Should You Change Your Podcast Tactic And Timeline To Support A Cause?

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community at Podcasters United and podcast industry experts Tom Hazard and Tracy Hazard as they debunk all that outdated and bad advice you've been getting from the podcast gurus and find out what actually works today.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

Hey, everybody, we are back. We got a really interesting topic today and it's thought provoking. It borderlines on controversial or controversy or avoiding controversy potentially. I mean, tapping into it. There's a lot to unpack here, really.

Okay, so first things first. We are not making any political commentary. We're not making any social commentary. That is not who Tom and I are. It's not what we're about here. What we do want to say though, is that there are considerations and there are things going on in the world today and yesterday because this is following Black Tuesday. So we're having issues that you all are having to deal with in saying, do I post today, do I not post today? What do I do? Right. And so we want to address that from a strategic standpoint, from a business standpoint, because here's the thing, look, one of the strategies is to take a look at this from a strategic fundamental who you are and how you show up in the world. So I'm going to start with that from us and then why we are bringing this to you today, but why we haven't changed our overall strategy to what we are doing and the rest, like we had a masterclass yesterday and we kept with it. We didn't block it, we didn't stop it, we didn't do anything like that.

Well, and we considered, we talked about it, Tracy and I. It's like, well, you know, this is now what they're calling Black Tuesday and you know, support for Black Lives Matter. We're very supportive of that in principle. But the reality is, were we gonna change and not publish our masterclass, which we had sent emails out about for weeks, you know, to our list about that we were gonna do this on this day? Do we change the schedule? Do we change what we're doing? Or do we continue and. Or even if we're gonna do it, do we need to make a live stream post ahead of time sort of explaining why we're going to continue to do? I mean, there were lots of things.

We, there are lots of considerations. And you all are pondering this and many of you been Pondering it as you're trying to decide, should I address Covid? Shouldn't I address Covid? Should I start a new show with it? Should I do a new series? So we want to take a look at this, though, from the strategic standpoint. What is this doing for you? What is it doing for your business? Are you technically. Also because that's how we show up in the world, making sure that you don't make technical mistakes that hurt you later. Right? We don't want to make the mistakes that cause harm to us when we're trying to do good in the world. Right? Like, we don't want to have those two things happen. So that's how we're going to address it today. So the first thing first is we're going to walk you through a little bit of our thinking in the process so that you have a sense of how to maybe process this for yourself. So Tom and I clearly know who we are to you, our audience, whether it's on our podcast show. It's our coaching clients, it's all of you here are done for your clients, right? We know our job and our role within that. It's our mission, right? And our mission is to be obsessively focused on you as a podcast host and making sure that you're getting the most from your content and the most value, returns, rewards, monetization, whatever that is. That is our job to show up for that. Okay? And on the side of that, our impact into the world is to make sure that all of your voices get heard. So when we talk about black voices, Latinx voices, whatever that is, our job is to make sure that you know how to get your voice out there. And so that's how we show up in the world. So we don't show up by not voicing, right? We show up by supporting, voicing. So taking a look at yesterday and saying going black and going silent, I understand the powerful message to that, but it's also against what we stand for here. Not the message of supporting Black Lives Matter, not supporting black voices. That's not what we're against here. We're for supporting that. And yesterday our masterclass was on advanced referrals and how to get referrals for your business and how to keep your business growing. And that's also in making sure that your voices are heard and your voices get out there so that you're seen, heard, found. Like, that's fundamental to who we are. So for us not to show up, to make sure that we do that consistently and Constantly was a consideration for us and so weighed heavily on us. And, you know, I have to be really frank about this, that I grew up in South Africa at the height of our apartheid, 1978 and 1979. And I'm really dating myself now. You all know how old I am, and I was a child there, and it was like growing up in the 60s, and I saw violence and anger and bombings. And at some point, my parents had to send us out of the country and to live with our grandparents for four months before they could come home from the assignment and job that my dad was on because it was so violent in the cities and we were close enough. And so looking at that is that I understand it at a fundamental core level of both the need for it, the power for it of it, and the necessity to shifting change. So from that, I want to support things, right? Like, I get the powerful getting your message out there, but I also know my role. And so that's the strategy piece that we're looking for, right? What's your role? What's your support factor? What's your audience? And what do they need the most from you? And is it taking a stand and making a powerful message, then go do that. But if it is showing up and doing the hard work, is it showing up and giving them tools, then show up and do that. Because wherever you can give them something of value, then give them that, because that's really, at the end of the day, going to shift, make bigger impact, make bigger movements. So that's our fundamental core thing that I want you to think about from a strategic standpoint. Does this matter for my audience in terms of me taking the stand? Does it also matter at the soul to me, right? To me personally? And that was the second part of what I was bringing up there, is that sometimes our business choices and our personal choices have to be two different things. And we have to take a stand because we feel very strongly about it. Right?

