How to Reach #1 Podcast: Paul Colligan

Welcome to Ministries that podcast, where I talk to successful ministry leaders about how they're using podcasting to amplify their mission and grow their ministry so you can too.

I'm Tim Hole, your host and owner.

Of Sonomorphic, a podcast production company that specializes in podcasting for ministries. My guest today is Paul Colligan. He's the founder of the Podcast partnership where he helps people leverage technology to expand their reach and revenue with reduced stress and no drama. Now, this is a different type of podcast episode because we're going to do a deep dive on the podcast charts, why they matter and how to rank on Apple podcasts. So Paul and I are going to talk about the elements that go into ranking on the Apple podcast charts, his effective strategy for reaching the top of the charts, and we'll end with a case study to walk through how to tactically do the same with your podcast. So let's get right to it. Here's my conversation with Paul Colligan.

Well, Paul, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today.

Thanks for having me on.

Yeah, so I first heard of your name because of John Houghton. I had him on the podcast just a few weeks ago. And you know, he's the CEO at the Holy Post media company, if you haven't checked out that episode. And he said you should be on the podcast and that you were a very faithful Christian guy who helped him learn the podcast industry out of just a desire to see the Holy Post succeed. And then when I did a little digging, I pulled you up, found you and the work that you get to do with podcast partnership, and then clicked around, found your slides from this year at Podcast Movement and saw that you talked about chart topping podcasts. And so I wanted to have you on to share how you've helped podcasters reach number one in their category, as I saw in that deck. And we've emailed back and forth a little bit. So to start off, I'd love to know how you even got into the podcast industry to begin with.

Well, now we're talking origin stories in the year 2000. So I'm dating myself there, had dinner with the CEO of Audible and got a vision for distributed media back in 2000. And I wanted in. I wanted in bad. The model at the time made it impossible to get in on a small scale. You know, Harry Potter just got in, Tom Clancy just got in, but it was gonna take a little bit for me to get in. And so I left both with a real vision for what was coming, but as well as a Little bit deflated that I couldn't be part of it at that point. Podcasting pops up around 2004, and I did not see it as the logical extension of the RSS schema with the, you know, blah, blah, blah. It was, I can play Audible now. I always saw it from that point, and anybody with a message could now distribute all over the entire world. And as a believer, I know a lot of people with some special messages. As a business person, I know a lot of people with some special messages. As a friend to others, I got a lot of people with special messages. And so helping people get their message out there was just a really, really interesting game, you know, a lot of fun. The big break. There's a couple of sales and marketing gurus named Joe Polish and Dan Sullivan. I've known Joe forever. Joe calls and says, hey, me and Dan are gonna do a podcast together. You wanna run it? I'm like, yeah, yes, Yes, I do. And that was the comfortable side of this. And it's been a lot of fun. A couple years ago, I sent them a record. I sent them vinyl of their first episode on their 10th anniversary because.

Oh, that's fine.

Everything sounds better on vinyl, you know. No, it's funny, I said to two guys who don't have a record player. So I spent a lot more money than I needed to, but that's. That's a whole other story. But, yeah, it was just. It was a way to get the message out. It was the promise of the Internet podcasting made it so easy. I mean, I loved what Audible was doing and still impressed and still a subscriber and. And all that stuff, but. But this is even bigger, and this is even better. And what's funny, now I laugh because, you know, now you can click a button and you can be on the Audible database, you know, in less time than you and I have been talking right now.

Yeah.

For free. That was not the model they gave me back in 2000. So, yeah, so that's. That's how I got in.

Nice. And so now that we've talked about that a little bit, you got into podcasting, and then, you know, later on, you helped, I believe it was Brendan Richard launch his show and get to number one. Is that right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so I'd love to jump into the Apple Podcast charts and kind of focus on that and how they work, what goes into all of that. And so let's start with. With just the charts and kind of the basics here. What are they and why should we care?

Apple S charts, top podcasts, top categories, you know, you know, all sorts of things. To be honest, the amount of people who get up in the morning and go, hey, I'm going to listen to the number three podcast for business today is minimal. Is minimal. It's bragging rights. And it's also a bit of a statement of positioning. You know, I mean, every mother has a podcast and you got to have something that says you have value and you're worth listening to. And Apple charts is a great way to do that because if you can tell the world, hey, the day we launched, we were number one in our category.

Yeah.

You know, and in Brendan's case, number one in all of itunes.

Yeah, yeah.

At the time, it was itunes. Now, of course, we have to call it Apple Podcast, you know, so it's an interesting play. Never from the amount of people who will find you as a result of it, but from what happens when you go to it. And we'll talk a little bit deeper than that, but it's a really interesting play, Almost a red herring, if you will. But we'll keep chatting.

Yeah. So from my understanding, a big part of the chart position is due to velocity of subscribers. And so I worked at Ramsey Solutions for a bit, and we were talking about this and trying to figure out, you know, what are the different elements? Because it's not, as far as I know, it's not published anywhere. Of what are the different pieces that go into that? From your experience, what have you found to be maybe some of those other pieces that go into the rankings?

Well, first of all, it's like the Coke recipe or the KFC recipe. It's not published. So that's said and done. Apple has published@apple.com that's not based on ratings, it's not based on reviews, it's not based on any of these things. So we know what we know, we know what we don't know. What I know, first of all, has not changed for the last 10 years. When I did Brendan's show 10 years ago, this is exactly the same stuff we did this year with Caitlin. It has not changed. And what we have found is it's based on how many people click subscribe and it's how many people click subscribe in the last 24 hours. This is really, really key.

Yeah.

