#259: How To Grow Your Platform With Podcasting by Thomas Umstattd

Welcome to Kingdom Writers, where we help equip and empower Christian writers of all genres to share your unique gifts with the world. We're your hosts, C.J. and Shelley Hitz.

This podcast is filled with spiritual encouragement as well as prayers to help you overcome the resistance you face as a writer. Your story matters.

Well, today I'm really excited about our topic. Our topic is how to grow your platform with podcasting. And I have a very special guest, Thomas Umstad. So welcome, Thomas.

Thanks for having me.

Yes. And I'm just gonna give your official introduction here for those that don't know you. Thomas Umstad has helped authors for over a decade as a literary agent, marketing director, and radio show host. He started his first podcast in 2007. So you've been doing this a while. And he currently hosts the Novel Marketing and the Christian Publishing Show. And I've actually been a guest on the Christian Publishing show before, so definitely check out his podcasts. But as we just get started into this topic of podcasting, first, just introduce yourself a little bit and how you got into this whole area of helping authors with their marketing.

Yeah, so I started off in college. I went to my first writers conference and I was studying marketing. I'd been building websites since I was 13, 14 years old. And I was at my first writers conference, and there was a marketing panel that I went to a marketing session, and the lady was like, every author needs to start a blog. Every author needs a website. And all these authors are looking around and they're terrified. The Q and A afterwards, one of them is like, who do we get to help us with that? And the author had just found a high schooler in her neighborhood, right? She's like, oh, just find a 5 year old. Any 5 year old can help you with a website, which is not at all helpful feedback. And so I turned to the author next to me, I'll build your website. I've been building websites since I was a kid. And so I built her website, and she referred me to her friends and their friends referred me. And the next writers conference I went to, I brought a brochure for website building. And while I was not getting much interest in my proposal, I had authors writing me checks for new websites right there at the conference.

Nice.

I think I found an area where there's some need here. A lot of authors need help with marketing. And what started off as just me became a company of tons of people. I think we had a dozen people at our peak building websites for authors all over the world. And after we build their website, they would have us do their marketing.

Yeah.

So right out of college, I'm doing marketing for authors of all levels, New York Times bestsellers, people just getting started and everything in between. And I was in the market consulting people on marketing during the indie revolution. So this was right at the beginning of the Kindle and the ebook revolution and the whole kind of transformation there. And so I got to see it. And the other thing I got to see was the social media, kind of the rise and fall of. Of social media. There was a time, I know it's hard to believe, but there was a time when you could actually build a platform on social media. It's not true anymore. You can't build a flat platform on social media. There's too much fake bot activity now. And you can't go from zero to platform on social media alone. And don't. If anyone tells you that you can ask to see their numbers, because as somebody who's had access to the numbers, I'll tell you it's not that way anymore. Not in 2020. It was in 2010, but not in 2020. And anyway, to make a long story short, I was the marketing director for a publishing company for a while where I boosted their sales by 500%. And I've been running the book marketing podcast, the longest running or novel marketing podcast, which is the longest running book marketing podcast in the world. So I've been helping with authors with marketing for a long time.

And what I love about podcasting is how author friendly it is. Right. Podcasts are in depth. People are going to listen to this podcast for 20, 30. I don't know how long we're going to go. 30 minutes, 40 minutes? That's a long time. That's a very friendly format for authors compared to, say, Twitter, where you're expected to say something meaningful in 140 characters or 280 characters. That's not an author friendly format. That's a troll friendly format, frankly. You can insult someone in 140 characters, but there's not a lot you can do of value in 140 characters. And so, yeah, you tell me which you want to talk about. There's a lot about podcasting that authors can take advantage of.

Yes. So when we just think about using podcasting to build a platform or to grow a platform, what would you say are just some basics that authors should consider, you know, when wanting to use a podcast to grow their platform? What are some pros, some consultants, who, who would it fit best? You know, that kind of Thing.

Okay, so there's four ways to use podcasts to grow your platform, and you're already doing one of them right now. So the first way is to listen to podcasts like this one on how to grow your platform. Podcasts are really good way of getting an education. And what's nice about podcasting is that it's cutting edge. So I like books because they can go in depth. Blogs can be very recent, but a podcast is both recent and in depth. And if you're trying to learn something where things change very rapidly, podcasting really is the best format. So listening to podcasts is really great. So the Kingdom Writers podcast, it's featured. We have a list on the Christian Publishing show. No, sorry, it's on the Steve Lobby blog has a list of all of the podcasts for Christian authors. Kingdom Writers is on the list. My podcasts are on the list. There's a bunch of other ones on the list too, and they all have different focuses. So if you're interested in science fiction and fantasy, there's a podcast for Christian science fiction and fantasy. So there's some really specific ones out there. So that's the first thing I recommend, is to learn how to subscribe to a podcast. And I realize some of you, you're watching this on Facebook and you think this is a podcast, but if you're watching it on Facebook, it's not a podcast. It's only a podcast when you're listening to it in a special podcast app, your phone. And in the world of authors, really in the world of phone users, there are the haves and the have nots when it comes to podcast apps. There are the iPhone users who are 10 times more likely to listen to podcasts because their phone comes with a podcast app pre installed. So if you get a brand new iPhone 12, you've never had an iPhone before. Right there on the homepage is a purple button that says podcasts. So iPhone listeners tap that icon and they listen to podcasts. Google doesn't make money from podcasts and they don't like podcasts. And so there is no podcast app on Android by default. And as we say in the tech world, the devil is in the defaults. So you can install a podcast app for free on an Android, but you have to take that step. And since it's a step that takes five minutes, but it's a step, Android users are 10 times less likely to listen to podcasts, which gives them a huge disadvantage in terms of education in the market. So for those of you who are on Android. And you have not yet discovered the power of podcasting. Listening to podcasts, I recommend the Castbox app. That's the best one that I've interacted with. But another good one is Podcast Addict. If you do a search for podcasts in the Google Play Store, you'll see dozens and dozens of competing apps, all trying to be the better podcast app in the next one. So you really can't go wrong. They're all good. But Castbox is the best free one that I've seen. So that's the first way.

