Podcast Host Authenticity: The Single Most Important Thing for a Successful Bingeable Podcast

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Hey everyone, this is Tom and Tracy on the feed your brand podcast.

So, yeah, today we thought we'd talk about authenticity because it's a big kind of hot marketing term like be authentic. Be authentically you.

Or I would say be real.

Be real. Yeah, like all of that. You see a lot of that popping up on how to be more authentic and the brands that are more authentic brands are doing better and all of that. So we really want to talk about that because this is the thing, it's like, it's really hard to hide when you're podcasting or video casting the authentic you. It's hard to be scripted. You have to be a really good actor, actress to be able to do that on an ongoing basis. Stay in character the whole time and do that. It always slips through.

I agree with you. You know, when we started podcasting, many years ago, when we started podcasting, we actually had more of a, I would call it a routine or a shtick, you know, as to how we started our show. Right. And I think it was a bit contrived. It was overthought and, you know, had a general business coach at the time who we were working with, and he listened to our podcast and he's kind of an ex hippie from the 60s. He's a little older guy.

Well, it's David Corbin and he just wrote a fabulous book called Brand Slaughter, which just really to the point here is that so many brands are slaughtering their own brands. They're killing themselves by not being good to their customers, by not being authentic, by just so many things that they do in both customer service and follow up that aren't authentic to their original brand message. They're messaging out and selling you on something and then they're not delivering on it. And that's the same thing we're talking about here. So, I mean, gotta give David kudos for that.

And so David said to us, you know, hey, you just need to be more real, man. You know, he said it. But you know what, there's real wisdom and experience in that. And you know, very quickly after that, we changed it up and it's just me and Tracy being us.

That's right.

Doing our thing. And I think that you can tell as a listener and your listeners who are listening to your either video streams or video program or your audio program in a podcast and they can tell when you're being authentic, the real you and when you're not. It's not to say that you air all your dirty laundry out on the podcast, you certainly don't. But you definitely can be real and you authentic. And we find that audiences, listeners respond to us so much more because of that.

Right. So, you know, we have a history of not just our podcast, which has almost 500 episodes right now, our other podcast and also we have hundreds of podcasts, episodes that have been done and the ones that aren't scripted, the ones where the hosts are much more authentic, where they don't even, you know, sometimes they don't even go and do an outline. I mean, I recommend, you know, you at least setting a topic or setting a question or setting an intention for an episode. But we don't actually, even when we do guest interviews, we don't even script questions. Then sometimes people get very uncomfortable and come back to it. And the reality is is that they're not going to be good guests because they're not going to be authentic either. And we found that across all of that, not just our stuff, but all of our clients stuff, that the ones that don't do that, the ones that are authentic, that just do a little more off the cuff, that have a little more of that realness to them, do tons better percentage wise than the others in terms of audience, in terms of stickability, in terms of binge ability, which is a very important thing to get at if you're going to grow your audience, whether it's on livestream or YouTube or on iTunes on podcasts. Right. So getting it that way is so critically important.

Tracy, I agree with you 100%. Let's talk about a few ways people can be authentic. All right? Now I think that certainly, I think especially as you're starting out, letting your audience know a little bit about you. Not too much how much tmi, how much too much. Right, right, right. But no, you really do want people to know you because this is what is going to make them respond more to things that you offer them to, calls to action that you will make either for you business or for sponsors in their business. Your audience will trust you if you are real with them and you let them into a little bit of your life. I mean, Tracy and I Talk sometimes about our kids. We have an older kid and we have a couple of younger kids. And as it's appropriate and as it relates to what we're talking about, we do talk about them and we let them know their names and we don't give them their Social Security numbers. But people get to know us and know that we're real people. They know that we live in Orange County, California, you know, in Southern California. Things like that.

