Social Media Star Vs. Podcast Authority: Two Paths To Podcast Power

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community at Podcasters United and podcast industry experts Tom Hazard and Tracy Hazard as they debunk all that outdated and bad advice you've been getting from the podcast gurus and find out what actually works.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 finish feed your brand with smart cut tactics proven to cast your original voice to the world.

Hey, everyone. Welcome to Feed you'd brand. I'm Tom Hazard along with my co host, Tracy Hazard. Today we are going to talk about social media star versus podcast authority, two paths to podcast power, and really what we're talking about is two completely different approaches to podcasting, depending on your goals, what you're wanting to achieve with the content you're creating. Isn't that right, Tracy?

Yeah, absolutely. And what I want to do is frame this up a little bit for everyone. Anyone who thinks that, oh, they just became a podcast star, it's not true. There isn't anyone that I could name. Joe Rogan didn't start podcasting first. He actually started on video first. He actually started in wrestling first. Right. So they built their social capital, if you want to call it that, outside of podcasting, and then went into podcasting. The godfather of podcasting, Pat Flynn, some people call John Lee Dumas the king of podcasting. They started blogging. They were not podcasters first and foremost. And keep in mind that they also started podcasting before social media influence became as big a thing as it is, too. So, like, it was that old ago, but the same thing for Tom and I. We were bloggers first. Well, I was a blogger first. I don't know if you've wrote anything, but you got a lot of credit for it. And so anyway, where you come out of something. El so this is what I want you to keep in mind. Chances are you didn't become a social media star from podcasting. You might have been a social media influencer in a channel before and decided to step into podcasting. So it's your second step, not your first. Most podcasters who build podcast authority and then step outside of that to use it in their own business, they. Their path is a second step, but it's a second step from their core business, not a second step from some other type of influence. Just want to keep that in mind. So essentially, podcasting is their first authority and expansion and community outreach. It's not their second outreach, which is what it is with social media. So there's a little bit of Difference in what they already have to start with and then how they're going to use that going forward.

I think for me, I try to look at, break things down into sort of a more simple understanding for myself. Is that do you want to be a social media influencer first, or are you wanting to just have your podcast give you material to share on social media, but your primary goal is not to be a social media influencer. Right. I mean, I think that's pretty one way to think about it.

Or your primary goal is to stay a social media influencer where you are. Right. And just use podcasting as an aside. But I think that's not as common. I think most often what happens is, is that at a certain point in social media influence, whether it's on Instagram or YouTube or wherever it is, they say, oh, I want to take my influence and now I want to go into reality tv or I want to go and do something, I want to write books, I want to do something else with it and I want to make more money and expand my influence. Right, right. I want to make products like the Kardashians. Right. I want to do something else with this influence. And what everyone will tell you is until you can move it off of Instagram, until you can move it off of TikTok and show us that you have play outside the algorithm, you aren't really an influencer. You'll never be a celebrity. Right. You're never going to take it to that next level. And so it is required of you to step into something else and show that you can take your audience and they will follow you wherever you go and do whatever you ask them to do. That's true influence. And when they won't do that, then it says, you're a TikTok wonder. That's great, but that's where you belong. And that means you don't get a book deal, you don't get a TV deal, you don't get those other things. So that's really why a lot of people come in and step into podcasting, because podcasting's cheaper, it's easier to access, it's a little easier to do. Right.

Well, the other great thing about podcasting, I just want everyone listening or watching this to understand this, is that being a podcast host has become something that puts you on the map. I'm just going to at least stay in the United States. I mean, maybe it does worldwide too, but all I know is the United States market. Right. How often do we now have the late night TV show hosts, having a podcast host on their shows. It happens every week and sometimes multiple nights a week. In fact, we have right now. And I'm holding this up for those of you in listening to the podcast, you can't see I'm holding up a magazine that's Costco Connection, where they're talking about how their customers are listening to podcasts more and more. I mean, podcasting has entered the mainstream. And if you used to be. If you wanted to really make a name for yourself outside of social media, okay, I'm going to say if you want to make a name for yourself, you had to be an author. You don't need to be an author.

You could be a podcaster or have a column, right? And the whole point of it is, and this is where podcasting is similar, is that you have to sustain an audience. A column can sustain an audience. A book, in the traditional book publishing world had to sustain book sales. Like, it had to have enough sales to. So it was a sign that you had that level of influence required outside of a platform, right? That's what we call it, really, outside of just the algorithm and just the social media channel itself. And so that's why this is so essential here. But we digress from like, the differences between the two right now. So I want to get back to that. Tom, there's some significant approach differences because you have a different goal in mind to the two sides of things. So if my goal of social media influence is amassing a large enough audience that I can sell enough ads or enough stuff, other people's stuff, not usually my own, very rarely my own. It happens on occasion, though. Just keep that in mind. Usually it happens later, once you've amassed enough, then you start to sell your own stuff instead of at the beginning.

