Your Podcast Strategy / The Team Clarity Matrix

20 some odd years ago, when I would help companies launch their website, in the strategy process and the design process, I would go, okay, once we build this website, once it is ready to do your bidding and your action, how are you going to market this thing? And they would always look me straight in the eye with all the earnestness, like they were speaking to their mom and they would say, well, Paul, we're gonna go viral. See, the idea was they knew what they wanted to do. They didn't necessarily know how they were gonna do it. They had a strategy, but it really wasn't that good of a strategy. And they had this idea that the web was young, the web was new, and just being out there would be enough. Well, it isn't enough and it's hardly ever enough. My name is Paul Culligan and this is a six part series on the Clarity Matrix, something we've developed. The podcast part. It's a process for you to understand the team members that make up your podcast. And the very first team member that makes up your podcast is the person who has to put on the hat of strategy review. And this is one hat that needs to be worn by the same person. Because sometimes you have the strategy person who comes in with the we're just going to go viral idea, and sometimes you had the review person who goes, well, you know, we never went viral. What do we do? We need someone to have both hats. So I'm recording this series on Facebook and if anybody joins me live, go ahead and make a interaction and we'll maybe put that towards the end. If you want more about this, I will give you information on this series and where it goes in future episodes of this. But I want to get to work. In short, everybody has a strategy you need to figure out and you need to review if it's working or not. So you have a strategy for your podcast. Someone's wearing that hat. I'm the strategist. This is what I want to do, this is what I hear is going to happen. And then the question becomes, number one, is the strategy viable? Have we seen this strategy before? We're at a point now, Podcasting has been around for, you know, a decade plus, and this idea that you're going to create something new isn't necessarily the best strategy in the world. Has it been done before? Has this audience been reached? Has content been made available? Has profit come from this? However you are looking for your profits to come now. Have we seen it before? We're at 15 plus years. If you haven't seen it, question it. Number two, how are we going to track the strategy? How are we going to track what it is that we're trying to do? Are we going to just kind of hope, is it going to be feel, or are there going to be numbers? Are there going to be things that we can do to figure out if it's working? And then finally, the last question in the strategy review session is, where are we willing to bend? If it takes months longer, if it takes years longer, is that going to be okay? If the numbers aren't quite what we wanted, is that going to be okay? So first, is the strategy viable? We've seen it before. What are we going to track? Where are we willing to bend? Now, the fact of the matter is, is part of making sure of all of this in strategy is that you have the right person for each of the other members of the matrix. So I want to go through all of these shortly or all of these quickly. Number one, the talent. The talent for your podcast. This has to be part of a strategy. This has to be part of review. Is the talent compelling? Is the talent the typ of person that somebody wants to listen to? Is the talent a attractive option for the audience that you're marketing to? I've seen people who just think they can grab anybody. I've seen other people who feel like they have to grab Oprah and won't do it because they can't afford Oprah. It's compelling. Do they listen? Is it someone that they like? Now, you don't have to be Oprah. A part of podcasting is. It's just a conversation. You're listening to this right now or you're watching this right now because you appreciate the fact of what we've been through, all the podcasts we've launched, the millions of downloads we've been part of, and what we've seen along the way. Sure, I have this fun little voice, but the fact of the matter is you're here for the content, and this is huge. So in the review, in strategy and in review, is the talent gonna work? Number two, the edit of the podcast. How is the edit of the podcast going to go? Is it just gonna be straight edit? Is it gonna be leveled? You ever driven in the car and heard the volume go up and down on a podcast, and you've kind of adjusted it because you want, you know, to catch everybody, and then occasionally, you know, a voice comes in, blurts out, or maybe Siri comes in louder or that type of thing that's really annoying. Is the podcast going to be leveled? Is there going to be continuity in style and size of the podcast? Is there going to be. Is the podcast can be ready for dynamic insertion? Are you going to be in a situation where later on down the line, is that even part of the strategy? Is that part of the review? Well, if you don't know, know, maybe you get ready for dynamic insertion. There's some really strategic stuff that goes from there. It's going to be easy to make changes. Are you going to keep project files? You're going to do everything you need to change things later if it happens, what are the expectations across the board? Is it going to sound like npr? Is it going to be edited, like, you know, the great podcast of