https://www.listennotes.com/e/b2348cbf468f4585b47e5f28678ce1ac

Welcome to today's podcast or happy hour. And it is a very special one. It's a very special podcast or happy hour because today we are spotlighting some women in podcasting and this is going to be recorded. So thank you for catching this on the recording as you're here. We're going to let some of our panelists come on up. We have a wonderful group of ladies tonight who are going to be sharing it. I wanted to pick my adjectives appropriately. Bunch of badasses. They're all podcasters. A lot of them are run their own businesses. A lot of them help podcasters specifically. So this is going to be a really exciting opportunity for us to, for us to chat. And so I'm going to invite all of our speakers up here and get.

Out of the way.

I want to give a special shout out to Marissa Eikenberry for helping put this together. She has been a big helper in kind of leading this charge and also some others as well. The reason that we do these podcasters happy hours is really to bring a sense of community. I know right now, currently, as we speak, there is a bunch of podcasters meeting in person at a big podcast conference. And I think that's fantastic. And it's absolutely so important for people to go to those. But we wanted to provide something that is virtual, that is something that people can access from their own home, because as podcasters, we are often so siloed and we're kind of doing this on our own. And it's something that can feel alone. And so I wanted to do these podcasters happy hours to bring some community, to offer some insight. Obviously, there would be some great ideas. But more importantly, I would encourage you guys to really get connected with the people that are talking on today. So being said, looks like we have some people who are here. I'm going to go ahead and just get started with some introductions. But I'd love for Marissa, Pixie, Nola, Deanna, I'd love for you guys to just go around and quickly introduce yourself if you can. Give a little background on maybe your show or what you do or would.

Love for it to get started.

Marissa, would you mind kicking us off?

Absolutely.

Happy to do so. Can you hear me? Okay.

Perfect.

Awesome. So I'm Marissa Eikenberry. I am primarily the web developer for the Kevin Eikenberry Group, a leadership and learning consulting company. But in addition to that, I edit two of, well, three of the company podcasts, the remarkable leadership podcast, talks like a leader, and also I edit and co-host long distance work life with Wayne Turmel. So yeah, it's a little bit about what I do, and I'm really, really.

Excited to be here with all of you today. Yeah, excited to have you. Let's hop over to Pixie.

You're next on my, on my list here. Well, thank you guys for having me. I am the host of Next on Stage 1 podcast, which happens to be an adult nightlife podcast where strippers and entertainers and sex workers get together and they tell their stories to people who may not be interested in the nightlife. I also host Project Podcast with Pixie where I teach other people how to podcast and I'm building a community of podcasters to share and relay information between one another and I use Twitter spaces to do it. My third and final podcast happens to be Pop Culture Perspective where me and my co-host Mr. Jay from the Next on Stage 1, we relive a lot of interesting comic book stuff, nerd culture, everything. We break it down in a fun and friendly manner. for people like me. And that's basically what I do.

I love it. And thank you for doing this. I saw you already led a call earlier today. So thank you for making some time for us as well. Noah, will you give us a little background on what you got going on?

Oh, sure.

Of course.

I host the Janice Oasis, which really talks about the future of work. I offer consulting services regarding hybrid and remote work. I help organizations who want to actually do that better. And the podcast really allows me to aspects of hybrid remote, but also what other things are factoring into the future of work.

Yeah, I've really enjoyed your posts. I think that was how we got connected on LinkedIn was I was really enjoying your posts on remote work and the whole thing, the revolution that's happening. So appreciate that.

Also, I met Marissa as well, and Reena I've actually met long before, but I've never actually spoken to. So thank you for connecting us. We needed this spark.

Yeah, I'm excited as well. Deanna, let's hop over to you.

Hey, Hector, thank you for putting this together. Very excited to be here with all these fabulous ladies. I am the host and founder of Label Free podcast. I've got over 300 episodes. I really started as a passion project and has become much more. I'm also the head coach and founding partner of Female Podcasters Network, where we empower women such as all the ladies here to use their voice and to help them grow their podcasting profile and persona. I also produce another podcast a client of mine called Because Bikers Matter, completely different genre, completely different focus, but I've been a part of the podcasting space for a couple of years now and just really have loved the community and the inclusivity of it all.

Yeah, if I'm not mistaken, you work primarily, if not exclusively, with women podcasters, right? To kind of help them get started and get going or to find their face there.

Well, correct. I have one personal client I own that it's all, he's male dominated in the motorcycle community, but as a head coach with the network and the network's free to join. It's a great place for women to network and stuff like that. But yes, with that particularly, I work with only women.

Yeah.

And that was a big reason why I thought it would be so valuable for you to be here, because I think that you are really, you have a ground level perspective. So thanks for making some time.

Thank you.

Let's hop over to, oh, looks like we have a couple more people that needed to get up onto the panelists while we're waiting for that. One thing that. Oh, it looks like we're here. Maria, do you want to share a little bit about what you got going on?

Hi. Yes, I am Maria. Hello. I'm kind of excited about this room or space, whatever it's called here on Twitter. I don't know any of you guys. I put this on my calendar last week, I think just. I would love to mix it up more with other podcasters. It's so amazing, right? Because any of these social media, social audio platforms have so many diverse groups and you can think so many people. And then you come into a space like this and you look around and it's like, oh, how cool is this? More new people to meet. I love it. My show is called Strong Body, Strong Soul. But I, I'm happy to just listen to you guys right now and see how everybody's doing. Oh, I see pixie. Wait, I know pixie.

Anyway, thank you for joining us, Maria. And you have impeccable sound. I would like to know how you get great sound on these Twitter spaces.

Because it's a pain. It's a pain, right?

Yeah.

And my equipment works differently depending on what platform I'm in or on.

Okay, so you're going through your external mic. I am.

I'm on a Samson mic and I have a RODECaster. The RODECaster sounds, I cannot get them to work in Twitter spaces, but they work fine on Wisdom and on Clubhouse.

So go figure. Well, I will need some training on that later because that's, that's a big pain in my neck is the poor quality that comes through on these recordings. But it looks like Rena just hopped in. I want to see if we can give her an opportunity. Marissa actually did some, a little bit of research and I hope that I'm okay enough putting her on the spot here to share some of it. But one of the initial things that sparked this was I saw a study from the Edison Research Group that said, now it was a small, only about 700 podcasters that they kind of surveyed, but out of those 700, only 30% were identified as women. And I thought I was shocked. by that. And that's probably just because I've grown up around a bunch of strong women in my life. And I was just shocked. And I was surprised because I know I've been acquainted with so many strong, powerful, amazing, successful women in the space. Deanna and fixing Arena, all these people. So we wanted to have the space to kind of bring some light to it, but then also try and find some solutions or find some things that we as an industry can do to get that 30 closer to 50 or whatever that number needs to look like. Maybe it's It even becomes an industry that they take over. I think I would welcome that as well because the industry has its own issues that I think women can bring their solutions to. So I don't want to stop talking too much and I want to give a little opportunity for Rena to introduce herself. She's going to kind of be leading the discussion a little bit after Marissa shares some of her research. Rena, do you want to... We all kind of went around and just gave a 30-second bio on what we got going on, a little about your show or business.

So I've been honored to have Tracy Hazard and Deanna Reddlescu and Pixie on the Better Call Daddy podcast. So that is really exciting and I'm excited to connect with the rest of you. Angela, almost live, Walt, excited to see you guys here. I feel like we're having kind of a LinkedIn party as well. I'm the host of the Better Call Daddy podcast. The way that my show came about was I used to work in reality TV show casting. I kind of wanted to take those skills and apply it to the podcasting space. so in the beginning, it kind of started off as like shock and awe. And I wanted to share these stories with my dad and then have him weigh in. I'm a daddy's girl. I'm a mompreneur of four kids, 14 and under. That is kind of part of my brand, too. I talk a lot about like mompreneurship. I also am like a big fan of helping people get seen and heard, get on other podcasts, find guests for their own podcast. I've worked in PR and marketing most of my career. and yeah, that's a little bit about me.

It is great to have you here. And yes, very much a LinkedIn party that I think we have going on here. So we're bringing some converters, I'm converting some people here. Tracy, I think you are last up. You want to give us a little rundown of what you got going on?