The influencer will eventually, if they get big enough, create their own brand or private label products under their name as a brand, right? And that happens a lot, right?

So usually you're doing some kind of affiliate, you have sponsors, whatever it is you're hawking, you're doing that. So you need more and you need it as fast as possible. So you need more and a lot of it consistently all the day. So if you look at the high level Instagram influencers and the high level TikTok influencers, they're posting around the clock. Like they're always posting something, right? And they're consistently always posting because it tracks new people. And their goal is to get enough followers, right? You want to get millions of followers because the more followers you have the more money you make and the more sponsors you attract. So the same focus has to be for podcasting. That means your focus has to be solely on the download numbers, as sad as that is, because the download numbers are faked nine times out of 10 in some of those circles. And it's true, and I'm not gonna sugarcoat it for you, it is absolutely true that those that are selling ads, there are a lot of paying for their download numbers to juice them in the beginning. And there's no other way around it, because it's hard to get those ad sales going. Right? So that's what they do. So those are not real numbers. The other side of it is also, they don't care if anyone listens. They only care about getting that ad right at the beginning to make them money, because they know most of their listeners won't listen through. So this is why Spotify doesn't even bother to count more than a minute. They don't even look at the rest of the playthrough. They don't even consider it of any value. They look at starts and plays are 60 seconds.

Starts and streams. Really is how they do it. Starts and streams. Yeah, I think we've mentioned this before on the podcast. That is one of the things that is very, I guess, disheartening to me about Spotify analytics. It gives you no idea if anybody's really listened to your whole episode or what portion of they listen to. Spotify only cares about the first 60 seconds because that's where they make their ad money and that's it. So that's the best we have. I mean, we have a license with Spotify and we import their analytics to our platform. I think the follower data is actually more valuable to our customers than the actual play data because you don't really know if they listened. Right.

But I think the follower data makes it more apparent that people aren't listening to your show. And that's what's really like. You look at that follower data and you should have so many more plays than you have and you don't. Or so many more streams than you have.

You're right. You often have so many followers that, gosh, if everyone was listening to every episode, you'd have a lot more downloads of your episodes. That is true, Tracy. However, I do find it as a constant gauge over time that people are still finding your podcast and are interested enough in it that they are clicking to follow. They're taking that action.

Right. But then they're not sticking with it. So this Is where we say the path. For a social media influencer looking to expand into podcasting and looking to grow, your path needs to focus on how are you going to get the most downloads possible. And in the beginning, that means short episodes, more frequent episodes. So you need to be posting seven days a week if you want to really make it work. We have some that post multiple times a day because you need more download numbers, which means you have to have more episodes to get more download numbers for the your number of subscribers times how many episodes you run in a given month. That's how you get up in the algorithmic numbers and you get seen and found. That's it. It's a numbers game. So you have to have more content. Then once you find out that your followers aren't listening, if you're running ads or affiliations or anything where you're making money after that first 60 seconds, then you better concentrate on your content because they're not subscribing and listening, probably because you're overwhelming them with too much stuff, like it's too many episodes, they can't possibly listen, or it's just not good enough quality information, unique, valuable, long tail like most podcast listeners want to have. So now you need to fix your content, but you do that second, not first. And that's the flip side of what we recommend on the authority side. On the authority side, we see the content first model works. If you build up really great content and then invite in the right audience, it has its own tipping point where that audience starts referring other people to it, where the guests that you have start referring the right type of people to it. And when they're playing through, they then join your community, consume more of your stuff, and they listen and they play through more. So now the things that you're trying to influence, like get them to join my membership and my community, get them to follow me on social, get them to do something, buy my books, whatever it might be that your level of it is, come into my coaching, come into my community that is able to be done better. If you have a content first model. So your first steps are more downloads on the social side, better content and right fit audience on the other side, better content that fits the audience, right, that you want to attract on the other side. And that's what it is. It's just flipped. Eventually you both have to focus on the same things, like you eventually have to do the other thing. It's just the order in which you do it and the magnitude in which you do it. Most people are not capable of being a social media type influencer on podcasting. It's too much work. You have to put in too much content, too much time. It's a whole lot easier to repost somebody's image somewhere else or add your little twist to it, add a little hashtag to it, make a little comment, make a little 10 second TikTok video than it is to do 10 minutes of content in podcasting. We all know that. Because I have to sustain a thought, an idea, a concept. I have to talk about that intelligently for a period of time. Buying downloads, though, that's easy, right? That's why they go that path. Because if my content's not great and I need more time building up that great content, figuring out what my path is, figuring that out, then I'm going to buy my downloads because it's just easier. Because I got to get started, I got to get it juiced, I got to get it moving or I won't make money. I'm sorry if I sound a little callous about it, like, like mean about it, but it is what I'm seeing.

