It Is An Issue Of What YOU Are Doing In Podcasting - The Podcast Report Episode #52

It's no longer an issue of what's possible with podcasting, it's an issue of what you're actually doing with podcasting. It's the podcast report, episode 52. We've been doing this for a year. Show notes, links and more@thepodcastreport.com 52 it's the podcast report with Paul Colligan. And here's Paul. Hey everybody. This is Paul Calligan, author of how to podcast 2015 and a couple other books about podcasting with this is not about the book, this is about podcasting. And this is the podcast report. And this is episode 52. If you don't know the show, we've got 51 episodes before would love a subscribe, a new listener, a new regular consumer of what we have here. My goal has always been to make a show for the podcaster. Someone looking to go deep, someone looking to make this more of a business than a hobby. I enjoy the audience, I enjoy the comments, I enjoy doing this show. But most importantly, I enjoy podcasting and what it means. I making a good chunk of my revenue from it. And as a result I'm able to spend some time thinking about it, pondering it, using it, testing it. And that's what this show is about. It is episode 52. And I have been doing this for a year now and this one's fun. This, this show has been a blast. There's going to be some changes. You're going to see some things coming down the pipe very soon. But in this episode 52, I want to get a little reflective. I want to chat about a couple things. I want to get a couple of things off my chest, if you will. First, if you've never done a weekly show, the pressure isn't the right word because pressure is actually a good thing in this case. But the needing to listen to your audience and reflect on what happened the previous week and understand the way that combination of news cycles versus the evergreen nature of what it is you're doing, how all of this comes together. I recommend highly anyone tries to a 52 week podcast and I'm not stopping here. Don't worry, this is not the last episode. This is something I really, really recommend. Now in the last week, a couple of really big pieces of news about podcasting and some of the exciting things have happened about podcasting and you know, I started working on my notes for how do we deal with that news? What do we do with that news. But here's the thing. I've been trying to make a show I've been desperately putting together a show. I've been working on a show that is not moment in time but is longer term. I've been working on a show that is not. Oh, my goodness. I have to list this week because if I don't listen this week, the news is no longer good, but to a series of ideas and conversations about podcasting that just makes us all better. So here's the thing. I'm not going to chat about the news. I think I will put the links to the news atthepodcast Report.com 5, 2. But the specific pieces of news aren't going to be about what this episode is about. See, and I said this at the beginning. It's no longer an issue of what's possible in podcasting. It's an issue of what you're actually doing with podcasting. This news, you know, makes some go, oh, one day we're going to get there or we are on our way or it is getting better or that type of thing. Well, here's three things for you with podcasting. Number one, stop waiting for something to get better. Make it better. Podcasting is at a wonderful place. We are doing amazing things and we don't need news from anybody. We don't need reports, we don't need downloads, staggering numbers. We just need to get out there and do stop waiting for something to get better. B, we're already there. Podcasting is the greatest media distribution mechanism in the world. I love this thing and I love it more and more every day. And as I deal with my clients and as I deal with customers, I'm realizing the strength of this over all of the other models. And the other models are very, very cool, but they're not podcasting. See, we're already there. And the only, the only thing this news should do is give us a virtual pat on the back that we are pointed in the right direction, that we are doing the right thing, that we had the wherewithal to be there before the other guys did and not even before it's popular. I don't know how much bigger podcasting is going to get, because if you look at the numbers, it's plenty big enough. The models are there. People are doing extremely well. This year, I'm heading over to Podcast Movement, a big event. And if you're there, say hi. And if you're. You're listening to this past podcast movement, know that they were great events. But here's the great thing. We're going to have people there with millions of downloads. We're Going to have people making seven figures from podcasting. All the things that we thought one day were going to happen are happening now. We don't need to wait for anybody to fix the tech. We don't need to wait for any infrastructure to get in place. We don't have to wait for anything. It's all, all there. So, a, stop waiting for podcasting to get better by monitoring the news