We give context to things. I think that's, like, really important. So we give context to, like, this just happened to us. And here's why we think it's important. And it made us think about this. So it shows that sort of relationship between our real life and our life on the air. So one of the things that, you know, you struggle with at the beginning of being a podcaster or a video cast host is like, you want it to be well produced. So you tread a little bit on the side of some of them. Treads a lot. The intro episode, the very first episode you ever do, so often they're the worst one ever, and you just gotta rip the band aid off and do it. It's one of those things that we have.

I agree. You have to jump into the deep end of the pool if you're new to this. Right. Because getting experience is really the most important thing. You will get more comfortable with it.

Yeah. And you just sort of have to accept that that episode is like, gonna be your stiffest ever. But please don't script it. That's my number one thing. Please do not script it. Cause the ones that script it, it's just they cringe so much more than everyone else later. And they're the ones who can't wait to redo it.

And you can tell the scripted ones, I don't even need to describe to you what it' can tell that they're reading from a page.

Yeah. Have you ever heard, like, you know, the authors that read their own audiobooks.

Even the most recent one? I'm going to date this episode a little bit. And this is in no way a political statement, but we're recording this just after some of the early recordings of Hillary Clinton reading her new book that she wrote about the campaign came out. And when you hear on the news these clips of her, it's even a little more mechanically delivered than her speeches from the stage were on the campaign trail.

Right. But it's highly likely because they slowed down the audio, which is they do that when you record. They slow down, down the audio to a very specific pace on audiobooks. That's kind of a part of their process, so it makes it even more mechanical sounding. So you gotta let you be you. And you can't do that if you're reading off a piece of paper.

You can't. I agree 100%. And here's a little pro tip for you. If you are listening to this and you're preparing to start your podcast and you really haven't done a lot of recording before, then I highly recommend, especially if you're gonna do any interview episodes and that's a subject for another feature. That's right, podcast episode.

It's coming up.

As to why we recommend you do interview episodes, so stay tuned for that in a future episode. I'm not going to go into that right now, but we do recommend you at least do some interview episodes as a part of your editorial calendar plan. But for now, let's just say okay. When you are going to do interview episodes, I highly recommend, when you're a new podcaster, you conduct those interviews, two or three of them before you go and record your introductory episode. Because when you're interviewing somebody and you're having a dialogue, you're having an interaction with someone, it is a little more real and natural inherently.

So when we run our podcast workshops or our brand casting workshops, when we run those with clients, or when we even run through a client where we're going to do the done for your services, we actually set it up and it's sort of included in our package to do the first three episodes. And that's actually what we do is we reverse it. We make them do an interview first, a topic second, and then third, do their intro. And so we work backwards on purpose because they get more and more comfortable into that intro episode.

Well, I think not only do they get more comfortable, and you're right about that, Tracy, but what they also do is, especially when they're a new podcaster, they don't always completely understand all the types of things they're going to talk about, everything that their show is really about. And that doesn't mean that your show can't pivot over time as to what it is about. It absolutely can. But what to have experienced some of those interviews and some of those topics first, you feel it, you live it, you are it a bit more. And when you record that interview episode, you have an easier time not just delivering it. Which is the first thing we're thinking talking about here, right? Is delivery.

But you're articulating it too, right? You're thinking it through and it's gelling in your mind, and it's starting to feel like, how would I say that when I'm introducing my guest and asking them and telling them what I'm about and what my show's about and what I want my listeners to gain from it, all of a sudden you're refining that message for yourself, and so you're getting that true brand as well come across. So that brand messaging is coming across just as well for you as in that process. So that's really one of the pro ways we do this. But we know it works, and it comes across really well. And if you have already recorded your intro episode and it's bad and you're not happy with it, there is no reason not to replace it.

Absolutely.

So just want to throw that out there. Yeah. It might mess up some of your statistics. We have ways that. And tricks we'll talk about in the future about ways to not do that. But you just really rerecord that because it is a critical episode. So we find that when people come and find your podcast or find your video, if you've got a whole series of live streams on your website or however you're hosting them and they go in, they'll come into the most recent, they'll check out your most recent, and then if they like it, they might go back to the very beginning again. And that's where binge listening happens or binge watching happens, but they go back to the beginning. And so they want to see if that was kind of an anomaly or what you're really about or if that just. That last episode, the most recent episode, was good, but is this whole thing for me and should I spend the time on listening to everything that you have?