I don't like even talking about buying downloads. I mean, we know we've seen it. We've seen it happen with a lot of the Spotify shows like Meghan Markle and Prince Harry's show and things like that. There were some major articles written about that.

Oh, it's just her show. He wasn't on it.

Just her show. He wasn't a part of that one. Oh, okay.

Well, I don't know if he ever, like, came on it, but it's not his show. It's her show.

It was her show. My mistake, sorry.

She's supposedly restarting it, so we'll see. Well, we'll see if it gets better the third time around. I think it's technically the third time.

So that's where if you've got a name, you can get a deal, but, gosh, you got to deliver. And obviously that one never delivered. But yeah, I mean, buying downloads is not a path to success. Now, raising awareness of your show and paying some money to be able to do that, however that is, is, I think, a fine idea. Certainly you got to raise awareness.

Well, I mean, look, I'm not saying that you shouldn't pay for some kind of advertising. You shouldn't pay to have exposure. We use promo cast here at Potatoes. Like, I mean, we care about it being actually translating though into listeners. It's not just a download play. Big fact. It won't work in A download play, it's not how it works.

It's actually outside of the download ecosystem, but it is playing clips of your episodes and driving traffic to your podcast. So it's raising awareness of it, which is really so valuable.

Right. And then we see a boost in listeners month over month over month, sometimes 50% growth because they're seeing your show and then finding it, and then it's great content over on the other side. So then they're actually listening to it and downloading it and binging it. Right? That's the model that is sustainable because they will stick around and they will share it with others, and that's a growth model. But there's not a growth model on the other side if you have no plan for what you're going to do next. So once you get a bunch of downloads and you get the sponsors now, you have a responsibility to deliver conversion. And that requires a content focus.

Well, and it's in your best interest and in the sponsor's best interest too, is to convert those listeners into clicks. And I always say to podcasters that you don't have to worry about whether the people that click through from sponsorship of your show, you don't have to worry about after they click through, whether they buy it or not, because that's really on the sponsor, on the vendor. If their offer isn't compelling enough, people aren't going to buy. If it is compelling, they're going to buy. And if they're a right fit for it, they're going to buy, buy. Your job is just to raise awareness and get them to click, boom. That's the value you provide. You've raised interest, you've endorsed it or recommended it, whatever it is. And converting those people to click to go wherever that sponsor needs them to go, that's your job, not how many people buy. Unless you're doing an affiliate model and you're only making money when they buy. And then that's a little different. You want to be careful with those.

It is a little different. You want to be careful with those.

Sponsors because it's usually if you're a big influencer as a podcaster and can convince a lot of people to go buy it, then great.

And you'll make more money that way than you would passively off the dollar advertising. So, but you have to have that level of influence. So the thing is, is that it's chasing more, more downloads all the time. If you follow the other model. Right, it's always chasing more. But that's why most of them choose to go into a programmatic ad environment where it only measures whether they streamed it. They never measured whether they listened content. You get paid whether they streamed it or not, right? YouTube is the same model. They do not care whether or not somebody watches your video. As long as the ads run. Right, they don't care. So it's a secondary model, though, when you start to like, it always is a model in YouTube to run shorter videos at the beginning of it. When you attract enough audience, the next step to make more money is just to lengthen the videos you have. It's the same model in podcasting. Get started, get them amassed, and then work on the content. And the reason why in YouTube you link the videos is because now you run more ads within your show, right? Because they periodically run the ads for you, right? So the more ads you can squeeze in, the better off it is. And so that's why you see everyone, Joe Rogan included, he didn't start out with 90 minute videos. He started out with shorter ones that then eventually got to Vinod Heck.

Two or three hour videos in his case.

I mean, sometimes, yeah, two or three hours, right? More ads run during that timeframe. If you could command the listenership to stick around and go for it. But the last thing you'd want to do is create a long video when people are jumping out after a minute, they're already jumping out. It's a waste of time to create 90 minutes. But if they're not jumping out. Now you have an ad expansion, money making model to legitimately expand your content. But you still also can't exceed the expectation of your type of listener. But the other difference, and this is what I want to raise to you, is that if you're not in a niche, it's a whole lot harder to grow and sustain an audience in podcasting than it is if you're in a niche.