Sure, thanks. I guess I had a little bit of difficulty not realizing Twitter Spaces was only available because I've used it before from a third party app and so I didn't realize it didn't work. So anyway, tech support all around, thanks ladies. I appreciate that. So I'm Tracy Hazard and I am the CEO and co-founder of Poditize. We are the largest post-production company in the podcasting space. And I host seven podcasts or have hosted seven podcasts over the time. The most current one, the Binge Factor and Future Brand are related to those interested in podcasting. So yeah, I'm here about all things podcasting and I live, eat, and breathe it here. I love it.

I think we are all kind of cut from the same cloth. So I'm excited to dive in. I'm gonna turn it over to Marissa. She's got some things that she kind of wanted to share a little bit, and then I will throw it over to Rena and for a little discussion. Marissa, you ready?

Yeah, I'm ready.

Okay.

So in preparation for this, I was trying to do some research because I also didn't realize how underrepresented women were in this space. And so I did find a slightly different statistic than Hector did that it's of the most popular podcasts that 30% are hosted and led by women. But 12% are co-hosted by male and female hosts. But I could not particularly find one for overall podcast. So I'm not quite sure about that one. But some of the other statistics that I found too. And so these are from Buzzsprout, but like female listenership reached an all time high in 2021. We hear all the time that podcasting is up and listenership is up. And I don't know if, I mean, granted, I know that we're going to get into some more discussion later, but I wasn't sure if anybody had any thoughts on why they think that maybe some of that female listenership is up. is it just we're getting back into the world and some of us have decided that we're staying at home? Like, I couldn't necessarily find anything like that, but I would love to hear if anybody has any thoughts about why that might be.

Well, listenership isn't actually up right now. It's down. It's down every year in the summer. It happens every year. You think, oh, wow, lots of listeners will be up this time of year because they're traveling on vacation and they're in the car and they're doing that. But it's actually down every summer. It's been consistently every summer except for 20. It's been down every summer since for the last decade. And we can see this because we track over, you know, hundreds of thousands of episodes and see what's playing and what's not and where their podcast statistics lie. So it's actually down. However, the total number of listeners is way up year over year. And they're frustrated because there are less new podcasts launching. And the podcasters that are out there are producing less and less shows each seat as each year goes by. So those of us who've been podcasting consistently and constantly are at a great benefit because there are less of our competition around for people to find us.

That's a really great point, Tracy. I know that there's a statistic that I see a lot about how like 90% of podcasts never make it past episode three. Like we're already in the 10% just by getting episode four, let alone years and years of podcasts.

Yeah, you should be so proud. We should all be so proud. When you make it past 25, you've achieved that beyond the 73% of podcasters that quit their show prior to that. So to me, 25 is the metric of whether or not somebody's committed to a show.

Good to know.

I know.

You're 30. That was my goal.

I'm almost there.

We'll keep going.

Some of the other statistics I found too, so like as far as gender statistics, as far as listening to podcasts. So we've got 43% of men and 39% of women in the US listen to podcasts. Like it's really not a lot. We as people in the space think that like, oh yeah, podcasts are everywhere and all that. And like, in some cases that's true, but there's still a lot of people that they've heard of a podcast, but they've never listened to one, especially for our demographic. One of the other things I found too was that 49% of podcast listening happens at home and 22% happens during commuting. And I'm sure that changed a lot. with 2020 and stuff. I know for me personally, like I listen to podcasts a lot when I'm commuting, but I don't commute as much anymore now that I work remotely. Does anybody else find that to be true for them too?

I know that a lot of people started their podcast during the pandemic. So I've found and witnessed a lot of growth between individuals and just the curiosity behind podcasting. has been up because people are at home and they're willing to share the social audio with each other.

That's a really great point, Pixie.

I also think it matters with your show. I mean, entertainment shows, yes, certainly they're much more of that style of commuting shows. But those of us that have business podcasts, podcasts that are being used to educate, to help people move forward and whatever that is, Those people are consuming, our listeners are consuming them wherever they are, whenever they have time. I get a message a lot from women in my community that they were putting their makeup on in the morning and listening to my show. So you never know where they're going to find time. I have my husband and partner. He does it when he's washing dishes. He's listening over our Alexa device. So you never know where people are going to be listening.

Yeah, I do it when I'm doing housework as well. I need something to occupy my mind while I do mindless tasks. And that's when I listen to podcasts too. I never listened when I was commuting at all.

I totally hear you there, Nola. Like, if I'm doing anything mindless, I need to be listening to something. And it just tends to be podcasts.

That is so funny. This is Maria. I think it depends on what kind of content I'm listening to. If I'm listening to a really heavy duty entrepreneur, kind of podcast, I kind of want to be taking notes sometimes. So I tend to get frustrated if it's too full of quality information. If I am driving or doing something mindless, I want to be able to take notes sometimes, I have to say. If it's just purely entertainment, I'm okay, you know, moving around and stuff. It depends what I'm consuming.

That's why I like podcasts. You actually offer transcripts. I think transcripts are really helpful for that kind of stuff. So I like to listen and get an overall general impression. And then if there's something that I need to go back to, I'm going to look for the transcripts. So that's something I need to get better on my podcast. I've done some of them, but it's like, I know, I think transcripts are a competitive advantage.

I can speak to that because obviously this is what our platform does so well for our clients is that we really build up their website and their transcripts and the transcript style blogs, what we call verbal SEO blogs. But the side of that is that we see a much higher significant listenership on the web where they're actually listening to that episode within the blog post on the website. So in the episode blog post, which goes straight to your Google power at the end of the day. So if someone's actually listening to your episode within your website, then you're getting a lot of sticky power to that. And so we see a higher degree of if you're looking at your statistics and you say, how many people are listening on iOS and how many listening on an Android? And then that website of it, ours is about four to five times higher than the average person because of the transcript style blog.

That's a really great point and shows, as we were saying, the importance of transcripts and the importance of having your own website for this kind of thing. I have one last thing that I learned when I was doing my research and then I'll throw it over to Rina. But I didn't realize this, but one of the reasons that podcasting is so popular is actually because of a woman podcaster. Sarah Koenig, who collaborated with WBEZ in Chicago to produce and host Serial. I know many of us have heard of that show, if not have binged all of the episodes. So it started in October 2014 and had over 5 million downloads just by the end of the year, which is just incredible to think about. So anyway, so I just wanted to throw that out there, too, that it's like one of the reasons why we know about podcasting today is actually because of one. So there we go.

Rena, I'll go ahead and throw it over to you. Thank you, Marissa. I would love to talk a little bit more about serial. Like, why do you think that show was so successful?

I will say one thing. I mean, I'm just guessing here, but I know that, like, we see all the time this idea that true crime podcasts are super popular. People are very interested in them. It really just grabs a hold of people. And I know that the way that Sarah does her shows, I've only listened to season one, but the way that Sarah does her show. It's very impactful. It's very engaging. It didn't feel like she was just reading something off with the interviews and all that. I think that really helped. So that may have been part of the reason why it became so popular. And I I know that even when it came out, there were a lot of people saying, oh, my gosh, have you listened to this podcast yet? So I think word of mouth was also huge.

I think it might also be like, I'm going to say misclassification to say that A true crime podcasts are the thing. They happen to do better than other entertainment style podcasts for quite some time. Although I think that the comedy ones are taking over right now. If you look at the numbers, you know, Jason Bateman has a really funny one. Dak Shepards is funny. Like there's a bunch of shows that large celebrity comedians are taking over and doing. They're actually really, I think, shifting the numbers on that side, and we're going to see a decline in the true crime. I think personally, the reason the true crime did so well is just because they're easier to do the thing, like leave people hanging so that they'll come to the next episode. So you get people binging much easier on a true crime show than you do on a talk show.

Yeah, I've also heard that there's also less true crime relative to other industries. And so I think all those kind of make for a perfect storm. Rena, I promised myself I wouldn't do this as much, but I wanted to just inject one thing that from the earlier conversation, and that's whether or not we should be promoting or helping people, not only to find our shows, but it seems with listenership down and this whole thing, do we need to be like getting people excited about just podcasting or educating people on podcasting in general, and then they can find our show. Because if they don't even listen to podcasts, we're not even in the realm. So I was just curious if you thought that it was more important to be focusing on, as an industry, promoting individual shows, or do we still need to be educating those who are not listening to podcasts on what is out there, what podcasting or listening to podcasts is all about.