Well, and it's really. Social media has complicated these issues so much. I used to keep Facebook was like my personal social media platform. This is going back. Oh, my gosh, it's going back at least 12 years. Facebook was personal and LinkedIn was business, and I didn't mix the two. But over the years and being in business, those lines got blurred at least five, six years ago. And I came to the realization that I cannot refuse to connect with people I'm in business with on Facebook. And so that passed long, long ago. But so in some ways, though, I have people from my Personal life back from high school and even grade school that I'm connected with on Facebook, that I communicate with differently than I do, obviously, people in business. And so that's a consideration too, for each of you individually and personally. Is your social media mixed between business and personal, or is it. Can it be strictly one or the other? So that plays into it also, Right?

And when you're talking about that is that you can make a personal stand. You know, people change their profile photos, things like that. Those are powerful personal stands, and you can absolutely do that. But if your job is to show up and to provide content and to do the things that you do, that consistency and constancy is really important to audiences. So what we know is that when we show up week after week after week, that we are making sure that all of you are supported when you're sitting back worrying about this question. So if we went black today because your coaching call happened to happen on Tuesday, and we went black and didn't support you as you're struggling to deal with whether or not you should comply and you should do this or you should support that, then we haven't served you well just by making a stand and a statement. So that's why we made the choices that we made. And, you know, I'm not going to apologize for them. They were our choices, and these are going to be your choices, and you shouldn't have to apologize for them either. Right. And that's the great thing about being here in America, right? We have free speech. We get to make these choices. Right.

Well, you know, and to that point, Traci, hopefully it's obvious or clear to all of you who are watching us or listening to us here that Poditize is a safe space of free speech. Podcasting is a wonderful medium where you can publish everything, anything you want, and the FCC is not going to care or pay attention. There is no regulatory body that is going to restrict what you want to say on your podcast.

The content of what you want to say. They can restrict it if you don't comply with the ratings rules. Right.

But other than that, putting profanity in the title of your show, they won't let you do. Right. I mean, that's more of a platform issue, like Apple and people like that.

But we are here not gonna shut you down.

Right? Right. And the content of what you say in each episode, you are free to say anything you want. And I fundamentally believe in that. Right. Whether I like what you post or not disagree with it does not matter what you Podcast on completely believe you can publish anything you want. So politize is Switzerland in that sense, a very safe space for public.

That doesn't mean, though, that the directories out there are. So keep that in mind. It's just like Twitter. So there was a really interesting post on Twitter today, is that someone went in and created a. An account that mimicked exactly what the President tweets.

So it was exactly the same tweet, just auto retweeting?

No, no, it wasn't a retweet. They would copy and paste the exact same thing into their profile and see if they got shut down.

Oh, did they?

They did, yeah. And they're going to keep doing it. Every week they're doing new ones and they're seeing what happens within, how long it takes them to get reinstated and everything. But so far, everything that they've retweeted got blocked just. And they got delisted. So every single time that has happened so far. So keeping in mind we're ordinary people, Twitter has a statement about presidents and heads of state qualify under a different type of category. We don't here. All of us as podcast hosts do not. So we do. If the platform itself or the directory itself, who's distributing it out to the world in your message, they have a right to shut you down. If they get complaints and they shut you down and ask questions later.

And if you're. If they believe you're not in compliance with whatever their rules or guidelines are.

