to itunes. Subscribe to my pod. No, no, no. Pictures, videos, arrows, simplicity. Now, that's the lazy part. The selfish. Biggest radio station, wiifm. What's in it for me? Okay. Why should they subscribe? You know, Brendan said, you get this, you get this, you get this. If you say, hey, subscribe to my new podcast. That's as exciting as saying, subscribe to my email newsletter, bookmark this page and come back often. Yeah, I do that all the time. Who has looked at a bookmark, like, in the last three years? All right, your audience is lazy. Your audience is selfish. Your audience is right. When you go with a live push, when you go with email push, tell them why. Took a client. I had a client who's. I don't have this in the slides, but his desire was to beat Oprah. That's all he wanted was to beat Oprah. That's not a bad desire. And we took his $299 course, and we put it in itunes and we said, this is gonna be live for three hours. What's in it for me? A $299 course that you can get from itunes for free. He beat Oprah. The Tubebuddy power move. Is Tubebuddy here? Tubebuddy's here. Tubebuddy is a very, very powerful tool. And you guys got. You guys got a trial, right? You got a trial at the booth. Yes, Trial at the booth. All right, I'm going to say they have a trial at the booth, and you can go and you can take all of your videos with the click of a button and update a card. Wait a minute, Paul. I have 5,000 videos and I have 8,000 views a day. Are you saying I could click a button, update all the cards for my launch on itunes? Yes. Update all your cards, update all your descriptions, update all the links. Use a tool like Tubebuddy to do this, and you're at a good place. Paul to YouTube won't let me do clicks that's because you haven't turned on monetization. Most everybody in this room has probably turned on monetization. That's why I love the vidsummit crowd. But here's the trick. If you're worried about, if you're worried about monetization, turn it on. Just turn it off by default for most of your videos. Give them three or four videos of monetization and YouTube will be fine with you. That's the tubebuddy power move. Brown bearing the video podcast. Two guys go camping. It happens. I'm from Oregon, having a good time. The fire's roaring. Guy runs and he goes, there's a brown bear coming after us. There's a brown bear coming after us. The brown bear is coming down the mountain. Brown bear is going to have dinner. One guy takes off, the other guy starts putting on his shoes. What are you doing? The brown bear's coming after us. Yeah. I just have to be faster than you. Okay. You just have to be faster than your competition. Okay. Video podcast. Right now, the numbers are incredibly low. You could take your YouTube show, you could take your live stuff, you can make a video podcast. And you need very few subscribes to hit the top of the itunes charts for video podcast. And all you have to do is be better than the next guy. And if you look at the itunes charts for video podcasts, there's some video podcasts that haven't had a new episode in four or five years in the top 20. Yep. So all you have to do is get more subscribers than they do on any given day. Back to that email list, back to that push. You could be at a really, really interesting place. So you can brown bear the video podcast. So the summary, you do what's best for Apple, not what's best for you, not what's best for the gurus, not what's best for somebody with a 30 day return policy. You focus on the 24 hour subscribe, you ignore the gurus, you make great content. That's how you get up to the.

Top of the charts.

So if you go to paulcolligan.com vidsummit I've got these slides. I've got my presentation on Amazon, Alexa and Google, and I've got the three mailings that Brendan did and the three mailings that JJ did, I will get all those to. You realize I've been updating these slides all day based on what's been happening at this event. So the signups there, you're good to go. It'll probably be the next day or so before I deliver the rest of that. But the slides are there. If you want to catch me on Twitter, you can. Facebook, you can. Instagram, you can. If you want to reach me on another social platform, chances are very good. It's paulcolligan.com social platform of your choice. I am here for the rest of the night and I'm extremely approachable. Some say, some don't, but that's your call. How much time do I have left? I have just a little bit for questions. I don't want to be good to the stream by responding to the questions.

So 12 minutes.

I got 12 minutes. So let's do questions and let's. Do we have a microphone runner or should I just call on somebody and then repeat?

Just call on someone.

Call somebody.

Repeat. Go ahead.

You showed us a slide of statistics that I've never seen before.

That is a slide currently only available to podcast networks. Apple has announced. It's a good question. It's a very strategic question. I appreciate that. Apple has announced their opening up stats for everybody this year. What comes on those stats, we don't know for sure. This is a network stat, but it's coming to everybody and Apple's been cleaning up a ton of stuff internally. It's coming any day. You can go to the developer site at Apple and look at the podcast presentation that happened at their developer conference and you can see some stuff that they're giving away. But it's coming soon. We will get page views, we'll get downloads, we'll get streams. They're actually probably we're going to get a metric for how far they listened, which is absolutely fantastic for insertion and what consumption's like. But that's where that has been gotten from. Next question. Yeah, well, it depends. It's like I had a friend who launched their book the same day that the last Harry Potter book came out. To be number one, you have to do a lot more than a week when a Harry Potter book doesn't come out. Okay. Honestly, top of most of the categories is about 900 to 1,000 subscribes. It's not that hard. You're at about 15 now. The big ones news, that kind of stuff. You're at about 15,000 subscribes, but you can go 15 to about 20,000 subscribes on any given day and be number one. Those are subscribes, those aren't clicks, those aren't downloads. Those are subscribes in the back.

