How To Create Bingeworthy Content With Tracy Hazzard From The Recognized Authority Podcast With Alastair Mcdermott

So when you're starting out, it's okay to use the platform heels, then get yourself a little mini stage and then get a bigger, broader stage. And right, you're constantly building up that authority over time. So whatever you're going to go in to do, look at it as a long term, long tail thing that you're going to do that it's going to continue to build on. Welcome to the Recognized Authority, a podcast that helps specialized consultants and domain experts on your journey to become known as an authority in your field. Since you can increase your reach, have more impact and work with great clients, here is your host, Alistair McDermott.

I want to take a moment to read out a review that I recently got on Apple Podcasts. Alistair is a great guy who is eager to help. This comes through loud and clear on his show. He is one of those rare interviewers who ask the questions you'd ask if you were there. I especially enjoyed the episode with Norbert Schwartz about audio quality. Mind Blown. And that is from En Junkie on Apple Podcasts. Thank you so much for that. It's really nice of you to say that. I really do try and ask the questions that I think my listeners will want to hear and I really am eager to help people. And yeah, the audio quality stuff with with Professor Schwartz is insane. So thank you so much for leaving that review. And for anybody else out there, you can leave a review in your favorite podcast app. If you click on the link in the show notes, it will actually bring you to leave a review in whichever guest apps that you use on your phone or whatever your listening device is. So thanks again. It really is encouraging for me to read those reviews and also it does help to rank the podcast up the charts and get more listeners. So I would really appreciate if you could take a moment to do that. That link is in the show notes, so thanks and on with the show.

So today my guest is Tracy Hazzard. Tracy is a seasoned media expert. She has over 2600 interviews, articles in Authority Magazine, Buzzfeed Inc. Magazine column. You have eight podcasts including the Binge Factor, which I'm going to talk about in a minute. And actually, ironically, I was kind of binging on the binge factor recently. Feed your brand and a whole bunch of other ones. I'll ask you about those later on. And Tracy's big into podcasting and so I'm, I'm delighted to nerd out about that a little bit. And I just want to put some context on discussion about podcasting because I'm Sure. There's somebody saying, oh, he's got another podcaster on. One of the reasons why I think podcasting is so important is because what we're doing, when we're building authority, one of the important things that we do is putting content and putting our views out into the world. And I think that, you know, that that content is really important. And podcasting, I think, is. Is one of those really crucial kind of vehicles or really crucial channels that you can use, particularly because podcasting builds so much trust. And so I do think it's a really important thing to consider doing if you're trying to build your authority, is to start a podcast. So y. With. With that context in mind, Tracy, welcome to the podcast.

Thanks for having me. The recognized authority. How could I not want to go on a show named that?

Awesome. So I have been binging on the binge factor, and so I want to talk to you about that because I think that's a cool podcast name. It's a. It's a. It's a really great concept. And can we just talk about, like, what the binge factor is in the context of. Of this type of content?

Well, early on, when I started my very first podcast, which was a geeky little show on 3D printing called WTFF, which stands for Fused filament Fabrication. Really, really geeky, engineering focused show, like, design focused. Totally weird. And we started that eight years ago. And when we started it, we would get people who would message us. They'd send us a tweet, or they'd email us, and they'd say, hey, I've been binging on your show all weekend. I got to number 50 and I have a question. And because we always ask them if they have questions to reach out. And so I thought the first time it happened, I thought, you're binging on me. Like, what does that mean? And then after a little while, I thought, someone's listening to me for 50 episodes in a row. Are you sure you want to do that? Like, I couldn't listen to myself for 50 episodes in a row. But that's what they were doing. And it's because they were massively trying to learn something, so they were cramming it in. And so that's what we do when we want to gather knowledge. We binge on. And my dad does this all the time. He'll go to the bookstore and he'll buy three to four books on the subject matter so that you're covering it, the gamut of what you want to learn and what you want to absorb. And now we have such easy consumption. I mean, podcasting is so easy to consume. We can listen to it on double speed. We can skip through really fast. We can skip around and choose episodes that interest us, go back and then go to the others. So it's so easy today with the way we consume media. And podcasting is just one of the most simple ways to consume that. So that's how the term bingeability came about. But what we realized that was the most critical factor was when someone binges on your content, they come back and they ask for more. They buy from you, they ask for more, they ask questions, they participate. So the bingers on your show, the people who are bingeing listening to you, they are the ones that are going to become your best customers.

Really interesting. Yeah. And I guess, you know, binging on, on shows has become a thing since the streaming services started up. And, and you know, Netflix released a season of a show for the first time, whatever that, that, that first show that they, that they did, where they released an entire season, and then they realized, hey, somebody has watched this in a weekend or somebody has watched this in, in a single night, you know, if they're big fans of a show. And, and you know, it, I think it changed, it changed the way that some people consume or it just showed people that this is the way that people want to consume some of this. So.

I think noticing and doing that is really interesting. And so you have. So how many episodes of the binge factor do you have now?

Over 120, something like that. Over 120 of the binge factor. But the binge factor actually was a spinoff from feed your brand. So we still have feed your brand in its own entirety. It's over 150 episodes on its own. So really out of the two shows, we are probably getting pretty close to 300 episodes.

Wow. Okay.

Yeah. So the binge factor was my interviews with successful podcasters, sort of identifying their binge factor. And as I started to do that, we realized it should be its own entity so people could consume it separately from the tips. Because we were noticing in our stats a skip around. So we would see that the tactics sometimes had double the amount of listens that the interviews did. Which makes sense because if you're trying to learn something really quick, if you're trying to get skill up on your podcast or figure out how to podcast or whatever that is, you're gonna consume the tactics in a much more concerted way. And then the interviews are. Yeah, you know, it's nice to know. I'd like to hear what other people are doing, but it's a little bit more casual, a little bit more. You know, I would say you maybe don't binge on all of them. You sort of binge on some, then you listen regular. And so what we do end up having is very regular listeners over there. Steady growth.

Really interesting. So.

I want to ask you about the different types of content and the tactics versus interviews and solos and things like that. But let me ask you first, what are the actual binge factors that you're seeing over and over again? What are the. You know, I'm sure you have some number of them that keep repeating. Can you go through some of those and be interesting to talk about how those apply to podcasts and maybe they might even apply to other types of content as well.