and tracking what's going on. B, realize they're already there. Podcasting is everything it needs to be right now for you, for me, for the industry, and then we can act on it and then finally just take that news and go, yep, I'm doing the right thing. I'm doing the smart thing. You do that, you're going to be in a much better place. Now. The models exist. The models for podcast monetization exist. There are going to be no new ones. And I'll tell you this, if you're waiting one day for some sort of situation where somebody's just going to randomly insert an ad for you and you're not going to do anything, Google AdWords for podcasting, it's not going to happen, at least in any way that is going to be profitable to you. The generic insertion of generic ads to a podcast without extreme downloads, it's just not a model. It's just absolutely a waste, waste of time. But the models do exist. And if you listen to the show, we've discussed the models in different ways. If you haven't, go ahead, go back to the back catalog of the podcast report.com and take a look at them. But the models exist. The numbers are not going to get better for you without specific work and implementation to make it happen. And the more generic the models are that you embrace, I. E. Blind add, insertion and that kind of thing, the worse they're going to to get. Growth happens. Numbers happen. Not because of tech, not because Apple announces a new software platform, not because of anything other than slow and steady. You know, Marc Maron interviewed the President of the United States of America on his podcast. Over a million downloads in the first 48 hours. Like, wow, look at that. That's amazing. That's amazing. But the thing that didn't make any of the reports, the thing that didn't make any of the stories, the thing that didn't make anything was that Maron was on episode 613 of his show. And Mark, for us old timers, he came in towards the end. Mark's been busting his butt for a very, relatively speaking, short amount of Time. But he's been busting his butt, I'll tell you. Not all of his episodes got a million downloads. I said this out on Twitter before. He got Obama not because of charity. He got Obama not because Obama was trying to do the podcast thing. He got Obama because Obama. Obama was perfect for his show, and it was good for Obama and it was good for Mark, and it was good for podcasting, but it wasn't, you know, a piece of federally funded charity or support or, you know, federal dollars going towards helping out this flailing industry or something like that. They got on WTF POD because it was a smart show for Obama to get on, and it was a smart show for him to get on, because it's a show that has mastered the process. Gotten better, you know, at episode 613. I've been involved with tech for a long time, and, you know, I remember hearing about this concept called email and getting email and wondering who I would email. Well, all tech goes through. I have a book on my shelf, the Beginner's Guide, the Internet. It's really, really thick. It's. It's like 800 pages. And believe it or not, the World Wide Web only got a couple of paragraphs. This was before the graphical version of the World Wide Web. But tech goes through a growth process, and tech has always gone through a growth process. The first phase of the tech is, have you heard of. Have you heard of email? Have you heard of the web? Have you heard of the Internet? Have you heard of podcasting? That's always phase one. Have you heard of. Because most people haven't. And you get to introduce them to this, and that's where it starts. But then the second thing that happens is the second question that we ask, the second place we go is, are you using the Internet? Are you listening to podcasting? Are you surfing the web? Are you using a smartphone? That's the next phase. Have you heard of it? Now are you using it? And then the third phase, and this is where it gets really interesting, and this is where tech has made it, is what is your email address? What is your website? What kind of cell phone, you know, smartphone, do you have to. What is your podcast? And now, boy, I'll tell you, we're almost at that third phase in podcasting, where. What is your podcasting? I was at an event, and I was chatting with someone who has a series of stores, and he needs to distribute training material to all of his store members. And he was asking about podcasting, and should I do it by podcast as Opposed to the old model, the old method of, you know, group conference calls or the, you know, weekly video conference or that type of thing. I said, it'd be great, you know, and he said. And he looked at me and he said, well, no, because my, you know, my employees love podcasts. They listen to them all the time. You know, how cool is that? It's no longer an issue if you heard of it. It's not an issue of are you using it, but now it's an issue of, my boss has one. So slow and steady. This is the industry. It's ready. You're in it. You can do great things with it, and it's pretty, pretty exciting. One piece of news that is it's perspective. The