Yeah. And someone was asking, can you listen to it on a computer? And you technically can. A lot of times people will embed their podcast on their website. You can go to their podcast page on itunes and that sort of thing. There's a lot of ways to listen to it on a computer, but it's so convenient on your phone. You can listen while you're doing laundry, while you're walking, while you can multitask and then get an education at the time. Same, same time. That's what I do.

I have somebody who said they listen to my podcast every time they're working out, and if I have a long episode, it causes them to work out longer. Yeah, but, you know, a lot of people listen to my podcast while they're doing the dishes, or, you know, they connect it to Bluetooth on their car. And which is the other really great thing about podcasting is that you're not competing for visual attention. So somebody's looking at a screen. You're competing with Netflix, you're competing with YouTube, you're competing with with Facebook. But if somebody is driving down the highway, hopefully you're not competing with any of those things. Now, I know some people do Facebook while driving down the highway, but those people are eliminating themselves from the gene pool as they get into car accidents. But you're basically just competing with radio, you're competing with Spotify, you're competing with people's music libraries. And it allows somebody who's got a long commute to turn their car into a classroom, which I really like. Audiobooks, do something similar. And you'll find there's a high correlation between people who listen to audiobooks and people who listen to podcasts. So much so that Audible now and their Audible app offers podcasts, which is brand new as of just a couple weeks ago. In fact, you need to check Shelley to see if Kingdom Writers is in the Audible app as a podcast that subscribes to. Because you have to go through a special extra step to get your podcast added. So that's the first way. And you're all on your way to doing that. You're either watching the video live and you're installing the castbox, or you're listening to us in the future, where maybe you know who the president is. We are all Schrodinger. Right now. The cat is neither dead nor alive because the box has not been open.

I know.

So for those of you listening in the future, you've already got this. But the second way to build your platform with podcasting is with a technique called guesting. This is where you're leaning up against somebody else's platform. This is what I am doing at this very moment. And what Shelly did when she came on my podcast, this is where a podcast host introduces you to their audience. So Shelly knew who I was. She's vouching for me. She's probably not vouching for everything I say. She may give a rebuttal at the end, but she knows something about me, and she's introducing me to you. And when you are a guest on other people's podcasts, those hosts will do the same for you. And what's great about guesting on a podcast is that it's very little work. So when I'm done, Shelly's gonna have to turn this into a video, and she's gonna have to edit the audio and put an intro and an outro and all this work, and I'm just going to leave. For me, I'm like a grandparent. I get to come, I get to play with the kids, and then when they need a diaper, I'm like, this is your problem. I changed my diapers.

And so it's the fun of having a podcast without all of the work and responsibility of having a podcast. And it also allows you to reach more people faster. It's not as in depth of a connection. So for those of you who subscribe to the Kingdom Writers podcast, you probably had Shelly's voice in your head more than your own mother, which is a big place of influence. Shelly is influencing you more now than your own mom is right now. That's kind of crazy if you think about it. And something really to be honored. Shelley really has to honor your time with the guests that she brings in and the things that she says. Which leads us to the third way of building your platform with podcasts, and that is to have your own where you are the mom in the conversation. Starting a podcast is kind of technical. We can get into that process. But the fact that it's technical means that you're not competing with nearly as many other authors or influencers in your space. And especially if you're a Christian author, depending on the genre, you may not be competing with anyone. If you're doing a parenting podcast, you're going to face some competition, but with some of the other topics, you may not have any competition. Especially for those of you who are novelists, there are a lot of novel categories that I don't think currently have a podcast. Like, for instance, Slip Time. Really popular genre in Christian fiction right now. I don't think there's a Christian slip time podcast. If you were to start a Christian slip time podcast, you would be the only one. You would get 100% market share on your very first episode, which is really incredible. So the process just to give you kind of a quick overview of what it looks like, you record the audio, which you can do on Zoom. It's not how I recommend doing it, but it's a good way to do it. There are better, arguably better ways, but they're a little more expensive. The advantage of Zoom, though, is that everyone knows how to use Zoom, and it's really, really easy. And you can connect Zoom if you're making it live like we are. It's hard to do that with the other tools. So there's advantages to using Zoom, and it's way better than how we did it back in 2007. You had to get a little string and two tin cans. You had to connect the string to USB. It was awful. That's not really how we did. We tried to do what was called a Skype double ender, which basically required you to learn voodoo. It was so complicated. So you record the audio and then you edit the audio. So some people do a lot of editing, some people do a little bit of editing, and then you upload that audio to your web host. And then you have to have your web host or your podcast host connected to the various directories. So there's itunes, Spotify, Google Play, the podcast directory, which is the new big neutral one. And once your podcast is connected to those directories, you only have to do once. All new episodes go out to all of your subscribers automatically. And here's the magic of podcasting. There is no middleman, unlike with YouTube, where Google controls what's uploaded to YouTube and censors people based off of their content, based off whether they think you're speaking the truth or not. So if you're giving medical advice that they disagree with, they will silence you. Which is, by the way, not the scientific method. The scientific method is not to burn people at the stake because they say something that scientifically you disagree with scientific method is to have a debate with them. But I digress. So with podcasting, though, there's no one in the middle. Creators have full control over what they say, and listeners have full control over what they listen to. And it's the only major media platform that functions that way where there's no central authority or there's no algorithm.

