What Kind Of Downloads Does iTunes New And Noteworthy Bring You? A Case Study From The Field - The Podcast Report Episode #67

So Paul, what kind of downloads does iTunes, new and noteworthy bring me? It's a case study from the field. The podcast report, episode number 67, show notes, links, conversation and more at www.thepodcastreport.com 67. It's the podcast report with Paul Colligan. And here's Paul. The big idea is not a new one. You not itunes are the best chance at growing your podcast audience. We've chatted about this before, but I've got some interesting numbers that kind of, I don't know, bring a little bit more clarity to the whole issue. Hey, this is Paul, Paul Colligan, podcaster. Obviously you're listening to my podcast. I'm also an author and podcasting consultant. I've been doing this since the beginning. I love the industry. I have since day one. You are a podcaster looking to make your podcast real business or do more business because of your podcast. That's why you're listening to this show. This show has never been a massive play. You won't see me in on any top 10 lists of X, but it's always been a deep one. You, the podcaster, need information, need numbers. And I've got them for you this week. And let's have some fun with it. First, a drive thru coffee story. 20 years ago I was in my office, I was making websites at the time, very, very beginning of web design as a business. I've always been a bit early to things. And well, this woman walks in and she's got this drive through coffee stand up big in Portland. She'd taken one of the old photo mats. Boy, I dated myself there. And she take an old photo match. She'd made it a drive thru espresso stand and she wanted a website. And I asked her, why do you want a website? She said, well, because when people are searching the Internet, remember this is pre Google, this is Yahoo. You know when people search the Internet looking for drive thru espresso stands, I want them to find me. And I'm like, no, look, nobody ever is going to search the Internet looking for a drive thru espresso stand. They're going to be driving down a street and they're going to see a drive thru espresso stand. You have to match your message to your market. It's been that way for the last 20 years. It's been that way for the last 200 years. And I told her, I said, you don't need a website. You need coupons. You need a big sign. You need attractive building. Anything you can do to make your. Your drive through espresso stand better. She said, no, no, no, I need a website. I need a website. Well, I wouldn't offer it to her. It would have been a waste of her money. It would have been wrong to do. And sadly, she calls me a couple of days later and says, well, I found somebody who would make me. Well, of course there's somebody to make it for you. Doesn't mean that it's right. Doesn't mean that it's smart. Doesn't mean that it's strategic. And it's funny because although this story is 20 years ago, boy, it reminds me of podcasting more and more and more. So why this topic? And, Paul, what does this have to do about itunes? New and noteworthy? Well, I've chatted about it before. It's certainly a popular topic, but I have some real numbers. I did a campaign for one of my clients. I've got permission not to share the name of the campaign, but I can share with you the numbers of the campaign. And as a result, I think it would be really, really fascinating for you. My clients are all buzzing about this kind of thing. Everybody I work with, everybody wants to be a new and notable. Everybody's looking for new and notable Every time I call, you know, they know nothing about podcasting, but they want to know about new and notable. What does new and notable mean? How do you get there? What do you do with it? And, you know, gosh darn it, it's always good to have the right numbers. I reached out to some podcasters, and in the link here in the show notes@podcastreport.com 67, I have a listing over at the podcasting community at Google, asking people what they would say for those who are obsessed with new. And I emailed Rob Walsh over at Libsyn, and I asked Rob about it. He's always witty, and he basically said, look, if the reason you're getting a new notable is to get a screenshot so that you can scam other people into being on your show or advertising on your show or something like that, might as well just take a Photoshop yourself in and not go through the effort, which is a fascinating, very Rob type of thing to say. But what's interesting is really, for me, the only thing sadder than a scam is a scam that doesn't work. People put so much time and effort and then they say things that are wrong, and it just doesn't work that way. So the numbers. I ran a video podcast up the charts in a small room on Saturday, 10, 3, October 3rd. We did a little bit of social on October 4th. It wasn't even strategic social. It was just social that kind of supported what happened in the room. About 250 people in the room. Not all of them had iPhones. Obviously not all of them took action. But we were able to get a number one in our sub tier. We were able to get a number two in our tier. And we didn't go into the deeper list at all. It was just sort of a small thing at that point. There was no other promotion, no email went out, no marketing went out. Nobody mentioned it, nobody did anything. Which is, you know, happens a lot in podcasting. This. This particular reason was more strategic, but it's interesting because it gives us the numbers. So that was 10:2 and that was 10:3. And then what, what happened? I happened to turn on 10 8, and I noticed that the show was in new and noteworthy, which I was really surprised with. I was, yeah, really surprised with it. I looked at the stats for 10, 8, and there were a total of. You know, I should do some dramatic pause here to ask everybody to kind of post what they think the total was. The total amount of downloads for being in new and notable was 32. 3 2. Not 3200, not 32,000, not 320,000, but 32 as in 3 tens and 2 ones. Then of course, you go further into it. This is one of those podcasts that launched with a bunch of episodes. Not one of my strategies. And we'll chat about that in another episode. 21 was the latest episode. The rest were other episodes. Meaning that probably you're looking at 22, 23 subscribes. Maybe I looked at the stats yesterday. 