Yeah, you know, I feel pretty lucky that every time I do an interview, there's always something unique I can say about them because everyone has such a different show. So it's always like a twist on something. But you're right, there are ongoing patterns and themes. And one of the most consistent ones that I think is the most valuable is that when somebody is a deep expert in a particular area and they curate really well within that area, so they're choosing guests really well, or they're choosing their topics really well, or the way they ask their questions narrows in on what's the most valuable takeaways that you could be doing. Those people, I think have, that's their significant binge factor. And that's a very clear pattern to a successful show. So that's probably the biggest one that I see again and again. The next one might be something more along the lines of, I would say someone who is very entertaining in the way that they do something, maybe they have a little comedic flair to them, or sometimes when I get co hosts, the interplay between the two is fun and it keeps you engaged. So those are probably the two most significant ones that I see again and again and again.

Yeah, and I've noticed that my favorite podcast, going back actually to podcasts that I listened to in 2005, that, that they were podcasts that had co hosts who had fun with each other and kind of had good banter. So co hosting is really hard.

So when it's done right, you'll. You'll love it. It's very interactive.

Yeah. And like one of those podcasts, like they had an hour long podcast episode and they had 15 or 20 minutes of just kind of it was banter that wasn't directly related to the topic all the time. And, and, you know, it's. It's really interesting that they managed to pull that off. I think that was what really first got me interested in podcasting when I was listening to that show, which, by the way, was called Boeg World. It's no longer. I think they ran it for about 15 years, but they don't run it anymore.

Well, my very first show was with my partner and husband Tom, and so we were co hosts there. There was this nice interplay between a male and a female voice, so the voices didn't overlap, which really is helpful. So if your voice and your co host voice sound too small, similar, it's not a good thing because people get confused. But so the clarity of having the gender difference really helped. And then my role was to play the role of the novice, of the one who needed to make Tom explain the techie details. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, wait, There's a lot of people out there who don't understand that. Go ahead and explain it. So even though I didn't have enough knowledge to be dangerous in 3D printing, my job was to make sure we actually explained it in plain English to everybody. And.

At the end of the day. And then my also role in that was to prep and really ask great questions of the guests, because that's kind of one thing I'm really great at is interviewing and asking good questions. And so. And then Tom would interject and can go for like, let's expand on the techie details here. And so it was like he would geek out and I would keep things on track and it was fun and people liked that. And then every so often we would disagree and when we disagreed, we got so much comments when people would side with one of us and like, it was. It was really actually fun. And if you, if you really knew us, you'd know, like, any kind of disagreement was never anything heated between us. It's like, you know, truly a debate. Like, you know, a real gentleman and lady debate.

Yeah. And, you know, it's. It's hard when you're interviewing experts, particularly if they are.

How would I put it? If they've been experts and seen as experts and authorities for a long time, it's very hard as an interviewer to disagree with them, particularly, you know, when they've written multiple books and they've got all of that kind of thing. And there have been a couple of times where I've just plain disagreed And I've tried to bring that in, and there have been times when I just didn't because it wasn't right.

And we could always do that in our. In our clothes, together, because we'd be just saying, you know, like, I hear that, and I really see how that could work for some people, but. But it doesn't work for us, and here's why. And, like, then we'd go into it, or Tom would take that person's position, and I would take the opposite, and it really helped us to be able to explore, like, without being rude about it.

Yeah. Yeah, that's brilliant. I love that. I think, you know, the entertainment factor that you're talking about here, I think it's really important. And this is something I've mentioned before when I was talking to somebody about YouTube, but it's something that I did a. A training course on. On YouTube with. With it's Video. Video Academy, Tim Schmoyer's company. But what really struck me was that I need to make my educational content more entertaining, and that. That was the biggest takeaway I took from. From the whole thing. Like, they. They got real nerdy and into the details on stats and all that kind of stuff and retention graphs and all that kind of thing.

Well, especially in video, when you really have, like, if you don't capture them, like, every minute people drop off, like, that's the stat. And it's crazy. At least in podcasting, we get a little more leeway. Like, they start up a show and they listen through more.

I think so, Yeah. I think. I think there is a bit more. And I. I also think that it's. It's a different type of consumption, I think, in part because people are usually doing something else while listening to podcasts. They're driving or they're at the gym or they're doing chores in the house or gardening or something like that, going for a walk. So I. I think that we get a bit more time before they hit next or pull up their podcast app and start searching.

Well, there's this really great thing, you know, that I don't know if you have that TV show over an island, but the Voice. Have you ever seen the Voice?

I have seen that. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. So the Voice is like the blind audition singing version, right? So the judges can't see who's singing. Well, that's the same thing with podcasting, is that our listeners don't have a visual of us, so they haven't made any of those preconceived notions of what we're like, who we are, whether or not they will listen to us. Right. Like, the visual actually interferes with our ability to take in content. And so when we don't use the visual and we're just using the audio version, we actually, their brain is giving us more grace and giving us that time to judge it, to make those decisions. And so that's working for us as well because our eyes make our mind judge just too quickly on people. And so that's one of the really best things about podcasting. And so early on, we didn't do video at all. In our first show for about the first two years, we would do, like, little video clips of, like, the machines running or prints that we made, but we didn't do it of us. And so the very first time we'd use livestream and we live stream out some longtime listener types in the chat and writes in the comments. Wow, I didn't know you looked like that. And I said, look like what? Like, what did you think we looked like? He said, well, Tracy, I thought you were taller. And Tom, I thought you had more hair. And I said, I'm very sure that I think I'm taller than I am. And I'm very sure Tom believes he has more hair. So we're all good in our perceptions, but it was such an aha. That this longtime listener never looked at a photo of us. I mean, it's all over our website. They could have, but they never did. They were just listening and had no idea we looked like that.

That's. That's amazing. Yeah, it is really interesting. Like, I'm still fascinated by the fact that somehow people.

Listening to audio builds more trust than watching video. And I don't get it. Because you've got more signals with video. I still don't understand why that. Why that works, but it just seems to be the case that.