So you think about, like, Facebook and Instagram and Pinterest and all these things. There's algorithms, and they choose what they're going to show to people. And many of your followers. Followers will never see your posts. Whereas with podcasting, you always get notified on what you subscribe to. So it's kind of like, you know, when you have your own email list, you know, people will always get your emails, unless it's going to spam or something like that. But it's definitely. You have a little more control with podcasting.

Yeah, it's just like email, but with no spam filter. The only thing that's kind of like a spam filter is that if someone on Apple Podcast doesn't listen to five episodes in a row, Apple Podcast will stop downloading additional episodes. But it will as soon as they listen to one of those episodes. And guess what? That's not Apple censoring you. That's your listener thinking that you're bored.

And that's on you. That's not big tech. That's not some artificial intelligence program not favoring you. Which is for those of us who are Christians and don't feel like we're being favored. Really, really good for us. And why there's more Christian. More podcasts in the Christian category of podcasts than of any other category. More than news, more than comedy. More Christian podcasts than anything else. Now, the reason why there's more Christian podcasts than any other category is because of all the churches that have podcasts.

True.

So a lot of churches will have a podcast of their sermons for people who are sick or couldn't come. But that's also really good for you if you're starting your own. Because a lot of Christians already have a podcast app on their phone that they use to get their church's podcast. So as a group, they're a little more familiar.

Yeah. So I guess I did want to ask you, you know, you talked about people who have novels or, you know, we have a lot of nonfiction authors in our following as well, but what are some tips you can give for people to know if their audience is even listening to podcasts? You know, so that you might be the only person that. In that category that has a podcast, but maybe nobody is, you know, in your genre or in your target audience is even listening to podcasts. So what kind of tips do you give for that?

Something like 50% of the population of America listens to at least one podcast. And to give you an idea of how many people are listening to podcasts, there is, I think five or six chickens podcasts on how to raise chickens. Yeah. Your topic, whatever it is, is not that obscure. For there to be competition is like, oh, I don't listen to that chicken's podcast. I listen to this chicken's podcast. It's better. So I don't know of any group of people that don't listen to podcasts. I will say some groups are less likely to listen to podcasts. So the poorer someone is, the less like, they're more likely to have an Android phone, and they're more likely to have a phone without a lot of space on it, and so they're less likely to listen to podcasts. Also, the younger somebody is, the less likely they are to listen to podcasts. Teenagers don't listen to a lot of podcasts. They prefer YouTube. But in general, they listen. They also listen. They just listen on YouTube. And everybody's listening to podcasts. So you need to ask your listeners or your readers and to know for your specific genre, but also do some research.

Yeah. So as you know, as somebody is coming into this, and for those of you that are in Christian Book Academy, we recently did have someone that created a training with the technical stuff of it. So if you need that, it's there for you. But as they're thinking about, like, actually reaching new people, not just publishing a podcast and then having a few listeners, their mom and few family members, what do you recommend that they. They do to really, you know, bring in that target audience to listen to their podcast?

So the first few listeners, you're going to have to find one at a time. So think about how Jesus grew his following. First, he just went up to random people or seemingly random, said, follow me, right? He looked them in the eyes, he saw them face to face. Eventually, he's speaking to really big crowds. But he didn't start by speaking to very big crowds. And you're not going to start by speaking to big crowds either. So you've got to get those initial followers. And then it's about thrilling them so much where they go and grab their friends. So think about what Andrew did. Andrew comes, he meets Peter. His mind is blown. And so he runs and grabs his brother.

Peter and brings him, right? He's like, you got to meet this guy. He's amazing. And Peter comes and he's like, oh, man, I'm totally going to be the guy. I'm going to apologize way more than the rest of you, and I'll say all the stupid things so you all can keep your mouth shut. That's not really what he said, but sometimes it seems like he might have said something like that anyway. So it's a bit of a grind at first if you're starting from scratch now, it's easier if you've already built a following, you already have an email list, you already are speaking on the platform, you're already guesting on other people's podcasts. All of those things will help. But if you're first getting started, you got to find those first folks. And you don't actually want your podcast to be super big right away because you're not going to be good at podcasting. Shelley, I don't know about you, but my first podcasts were awful. Nobody's born good at podcasting. It takes a lot of practice to figure out the technology. Most people buy the wrong kind of microphone at first. They get some blue snowball or some condenser microphone, and they keep it far away. And the audio is bad, and they don't figure out how to do the interview. They don't know how to ask good questions. And you don't want a big audience while you're figuring out all those things. And you'll get better every episode, and it'll get a lot better in those first few episodes. And as you get better, your audience will start to spread the word. Now, there are some things you can do to promote your podcast, and a really great thing actually goes back to the second strategy, which is guesting. Podcasters love having other podcasters on their podcasts because the podcasters have good audio, right? You bring on some random guests, they don't have a microphone. They're trying to talk into some headset or talking to their computer. You bring in on another podcaster, they can have a good microphone, they're going to know how to do it, and you'll have a tighter, better episode. And so. That's a so. And podcasters love having each other on their podcasts. It's not a, you know, at least in my world, author world, it's not seen as competition. I had Shelley on the Christian Publishing Show. She's having me on her podcast, the Novel Marketing Podcast. Our quote unquote biggest competitor is the Selmore Book Show. Guess who's been on Novel Marketing Podcast. Both of the original guests of the SELM or book show, and guess who they feature occasionally on their show. Our episodes. We get featured in their news of the week from time to time and we both benefit from that. So guesting is really good. And then another way to grow your podcast is actually the fourth way that you can use podcasting for your platform, and that is advertising. Podcast advertising is one of the most effective, cost effective forms of advertising right now because most people aren't doing it. It's really, really cheap. It's way cheaper than Facebook ads since Facebook ads are so easy and all you have to do is push, boost, post and swipe your credit card and Facebook gets your money. Facebook ads are really, really expensive compared to almost any other kind of advertising. So experiment with podcast advertising for your book and experiment with podcast advertising for your podcast.