I'm going to jump in and answer.

If that's okay, Rita.

Yeah, go Tracy.

Yeah, I mean, to me, I think that that is the big miss. And that's shame on Apple and Spotify. You know, they're not out there promoting podcasting in general and all the great indie shows that are just engines running and doing fantastic things. I mean, I just talked to a podcaster who's doing a show on no closing and just reached a thousand episodes. Like that's, I mean, that's amazing. No closing real estate. Like it's so niche. And yet a thousand episodes in there. really doing extremely well. We should be proud of that. But Apple, Spotify, the big players out there are the ones who have the budget and the time and the advertising ability to say, Hey, what did you get from podcasting? And how great is podcasting out there? And how much wonderful impact? Instead, the only thing they do is promote the same old shows again and again and again.

Yeah, I would totally agree with that. Is the guy that you're talking about, Scott Carson?

Yeah, Scott Carson. Exactly. He just celebrated five years and 1,000 episodes.

That's a big accomplishment. I mean, how many people do you see like that?

Not many. I mean, I have many women who've done the same thing. I mean, it's just different niches. And I just happened that I spoke to Scott today. But yeah, I mean, you should be really excited. When we hit 700 episodes in one of our shows, we were off the charts excited. And I know that the impact that we had was tremendous over the eight years we did that show. And we just need to be really proud of those people who have accomplished things like that. And there's no one out there promoting that.

Today was on an IG Live with Angela, who's here, and she has been doing that for a couple of years now. And I think that she's amazing. And I was trying to convince her about turning that into a podcast. now, since we have a lot of podcasters in the audience, what would you tell somebody who has gotten really good at one platform? Like how easy that could be to reformat into a podcast?

I'd say go for it. I think that any way to repurpose your content is powerful and you find a whole new audience in the different, in the all the other platforms. I mean, I think it's important to have a presence. and to take all that content and put it into a podcast, I mean, can't really hurt maybe a couple extra steps, but another way to really build your brand.

Also, it is super important, like Twitter spaces, what we're doing here, what we do on LinkedIn, all of this can be repurposed as bonus content for either a podcast or Patreon or any other way that you can, as long as you control your IP, your intellectual property, that you can put that out there to the masses. Not every platform is going to work the same. So if you own it and you have it and you can create it and you can reformat it for these different ones, your reach is going to get even bigger right now. What is it like Instagram really big on the reels? Facebook is really big on the longer posts and Facebook live. There's a lot of different ways that People need to know about how to podcast, how to listen to podcasts. And we are the forefront. If you can get somebody just to take a bite size part of your content and then listen to it and then expand upon it, you're going to do so well just in on any of the platforms. What I suggest is that you focus on one platform, build it, and then slowly work on another. You kind of have to learn how the algorithm works for each platform and don't spread yourself too thin. If you can, if you can't manage a whole bunch, it's better to be super focused on one.

That's really great advice, Pixie. I'm so glad you said that because I think that strategy is the most important thing. If the audience on IG is the same audience you want to reach that has supporting your business, then you're going to be committed to your podcast. Otherwise, the podcast is a side hustle. It's an aside and you've got to build an audience over there and it's a lot more work. But if it's in line and that audience is, it's best to actually now get off a platform. So if you've got it working one place, it's now really great to move it someplace else. And my view on this, and having done this for a really long time, is that when you can take it home, when there's a place where you can put it on your home base, your website, and do just as well with it there, that's going to be the best option because tomorrow Instagram could change their formula, Twitter can change their formula, and all of a sudden you don't have access to that audience anymore. So moving that home is the best way to do it. And podcasting is just so easy and great and an easy way to do that. But make sure it's strategically right for you.

Yeah, I love that. What are some other unforeseen challenges that you guys have seen in creating your shows? like things that you wouldn't have expected, but since you've learned it kind of along the way.

Mine has always been not being invited to the table. So I'm kind of brash and spicy, and not everybody gets my sense of humor. So I've almost had to barge my way in and grab a chair and just pull it up to the table. so do not be afraid to lean into who you are, create a community around you and build what you enjoy. I get quiet sometimes in professional spaces. I get that imposter syndrome. But if you realize how amazing your story is and you lean into it and you tell people exactly how you want. You bring out the best quality and sound and audio, and you're talking to the people you want to talk to, and they're going to respond in such wonderful ways. Do not be afraid to go after what you believe in.

I absolutely love that, Pixie, and I feel like you've really mastered Twitter, which I don't know too many podcasters that go all in there.

I love Twitter. Twitter has been amazing. These spaces, being able to voice my opinion because my profile, if you go and read it, it's kind of spicy. And then if you see my posts, they're definitely not safer work. But if you get to hear me and hear the way that I talk to people in spaces, I mean, it just opens up doors because you think you're gonna get one thing and then I sucker punch you with another.

I think that's part of life. This is Maria and I just love your attitude in here, Pixie. I think a lot of us, if we concentrate too much on one little niche subject and we don't let our personalities out there, I mean unleash, I think your followers, your audience is going to like you even more and they're going to respect that. And I think even if you piss a few people off along the way, It's like they're not meant to be your listeners anyway. It's all right. That's what I say.

I was going to add on to kind of what Pixie was saying. So my biggest challenge, I think, when I have only been co-hosting for like five months, so I'm a newbie compared to pretty much everybody here. But I had been doing back end editing for the other podcast for like six years. And so one of the things that I had to learn really quickly when I started co-hosting was I needed to take up space. But not just that as far as like being a co-host and on the show, but also in the podcasting community. I never felt like I belonged there because it was like, well, I'm just an editor. I just work on the back end. It doesn't really count, but it does count. It does matter. So even people who are listening right now, like, even if maybe you're not actually hosting or co-hosting and you're doing the back end, like, that's I think that's really important. And without the back end people, like there would not be a show. So I want you to know that like you belong in the podcast community and you do take up space and it is worth it.

That's excellent, Marissa. I just wanted to actually ask, did you actually find any statistics? I know you were looking into whether the people behind the scenes, if it's actually male dominated as well. Did you actually manage to find any?

I looked so hard for that information. I can't find it. I believe that it's probably also pretty much the same as the hosting statistics, but I'm really just guessing on that. And if anybody has those statistics or has any insight on that, like, I would love to hear about it because I searched for a while.

Or if they've been to conferences, like when you go to the conferences, what are the conferences like?

What I would say, no, about that is that from what I've, now this is all just kind secondary sources, but because a lot of early podcasting came from the radio industry, which is very male dominated as well, that that, unfortunately, that has bled over.

So I'm just going to share our statistics. So obviously we're obviously I'm the CEO of my company. We're a predominantly women owned company as well. So we're majority women owned. We have 108 staff members around the world and we pay women more than we pay men here. And it has nothing to do with the fact that men aren't valued. It's just the fact that we happen to have more women in leadership. So 11 of our 15 teams, so our video, our audio, our blog, our social share, our graphics, all of those teams, 11 of those teams are run by women. So women are in leadership positions in our company. So it makes a difference in terms of the makeup of your company over time. And so we do actually end up with about a 65% women to male ratio. just in terms of employment here. We also have tipped the scales because of that in the makeup of our client base. So the industry is running, and I don't remember the exact last statistics, but it was under 40, somewhere like 36, 37% women podcast hosts. And we are about double that right now. We're at about 60% somewhere right around there.

That's pretty amazing. I had another question that has recently come up in a conversation that I had, like as far as unseen challenges, I feel like a lot of early on podcasters are kind of trying to figure out which direction to go in their show. And so when you first get out there with your podcast, like everybody wants to be your guest. And so I feel like one unforeseen challenge is how do you say no to all of the people that are constantly pitching you? Does anybody want to speak to that?

Go ahead, Nola.

Oh, and I'm new like Marissa too. I just started in December, so I'm not the expert. But the way that I've had to deal with that, Rena, is I've actually created my own private community on money networks for my podcast. And because I'm charging for that, and I give podcast guests access to the community, it's got a dollar value. So I want people who are going to be in my community that I think are going to be a fit assistant, and it helps me say no to people that I don't know that I have no idea whether you're just wanting to come on the podcast because you want to promote something. That's not really what my podcast is about. My podcast is about ideas and concepts and what's possible, right? So like it's not necessarily about pitching a product, right? So for me, creating that private network that has a dollar value, it helps me say no.