And it's interesting because if you go into Apple and you look at the charts, you know, a lot of the people are either just the ones that are gangbuster, everybody knows about them Joe Rogan types, or it's people who were on TV last night, you know, and so it makes sense. The ones on TV last night are the top ones there. I have been very vocal with Apple that this is not a perfect system. I ran a show off the charts in a category. The show was absolute complete nonsense. It made no sense. It was no nothing. I got to number one in the category by buying a thousand names on Fiverr, you know, not even gray market, you know, and running a script that got us the top. Told Apple we were doing this and it was there. And there are a lot of people doing this. If you have looked at the charts and you have looked at people and go, how the heck are they in the top of the char? Yeah, they probably cheated. It's very doable. And Apple's made it possible to do for the last 10 years. Now that's said and done. The joke is, if all you want is the number one ranking, use Photoshop. That's not that complicated. But what's interesting is we saw this with Brendan and we've seen this with all our clients through to Caitlin this year. People want to be part of something. And so the message that, hey, I got a podcast. Nobody cares these days, relatively, hey, we're launching our podcast today. Help us to go up the charts. People care about that. That's really, really interesting. And what happens is once somebody clicks, subscribe or follow or whatever Apple's gonna call it this week, what's interesting now is it's not just that they help you get up the charts. It's they're now following you. And it's now that every time a new episode comes out, even if they don't, you know, listen, they're going to get that ding, they're going to get that notification, they're going to get that alert, and then that becomes fancy. So instead of I got a podcast, it's you were there with me from day one. Thank you for helping me get up the charts. Let's do this together. Let's be part of this. So Brendan, you know, we launched to his list. We got to number one all of Apple podcast. About a year later, I did a run for a famous nutritionist, and I said, oh, you're very niche. We got her number four in all of Apple. Now. She was number one in health. We had number four of all of Apple, which is still very impressive. Did better than I thought we were going to do. And what was funny was I got an email from a noted associate in the industry. He was like, hey, you know, my list is probably four times her list. I'm like, yeah, it probably is. I could probably get four times many downloads as she could. Yep, yep, probably. And he said, so let's do this. I'm like, well, you got to do it. Right? And whereas this nutritionist message was, I'm launching my podcast today. Help climb me up the charts. Here's the link. This guy's message was, I have a new podcast. Click here. You know, with the big 6 inch play button on his website and the big font. Follow me on Apple. And he had four times as many clicks. He had four times as many downloads. He had four times as many email opens almost eerily. How close it was four times as much. Didn't even crack the top 200 Apple, because people went to his website, people clicked the play button and then people went away. And so it is a. So why should people care? It's a great rallying cry for your audience and it's a fascinating thing to brag about, if you will, but you know, it only matters if you have a real audience. It matters if you have a real audience.

Yeah. So it's in 24 hours, right? The number of followers in 2020.

And one of the reasons I know it's the 20 or one of the reasons we believe. Yeah, okay, sure.

Yeah.

What is truth? We had a client who did a massive launch and literally because of an email problem, she did all of her promotion on Thursday and all of her affiliates did their email promotion on Friday.

Okay.

So if it truly was velocity, it should have kept going. It didn't.

Okay.

The affiliates and associates actually drove more clicks than the initial listed and it had no effect, it stayed longer, no effect in increasing it. And the 24 hours. The 24 hours makes sense. A lot of your algorithms work that way. Amazon works that way if you're doing book sales or that kind of thing.

So yeah, and when it's 24 hours, it's from when the episode publishes. Is it just in a 24 hour period, it's rolling anywhere, or does it have to be within a specific day that it's the 24 hours?

No, no, 24 hours. You know, if the subscription run starts 8:00am on Tuesday, you got until 8:00am Wednesday, got, you know, now you're going to get more at 9am on Wednesday if you do an effective campaign. But it's not going to help. You know, you'll stay longer, but it's just not going to move the needle.

Gotcha, gotcha. Is there a certain number threshold that you found digging into the, you know.

Which category and because of client confidentiality issues give you obvious numbers. But I've seen some categories where 350 subscribes in 24 hours gets you to number one in the category. It's not that hard.

Yeah. So why does it seem to be that people feel like it's such an unknown and they keep talking about ratings and reviews to get up the charts? Why do you feel like that's still so prevalent?

This is a whole nother podcast. There's a lot of things that people wish podcasting was. There's a lot of things that people wish they were. We had a client who was pretty sure they were going to bring themselves to number one in all of Apple by just a messaging campaign to their friends. They literally went through and texted all their friends, okay, you know, and they were like, all my friends said, you know, they subscribed. Well, they didn't, you know, and like Apple doesn't have a reason to lie. And the download, the conspiracy theory, which are a big thing these days, but the conspiracy theory required for Apple to deny all of their friend subscription capabilities. Just, just absolutely ridiculous. But people think they want it to be a certain way. There are also a lot of people have no idea. So they just copy from the last ebook and they copy from the last training program. And there are a lot of podcast training programs out there, you know, written by people who don't have podcasts and who don't do this. And it's, it's just a mess. So there's a real echo chamber. Yeah, I was at an event, a major player in the space. You know, I went up to him, I said, dude, you're a major player in the space. You have a reputation, you know, you, you claim to have ethics, you know, you're just not. This isn't the way it works, you know, and, and he said, oh, I'm sorry, I'll change that. And you know, the next time he presented it, he didn't change it. So there's just a lot of, you know, people want things to be a certain way. Well, that's a statement of human existence. You know, there's a lot of bad content and copy. And then also there's just a lot of training programs that were designed in such a way that can't really see any success until after the 30 day training program money back guarantee is over. And so you have to be careful. I mean, every time I've done it, it's worked.

