Defying The Norm: Rule-Breaking Podcast Strategies For Fast Growth

Want your podcast and videocast to be seen, heard, found and rewarded in this noisy digital world, you are not alone. Join the nonprofit community at Podcasters United and podcast industry experts Tom Hazard and Tracy Hazard as they debunk all that outdated and bad advice you've been getting from the podcast gurus and find out what actually works. Today, get ready to feed Feed your brand with smart cut tactics proven to cast your original voice to the world.

Welcome to feed you'd brand. I'm Tom Hazard with my co host and better half, Tracy Hazard. And today we're going to talk about defying the norm, rule breaking podcast strategies for fast growth. Now this is something I think, Tracy, you and I, it's been said to us, I think as we were students many years ago, but we've said it ever since. If you're going to break the rules, that's okay, but make sure you do a really good job of it.

Yeah, I mean, this is something that we learned in art school. Tom and I went to art school. For those of you who don't know that. And we've said that before, we went to Rhode Island School Design and part of that sort of model of art school that especially Rhode island school design is RISD is, is that you study the masters before you're allowed to break the rules, right? So you study what works, you studied what's been done and then you decide how to make it your own and break the rules. But if you're gonna break the rules and. Cause there are some things that are conventional wisdom. And conventional wisdom can be a good thing and a bad thing, it can become me too. And you can get buried amongst everybody else doing the same thing. And you don't stand out, you're not differentiating yourself. But conventional wisdom can also be there because it works, right? And if you break those rules and now you're sitting back going, I don't know why it didn't work. It's because you didn't even attempt to follow the rules to begin with. So that's the one thing that I like to say here. If you're going to rule break. And I love rule breakers, I really do. I absolutely love the rule breakers in the world. They are, had a lot of fun. There's a lot of great things to them. But if you're breaking the rules and you don't even know what they are, that's a problem, right? We need to understand why some of these rules are there so that we understand why we're breaking them. And we're breaking them for a purpose, and we're breaking them for the greater good. And we're breaking them to stand out and make sure that we're doing that. And then if they don't work, we understand why that didn't work, because we broke them with that purpose. And if we didn't achieve the outcome we wanted to, well, now that's an aha. And we can learn from that. Another thing is I don't like to break all the rules at once. I'm all for breaking one rule at a time because otherwise we don't know.

Which one failed or which one succeeded.

Or which one succeeded. Exactly.

Two rules at once. One of them may be masking the failure of another and give you a false indication. And so then you try to do that somewhere else and it doesn't work.

Right, Right. This is called a design of experiment. Like this is something that we follow as designers, Tom and I learned this is that you want to adjust one variable at a time. And so especially with rule breaking, we want to break one at a time. And so for us, if you're going to break a podcasting rule, we want you to give it a minimum of one month, but up to three months. And that depends on how many episodes you're producing. Right. So if you're producing an episode every single day, then you don't need to give it as long as somebody who's only producing one a week. Right. So we want to give it 4 to 12 episodes total before we decide if it's working. But if you're doing a daily one, give it a month because you will not understand if it's working or what's happening in it. It can be a short term bump and anomaly amongst your stats, your results, your outcomes, and understanding the impact that might have. Also because you need time for people to listen to it catch up and then respond to you. And when we're producing a daily show, we have a little bit of overwhelm and that while they may be downloading the show, they're not necessarily listening to it. They need time to catch up, especially in a daily. So give your listeners time to catch up with you in the production side. So four to 12 episodes total if you're doing a weekly and one month if you're doing a daily, or two to three times a week if you're doing more. Think about it. Giving it a month would be a good amount of time for you.

Sounds like some good advice, Tracy. For sure. So let's talk about share some examples of some rules that you might break and maybe. Why?