I've been doing this a long time and I've done thousands of interviews now. And I'd say in the early days, I practiced a, and I do recommend this to my clients too, I practiced sort of yes policy. So you don't necessarily know when you're first starting your show, like in the first six months, what's gonna resonate with your audience and what's gonna resonate with you and everything about it is It's not all dialed in. You're exploring it and experimenting. And so I tended to say yes in the early days, and I recommend saying yes in the early days to them. As long as you're absolutely positive, they're not a mismatch and or they're not going to be selling your audience. Those are my two requirements. If it's an absolute, it's a health and wellness and I don't have a show about health and wellness at all, or it's not something we touch on, then I would say no. And if they plan to sell something or if it seems like they sell something, and I do check them out when they apply, so I'll check out and see how they were on somebody else's show, I will say no. If I think that there isn't a way to control that. That's it. That was my requirement in the early days. After that, I get very dialed in and very detailed, and I say no a lot. But I ignore a lot more than I say no to because I'm say 90% of the people who reach out to me are agencies, A's, and not the real people. And if it's not the real person taking the time to reach out to me, then they don't deserve a response. and typically, I mean, it's a bad email to begin with, you can tell, or it's a chat message and it seems like they haven't actually listened to the show before. And so from that, I just ignore it because that doesn't warrant a response. They didn't take a real amount of time to ask me to be on my show. Now, that being said, I've been using Podmatch lately and I absolutely love it. I think their AI is doing a really good job over there of making connections that are right. because you're not inundated with them offline, you can be really clear in your messaging and say, Hey, I don't think this is a fit and here's why, and you can have a quick little conversation about it. And so now what I do is I practice and say, Hey, if they're not right for me yet, and I'll explain what it takes to be right for me. I try to refer them to somebody else who I think they will be right for, and it has served me so well because those people, even when I denied them on my show, sent me someone even better. So that's kind of how I practice my guesting. I think we need to assistant, practice a, you know, a really great guest etiquette on our end so that the guests are better when they come on board as well.

I love everything you just said, especially the ignore. I'm doing more of that too, especially if it's just from a publicist. I mean, a cold outreach. I think that you're right. If they're not even reaching out to themselves, then that is kind of okay. Has anybody else had success on Podmatch or any other guesting sites that they want to mention?

I love Podmatch. so I'm, I'm, like, just like Tracy, I've had great success with it. Their AI system really does a good job matching people up to, like, that would be a good fit for your show. And I also take the option of speaking in other shows. So I've been able to expand my reach by going on other shows as well. I use podcast guests, which is a great platform. They will highlight your show in their newsletter. So if you need a introduction, I can introduce you to Jessica, who send you the form to fill out. I also use Matchmaker. Matchmaker is okay. It comes in spurts. Those are the ones that have been pretty successful for me. But I agree, I'm ignoring a lot more now than I respond to because I get inundated from the public, all those people as well.

This is Maria speaking. Are all of you guys noticing more emails coming in from odd publicist, podcast promoter type people? because I love that idea of ignoring.

I have to say, Maria, it's a great idea for you to use a different email address in your RSS feed than your personal address. So I might have like info@thebingefactor.com as my email and my RSS feed. So then when emails come in there, I know if they've used the feed to pull my information rather than somebody referring them to me and using my actual real email address.

Yeah. Good idea.

I actually get approached on LinkedIn mostly.

And Twitter from individuals or from publicists looking to place their client on shows that they feel like they might match with.

Honestly, it's been people that I know, people who are individuals. I have had some publicists, but not that many. Yeah, I just started in December, too.

Right.

All I've at 30 I'm like, it's a new podcast.

Right.

Well, I think the number one thing is obviously when you have a guest on to make sure that your personalities match, that the conversation is going to flow because there's nothing worse than trying to pull information from someone or have them take the ball and run with it. And they don't even leave the host a word in there. That's the worst. I'm like, this isn't a webinar. This is a conversation. Yeah, like all that kind of stuff.

People who approach me on, on LinkedIn and, and like they'll pitch me to be on the podcast. And my response is like, I need to get to know you, right? Because I need to know if I'm going to like you. So like engage me with your content because I like LinkedIn, I liked engaging people with people. I like Twitter and I like having those conversations ahead of time. And like I've got a history of following people for a really, really, really long time. before I ever really talk to you or connect with you directly. So it's like, okay, I want to see what you're about before I'm going to actually get you live talking to me. That's just kind of the way that I operate. And I haven't had a problem getting people that I want. I mean, it's not like I don't get told no, right? But the people mostly that I've approached, because I already have some sort of version of a relationship with them, I'm being told yes. Right. So I find it effective.

Which I think social audio is a great place to start. I'm telling a lot of people that are just starting in their podcast journey, get on social audio because it will help you find your podcast style too. Just having conversations with people that you don't know. And you can have a valuable conversation out here and then say, Hey, come on to my show and we'll talk about what we were just talking about. Kind of practice ground for some. Yeah, it's great.

And like LinkedIn has just added audio too. So I've been exploring LinkedIn audio. This is the first Twitter spaces that I've done. So this is my practice. Go big or go home, right?

That's right. Well, it's perfect because on LinkedIn, it's not recorded. So if you really mess up, oh, well. Exactly.

That's right.

Yeah.

But no, that is an interesting difference between the audio. spaces. So this is cool.

Do you have any other tips or strategies around social audio, Maria?

I've been hopping around. I'm really into repurposing if I can. And I find that wisdom and clubhouse, both their audio quality is a lot better here in spaces. The quality just isn't there. And LinkedIn audio, you can't record anyway. I mean, every conversation obviously doesn't need to be recorded. I think it's so silly people are having a fit about not being able to record. But I have had people on wisdom with me, which I really enjoy the wisdom app because of that one-on-one nature of it. I don't necessarily want 10 people in a conversation that as a listener of a podcast, that's a big mess to me as a listener. And I think it's just fascinating, I think, with podcasting, with any kind of content. you create what you enjoy listening to.

But I, on Clubhouse, what I used to do was I was able to hook up Clubhouse to my actual microphone. And so I would just record through that into whatever I had, the Zoom device or anything like that. And so what I was saying is that I just record my end of the conversation because in some of those spaces like Clubhouse, you're not supposed to record. And that way I would be able to utilize them as like a teaser. And so my team would take assistant< end_header_id > assistant< end_header_id > a little clip of it and say, Hey, here's.

What you missed on Clubhouse this week. You don't want to miss the next one. And so you can use it for promotion purposes. I agree, except I think on all of these platforms, it's pretty much common knowledge. Once you speak in a social media or audio space, the host is able to use it.

You are agreeing to having your voice recorded. I think you're right. I just think that in some of the spaces though, People don't really realize what they're saying or anything, or that the way that it's recorded is not great quality. And so we would record through a higher recording on just our end so we could reuse what we said.

Right.

And absolutely. I mean, when you're in a social audio conversation on Clubhouse or something, that's not necessarily a podcast episode, obviously, too. But on wisdom, it can kind of work because you do just have a one person with you. I think that all of these platforms too, like on Wisdom, all talks on Wisdom are recorded, whether you want them to be or not. On Clubhouse, you have the option, just like here on Spaces, you can turn the recording feature on or off. On Clubhouse, unfortunately, once in a while I'll have somebody in a room and they don't realize they're being recorded. I never would repurpose somebody's voice unless I had their permission anyway. But there are a lot of bad actors out there, so you never know. I say put good stuff out there that you're proud of anyway. You never know where your voice is going to end up. So that's my idea on social audio.

Pixie, I think we should always assume we're being recorded somewhere, right?

Absolutely. I think so.

Hey, Pixie, would you mind sharing? You have, like, taken over the world with your Twitter spaces. and I just don't know if you are aware of the genius that you have been. There's so much genius behind it. I'd love to get your insight or your flaw. Like, what are you doing that's creating so much community and people are coming back? And can you talk about how you've built what you've built with Twitter spaces?