Right. And we can't do anything about that on your behalf. I mean, we. We can.

We can advocate for you, we can communicate with them on your behalf. If we think that they've erred in their decision based on their policies, certainly.

Right. But for a lot of times, that does happen because they take you down and ask questions later. Right. You know, and some of them don't even have an ask questions later. Like Facebook is really difficult with that. Right. But itunes, I find, or Apple is very, very easy to resubmit and fix whatever's wrong. And usually they're really good about that. So. But just keep in mind that we don't control that here at Poditized. Your voice is still out there. Your audio file is still there. It exists. It's going out on your website, it's going out to everywhere that leaves you listed. But if itunes decides to block your Apple podcast decides to block you, you are blocked. Right. You are not reaching out there. A platform has that decision. We do not here. So keep that in mind that those things are a part of the strategy.

Speaking of, like, tactical and technical things, that's why I was kind of bringing up the Twitter thing. I wanted to make sure that you guys understand that sometimes there are technical consequences. And that's our job here, to show up and remind you of what they are so that you're making an informed choice. So it isn't just a choice of, do I want to support the movement by doing this, but you might actually be causing detrimental damage to your overall marketing plan and mission and message that you've been working on for so long by making choices like that. So there are two things, Tom. First, I want you to talk to me about the article that you read about what happens when we put all black squares into Instagram feeds and other things. So this goes to a fundamental understanding, and I'll pipe in and talk about that. The hashtagging importance.

Okay, well, so this is not about your podcast or your SEO or your, you know, your visibility in the charts on Apple or anything like that. This is about social media. So there was an article came out yesterday because awful lot of people had been changing their profile pictures to just be black and then would hashtag blacklivesmatter and other related hashtags. And the article was not taking a political stance or was not trying to promote any sort of ideology or agenda. What it was really raising awareness about the reality of the computer algorithms that are in control of what we all are fed in our feeds on our different social media channels, Facebook, Instagram, et cetera. And what they're saying is that by so many people putting black as their black image, as their profile picture and hashtagging Black Lives Matter, it actually did a significant disservice, unintentional, but did a significant disservice to the movement, because there are people that monitor Black Lives Matter in their feeds all the time or in Twitter.

The hashtag this is a journalistic technique, right? When you're trying to monitor a topic, especially if it's your beat, right? So use an old journalistic term, but it's your beat or whatever. So I would do that occasionally if I was writing about innovation or something like that, I would use the hashtag technical innovation or technology innovation or other things like that. And I would use that hashtag or AI innovation. I would use that to find information quickly. So what happens is when you're hashtagging black livesthematter in this particular case, or you're hashtagging covid19, okay, and all you get is black. You don't get any information to be able to utilize. So the people who are putting out legitimate information about what's going on in a particular city is being buried under the inundation of the black images. And so it's hard to find information.

It was clogging up the hashtag and all the feeds and information with, yes, we understand a lot of empathy and support for the cause on that day yesterday, but it really hurt the actual, you know, dissemination of information to those that use those hashtags in the way that most people do to monitor that type of information. So it has a negative impact.

So to use COVID 19 as an example, what has happened is that there's so many people who post COVID 19 even though because they want to tap into the trend of it, so they're being opportunistic about it. So their episode really isn't all about that in a podcaster sense. Their episode isn't about it. There's no health experts, there's no real opinion. It's just that we're talking about it. Right. And so you put COVID 19 in the bottom of it. What happens is, is that Google has had to shift their algorithm, like they've had to degrade anyone who uses the COVID 19, unless they come from a legitimate medical source or government agency or something like that. So it's not even actually serving you from a technical standpoint, because an inundation and misuse of a hashtag for those purposes actually don't do you any good at the end of the day. So you think you're tapping into a trend and the reality is your voice isn't being heard anyway. And so thinking about how you're doing it, use it when it's legitimately important for a searching capability. And now you're really, you're doing your business and, and your listeners a service to be able to actually find it, because otherwise you're just buried anyway.

