How To Be Authentic And Not ‘Fake Famous’ With Your Podcast

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So, hey, everyone, welcome to Feed. You'd brand. I'm Tracy Hazzard and today's topic is how to be authentic on your podcast and not Fake Famous. There's a new movie out on Netflix. It's called Fake Famous. There was a review in Wired magazine. I've added the link to that in the post on Facebook and I'll add it here in a few minutes. And we wanted to talk about Fake Famous and this idea of influencer models in podcasting also because in the news is the whole market watch on Spotify has downgraded Spotify stock and just taken a harsh look at the model by which Spotify has been buying companies and the valuations that they've been giving it and the profit that they have not turned. And they've been following this influencer model or celebrity model of podcasting. I've been really critical of that from the beginning. It's the opposite model of what we built here. We have built all our monetization and incentive systems and everything here at Poditize to be the opposite of that. So I kind of wanted to go over what that means.

Fake Famous is a documentary on Netflix and Fake Famous is talking about how you create an influencer on Instagram. So lots of people out there think of Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, all of these places as these places to become influencers. Right? We wanna become influencers in that. And they lump podcasting into that, mainly because we have people like Joe Rogan who came out of that and became influencers. What we're really discounting in the fact is that they were already influencers actually somewhere else. Wanna take a look at John Lee Dumas. We wanna take a look at Pat Flynn, some of those people sort of hefty. And what I consider to be the godfathers of podcasting, right? They started out as bloggers first. They didn't start out in po. So we want to take a look at that from the perspective of that is really not how they became influencers. They already had an audience when they started podcasting. The podcasting exploded that and grew that. But they already had that to begin with. Joe Rogan had celebrity already and he had been a broadcaster and he had experience over there before he started his podcast. Now all of them have worked really hard on their show. They deserve absolute credit. Kudos for all of that they've done there. There is no question in my mind that they helped create the podcast economy that we're all operating within. So we have them to thank for that. But we want to take a look at that and saying how hard is it to create that influence today? So Libsyn has a number out there that says 1%. I think the industry standard was 2%. But Libsyn has probably the largest number of podcasts on their platform. And their number says that only 1% of all podcasts get monetized at an influencer style. At that advertising level, only 1% make enough money to break even on your show or greater. Right? That's really low. Think about that. That's really, really low. Now keep in mind that a lot of those influencer style shows are expensive to put together. So their break even point might be a little different than you DIYers out there. It's a little bit different model than what we operate under here. But that's still an interesting thought, right? If less than 1% can break into that and do that. And Joe Rogan is by far the most successful out of that group there. And my understanding is a lot of his audience also is on YouTube. So it's not really a solo podcasting platform. Model. Web's model, right. It's blogs, it's videos, it's the podcast. It's all of that put together that is really making their ecosystem of that greater value, not just the podcast, which is why Spotify is being downgraded. They're not making the ad dollars that they should. A lot of it was the purchase of anchor. And when they purchased anchor, they got a lot of, I'm going to say it, bad podcasters. They got a lot of people who came on the platform because it was free. And free is not really free, as we all know that. But in this case, the free brought in a bunch of users who didn't build quality shows. And so they didn't have the quality that they were on top of it. They spent all of their investment dollars paying people to pod, paying for advertisements that were fake advertisements that weren't really advertisers on their show, including that they would just play Spotify ads and anchor ads for a period of time. So people were barely making $50 a month. On some of that. So when you look at that model, it's like, is that worth all the time and effort that you put into podcasting to be making 50 bucks? And yet anchor went for 10x their value, because that's what they said. So they charged Spotify a 10x $140 million ton of money and then didn't really bring quality users, quality shows to the platform. That would have created a bigger, robust, greater than 1%. Only that 1% qualified on their platform as well. So that's not really a model that's sustainable.