So when you're talking about podcast advertising, are you talking about approaching a podcast and saying, hey, I would love, you know, you know, to sponsor your show. How, how would that work? And like, do you have suggestions on what to offer or what to, you know, what, what someone should, should suggest or, you know, that sort of thing, if it's a smaller show or if it's, you know, something that they don't have sponsors yet.

So I'll pull up my mug. I have a podcast episode for that. So actually just two or three weeks ago on the Novel Marketing podcast, we did an episode on podcast advertising where I brought in one of the top experts of podcast advertising, does podcast ads for big brands. We talked about how authors can do it. But I'll give you a one really good tip right now that you can take the bank.

That'd be great.

One of the biggest podcast advertisers from the beginning, from the dawn of time and Shelley, you probably heard this podcast advertiser back on the very first podcast you ever heard is Audible, the audiobook company. They've been buying podcast ads since back when we were chiseling our RSS feeds and MP3s on stone tablets. And they are still sponsoring lots of podcasts and they encourage their podcast hosts to recommend a book every week to their listeners so that they'll sign up for Audible and download such and such book. Well, they are not those. Many of those hosts are not reading a book a week and so for just a little bit of money on your part, you can become the book that they recommend. And so you're kind of hijacking the ad spot that they already have. They're already getting paid by Audible and you're just asking them to pay them more to be a part of that read.

Yeah, that's a great idea. And people, you know, like you said, they're already getting paid by Audible. They might even be an affiliate, who knows for Audible, but then they can give specific recommendations for books. And if your book is in an audiobook format, which I always recommend that you have those multiple formats, that's a great, A great opportunity. So love that tip.

Yeah. And your book does need to be an audible. And if you haven't yet spent the money to get your book made into an audiobook or teamed up with somebody to make it for you for Freaks doesn't have to cost money to get an audiobook. You shouldn't be spending money on ads because advertising will be more cost effective the more formats you have. So you want to be on ebook, paper, and audio before you spend time advertising. A lot of people spend way too much money just with an ebook. It's like you realize there's people in this world that will only read a paper book and you are spending money to get them to your Amazon page and they are bouncing and they are leaving. And there are people like this guy who only read an audiobook. And if you don't have an audiobook version, I will not buy your book. In the last 10 years, I've read maybe 10 non audiobooks and I've purchased around a thousand audiobooks. I think it's closer to 900. I read 50 to 100 audiobooks a year and about one non audiobook a year. So if you want somebody like me to read your book, it had better be an audio. Yes. And if you're gonna do podcast advertising or really any kind of podcast promotion, podcast listeners really expect an audio version.

Yeah. And we do have a training on this, how to do the audiobook. So definitely check that out. In the sponsor specialty books module, we have a whole training on audiobooks, how to get into Audible, all of that. And then if you have any specific questions, ask us in the Facebook group. But there are ways to get started with audiobooks without any upfront costs. And we've done that with many of our books. And so, yeah, I definitely recommend that. If you haven't done it yet. Now, what are some mistakes like when people are saying, okay, well, I Love this idea. Let me go and, you know, be a guest on a bunch of different podcasts, and then I'm going to sell all these books and maybe nothing happens. It's like, wah, wah. But what are some of the most common mistakes you see authors making when they're a guest on someone else's podcast?

Getting a blue yeti microphone or blue snowball microphone. So here, the blue snowball microphone is probably perhaps the most popular mistake for podcast microphones. And it's a mistake for a couple of reasons. One, if you're a guest, you're not using the microphone very much, and so you're tempted to put that microphone in a drawer. Well, the blue snowball is what's called a condenser microphone. It uses a condenser on the inside of the microphone, which is incredibly fragile. If you've ever seen microphones and foam cases. The reason why microphones are in foam cases is because condenser microphones, if you look at them with an angry look, they will break and stop functioning. And so that blue snowball that you've got going in and out of that drawer is going to break. I have had, in the history of my podcast, two or three guests I was not able to interview because their blue snowball broke.

Oh, my goodness.

And they didn't know it was broken. And condenser microphones, just awful. And what's really sad is that they're also more expensive and they give you worse audio unless you have a treated room. So condenser microphones are really designed for that kind of foam studio that you see musicians in. What we used in broadcasting, and I had a radio show for a long time, and what we used in radio and what this microphone is, is what's called a dynamic microphone. This is the kind of microphone that your church has on stage and, you know, your worship leader drops the microphone and they pick it up and it keeps working. The famous example classic, sure, SM57 microphone. It's a really popular one amongst musicians. The joke is you can roll over it with your tour bus and still use it on stage that night. And they're also much better at rejecting room noise. So they give you a much better, clearer, sound, cleaner sound. And they're better and they're less expensive. So it's just a much better choice to go with a dynamic microphone like the Samsung Samson, like the guy from the Bible with the long hair and the big muscles. Samson Q2U is normally about $60. Right now, during the pandemic, it's closer to 80 or $90. And it's an amazing dynamic mic that's USB, can plug it straight into your computer. Another really good dynamic MIC is the ATR2100X, which is about $100, or it was pre pandemic. All podcast mics right now are sold out. Um, because everyone is starting a podcast right now. Uh, more podcasts were started in 2020 than in the first 10 years of podcasting combined. Wow. Like 10 years to get to a hundred thousand podcasts, give or take. I don't remember exactly how long it took us. There's a big deal. We're at a hundred thousand podcasts. In April of 2020, a hundred thousand podcasts were launched. One month, people like, I'm locked at home. I've got this check from the government. What am I going to do? Yeah, I'm going to buy a podcast microphone and start me a podcast.