Well, now, Tracy, let's talk about a choice that a lot of podcasters have been faced with or have been considering, and that is do I pause publishing new podcasts because of unique circumstances around COVID 19 and the stay at home owners and people being out of work? Do I publish more episodes? Do I address and, you know, podcast on more topics specifically related to COVID 19? That's been a. We've heard a lot of those questions.

Yeah. And you may consider the same thing under a Black Lives Matter model. You know, as to how you want to address it, it depends on your show, of course, and what you're doing. So we want to be really supportive of you and how you do that. There's a couple of podcasters out there whose shows are not about that subject. Right. We had the two podcasters at the Athlete Times Media. One's a cow.

White tiger.

White tiger. Thank you. Yes, White tiger. So the two hosts of White Tiger, one's a former police officer. White police officer. And one's a black. NFL. Former NFL player. And they work together. Now, their synergy together to working through what happens after you leave your industry that you've worked in for so long and you have passion about and you love and their support of each other. Wow. What power could they have? Even though it's not what the show's about, the show is about and commentary about that and about transition. Right. But what power could they have? They may make the choice that's right for them, but they may say, I want to shift and talk about this. Perfectly relevant for them because of their backgrounds, because of their history, because of how they are together. Right. Great idea for making that shift. But if Tom and I were all of a sudden to shift to talk about healthcare, when our show is about how to podcast.

Right.

Is that the right thing for us to be doing, even if we care passionately about it and what we do?

Maybe only to the extent that we're talking about it right now. About, hey, we've got a lot of podcasters wondering about should they publish relevant to COVID 19, more or less or otherwise.

Right, Right. And so that's where I say, shift your language. Right. Don't shift your show. Shift your languaging, being sensitive to this. But also remember, right. That binge ability happens. What are you laughing about?

Tony's comment.

Nice assistant. Thank you. Yeah, nice assistant. So the other side of that, though, is that when you're looking at shifting your language and not shifting your entire show, it becomes something that becomes a regular occurring thing. That's great. But it has to be evergreen at the end of the day, because one day we won't be in mid Covid. Right. A year from now. And I don't want my shows to not be bingeable anymore. Right. To not be something of value in the future. So when we use that language, we will say COVID 19 or the trend for more people to work from home, which is going to continue. So we're referencing the event, but we're using it off as a jumping off point. Now, we used to do this a lot on our 3D print show. Unfortunately, things would happen like we would have shootings and 3D printing.

There were things in the news about the, you know, what is it, the ATF classifying 3D printed weapons or banning them or things like that. So they were very touchy subjects.

Right. But they were also timely subjects. So like we wanted to address them, but we needed to put it in a context of like how you look at that. Because what happens the next time something gets confiscated or they change the law and it completely reverses everything, right?

Well, it was the bump stocks because there were a lot of 3D printed bump stocks after you could no longer buy them and they were banned and they ended up banning them even if you print them yourself. So anyway, ended up, it was touchy stuff to talk about because we were trying very hard not to make a political statement or take a political stance, but talk about the impact.

But here's the case of what happened. So my sister was at Route 91. She managed to escape with her life. She was very stressed and traumatized and it was awful. My family's from Newtown, Connecticut, so like guns were a sensitive subject matter for me. Right. And we have, you know, our brother in law owns guns and he's in Colorado and he's a hunter. And we wrecked, you know, so all around we were torn over the subject as well. But to not address it on our show because it was a political hotspot wasn't good for our show. So we decided to address it. But we decided to address it in a way that was authentic to Tom and Tracy. That pointed out the sensitivity of our own viewpoint on it and the sort of transitioning of our own viewpoint on it over time because of events that had occurred. And we did that. And here's what really interesting that happened is our listeners responded really well. We never had any kind of nasty comments about it or kind of, I mean, there'd be the occasional people who would point out where you could find the 3D print gun, you know, libraries or whatever. And so, you know, not my favorite thing, but they have a right to post that. And I, you know, we weren't going to argue with that. But then what happened though is that one time we had, we were working with this agency and they posted something. It wasn't, I say it was clickbaity, but it had something about guns in it. And you know what our listeners noticed and they started tweeting to us and messaging us on wherever it was posted across social media, messaging to us and saying, hey, Tom and Tracy, I think you got hacked. Because this would not Be you.