So when we look at this influencer advertising model, I look at it and say, why would you want to work that hard? Why would you want to do that? And you don't get the fake follower boost that Instagram has. So the article on the show, the Netflix show Fake Famous, outlines the guy who started the documentary, picked three sort of actors and said, I'm going to make you fake famous on Instagram. And so what they set out to do is they basically ran all these photo shoots that were all faked. And that's really interesting and funny to take a look at how they faked them because, I mean, there's the scene where a girl, it looks like she's being photographed looking out a jet window, and it's actually a toilet seat. Literally a toilet seat. And by how it's cropped and lit and everything, you don't know that it's not actually a jet plane. It's got like a landscape image behind it. Right? So, I mean, it's truly faked. And so all of that is there. And then in addition, they bought fake followers. So they bought Instagram followers using bots and some other systems to boost their celebrity on Instagram. And at some point, it tipped and it worked. It tipped to those fake followers coming through. And because they had so much followership, some real followers were like, what are these guys doing? I gotta check them out. And now they got real followers in the process. So at some point it started, tip, tip the point, and there's a whole bunch of others goes down a rabbit hole of whether this is good or bad or why Instagram doesn't shut this down and what's going on there. But think about it from a podcast listening perspective, that won't work. Look, there are programs out there. I've seen them. I see people sending me messages on LinkedIn all the time, offering to get me listeners for my show. And that's great if your model is, I want to show up on the new and noteworthy. And that's all I care about, is the cachet of saying I was there once. However, the problem with that is, is that you can't sustain listenership from fake followers, right? Fake listeners don't listen. So if they're not listening to your show, they're not buying anything. They're not referring your show, they're not recommending it to anyone else. It's not really growing. There isn't a boost model where it does more than put you on the first page of Apples search engine and that's it. And most people, over 60% of the people who are looking for new shows don't use that search engine, don't use that new and noteworthy or the best in the business class or entrepreneurship or whatever that is in the category. They don't use that to determine what show they're going to watch next. Instead they ask their friends, they go look on Google and they Google it. So they look at articles that are written about the best, they get referrals from different people, they hear someone speak and then they follow them and they listen to their show. So it's not a model by which it's going to catch fire and create that sort of Instagram influence. Podcasting doesn't have that built into the system. So really the only choice at the end of the day we have is to be authentic about how we do it and to truly look for real listeners who are going to add value, real listeners who are in our category who, who are going to become our clients. And the 99% of us out there making money off of our podcast are making money off of our things that we want to sell core. So whether it's our books, our programs, our masterminds, our courses, whatever it is, our products, some of us have products, right? Whatever it is that we want to sell in that model, that's what we're really looking to get. And having freak followers isn't going to help you do that. So spending time and energy on faking it as a podcaster is not the win. The win comes from truly getting followers who find value and then share you and they tell their friends. So podcasting has built into it an incentive for more authentication, for making sure that also you can sustain this week after week and talk knowledgeably about what you're doing and be that true type of high value influencer, not a fake one.

So that's what I'm encouraging you about today is sort of take this lesson and say, I'm going to worry less about the hacks on how to get more listeners. And I'm going to worry more about making sure I'm in front of the right audience as much as I can, whether that's through articles, whether that's through making sure I'm posting in social groups that are relevant to the right type of people that I want to drive to my show, whether it's also sharing out in your own social platforms and asking people to share you. So incentivizing your audience to do some sharing. We have some great tips from various podcasters that have done that, running contests. There are other ways to go to get real listeners that are going to come back again and again, binge on your show, listen to everything you have, and then buy everything you have to sell, which is extremely important. We want to really boost that active listener, that binge able listener. That's what I call it, the active listener, the one who's engaging in all that they can and want more from you. So I love podcasting because it's sort of built in to level that playing field where you really can't fake it anymore. You might have been able to fake it before, you might have been able to because there wasn't as many shows. And to show up on that first page, it was like the way to find it. But it just doesn't work like that right now. And so we really want to look at it from this perspective of being able to say, hey, I'm an authentic podcaster. I work hard for my audience. I'm putting in my time to make sure I build great shows, great guests, sharing in all these places and participating and engaging in all those places. It's a lot of work being a podcaster. And that work deserves the reward of good listenership. And that's why the reciprocal relationship, when I'm invested in my audience and providing them tremendous value, they come back and listen again and again. Because I'm that resource, I'm that podcaster, I'm that girl who has the answers for them. And that's how we find that sort of residual value over time. So anyway, just a short little thing on how to really grow your show through authenticity and just kind of some tips about that today. And hey, don't forget to go to the blog post for this episode and check out that article about fate, famous in Wired magazine as well as go check it out on Netflix. Tom and I will be back together next week. When he's back, he's actually out at an event. Imagine that. So he's going to be back next week and we'll be doing another episode of Feed your Brand.

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