Well, and also all the speakers that, you know, couldn't travel and speak, it's like, let's do some speaking online. Let's start a podcast.

Exactly. And people were buying them for zoom calls to sound better on a zoom call. And there's lots of reasons for why podcast mic demand has gone up. But those two are really great starter mics, and you can also plug them into your mixer. If you start your own podcast, you can use them as your guest mic down the road. They're just really solid mics. I've own both the ATR 2100 and the Q2U. The 2100X is the one that's out now. I have not tested that one, but it's very similar. So I try to only recommend gear that I either tested or know people who've tested very carefully. So I realize it's kind of a technical mistake, but it's the one kind of big defining characteristic in how professional you sound. How good your audio is, really influences whether or not you get on the big podcast. The little podcasts don't care. They're like, we just want. We just need guests. Anybody will come on. My podcast is fine. But the bigger the podcast is, the bigger the audience is, the higher expectation they have for quality. And you'll notice the popular podcast you listen to, everybody sounds like they're in the studio. And they're not all in the studio. A lot of those people are at home with their own microphones. And it is crazy that we live in a world where for a hundred dollars, you can sound like you're in the studio. Like when I was a kid, to sound like you were in a radio studio. Required you to have a radio studio. $100,000. And now it's a hundred bucks. And you're like, but the mic you recommended, it's only $80. Where's the other $20 come from? And this is where it comes from. This thing right here, this is a microphone arm. You can get them for $20 on Amazon. This one's a little more expensive. But to give you an idea, I'm going to back up from, from this. So right now I have a somewhat radio sounding, hopefully a good radio sound. Now I'm going to back up. You can hear how I sound now about a foot away from the microphone. Do you hear that difference?

Oh, yeah.

This is the distance most people have with their microphone when it's sitting on the table. And so you can upgrade your microphone and how good it sounds just by getting it closer to your mouth. This is what creates what's called the proximity effect. So if you've ever heard your voice and you don't like the way your voice sounds, right. Who doesn't like the way their voice sounds? Show of hands, nobody likes the way their voice sounds. And the reason you don't like the way your voice sounds is that you hear your voice with a proximity effect, like almost a super proximity effect, because your voice is resonating through your bone structure. So you're not just hearing your voice from your own mouth, you're also hearing your voice resonating through your bones into your ears. And that gives you a more resonant sound to yourself. Nobody else hears it that way. Everyone else likes your voice just fine without that. But you can sound more that way if you'll get closer to the mic. And the other thing that I'll talk about while we're talking about microphones I'm nerding out here is a little bit of microphone technique. So there's something called a plosive. And this is when air is kind of exploding out of your mouth. It's P's and D's. And the temptation is to talk straight into the microphone like this and say, Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. So this microphone, it's a very expensive microphone, has a built in pop filter. So it's doing a pretty good job filtering out those pops. But if I say it right in, you're probably still hearing the really loud, which isn't much of a problem if you're listening on speakers. And I realize a lot of you are listening on speakers, but those of you listening on headphones, you're hearing that right through your headphones, right into your eardrums. If you're wearing earbuds. People do not like listening to plosives. So you'll notice you can actually see the camera. Can see my mouth. So the wind of my mouth is coming straight out, and it's coming past the microphone. So we call in radio talking past the microphone, and the microphone itself is very close. I'm only about two fingers away from the microphone, but it's pointed at the corner of my mouth, so it's getting the sound waves my voice without getting the wind of my voice. And if you do this, if you have this kind of good microphone technique, one, it allows people to see you better on camera. Right. This would be a less interesting shot.

For video because oftentimes when you're doing a podcast, it's also video, but it actually also be worse audio. So pull it just a little bit off access point at the corner of your mouth, and you can make a less expensive microphone sound like a really expensive, nice microphone.

Yeah. So beyond some of the technical stuff, I love that you did cover that. What are some of the other bigger mistakes that you see people making when trying to get booked on other people's podcasts?

I think the biggest thing that keeps them from getting booked is having not listened to the podcast that they're pitching. If you are reaching out to a podcast, you need to explain why you would be a good, interesting guest for their audience. And I get pitched all the time for people to come on my podcast. Shelley, I'm sure you're the same way I do too. Very often these people have obviously no idea about you or your audience, and their whole pitch is all about them and how amazing they are. Like, not interested. I don't want to hear about how amazing you are. I want you to be interesting to my guest. So if you will just listen to the podcast first and then say, hey, I listen to your podcast. You were talking about such and such topic. I am an expert on a similar topic. I think I could add to the conversation. Or I have a story that's similar to what you're talking about. People are much more likely to have you on. Or the best kind of pitch is I've been putting into practice what you've been talking about. I've been following the Kingdom writers process and now I'm a success and I'd love to share my story. Right, Shelley, you totally want to have somebody on who's got a story like that, right? They've been listening to your podcast. They put into practice what you're teaching, and now they're a New York Times bestseller, and they want to reach out and share how much you've helped them. You'd be like, absolutely, I'm assuming, yeah.

Well, I'd be interested in having a conversation, you know, with them. Typically, I don't have just random people on my podcast. It's either members of our academy or people I've specifically invited, like you. And so, you know, you know, it would have to be a specific, special situation, but it would definitely get my attention. More than 99% of the pitches that I get every day.