How many times have you done it now?

30 times, okay. In proportion to. And not all of them, you know, top 10 in Apple, but it's all based on the size of the list. Top 10 Apple, six or seven times. And the big thing is the win is not really the screenshot as much as the win is, you know, your audience was there from day one.

Yeah.

And people want to be part of that.

Yeah. Being part of something that's huge. So. Yeah, that's interesting. So I'm going to dive into the slide deck and some of the things I saw in there. You had said in there that it's pretty easy and as we've been talking about it with intentionality, that anyone starting a podcast can rank well in the charts if done well. Right.

Anyone with a real list.

Yeah. So what would that real list need to look like? And then what are those intentional steps that they need to take with that list?

Well, they have to follow the show. You know, listening to it isn't going to help. You know, and one of the big things everybody says ratings and reviews. Ratings and reviews. You know, a little thing about direct marketing, which is not evil. People use direct marketing to do evil things, but direct marketing in itself is not evil. People always do the last thing. So a lot of people say listen, rate and review. So they review.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, I followed a gentleman who, he was having a contest. He would take one out of every hundred reviews and he'd give a free iPad. And you know, who likes iPads?

Everyone.

Everybody. And so this guy got 10 times as many reviews as he got downloads. Think about it.

Wow, that's massive.

Yeah, yeah. You know, and I mean, he got a lot of reviews and, you know, and then Apple figured that out and went there from that. So if you have a list. But the thing is, you know, a lot of churches have 200 people in the audience. If everybody there, click, subscribe.

Yeah.

You know, that church could be number one for one. And then everybody in the audience, you know, and again, making it a big deal in your church to just have everybody subscribe to the sermon so they can go do ministry instead of sit around and listen to the sermon and but 2, 300, you make a real dent. You make a real dent.

Yeah, that's what I've told people too, because of what I knew. And so now I know even more. That's in a 24 hour period. It doesn't. It's not necessarily velocity. It's much just like the pure number in that 24 hour period.

And so it comes by the pure number. Velocity is Subject to it.

But yeah, yeah, yeah. And so, like, if you have a podcast and you get up on a stage in front of thousands of people and you say, hey, my podcast is launching. My trailer's out. Go hit follow right now. It will most likely jump up.

Yes.

And it's like, why do people not do this? You know, there's huge ministry conferences, and they have podcasts, and they're launching podcasts all the time, but they don't do it on stage.

Yes. So many people think, you know, one of my favorite thought leaders in space, a guy named by the name of Tom Webster, you know, Tom says, you know, two guys in the basement talking about the Mets is not a podcast. It's a cry for help. You know, a lot of people think really highly of themselves, and they say, you know, they'll stand up and say, I got a podcast. Everybody will automatically do this.

Yeah.

You know, people don't know that you need to follow. A lot of people have heard. You just asked. A lot of people have heard, you know, while this review, when I get home, you know, and the thing is, you know, if I don't have time for another podcast, why am I going to follow it?

Yeah. Right.

You know, and so the message has to be, here's what you need to do. Here's why you need to do it. You know, and by the way, that's the bullets of any good communicator anyway.

Yeah.

Anybody in ministry conference could launch a show, you know, if the messaging was correct. And, you know, sometimes the messaging, you know, we got to reward good behavior. We have to reward good behavior. So I helped a client with the event, and, you know, everybody who, you know, went to the back and showed that they had subscribed got to give away from the, you know, got to give away from the speaker. So instead of, you know, so you bring 500 copies of the book to your event instead of just giving them 500 away and then ending up in the trash or in the hotel room, you know, when it's done, you know, show me that you subscribe to the show and get a free copy of my book.

Yeah.

By the way, those likely to subscribe to the show and listen to the book. Anyway, I have a theory that at big conference events, the cleaning staff all have this side business of hawking a couple hundred copies of a book that got left in the room because somebody couldn't shove it into their suitcase.

Yeah.

So, yeah, it could happen, but you got to tell them why, and you got to orchestrate it. You Got to orchestrate it.

So let's talk through that a little bit. So in the deck, you talked about three different emails that you send if somebody were to. So we'll get into that in a second, but I'm interested, since we're talking about from stage, what would be a good messaging from stage that would relay that intent really well of, hey, here's the mission. You're helping me do that thing. What would that look like?

I mean, you said it mostly right there. You know, hey, this ministry, this organization, this message, this book, this movement needs all the help it can get. And if we were to be a top 10 podcast on the day of release, I can leverage that on the next phone call, I'm at, the next interview, I'm at that type of thing. So all you have to do is open up your phone and click Follow. Everybody open up your phone and click follow. And then have on your slides on the side of the stage where to click. Have the mouse going, click. And you'll get people. I have an Android. Not deal with it. It's the Apple charts. Android devices are not going to do anything on the Apple charts. And that's just the way it is. Give away something, you know, give away a book, give away a T shirt, give away a bumper sticker, give away a tea cozy, I don't care. But anything you can do, you know, and then remember though, the thing is, the bragging rights is 5%. It's you now you've got a thousand people who are subscribed to your show. You know, and one of the things about podcasting nobody talks about, and it's so funny because, you know, podcasts are spam free. You know, if you have a list of a thousand people, you email and 300 people get the email, you're thrilled. You're thrilled. If you have a thousand people on your subscriber list and you see an episode, a thousand people get the show. So it's the strategic byprex of all this that is really, really powerful.

Yeah. So you said something about Android that I'm interested to dig into for a second because now that Apple podcast is in browser, can you log in in browser to Apple podcasts and follow shows?

