iOS 8 Is A Gift To Podcasters (And How To Take Advantage Of This Gift) - The Podcast Report #14

IOS 8 comes out tomorrow, my birthday, but it's a huge gift for podcasters everywhere. This is the podcast report, episode 14. And I've got Rob Walsh from Libsyn, who is going to explain and show why the new iOS is good news for anybody doing a podcast. If you want a transcript from today's show, go ahead and text Ep. 14 to 503-897-1290. It's the podcast Report with Paul Colligan. And here's Paul. Hey, everybody. I am on the Skype line with Rob Walsh of Libsyn of podcast 411 of Today in iOS and a couple of dozen other things. Rob, how are you doing today, ma'?

Am? I am doing great, Paul. Thanks so much for having me on.

Thanks for joining the show and even more than that, thanks for what you have done for podcasting. You have been around since day one, pretty much. There might have been three or four days after the initial invention that you weren't there, but you've been there since day one. Podcast411, your original podcast, where you interviewed everybody about podcasting, was just, it was just a masterpiece. And I think one day when they archive the history of podcasting, that's going to have a special place because you just went in deep, you went into implications, you went into best practices, you weren't afraid to speak your mind when you felt like that needed to happen. And I just truly appreciated that, ma'. Am.

Well, thank you. Thank you so much. Hey, and one podcast you forgot to mention was Today in Podcasting, which who was one of my co hosts. Yes, Today in Podcast, you.

Yeah, we did that for a while. That was.

So we have a good long history. And for those that don't know, Paul and I have known each other since Gnome Deck's days. So it's been a long time. So we've had good relationship over the years.

And then the other thing about Rob and I want everybody to consider this because this is really important. You know, I love all podcasters. Podcasters are some of my favorite people. But. But in reality they come to you with different experiences. You know, the, the podcaster who has the day job, plays with the kids, you know, and then starts podcasting at 2 o' clock in the morning is. Is no less the podcast than anybody else is, but the people who do this as their day job are the ones who are living and breathing this. And it's not hobby. And there's just a special place in my heart for people in the business. And Rob is truly in the business. Because what is your day job, Rob?

Podcasting. Exactly. VP of Podcaster Relations at Libsyn. And my day job has been podcasting since April 1st of 2005, from podcast411, then over to Libsyn in 2007. So this has been my day job pretty much for almost 10 years, nine and a half years now. And I've been podcasting since December of 2004.

And because it's his day job, at least for me, Rob carries a certain amount of gravitas. And we've spoke in a past episode, we had P. Diddy, you know, we spoke a bit about the pottertainment magazine, and it's gonna be interesting. It's always interesting to see where that's going. But I'll be honest, in that magazine, I always flip to see what Rob has to say. And in the most recent episode, Rob had an article about iOS8 and what iOS8 means for podcasters. And what's interesting is we're recording this on September 16, tomorrow, September 17, not only is iOS8 released to the world, but it is released as per Rob's prediction. I mean, how long ago did you submit that article when you predicted today tomorrow would be the day.

It was about? I guess I wrote that at the end of July. Yeah, but I've been figuring was going to be the 17th was pretty much my guess on that. Just Apple tends to follow patterns lately.

Yeah, the thing is, Apple tends to follow patterns, but not everybody tends to pay attention to the patterns, and you actually pay attention to the patterns. And that's one of the things I like. So you wrote this article and everybody, Pottertainment magazine, It's on the IP iOS platform. I guess they have the iPhone version of it now. I know it's coming for Android soon. It's, it's, you know, our good friend Gary Leland. We'll put a link to it in the show. I actually texted Gary before we started recording, asked him to send us a coupon code to give everybody at least a month or two free. And nothing like mentioning him and giving him a free plug on the show to do that. But so on. Then, of course, the other thing is, is iOS 8 releases on my birthday, so. Yes.

Well, happy birthday tomorrow.

Thank you so much. Big. So Anyway, what does iOS8 mean to podcasters, Rob?