Well, let's talk about criticalness of differentiation, right? Especially in social media, especially in, I'm going to say websites, where there's billion. Website billion, one point. I don't know what the last count was like 1.6 or 8 billion websites or something crazy like that number. I don't even know what it is today. That's probably last year's number. There's over a billion YouTube channels. Like when we're talking about differentiation, it's greater and more magnified in social media and on video than it is in podcasting. So I just want you to understand there's a magnification situation there because there's so much noise in all those other places. Podcasting is not as noisy. There's two and a half million podcasts, 2.6 or something last time I checked it, something like that. But there's only about 400,000 active at any given time. So it's not as noisy when you're looking at active podcasts. And that's really critically important that if you're going to defy the rules and make sure you're looking at the people who are actually producing them right now. Right. And so, oh, Tom's got 1.1 billion websites.

Tom on the Internet. That's the count. Yeah, 1.1 billion websites, but that's not active.

And I keep want to remind you the stats are the total number of live websites, but that doesn't mean that they've updated them recently. Right? So think about it.

Websites all over the map as to whether they're dormant or active. But there's 1.1 billion websites that are figuring into Google search. And it's very interesting because we talk a lot at potatoes about standing out from the crowd, being found, being heard, and there's a couple of ironies there. Yeah, you're right. 1.1 billion websites, 400,000 active podcasts. That's a much smaller pond to rise above the crowd in, Right. On the one hand. On the other hand, your podcast is only able to be discovered in that small pond on a small set of data. There's more data you can put about your podcast on your website to get you found. And the great part is Google doesn't discriminate. They want the most relevant content they can find. So you can compete and Current, Current. Yeah. And you can compete among those 1.1 billion podcasts using your podcast as the fuel you can rise above and certainly for certain phrases and things in your Nich. So the 1.1 billion is scary on the one hand. On the other hand, I'm not scared of it at all. Because Google does not care about anything except you're putting out quality content that's relevant. You compete against the biggest Fortune 500 companies for content, you've got better content. They're going to put you above them in the list.

Right. So that's what I want to mention here, is that the conventional wisdom, the things that we shouldn't rule break on, are consistent and constant. Consistent and constant is a bot rule in every search engine, whether it's podcast, search engine, YouTube, search engine, Google search engine for your website, any search engine. But it's also a human characteristic. Humans like consistent and constant. We trust consistent and constant. So those things, when we look at that conventional wisdom, I don't want to break that, but can I break some things within that? As long as I'm being consistent and constant, I can break a lot of rules on capturing your attention and doing different things. But there are these people who talk about pattern disrupt. Okay, that's a differentiation. Pattern disrupt, we try to do it when we write an email. Maybe sometimes when we write a subject line to an email, we want to capture your attention. So we do something that's a disruptive pattern in our languaging for that. But what we don't do when we send out emails and anyone who tells you otherwise is lying to you about it, it can really, really harm you, is that you don't deviate from being consistent about sending out emails regularly. Right? There is still consistency and constancy in how we reach out and how we utilize our emails. Because lots of things break on the technical side, if we're not consistent and constant in our email, same thing happens on our website, same things happens in our podcast, but it's because it's both a human and a bot requirement here. Like, we crave it. And so that's one of the rules that I do not want you to defy. No matter what happens, keep that consistent and constant.

Can't tell you how many times I have existing podcasters come to me and they don't understand why they're not getting found through their podcast. And then I look at their publication schedule. They haven't published in four months, five months, six months. It's like not. You're not really a podcaster.

What the sort of expectation is from a listener perspective of a podcast. They want to hear what you've got next for them. Not always are they just interested in listening to what you've done in the past. And even if they did have listened to you for a long time, they already heard what was in the past. They don't want to hear it again. What's new? What's in it for them now?