For sure. For sure. And when you are trying to decide, I know I'm kind of putting you on the spot, but let's say somebody's reached out to you. I'm guessing some of the things you do to decide, you know, first for most of you, just disregard them out of hand. But if they have caught your attention, you're going to go to their website, and if you're like me, you're going to try to see if you can find another podcast they were on. See how they did on that other podcast. Were they helpful? Did they have good audio? Are they talking about themselves all the time? And this is why it's so important to be faithful in the little things. So your friend has got a podcast with five people listening, and they say, hey, will you come and be on my podcast? Don't be like, I'm a high and mighty writer. I would not deign to be on your podcast. No, I'd love to be on your podcast. I need to practice, and I need to be able to show that I can talk into a microphone and be articulate and helpful. And you have to be faithful in the little things before you can expect to be faithful in the big things. You work your way up episode by episode, and you get that practice. Then the only other practice thing I would say is not having public speaking practice, you know, Join Toastmasters. One of the nice things about having your own podcast is it forces you to get practice talking into your own microphone. But there are other ways of practicing public speaking, and you can do it even during a pandemic. You just gotta go to a Zoom Toastmasters meeting.

Yeah, yeah. Toastmasters is a great organization. I've been part of it in the past, and it's just. It's just a great way to improve. And, you know, I would always be listening for my ums and my ahs and they count those. But. But it is. It's good. So, you know, beyond being a guest on someone's podcast, you know, if, you know, if someone has started their own podcast or is considering it, what are some of the mistakes you see people making when they're starting their own podcast?

I would say probably the biggest mistake is having not listened to the other podcasts in your space. So let's say you're starting a parenting podcast. There's a lot of parenting podcasts out there. And so you need to find how does my parenting podcast fit into the bigger constellation of parenting podcasts? Right. Are you the sage at the top of the mountain giving advice? Are you the I'm a parent just like you, and I change messy diapers and I don't know if that's chocolate or poop either. Right. That's a totally different kind of podcast. And are you witty and funny? Are you serious? Knowing how you fit is really important. So, for instance, sell more Bookshow, which is, quote, unquote, a competition, isn't if you actually listen to their show and listen to our show, we couldn't be more different. Sure, we're both on book marketing, but they cover news. If you want the latest on Amazon's recent change and what it means for you as an indie author, they're going to cover that the week it happens and they're going to have great analysis. My show doesn't do that. We cover the timeless marketing principles and we are constantly linking back to episodes we recorded two, three, four years ago. We have a very evergreen format and we very rarely cover cutting news. It has to be a big deal like mailchimp totally changing their rules where they're no longer author friendly or Europe passing some big law about privacy. That's it. If it's not that big, we're not going to cover it. And we're able to coexist very happily with this other podcast. And listening to the other podcasts in your space also will help you understand kind of where the hole is. You'd be like, oh, no one's talking about X or no one's covering this aspect or all the podcasts in my space are long interviews. So maybe I'll have a short quick tips podcast. Not every podcast has to be a long interview. There's other formats. In fact, I really encourage you to explore the other formats. I have a client now, we do a little bit of podcast editing and one of my podcast editing clients just passed her millionth download and her podcast is just her praying for five minutes every day. It's a quick, encouraging podcast. And people love it. They love it. One million downloads worth. It's a very popular podcast and it's a very different podcast than the other kind of Christian guru podcast. And even the other Christian prayer podcasts being that short and that focused.

Yeah. So I love that. You know, just even I've talked about that with guest blogging. Like, look at where the holes are with that person's content and say, hey, I can offer this to your audience, but you know, if you're creating your own podcast, it's the same thing. What value can you offer that's not already out there? And so we have some questions coming in. Are you good with taking some questions?

Yeah, let's do it.

All right, so Liana says, do most podcasts let you know questions ahead of time? And can you prerecord a podcast session or is it live?

So podcasts are always prerecorded live. Sometimes the. Sorry, they're all prerecorded. Sometimes, like in this instance, there is a live studio audience for the pre recorded. But if you ever watch the Tonight show or the Daily show, those aren't live. Those are recorded for a studio audience and then they're posted later on in the day. As a general rule, podcasts are the same way, except often they're recorded weeks or months ahead of time. I could list any number of podcasters that could die today and would still be podcasting for months and months until their credit card expired, until their heirs turned off their credit card because they have so many episodes in the buffer. As for the first part of your question, whether you know the questions ahead of time, it depends on the podcast. Shelly didn't send me questions for this ahead of time. I don't generally send questions to my guests ahead of time, but I sometimes do, and it depends on how experienced they are. So I tend to interview lots of people who do lots of podcasts. They're already media trained, they're media savvy, and I'm wanting to have a kind of a more organic conversation. But sometimes I'll send questions if they're tricky. So I've had guests on where I didn't send them all the questions, but I like here is a tricky one. And I don't want this to feel like a gotcha question is dealing with a sensitive topic. And I wanted her to be prepared. And that ended up working really well. She gave really great off the cuff answers to all my easy questions and then my hardball question. She knew exactly how it was coming across. The plate and she knocked it out of the park. And so it was a friendly interview. In general, podcasts are friendly interviews.

In my case, I asked Thomas when he submitted his form. I used calendly to to schedule these and so you can automate a lot of the back end part of it. I asked him if he had any questions he wanted me to ask. So he gave me four questions and those are the questions I used today. And so you can also like when you are a guest on a podcast, like I did a podcast blitz after I released my book Broken Crayons still Color. And most of the hosts would ask me to come up with the questions for them. So it saves them time. So. So also be prepared if you're going to be a guest that they might be asking you to come up with good questions that they can ask you as well. So great question.

I totally forgot I sent you a question.

Oh, that's okay. It's been a while. We set this up a while back. But Deborah says she's an editor and she says, I can't imagine having a podcast. I know she has a blog and she says, but are there specific questions we can ask ourselves to determine if a podcast is really right for us?

