The Ease, Power & Simplicity of Podcasting - The Podcast Report Episode #60

The ease, the power and simplicity of podcasting. It's the podcast report, episode 60. It's the podcast Report with Paul Colligan. And here's Paul. The big idea for today is show me an easier way to expand my reach and I'll stop podcasting today. Hey, my name is Paul Colligan. This is the Podcast Report. It's the podcast where we take a look at how you can move your podcast into a real business or do even more business as a result of your very real podcast. It's a special episode today. I'm recording this one live in front of an audience at JJ Virgin's big Mastermind event in Palm Springs. Everybody give me some noise. I am an author, eight books, number one at Amazon. I like content. I create content. A number of them are about podcasting. But I've been a podcaster even longer. I've been podcasting for the last 10 years. I love this industry. I love the people. I love the things that enables us to do, and that's what the show is about. I have always been about leveraging tech to expand reach. The reason I'm here at JJ's event is everybody in this room has a very, very important message to give, has something very, very important to say. And when I tell them, I give them the idea of expanding their reach by leveraging tech. There is drool in this room like you could not believe. That's why we're here. We're chatting about podcasting today. Whatever allows me to extend my reach, I embrace fully. That's one of the reasons why I'm a podcaster. So today's event, I'm here recording live in front of an audience, not because this is the new way of the podcast report. I'm recording live in front of an audience because I'm here in front of people who want to expand their reach by leveraging tech. Whenever that happens, I go, because that's my message, that's my purpose. So thank you all for letting me present here with you. As a result, this episode will be a little bit different than previous episodes. If you listen to previous episodes of the podcast report, it'll be slightly different format wise, but it'll still be fun. And when we hit episode 61, we'll get back to work. Sound good so far? Audience? All right, so the big three reasons. This is why I podcast. This whole episode's why I podcast, not how I podcast. I shared a little bit of that with the group earlier. That's not what the show is about. The show's about the big ideas. What do we do with it? But I podcast for three big reasons. Number one, ease of production. You're watching me record this on a $99 microphone at a hotel in Palm Springs. It couldn't be much easier. There's the power distribution, which we'll chat about a little bit, and then there's the simplicity of consumption. People are consuming podcasts anytime, any place, anywhere, and we'll chat about that. So let's hit the 3 ease of production. I'm doing this live. There's no better example. There's no studio, there's no engineer, there's no soundproof room. And you're going to hear some audio bouncing off the walls and the recording of this. But the fact of the matter doesn't matter. You're here for the content. Thank you so much for being here for the content. For those of you who aren't watching in front of the audience, I'm using my iPhone to record. I'm using the glorious new boss Jock Jr app. I will be including a link to Boss Jock Jr. In the show notes@the podcastreport.com 60 for episode 60. Boss Jock Jr. Has done great. It deserves a plug. And I'm also using the IRIG IMIC hd. I will include a link to that in the show notes as well. It's a $99 microphone. It does a great job. The notes for today's show I wrote on the plane using the mynode app for my iPad. Didn't have to buy online Internet. Didn't have to do anything. It was a great time. I have a number of clients, number of high level clients. You've seen their podcast in the itunes charts. They're a lot of fun. Once they realize how easy it is to produce a podcast, they start. We have these visions in our head mostly Due to old 80s MTV videos of the headphones on and the microphone and talking straight, close and this kind of thing. And 27 engineers in the back each who cost $1,000 an hour to run. We have this idea that we have to do all these things to make the show work. We don't have to. It's an easy production process. And once you realize that, as many of my clients have, you start producing immediately. How many in the room here think, gee, if Paul can talk into a microphone, I can talk in front of a microphone. Okay, that's it. That's all we've got. Now I have for you the audience here and the audience listening to this. I do want to make sure we expand on the idea of ease of production. And so I have a little cheat sheet of the 7 insanely easy podcast production options. Now, this is not a show about how to podcast. So as a result, I'm not going to go through those numbers right here. But if you would like to get a copy of the 7 Easy podcast