So Malcolm Gladwell was on. Had started his podcast and. And he had just started it and hadn't written a book. And he was on the Stephen Colbert late night show. And he said, you think with your eyes, but you feel with your ears. And that's the difference. We're going straight into feeling instead of into thinking. So we're not overthinking things when we're listening to someone. And that's how trust builds faster because emotion and trust are connected.

Really interesting. Yeah. And like, that's ultimately why it will. People listening to this show and why I'm doing this is because we want to build trust, because that trust is what we're substituting for the personal referral. And that's, you know, we're trying to scale past that or avoid having to do, you know, in person networking and that kind of thing. So we're creating content in order for it to create trust. Like that's, that's the reason we do this. That's ultimately why content marketing works and authority marketing works is because we're creating trust. So, yeah, that's a really crucial point. So I think that this is fascinating.

You know, there's this thing of what we consider as to being showing care for our audience. If we show care for others, benevolence is the term that you would use. But care, if we show care first and we're putting our audience first, we're putting what's in your best interest first. If I do that, then I build trust faster than me saying, I'm an expert, I'm an authority. I don't have to say that if I'm out there putting out things that are useful to you.

Yeah, absolutely. And in fact, I think that you specifically can't say that you're an authority. I think that you can't self ordain. I think it has to be somebody else. Now you can say things like somebody else should say.

You're absolutely right.

Yeah. And I think that's where the recognized part comes from. It's other people are recognizing that you're an authority. It's not that you're, you know, it's not that you're recognizing that you are. And in fact, like there are lots of people who are experts at something but don't have any kind of external visibility. And I think that's the difference between the expert and the authority is the expert who doesn't have that external visibility is an expert, but is not an authority. I mean, if, if somebody else recognizes them, if somebody else, I mean, they might only be known to a handful of people, but if those are the right handful of people, you know, people with double PhDs in a topic and all this kind of stuff, you know, those kind of people, then, then it doesn't have to be a lot of people, but it just has to be external to yourself. So, but that's getting a bit, that's getting a bit into the weeds on that stuff. So let's talk about, let's talk about curation, because you mentioned that people have to be deep experts and that they curate. Sorry, what you said was you noticed this as a binge factor. People who are deep experts, deep expertise in a field and that they curate really well. Can you talk about what that is like when you say that they curate.

Really well, meaning that they know what's important, so they're going in for the most important thing that they can learn from something. And it's part of it is I think if you're curious, and I love curiosity, I think if someone's curious, they can make a great podcaster, they can do great content. Because if you're asking a question, you're actually probably in the same position as your audience. You might be a year ahead of them or two years ahead of them, but you're still asking the questions that they're going to get to at some point, so you understand that. So when you're asking questions yourself and you're saying, what do I think of this and who's an expert in it that I could ask? Now you're talking about what curation is like, right? Who can I bring on so I can learn some more, so I can get an answer to this question for myself and my audience? And when you look at it from that perspective, you're out there seeking answers, and that's really what people are doing, right? When we're searching on Google, when we're out there searching for a podcast or content that is teaching us something, even if we want it to be edutaining, we still want to learn something in the process, right? We want to have takeaways. When we are in that mode, we're always out there asking a question. We may not have it totally formulated as a question, but it is a pondering of something. And so if you're doing that in your curation process, in how you select guests and how you select topics, then you're right on. You're right in that place that your audience wants without you having to be so conscious of it. Sometimes we get the professors, and the professors are not necessarily experts. They're great at teaching, and they're great at simplifying things down to like A, B, C, D. You know, you do it in this order. That's great for a course, but that's not really great for a podcast, because a podcast is a meandering. Right. I might go down a rabbit hole of something, and I might want to dive deeper into some other area. And so if you're curating in that way, mode of yourself, you actually will be doing this because curiosity leads you down the paths you need to go, then you get back on track and you go back down. But when you do something that's completely Ordered. And our brains go, yeah, I'm learning something. And it feels excruciating. Right. It feels like I'm in school and we don't want that. And that's when the entertainment part is missing. And that's why curiosity and curation actually does better. And it's okay that it's out of order. That's what your book is for. Later, if they wanted an order and they want to learn, that's why you have a book and you have a course that you also sell.

Yeah, that's really interesting. I know that in, in the world of copywriting and copywriting for sales pages and things like that, for online, I know that the word learn is a bad word. You know, you never want to tell somebody that you're going to teach them something or that they're going to learn something. It's always going to be that they're going to uncover or discover, gain knowledge. Yeah, because discover, discovering something doesn't sound like you've put a lot of effort in, whereas learning sounds like you're going back to school. And these, I, I guess like there's, there's the subconscious associations that these words trigger, you know, but that's really interesting. I hadn't really thought about that because I, I do try and make these podcast episodes as actionable as I can. Like, like, I do like to get straight into the details and, and.

And you know, almost make it like a masterclass. That was how somebody described it, which was really interesting way they said like the podcast episode was like a masterclass in whatever the subject was. And I really like that. But I also get, get what you, you mean about this meandering aspect because that's really interesting. Like what, what? Like I've got a whole an A4 sheet full of notes and I've got it like 3/4 full already from things that you've said so far. But.

Well, and this is the thing, your audience would be mad at you if you didn't ask the follow up question because you followed your rules. Right. You're going in order. You're trying to do that. If you didn't follow the ask that good follow up question, your audience would lose interest in the way that you ask questions. And they go, find me somewhere and find me telling the answer to that question they wanted answered. Right. So you'd lose them in the process. So that's not, you know, that's why we want to stay in that place of our own curiosity and go with it.

Yeah, yeah, really interesting. And. But what I Was also thinking there is like, I've got about six different things I could ask you next. That's it. That's the other. That's the other thing.

That's the other part.

Right.

So then we end up with a longer show.

Yeah. And, well, this is one of the reasons why I like the longer format show because I can ask more of those questions. So. Yeah, so let me see. Let's go back to something we were talking about earlier, and you were talking about how you had tactics and interviews separate and people would consume it separately. You saw higher numbers on the tactics. Can you, can you just describe what was going on there and what you were learning from it?