Yes. But you have to have an Apple account.

Sure. So it's.

And a lot of Android people don't have Apple accounts.

I could see that now.

I was at an event where we were doing. It was the giveaway, and this gal comes back and on one hand, she's got her Android phone, on one hand, she has her iPad.

Yep, that's me.

You know, and she goes, I can't subscribe on the iPhone. Correct. But you can subscribe on the iPad and do that. So a lot of people with Android have a Mac device, you know, or have a computer at home or that type of thing. We're going to test it. It's an interesting question.

Yeah, testing.

It's hard to do, but we're gonna try from there.

Yeah, are there any ways? Cause I know like sometimes there's a link that you can click that then automatically takes you exactly where you need to go and can push the button for you kind of a thing. So can you create that does not.

Exist in Apple podcasts at this point. It exists on YouTube, but it's not exist.

Okay, I knew I'd, I feel like I had heard that about that before. But it doesn't work on Apple podcasts. Okay, that's good, that's good to know. So back to the email thing. In the slide deck you had outlined, here's three emails to send and different messaging for each. Walk us through kind of what that looks like.

Well, really it's three on the day of. First of all, let them know it's coming. You know, you know, the good old save the date. If it works for marriages and launches of, you know, you know, the local taco joint, it can work for your podcast as well. So about to save the date. But then the morning, there are people get up in the morning, check their email, let them know you're doing it, you know, and we're doing it. It's not about you, it's about them. Direct relationship between the mission of the person you know and how far they've gotten. But, but this, hey, we're launching today. I need your help. Do this now. A good chunk will, but a good chunk won't. So around lunchtime you'll start seeing results. So then the lunchtime messages, look what we did. And it's we. It's not. I'm so cool. I'm number this. Look what we did.

Yeah, you push the button.

Yeah. You know, and then the message at the end of the night, you know, around dinner time is, look at where we're at. Imagine if we did one more push. Now some of your biggest fans will get all three. Some won't get any of them, some will get one of the three. So it's a three time chance for it to work. Yeah, you know, we all have friends who, you know, we look at their phone and the little red bubble on their email with, you know, 125 unopened, you know, emails. The fact that they get any of these is minor. So three also increases your chances.

Sure.

But that message of, you know, people want to. On crowdfunding campaigns, people want to be the one who pushed it over the top.

Yeah.

People want to be the first. Give them all the options. Give them all the options.

Yeah. I think I saw this on the deck too. That this is specifically has worked with email lists and people with large social accounts or other means of reaching a lot of people. It doesn't necessarily translate. Is that right?

Well, large social lists do not equate large social action.

Sure, yeah.

You know, at the time that we recorded this, there was a certain singer by the name of Taylor Swift who endorsed a certain presidential candidate and she saw a lot of action because Taylor Swift's audience is real. There are a number of people who have paid for a social audience. You know, you'll see these people, you know, you know, they have 27,000 followers. They say something and they get one thumbs up. You know, that audience is not real. Right, right. Any day, anytime, anywhere, any place. I prefer an email over social right now, but if all you have is social, go with. Yeah, there are people without an email list who are making a full time living off of social. You know, it's hard because, you know, Instagram, one of the most popular moves, you know, doesn't have a direct link capacity, you know, from messages, so you got to go a couple clicks through. So email is the best way, but anything that can get them to do it, you know, I mean, I mean, I've seen people go to the top just by announcing at an event. There's no email at that event, so it totally works other ways.

Yeah, yeah.

If you have a solid email list that is responsive, you know, you can do this and don't do it on, you know, I had a client, God bless him, I had a client who launched his book on the same day that Bono launched his book and on the same day that Matthew Perry launched his book. You know, and he wanted to know why he wasn't number one at Amazon. Like, you know, don't be dumb in this response, but just, you know, you know, just be smart to this. You know, pick a day, find out, do a Google search for that date, see if anything's happening. You know, it might not be the date that you wanted, but pick the best one that you have and then something will happen in the news last night that'll ruin your numbers anyway. But that's just the way it is.

Yeah. So is there a specific day of the week or day after launch that you're like, this is the day to do something like this?

Yeah, I have no science on this, but I like to be logical. Monday is the day that a lot of people take a three day weekend with, you know what I mean? And there are a lot of three day weekends with Mondays anyway, so launching something on a Monday, everybody's coming back, they're waking up. What are the things that came in over the weekend? Monday seems like a really bad day to do things, and Friday, everybody's closing up for the weekend, you know, and obviously don't do anything on the weekend. That. That's just ridiculous. So I think logic dictates that a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday would be the smartest day to do it. Yeah, I like Wednesday because just your team who's marketing it can zone out on Monday, can get to work on Tuesday, see the results on Wednesday, surf that end of Thursday and Friday, and then maybe even write a little bit for the weekend. Yeah, but no science on that one.

Yeah, no, that makes sense. I mean, those are the best days to publish a podcast too, from what I've seen is the data too, which is why I usually tell people Tuesdays is a great day. Wednesday and Thursday also great days. But yeah, getting off the Monday. You know, so many popular podcasts that have been around for a long time still publish on Mondays. But yeah, you do run into those Monday holidays as the producer for the Entree Leadership Podcast. When I worked at Ramsey, we would always know, oh, well, that's Labor Day. Or, you know, it just.

It just exactly. Yeah, yeah, that's Labor Day. That's Memorial Day. That's Martin Luther King Day. That's that, you know, so why did we do this on a Monday?

Yeah, just both. There's. Yeah, three or four at least that'll hit you, if not more.