iPhone. Eight years. The iPhone's been out now for eight years. And I remember seeing the presentation about the iPhone and I. A different angle on the iPhone. I didn't initially think about podcasts, to be honest. But what was interesting with the iPhone was not. Yeah, there was that bit about the portable ipod and that type of thing. But the thing about the iPhone that was so interesting was that, you know, the basic premise of the iPhone. And I'd had smartphones in the very beginning. I had had Internet connected phones the date it happened. Some of them were just lousy. Some of them were just terrible. Some of them were just really bad. And what was interesting about the introduction of the iPhone by Jobs was just the concept that it didn't have to be bad, that it could be better, that the interface could be beautiful, that the whole process could be smooth. And then we did great things with that. And, you know, we had our own podcast clients, and Apple comes out with theirs, and it's part of music and it's all these things, but the tech just got better and. But it was always, you know, once it was there, it was good. And that's kind of where we are. I spoke in a previous episode of this show about Seinfeld on Hulu and Seinfeld on hulu, you know, $875,000 per episode. And of course, when Jerry and Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David, when they created Seinfeld back when, you know, they weren't thinking about, you know, Hulu distribution. They weren't thinking about, you know, the different places it was going to go. They were thinking about the simple fact that they wanted to make something really, really awesome. A couple of Christmases ago, I bought my wife, you know, the entire series on DVD because she loved it so much. And what they did was they created something awesome. They didn't worry about the tech at the time. The tech was syndication. Now it's Internet video. But the content was still the same and I think podcasters need to do the same. I was looking at Marc Maron's site and he's got a DVD available of the first 100 episodes of his show. His content is good. Yes, it's distributed by podcast, but that's not its speaking point. Its speaking point are some really in depth interview. The best comedy comes from pain and Mark does that extremely well. And it wasn't creating the best podcast in the world. He was creating the greatest content in the world and he was distributing it to the world via podcast. And that's the exact same thing we should be doing. And that's part of how I'm going to be changing up a little bit of what I'm doing here in year two of the podcast report. Not as much going to be creating podcasts as going to be creating content that's going to go out different ways and that should should give you a sneak pre for that. But I want you to sneak peek of that. But I want you to think about that. I want you to ponder that. I want you to do great things with that if you have gotten this far. Thank you. I appreciate you. Podcasters are wonderful if you have not subscribed to this show or honestly subscribed to another show. Subscription is one of my favorite things about podcasting and it doesn't get the press that it deserves. You subscribe to this or follow this or whatever your platform uses. And by the way, thepodcastreport.com iTunes you can go over there. Thepodcastreport.com Stitcher or the podcastreport.com iheartradio or the podcast, you know, they're all there. Any place that you can follow a podcast, just go to the podcastreport.com to subscribe. But what's neat is when episode 53 comes out, it's going to come to you automatically. When episode 54 comes out, it's going to come to you automatically. And the relationship is not going to be one where you have to seek and find, but one where it's going to be delivered to you. And the consumption is going to be easier and it's going to be comfortable and it's going to be regular and that will change the game. And I'll tell you, for my clients who are seeing success, the the it's either a tremendous massive crazy budget of marketing each and every unique episode or It's a really intelligent process of getting subscribers initially. So subscribe to the show and Gus darn it, subscribe to other shows. Realize that power of podcasting. Work that into your place, because that is very, very, very cool. We always had to find Seinfeld and we had to go get it, whereas the podcasts come to us. So definitely subscribe. I would love social interaction. If you go to the podcastreport.com Facebook, you'll see what we're doing on Facebook, thepodcastreport.com Twitter, you'll see what we're doing there. Those seem to be the big ones. If there's other ones you like, they're probably slash whatever as well. But I'd love interaction. Email is great. The podcast reportoutlook.com interaction with you guys is fabulous. I appreciate you, especially you who have gone this far into it. Episode 52, 16 minutes into the episode. It's been a pleasure, it's been an honor, and I am so looking forward to year two of the podcast report. Chat with you soon. Bye.