Well, so our community, so I have a company called Potatise, right. And Poditizes, the largest post production house of podcasting in the country, in the U.S. and so we have over 1,000 shows on our platform. And so our own clients use our podcast as a knowledge base and they share it with other people who ask them, oh, you know, what do you, how do you do this for podcasting? They're like, oh, Tracy and Tom have a episode on this. You should take, you should go listen to feed. You'd brand. And so that's kind of how it's gotten shared and how it gets out there. But the reality is that it's really the blog that is what works for us. And the blog is what gets people into the episode and into the podcast and it comes through that direction. Because when you think you have an issue, like you don't know how to handle something in podcasting, like, let's say you're having a syndication problem with Apple, Apple's about to have an outage and not a lot of people know about it. And the last time they had an outage, like, shows disappeared. So what do you do? Right? And so what are you going to start doing is you're going to Google that and the chances are good Apple hasn't caught up with it. They're dealing with the problem of the outage that they haven't caught up with and don't have an answer for that. So Google's going to serve you up somebody else who has an answer on what happens when your show disappears off of Apple. And so what do I do when my show's gone on Apple podcasts? Like, however you type it in, you will end up with our episode showing up as one of the top three. And usually our episodes show up in the top ten of any kind of topic. And when that happens, you're going to say, well, that's not put out in an ad. That seems like a trustworthy source. It came from a podcast that's all about podcasting. Let me check this out. You click on the blog, you go listen, watch the video, learn what you need to do, fix your problem, and then you're thinking to yourself, what else don't I know about podcasting? Now you subscribe and you become a listener and you're into it. That's how we get into people. We aren't really pitching our podcast out there. I mean it happens and it's getting referred and it's out there and I'm on shows like yours and people will say, oh, I'll subscribe to feed. You'd brand. That's exactly what I was looking for. But it's less likely that that's going to happen than it is that somebody's going to have a problem. And I've got a solution for that. And that's the blog issue. So unfortunately what we say is not documented unless we document it.

Right? So you're bringing the blog into it there and you're talking about the tactics. So does that mean that.

Those episodes and those blog posts are very much focused on a single problem and that it's designed in order to help answer that question, in order to rank for search engine optimization? Is that the strategy?

There's the strategy is that yes, it's taking what wonderful things you've said on your show and whether it's an interview or a tactic based show, doesn't matter. What I can tell you is that over doing this for a thousand clients, that the real power, the reason they don't quit their shows, the reason that they are getting clients a traffic and monetization in the non ad style of monetization is because of other blog posts. But if I told them I was a blogging company, they'd be like, nope, not going there. I have blogs that are old. But we're a podcasting company that adds blogs, social media, graphics, video, like adds the whole gamut of repurposing, right, of redistributing content from one single source of recording. And that's actually what really works. The fact that it has the multimedia types and the fact that this is finally reduced to a blog. Now we don't call it a blog, we call it a verbal SEO article. So it's a verbal SEO article and we would call it a power page. In the old days of blogging, if you come from the content, if anyone's out there from The SEO days, we called them power pages. And power pages were anything with 5,000 words or more. But your show that's an hour long is going to be at least 6 to 10,000 words. So you have a super power page instantly, no matter what. There's questions and there's answers. And so if you make your questions a heading or one of those title size, a subheading three or a two, and then you put what I say right below that as the answer to the question without saying Tracy colon, Alistair colon, like you're not doing that. No timestamps, not a true transcript, but making it more of a blog style, what you're going to end up with is this power page that Google's going to recognize as what they believe a blog should be. But because it's in the spoken word, because everything is said and phrased as I said it, Google recognizes that as not bot, right? There are a lot of articles that Google questions and says, is this a bot that wrote that? Is this an AI that wrote that? But with our speech pattern, that never happens. And so not only is it getting lots of PowerPoints because it's such a long blog and Google loves more content, right? They just love, I mean, I mean, the bots over there love more. And it's the pattern of that voice really works. And so those things are the things you don't. People mess up. Like they think, oh, I'll take my podcast, I'll turn it into show notes or transcript, and I'll make it really easy for someone to find what they're looking for by putting time codes and doing all of that. And I say, don't do it because it's not sticky, right? I want them to go searching through that blog. I want them to take five minutes because the more time they spend on that, that page, the more bonus points with Google I get too. We always put our bullet points and the things at the bottom of it, so they at least have to scroll through the whole page to get to it. Now, my clients and my frequent listeners know that they're going to scroll to the bottom, but they still got to scroll through 10,000 words to find it.

So all of those points are going to add up. We add images and break up text because it's too much otherwise. You got to make it look good, too. But it's really there for the bot, not for humans. They'll stop at the podcast and listen.

So do you do that for all of your shows?

Every single show that we manage and produce on our diy system. We teach them how to do it, but they have to do it themselves.

Right. Okay, so I'm just looking at a random selected post that I picked from Feed your Brand just to see, because the way that I do the episode pages, I do have that transcript with timestamps, and I've got the show notes. And so I think of that as like the show notes page or the episode page. And it has links to, you know, if you click on the link for this episode, it'll have links to Tracy's bio. Any books we mentioned will be linked there as well. All of those kind of things. But Tracy's episode is. Is different because it's like. I can see it. It's like a blog. Yeah. You've formatted, you've taken it out and, And. And turn it into like a blog post. Yeah, it's really interesting. And do you do much editing on that or do you just take the transcript?

No, we really do. So, I mean, the first level is an AI that does it. Right. That's the first round that we do it. Then we have three people who. Three human beings who touch it after that. So someone who will edit it so that if I say the words twice or I repeat a phrase, it'll delete the repeats out because you don't want to have that. That repetition's too much. And so it'll take that out.

And then the third will be formatting it in the style that looks like it should go for the blog. And then the final pass is as we put it and insert it into the blog. Someone's actually listening to the podcast and making sure that they take out anything that was edited out. So if it was edited out by the audio editors, they'll Removing it at. At that time.

Really interesting. Yeah, yeah. And. And I, you know, there's a lot of. There's a lot of work there.

This is a lot of work.

This isn't true.

It's the lion's share of what we do, really.

But it's also power. You have 100 episodes that you've already produced. You can go back and put blogs in for all hundred of those episodes at any time. So you can do one a week, one a day, whatever pace you want. The faster you do it, the more power you get for your website. Faster. But you can pace yourself out and be doing one of your new episodes and one of your old episodes every week, that kind of thing, and be filling your website and be ranking higher and higher on Google organic keywords and organic traffic. And you're gonna actually get people who are extremely interested in what you have and what you're offering, and they're going to find you your show. Our shows increase in volume and listeners because of it. Like, everything is a direct relationship to that blog going into place. And so we see it because we renovate shows all the time. People who have 100 episodes or more who come into us and we do it, and when we do it, we see an immediate result 30 days later.