Right? So certain conventional wisdom, this one do not mess with. There's a really like, so many technical reasons why that are going to prevent you from being seen, heard, and found so that what you do that's so wonderful and different will never be found. And that's what we want. If you're going to defy the conventional wisdom, if you're going to defy how this works in the podcasting space and want to be seen, heard, and found, then you're going to have to do it right. And some of the things you have to do within the rules, and that's the one rule consistent and constant, that you do not want to defy. Now, once you're in that, the next rules to defy is I really need to stand out. I want to capture attention. I want to make sure that you find me. So the reality is, is that there's so much today that is bought that is artificial intelligence, that is cookie cutter, because you followed somebody's guide and rules. Look, we're out here telling you what some of the rules are. Here at potted highs, we're sharing them with you. But when we do it for and with our clients, we're also doing it in what we call a bespoke way, a way that finds your brand, that finds your personality, that builds that within the model. Right? We want to do what works, but we don't want to adhere to it so that we have no personality left. We bring nothing to the table. At the end of the day, that's us. That's not why someone's going to listen. Someone's going to listen to your show, Someone's going to find your show, someone's going to choose to subscribe to your show and check it out because something appealed to them. And that can only come from bringing you to that model. Right? So how do we bring personality humor? That's some of the most important things that you can bring to it. Look, how many of you have gotten emails that obviously were templated and like somebody said, plug your company name in here and like everything else, it's all a template. How many times do we see headliner audiograms that are templates that look like everybody else's out there? And I don't even know that it's my podcast being shown there? How Many times do we see that in a canva template of a graphic that we post on social media that makes me look like everybody else. It's the same colors, it's the same model, and everybody's Instagram looks the same after a while. That's not okay. We need to bring our personality, we need to bring our brand to it, but not overly brand that. Like, remember when I talked about pattern disrupt? Let's disrupt it on occasion on ourselves as well. Our own brand needs occasional disruption. It happened recently that our team was putting out everything in potatoes blue. And I was like, guys, I don't want every end card to our videos be all potatoes blue. Mix it up a little, come up with an accent, do something different, make sure people capture their attention.

And.

And so my team was like, oh, right, I forgot about that. And so we wanna do that. So we don't wanna also everything be so branded and so us that it loses meaning.

Yeah, it's true. If everything is the same, people stop paying attention. I've seen it. I've seen it. I've seen it.

Right, right. And especially when you're saying something that is similar to other people, we might need to say it in a new way. Say it in something that has a little bit of personality. I categorize our humor here. And our humor comes from our wonderful creative director, but a little bit from Tom and I like Tom and I magnified. And so I consider it to be a little bit of what we would call snarky geek. And snarky is something that your stepfather says. And so my stepfather in law, he says this. He says, I don't like things when things are too snarky. But I think that sometimes when we were like, guys, how many times do I have to tell you? Consistent and constant. I get to be a little bit snarky about it because I've repeated myself so much. Right. But I can still bring some humor to the repetition about it. Right. And so we like to call that snarky geek. So Tom and I throw in, it's about to be May 4th tomorrow. We're recording this day before that. And May 4th is May the 4th be with you. In our household, we really care about that. And to not put out a social media post on May 4 would not be in characteristic of our humor, our direction, our geekiness that Tom and I have. And it needs to happen. Right. So you gotta bring you to the table.

Well, it's also about standing out. Right. If you say something a lot, because it is an important Message you repeat, consistent and constant all the time. So I think sometimes you have to inject some humor, some snarkiness, something into it to be a little different and get attention to sort of make your point or make sure that people see it, that it sometimes takes people hearing something many times before it really sinks in.

Right, right. And so bringing humor to it is one great way to do that.