Because they knew our voice. They knew what we would tend to post or not, and it wasn't in alignment with that. And they were right.

They were right.

So we appreciate it and we took it down.

We took it down and we fired the agency. Right? Like that's what we did. Because obviously they didn't get it and our audience did. So this is where you showing up and being authentic to who you are, to your messaging and doing what you do when you don't, then do something that they want you to do that's also important. They're going to reach out and touch you. So if you have an ability to soothe people, to help them through transition periods and you don't go and address maybe the stress going on during COVID 19 or the loneliness and it is in your subject matter, then they're going to notice that, too. So please make sure that you're thinking carefully and strategically about your show at all times. And if it needs to shift, it needs to shift.

Now, I'll tell you fundamentally what we have seen now that we've got a couple months behind us, of people working from home, more being forced to and all that, we have seen a trend of listenership going up overall, with few exceptions, but in general, listenership is up. It seems that people are wanting or have been longing for more human connection. So it's been a really good time to reach people. And, you know, we've had opinion. Hey, we're not going to stop our publication schedule. Why would we stop going to continue? If anything, we've published more during this time. And I'm going to give you an example of another customer. I was actually right over Tracy's head.

I can't even. Can't do it from here on this side. Business done differently. The yellow one. Oh, my gosh. It's just like trying to. Trying to do something with yourself in the mirror.

Right there. Right there. The bright yellow one by my head.

Yeah, Jesse Cole. Business done differently. He's the owner of a minor league baseball team in Savannah, Georgia, called the Savannah Bananas.

And he's really cool, by the way.

He's a great guy. But his podcast is about business, not his baseball. Actually, he has two. There's another podcast more specifically about the baseball team. And he not, you know, his business was really negatively impacted. Nobody in the stands, no baseball season, no revenue.

He made going to minor league. I mean, that's his. The innovation that he brought is made going to minor league baseball games exciting and fun again. And people wanted to do it.

And he stands. He has a very, very good business. Now, of course, it's been really harmed by no sports, no gatherings of more than 10 people and all that. But he decided in early May, I forget, I think it. Or late April, I forget. He recorded a series of podcasts, five of them specifically related to business, how it's impacted by COVID 19, and put out one per day in this special bonus series of episodes for a week. And he felt it was the right thing to do for him and his business and for his mission with his podcast.

And listeners want to hear that. Right. Like, this is what I guarantee you, his core value. Listeners know what he's done and understand he's got to be struggling here. What is he doing? I want to know. Right. And so by him putting that series out, but kind of segregating it the way that he did is a great way to do it, you know, because he wanted to make it right. He didn't do it immediately. He waited till he had good information to share and then he put it out there.

Other things that I just want to point out because we do have some technical things that there are others who have their production schedules already way ahead in advance. They have their episodes going out and they don't want to appear insensitive.

Ah, we have had some people in CIA. Yeah.

And so by adding a little advertisement clip, by using our ad mixing system, they were able to add in a little ad piece that says, hey, everyone, I know that a lot of you are sheltering in place right now, experiencing some tough times. Experiencing some tough times. And this episode was recorded two months prior to that, so we don't discuss it at all. But I really wanted you to still hear this because this is someone successful who you can learn from, and maybe that's going to really help you through this hard times. But I wanted you to know that it's different. So they're referencing the fact that it was recorded in a different time and space.

Well, and I think doing what is a lesson that was recommended to us many years ago in business, Tracy. And that is when there is a obvious elephant in the room situation. You've got to address the elephant in the room. Do not ignore it or pretend it's not there. Address it. And you're being more real with people. So I like how some of our podcasters have been doing that, either by creating a new intro for their short or like you said, just adding in a little segment using our ad insertion system right after the intro and before the main episode starts. Saying this, that, then later on, a couple months from now, when it's all blown over, that that can be removed. And at that future point in time, people aren't gonna think, oh, this was published right in the middle of COVID 19. They can take it out. Oh, you know what?