That's. That's really interesting. Yeah, I'm just looking through. I picked another couple of. Just to see how it's done. And is. Is there, like. Is that a heavy edit or is it just a light edit to remove those, like, repeated words which are common? Yeah, all that kind of stuff.

Yeah, it's. It's a light edit. Unless we had sections edited out. Like, that's the only reason, you know, so you could wait. We just don't wait because we try to produce our podcasts in seven to 10 days for all of our clients, from video to audio, to blog to social share graphics, so that they have everything ready to publish in 10 days. And because of that, we overlap the audio editing and the start of the transcript because it does take the longest to get that blog produced. And so that's why our final pass is to cut out any edited sections. And we do have a process. Like our team, our audio editing team is alerting them to large sections, so they'll see it. They just have to actually delete it.

Yeah. So what you're doing is you're really cranking up the SEO aspect, the kind of the audience, not just audience, the traffic growth, getting new people in to see content.

So, yeah, that's we're making visible. You know, you talk about that, you know, we're making visible what was said. And that's the big issue, is that because today our world is controlled by a bunch of bots. There's search engine optimization on Google. Yes, we all are very familiar with that term. But there's search engine optimization on Apple, on Spotify, on all of the podcast players. That's a search engine in and of itself, and it can only search on what's listed as the description of the episode, the description of your show, the titles. That's it. It's all it has to go on. And your name, of course, the name of your show and your name, but that's it. So unless they know you or they type in what is in your title, chances are most people didn't put Much of a description in for anything. Their show description or their episode description. And because of that, they're not as searchable. Those topics that you're talking about are. You know, sometimes people put cute titles. Right. Like that's the thing. Because you think. You think this is entertainment. Podcasting is entertainment, but the search engine doesn't work like that.

Yeah.

So entertainment's good and it's catchy if you've got a human being looking at it. But if it's not even getting in front of that human being, catchiness isn't helping.

Yeah. I had a friend who had a podcast, and she had, I think, 40 episodes, and they were all interviews, and all of her episodes were called A Conversation with and then the guest name, and that was it. And I showed her the. What it looked like the preview in my podcast app, and it was just a conversation with. And then.

Yeah, you never saw that.

He never saw it.

So I was like, oh, my God. Right. I've got to change this, you know?

Well, so we actually recommend to everyone, when you're titling, don't use episode numbers. Actually, Apple recommends you don't do it anymore. People still do, but don't use episode numbers. And we always put the guest name at the very end. So actually you don't see it, because if somebody were to type in my name into the search engine that is Apple, and they were looking for shows with me, your show is going to show up because it is in the title. But they aren't really looking for that initially. They want to know what did. They don't know me. So what did we talk about? So we always put the topic first. And if you want to have a cute, catchy title, we do Cute, catchy, two words, colon, and then the hefty description, that tells you what that means.

Right. The more SEO, which. Which is usually you know how to do something or you know something very how to.

Right.

Yeah. Usually people. That's what people are searching for, is they're searching for the question that they want answered.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, in other words, like conversation, like, you're just using that there. People don't type that in because if we're listening to podcasts, chances are good we're listening on our phone. So we'll type in convoy convo. Chat. Yeah, Right. We won't. If we were to type in that phrase, we'd never use a long word like conversation.

Yeah, yeah, talk.

Right. Like, we would use those phrases. So you also have to simplify your words and not be. So you Know so much of a professor about it. Right. Like, let's not be using the good vocabulary is not helpful in search engine optimization.

Right. Right. So, okay, one other thing that you mentioned, you called, you said interview show or tactic based show, which was really.

Interesting because topic is a lot more common. People say it, but I like it as tactic. I want them to take away, use it and tell other people they used it. Right.

Is that like when you're saying that, is that a solo monologue style show? Is that what you're talking about?

It can be. It doesn't have to be. It could be you and someone else who is solving a problem together. So. So a lot of times we'll go, Tom and I will do show together where we're giving two sides to something, like two ways to do it. So that can work as well. It's focused on a topic or doing something, a how to. Right. And that's really why I call it tactics. Because when I got my column for Inc. Magazine, so INC Magazine reached out to me because I had the podcast in 3D printing and I gave a speech in LA. And so I got the speech because I gave a podcast and the speech was about pricing 3D prints, like pricing services and pricing your models and things like that. I mean, super tactical at the end of the day, really nitty gritty. And the editor of this new section of the magazine, the innovation section, saw me and she reached out to me and said, this is what I want. I want nitty gritty. I want people to read our magazine and not have it be esoteric commentary philosophy on design and on and 3D printing and disruptive technology. I want it to be, how do you use this in your business and do something with it? I want it to be tactical. And so that really got me started in saying, if INC. Magazine wants something like this, then this is really what people are seeking because they know they're gonna make a lot more ad dollars off of it. They know there's money to be made there in solving the tactical problems and getting into the nitty gritty. And so that's why I've always dove deep into that area.

Right. And. And so this is where I use my podcast as a way to get free coaching. So absolutely. One of the best things about having a podcast, being able to ask all these experts for their advice on specific things. So. And you have a podcast, so I'll be interested to see what your answer is on this one. One of the things that I've tried to do a little bit is to. So this, this show is about building authority. When I bring on a guest, I'm usually showcasing them as an authority. We can try and make it as conversational as possible, but ultimately they're on the pedestal. And that's the way that a conversational interview podcast goes with a co host show. Usually the two, the two co hosts are both kind of building their authority. You'll see that in the two Bob show. David C. Baker and Blair Enns, they're both experts, but they don't have the networking impact of having a new guest every time. So they already have huge networks anyway. So those guys are fine. But I'm really interested in adding some sort of solo segment to my show or spinning that off as a separate show and having like a solo, separate show. I'm just wondering, how would you think about that? Should I incorporate like solo episodes into this podcast or should I start a new separate, separate podcast for that?