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I would love to get into more of a case study and kind of walk through. Okay, we've got all the different pieces, how this unfolded with Curiously Kaitlyn. So we've talked about that, mentioned it a little bit, but it's a newer podcast that came out in April of this year from the Holy Post. So set the scene for us on how you got involved in the process and then the process that you took and the results that came of it.

Well, first of all, as you mentioned, John. John's a fascinating guy. People listen to him. I like John. I like the Holy Post. I like Phil. I remember it was funny when we made our first connection, Phil's assistant said, do you want to do Zoom or phone? I'm like, it's got to be zoom because if it's phone, I'm just going to giggle because I'm talking to Bob. And Phil's show to me is the epitome of when Paul said, work out your salvation with fear and trembling. That's the Holy Post. I think it's a great show for that. And so I've just been a big fan of what they're doing, how they're doing. It helped get me through some of the crazy Covid personally. I go to Chicago on a regular basis for strategic coach. Anyway, and so Phil says, you know, we got a new CEO. He's fun, great. You know, John buys me dinner. You know, we get to work, we get it done. One of the things out of Holy Post, you know, there was a moment where watched a very controversial topic episode on Holy Post with my daughter and it was Phil and it was sky and it was Caitlin. I asked my daughter at the end, what do you think? She said, the two white guys gotta go. But her, her I like. I think Caitlin's the future of ministry right now. She's just amazing and she's just doing just fantastic stuff. So when the team says she's launching a show, can you help? You know, the answer is yes. Yes, I can help. You know, and I was paid for it. You know, full disclosure there. And the great thing of the Message there was just people love Caitlin, people adore Caitlin. So the message was, hey, you know, you guys adore Caitlin. Here's something you can do for it that's tangible. Yeah, because she's not the type is going to sell T shirts. She's just not the type who's going to tell, you know, the Caitlyn cosmetic line or that type of thing. So there's a real tangible way you can help Caitlin. And people wanted to do that. And so the launch team was, you know, signed up in record numbers. People were really, really excited about it. So that morning, you know, so the message come out, Caitlyn shows coming. We didn't tell people what the name of the show was because people would look it up because remember, it's 24 hours. So if you launch, I can't remember what day it was, but let's say you're launching on the 14th. If people find the show on the 11th, you know, they're going to subscribe on the 11th because they like Caitlyn so much. So they were very careful not to announce anything that morning. The emails went out, the emails went out, social went out and a couple of people supported on social media. You know, clicks were gotten, however they were gotten. But she, I think when we first checked, I think she was like 37 out of the door on religion and spirituality or whatever the category is at Apple. And then it just kept going up from there. And there was a point where velocity wise, I thought for one or two hour period she might beat Joe Rogan. And I was just thrilled with that possibility. It didn't quite happen, but she still did really well, was number one in the category, I think by noon. And then, you know, then just started going up the regular charts from there. What was interesting was there's a really popular religion show. I can't remember even who it was, but so he had done something that had gotten some really good attention. And strategically I would not have launched that day if I knew that was happening. But past that and then went there and then the numbers keep coming and people would promote. And it was funny because, you know, you got necessaries in the, in the Patreon. People are like, whoa, you know, I don't want to support on Apple. I don't like Apple Apple, you know, I want to support on Spotify. And it was great. So her client, Think about it, think about it. You know, you know, the win is follows. So some of Caitlin's followers are going, hey, you know, get her on Spotify or get her here or get her, don't care. Just wanted people subscribing to the show. And what was funny, you know, then the next day I'm like, I wonder how she's doing on Spotify. Was just curious. And she was number one in faith and spirituality on Spotify the next day as well. Even though all the messaging was Apple, Apple, Apple did press releases traction on that was about average to others that we've done, and this was a really successful one. We did the ap, we did Religion Newswire, we did POD News as an online newsletter, did them as well. Did a couple other little independent things, did that, did social, you know, and of course, it was on a Wednesday, so that was the day the holy poes came out. So they talked about it, not much. Caitlin's a very humble person, and so she did not like the attention, did not like the focus, and played to that. But, yeah, it just blew up. And really to be expected, every time I do this, I am simultaneously surprised that it worked. But then, you know, well, why wouldn't it work? And I'll tell you the main reason why it wouldn't work is Apple will at some point change the algorithm. Yeah, they have to. And at some point will change. But going back to that, I am a big proponent of, you know, when you're playing in somebody's sandbox, what is it that the sandbox wants? When I present at events, you know, I have a slide that's like, hey, guys, you know, YouTube has announced that three out of every four views at YouTube comes from if you like this video, you like this video. Which means that YouTube makes their money by selling your audience to your competition. And Facebook makes their money by selling your audience to your competition. And Instagram makes their money by selling your audience to your competition. And, you know, everybody makes their money by selling your audience to your competition. Apple makes their money by selling iPhones. And so what they want is they want people to do things with the iPhones. And what's the best thing to do with an iPhone? It's really not buy a TV show. It's subscribed to a show because then they're using the iPhone on a regular basis.

Yeah.

And so Apple wants people to subscribe to shows, and so that's the business they want. So the fact that they reward that, I think is a good thing. Now, there was a time in the early days, they have done some fixes. There was a time where you could get to the top of the charts literally by clicking subscribe unsubscribe subscribe, unsubscribe.

Subscribe, unsubscribe how many pluses there were.

Yeah, yeah, they eventually, eventually fixed that one. And so every time I told the client, you know, this could be the day that Apple changes, but been doing it for 10 years and it hasn't changed yet. But even if it does, if you don't rank the charts and 3/4 of your audience is now following your show, you won.