Now, maybe you're not funny. That's okay. That's okay to be really straightforward about it. Maybe you're a little bit angry about something. Dive into the anger. Anger is good, too. It's a differentiator. So's inspiration and power in that. So it can also be a sort of diving into why people are attracted to you. What do you bring to them? Do you bring to them anger that gets them moving, gets them empowered to make change in their life? Okay, go ahead and do that. Do you bring to them the power of happiness and inspiration in a way that it's infectious? Go ahead and in good way. Infectious. Go ahead and do that, too. Right. If you got humor, play to it. Because when you make people laugh, they pay attention. And that's something that I want to bring to us today. Like, we've got an example of something that made me laugh. So something that Tom and I repeat again and again is that intro outros are way too long. There's a lot of coaches, gurus in the podcast world, and I'm using air quotes in the video, if you can see it, if you can hear it. Here are the air quotes here, right? Podcast gurus, right? And one of the things that they say is, oh, you have to make sure you tell everybody all about you and share everything about you and sell in the very first 30 seconds and one minute of your show. And that means in the intro. And I say, hmm, that's a great way for someone to go, wow, your show's really about you and not about me, the listener. So do I really even want to give it a shot? And it's a great way for you to pop out of that. But the outros, a great place for that as well. Although we have binge listeners who go from the outro of one straight into the intro of the next. So you have to also pay attention to the length. So that's why Tom and I are very conscious of the length. And one of the things that we say again and again is we highly recommend switching things up if you've been doing this for a while or if you followed these gurus and made a really long intro and outro, then go ahead and switch it up and shorten it. And 30 seconds is our ideal here. However, if you're going to make it longer, you better make it absolutely interesting. And if you can do that with humor, there's no way I'm going to tune out. So here is what Tom's going to share with you is one of the best outros I have ever heard. It's on the show called Therapy Bites. Doc Keith is just fantastic. I've been on his show, he's been on my show. So there's a bunch of swaps. There'll be a link to the blog post in this episode so you can hear what that is about. And there's tons of his humor. He's very funny and in this geeky psychiatry way, which is really even funnier. He's got a lot of inspiration and baseball humor as well in there too. Baseball analogies. But his outro is absolutely one of the longest but yet most brilliant outros I have ever heard.

It is really long. This is going to be a little more than two minutes of a audio clip that I'm going to play for you. It is worth listening to because he did something really brilliant. He made it fun. And even though it is the same every episode, I've already listened to it several times just because it's so unusual and I was talking about with other people and I've shared it with other people. Can you imagine? I'm in the podcast industry and I have shared somebody's outro with other people just because the outro is so great. That doesn't happen every day in a podcast, right? So check this out. I gotta make sure I share the sound and all right, I'm playing this from. Where is it? There it is. Apple Podcasts desktop app so hopefully you all can hear this.

Government legal gobbledygook Therapy Bites is not intended as a diagnostic or as an alternative to professional clothes. Clinical treatment resources and advice are for information and entertainment purposes only. Brought to you by someone saying things you don't like. Tape that nagging loud mouth shut government approved speech tape gas tape now available at your local hardware store. Therapy by Sart Lab is not an approved endorsed authorized butt kissing affiliate the United States Special Offense Assessment Police soap for short warning consumption of Therapy Bites Art Lab content by Kool Aid drinking Stinkin thinkin social media pseudo psychological pushing Wacky woke anti free speech mumbo jumbo advocates may cause spontaneous internal skull combustion stomach discomfort and or laxative effects.

Allergy warning Therapy Bites is manufactured in a facility that challenges nutty distortions, processes, nuggets of accurate realistic thinking and life affirming beliefs. This is the audio version of the legal fine print. Why are you still listening to this when you can catch the next great episode of Therapy Bites Art lab with a good friend or family member? Really? Are you still there? This is getting silly. Move on to the next psychologically thrilling episode of the Best Advice on the Net. No Kobe required. Me eat kope.

Yeah.

With Dr. Heath and the T Ball team. Go ahead, don't be podgoraphobic. Scoot, scoot, scoot. On to the next episode.

Gotta love that. I love that. Sort of like, are you still there? Why are you still here? Like move on, seriously. But he also does in there is you hear that moment where he says, share it with. Go on and listen to the next episode with someone you love, with someone you can share it with. So he's inviting them to do that in that process. So there's a lot packed into this wonderfully energetic and fascinatingly funny and kind of extra long outro that captures your attention and definitely disrupts your pattern of thinking, gets you in the mindset for that next episode, which is also really important. So he is being conscious of that flow in the bingeability of shows from one to the next.