Well, so we invented our system, our poditized system, our hosting platform has multi feeds just for this purpose. Because you might need to spin off, you might want to create a feed that's just a 101 series. You might want to create a feed like I did, take out a feed your brand and shift into the binge factor and make it its own thing. So we made it really simple and easy for people to create multi feeds and not have to go and register. I mean, you still have to register and syndicate your show, but you don't have to go register and get a brand new account. You can manage it all in one one. You can look at all your shows and see all your stats together. So that's one of the reasons we did a tactic to be able to solve this problem was because we don't know if it's going to be a good idea. So what I like to do is get started because I don't want to start a show with just one episode. It's a lot of work to market a new show. So what I like to do is start the idea for a new show and I might call it a segment. So like I started calling it the binge factor before it was the binge factor. And so I might start it as a segment and do it as its own separate show. And so do it as a bonus episode each week for a month or two months until you get eight episodes under your belt. Now you say, wow, let me see how well listened those shows were and let me make a few twists and a few adjustments to them. Now let me spin them off into their own thing. And so that's kind of how we do it is that we say, okay, now it's one worth spinning off and making it its own show because now you can consume it separately. And one of the ideas for you and because I've listened to your show and because we've already had an interview, you've been interviewed on the binge factor, that for you personally I recommend a short format show so that it's under 10 minutes. Do it on video, maybe do it live on LinkedIn or something like that. So you're utilizing it as a promotion piece keys and then utilizing that as a spin off show as well. You know, eventually a spin off show, but use it within your show, see how it does it actually might drive more traffic to the regular show by keeping it within. Some people find that happens and that spinning it off actually doesn't do as well for you. And that's the case if let's say you had a guest on and then your topic that you chose to cover was really a deep dive on something they said but didn't go into. Because. And it's like, well, how do I do this or why is this important and what can I accomplish with this? What's the benefit? To me that could be the show that you do as the secondary. And so your shows are tied together, the interview and the topic and then they go hand in hand. You wouldn't want to separate something like that, you'd want to keep them together. But having the different formats, 11 hour and 110 minute, that makes really a lot of sense to people. They'll easily see the difference between they can go binge listen to all 10 minute ones, they can skip through it. You know that they'll see that. So that's a tactic and a way that I would do that for you in particular, but for others out there as well is start it within your regular show. Because it's way more work to start a new show and get a new audience. So the only time that I really recommend like spinning it off is if you had a different audience. So if that was a totally different audience, then you want to spin it off, right? You really want to get it into a new place. And so that's part of why we did that with feed your Brand. Not only did we notice that the interviews weren't getting quite the same number of plays, so we didn't want it to overall adjust our when you look at the stats from the stats perspective, you don't want it to muddy the stats for us. But we also noticed that experienced podcasters listen to the success stories and new podcasters listen to the tactics. And so we can clearly differentiate who we're talking to by doing that. And then. So when I go out and give a speech to a podcasting audience, I give a speech and tell them about the binge factor. And when I give an audience to an entrepreneurial group who's really not that familiar with podcasting, I give them feed your brand as the option. And so it also gave me a way to segment how I market.

Right. Really interesting. And I love the distinction between the. The. Because it, you know, some people might think of that as the same audience, but it. And it might be.

It's. It's still niching down. Right. And I know you love that, so.

Certainly do. Yeah. And, and I do have this other podcast called the Specialization podcast, which is a static podcast. It's. It's got nine episodes now and it's, it's just standalone. Like I don't intend to update it very often, but it's like an audio course. Is there anything that you'd recommend that I do with something like that or just like I.

Well, yeah, with the multi feed strategy. That's one of the reasons is like if you wanted to have a course that you actually put behind a pay gate or if you wanted to have it on a special landing page, by creating a separated feed and just using those episodes in it, you can create a player that's just for that. And so you can really see how many people are consuming that. You can see the stats, you can really understand what that's happening. And in our podcast portal where we do our hosting, you can see your podcast stats and your website site stats side by side. So by separating them out, you could use just the landing page as your website and be able to watch how that's doing individually from your overall website, which you might be watching for the recognized authority instead. So you'll be able to see those stat differences all in one place and be able to watch its growth and see what's happening as you move forward. Then we also have players. I love our players. Our brand new player that hasn't even come out. Only our clients have seen it even yet. And we have tabs. So like my 3D print podcast has 650 episodes. That is way too much to consume and to scroll through and to pick episodes. And so we can put out a favorites group that is like the top 10 or 20 episodes. We can put out volume one, two, three. So they know what order to go in. You can do a special series like you have with the specialization, so you can kind of create them and then they're tabs on your main player. So those are some tactics that we like to use. Everything that we've developed and we do is really at getting a higher level of authority. But the real reason authority works is because they can find you. They're finding what they're looking for if they have to search too hard. Because you're a deep authority and you've got like, I've got, you know, in my bio, you read 2,600 articles. There's no way you're going to be able to go through that and figure out what's worth consuming. You're just going to go, I give up. It's overwhelming. Like, let's hope the search engine works and I'll type in my topic and let's hope it really works and pops up what I want. That might be the extent of what you do. It's too much information. And so when we can niche it down and we can get it really specific for the right audience, we solve their problems. Then they want to go deep, dive in, consume more, and they'll go through the rest of the stuff.

Yeah, yeah. Really interesting. I guess that's the same reason why YouTube have playlists and things like that, so that people can just go in on topics. Yeah, yeah. So I guess that that makes me think about, you know, playlists for my own podcast and because you talked about earlier about curation and that's another way of curating is just taking your own content and, you know, maybe categorizing the podcast episodes in some way. Because I like. For example, I have a lot of podcasts about specialization. I've got a lot of podcasts about podcasting, for example. I've got some about books. And I could categorize those down and make those easier to find. So that's interesting. That might be something I will look at, but I'm just very conscious of time. And thank you for sticking with me over the hour.

No problem.

And it's not an hour in the episode. It's just that we're past the top of the hour on our clocks here. You know that I have some questions I like to ask. So let me ask you, what is the number one tip that you would give somebody who wants to build their authority?

So the thing about authority is it's not an overnight thing. You have to be in it for the long haul. You really need to look at this as a continual building. So I like to. I used to do a stage presentation where I would show authority. I'm five two, I'm not very tall. And so at five two, a pair of platform heels does a lot. Right. So when you're starting out, it's okay to use the platform heels, then get yourself a little mini stage and then get a bigger, broader stage. And.