And it might shock you, but it's true. I mean, we on one of our podcasts have almost 500 episodes. And still to this day, we'll have people say, hey, I just found your podcast and I'm up to episode 182 and I'm.

Or lately we have them go, hey, I can't find your first 100 episodes. Where are they?

That's true.

Because that happens.

Yeah, it depends on where you're listening to it. Itunes only has a maximum of 300 that they will show. So when you get to a certain point, you have to archive and have multiple feeds, or better yet, have it available on your own website, which is what we do.

And that's where we send them so that they can find any of the episodes there. But you know, wow, that's such a compliment. And that's so great. And it says that you're relating to your audience. And that's really what I want to. The next kind of big tip that I want to give you is that the whole idea is to pace yourself. Okay. This is not a, like, I've got one shot at talking to you and I'm going to spit out everything about me so that you know so much about me. So you're just going to want to listen again. That's not a good path. We're building a long term relationship over many, many, many episodes. So we want to not only do that with our personality and ourselves, we want to get us through be real over time, but we also don't need to give them everything in our first message.

That's a really good point, Tracy. I'd like to add to that in terms of being authentically you. Also doesn't mean you recite your resume.

Yes.

Okay. That is another sort of rookie error that I'd like to caution you against. And there are times and places to drop relevant aspects of who you are and where you came from and why people should be listening to you. Absolutely. But I would caution you against your intro episode making it all about you. I would recommend making it, you know, enough about you to give you credibility as to why they should be listening to you, but really making it about them, about the listener, about who you want to listen to your show and.

How you plan to serve them. Right, right. How you plan to provide that and get that to them and continually to serve them. So, like, I mean, things come up over time, like, well, this will happen on this podcast series. I mean, you're just getting to know us, but we've been podcasting so long, like, I forget, I haven't talked about, you know, we haven't mentioned we have three daughters or something. It might come up and we'll be like, oh, yeah, by the way, we have three daughter. You know, and it doesn't occur to us because we've been podcasting so long that it's just we've talked about it. We feel like we've talked about it before.

What show did we talk about?

Right. Or it happens all the time because I give a lot of speeches all over the country. And so as I'm giving speeches, I'm like, oh, yeah, I didn't talk about it with this audience last time I met with them. That was six months ago. And probably there's a whole different set of people here. So I Gotta mention that again, I sort of forget that, you know. Oh yeah, by the way, I'm an in columnist, you know, like that kind of thing. It's sometimes it becomes an aside for me. And so you do have to kind of remember that, that there are new listeners all the time. So you do want to make that there's something for them. But there are listeners that have been loyal followers from the beginning of your series of whatever it is, videos or podcasts and they're always there and you got to give something to them as well by not boring them with constant overview and redoing that and that we hear happen all over the place. I mean the reality is is that they can find you, they can find your bio, they can find you on the website. It is not time to keep doing that in every single episode or in.

Little additional pro tip here. In the intro of your podcast, which we do recommend for most podcasts you have introduction that's pre recorded and with an announcer, some voiceover artist of a style that you like that introduces you. It sort of sets you up as the authority. But the point here is we've had some clients who make their intro of their podcast that pre recorded one that remember when people binge listen, they're going to listen to that intro over and over and over again. So keep it short and sweet. It has to be good, has to be to the point, entertaining if you can, especially because it's going to be repeated over and over. But especially don't put your resume there. And we have had some people we've experienced do that. And it's not helping them, it's really not helping their user experience of their listeners. They're providing great content in their episodes and sometimes that's enough to keep people coming back to listen despite having that repetition. But I would caution you against having that. If you really want to have some of your resume and credibility stuff in there, I would recommend putting it in the outro to at the end of your podcast because then those who are listening for the first time and are interested, we'll listen through that. But it's pretty easy for everybody who's heard you 50 or 100 times to then okay, I'll stop listening at that point. I've heard that right.