Well, it means a lot because for the first time in iOS 8, the podcast app is native, and native is important because native means users can't delete it. So you're going to have two groups of people. Hey, what's this app that was installed on my device? Let me discover. And then you'd have other people talking about it, hey, what's this app and how do I delete? Doesn't matter. They're talking about the podcast app in either case, and that's good. And quite a few people are going to try it out. They're going to go into the podcast app and they're going to open it up. And you're talking 500 million people by the end of October are going to have the podcast app installed natively on their iOS device that they cannot delete.

That's pretty cool. Yeah.

I mean, now let's compare this over. On the Android side. On the Android side, there are zero apps that are native for podcasting. So this is, I mean, this is a big deal for podcasting. And when podcasters, you know, look back, I said in the article, there was basically, I think, I Look at it, three inflection points for podcasting. The first was June 29, 2005. That's when iTunes supported podcasting for the first time. ITunes 4.9. Then the next inflection point was two years later. And that was a slow inflection point, but an inflection point. And that was when the iPhone was launched, because now everyone today has a mobile device and that's where majority of people consume their podcasts. And now we're talking your birthday 2014 as the next inflection point because that's when the podcast app became native and didn't require people to download it. And native apps get used far more by the masses than third party apps.

Now let's speak to a couple things on that issue. Number one, podcasters are a passionate bunch and they love to love as much as they love to hate. And one of the things you always hear about is how much, you know, bigger Android is or how BlackBerry is going to take over the world or something like that. The thing I love, Rob, is in your position, you know, how much is coming from iOS versus how much is coming from everything else, because you got access to the stats at Libsyn. So let's settle this. What percentage of podcasts are coming to iOS devices overall? Libsyn. As much as you can tell us without, you know, breaking.

Okay, so let's look first on mobile versus computer. And downloads for mobile are right now around 64% of all our downloads are directly to mobile devices. Compare that to a couple years ago where it was 43%. It's been a huge upswing in the last two years. When we look at the mobile downloads iOS to Android, the ratio is 5.8, 5.3 to 1 depending on the month. You're talking over 5 to 1 iOS for every one Android download, there's five plus downloads on an iOS device. It's that big a ratio. So forget that there's more Android devices out there, there's no native way for people to discover podcasts, and guess what, the masses just don't do it. But on the iOS side, Apple has always made it easier and now they're making it even easier. So I expect that ratio to go up even higher.

Interesting interest. So over 5 to 1 iOS to, well, mobile, iOS to Android. Well, as opposed, I guess there really is nothing non mobile about iOS, but that's a whole other story. And then you said something in the article that just, it was painfully obvious. But, but the implications just had me had me up at night. Phone numbers are hyperlinked inside of the iOS app. Now obviously if you're, if you're, you know, watching on your iPad or you've got an ipod device or something like that, that's not going to matter. But what does a hyperlinked phone number do to a show?

Well, I mean, I always look at, as a podcaster, my lifeblood has always been listener feedback. And I am really of the mindset that the main way the shows grow is word of mouth marketing. And you have to get your audience to be out there promoting your show. And no audience member promotes a show stronger than an audience member who's been part of your show. And getting that feedback is crucial and people are lazy and the harder you make it for them to get you feedback, the less feedback you're going to get. The easier you make it, the more feedback you're going to get. It's kind of just a little bit of common sense. And one of the beauties with the podcast app with Apple, when they updated it, I think it was back in May timeframe, they added hyperlinks to your show notes. So if you actually open up the podcast app, go to an episode, you'll see the album artwork for that episode. If you tap on that album artwork, boom, up comes the show notes and any URLs that you have hyperlinked inside your show notes are hyperlinked. But if you have a phone number, just putting a phone number in there makes that phone number hyperlink. So just putting in 1, 206, 666, 6364, which is the phone number for today in iOS that links out now, people just have to tap it and then you get a button that pops up and the button just says, call the show. And you do that. You say, yeah, call the show call. You click the call and that's it. It's so easy for people to leave your feedback.

Now, to get that hyperlink, do you have to do anything special?

No, you just put it in. I mean, I just type in the show notes, call the show 1, 206. Don't put a lot of brackets around it. And you have to put in your country code. Well, actually, I don't even think you do have to put in country code. I think if you actually did 206, 666, 6364, it knows that's a phone number. And I'm actually pulling it up and. Yep, because Elsie, who's my co host on the feed podcast for Libston, didn't put the one there. And the 412 number is showing up for our call and number find. It's a call.