Let me tell you a story. There was an editor, she was a technical writer and she was like, oh, I'm going to try podcasting and I want to do my podcast about English grammar. And so she started a podcast. It was a short five minute podcast called Grammar Girls. Quick and dirty tips to clean up your writing. And every week she would have a new episode about some grammar rule. Basically it was her chance as a grammar Nazi to whine for five minutes about something people were doing wrong. It's like it's your, not your. And she would explain the rule and explain how to use it. And she got millions of downloads, millions of downloads. And it led to her, an unknown author. She's not celebrity. She's not connected just with the power of her podcast. Agents called her to write a book. She wrote a book. And her book on grammar became a New York Times bestselling book on grammar. And now if you go to the writing section, it's Dunkin White's elements of style and Grammar Girl's quick and dirty tips to clean up your writing. She's right there with the Legends and Stephen King on writing. And she was a nobody. She's not a nobody anymore. And now she's Grammar Girl. She's very well known. She started her own podcast network and I see some people in the chat are reading her blog. She has a blog version of every podcast episode that she does, which I do for my novel marketing as well. Every episode is also a blog post. So you can absolutely have a podcast as an editor. It's been done before and it's worked out really well. And there's quite a bit of different markets. So Grammar Girl is popular with everyone, but she has listeners who are in other countries and they're learning English as a second language and they're wanting grammar help in that regard. She has others who are students learning English for the first time, and she has some that are authors. I could see a podcast that was just grammar tips for authors that was less how the pieces move on the chessboard and more how to win at chess. When do you use passive voice to hide something in a mystery? That's a very different way of thinking about grammar than never use passive voice. Sometimes there's a time when you want to make it just a little bit of vague and you want to do it on purpose. There may be room for a podcast like that for that specific kind of audience. What I would recommend is being a guest first. This is like babysitting somebody's dog before getting a dog yourself. Right? If you can't stand having a dog for days, don't adopt a dog. And so if you go on a podcast as a guest and you hate it, podcasting is not for you. And that's okay. And you can still advertise if you wanted to. You can pay for ads and the host will read your ad to their audience. And you don't have to ever talk into a microphone. So while podcasting is a great method, it's not the only method and you're not stuck with it.

Yeah, I think that's a great, great advice. You know, get started as a guest first and then look at the market, see what's out there and, you know, see if you can fulfill a need like she did. You know, Grammar Girl. I know her site as well. And speaking of these quick podcasts, Leanna also asked, you know, how long is a quick podcast? Is there a minimum or a maximum time for podcasts? Anything that you have to say on that?

The shortest podcast I've ever listened to had about one minute episodes. And the longest podcast I've ever listened to has six to eight hour episodes.

Oh, my goodness.

And it's a very popular podcast called Hardcore History. He releases episodes two or three times a year. They're basically like audiobooks and they. And they are hardcore. He'll go into the history of the Mongol Empire and he'll talk about all the millions of people they killed and it gets millions and millions of downloads. So this is the beauty of podcasts. Exactly. The format is so free. Your constraint, you'll just have one constraint. It's a big constraint, is what is interesting to my target audience to know that you got to know your target audience. And the beauty of podcasting is you can thrash around a little bit. You can start a podcast, you can do some five minute episodes, you can do some 20 minute episodes, and you can do some hour long episodes and you get stats on how many times those episodes were downloaded. Hopefully you're interacting with your listeners. You have comments on your website or an email address, or social media, if you must, some way to interact with your listeners so you can get the feedback back from them and you just find what works. Shelley, I don't know if you've evolved your format, but we've evolved our format quite a bit with novel marketing. Our episodes now are quite different than they were in the early days.

Yeah. And I've tried many different things and I probably don't do podcasting the perfect way. But you know what? I get content out there and people continually tell me they found me through my podcast and that's how they become a Christian Book Academy member or, you know, be able to, you know, become a customer of mine. And so even if you're not doing it personally perfectly, you know, it's, it's, you know, something that can be valuable. And Debbie asked, do you record lots of podcasts ahead of time so that you have plenty of material ready to go? I do this for my blogs.

It's good to do that, or it can be good. There's some pros and cons to recording episodes ahead of time, and we really saw it here in 2020.

Yeah.

So in March and in April, no one wanted to hear about your podcast unless you had some kind of way of connecting it with what was going on. And for the people who had their scheduled way ahead of time, they really kind of felt out of touch. They almost, almost like they were like, not in the world. Because it's like everyone is talking about how the world is coming to an end and you're just like, halala, here's my topic. Right. So that's the downside. If you're going to pre record, you need to have the ability to put things on hold and come in and adapt to.

Events if they're that big. We don't have Big events like pandemics that affect everyone very often. God, hope, God, please no more. Right. There's some asteroid. I'm one earthquake away from filling my 2020 a natural disaster bingo card.

Well, the other thing you can do is you can add bumpers so you can record forward an extra intro to an episode that you've recorded in the past and have that part be up to date and you know, be kind of be like an introduction to the episode and then you, you know, you can kind of feel like you're still on topic. But it is, it's great. It's always great to batch, you know, if you can, that's something that you can do or like what we do, we repurpose. And so, you know, we're already providing, you know, time and, you know, things for you guys here in the academy. And then we're able to record those as well. Especially the last year and a half, as I've been completely redoing the curriculum, I haven't had time to do extra things. And so it's been a way that I can keep providing content for my podcast. So there's different seasons too for your podcast as well, depending on what you're going through. Myrna just has one more question. What kind of advertising budget are you talking about regarding podcasts?

