Podcast Seasons And The Mindset Scorecard

I remember it like it was yesterday. This was a big deal, a big moment in podcasting for me and for many podcasters. I found out that Michael Hyatt had just released the hundredth episode of his podcast. And I like Mike, I know Mike, and I wanted to see what he was doing. I wanted to see what he was up to. So I went over to visit the hundredth. That's always a good thing. Grab the hundredth episode of shows, grab the 250, the 500. It's just always a blast. So I went to go listen to Mike and what was interesting was he spoke honestly and openly, and I've appreciated that about him, that he wasn't having fun on his podcast anymore, that what was happening was he was just producing it every day because. Or every week because he thought he was supposed to. And the joy was going. And we've seen this happen in podcasts a lot. You've heard podcasts, you know, hey, it's Wednesday morning and I got to get an episode out. What Mike did, though, was instead of drop the show or instead of sporadically post or that type of thing, he moved to a season model. He announced that whereas the old show was him monologuing, the new show would be him with an interviewee and he would have a guest host and he would batch these so he could get the energy going and he could do a bunch of things. And. And basically he changed everything in the show. I changed the model for opting in, changed a lot. And he just did it and he went from there. I remember thinking to myself, this is odd. Are you allowed to do that? And it was a funny moment of realization because, you know, of course you are. We're allowed to do whatever we want in podcasting. I don't know if Mike was the one who invented it. I don't know. I'm going to say he is. You know, for the sake of this argument, if I am wrong, someone please let me know. But he was the one I heard about it from. And from that day on, I started realizing that we can wrap podcasts even more in formats that make sense to others. See, I get the idea of a season. I'm a big fan of the Walking Dead, you know, whenever a new season comes out. I know, Yep, Paul loves his zombies. This model, this idea became part of everything I was doing in podcasting from that point on. And it's become a big part of what we do with our clients at the Podcast Partnership. This is part two of an eight part series that we're doing about the podcast partnership Mindset Scorecard. If you've been playing along, you have a copy, great. If you don't, the easiest way to get one is head out to Heads up Tuesday dot com. That's our weekly email newsletter. When you sign up for that, it gives you access to our library of everything. And included in there is the Mindset Scorecard. If you just want it for that, don't worry, unsubscribe, I'm not going to come after you. It's. I don't want to email people who don't want to get email from me. I just want to make things as easy as possible. Inside of there is the Mindset Scorecard and a number of our other tools. And last week we chatted about Podcast Gold. And also in that Heads Up Tuesday list is the Podcast Gold image a lot of people have told me they printed put up on their wall. Thanks. Appreciate that. This week, Podcast Seasons and the way the Mindset Scorecard works is it's a big white card and it takes a concept like Podcast Season. It divides it up into four categories. 1 to 3 points, 4 to 6 point, 7 to 9, 10 to 12. How far do you rate on this idea? Because the thing is, if you and I don't have the same mindset, if you aren't looking for the same things we're looking for in a podcast, we're not going to work well together. You know, some people come to me and they say, you know, I just want a lot of downloads, so I can get you a lot of downloads from China for really cheap. Actually, what you want are listeners, that kind of thing. And you'll find later on in there, one of the, one of the mindsets is about impact, not downloads, but this week it's about the idea of podcast seasons. So in the one to three area, the really low area, the way we kind of explain that rate that is that the idea that seasons are old media, unnecessary, not worth the effort. I'm just going to release my podcast on a regular basis, week after week or day after day or whatever it is, and just not worry about Seasons. And if you want to do that, that's fine. Not a big deal at all. We see it as a really valuable tool. As I've chatted about in the past, one of the things we do is, you know, we review what's working, what isn't working, and then we change things based on what is working, what isn't working to better. One of the most recent examples is we changed jj Virgin's show from Reignite Wellness to Ask the Health Expert. From a three day a week show that was one interview, one question and answer and one monologue to a show that became five questions and answers a week. We changed everything radically about that show and we could do it and it made sense. People were able to wrap their minds around it because we moved from season two, Reignite Wellness, to season three, Ask the Health Expert. It worked for us. It was solid, it was good. JJ's numbers are better than they've ever been before in consumption, in downloads, in tracking sales. I mean, it's there. It's what we want. It's the tool that we recommend people use. Now, do we have people who don't