And if you're doing that in a video cast format, you can put it in the like click through on the end so that you know or put it into the comments field. This is a really good way to do that. If you'd like to know more about you Know, if you'd like to know more about Tom Hazard, click here and you've written it into the comments and not as a part of the video. And that really helps kind of keep things moving along. Or find me a profile. You know, they can connect to you on Facebook. So there's already a lot of ways for people to get in touch with you. It's not like it's a mystery, right?

No, absolutely, there should be. There's about 10 different ways that your listeners should be able to find you, and we'll cover some of those in, you know, upcoming episodes of setting up your webpage properly and your profiles on, you know, itunes and all the different places like that. They should have no problem finding you if they want to find you. So you don't have to make it all part of the audio program.

Right. And so here's one thing that will happen to you. So, for instance, this happens to me all the time is that I'm pretty clear in most of our episodes about things that LinkedIn is my preferred method of communication, you know, because I mix my Facebook with personal and some professional and other things like that. But I kind of prefer it to keep it personal. It's not my fastest response time. So if people send me business messages there, I don't get back to them fast, but I do get back faster on LinkedIn. And so people get to know that over time. And because I MEANT I'll mention LinkedIn constantly and say, like, oh, oh, get in touch with me via LinkedIn. And so I invite you to connect with me via LinkedIn because you say that your preferences are coming across authentically in the process to go back to our topic. It's happening, and they'll find the best way if they really want to get in touch with you. It shows that they listen, it shows that they paid attention, it shows that they want to. And so when they reach out there, I always personally answer. And so that's kind of how it really goes with people, is that they get to know you, they tap into that if they really are listening, and they reach out to you that way. And so it kind of goes both ways. Now they're being real back to you?

Absolutely. No, it does. It becomes a relationship. So I think the more real you are, the more authentically you that you are on your show. I think that there's a certain consistency there with the communication that happens when people write into you and maybe you have an assistant answering a lot of those emails, and that's okay, too. But I think that there's an integrity. There is really what I'd like to see.

Yeah. And authentic integrity. Exactly. I agree with that. And I just want to mention one more thing. I think we may have said this already before or on one of the prior podcasts. I mean, we're only on episode six, so we're really not that far into it. Even though we talk about this topic, like, every single day with our clients, one of the things that happen is, like, we tend to head towards something. So we have a podcast on 3D printing called WTFFF, and we expected there might be a bunch of techies on there, but when we started it, we really had an interest in sort of addressing design. It just was the way we wanted to take it.

Well, because we are designers first.

Right. And so we weren't really sure were they gonna respond well to going to be a problem. And we found over time that because we also have such business and marketing skills that are a significant part of how we design, that those came across, too, as well. And so we would tap into and occasionally do an episode or a segment, or we deviate and go off on a little tangent about a marketing lesson or a business lesson we learned from something that happened in the 3D printing world. And those happen to be some of our better episodes.

Yeah, I think there are some of our more popular episodes most listened to.

Because it's where we're most original.

Well, yes. I mean, we started out our careers as designers. The reality is we are entrepreneurs. We have our own businesses, and we have designed those businesses, just like we actually have designed this podcast for you, those of you that are interested in bringing your unique message to the world in the most effective way possible. We have business lessons we're going to share with you, too, here that are not just strictly about always the details of getting your message out right and getting the biggest return on your time. You invest in your original message in creating that. But there. There are business lessons that are going to apply, and I think. I certainly hope, you know, appreciate that as we go through it.

Right. But my main point to bringing it up is that that originality that you express because your viewpoint is different is exactly why people are tuning into your show, whether it's your live streams every day. So we have this wonderful friend that I absolutely adore, Aaron Scott Young, whose podcast is called the Unshackled Owner. And he has a web series. I. I guess it's. What does he do on Wednesday nights?