production options, go ahead and text your email address to 503-342-7992. That's 503-342-7992. Now, don't worry, these are on the show notes as well. So if you're driving in your car or you're at the gym or you're on the airplane, you don't have Internet access, that's okay. Go ahead and visit thepodcastreport.com 60 and you'll find that number 503-342-7992. So that's the ease of production. It's simple, it's easy, doesn't cost a lot. Anyone can do it. And I'm seeing some nods of approval in this room. The next thing we have is we have the power of distribution. It's one of the things I love the most about podcasting. It's absolutely phenomenal. Once you set things up correctly, and I stress once you set things up correctly, it is true. Set it and forget it. You don't have to tell iTunes when a new episode's out. You don't have to tell your audience to get the latest episode. All of this happens automatically. If you set things up intelligently, the second you release an episode, Twitter gets notified, Facebook gets notified, Instagram gets notified. You can set it in true. Set it and forget it form. I remember on my other show, thinking out loud, I recorded an episode in my car on the way to have a lunch with a friend. I uploaded the episode, filled out a form, and by the time I'd walked across the parking lot to enter Starbucks, Twitter was already being updated to the world that my latest episode was out and we were being downloaded. Once you set it up correctly, distribution is crazy. New options all the time. We just got JJ Virgin on Spotify. Anybody ever heard of Spotify? Who thinks Spotify gets a lot better with JJ Virgin on there? Give it up. And these things are happening all the time. And we're seeing more and more places. We're getting inside of cars, we're getting inside of home entertainment systems, we're getting inside of alarm clocks, we're getting out of a bunch of other places because it makes sense. Content that you want at the time and place device of your choosing means that we have to be on the device of your choosing. And from a. From a pure dollars and cents standpoint, I have to pay to send you a Britney Spears song, I have to pay to send you an audiobook, but I don't have to pay to send you a podcast. So they're on our side distributing our content, and we're finding ourselves in more and more places. There isn't a week goes by where I don't look at my stats. I look at my stats every week to watch what's happening, where there's a new client or a new website or a new piece of equipment that is distributing my content to the world. Ease of distribution is phenomenal. And then the other thing in setting it up correctly is have real archives. One of the things that MP3 has done is it's changed music. You know, we've all listened to MP3s and it sounds like it's a robot talking into a tin can, you know, and we have those bad audio options. When you set things up correctly, you can make changes, you can fix things. And when you're ready for the CD version, you can just pull it off of the archives. If you're ready for radio, you can pull it off the archives. I had a client who recently recorded an entire season of a show giving the wrong phone number for the opt in process. And if we publish this property, there'd be some poor lady you know, in LA that'd be getting text, please send me the notes. Please send me the notes. And so we had to go back in and we had to change every single time the phone number is referenced over the cross of the 10 episodes. I defy anyone to even know that we made a sound edit because we did it correctly. Well, what kind of sound equipment did he use? His microphone cost less than the microphone I'm using today. Once you set it up right, power distribution is crazy. So that was the ease of production, that was the power of distribution. Now, finally, the simplicity of consumption. Apple has made this tremendous. Paul, how do I listen to the JJ Virgin podcast? Go to Apple, type in JJ Virgin. And the part that says podcast, click play. Well, Paul, how do I get on my iPhone? Go to podcast, type in JJ Virgin, click the word subscribe. What if I don't have a phone? Go to the website, click the play button. Apple has made it incredibly easy to subscribe. The thing is, it's not just Apple now. From a statistics standpoint, iPhone, Apple, that whole world is about 80% of your podcast, and I don't think that number is going to go anywhere right now. Now, we have other options. We have the Android platform, which is Google's platform. That's about 15%. And then you got 5% on other platforms. Different crazy things that are out there. But every smartphone can get your show. Right now, Americans are more likely to be carrying a smartphone than a dumb phone. Do we realize that people who make over $100,000 a year are more likely to have listened to a podcast last month than not have listened to a podcast last month? The connection there is phenomenal. So it's not just