What's Next For The Podcast Report? - The Podcast Report Episode #73

What's next for the podcast report? It's the podcast Report, episode number 73, show notes, links, conversation and more at the podcastreport.com 73. It's the podcast report with Paul Colligan. And here's Paul. Today's big idea. The unexamined podcast isn't worth recording. And well, friends, I've been examining the podcast report. Hey, this is Paul Culligan, podcaster, podcasting consultant, author. But today it's about the show. I've been in podcasting since the beginning. I love the industry. I've loved the industry since day one. You are a podcaster looking to make your podcast a real business or do more real business as a result of your podcast. Most of you have been with this pretty much since day one, and I'd love you for it. But if this is your first time, welcome to the family. This podcast has never been a massive play, but it has always been a deep one. Why the topic today? What's next for the podcast report? Paul, are you getting. Are you finishing this? Are you closing this? Nope. It's just time for phase two. I've learned some things along the way and I am going to. And I've been hitting this for a while. We not reimagine, but really simply go into season two of the podcast report. It's time to take a quick little break. I'm recording this over, you know, near the holiday, and I'm going to take some time off during the holiday to let that happen. Something I recommend all podcasters do, take some time off. And unlike the smart, I haven't recorded a backlog to give to you. So a little break. And then I want to do some live stuff and I will share that with you and I'm definitely going to invite you to that. And if you can't attend the live stuff, that's okay. We'll have the recordings of that for everyone. But first, it's important I want to explain to you, I want you to understand why I started the podcast report, why I did this initially. I have been in podcasting every week in one way or another since day one of podcasting. But a good chunk of time was spent working, working with my consultants, working with some clients, working with, working as a consultant with my clients. And I wasn't always in front of the microphone. And there were some who were concerned maybe I wasn't in this anymore. And, you know, I wanted to make sure those who I wanted to reach, and you're the demographic of this show. You are exactly who I want to reach. I just wanted to make sure you knew I was still here. And at the same time, I wanted to hone my craft. I wanted to test some things. There were some things I wanted to try that I wasn't necessarily ready yet to try with my clients, wasn't necessarily ready to try yet with others. And so I did this show. I wanted to stay in front of the podcasters. I've spoken to this previously, but I remember podcast movement number one. Dave Jackson, school of podcasting is doing his five and five show, and Lou from Disney says, well, I never miss Paul's show. I have accomplished since then what I'm trying to accomplish right now, getting in front of you. But it's time for a change. So a couple of big ideas about the change. First of all, big idea number one, weekly is not the secret, and this is important for podcasters. There's this idea that in order to be a successful podcaster, you have to get 52 shows out a week every single day, at the same time every week. Or there's some who believe that you got to get, you know, one show out a day, 365 days a year, every single time. The consistency is the key, and there are some audiences where this makes a lot of sense. I actually got to spend a little bit of time with the Dave Ramsey podcasting team, and anybody who knows me, who's been listening to me for a while, knows Dave is one of my great idols in all of this. Idol might be the wrong word, especially with Dave, but the fact of the matter is they need to get out an episode every single day. That's their mantra. But it's not the secret. It's not the only way to get things done. If you look in itunes and you look at some of the podcasts, there's podcasts two, three, four years old. They're still existing, still get an audience, still get downloads, and they haven't been consistent for some time. Some have pod faded, some have gone away, some have closed up purposely. But weekly, is it the secret? It might be a goal, but it's not the secret. So I'm not going to go weekly, at least during this break. I promise to report to you in the future what this does to my audience. You know me, I track the numbers, and in future episodes, I'll share what going away for a little while did. And then the other thing about weekly not being secret, and I think this is more important, there's a band, I think I've spoken to this before. There's a band called over the Rhine and love them. Singer, songwriter, husband, wife, duo. And they took a little while off and everyone wanted to know what's going to be on the new album. What's going to be on the new album. And the new album starts, the piano plays and she sings. I don't want to waste your time with music you don't need. I thought it was beautiful. They didn't have anything to say at that point. And gosh darn it, right now, kind of the sum of taking podcasting seriously and the sum of what the montage is options are. I'm really proud with what's happened here in season one, and I don't have anything more to say for this season one kind of stuff. So I am not going to waste your time with music you don't need. So big Idea number one, Weekly isn't the secret Big Idea number two? I've been speaking to Seasons for a long time. I'm really impressed with what Mike Hyatt's done. I've been watching that like a hawk. I've actually proposed Seasons to a couple of my clients and I've got a very big, very exciting client that I'm going to be working on. You'll be hearing more about that inside of two that has agreed to go. The season model sees it as well. Actually turned away some, some really exciting opportunities to go this way. And I'm going to try doing Seasons with the podcast report. Could be really smart, might be bad, I don't know. I'll follow the numbers, we'll track this. I'll let you know how it goes. The next thing is it's time to really go for the opt in. I did that a little bit at the