Yeah.

When you start the podcast, how quickly should you do? Well, here's the thing. How quickly do you want an audience, you know, publish with one episode? Having a few episodes in the can is always a good idea, but the fact of the matter is listening to your audience and finding out what they like and what they don't like is a really good idea. As early in the game as is possible. So I've known people who have launched with only one episode recorded. I don't necessarily know if I do that, but I wouldn't have three or four in the can. Joel Calm's done that 18 or 19 times every month. Joel actually launches a new podcast. It's one of the things he does and I think this new one's going to stick though. Joel, stay with that one. It's pretty, pretty cool. But yeah, I'd get out there as soon as possible because audience is really awesome and there's nothing who agrees audiences are awesome. That should be like the hashtag of VidSummit 2018. And once you release an episode and you start getting downloads. Yeah, it starts to kick in. It's like when you go live and you see that number start to click, starts to become really, really interesting. So I'd go as early as. As possible. I'll go back to the second sif. Yes. No, you. Yeah. In terms of downloads, you know, is that more for like brand deals and things like that? Yeah, downloads. The question, what about downloads? What is that for? It's definitely for brand deals, you know.

Now.

I can buy you a lot of downloads offshore, really, really cheap.

So you got to be really careful.

In terms of what's going on. There's a concept called Twitter bombing, you know, that can get you basically the infinite downloads. If you make infinite posts with an infinite, infinite robot, very, very doable. So downloads is the main metric right now. But be careful. The iab, which, what that stands for escapes me right now. But most of the hosts. Libsyn.com is my favorite host. Lib S Y N.com they do stats based on the Internet Advertising Bureau rules and they will quote that. Yet downloads is a metric mostly for sponsors. One of the things I do in a number of my shows is we do giveaways on the podcast. And so what we'll do, and that's opt ins. And so we have a metric of opt in per download. And so we see about 8% on a bad day, 16% on a good day. So that's one thing we track it for. But remember, you know, we're not getting ad inserts like we're getting with YouTube. And we're not getting a bunch of things, so, you know, those are other metrics to look for. But download, I mean, it's definitely indicator. If he gets 5 downloads, he gets 5,000 downloads. He's probably doing better than him.

Next question. Yes.

Is there a particular reason why you.

Like Libsyn over other.

Yeah, the reason I like Libsyn is they've been around for 10 years and they've had a downtime of less than five minutes over like the last four and a half years. And they power a huge chunk of the Internet podcasting. For me, the main reason I like Libsyn is I know the president and I know the vice president, and I have them on speed dial. So something goes wrong, you know, that really, really helps. But I mean, a good chunk of the podcasters are on there, and they're just reliable coupon code. Paul will get you your first free month. Yes.

So you're saying it's better to go for the video podcast on that?

Well, ranking. If you want to rank easy, a video podcast will rank you easy. And I'll tell you this, the new Apple TV is making video podcasting very sexy. And I'll tell you, as we look at things like YouTube TV, as we look at things like Facebook TV, as we look at these other TV things, user generated TV is going to become pretty huge. You know, I've got a client, God bless him, brilliant guy. He has a 4 camera, 4K show that we, you know, he edits and sends it to us, you know, and he called me one day and he said, paul, I go to my Apple TV and I go to podcasts. I don't see my show While you're on YouTube, you're not a video podcast yet. And so if my smart client with this huge budget is looking for his show and podcasts, how many people I have there have an audience who's looking for you on a video podcast and can't find you? We're smart. We know the difference between YouTube and a video podcast. Not all of our audience does. Our audience is three things. Our audience is lazy, our audience is selfish, and our audience is right. And if they want to find our content on a video podcast, we should make it available for them. And the cool thing is, because it's such a low demographic right now, you can kill two birds with one stone, rank high in the charts by doing that and go from there.

Yes.