Although I think like most of them, eventually, if you really listen to his show every single time, once you hear that outro, you're probably gonna skip to the next episode, right? Cause you've heard it before. As fun as it is, unless you're driving in a car with somebody, you would say, oh, you gotta hear this, it's fantastic. And you're gonna play it all through so they can hear it. But boy, it got your attention, it put a smile on your face and it probably makes you more interested to listen to what he's going to say next in the next episode, right?

Absolutely. And you know, some of the other options that I've seen in the intro outros in terms of treating them like pattern disrupts, is to have short ones, long ones, actually mix them up in different times, have different voices, record them. I've heard a podcast where they have their kids do an intro and it's pretty funny. So just mixing it up now and again and definitely making changes to it, that's not a bad thing. Try out some different things. But one of the things that Tom and I hear again and again from seasoned podcasters is like, I finally listened to you and I cut down my intro and Outro. And the audience reached out to me and thanked me and I was like, so if you want engagement, do what they want. And that's really important. So understand what that is, capture their attention, but also do what the audience actually wants, what's important to them.

I think it's really important. And it's really pretty obvious when you think about it. They're listening to every episode. They want what's new, they want the new part of every episode. They've heard the beginning. That's why we sort of say less is more in the beginning. Right. Let's just welcome the listener, introduce the show and get on with the show type of thing. Little oversimplified, but I think having a prerecorded intro is still important, though I don't really recommend not having one. There's. It's an important to have a little familiarity like press play. Oh yeah, I recognize that. That's the show I meant to play. Right. So I think that's important. But so many other ways to sort of do this pattern disrupt that you were talking about, Tracy. I mean, changing up your intro or your outro once in a while to freshen it up I think can be a very good thing. See who's paying attention.

People are really afraid of this. And this is that over branding situation that we get into is that we get really afraid to defy the model to bring ourselves to, to the table. So I hear it a lot where I'll be listening to a show and I'll say, you know, I could tell that you trained with this particular coach. And they're like, how'd you know that? I was like, well, because you're making the same mistake that dozens of other people make. And it is a mistake. And I'm going to tell you that. And they're like, but no, that person is a goddess. So I'm not going to change it. She told me I have to do this. And I said, well, she gave you something that was easy for them to execute, easy for them to get you moving, but at the end of the day, it's not going to serve you into a hundred episodes. So while it was great to get you started, it might not be what needs to continue for you. And that unwillingness to take that open mindedness, that growth mindset required to take your show to the next level is really important. Look, I applaud anyone who puts out a podcast coaching program or a podcast bootcamp, a podcast class, how to get started. Go do it. We have one. It's free. Very few people have the ability to get through it. So someone putting it out there and getting you to go through it, there's power in that, and I applaud them for that. But now, how are you going to succeed from there? Is that everything that you needed? It got you going, it got you moving, and it did it in a simple, easy way. And because of that, we sometimes simplify concepts. We don't give you everything at once because we need to make sure you move into that next phase. Then we add the next layer and the next layer and the next layer. And so you need to be on a model of customizing things over time. Right. Tom and I were talking about design of experiment. One thing at a time, at the right moment, and making a shift. Before you know it, your show is completely unique. Completely you. But also completely working with the audience that you've attracted, because if it didn't work with them, you would have discarded it along the way. That's where we really want to get to. We don't have to do that all from day one. We can do that over time. We can start to defy those odds when we start to understand what's working, what's not working for us, for our audience, what just doesn't feel right to us. And it's okay to say this expert, it's not the right advice for me.