Absolutely. I started here on Twitter not even two years ago. So all of these followers that you see on my page have basically from the number 600 have been because of Twitter spaces. I gotta tell you, they rolled it out and I started jumping into spaces and I had no idea what I was doing because I was a new podcaster. The social audio was all new. It was kind of exciting. It was like the wild walled west of audio. Nobody knew how to unmute themselves or what it was doing. We would get rugged. We didn't have a co-host in the beginning. Now we got two. Now we've got all of these amazing emojis. And you could go directly to the person's page as soon as you could hear them talk.

So it's like, this is amazing.

I could see myself as a podcaster. I could host my podcast through Twitter spaces. I could do a lot of audio. I could do interviews. I could connect with people here because everybody I know is here on Twitter. So it was sort of a natural progression. At first, I didn't get. I didn't get the hosting abilities. I only got the speaking abilities. And I thought that was. That was pretty okay. I could jump into a lot of things. and you saw a lot of NFT spaces, you saw a lot of like follow for follow, make sure you get a million followers today. A lot of junk, right? A lot of spam. And I was like, you know what? We don't have, we don't have a podcasting space. So I started back in July of last year, I started hosting spaces. There was probably six people in the whole room. that was it. It was a very small, intimate group of people that were willing to answer my podcasting questions because I have a lot. I always do. And it worked. I played with times, I played with days, I played with as much of the audio that I could. And then I realized that I could record, I could get my audio from the periscope because that's where this is built, is from the Periscope. I could get my recordings and I could edit them in Audacity and just have a podcast. I was like, this is great, but what kind of podcast do I want? Well, people seem to resonate with the, okay, let's ask podcasters other questions. Let's just dive in and have a deep discussion. So October last year, I launched the Project Podcast. and it was all built here on Twitter spaces and it just kind of blew up. I got to a thousand followers, I got to 2000 followers, I got to 5000 followers, I got to 10,000 followers this year. So the numbers and the growth are here on Twitter if you're willing to use the new audio platform. If you're willing to put yourself out there. I'm not doing anything new. I'm putting myself out there and having a discussion just like what we're doing here, bringing beautiful minds together in a civil discourse where we can say, yeah, I like that or no, that really didn't work for me. And it's so beautiful because you can repurpose that content. I always told everybody that I'm recording every Twitter space. like it was a podcast. I introduced myself. I always did like a reset of the room, and then I closed out the room. I have probably 50 different recording just sitting on my laptop of Twitter spaces. And it's so amazing that the community that has been built from podcasters helping other podcasters. I've had over a hundred people in a room before just wanting to know more about podcasting. So we're doing amazing things. We just need people to kind of get on board to help one another. And learning and teaching and growing is probably one of the easiest ways to get somebody to know what you're all about.

I love that. Absolutely. I think it's so cool what you just said. I think a lot of times when we're on social audio, people will come up and they'll just right away go on about their credentials and everything. When what we really need to do is hear who they are and what they're talking about. I love what you just said there. Totally. And I think we need more listeners. I think we need to be having more conversations like the one we're having here. like you were saying at the beginning. Seriously, Hector, it's like so many people still don't know what a podcast is. And I think there's a big misconception. Everybody thinks they need to be a podcast host. Well, we need to let people know what they are so that we have more listeners too, and be approachable and kind people. I think it's a microcosm of what can happen in the world at large, the whole idea of collaboration. and sharing and absolutely hearing people that think differently than you. Either you like it like Pixie just said, or sometimes you don't like it. It makes you more sure of what you do believe. Conversation is so important. I love it. I love it. That's all.

Yeah, I love that too. And congratulations, Pixie. That is so incredible in such a short amount of time. you said that you have a lot of questions. Do you have any now?

I always have questions. Right now it has been moving into the profession. I don't consider myself a professional, guys. Just to be honest, I consider myself a ship poster and just Infamous here on Twitter and not taking myself seriously. It's kind of interesting to see when I jump into professional spaces because I do have to bring a little bit more of myself and allow myself to go, yeah, I know what I'm talking about. I'm not just a ship poster. So that kind of rubs people wrong. Like, I've been kicked out of rooms just because of what my profile says. And it's so interesting to see that when the space wasn't for me, and I created my own space that people are willing to come to hear what I have to say. But if I go to them, sometimes it might not be the space for me. So I want to just encourage people, if you're not finding the right climate or the right Community around you, build it for yourself. If you want more women and podcast, invite them. bring them to the table. Show them that they can do just as much as you've done. Encourage them to be part of the spaces because this is lovely.

I absolutely love that. And I feel like that transitions really nicely into something that Nola wanted to talk about. Like, how can we open the door for other women, for non-binary podcast hosts? How can we be more inclusive. Nola, do you want to talk a little bit about diversity and inclusion?

Yeah, well, and I wanted to go back to the thing about radio. So if what Hector mentioned about the fact that, you know, radio is very male dominated and when podcasting first started, like those people transitioned from radio into podcasting, this means that this is an ongoing issue that really has existed for, well, when did radio start? Like the 1920s? So Is this a deeper issue and it's beyond, you know, just female representation in podcasts? Like how do we actually make it more diverse and inclusive so that we've got gender inclusion, non-binary, but also people of color, different backgrounds? How do we amplify those voices and make it more approachable that way? And honestly, does it come down to like sponsorship, like looking at where the money goes? in the industry. And again, like I'm new to podcasting. I don't know everything about this. These are questions that I have is like a lot of these are self-funded podcasts, right? But like the money that's in podcasting, do we look at the sponsors and look at what their diversity and inclusion strategies are for their own companies and then call them out really on the podcast that they're sponsoring and the fact that they don't necessarily sponsor diversity.

I think you hit that really right, Nola. I mean, the money in podcasting is going to only two percent of the podcast. And out of that is predominantly, I would say almost 80% male in terms of the money in the traditional media model. One of the things we're working on is it's going to come out later this year in October, but is really looking at the valuation of podcasts in a different light. so that you can say, okay, I did the math. Joe Rogan is supposed to have 11 million listeners. That's actually not true. He has about 2.2 million listeners, podcast listeners. He has 11 million in the audience when he used to have a YouTube channel. Very different. So he has only 2.2 million listeners. He cited that statistic. It's not like I found it behind the scenes. He actually says that when he moved over to Spotify, that's what he ended up with. 2.2 million listeners and I read an article that said that if it were 11 million, it would be like Taylor Swift dropping an album every single day. And the reality is that it's not, it's not equivalent that if Taylor Swift dropped an album, there are hundreds of millions of girls out there going to buy stuff, right? And so like, and begging their parents to pay for stuff. And the men who are the predominant audience of his listener base don't spend money. So what are the advertisers doing over there? They're not gaining a lot of conversion. So if we had a female who was doing 200,000 listeners, their listeners are going to convert at a much higher rate in terms of sales volume for those brands that are advertising on it than 2.2 million male listeners who are under the age of 20. So it's just very different in not just the demographics of the audience, but the action that they take and what they do with that. So my goal at my company and the technology and the things that we're trying to build and figure out is how to discover what podcasts are more valuable than others. What are those characteristics of that that have nothing to do with download numbers at the end of the day that has to do with audience interest, audience conversion, keywords that matter, and what can we do to make sure and change the model by which monetization happens? that's my ultimate goal within a year and a half.

I love what you just said, Tracy. This is Maria again. And I just want to say, I think it's just, we all know it's a society problem with the gender issue. I was talking to Rose Horowitz. She's a journalist out here in Twitter spaces and such. And she's done various shows on the gender inequality in broadcasting. in media, in news, journalism, and men's voices tend to get people have the impression they have more credibility, even amongst female listeners. So I think we really need to continue conversations like this, and we need more companies like yours, Tracy, because it is true. We need confident women out there supplying valuable shows and information and getting to those audiences in a more powerful way. I think we just do.

I thank you, Maria. I don't want all of you to underestimate the value of your voice today. I am now booked up all the way through Thanksgiving for speaking engagements, live speaking engagements. And they are coming to me because they do recognize that they need diversity. They need more women. They need more in the BIPOC community. They need more of that. So it's being recognized at the event level. We just need to step up and make sure that we're taking advantage of those opportunities. And when we do it, we're also going to give case studies and shout outs to other BIPOC and other women and other podcasts that are underserved in terms of the value that they're receiving right now.

Congratulations, Tracy. That's amazing. Have you seen any other spaces where women are gathering and having conversations like this?