old? Or is it going to be something simple? And we've got a lot of clients using our Dial Talk done platform who simply talk into the phone and record a podcast and their audience loves it and their audience is there for it and the podcast is entirely profitable. But in the strategy and the review, what is it for the edit? In strategy and review, what do you have for publish? What happens if problems happen along the way? Who are you going to call? What are you going to do? What happens if something changes? What's the plan? What happens if there's a new platform? What happens if a platform changes? You know, Google seems to be like on their fifth iteration of podcasting. There's Google, at least at the time of this recording. In the podcast, in the Google Play Store, there's straight Google podcasting. What do you do if somebody wants something new? What if you do, if somebody wants a new tag, who's going to be on top of that? The publishing isn't just clicking the button at your host or even designing it yourself. It's knowing that your host has your back and knowing that the process you've got is good for the next couple of weeks, couple of months, a couple of years. Promotion's a big one. Promotion for strategy and promotion for, you know, tracking all that is really, really huge. Question number one, are you going to be pulling from an existing audience? Now here at the partnership, we have been able to work with some really high level people and we've been able to take their existing audiences and we've been able to leverage that and that's how we've done some of our launches. But if you don't have an existing audience that you can pull from, what are you going to do about it? It's the easiest path, but if you don't have it, what's the plan? And in the promotion process, what are you going to track? What are you looking for? Is it downloads? Is it consumption? Did you even know that consumption was the thing? I mean, if I get 10,000 downloads of a podcast, yay. But if they only listen to the first five or six seconds of the podcast, you know, boo. Are you tracking downloads consumption? Are you tracking subscribe rates from Apple? Are you tracking calls to action? Are there going to be calls to action? What it is that you're doing? Are those going to be ads done later? What kind of rate are you wanting to get for your calls to action? Are you playing a long term game or a short term game? Are you hoping to see immediate result and, you know, two or three episodes out the door? What are you doing internally? We track our time to action numbers. We got to figure out what our time to action is, what's the shortest amount of time to get action of episodes out the door and that kind of thing. And then we also track the profit response numbers. What are we looking at? What are we looking for? What are you going to track? What are you looking to do? The promotion piece has to be part of. It's a hat that someone wears, but the promotion piece has to be part of the strategy and has to be part of the review as well. Operations. This one's big. What happens along the way if there is a hiccup, if there is an issue? Are these things being caught? Are these things being tracked? Are you doing quality assurance? Are you double checking that you know, the files are the right size and the album art is there and the ordering of the ID3 tags is there and the transcripts are done correctly, that kind of thing? Who is going to be in charge of tracking all that? Are you in a situation, Are you the type of organization that likes to rush at the last minute? I'll tell you this, if you rush at the last minute, your podcast is not going to have that long of a life, or at least not that successful of a life. Again, all in the strategy and the tracking. Are you going to make sure everything is published at the same time? Are you going to be at a good place there? So anyway, you got the strategy and review level at the top of the matrix. And again, keep listening to this series and we'll tell you how to get a blank matrix for yourself. That strategy review is not just I know what I want to do, it's I know what I want to do, I know how I'm going to track it, and I have a plan for tracking it. And that strategy has to be strategy for the talent, which we'll talk about next episode. It has to be strategy for the edit, which we'll talk about the episode after that. It has to be strategy for the publish, the promotion and the operations, which again, will be future episodes of this podcast. What is the strategy? How are you going to track it? And are you in a situation where someone will be able to know what it is that they're looking for? Having a strategy to learn along the way might be a very interesting strategy, but then, you know, not knowing what you don't know and that kind of thing can get you in a bad place. There are different way, different ways to start a podcast. There are lots of different things to do. But if you're going to take a look at the clarity matrix and if you're going to make sense of all of this, you want to deal with the questions we chatted about on this episode. And of course, you'll deal with the questions we have on future episodes. Thank you so much for, for participating. For those of you who got this live, thank you. For those of you who have questions later, you can go ahead and add those. For those of you listening to this on the podcast, make sure you listen to the next episode. We'll tell you more about how to get your blank clarity matrix. Thank you so much. Chat with you soon. Bye.