beginning of this with the instant customer technology. And as you know, as you've heard me speak to, that's kind of gone away. I've played with some options for that, but it's definitely, definitely time to go to the opt in. I love listeners, but I love subscribers. But the sales, the revenue, these things are going to come from email. That's just the way that it works. And then finally the last big idea. And this is more big idea for me and my show than necessarily podcasting as a whole. But some of you are ready to take the next step. Some of you are ready for training, some of you are ready to go deeper. And I want to take a look at that. I want to examine that. I've got some opportunities. Taking another class through the podcast expert blueprint. That's Going really well. And I want to, I don't know, I want to make that available to you. And that's going to be part of the season two. So if you don't have the idea, I'm going to close up season one. Not today, don't worry. I've got some more stuff here in season one. We're going to close up season one and then we're going to launch season two with a different format. So this is episode number 73, the podcastreport.com 73 the podcastreport.com 74. I'm going to take a look at the state of podcasting. I'm going to share with you what I think is going well, what I don't think is going well, you know, what the standards are, that kind of thing. Things that we can know what's going on, where we want to play, what we want to do. And then for episode 75, I'm going to do predictions for 2016. My prediction show for 2015, believe it or not, was the most downloaded episode of the podcast report. I think people want to see where things are going in episode number 75. I am going to make going to do live, and that's going to be fun. If you head over to the podcast report, I'll give you some directions and some instructions on that. If you actually head out the Facebook page right now, it's all live. It's there anyway. Episode 75 is going to be live. It will be recorded and it will be made available. And for somebody listening to this episode, you know, a couple of years later, just head over to 75 to listen what we did on the prediction show. So I'm going to do 74, state of podcasting, 75, the prediction show. And then we're going to close up for a little while and I'm going to come back. Season two, episode one will be on January 19th. Now, I have, as I hinted to earlier here, I've got a major client who is doing this right, and we're doing seasons. We're actually going to be doing eight episode seasons, much smaller than anybody else is doing. And I don't think the podcast report will go to eight episode seasons, but I'm going to parallel what we're doing there. I'm going to share with you some of the results that we've got there, and that should be fun as well. The entirety of season two hasn't been figured out, let alone season three, season four, season five. But the fact of the matter is the idea of doing 8 episode runs, 10 episode runs is really, really exciting for me. If you have been doing your podcast for a long time, I'd really like to recommend that you think about, you know, are you doing it this week? Because it's the way you did it last week, the way you did it the week before that. The industry, there's some things that really haven't changed at all in 10 years, but there are some things that have pretty radically changed over the last 10 years, and it might be time for you to reexamine your podcast. You know, the big idea for this week is obviously a play on Aristotle, but the fact of the matter is there's a lot of podcasts out there that are there because, well, that's what they do on Tuesday, that's what they do on Wednesday. My new client, who again will be announcing in season two, knew we had to do a podcast, got the microphone, started recording, recorded eight or nine episodes, and then realized it's just like everything else out there. And he wanted to do something different. He wanted to do something impactful and powerful. And, well, if your show, if your podcast, if your efforts are just like everything else out there, yet you are unique and by the way, you are, it might be time for you to just sit down and think about what comes next. And is that just a break? Is that a redo? Is that a reboot? Is that a seasoning thing? What is it? You know, the holidays are a great time to take a little break. Everybody understands. Fact of the matter is, most of you will be taking a break from consuming podcasts. So I might as well make a break from producing podcasts. And that puts us all at an interesting place. So, yeah, two more episodes of season one, then season two looking feeling different. I'm going to go on the season four and then have some fun from there. I'd love your thoughts on this one. Thepodcastreport.com 7.3 if you want to share any ideas about what you'd like to see in future episodes, things you'd like to see me take a look at, things that would help, you know, my whole mantra of making you a better podcaster, helping you make more business as a result of your podcast, I would love to hear from you there. You can also go to the podcastreport.com Twitter or the podcastreport.com Facebook to hit any of the social things. If you have not subscribed, now is definitely an important time to do so because I'm going to go away for a little while. I think it's like five or six weeks. It's not that huge of a deal. But you need to remember, you need to know what's going on. So the fact of the matter is if you subscribe to the show@the podcastreport.com iTunes or Stitcher, Pocketcasts Tunes, iheartradiovercast or Google Play hasn't gone live yet, but that'll be very, very, very soon. Then when we start up with season number two, you'll get that automatically. I'd love to have you at the live event. I think that would be fun. I haven't decided if I'm going to do video or if I'm just going to do audio yet. There's some things I'm still playing with, but it will be a fun time. If you want to email me the podcastreportoutlook.com if you want to review the almost last episode of season one, definitely review it out at itunes or out at Stitcher. I love reviews there. Thank you so much. Next week, the state of podcasting and the week after that. My predictions for 2016.