Well, to be honest with you, a lot of the space that I'm speaking at is now all NFT crypto and blockchain, which I wrote a column for Inc. Magazine on disruptive technologies and I wrote a lot about blockchain. So it's kind of a logical place for them to come to me on, thank goodness, but it had been silent for almost two years where I hadn't had anyone asking me to talk or speak about that. So I think that area is growth. There's a lot of community over there, continuum Continuum.Market is really working in that space and it's run by a woman, Christina Bruhan, who's also a podcaster. And I think that there are spaces like that are making community differences and so stepping up and saying to event planners, Hey, this isn't the way it should be. We have other people, other speakers we can suggest to you. And that's really, I think, changed it for me. But I think the tech space has been really low for a long, long time.

Does anyone else know any women groups that we should be supporting or be a part of?

Twyla Dang, Twyla, let me find her at. She helps women in podcasting and once a month she does a Twitter space for women in podcasting. Let me find her at.

The other is JJ Bramberg and Goodpots. GoodPods is run by a brother and sister team, and JJ is just amazing and she's put a lot of effort into the app. I actually think it's one of the most beautiful, easy to use listening apps out there. And I use it when I'm doing my own listening. Of course, I have to do research on everybody's on all the listening apps. But when I'm doing my own personal listening, I use GoodPods. So we have to remember to like consume the things that we, to support.

These wonderful women and the BIPOC community working in podcasting. Yeah, JJ is great. I interviewed her. She came onto my Facebook group with me. I have a podcasting Facebook group and it was just like, what is good pods? Because a lot of people don't know what that is too. So it was fun to have JJ on a live stream. It wasn't a podcast interview necessarily, but there are a lot of powerful women out there. I tried to do a clubhouse room recently called Women on the Mic. and that was with Rose Horowitz, actually, journalist. And it would be fun to get more rooms like this going across these platforms because we don't know where people are and the more momentum it builds, the better, right? So let me know if you guys ever do more stuff. I don't have a lot of followers here on Twitter. I haven't been on Twitter for very long, but. But I love social audio. It's really turning out. It's so great to just have conversation, right? Where you, you, you know, we aren't sitting here reading off a script and trying to self promo our shows and stuff. It's like, let's make the world better. It's really cool. Thank you.

I want to hop in because we're a few minutes over the hour and I, I definitely don't want to be the one to end this conversation. I just want to thank all of our panelists who have given their time and on a whim, I sent out a message to some people that were recommended hoping that they would grace us with their presence. And, you know, typically we do these as a podcast or happy hour. And the idea is for everybody to have their own beverage. So I raise a glass to you ladies for being the shining example and just, just creating, eliminating all the excuses, really, and being the example for people to follow behind. So I just want to thank you for that. And I'm sure all the other, you know, podcasters that come behind you feel the same way. same way. I definitely want to let the conversation keep going, but I want to release and acknowledge any of the panelists and thank you for your time. Obviously, if you guys are want to hang out and keep talking, then, then.

By all means, thanks so much for all this. This was fantastic. Well, I want to acknowledge you, Hector, because this is what I know, is that it does take sometimes men recognizing the value in women to be able to help raise our voices and Elevate that. So thank you for recognizing that and bringing that for it. It's invaluable and we appreciate you for that.

Thank you. Thank you.

Amen.

Could I just do a little shout out for some amazing women that are in the audience really quickly? Doni, she is going to be celebrating her second year in podcasting. She has been on publication. She's been in a couple news articles, and she's just absolutely amazing. Honey and Hustle, just a fan, another fantastic female podcaster who's always willing to help other people out. She gives a lot of, like, voice up. She gives spaces for people's voices. And then you get the lovely ispooky Christina down there in the listenership. And I just want to say, you ladies are doing amazing and I see you, ladies.

I see you.

I love that. I have a question. Do you guys make use of the communities here on Twitter? Are you guys a member? Because I see several podcasting communities here. And I was just wondering what your thoughts were on how communities were working here as far as support for podcasters here on Twitter. Does anybody have any feedback on that?

I find that they exist.

Yeah, they exist. Yeah, I can send you guys a link. They exist. The one podcasting community I'm in, it's very dry. There's no real interaction in there.

Yeah, I found that too. It's like more for self promotion, kind of.

The one that I'm in is a non self promotion, more of like a ask questions but it's really dry and you don't get very many people interacting. It's kind of like there's a Twitter space community and it's also dry. So I feel like hosting spaces actually gives personality to what's going on. But for me, communities just, it's just not hitting the mark.

Yeah.

Anybody else? I haven't had that much great experience with communities. I'm not sure if they know exactly What the intention is or how, where it's going, it would be nice. Like if everybody was all in a community talking about what should we talk about on Friday at our podcast space, but I don't find a lot of conversations happening in there.

Yeah, I totally don't know anything about the communities, but I also wanted to ask Deanna, I know that she has like a woman in podcasting group that she does. And then Maria, if you could talk a little bit about your Facebook community, I have found starting a Facebook group has been. like my most engaged sounding board.

Yes.

Yes.

Where's Deanna? You wanted her to speak? Where is she?

Label free podcast. I'm right here.

Yeah.

Oh, label free. Go ahead.

Yeah.

So we have, it's a network. We have about 2, 000 women that's in the network, and you're free to jump in there and share your podcast, ask any questions, connect with the ladies there. It is free to join, and we do, like, swaps. review swaps on Mondays. We do a guest swap on Wednesdays. So there's a lot of people that do make connections and it's been very successful for a lot of the ladies. As a founding partner, I've taken over the social media. So we're slowly starting to grow our social media and I'm telling the ladies to tag us so I can share it just to kind of get more involvement and so women can keep supporting each other and empower one another. And so it's been you know, it keeps growing. I mean, it's massively growing, and it's very organic, which is great. So if anybody's interested in the link, I'm happy to send it over. All you got to do is sign up and you're good to go.

Yeah.

Thank you. I just followed you. I'll follow up with you. I have a Facebook group, and it has almost 6, 000 people in it right now. It's called podcast support Community. It is on Facebook. I inherited the group. When it was about 2,500 members big, I didn't even know how that happened. The admin of the Facebook group just, I don't know, I just became the admin and I reached out to him. He quit the group because it was becoming too much of a link drop kind of place. So I changed it. It's a public group on Facebook, which means everybody can see the posts, but you have to be a member in order to be featured. on the page in the community. And I see Dion Sanchez is there in the audience. Dion is a member of the group. She has Words from of Heart podcast. But it's a mix and I love it because it is podcast creators, podcast service providers. I allow people to come into the community if they are selling stuff too. My number one rule is no DMs without permission. And you cannot link drop on other people's pages. posts and stuff like that. I'm kind of strict. People get mad. I make everybody be nice to other people first, or I will not approve their post on the, on the page. So I really am about, it doesn't matter what your topic is. I want everyone to help each other out. It's to learn and evolve as podcasters, not just link drop. So that's my Facebook group. You're all more than welcome to go there, because here on Twitter, I find the same problem on Clubhouse too. I can be in a room with a bunch of people that I like, and I don't necessarily want to follow a hundred new people. I think those off-platform kind of places are a great place to mingle. I love mixing it up between modes of communication too, obviously, with whether it's video or audio too, stuff like that. So there you go. Okay, I'm done. Thank you for listening.

Yeah, I'm curious, like, if any of you guys want to talk about where you would like to expand like pixie. I feel like you've kind of gone all in on Twitter. Maria, you're managing a Facebook group of like 6, 000 people. That's insane. Have you guys thought about other platforms that you would like to expand to and any strategies there?

I'm currently expanding into tick tock because I want to get better at the visual, but it's kind of weird. It's touch and go, so. My podcast is an hour and 20 minutes long every time we record and TikToks are like seven seconds, so I don't even know.

Yeah, I've delved into TikTok as well. I have two TikTok accounts. One is kind of for silly stuff, either to promote my podcast or do silly stuff with my kids. The other TikTok account is more meditation based. It's more my photography and videos and breathing exercise kind of stuff. You won't see my face on that particular account. It is just pretty stuff, but I don't know what I'm doing over there either. It's not like I've gone viral or anything. It's just kind of like Pixie said, just testing. I think that there's podcasting. A lot of people are starting to do live streams, of course, as you've seen on YouTube and Facebook and stuff like that, and they're calling them podcasts. when it's really a talk show. And so there's this growing phase right now where people are just kind of starting these things and calling them podcasts. So I think educating the public is a big part of what's going on around in the world right now, too. I don't think there's anything wrong with doing a podcast on video, too, but I think it is primarily an audio medium, if that makes sense.