We should also mention to those of you using the DIY system system, you can use the intro outro, auto add to do that. So you would load up that special thing as an extra intro and you can check the button and automatically add it to the very front before your whole show plays. So you can utilize that on the DIY side as well. And if you guys need help with putting these things in, please reach out to our team. We've been doing it for other podcasters and we're happy to help you do that because it makes your show more relevant to your audience and we want that because that will attract more listeners. I want to go back to what you were saying about the listenership growth on the platform. So I've been doing a lot of interviews with many, many podcasters. And one of the interviews I just did today, which won't air for a couple of weeks, But I interviewed Dr. Mark T. Wade, who is Virtual Summit Podcast. The Virtual Summit Podcast. He and I mentioned Scott Carson, who was on his show as well. And Scott was mentioned in his recap of one year anniversary episode. So I was like, oh, actually a couple of our clients were mentioned in there. John Fawcett, you were mentioned as well. So there's a couple of you guys out there who have been on his show. So the Virtual Summit Podcast. And it's really interesting because this is something that when I went to go look at the status, the ratings and stuff he was saying when he first started the podcast, which was a year and a couple months ago. Okay. Or about a year and a month ago when he started it. Then there were no other podcasts on Virtual Summits. But now I pop up and there's like, everyone and their brother has a podcast about Virtual Summits.

Wow.

And I mean, an entire show on it. Not just like.

Not an episode.

Not just an episode.

Right.

Like they're everywhere. Right. There's shows popping up left and right.

He started a trend.

But you know what? The spike in his traffic, because he already has 150 episodes, and this is.

What we're seeing, 150 episodes in a year. So he's been committed. He's been doing like three a week.

He's been doing two to three a week. Yeah.

He does.

He does two to three a week. So he's really committed to it and it shows and the content is fabulous and well informed, but it is for his business. He has a software as a service called Virtual Summit Software. And so, you know, so thinking about that is that that's powerful and it is working. But the ones who are popping in and popping out or don't have the background in history didn't have the platform before. It's not happening at the steady. It's not like all of a sudden there's a spike in listeners and they're listening arbitrarily to any show that shows up. No, they're not like that. They're specifically listening and they're still being discerning about the shows that they choose. And so this is the episode that I also want to highlight for you on the Binge Factor. I interviewed Jennifer Otto and it's I think last week's episode. Jennifer Otto is a binge listener.

She's not a host, not a podcaster.

Right. So I interviewed a binge listener to get her perspective and she clearly goes through the outline of how she decides if she's gonna listen to a new show.

Wow.

And honestly, one of the things she said is like, and she confirmed what I've been saying for so many years now is that if I really want to deeply learn about something like I'm really, I want to learn how to Virtual Summit. I want to learn today because I don't have time, I want to crash course it. I'm going to pick a podcast that has a minimum of 25 episodes or more. Right. And so.

This is where you just starting up or you switching to a new show, like switching completely to a brand new show might be a mistake right now. And so in terms of addressing only something that's COVID 19. Right. Or it's one thing to address a broader subject, but to only address in that I'm going to go to the more tried and true longer and that's what listeners are going to do too. So keeping consistent with that is really, really important. And Jennifer Otto has some great. So she gives great shout outs to Jen Duplaisis, which is Jen's podcast is.

About real estate and mortgage lending. Mastery has one, but she has two.

She's yeah, but the other one hasn't launched yet. So I asked Jennifer Otto, there's two gents. So it got confusing. But I asked her, I said, so have you listened to every one of Jen's episodes? She said, absolutely, I have. Well, now, when Jen Starts up her new show, even though it's not about real estate. Are you going to listen to it? She said absolutely. So there is a power in terms of if you have the binge listeners, for them to come to a new show with you. But remember, it's the general listenership. If you were expecting that launch boost, it's not there. So your binge listeners will come with you. So one of the things we technically we recommend is doing what you were talking about, business done differently is that doing a series with in your own show. And then if you want to spin it off later right into its own. Into its own thing, do it that way you're going to have more power to it.

Right. And you can even leave it in your normal show feed. It can stay there forever. But if you have a special series, you can highlight it and move it over into its own. So that people newly finding your show that really just want to binge through that subject area that is focused in really a micro niche of your genre can do that easily. And why not? It doesn't cost you anything to put it out that way.