Awesome, awesome. Now, when you click on that, does that go just a call or does that give you the option to text?

It actually says call. So it's just a call in number, not a text.

So this could be used for calling in just for show feedback, show hotline, that type of thing. This could be used for calling in, leaving voicemail. This could be used for anybody who's doing a live show that they later encode and put into a podcast. This could be used and just that ability. You know, the funny thing is, if I have a show that I listen to that I know I can call in at any time, even if I don't call in, knowing that I can call in is extremely more attractive than the evening news with Dan Rather. That is like, doesn't care about me in any way, shape or form.

Right. And if you want to cover, by the way, the iPad users that can't call in, if you put your email address in there as well, the email address is hyperlinked, so they just tap on the email address and they can email into the show.

Oh, that's so good, Rob. That's so good. And show notes hyperlink. Do you have to do anything special to get hyperlinks in the show notes?

No, if you have that URL linked. So if you're using Libsyn and you have a link to your links in your show notes, they come through as long as you haven't stripped out the HTML code. So at least with Libsyn, if your show notes have links in it, those show notes will show up with links inside the podcast app now. And when you tap on one of those links, it will open up that page in Safari right there on the app. So again, Apple's made it more interactive with the podcast app. And I should point out, if you're a podcaster and you don't use the podcast Apple, which I hear a lot of podcasters say that to me, oh, well, I don't use a podcast app. I use this app or I use that app, you know, and you know, that's great. But you not if you're not using the podcast app, that's actually the app that the majority of people. I mean, if you took all the other apps that are used on iOS and combined it and tripled it, it still wouldn't equal what the podcast app is. So that's where the majority of people are going to consume your show. Know the app, learn the app.

Exactly. And the fact of the matter is, if you like appX over the Apple app, that's fine. Preferences are okay. Just realize what the majority of your audience is using. And for those listeners who listen to this show who prefer Android over iOS, that's great. You are still a human being, we still love you. But you might want to consider picking up an ipod or picking up an iPad or something to have that experience. Because if you don't know what the experience is of the majority of your audience, you're doing a disservice to the majority of your audience.

Yep, absolutely. I mean, you need to see how your show plays. One of the things that people don't realize, podcasters, if they're using feedburner and they've got, they'll turn on the statistics for feedburner and they'll turn on smartcast. And a lot of times that conflicts with the podcast app and causes your episodes not to be able to download into the podcast app. So you need to check your show every episode, make sure your show is working. When you release a new episode, you should go to the podcast app, click Play, make sure it works, then click download, make sure it downloads, make sure your show is actually working with the podcast app. And again, if you don't, as I think, I think it's in the article, if you don't have an iOS device to test it on, find one of your smarter, better looking, richer friends that does have one and, and check it on their device.

Servers. Byte range request. Now that's nerd talk. But it's vital. Now, chat to that for a minute.

One of the requirements from Apple to be in itunes now if you go to submit is your server where you host the files has to support byte range requests. And byte range requests means that the server is able to take, just as it sounds, a range of bytes for that media file and deliver that piece and then deliver the next piece and deliver the next piece. Libsyn obviously supports that. One of the downsides is when you go to submit your feed to itunes, itunes has a bug in there. And every 20th time you go to submit a feed, it'll give you a false negative saying, oh, sorry, that server doesn't support byte range. Wait five minutes, resubmit. The message should go away if it doesn't submit the third time. If it doesn't go away and you're not hosting with libsyn, maybe that server doesn't support it. But you do need to host your media files where they do support byte range requests, and most pure podcast hosts will do that. You'll get into issues when you start talking looking at services that aren't meant for podcasting.

1400 by 1400 for the album art. I remember when it was 300 by 300 kids, get off my lawn. Why does it have to be 1400 by 1400?