Right.

You're constantly building up that authority over time. So whatever you're going to go in to do, look at it as a long term, long tail thing that you're going to do that it's going to continue to build on. That's why I love what we do in podcasting so much because it's building all this long tail content for us, but we're also building out our domain authority, our web authority, our Google authority. Like all of those things are building at once. Our social media is being filled with all kinds of content topics. I mean, I could. My team has too many choices. They're always complaining about they could choose 10 clips instead of two. And I'm making them choose two because I think it's too much information otherwise. Right. And so they have plenty to fill our social media. So that's constantly being filled. So that is giving us authority and social proof over there as well. The connection to all the guests, weekly social proof of me with somebody else side by side talking about a subject matter that is in deep interest to my business and to the authority I'm building. So like, all of those things compound over time and what you'll find is that compounding actually adds to an acceleration later. You just got to give it time to put its framework in. So when I started one of my podcasts, I was asked to do a blockchain and cryptocurrency show. And I decided, well, I'll just do a podcast with it as well, because they're asking me to do all these interviews and write all these articles. I want to record the interview. So we called it the New Trust Economy. And we launched the New Trust economy in June 2018. Oh, no, I'm sorry, January 2018 and February 2018, I was asked to be on the Larry King show as an expert in Blockchain, of which I had only done about 25 interviews in that area and written articles about them. I was by no means an expert, but I wasn't going to tell the producer who's asking me to be on the show. And she specifically said, said, we want you because very few women Comment on this. And we want a woman, and we want you to do what you do best, which is make it in plain English, because Larry doesn't like things that are, you know, all techie and all talk about the industry. He wants it reduced down to stuff the audience can understand. And you seem to do that well. So that's why they were asking me on the show to explain things. So I was like, I can do that and that. So I got that with. And we really. I looked at the numbers on our podcast. I don't think we had a thousand listeners in one moment month, because we had just launched it, and we actually hadn't put any marketing effort into the podcast yet. It was coming, but we just launched it a little sooner than we had the marketing plan for it.

That's amazing.

But that compounds.

Yeah, the compound effect. Absolutely, 100%. And that's something that you see in the world of SEO. And you write one article, it doesn't make a difference. You write one article a month or one article a week, and that makes difference. That makes a difference over time.

Yeah. Consistent and constant. That's what we say here again and again to our clients and to ourselves, to be consistent and constant about it. And at minimum, what that means is weekly. One per week is consistent enough for all of the bots. Less than that is actually not worth it. It has diminishing returns.

Yeah. The other thing that's really interesting there is Larry King team didn't reach out to you because you were the world's expert in blockchain. They found you because they were looking for a woman, and they were looking for someone who could explain blockchain in plain English. And the podcast demonstrated that you could do that. And so that was it. You were actually the person they were looking for. It wasn't like, you know, you. You kind of blagged your way on or something, you know, but everything that.

We did is because you can find me really easily on Google. So when they Googled me and that's what they did, they were like, oh, she's written a Colin Frank magazine. And, like, all of those things added up to them saying, this is a good enough authority for us. This is exactly what we need.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Really interesting. Okay. Business mistakes and failures. Have you ever experienced one? And what can you tell us about it?

Oh, yes, of course I have. You can't be in business and not create, not have business mistakes. If you are. If somebody says that to you, they're totally lying. Like they're selling you something. Right. And so, no, of course, there have been tons of mistakes. And, you know, I mean, for us, we have, you know, had all kinds of mistakes in doing business with the wrong people. Like, that happens all the time. We take on the wrong clients, it becomes a big mistake. We learn how to do these things. You know, we recording mistakes, podcasting. Right. Like, you learn how to. How to simplify everything. What if you're not learning from those mistakes? So that's the problem that I see with a lot of people is that they're like, they blame something else. They don't take it as a learning experience. And so having a process for taking that in and saying, okay, so we spent $10,000 doing this marketing plan, and it absolutely fell flat on its face, like, okay, well, but what are we gonna learn from that? And so this is just a really recent example. This just happened to us this year. So we launched a Republic Crowdfund campaign. And Republic is one of those portals where you can do equity crowdfunding and you have to file with the sec. And it took us like, six excruciating months to get the program going, to get everything filed, to get it all ready, to get it launched. We launch and we have an unbelievably bad email open rate. And not with our clients, that works out fine. But in our general, our main list that we use, which is well over, I'd say, 50,000 people or something like that, unbelievably bad delivery and open rate. And that's because of the changes at iOS and a bunch of these things that had accumulated and happened in the amount of time we were prepping up, thinking we had this list to work with. If we had launched sooner, it wouldn't have happened. But because we launched after the 2022 New Year, all of these changes had taken place. And it was just. It went so badly that we weren't able to achieve the amount of sales or the amount of interest in our Crowdfund campaign. So that means not enough investors. And we were looking to go up to a million dollars. We ended up at 200,000. So we had to figure out how to pull out a win. And to compound all of that, the advertisements, an agency that we hired weren't working either, because Facebook ads weren't working, because the war started. Started. So, like, nothing worked as it was supposed to. Everything went wrong. And so all the money we had invested and spent was feeling wasted here. So how could we pull out a win? So we sat down and said, okay, here's our learnings here's what we're going to come take away from it, what still works and what can we do, and our client base still worked. So we said, okay, we're going to do a text campaign. We're going to do it and we're going to try to get over 300 investors. And whenever we hit over 300, we're closing the campaign. But we want to get 300 investors and we want 200 of them to be podcasters or our clients. And if we can achieve that, then we can come away with enough of a win, even though we didn't get what we were going for. So that's it. How can you turn what you've got into something that works for you, that still becomes. In this case, what we were looking for was investor social proof. Right? If I tell investors now, and this is working for us, as we're taking angel investors on, as I'm telling them and saying, hey, we did a crowdfund campaign. We did 200,000, and 200 of them were in the podcasting industry or our own clients who invested in us. And they think, well, I don't know enough about the podcasting industry, but that sounds like social proof to me. And so that gives us the credibility on something. So turn it around. Even if it's a loss. That's my one thing that we always try to do is figure out how we can pull a win, even a small one, out of it.