No. And we have multiple feeds here, so you can do it when you're ready. Yeah, it's like nothing. So the last thing I just want to say from a technical standpoint, then we're going to questions and we'll move on to where we are. There is that. But the last thing I want to say on that is that when you disrupt your consistent and constant plan, right. When you're being consistent, you're posting every week at a specific time. And you know, for those that were on Tuesday, it was an unfortunate choice to be making for many of you to decide. Do I not air something because the musicians are going off air? Do I not air my podcast on Tuesday? We didn't have to make that choice just because ours are Wednesday, Thursday, Fridays. We're later in the week.

I have a podcast that published yesterday. I have an episode. I didn't think you did.

I thought we were on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.

No different show, though. The show I'm doing.

Oh, you're doing Festool.

So that one published on Tuesday. But here's the thing. Even though we publish it on Tuesday, doesn't mean people listen to it on Tuesday. It gets pushed to their phone, their device. They might get to it Wednesday, Thursday, or on next weekend. To me, as a podcaster, it's very different than if you're like the Tonight Show. Like last night, Jimmy Fallon went on and his intro was just voiceover. No Music because the whole music industry is supporting Black Lives Matter by not playing any music yesterday. So great. They're a show that does absolutely. A live, well, a live recorded show, but a do new show every day and it does air at a particular time, but it didn't mean they didn't air.

Right. And so that was a choice that many had to make yesterday. And I know she podcast and a couple of other decided not to post at all yesterday. So there are choices to be made and innovations to be had. But when your audience counts on you to show up consistently and constantly on time, that can be a detriment to your business. When they say, wow, you're more worried about something else than you are worried about showing up for me. And so think about that. And I don't say that from doing it for one day is not going to hurt you, but if you were to do it like and shut down and not record anything during this whole Covid period, that would have been a shame for you not to show up for your audience because you were caught up in, you know, what's going on now legitimately, that people pod faded during that period because their children were home and they had to deal with homeschooling.

They got sick or their businesses got so negatively impacted they lay people off and do a lot more work themselves. And again, be the chief everything officer when maybe they weren't. I mean, there are legit reasons why some people don't have enough bandwidth to do it maybe.

And our recommendation for that is to go on do one single episodes and explain that. Don't pod fade and have people wondering what's going on with you. But if you tell me, if you came out and I was listening to your show and you told me, I'm having a hard time and here's what's going on and I really hope I can come back to you because I love the podcast, but I can't. I've got to take care of my family, I got to take care of my employees, I got to take care of my business. I'm more likely to not unsubscribe you. I'm going to hang out and wait and see what happens. Right. I'm going to actually be really eager when you come back to listen to that episode and find out what happened to you and what was the story during the whole time. So making sure that you're out there messaging about that is really technically important. But also keep in mind, if you go in an extended period of time without posting, without putting out Blog posts without doing this, without doing it in social media. The AI, the artificial intelligence to the bots that control your ranking, your authority, your value and whether or not you get served up will be negatively affected if you are not consistent about what you go through and what you do. So keep that in mind that it does have a technical effect. So this is a really an example outside of podcasting industry, but we used to work in the product industry. We support a lot of Amazon sellers, we support a lot of Amazon brands. And I had some conversations at top big brands who were choosing to send the limited inventory they had to Amazon and not to stores and not to their own website sales. So you would think, oh, I've got inventory, I should sell to my website, I'll make more money, the margin will be there, it will be better for me. And instead they made the choice to send the inventory to Amazon and make sure that their product never went out of stock on Amazon. That was critically important for them. Why? Because the minute they go out of stock, all the other products come in above them and it will take them three to four times the amount of money and effort and time to recover from an out of stock period of time. And that's all algorithm. There aren't people there making that choices. So using that as the example, the same thing happens on Apple podcasts, on their search engine, on how they do it, on how they deal with subscribers. That's why I tell you not to.

Go more than chart how you chart in your category. Right.