Because that's what Apple said. It has to be. What Apple doesn't tell you that it has to be also is under 500 kilobytes in file size. Because if your artwork is 1400 by 1400 and 1.8 megabytes, there's a good chance your artwork doesn't show up in itunes. It also cannot be cmyk. It has to be rgb. CMYK will not show up in itunes. So we'll see that quite often from users. They'll say, my artwork's uploaded, everything looks fine. But it's not showing in itunes. And all I'm getting is this little gray box with the little itunes podcast symbol. If that's your case and your artwork is cmyk, it will never show up in itunes. Itunes does not support it at all. It does have to be RGB. It needs to be either a JPEG or a PNG file. Again, less than 500 kilobytes in total file size. If you want the artwork to show up in work, well. So yeah, it just. Those are Apple's requirements now. But that's at the show level artwork. Don't confuse that artwork with your episode level artwork because there's also episode level artwork and the episode level artwork you actually want to be under 100 kilobytes. And you don't want it 1400 by 1400. You want it smaller, something like 300 by 300 or less than 600 by 600.

I was not aware of that one. Thank you. Very cool. So half a billion people by the end of next month. A half a billion. Well, a half a million installs. Some people have multiple devices. I know I sure do.

Right.

But a half a billion devices by the end of next month are going to have this podcast app that you cannot delete. Whether that's good, whether that's bad, deal with it. It's just a fact. There are going to be people who know what podcasting is and they're going to be, oh, wow, look, it's easier now. There are going to be people who don't know what podcasting is and they're going to be poking around and they're going to type in keywords to see if there's anything about what they like. A lot of people freak out about charting. How do I get onto new and notable and how do I get on this category list and how do I get on this top list? And that's all great for podcasters who are researching other podcasters, but the average world just doesn't go there. So you optimize your show for that newbie. If your art is a grayed out itunes symbol, they're going to think you're broken.

Right? I mean, it doesn't look good. You'll never get featured, by the way. Itunes will never feature you if you don't have artwork and you don't have good looking artwork. Apple is very about the aesthetics. So first off, make sure you do have good looking artwork. But per how the regular people, the average consumer, the non podcaster, is going to find shows, it's keyword search. Like you said. People are going to go in and they're going to search and they're going to search what it is they're interested in. They're going to search mountain biking, they're going to search tree climbing, because yes, there is a tree climbing podcast. They're going to search whatever subject matter it is that they're interested in. How itunes search works is very altavista. It's what's in the title of your show. It's so last millennium on how their search works. So you need to make sure if you have a podcast that is about mountain biking, you don't want to call it the cheese doodle podcast and be cute and coy. You want to have the words mountain biking in the title of your show. It's so important that one little change will really bump you up. Now, how itunes search works is after they look at the keywords that are in your title, then they sort it by the number of subscribers all time. And this comes back to the other issue that people will make or consultants will mess up podcasts on is they'll use this ITPC link which you go to a website and if you see the ITPC link, you know that the person that's doing that is a paid consultant that was overpaid and doesn't understand podcasting because ITPC links, when you click on it, automatically subscribes you onto that person's itunes account on their computer. Sadly, that bypasses the itunes app store or itunes store and you get no credit for that subscription. So the top 200 list you don't get help with, and in search results you don't get the credit that you need. So never use the ITPC link. Always have people go to the itunes store and click that subscribe button in the itunes store.

So good. Keywords based on what it is that your audience is looking for, not on who it is that you are. I always say topic, not talent.

Well, it should be relevant to your show. I mean, you don't want to put lesbians kissing on your show if your show is a vegan show, right?

Exactly.

It's not related. You might offend. You're not going to get the audience you are hoping for.

Exactly. So let me rephrase that. You want to use the keywords that your audience is looking for in relation to your show. The topic, not the talent. Now more important than ever because you've got a whole. Apple is. Forcing is the right word. Apple is causing a lot of people to search in the keywords more than we've ever seen before. That's why you're calling it one of the infliction points. And then at the same go ahead.

In the podcast app, it's even more so that they're going to be searching on the keywords because the podcast app is even harder to go around and find the top 200 lists. So when you actually get to the podcast app, that search is a dominant button at the bottom. I mean, there's five buttons at the bottom of the podcast app and one of them is search. And you know, so gee, guess which one people are going to use when they look at the bottom and they see my podcast, my station feature, top charts and search. And search is in the bottom right hand corner. Guess which one they're tapping on. Tapping on search.