Yeah, I love it. Even a small win out of a loss. Yeah. Yeah. Very cool. Okay, I got a wrap. Can you tell me if there's a business book or some other kind of resource that's been important for you or something that you'd recommend for people?

Yeah, you know, I'm a huge, huge Shane Snow fan. I interviewed him on my show. He's one of the only non podcasters authors that I interviewed. So Shane Snow and I love dream teams. I love the way he talks about how you assemble your team, what you're gonna do. You know, it's just there's so much about the way that he talks about things and building it, and when I was talking about benevolence before and showing care. Benevolence, trust and then expertise, like if you go in that order. So benevolence, trust and skills, if you go in that order. That's true. Know, like, and trust, trust, that's the way it actually works, is giving it in that order. And he talks about building a team that can do that within itself to each other, and then externally to Your clients. And that is one of the books. I refer to it again and again. I give lectures on it, like on a piece and go tell people to read it. When I mentor people in our. We have a certified strategist program and I mentor them on business and help running a podcast business. I send them to read this book as an assignment as well, because they cannot build a team if they don't understand these fundamentals. Channels.

Right, right. Yeah. Looks really interesting. That's Dream Teams Working Together Without Falling Apart by Shane Snow.

That's right. How important is that today, right? When your team's remote too, right?

Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Really cool.

I have 108 team members around the world.

Wow.

So it's essential that we make our teams work. And this is one of the resources we use.

Yeah, that's. That sounds really interesting. I'm going to go check that out. I have a team of two.

It's okay. It doesn't matter how big it is. They have to work together. They have to function. Right?

Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so last question then is just. Are you a fiction reader? Do you read fiction books at all?

I do. I'm a huge fiction reader, so I read about 300 books a year between my business books and the fiction books that I read. But I definitely read a lot of fiction because. Because it helps my mind shut down. And there's something about fiction reading for me that actually improves what I've been mulling over. So if I'm agonizing over something, I switch to a fiction book and I let that fiction book kind of wipe my mind a little bit, make it easier. So I'm a big classics reader. I grew up. My dad.

Wanted to be an English professor. He turned out to be an engineer, but he wanted to be an English professor. So we were filled with. With, you know, Shakespeare and classics and all kinds of things. So I'm kind of a Russian lit geek and I love Dostoevsky and, you know, Chekhov and like the deep dark kind of mulling. I say it's fiction and then I should be taking it easy. And then they're so melancholy. Right. But I actually really like that. I like non happy ending books.

Right, okay.

Very interesting. Very interesting. I read about the same amount, but I think I read. I go a little bit lighter. I go more on the science fiction fantasy ended.

I do like that too, I have to say. Like, I mean, I guess for me, I probably will, you know, I'll watch more science fiction or those kinds of things. Watch more of that Then I read more of that, and that's just kind of it. But we are kind of space geeks here.

Yeah. Well, one thing you mentioned, like, just that it helps you to shut down. I see reading almost like a form of meditation for me, particularly because, like, when you're reading fiction, it. It forces your brain to concentrate on one storyline, and you kind of read it in. You read it in a sequential fashion, whereas when you read nonfiction, you tend to jump around more. And if I read a nonfiction business book, I won't go to sleep at night, so I can't.

Because your brain will start working on it, right? Yeah. And so that's. That's. Yeah, I always read fiction right before bed because the storyline, the characters, like, it does distract my brain. And it is like, I would agree with you, like, meditation.

And, you know, it didn't used to be that when I was a kid, reading would keep me awake. Like, I have to finish a book. And so I was one of those kids who would sneak under the covers with a flashlight reading. And, you know, luckily we have Kindles today. And, like, it just, you know, it's got the black light behind it. No one else cares that I'm reading. The dog doesn't care. Tom doesn't care. And I can read and then say, okay, now I'm done. I'm ready to fall asleep.

Yeah, I did the same. And I actually. This is. This is crazy. I had a little Sony tape player, like a. But you could tune it into an FM station and a little red light would come on if it was tuned in properly. And I used to use that little red light to read because people to.

Know I was reading, so your parents would know. I love it.

That's really, really nerdy. Anyway, I'm just embarrassing myself on the podcast now, so that's great. That's the great thing about the podcast. So, Right.

Podcasts you can listen to passively and no one knows.

Okay, Tracy, where could people find you if they're interested in learning more about potatoes and they want to check out? Can you list off some of your podcasts for us?

Yeah, absolutely. They can find me, of course, on potitize.com, which is where you'll find links to feed your brand and the binge factor. But you can go into any player and type in my name, and it's Tracy Hazard with two Z. And when you type in Hazard with two Z's, you will find all of my podcasts. So there's ones on blockchain, there's ones on 3D printing, as I mentioned, there's a one called Product Launch Hazards that's on how to launch a product because I spent 25 years designing and developing products for mass market retail. So there's a whole lesson, there's a whole tutorial on how we do things and who we use there. We've got a couple of new Trust Economy, which I mentioned was the blockchain. But Next little thing has reviews of products because people are always asking us what we buy, what we use, and we really only do them around the holidays. And then we'll do another holiday set again and give people tips on what we're gonna buy for the holiday. We have fun with shows. We try them out. We start a brand new show every single year so that we know what it's like for our clients to start a new show. And so this year we started a private podcast called Worthy News and Notes, which you won't be able to find on any player. It's only for our investors. So if they invested in our company, they have a private page in which they can go and listen to us. And it's a touch point. It's a weekly touch point. So if you're taking revenue in and you want to have touch points with your clients, you could do a private podcast. But if you're taking investors in, one of the things we hear so strongly is that the founders, they don't trust trust that they have the lack of trust on, that they don't believe in. The most they won't invest more money in are the ones that don't communicate well. So we said we're going to defy the odds there. And so we're going to communicate in our mode of choice, which makes sense. You invested in a podcast company, you should now be forced to listen to a podcast. So we're helping them learn about podcasting while we're keeping them updated.

Yeah. Yeah, that's brilliant. Okay. Well, Tracy Hazard, thank you so much for coming on the show. It's been a pleasure to talk.

Oh, it's been absolutely my pleasure. I love the Recognized Authority.

Thank you.

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