So we're seeing a lot of, we do vodcast, video podcasts. We see them mostly doing, being much more successful over on YouTube than on Tick Tock. Yeah, but Tick Tock and YouTube shorts, we utilize those all the time for the promo Clips. So we utilize Tick Tock as a promotion to the long tail episode or to the long tail video. And so I do see that working fairly well for most of the podcasters. I do have quite a few Tick tockers who then came to podcasting because, like pixie was saying, they craved the long form because they were tired of the seven second thing and they wanted to do something more a deep dive. And so podcasting was the logical alternative for them and videocasting, like the whole, the whole thing. And that seems to be working out really well as a platform growth for them. So I do see growth there. I think what we're exploring is a deeper ways to utilize LinkedIn. The LinkedIn newsletter has been tremendous for us. And I know that sounds like odd, but we embed the YouTube videos right into them. We click, we link them directly out to our blog pages and our podcasts. But the newsletters, I mean, I think when I started it, we got a thousand followers, subscribers to the LinkedIn newsletter within the first week. So it does have kind of a nice little push on that. We're working on expanding our LinkedIn group and making it maybe public coming up in the future. Right now, I think it's only people who are brandcasters, potenzized clients, and can only participate in that sort of LinkedIn community right now. But I think we're going to expand that and open it up.

That makes me want to follow your newsletter. Tracy.

You already follow the podcast, so you're, it's the same thing.

So, let's talk about that.

So, yeah, I mean, see, I only make content. once a week for, let's say, feed your brand or the binge factor. I only do that once a week. So binge factors interviews, feed your brand is a topic. So, like, this week's topic was about the high value of your podcast show description, like really nichey, detailed topic. So we record that. We do 15, 20 minutes of that. We record it. Then we uploaded it to our podcast and make it a video as well. And so it goes video, audio, blog. Social Share. Then about two weeks later, it gets repurposed as an article in Authority Magazine. If it's an interview, it gets put there. And if it's a tip article, it just gets straight out into medium. And then from there, it goes to the LinkedIn newsletter about a week after that. So it's all the same content. Plus we have shorts, video clips, all the promo pieces that are coming out of it. So we only sit down and record for 20 minutes and everything we need for probably a month, is created from that.

Wow, that's awesome.

What would you tell someone who was thinking of creating a newsletter?

It has to be well written. You can't just post your transcript there. That's not going to work. You need to really sit down and make sure you write it like an article. You tease them into it. You get them excited with your opening paragraph. You put a great headline on it. The headline is essential to getting anyone to read anything nowadays. And it can't just be something that was like, I got what I wanted out of the headline, so I didn't actually read it. Right. You want to leave them hanging from the headline so that they need to read it. So that it's all about enticing and lucky for me that I've worked as a writer for a decade. So it's just a little bit easier for me to kind of say, oh yeah, you can do this too. It's really not as easy as that. But you can hire people to help you with that. You can hire people people who are good copywriters, you can hire people who are good at creating great headlines. The major tool that I use to screen my headlines is CoSchedule's headline tool. I don't think it's even $200 a year for it, and you can do hundreds of headlines over the course of the year. And I love the tool. I will type anything in there and you'll see its ranking rating and it'll teach you how to write a better headline.

Okay. I love that you just mentioned that. You said it's the CoSchedule headline tool.

Yeah, co-schedule is like buffer, but a bit more expensive. And it's like a, it's like a scheduling tool that a lot of agencies use. And they built this amazing headline tool that's super easy to use. You just type your headline in there and it starts to tell you, you need more emotional words or you need less words in your title or you need more words and it'll give you a rating based on how live changes you make it. It keeps up in your rating. And then if you're looking for a judgment, I If I can get a headline that ranks between 70 and 80, it's perfect. It really will do what it needs to do.

Before you used that tool, are there any other tools that you use?

I mean, there are lots of other tools that lots of people use, and there are even some that are automated copywriting and stuff. But I've never been a fan of it. This is the only one I've consistently come back to using again and again. I just find the others not that you shouldn't have some grammarly help and stuff like that on occasion, but it really doesn't change the way you write it. But what I do know is that writing from your podcast, writing the same topic, what you know about and using what you said there, if you hire a ghostwriter or you hire a copy team, they already have the essence of what you're gonna say. You can hire someone and be more successful doing that than you can hire someone to write blogs for you with no context as to what you're about, what your opinion is, and what your viewpoint on the topic is.

Does anybody else have thoughts about blogs or newsletters or tools that they use?

I'll just say from a transcript perspective that I use Adobe Premiere to edit. We do video and audio, so I'm using the Adobe suite for that. But I will say for those of you who are using the Adobe Suite. They do have a transcript option now that will go through and write the whole transcript for you. And you need to look at it because some of it's not going to be exactly accurate, but it does help get a lot of that done ahead of time. And then once you get your transcript edited, you can click one button and now you have captions you can add on to your episode as well. And I found that to be a big time saver. And it's a huge money saver because we were using Rev. for that before.

So I've done a deep exploration and Marissa's right that the Adobe version is actually really good. They do have about 95% accuracy, which is kind of the guideline to what you should be using from a transcription service. Rev is right up there, but I have to say Deepgram is coming up with better pricing and even better, I think, a transcription ability. So I think they might be the ones to watch for the next year.

Interesting. I haven't even heard of that. I'm actually interested to Tracy, I know you were like talking about monetization a little bit. Are you having conversations with brands about considering partnering with more women?

So we're working a different angle to that. I thought that was the way I would go, but it was such a difficult conversation because at the end of the day, they're actually mired by their own view of statistics. They believe in the IAB model, which is the Interactive Advertising Bureau, which actually downs your statistics. So I have a syndication hosting company, so I can see what they do. If I switch my show to IAB compliance, I'm going to use lose thousands of listens per month based on their formula that has nothing to do with real plays or not. So it's not of interest to someone who's an independent podcaster or in the early starting stages to do something like that and be compliant. So that's a problem with big brands. And then they have this perception that podcast advertising is branding only and doesn't have any conversionary value because they've never done it in that direct response marketing model. So we said, okay, this is going to be a really hard road for us to just convince them otherwise and get enough podcast advertisers for our podcasters. So what else can we do? So we've adopted a new partnership with a company called consumables, and we're really excited about it. And in fact, I've not even publicly announced it, although we have a relationship and everything's going forward. I've not put out a press release about it yet. We probably will in September. And consumables does what you see is banner advertisement on streaming video. So you might see them on Hulu and other places like that. They also put them on websites, big name websites like cnn.com and espn and webmd. And they run the banner ads on the side and they have big name sponsors who actually are really looking for Content. and so what we've done is we've created a partnership where we can put and get discovered podcasts within the niche. So if someone wants to advertise on web MD and they want health and wellness podcasts, I can serve them up through a special feed in our system. And because we have this multi-feed system that we built into our monetized platform, we can do this with that gives a clip of your show and feeds it out to this consumables feed that's being fed there. Then what happens is I can't pay you for that because I'm not getting paid for that, but I can make sure that your show is getting discovered and showing up on webmd.com, we're putting in a back-end system where we take photographs of that so that you can then share that screenshot and hopefully that will get you more advertisers in the future. But the second thing is, is the advertiser who's paying for that space, like let's say it might be Kaiser, or Permanente or something like that, paying for that space that those podcasts are playing in, Kaiser might come back and say, wow, that podcast was really played hundreds of times. I'd really like to sponsor that show because that one was played so much more than the others that were in the feed mix. So now they have an opportunity to look at it based on content response and not listens at all. So I hope we'll be able to flip the switch on how podcasts are discovered and how they're monetized and chosen by big brands just by doing that.