Right. That's the great byproduct of the thing, is that now you have an audience that are committing to at least show up for a period of time if they decide they don't want to keep listening to it down the road. But you can persuade them in the first several episodes at least. What does it look like on the Spotify charts? Still follows in 24 hours, or are there other elements that go into it that was a little more murky? Because I would think if Apple were to change it, the logical piece to it as well would be listen time. Right. Like, just like YouTube uses watch time.

It would have to be some equation of subs, listen time, but it has to be percentage wise.

Sure, yeah.

You know, because, you know, if the show's five hours long, you know, and they only listen to five minutes, that's not a win. But if the show's five minutes long, they listen to five minutes. That is a win. So it'd be some element of subs and then consumption time.

Yep.

You know, I always tell people, the first podcast event I went to, it was hilarious because at the end of the podcast event, the entire podcast event met in the hotel bar, you know, and we just continue the event there. You know, I was there. There was a list of podcasts, not indexes, not databases, a list of podcasts. And so, you know, it's changed a lot since then. I think Apple's going to get in the game. You know, I think, unfortunately, in my experience, both Spotify and Apple. Unfortunately, it is my opinion and it is my observation that nobody really completely owns that process. You know, there are a lot of organizations that, you know, only worry about making mistakes. You know, a lot of people like to keep the status quo. So I don't think there's a lot of logic to it. You just got to play with the logic that currently exists.

Yeah. Do you do this campaign with the trailer or the first episode? How do you time it with those items?

I do it with the first episode. Getting an audience to get excited about a trailer doesn't matter. I put the trailer in for the after effects. Because, you know, Caitlin, I've watched the numbers. Numbers have gone up since the launch. The trailer is for the people who came on after the launch. In my opinion, in this process, not everybody has a list. Nobody has an audience, and everybody has all these things. So trader is a good place to start there. But I do it from episode one. I'll tell you, one of the big things is so many people. You know, again, it's from these podcast training companies and consultants. And, you know, I met a guy, we went through the whole sales process and he said, you know, well, I'll go with you as soon as I'm done with this 200 episode punch card I bought from a offshore company. So they're gonna do the first 200 episodes and then you're gonna take over from there. You know, by the way, if you're buying your editing from a punch card, you know, it's not necessarily the quality and process that, that we're looking for here. And there are a lot of people. We'll launch with 10. Launch with 10, because then they'll listen to a whole bunch and you'll download a whole bunch. Well, they're not going to listen to a whole bunch. They're not going to download a whole bunch. And by the way, if you get them at number 10, then they start with episode 10, then they don't get the pilot. The cool thing about the launch strategy to one episode is they get the pilot, they get the vision, they get where they started, what this is about, what people want. I did one client. This was the Nutritionist hit number four. She'd heard from other consultants that you launched with 10, and I said, no, you launched with one, and we compromised at four. And it was hilarious. If you took the amount of downloads of episode one, two and three, you multiplied them by 10, took that total number and doubled it. It was still less than the amount of people who only downloaded episode four. It's a missed opportunity.

Yeah.

So if you could do a big launch, do an episode one that gives the vision. Email sports division, Social supports the vision, Everything sports the vision. And by the way, if your podcast is just people interviewing fascinating people about fascinating things, you don't have a vision and it's not going to work and you're going to hang up at about 10 episodes anyway. So. Yeah, yeah, support the vision.

Yeah, that's good. What have you found to be some other byproduct? So you've, you've done this with a client, You've gotten them up the Charts. What have you seen as some of the byproducts of that now over the next month or two months or a year that you've seen? Okay, this is a keystone to the success of this show.

I had a client very well known in the Internet marketing space and Internet marketing folk, when they do a podcast, they tend to follow a formula. The episode releases, they do an email about the episode. They don't say subscribe, they say listen. And then they have to do it every week. A client who we did a run for made it number one in his category. I think it was top 30 in all of Apple, if I remember correctly. But, but I could be wrong was doing the. Every week a new episode comes out. You know, they promote it. Every week new episode comes out, promote it, you know, which they stand behind their product. And that's very, very cool. But like episode four or five, they didn't send out the email. And I was just curious. I'm like, hey, you didn't send the email. Why? Oh, we totally forgot. I'm like, wait a minute, let's, let's wait. Let's see what the email does. Let's see what the delta is. This is science. This is the kind of stuff we discuss. And what was great was him not sending out the email. It was only a 3% less so 97% of his audience was coming anyway because they had subscribed. So strategic byproduct here, he doesn't have to email about the show anymore. This stuff comes automatically. He can email about other things. And maybe he could just stop pounding his list with email. And then what's funny is same client, he drops the show for about 18 months, 18 months, year and a half. We take an episode of his YouTube video series that he was doing. Yeah, we strip the audio from it and we use the same title and copy from the YouTube audio. So we didn't change anything because we don't want anybody to think it was an SEO play. We published that back into the podcast. SEO is search engine optimization. That's where you the right keywords that people are looking for. Yeah, he got twice as many downloads of the podcast episode, 18 Months of Dormant podcasts than he was getting on his YouTube channel that he promoted by email that he put on his blog. And then for us, one big thing we are a big proponent of and a big tracker of, Apple, Spotify, YouTube, Pandora, all give you consumption analytics how far they went in. And I chat about this one earlier, people listen to the podcast audio stripped version of the episode Twice as much as they watch the YouTube video. So we got twice as many downloads, they consume twice as much time with no promotion as the result of a number one run that we had done at that point about 24 months earlier. Yeah, this stuff works.