Oh, no, no. He has what he calls on the first and Third Wednesday evening of every month, he has this thing called the Freedom Call, which is a live webinar style. Really. It's him giving a business lesson and his whole thing is becoming an unshackled owner, meaning having a business that works harder for you than you work for it. That's the goal. And he teaches a whole course on it that you can buy and you know, take this course and he'll teach you how to do it it for your business. But the Freedom Call is sort of a less expensive, sort of an entry level way to get a lot of those lessons in a group format and not quite as much of a one on one format.

Right, right. Aaron had come to me at one point and said to me, I was like, I have these listeners, but I don't know why they're listening. And I said, erin, it's right in front of you. They're listening because it's you, because you're awesome, because you have such great experiences, because your stories are fascinating. I could listen to them all the time. And so that's why people are listening. And it has everything to do with him being authentic. And while it does, of course he has great lessons and it's a great program that he has going on there. But it's that authenticity that is really resonating. And I think that you are going to find that the more original you are, the more authentically you you are, the better the response will be.

I agree with that 100%. I do think you also though, have to have the content to back it up. I don't think you can be all personality without having really good experience that you're sharing wisdom. You' sharing. You know, you are talented at something, especially if you're in business for yourself. You must be. And the fact that you're willing to share that knowledge, you have some good quality content there. You combine that with then the authenticity and the integrity of, you know, being you and then you got a dynamite combination.

Yeah. So just before we go today, you know, I hope that you found this really interesting and exciting. And as always, you can find information on our podcast, this FeedYourBrandYourBrand Co or@brandcastingyou.com and you can find us on Facebook @feedyourbrand. And I just want to kind of mention one more thing before we go, and that is that this is a new show for us and it is also a very, very busy, high growth time for our businesses. So there might be some episodes where you get one or the other of us. We Kind of prefer to have it be both of us talking, but because it's more dynamic. It's just one of our preferred ways to do that. And if that's authentically you, then you should do it. But I wanted to let you guys know that sometimes you're just going to get Tom, and sometimes you're just going to get me. And that's a choice that we're making. But it's also a scheduling issue, and we just don't want to out and bringing you good content or good interviews or, you know, good messages all the time to help you continue to grow and feed your brand.

There's no question that I enjoy doing this more with you than I do doing it alone, Tracy. No question. It's a lot more fun. Besides, I think people like listening to you more than they like listening anyway.

But I'm not so sure about that.

But anyway, it is a lot of fun and it's something we do together. And obviously we're in business together and we're married. I mean, our whole life is together, really. But yes, Tracy especially is speaking on a lot of stages, you know, over the next few months and is traveling a lot. And we may still be able to do episodes together when she's on the road, just remotely getting us both into the same recording. But occasionally, yeah, because we. One of the things. And of course we teach you this, if we haven't mentioned it already in one of the episodes of this podcast, maybe we have. But consistency of creating new content is one of the most critical things. We highly, highly recommend you publish your show on a regular basis with consistency. Your audience will expect another episode at that same time of the week or on those same days of the week, if you're doing more than one day a week. And so you need to do that. And so to the extent that we need to, to be able to provide you that content on time, it will be only one or the other of us.

But yeah, we don't want to sacrifice that because we want you to have, you know, you want you to have the information, we want you to have all the great tips and tools, and we want to, you know, keep you moving forward with interesting interviews as well. That's going to be coming up in the near future. We're getting them all scheduled in and into our program process, and we're going to talk a little bit about that in a couple of weeks. Actually, you'll hear that about how we manage guests as well. So how we manage that interview process in our busy schedules. Because it is busy and it's hard.

To manage that and it doesn't have to take over the main focus of your business.

So, anyway, we hope this really helps you out and we'd love to hear your feedback and hear what you would like us to cover in the future, things that you're struggling with and other ways that we can help you. So please reach out to us@brandcastingyou.com or.

Feedyourbrand.Com and of course on social media, especially Facebook feedyourbrand. So thanks for listening everybody. This has been Tom and Tracy on.

The Feed your Brand podcast.

Sam.