Yeah. Libsyn does video podcasting as well. Yes. The classic question, how many episodes per month? How long per month? That kind of thing. The big thing about podcasting is because it's so intimate, podcasting gets really interesting on the predictability level. You can have my client who deals with the real estate agents, he publishes one episode a month on the first day of the month at noon. But it's predictable. It's when you start to drop them at random times where people don't know what to get. People like, I don't know if I mentioned this or not, but there are 47 million Americans who get in their car and drive a 30 minute commute to work by themselves. And the only thing you have to do is be better than drive time radio. And so if I know there's certain shows that I know come out Tuesday morning. I've been known, I actually work out of the home. I've been known to go on errands Tuesday morning because my favorite show comes out and because it's predictable. So the length of time, the amount you know, it's really funny, you know, you know, YouTubers are great for going. Well, everybody loves the short form content. Darrell says it should be 11 minutes, no longer. Well, there's a thing called Netflix that's actually proven that long form content is also very, very viable. And find out what your audience wants, find out what your audience needs and go from there. Surveying your audience and asking them, what do you want? How long do you want it? How do you want it? Where do you want it? Your audience is right. That's the three point of the holy trinity of audiences. You ask them, you serve them, you go from there. Yes.

My podcast, season two is launching tomorrow.

Good.

I never heard about season.

Yeah, pretty cool, huh?

Yeah. So with iOS 11, Apple released the new version. The podcast app that has a ton of new features in the new features is a tag for seasons, and you can make it whatever season you want. Another one of the things in there is podcasting by default. The most recent episode is the one they get when they subscribe, which is really hard. If you're doing something sequentially. You can actually say, I want this in order. First episode, first, second episode, second. If you're doing like a serial kind of thing, that's a tag you can put in there as well. There's a couple other tags, but the season tag is the one that's most exciting for me. Most of the hosts now, who are you hosting with? Okay, yeah, Libsyn has the ability. You can go in. It's the second tab. There's iTunes, specifics. There's a thing that'll Say episode number and season number, just plug that in and you can actually go back and set everything up and itunes will catch up in a couple hours. It's fantastic and it makes you look cool. If somebody comes, oh, season five, what did I miss? But what's really neat too, from a download consumption standpoint, there's also the ability to download an entire season. So if you have thematic seasons about thematic issues, you can actually tell somebody to go in and download the entire season, listen to in the right order. At that point, the podcast becomes almost more like audible than otherwise. And again, boy, if you've sold a season to a sponsor and there's a one click download for the season and the sponsors tracking downloads, that's a very, very cool metric. And that's a very, very cool way to bring things up. I can take two more questions, then we'll close up.

Yes, what if I have a brand new show, no following on Facebook, no following anywhere, promote my show and get none of that stuff. What are some recommendations?

Well, if you don't have an audience, find somebody else's audience. You know the best way. And the funny thing about podcast hosts is they're lazy, they're selfish, and they're right. So if you've got something to give to another podcast, a lot of podcasters wake up on Tuesday morning and go, oh crap, I gotta get an episode out. That's why interview podcasts are so popular, because they have no content. They go and take content from other people. So if you've got a podcast about a specific topic and you go to another podcast about a specific topic and say, hey, I want to give this to your audience. So what you're saying is free content for my audience and I just have to listen to you and I don't have to do any work? Yes, welcome to my show and see podcasters. The number one way to get a podcast listener is your existing list. Number two way is people who already have the religion. Because these people who drive, there's 47 million Americans, by the way, who drive a 30 minute commute by to work by themselves. They need a show to work. Monday morning, back from work, Monday night to work, Tuesday morning, back from work. So they're looking for more shows. So if I listen to somebody who has a podcast about my topic on a show that I like, the chances of me subscribing to that are very good. So borrow somebody else's audience. One last question and then we will close it up.

You think the number of episodes on the month or the Size of the podcast enforcing the ranking.

No, it's subscribes. It's only subscribes. And it's funny because people say how long should the podcast be? And that kind of thing. I'm Dan Carlin who does hardcore history. Dan does like six hour long episodes. You know, he could break them up if he wanted to. Dan just doesn't want to. Dan doesn't care because Dan's doing so brilliantly well, it subscribes. Do what makes Apple happy if you want to do well with Apple, do what makes YouTube happy. If you want to do well with YouTube, do what makes Facebook happy. If you want to do well with Facebook and you will be at a great place, I am available. I want to be good to the next speaker. Thank you so much. Slides are here.

Man. Vidsummit is the show to go to. I hope I can catch you there in 2018. These slides are at paulcolligan.com vidsummit a TubeBuddy trial is@tubebuddynow.com that's a special enhanced trial. You can see what you get just right when you go there. Very, very cool. If you are going to attend 2018 or any future year of VidSummit, let me know. Interact. I've got all the social information for you, but I'd specifically like to know.

If you're going to be there because.

It is really the event to go to. I was thrilled to make this presentation. If anything changes in this world, if Apple does anything different in this world, I will let you know. We'll update on the podcast report. But it's been going over a decade like this. I don't see it changing soon.

Thanks for listening.

We'll chat next week. We love the social interaction here at the podcast report. The podcastreport.com Facebook thepodcastreport.com Twitter thepodcastreport.com InsertSocialPlatform of your choice. We'd love to hear from you. I'd love to give you the chance to interact with other listeners of the show.

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