Yeah, I've talked about that on this podcast before. That good consumption on YouTube is like 30, 35%. And then on, on podcast, it's 65 to 85 somewhere in there. And if you're above that, then people will be loving your show.

I've got a client. He's so funny. So for our clients, every month they get a report, and in the report is top downloaded episode of the month, least downloaded episode of the month. And a lot of times that's based on when it came out in the month. It's just math. But every once in a while, you know, hey, this one, you knocked it out of the park. Best consumed episode. Least consumed episode. And then for us, another thing we met with, we call it the new content ratio, which is what percentage that month was new content. Because big thing on podcasting is people should go back to the back catalog, you know, and if there was ever a show that back cataloged Caitlyn's show. For those of you who don't know the Caitlyn Show, Caitlin asked little kids questions about theology, and then Caitlin finds hotshot theologians to answer them, and she won't let them answer it in a way that a young kid can't understand. So the question of, you know, all the questions of the faith, they've been around for a while. So this show has great staying power. So what we do is the new content ratio. And the new content ratio is, get this, the ratio of what was downloaded that month that was new. And we've got one client. It's so funny. It's a 20 minute show. It's a monologue. It's a monologue. It's a 20 minute show. His best consumption is usually 103, 104%. People are clicking, rewind.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, and his worst consumption is like 94%. Just nuts, you know, that was a dud, you know, and then I got other clients. Like, best consumption was 71, worst consumption was 32. You know, and so, but yeah, yeah, follow the consumption traffic. Consumption is really important.

Yeah, yeah. There was a bunch of stats that I got to play with at, at Ramsey to try and figure out some different, basically making a ratio, average time per download. It got nerdy. It was fun. I enjoyed it.

Well, it's nerdy, but it's also, you know, so many podcasters tend to see the whole thing as a. Like, when the episode's done, the project is done, you know, and the thing about consumption analytics is consumption can help you tell when you're really connecting with your audience. You know, if you did an episode and everybody hangs up five minutes in, your audience doesn't care about what that episode was about. When you do an episode and an audience consumes all the way to the end, they really care about that. You know, everybody thinks, wow, the show's doing great. I get a lot of great reviews. Yeah, there's a certain segment of the world that will give you a great review. And it's so funny, you know, I got 10 great reviews. How many downloads you get? A thousand. Yeah, so that's called, in the industry, 1%. You know, it's also called the math 1%. And so by tracking consumption, you can see how well you're doing. And so if you do, you know, weekly show over the course of the year, let's make the math easy. Let's say you took off two weeks for whatever vacation. So now you've done 50 shows about 50 topics, or maybe even, let's say five shows about 10 different topics. And wow, topic X gets an 80% consumption. Topic Y gets a 14% consumption. People really care what you have to say about topic A. So build your content around that. Serve your audience. If you're not serving your audience, just get out of the game.

Yeah. Yeah, that's what we. That's what we had to drill down with the Entree leadership Podcast was we had so many different topics that we were covering because we were mainly having business and leadership thought leaders on the show. And then we started getting into, okay, what are our content buckets? And if we can get that down to five, then we can figure out, okay, what's actually working. But when we keep going, oh, yeah, that's interesting, and that's interesting. But it's like, well, that doesn't actually accomplish the. The vision for the show. Then. Yeah, people get confused, or they just be like, ah, that's not for me. And then that's not a good thing either. Yeah. So before we go to the high pass segment, I would love to get your thoughts on what are some new developments in podcasting that you're really excited about.

I am thrilled. And this is not popular in the podcasting community. I am thrilled with YouTube's embracing of podcasting. I am thrilled because I deal with a lot of people who have a podcast budget and a YouTube budget, and now it's one budget. And yes, sometimes we're getting. We're getting the budget increase, but really, what is your content? What are you doing? And it's not about. My big thing is you don't have a podcast. You have a show that's delivered by podcast. And so I love the fact that YouTube has embraced it. And so many people, you know YouTube, depending on who you count, what your metrics are and that kind of thing, you know, they're one of the top streamers anyway.

Yeah, yeah.

And so I love that visually, it does make people go visual, but so many people. You know, what's really funny is a lot of people don't know this, don't realize this, because despite what you hear about how cool Android are, very few people are listening to podcasts on Android. The Google podcast app. Google killed.

Yeah.

It was so unsuccessful that an app called Podcasts has been killed by Google. It is now the YouTube Music app.

Yep.

And they're playing the game that Apple. Apple played, you know, a while ago, back when, when itunes did everything. And it's so funny because they have the audio version, the video version, and the audio version is just the album art atop the video is all it is. It's. It's the exact same content. So I love the fact that YouTube is there. It has created a lot of confusion because a lot of good people with great messages have gotten bad advice, you know, and have been told, well, you know, if you put your podcast on YouTube, you'll start diluting your YouTube message and YouTube presentation. No, it's one place nobody makes TV, only thinking about how it's going to work on Sony television sets, you know? You know, you know, we make TV so that it works on broadcast, that it works on cables, that works on over the air, so that it works on Hulu, so it works on dvd. Some people still buy them, so it works everywhere. You know, we make this content that way because that's what we want to do. So I really like the fact that YouTube's there. I think there's a really fascinating opportunity, if done strategically, for YouTube as a discovery engine for podcasting. Because remember that thing I said three out of every four videos on YouTube? Or if you like this video, you're like this video. So you use YouTube to introduce new people to your content. And then within your content, you let them know, by the way, you don't have to be in front of a TV set. You can listen to this on the way home now. True. Story back to Holy Post. Why not loop it all the way back in? They, for a while, were playing with the YouTube version of the show. They weren't really that into it. It was just the Riverside recording. And it was funny because I was sitting down. We were watching that. We're making dinner, and YouTube does the commercials every 10 minutes. My wife looks at me, she goes, can't we just pay to make the commercials go away? And I'm like, well, yeah. Yeah, actually we can. And So I paid $10 for my YouTube premium. And then I realized that YouTube is making more money from the Holy Post for me than the Holy Post is making the Holy Post for me. You know, think about the implications of that. So I love the fact that YouTube's there. You need a strategy for it. You gotta be smart for it. But I really love the fact that it's there. I think that's one of the most exciting things.