5 downloads. Now, maybe these are, you know, maybe these are new, maybe these are good. But this idea that itunes is going to bring five, five. That's it. Now, this was video. This was not an audio podcast system. And obviously the numbers are going to be a little bit higher in audio. But itunes turns on to what side of itunes you were at last, when you bring back up itun, you know, 5, 32, nothing major. I was able to do more in a room of 250 people. So why could this be so low? Why possibly, Paul, would these numbers be so bad? Obviously, you know, one of the things I joke with Rob is that the stats were off at libsyn, which is. No, not the case. What it is really is. It's just the nature of the itunes beast. We have this idea that you know, the world gets up every morning and clicks over itunes to see what's new. They don't. We don't do that anymore. We don't go to Yahoo to see what's new anymore. We don't go anywhere to see what's new anymore. We. We go about our day and we find out what's new. The only people who are looking at itunes on a regular basis are podcasters. And that's just the facts. That's just the truth, because it's not built for looking on a regular basis. It's not something that we boot up every morning. We boot up our browser, whatever our homepage is, we get to see every day. Most of us have calmed that and just maybe have a search bar or something like that, but people don't turn on itunes every day. Podcasters are the only one who looks there. And then, of course, the other issue is just the nature of the niche. This show was niche, but you know what? Most shows are niche. That's the whole benefit of podcasting. Podcasting is niche. And those podcast episodes that aren't niche do even worse because they trial appeal. They try to appeal to everyone. It's that classic, oh, my podcast is a little bit of everything for everyone, which means it's a little bit of nothing for nobody. The nature of the beast, the fact that nobody looks at itunes, and the fact that the nature of the niche, which is podcasting, not you, means that you're going to get a tiny, tiny little bit of the podcasting market. So what do you do about that? Well, you don't build your podcast on itunes. You just don't. There have been rare flukes. There have been rare occasions where synergy has come into play and has done some amazing things. You know, I think of Cliff Ravenscraft, you know, with his Lost podcast, the same time that itunes turns on. Lost is the first TV show. That's amazing, but, man, that's not a strategy. That's a lottery pool, you know. Now, Cliff's done, obviously, tremendously well with that lucky moment, and, you know, others have done well as a result of this, but it's just. It's just not a game that you play. So where do you build an audience? Well, you build an audience. And here's how you build an audience. The three levels of building audience. Number one, your existing audience, every single one of my clients. You know, my thing has always been increase reach, leverage tech. Well, increase reach means you take the reach that you've got and you increase it, and you start that with Your existing audience. You let your existing audience know that you have a podcast. Now, if you don't have an existing audience, step one doesn't go that well at all, or at least doesn't go. Doesn't take that long to take under play. You tell your audience your blog, your email newsletter, your friends, your Facebook followers, whatever it is. You let your existing audience know. Then you let people in your niche who already listen to podcasts and people in your niche who already listen to podcasts is not being listed in new and noteworthy. Underneath your niche being working, talking with people in your niche who already listen to podcasts is being part of other podcasts for people in your niche getting interviewed, cross promoting these types of things. This is where the power is. Once you've marketed to your existing audience, once you've marketed to people in your niche who already listen to podcasts, then you go everywhere else. And then as far as that list goes, I'd say marketing on itunes is probably, you know, at least after the first 10, you don't expect itunes to build your audience any more than you expect the phone book to build your audience. Just what it is. So what do you do with this? What do you do with this information? Well, a, you just, you know, if you needed some hard numbers to kind of close things up for you, you got some hard numbers now. But what do you do with this? Well, you claim responsibility for growing your audience. It is your job to grow your audience. It's not itunes job. It is not Google's job. It is not your host job. And by host, I mean media host. You as the host. Yes, it is your job. You got to claim responsibility for building your audience. And then the other thing you got to do is you have to understand the difference between downloads and audience. In past episodes, we had chat about the whole Twitter bombing thing. Yeah, that's downloads, you know, and new notable. Maybe you get a couple of plays. But those are downloads. Those are, yes, real physical, you know, displacement of ones and o's between two different organizations. But these are people going to come on a regular basis. These aren't people who have clicked, subscribed, and are listening to what you have for them every week. You have to understand the difference between downloads and audience. The scam that I spoke to earlier that Rob over at Libs and was chatting to. Yeah, there's all these groups. You review my podcast, I'll review yours. That everybody downloads each other's podcasts. Well, once that's done, they stop downloading each other's podcast. They Stop reviewing and you don't have an audience. You just have a password where downloads were fascinating. Claim responsibility for growing your audience. Understand the difference between downloads and audience. Here's what I've done. I've claimed responsibility for building my own audience. I'm not looking to anyone but myself to do it. And as a result, my audience is building, my strategies are changing, my production is upping or you know, however you want to say this. I'm responsible, I'm taking responsibility. I recommend that you do the same. I'd love your thoughts on this one. You can head over to the podcastreport.com 67 make a comment on a good old fashioned blog, but of course you can grab me on all of the social sites. Just head over to the podcastreport.com Twitter or thepodcastreport.com Facebook, wherever it is you want to catch up with me, I'm probably there. Do subscribe to the show if you haven't subscribed. We're 67 into this. It's about time to subscribe. What does that mean? That means, well, you just click the subscribe button. If it's itunes or Follow if it's Stitcher or whatever podcasting client you use, click on the button so that when the next episode comes out, probably next Tuesday, we will be in a situation where it comes to you automatically. That's the real audience, that's the real building. That's all the stuff that we do here. I've got a couple links for you over@the podcastreport.com 67 got a link to the book, got a link to podcaster, cartoon, SMS to opt in. But I've also got a link over at the community at Google where I ask people to make their recommendations of what people say about new notable. A lot of them are tongue in cheek, but it's a bit of a moment of I don't say inspiration, but maybe direction for everybody. Back to the big idea here. You not itunes are the best chance of growing your podcast audience. You've got passion, you've got content. You could do this. You just need to understand who and what is responsible for what. Do that. You'll get there. Can't wait to listen. Talk to you soon. Bye.