Wow, that's exciting and amazing. And thank you for sharing that with us pre-announcing it. That's really cool. I feel like you have very much mastered partnerships. I would like to bring that up just a little bit because I feel like I've had some really good opportunities through partnerships and that's helped grow my show a little bit. Like recently I had a reality star reach out to me and ask me if I would do like 50,000 impressions and she would do 50,000 impressions. And, you know, you can track that. And for me, that made sense. I was like, as long as it doesn't matter how long it takes me to get that, you know, she gets that in a day. For me, it would take longer. and yeah, so she was good with it and I was good with it. And then, you know, I had a celebrity that I really wanted to have on my show, Jerry Springer. And so I reached out to him and was like, Hey, she's going to be promoting me. Like, if you're considering really going through with letting me interview you, you should do it while she's promoting you because she's going to get you reach. And then that worked out where I was able to interview him and I was able to partner with her. So can anybody talk about, like, how partnerships have been beneficial for them.

I look for partnerships for the network to offer to the ladies that are part of the network. And so far it's been working out pretty well. So just different things that they can market, use to market. I have partnered with somebody here on Twitter that will pretty much almost automate your Twitter posts for every episode you put out. And then just other various just opportunities for them to either improve their speaking, if they're going to do speaking engagements for an affiliate with Steve Lowell. I'm not sure if you guys know who Steve Lowell is, but we've partnered with him and his, his team. And so just things like that to help them improve their brand and improve their voice, improve their, you know, everything that they're doing within their podcast.

I don't know who Steve will is, but that sounds really cool. I mean, I think everybody could use improve, you know, improving their speaking or improving their brands. So That sounds like an awesome partnership. Can you talk a little bit about him and how you guys connected?

Yes, he reached out to me. I don't even remember which platform, but to be a guest on my show, he went through my interview process and then we booked a time to record. And so he shared the stage with like Jack Canfield and some other big names. He's like a high impact, I just released this episode actually, a high impact speaker coach type of deal. It costs like $30,000 to work one-on-one with him. But he offers like a program monthly, so a membership that people can join in and there's, it's a little bit more, it's a group setting instead of one-on-one, but you're still gonna get the same benefits in learning his particular style. So he was very dynamic. I loved the conversation and just what he's doing and what he offers. So yeah, he was a pretty cool guest.

I'm always really cautious about partnerships, Marina, shared audiences and everything. And I really take it slow. because I need to make sure that there's a value exchange that is really going to do my audience well. So even though, you know, I have a 400,000 person list, so, but I would never email that list with just anyone unless I was absolutely sure that they were going to get tremendous value. And that's where I really have to be cautious about those types of partnerships. So I make it a practice to not do any partnerships with someone who's not a potatized client. Like if they're not a client and they're not experiencing what they're doing with us every day, then I'm not going to do more than a hey, let's do a show together, let's interview each other. That kind of partner is as far as it goes. And I also then draw the line at if they've got a product and I'm not using it, then we have a problem. If they've got a course, a program, I need to explore that and I need to make sure that it's really right for my audience. and we don't have conflicting viewpoints because that can also confuse my client base. And so I really am careful about these partnerships and sometimes they take a really long time to pull into place and to make them happen because of that. But when they work out, they work out tremendously well for everyone involved.

Yeah, that makes sense. I'm excited to kind of follow your journey with the consumables you said.

Yes, that's right. They've been around for probably 15 years, 20 years doing website advertising way before, you know, when banner ads were first starting coming in.

Yeah, I'm gonna definitely check them out. That's very interesting. Have you ever tried the product model of like different CPG brands or anything like that?

I mean, I had a partnership with Hewlett Packard when we had our 3D print podcast. but what I found was better with that was rather than running their ads on our show, we actually partnered with them to run a special series. And so we did a 25 episode special series. We charged a lot of money for it. And then what we were able to do there was we had them give us about, I think we did about eight interviews of behind the scenes with people that would never have come on camera or on the mic before from their company. So we got to talk to them about to sustainability. We got to talk to them about distribution. We got to talk to them about all kinds of geeky topics that people in our audience would be very interested in hearing. But what it did was it created this tremendous long term value and a third party endorsement of Hewlett Packard's 3D printing program. And coming from us who had over 650 episodes at the time, and having done the podcast for over five years at that time, it was really an endorsement that lasted The reason they chose us wasn't because we have the download numbers. It was simply because we ranked on the first page of Google on every kind of topic you could possibly say 3D print podcast with. And that's what ended up getting their attention and partnering with us. And it was one of the best and most fun partnership programs we did.

Wow, that's amazing. Have you tried to replicate that ever?

We recommended it to other clients who've done similar models, but for our own purposes, We're not podcasters as influencers. Like it's not our model of business, right? So for the Binge Factor, for P&G brand, I'd never do that because it is obviously P&G sponsored. And my job is to make sure that people fall in love with me and with P&G and with everything that we do through the process of listening to those shows. So to put other people's ads on there would never work. So it just isn't a model for any of our other podcasts.

All right. I think that's everything I've got. Does anybody have any questions in the audience. I see David, should we add another male voice? David, what do you think of all of this?

Well, I'm pretty new to what you guys are talking about. My podcast is more Apple influenced and technology based. So I don't have as many, I'm not into the advertising part as of yet, still been exploring that option. But it all sounds great from what I'm hearing.

Well, hey, take the time to plug your show. Tell us about your show and what has your experience been like? I've been doing for the last six years.

My show is called in touch with iOS, and that's focused on Apple related stuff like iPhone, iPad, Apple watch, Apple TV, all that stuff, and get a lot of guests from the Apple Community. So it stays really focused on a lot of things influencing the technology world and Apple specifically. And it seems like I'm getting a lot of a little bit of traction. I've been doing Patreon campaign and buying me coffee, that kind of stuff and starting to get a little bit of traction on that. But I haven't really explored any of the advertising stuff that you guys have been talking about yet. But it's a fun show. I do, you know, do it more.

For passion of technology that I have and so far so good. So David, are you vlogging it and.

Are you tubing it? Yes, I have a YouTube channel. I post the audio portion of the show and when we record live and stream it on when it's live and can I keep it up there for now? But working on doing more editing of the shows, I just jumped into TikTok and looking to put some shorts on there. And so just starting to explore a little further in the social media realm. But the YouTube definitely is a big place. I know the eyeballs are there and need to grow that audience so I can start monetizing that. No, we're near yet, but. But yeah, I do. I I have been dabbling a lot of the social media and trying to get it out there.

Well, what about the blog?

I haven't really done any blogging per se. I probably should. I have a website and a lot of the show notes and information for what we talk about in each episode. It's a weekly show, so I have a lot of information in there each week of what we talk about. So I haven't really explored going into any blog and having the times. This is just a side gig here, so.

Well, I suspect it's going to be really powerful for you as you go forward, and especially as you decide to monetize it, because the number one thing we do when our iPhone's not working or when something's not going right is we Google it or we, and Google will serve us up something that's a blog or something in YouTube. So those are the two places that actually get served up before a podcast does. So really dialing that in and then also making sure that your episode titles are really helpful questions, answers to questions. Yeah, they seem to be.

Let's see. Last week's episode, we talked about Focus mode, and I always try to put a topic related to a, to an iPhone issue. And, but, no, I agree with you.

Yeah.

Blogging is an important thing to do. And putting it in conjunction with social media and doing all that other stuff is definitely important. It's starting to grow further. I mean, it was just kind of a hobby the last, you know, three or four years, but it's, it's starting.

I'm starting to see some traction, so I know I've got some work to do.

Well, congratulations and good luck. Keep going. I appreciate that. Hey, I just want to jump in and, and thank everybody again. I think, yeah, I think we got all the questions on there. I want to thank everybody again and for your guys' time. This went and was well beyond my expectations. I originally put out a post just because I felt like there was a need to do this and I had no idea that it would turn into this. And so I just want to thank you guys again and appreciate your time and encourage you guys to go and connect and get connected with everybody. We mentioned that this was kind of a LinkedIn party, so follow them on LinkedIn, follow them here on Twitter, subscribe to their shows, and let's just hope that this can be the spark for future collaborations. I hope maybe in a couple of years we'll all look back and say, remember we were all on that Twitter space and that was the time where we came together. We met, I think that there's the possibility that is very great. So thank you guys so much for doing this again. I have my kids who are banging at the door, the barbarians at the gate, and they know that it's after 4:30 and dad's supposed to be off work. So thanks again and we will see you guys on the next one.