And you may never get back to where you were. You may get back to a new level, but you may never get back to where you were. So making this choice of not podcasting or not publishing can have a long term negative effect if you do it long term. Okay. So keep that in mind. One day is not going to change that. That that's one day is a blip. Okay. So want to be clear on that. So I just want to make sure that's our job is to protect you on the technical side and remind you that your decisions have technical consequences. The choices that you make in your strategy. We have some like a lot of things going on so on our platform on other things. So we can always talk about that too. The masterclass, you can collect, check it on replay. It's about advanced tactics for referrals and talking about lead referrals, lead generation. We have 21 different concepts to really think about and key factors.

Different factors.

Yeah, yeah, key factors to generating leads from your podcast and referrals from Those podcast listeners from those clients that you may already have. And so we use it, the term clients throughout the masterclass for a reason, because we obviously want them to turn into business so they're not just. But you can use that as. You can drop in the word listener in that in your mind and start thinking about how do I get listeners to refer me. Right. How do I get them to share my show? It's the same thing. Referrals work in the same way. So I think it was really good and we had a lot of great feedback and we had a lot of people.

I really enjoyed that master class. I think it is very useful.

Yeah. And so our goal is to bring you more of that.

And if you have a business that in any way would benefit from referrals, it's probably worth your time.

Yeah. And we shared some insights into how our business works and how we use referrals and how we apply them. And the power that they've had in growing our business over the last four years is tremendous. I mean, we can't thank all of you enough for referring us. And that's how we've grown. So. Yeah, so that's one. And we're going to do a POD to publish to audiobook. That's going to be in a couple of weeks. You'll see advertisements. Those are going to be on Tuesdays, the master classes. The masterclasses are on Tuesdays at 1pm Pacific Time. And so. But they're not every week. They're a couple of months is what we're going to do here. And I am thinking about having Dr. Mark T. Wade come in and do a Virtual Summit masterclass.

I think that'd be fantastic.

And I think it would be fantastic for all of you as well. So I'm thinking about doing that. And we may not get it organized this month, but I'll put it into next month for sure. And then we're going to have Teresa Deforge come on at some point.

At some point. Yeah. We're working that out probably more in July, I think. And let's see, Social media masterclass is coming up and that's always a popular one. And we have been rebuilding, reprogramming from the ground up our productized dashboard. Coding wise, we are very close to testing that ourselves internally, really. Just a week or two away from that, and then hopefully rolling it out to everybody in the beginning of July.

When I was talking to Marc on the Virtual Summit, they're going through a technology shift as well, and both of us were Like, God, it's so painful and it takes so much longer than you think it's going to.

And we made a calculated choice. We thought the majority of our customers would appreciate us continuing to show up for them and not pausing or delaying because of everything that was going on.

Yeah. And you know, think about it this way. The music industry makes a choice, and they can make a choice because, I mean, look, they've gotten tons of plays, their music consumption has grown over the last three months. Their business has been disruptive from on the creation side. So the creators are home, had a lot of time to think about what they're doing on social media and how they presenting and what their messaging is and what they care about out there. But not everyone has that luxury. Many of us are like, really, you know, in tight business, we're really, we're really struggling day to day and we're really cranking it out and doing what we got to do. And so we got to show up and do that. And so it's a different choice we made. Right. But at the same time, you think about that. What are some creative ways that I could support. If I want to support a mission, I want to support a messaging, I want to support Black Lives Matter. What could you do? So what I've been doing is I have pulled all of the black podcasters who are featured on my podcast, which has been quite a lot. And I had one interview, I just did that. I pushed her up in the schedule because I felt what she was podcasting about was critically important too, because I also thought that she puts out a very smart and wonderful value based view of a black woman in business. So I wanted her view to be heard because she's powerful and amazing. She made me. And I talk to podcasters every day and every time I go talk to one and they amaze me. I want to share them more. So I move them up in my social media share schedule and my production schedule. Those are choices you can make to be better about supporting. If you haven't had enough black businesses represented in your podcast, then get them represented. That's, you know, do that. That's a way you can do, help, support, make it go out there. And as I said, if your job is to support the underlying fears, the anger, go and support that in whatever way you can.

We hope this discussion was helpful. Thank you. All right, everybody, we'll see you next week.

Keep podcasting.

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