Yep. Very cool. And then if you're leveraging this, this newfound fame and you've started promoting and somewhere you've, you've read a book or read an article that says itpc, that's fine, that's functional. But it does not track what itunes is actually doing. And the great thing is, is inside of itunes, there's that drop down underneath your album art for copy link. You grab that one, that one will track. And you heard it from Rob, who again, this is his day job and he works with a lot of podcasters. And the cool thing is, I mean, he loves them all. Rob is an equal opportunity guy, but he's got the unique opportunity to work with some very, very big numbers and some very, very big names. And search is some derivative of the keywords and the amount of subscribes. So make every single one of them.

Count and don't go spamish, don't go into your title of your show and just all keywords, because that could get you kicked out of itunes. I don't know what their rules are there, but. But it should be. Take the three keywords that you would spend on Google Adsense, Google Adwords. What are those three keywords? Get them somehow in the title of your show. You don't even have to say them in the show when you say the show. An example I always gave was this show. I had a friend who had a show, it was a sci fi show and it was called the fifth race podcast. Nobody knew what the fifth race podcast was unless you were super hyper Stargate fan. Then you'd understand the fifth race was reference, an internal reference to Stargate. But I'm a big Stargate fan. I would never go in and search for a fifth race. I would search for, oh, Stargate. So when you searched for Stargate, his podcast came up. Not at all. Wasn't in the search results at all. And he had been doing the Stargate podcast longer than anyone. He made the simple change of a fifth race podcast. A Stargate fan cast or something like that. He just put the word Stargate at the end of the title search for Stargate. Two days later, he was number one in the search results.

Bingo. And the cool thing is those subscripts, those subscribes previously will still count even if you change your title. Right?

Right.

There we go. Beautiful.

I mean, if you search for Apple watch, you will see today and iOS comes up as, oh, number one.

Good job, man. All right, Rob, we're gonna have to have you back. You and I have played with a couple of number one runs in iTunes and we need to chat about that on a future episode. But between now and then, how does my audience find you?

You can find me at several of my different podcasts. Today in iOS is my main podcast. That's the weekly one I do and that's all about iPhone and iOS podcast 411 is still out there and kind of always a hiatus mode. And every now and then I release a new episode. But the archives are wonderful. And then the feed podcast, you search for Libsyn in itunes and just search for the feed. That's the one I do with Elsie and that's about podcasting, but also news and updates about Libsyn. And then of course anyone ever wants to email me, they can just email me Robson.com, so Rob, as in Robert Robson Lib S Y N dot com and always welcome emails and we'll respond to you usually pretty quickly.

And in terms of not making this sound too much like a commercial, the podcast report is hosted at Libsyn. Thrilled to be hosted at Libsyn. And it's man, I love your stats. You know, there's, there's no denying good numbers and you guys provide them very, very, very well. So thank you so much for what you do. And Rob, I'm gonna let you go, but man, you know, if you want to know what's happening with these new iPhones and you want to Forget how the iWatch plays into all this and what all this stuff means today in iOS is a heck of a lot of fun. And the feed, for those of you in the industry, again, I have no problem. I love dearly the podcasters by which this is their hobby, but for the ones where by which this is their day job, it's an entirely different game. And make a distinguish between the two because I think it's very important and you guys do a great job on that show as well. So thank you. Robin, any final words before we go, folks?

If you'd like to give Paul a birthday gift, even if you're not listening through itunes or the podcast app, go into there and click the subscribe button and then go and review his show. So that's your way of saying happy birthday to Paul. Give him a nice 5 star review.

Rob, I didn't ask for that, but that's good. I'll take it. Thank you so much, man.

Thank you, Paul. Fermion.

Man. I always like chatting with Rob. The show number is 503-89-71290 if you got any comments about what Rob said, go ahead, call it in. Leave that voicemail at the same time. If you would like transcripts for today's episode, go ahead and text Ep. 14 as in episode 14. 250-389-71290. If you want the show notes and all the links to the things we chatted about, that is@the podcastreport.com as in episode 14. I'll take Rob's offer on a review. We'd love that. We'd love subscription numbers as well, either over at itunes or Stitcher. I don't necessarily care. I like being at both. But with that said and done, the links to Rob and Libsyn and Pottertainment and all that stuff is in the show notes. Thank you so much. Talk to you next week.

Bye.