Or it's not the right road advice for me anymore, or going forward, as you said, maybe it got me going. And that's great. I agree. Anybody who's putting out a podcast on a regular basis, congratulations, that's awesome. Because at the end of the day, you gotta bring your message to the world if you wanna be heard. And I'm glad you're doing it, but how can we get you more from it? More listeners, more fans, more leads, more customers, more community members, whatever it is your goal is. I want to just mention a couple things, Tracy, about rubricing doesn't necessarily have to mean you do something radical. It just means you're changing it up a little bit so you are consistent and constant. You publish every Wednesday like clockwork. Your audience is used to it, but you've got an important point you want to make. You want to stand out. Hey, here's a thought. Bonus episode. Publish one on a Friday or on a Monday. And I don't mean not on your Wednesday. I'm saying an additional one. Show up at an odd time on a different day with additional value for your listeners. That's going to get their attention. Whoa. This one's so important. They didn't wait to put it out another Wednesday or they didn't wait to put it out at the end of three or four more they've got already in the queue. They gave it to me sooner.

Right. Here's another one that we hear a lot. I have to have guest episodes. You don't have to have guest episodes. Now you are sacrificing some growth models by not having guest episodes because you don't have somebody else sharing your show with you and for you. Right? But that doesn't mean that's the right model for you. That is critically important. There are other ways around it. I can't tell you how many guest models there are out there of podcast types that I could come up with off the top of my head. There's one that's right for you. That might be a way in which your guest is more like a debate than a guest. They're not a feature you and them are debating. That sounds like a really interesting model. And it's putting you on an even playing field so that they're not being featured. They're in debate and discussion with you. That's still topic focused at the end of the day. And you're still getting accomplished what you need to accomplish from your content production side, but you're also getting across, talking about what you want to talk about solo episodes, mixing them in. I hear more and more podcasters doing that both in addition to and or mixing up their month and doing less guest episodes and more solos, but not doing necessarily 100%. If they're still in the growth mode of needing to grow to their listener base and they need the outside help, they're mixing them together. So there are ways to break the rules and still get what you need. But you might need a consult. You might need to talk to someone who's doing this, who has an understanding of what works and what doesn't work. It's one of the reasons we offer our appraisals and our options to have a call with us for anyone out there. Because we want you to keep podcasting. And the more the industry keeps podcasting, the better off it is for everyone else. Our show values grow. Advertising values grow, if that's what you're looking for. Outcome. A value grows for that. But not being open to this isn't working for me. I'd like to do something different and not being open to a new idea and consider testing and trying that and holding fast to the way you've been doing it. That's a recipe for headed into pod fading because the more it's not working for you, the less it starts to work for you. That's just all a part of a self fulfilling prophecy that's going to happen on it.

I think that is another good reason to break some rules. If you as the host aren't feeling it, you're not getting what you want out of it, you're not enjoying it. That's a very important reason to change things up and figure it out. And I also want to put a footnote on something you said, Tracy. We find, especially recently, some of the people that have added solo casts mixed in with their interview episodes. Shows that were entirely interviews that have now gone to doing some solo content have actually a lot of recent case studies have been pointing out to us that their show is doing better. They're getting more engagement and more listenership that listeners are enjoying that solo content. It's not that they don't want to listen to the episodes with guests, they just like that they're getting more of the host's mind share outside of the context of a guest episode.

Absolutely. So break some rules. Once you understand why you made the choices you've made or why some of the advice is the way it is, understand purposefully, defy them. Break them for a reason and a reason that resonates with you and or your audience. Either one is way more powerful than breaking the rules for breaking the rules sake. It's also more sustainable at the end of the day and that is going to keep you podcasting and keep your show resonating, keeping your message out there to the world.

All right, that sounds great. I guess we'll leave it there. Tracy, I don't think I could wrap it up any better. Thanks so much for listening to this episode of Feed you'd Brand. You can find the blog post for this episode and all our other episodes@potitize.com, just go on the top menu and look for Feed you'd brand. Until next time. Everyone have a great one. This is Tom and Tracy signing off.

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