Again, it can vary. There are podcasts that can will do a read for you for as little as $20, maybe even as little as 10 if it's a really small podcast, all the way to podcasts who won't talk to you unless you're ready to spend half a million dollars. So if you want to be on the Daily by the New York Times, it's half a million dollars to play. Yeah, One seat at the table. That roulette wheels half a million dollars. And they're targeting big brand advertisers like Procter and Gamble and Nike, those kinds of brands. But that's not really where you want to be advertising. You want to be advertising on those smaller, really focused niche podcasts that don't have a big audience, but they have your audience. And you'd be surprised. Often 20 bucks, 50 bucks, 100 bucks will get you a read. You'll want to do two or three reads on the same show. You want to have them be a little bit different. You don't want to do 10 identical reads on the same podcast. People get really irritated with podcasts that have the same thing over and over again.

Yeah.

So it's like, even when the host is like this pre recorded commercial for their own thing.

Right.

And it's like after the 10th time, you've heard that exact same. It's like, gosh, if the host can't even be bothered to read it every time, why should I be bothered to listen to it every time people binge? You know, people will listen to 10 of my episodes on a long car ride. And you can't repeat stuff. I do at least three episodes. And realize that with podcasting, you don't get immediate results. People don't listen to podcasts right away. They're kind of unique in this way where people will download them right away, they'll sit on their phone, and then they may listen to it a week later or a month later. And so you won't see the kind of spike in sales that you will with, say, Facebook advertising, which is a lot. And then it's nothing. Podcasts, it often never drops to zero. You may be still getting sales on that ad from three years ago, but it doesn't spike quite as quickly.

Yeah, and that's a good point. When you have an advertisement in a podcast, someone can find that podcast three years later. You know, they're digging through and listening to it later. And so there's. There's longevity to that as well. Well, as we start to close down today, what are your final thoughts for authors on podcasting? I know a lot of them are very shy, introverted. You know, it's like, ah. I mean, even though you're not typically on camera, you're still talking. And so any final thoughts?

Well, at the very least, listen to a few more podcasts. You're welcome to listen to mine. Christian Publishing show and Novel Marketing. I have a bunch of episodes on being a guest on a podcast. You can learn more, but the main thing is just have fun with it. Just see it as an experiment. I just did an episode about how building a platform is kind of like learning to walk. And I'm watching my son learn to walk right now. He is a professional stander. He'll stand leaning up against anything. He stood lean against all pieces of our furniture, and every piece of glass within his reach is covered with little toddler smudges. And he falls down all the time trying to learn to walk. And you know what? That's the only way to learn to walk. And he has a sister who's 2, and she is walking circles around him. And he is determined to get walking so he can hold his own with his big sister. And so he's very motivated and he's trying really hard if he wasn't, if he was just sitting there and letting the world come to him, he would not be learning to walk. And for a lot of us with our platforms, we're just sitting there hoping the world is going to come to us and we're afraid to fall. And that is not going to work. And it will never work. It's not like, oh, if I just sit here long enough, the world will come to me. It's like, no, you got to be willing to get up on your feet. And the only way to learn to walk is to fall down a few times. And so get out there. Guest on some podcasts, try to host your own podcast. If it doesn't work, it's okay. A lot of people start podcasts and give up on podcasts. That podcast I started in 2007, it's not the novel marketing podcast. I started that in 2013. The 2007 podcast was a podcast connected to the book I was trying to write. Right. That nobody was interested in. They were interested in my websites instead. And I. And I pivoted. But I learned a lot doing that podcast as a idiot college student. And, you know, that was my stumbling and falling. And so it's okay to get out there and give it a shot. And, you know, you spend a hundred dollars on podcast gear. If it doesn't work right now, sometimes you can sell it at a profit because podcast mics are so in demand. And I'm not even joking, if you're able to.

I know, I know.

I've seen it at market price on Amazon. If you see it in stock, you can turn around and sell it, you know, a month later, $20 markup because of the demand. So it's, it's a really low risk. You might as well give it a shot. And it really can be quite a lot of fun.

Yeah. And especially being guests on podcast and those of you that are Christian Book Academy members, if you have an idea, something that you've learned from Christian Book Academy put into use, and you want to share that as a case study on our podcast, let me know. I'm open to having you on our podcast as well. So how can people get connected with you and find out more from you on all the things that you're doing?

So AuthorMedia.com has my novel marketing podcast, and if you go to authormedia.com gear, I have a gear guide that I keep up to date with all of my latest recommendations on microphones and all the other things that you need. And I have at different price points. I have the like here's if you just want to be a guest, if you're just getting started as a podcaster. And here's the Joe Rogan setup. So I've got the Joe Rogan microphones, $400 microphone and that's it. You have the professional microphone the top podcaster uses. It's only $400. You kids these days, you don't know how good you have it. Mics used to be so much more expensive. So that's totally free. That gear guide, you can get it authormedia.com gear and I try to keep it up to date. Just realize that often right now you'll need to buy your. You can't get it from Amazon, you have to get it from third party sellers on Amazon because there's just a shortage and hopefully the shortage will go away. Hopefully those of you listening in the future there will be rainbows and green skies and blue fields and no microphone shortages.

Yes. Yes. That's so good. And thank you so much for being here, for sharing all of your great advice and tips. Definitely go check out his podcast and get that gear guide. So thank you so much for being here. We appreciate you. Thomas.

Thanks for having me. Live long and prosper.

Thank you.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Kingdom Writers. We believe that you, as a Christian writer, have a specific role to play in the Kingdom of Heaven to impact lives for eternity.

And because of this, we choose to pour out our lives into encouraging writers like you to not only tell your stories, but to take the courageous step of self publishing your stories in books that will outlive you and leave behind a powerful legacy. This podcast is sponsored by Christian Book Academy, where we help you give birth to your books. We invite you to join our community of Kingdom Writers.