do seasons? I'm trying to think everybody, all of our clients, I think, do seasons. But, you know, can you have a successful podcast without having one? Yes. It's just one of the eight points on the mindset scorecard. Let's go from four to six. You know, I'm not totally against it. Seasons are a decent idea for some shows, just not mine. I'd say seasons are a decent idea for all shows. Even if you're still in episode 700 of season one, just start labeling those as season one because if you want to move over one day, you're at a good place. In the seven to nine category where you're starting to come over to our side of concepts. We have the idea of seasons will one day. Well, seasons will be part of my strategy one day and that'd be great. If they are part of your strategy, that'd be a lot of fun and I think it would be viable and profitable for you. But in the 10, 11, and 12 category, whereas we're really thinking the same mindset, the season model lets me produce the best possible content and provide a narrative of impact to my audience. This is key. The narrative of, look, we're changing things for the better, we're shaking things up, we're doing a whole bunch of things. When you move to a new season, it's not as weird, it's not as hard, and it sets everybody up for what's next. When. When Hyatt moved from season one to season two, he was able to set up the change and we went with him. If all of a sudden season two was so radical, you know, episode 101 was radically different, there could be a bit of a shakeup by doing the season, but a really, really cool place and that narrative of impact, they want to go with you. Your audience wants to see what's next? Your audience is ready to go to the next season. Your audience is ready to go to the next level. Now, the way Seasons works. I want to talk a little bit about the technology of Seasons because it's kind of funny. Apple announced, I can't remember how long ago it was now, two or three years ago, they announced that they would support what they call the tag for seasons and there'd be a way inside of your RSS feed, which is just the directions for where your podcast can be found to indicate a season number and an episode number. And what Apple did, and I really appreciate this, is Apple, you know, for lack of a better term, open sourced. It made it a tag that everybody could use. It wouldn't be an Apple specific tag, it would be a tag that everybody could use. And Apple went as far as to. If you go to a podcast right now and they have seasons, it'll only show you initially before the show, all episodes. It'll show you the, the episodes from, from that season. They've really embraced it. They've really done a good job with it. Now, unfortunately, we've seen some mistakes happen. There was the person who found themselves where their admin had swapped out episode 632, season one with season 632, episode one. So when you looked at their podcast on Apple podcast, it showed that 632, it was a mess. If you're gonna do seasons, do it right, track it, keep on it. But the second thing about seasons, that's really important and I want to point out is that currently, at the time of this recording, the only person who tracks seasons inside of the podcast app and the only one who makes this part of the interface and part of the experience is Apple. This could change at some point, but even if somebody big like Spotify or Google or somebody takes it on, that, that's fantastic. But it's not going to be everywhere. So one of the things you want to think about is whereas in the Apple interface, going from episode 22 of season two to episode one of season three, where that might be a big deal in some, it won't be a big deal in others. So you want to make sure that you think about that in the explaining and maybe you just tell people that, you know, if you're not on the Apple platform, this isn't going to be a big deal, but if you are, it's going to work out that way. When. When will others embrace it? Should they embrace it? Yes, I think it's an absolutely fantastic concept. It's number two in our Mindset Scorecard. It's a good way to wrap your mind around changes and what you're doing and all these things, but if others don't jump on it, it's still a great idea. When I jumped on there, there was nothing, um, season, you know, episode 101, season two, episode one, exactly the same thing, but in his mind, the concept to change, and in the mind of his audience, me, the. The concept had changed and it was really good stuff. So we like seasons here at the Podcast Partnership. I like podcasters who think about seasons. It's just a way to serve. It's a way to rap. And it's number two of our Mindset scorecard. Next we will take a look at number three on the Mindset scorecard, which is the idea of podcast technology and where the role of technology plays in the midst of all this, over the storytelling and over the business and that type of thing. As you can imagine, we're pretty opinionated about that. And then the week after that. I'm not going to spoil you. Of course, if you head out to headsuptuesday.com, you've got access to the scorecard and you can see where we're going over the future weeks. But I thought it would be really fun to examine our mindsets here at the Podcast Partnership and how they affect how we podcast. Thank you so much. We'll chat again. Bye now.