Cool. All right, well, let's go to the High Pass segment where we ignore the lows, and I ask you about some of your favorite things.

Let's take it.

So first one is, what's your favorite podcast success story?

Well, there's so many. But one of my favorite early days of podcasting, four guys in Southern California who love to get together and drink wine. They said, you know, this podcasting thing, we could write off our wine habit. And so, you know, they bought an oak table, they bought some microphones, and they launched a show called Grape Radio, all about the wine industry. The thing blew up, and within a year, all four of them were working for grape Radio, and they were flying around the world doing wine festivals and this kind of thing. They got a James Beard award. You know, somebody calls and says, you know, too bad you don't do grape tv. Oh, we do Grapevine tv. So all of a sudden, they're a video thing as well. The guy's flying to Sonoma to do some cask opening, and he's sitting next to the guy who buys content for American Airlines. Was looking for wine related content. Just four guys doing it. I think Phil's a success story. Phil has to perform, and so he launched this show to figure out what he's doing. I think that's great. There are a lot of podcasts that just found a home, and those are a lot of fun. A lot of people been able to quit the day job as a result of the podcast, and I think that's a lot of fun. I don't know. Those are two of my favorite.

Nice. Yeah.

All right.

What's your favorite part about working in the podcast industry?

It's a fantastic leveraging tool. It's hard to get the word out, you know, when we have to mail. It's really expensive, traditional radio, you know, broadcast towers, really expensive podcasting, really cheap. And so anybody with a message can get the word out. Now, you got to do it intelligently. And just because the message is out doesn't mean that people are listening to it. And, you know, all. All the caveats are there, but I love that part. My father has pretty severe dementia. He's in memory care, the whole nine yards. And so it's always the same conversation with him, you know, and. And. And, you know, what do you do for a living now, son? You know, and. And, well, you know, I do Internet radio. And. And. And, you know, my dad's like, why Internet radio? What's that about? And I'm like, you know, well, you don't have to pay for the towers anymore, you know, and he remembers radio back for the tower days. Oh, wow. Well, that changes radio, doesn't it? Yeah. You know, and that's what podcasting does. So it's a fantastic, fantastic leveraging tool that just not enough people are grasping onto.

Yeah. All right. What's one of your favorite stories from a client about how your strategy has impacted their organizations and the lives of their audience?

Well, I'll tell you. I mean, I think that one I told you about 18 months, double the downloads of a mailing. The mailing doesn't matter. Getting them to subscribe. Mailing lists are hard to maintain, and you got a better chance of keeping with your audience than you do the podcast. And then you can use the mailing list for other things. I don't know. I sometimes get a little chill that less emails are going out as a result of some of our podcasting strategies. I actually really like that. But I think what's important is now that the assumption goes away, what can I do with the email? What should I do with the email? Then they start asking the internal questions that are a lot more exciting.

Yeah.

Apple now just started recently. I don't know if you noticed this. They're now telling us how many people leave the show, how many people unsubscribe from the show? And so even tracking that, are you doing anything that's making people leave? So I really love the fact that this is just a communication vehicle that you can turn on. Got a client. He's so funny. You know, he is not one who has taken the podcast and YouTube budget, but so funny, you know, he'll release a YouTube video, he'll get thousand downloads, streams, which is amazing, you know, but if you were to release that on his podcast, he'd get 25,000 the first 24 hours, you know, with no marketing, no nothing. Pretty cool stuff.

Yeah, for sure. All right, well, as we close, who else do you know that would be a great guest on this podcast?

Yeah, Dave Jackson for the School of Podcasting.

No.

Yeah, Dave's an interesting guy. Try to get him on.

Okay.

Dave speaks often to his invisible Jesus buddy in the sky. He's got a take on faith. It's interesting. And he's just. He's taught a lot of people how to podcast, so.

Yeah.

Dave Jackson, School podcasting.

Okay. Well, Paul, thank you so much for taking the time to join me on the podcast. Talk through this strategy, how the charts work. I really appreciate it.

Thank you for having me.

Wow.

I learned a lot from that conversation.

With Paul, and I've actually already applied it with a client since we recorded this episode. I helped Luke Lefever launch his podcast holywork, and by following Paul's strategy, we got it up to number 97 in his category on Apple Podcasts. To check out Paul's work with the podcast partnership, just click the link in the the show notes.

Well, that's going to do it for.

This episode of Ministries that podcast produced by Sonomorphic. If you enjoyed today's episode, follow or subscribe to the podcast and share it with a friend. That's the best way to get the word out so together we can help more ministries grow and thrive through podcasting.

Now, come back in two weeks to.

Hear my conversation with Chris Starin. He's the host of Truce History of the Christian Church, where he uses JO journalistic tools to look inside the Christian church to explore how we got here and how we can do better. Chris and I are going to talk about him starting in film and ending up in podcasting, writing and editing episodes while being a school bus driver. And why he interviews expert historians instead of well known Christian pastors and speakers. Well, until next time, keep encouraging your audience as they follow Jesus.