it's Apple who's made it sexy, has made it popular, but it's everybody else that's made it really, really easy to get. There's not a smartphone on the planet that can't get my show. Remember that thing I said earlier about leveraging tech to increase reach? That's exactly why I do this. Clicking to play if somebody doesn't want to subscribe. If somebody doesn't want to download a podcast client, they can always go out to the website and they can click play. There's a technology called HTML5 on your blog. Make sure your play buttons are HTML5 compatible. That just means that they work on smartphones. And by the way, they're more likely to be looking at your website on a smartphone than anything else. Are you ready for that? Coming cars. It is easier to listen to a podcast on Tesla than it is to listen to a radio show. We're going to see that happening more and more. Let's come into the TVs. The TVs are getting smart podcast players. Rumor is Microsoft's got something pretty cool coming out soon. In September, Apple's supposed to have version four of the Apple tv. We'll be seeing more and more podcasts on our television sets as well. Home entertainment centers and gosh darn it, watches. That's the next step. You know, we're going to be going for our walks, our runs, however, we exercise with a watch that's carrying our podcast with a pair of Bluetooth headphones that lets us listen to it with complete ease and simplicity. So why do I podcast? Three reasons. Ease of production, power of distribution, and simplicity of consumption. So as I do with every episode of the podcast report, well, what am I doing with this? How does this affect my business? How does this affect my podcast? Well, here's the thing. I win when I focus on all three. I dominate when I focus on all three. The second any of my podcasts get complicated. I need to hit the stop button. Why am I making this complicated? What am I doing? Why am I spending so much time on this thing when it's so easy? If I do something in anything I'm doing and I don't have the power of distribution that podcasting brings me, I need to stop. And then finally, simplicity of consumption. I need to make it easy. That thing I did in the where I said text 503-342-7992 with your email address, I did that because most of you listening to the show right now are on a smartphone. You're not in front of your computer. You ever listen to something on your phone and it says visit a website? That's not what I do when I'm on my phone going on a run. But people can text. It's simple, it's easy. So that's what I do. I win. When my podcast focus on all three for you, the listening audience trying to take your podcast further, what do you do with this? Well, the first simple thing is, are you focusing on all three? Many of you got into podcasting for one of these three reasons. You know, the power of distribution is addicting. And so you spend a million dollars producing the show. You don't need to. Production can be very, very, very simple. Power, distribution, very, very easy. And the simplicity of consumption, what brings it all together? If you did this because people can click play your website, that's not enough. If you did this just because it's really easy to do, but you're not giving it what it needs, that's not enough. But you combine these three the ease of production, the power of distribution, the simplicity of consumption, you have yourself a winning podcast. So if you have any questions, if you want to take a look at any of the links I chatted with, you can go to the podcastreport.com 60 that will also give you the phone number. And I'll say it one last time for those of you listening at home. 503-342-7992 you've been listening to the podcast report. This has been episode 60. If you got this, because maybe this is your first time ever listening to a podcast, as is everyone in this room. For many of you, as is many in this room, we can fix all that. Post we're not going to thepodcastreport.com iTunes if you wanna subscribe to this show on iTunes. Thepodcastreport.com Stitcher if you wanna follow up on Stitcher the podcastreport.com Spreaker if that happens to be your way of catching things. Thepodcastreport.com TuneIn will help you, especially if you're riding around in your Tesla. If you want to follow me on social media, it's thepodcastreport.com Twitter or thepodcastreport.com Facebook. Paul what about social media option X? Are you there? Probably am@the podcastreport.com SocialMediaOptionX so subscribe to the show because next week when episode 61 comes out, I want you to get that automatically. That's one of the powers of podcasting. I don't need you to join the email list for me to tell you that there's something to listen to on the phone. Subscribe so that it comes automatically. No spam, no licensing, no nothing. It just comes. Would love follow up. My email address is the podcastreportoutlook.com thank you so much for listening. We'll chat next week. Bye.