You know, people that say, oh, I want to talk about all these different things, I want to talk about this, I want to talk about that. And hear this from podcasters a lot. I want to have a general variety show. They don't say it that way, but that's really what they mean. It's like, well, I have all these different interests. I want to do episodes on all these different things. Going to be a lot harder to grow an audience with that people. What you're really needing people to do is like you, no matter what you talk about, more so than being interested in what you're going to share with them. You know, I mean, like specifically so it is harder. People are generally looking and searching on niche topics. Their needs, their interests, their challenges, their desires, Something they need help with, something they want to learn and that is in a niche. It's narrow.

Right. And it does work this way in social media. People just don't understand that it does. They think, oh, well, I'm chasing the latest hashtag, I'm chasing the latest trend, and they're talking about it. But the reality is people liked you because you were the top gamer in something, or you were the top influencer in health and wellness area of specifically yoga. Like, it was really tight and specific when you first started, and then you started to grow and expand it. The problem with podcasting is that most people are out there looking for the specific and then coming into something. So when you're expansive, they're like, I don't know, I'd rather go with somebody who's going to deliver me exactly what I'm looking for right now to learn, or exactly what I'm looking for advice on. And so they'll go into the narrow first. And so your listener base is not as sustainable when you're in the general view. Right. And so that's why we, a lot of social media influencers have trouble with it, because they want to come from one thing to the next, depending on where the ad dollars are coming from. And that requires switching an audience, and that's harder to do. Or you're then honestly focusing and segmenting the audience you. The subscriber base you have. Right. And so you're really only appealing to small percentages of them rather than the general. We made a lot more money off of a hundred thousand listeners a month in 3D printing. And we could talk about anything. 3D printing, but it was very specific to 3D printing. Right. Than we would have ever made off of millions of dollars talking to general entrepreneurs. Millions of viewers on general entrepreneurship never made the same kind of money because every entrepreneur has a different problem. They're at a different stage, they're at a different level. Right. So it's just that kind of model is harder if you want that, if that's how you are operating in the social media world, translating that into podcasting, you need to pick the most valuable part of your niche and go there and keep your podcasting on that piece of it. Where are you going to get the most sponsors? Where are the most listeners out of your base going to that area of it, not just everywhere. So focus is a little different, but the business podcasters already know that. Right, Tom. Because they already have a business and they're trying to focus for a specific user so they don't have to think about it. They're already focused in it.

The easier it is for you to define your ideal profile listener, and if that's in alignment with your ideal profile customer or your ideal profile customer for your sponsor, I guess, obviously you may have different needs. As long as they're in alignment, that will work very well.

Yeah. So just to recap a little, it's like if you're on that social media influencer side, your very first focus and every decision you make about your show needs to be focused on the idea that you need more viewers, listeners and downloads. Right. Like, all of those things combined together, short content, more frequent content, then expand longer. But still remember not to expand out of the attention span of your listener base, because that can happen. So sometimes they want longer, sometimes they don't. Right. So it just depends on who they are. And then you prove the next method. And then you expand into other things that you might want to do. Like, what if you had a website for that and blogged it? What if you had the YouTube channel? Right. Like, so you expand outside of it to the next level and the next level to keep that audience buying in all the different places. Or get an audience that's only a viewer instead of just a listener with the same content. Right. That's how you work less and make more money as an influencer. Right. You expand into a channel with the same stuff. The problem is, is that TikTok doesn't translate into podcasting. So if you thought that it would, it's not going to. It's just not a viable translation. Podcasting can translate into TikTok the other direction if you cut it into pieces, but it doesn't go the other way. So what else can you do? Tom and I both recommend the path of podcast to videocast to blogging. Now, reality is, is it'll be video cast first because you'll record the video at the same time you record the podcast. But it's still like, if you're going to do it in a of, like, make sure it works, get it right, get it right in podcasting. It's easier to get it right here, then move it into the video side of it and add that as your secondary. We have a lot of podcasters. We have about 70% right now, 72%. I think it's something like that, who have expanded into video in the last three years. They didn't start in video so it's perfectly viable. And then from video blog, although now.

A lot of new podcasts, I think about 3/4 of new podcasts, maybe even more honestly, are launching with video from the get go now.

Right? But they're video and audio at the same time. So it's not like you skipped the podcast side of it, right? And you just went straight into it. So anyway, this is the math that really works for you there on the authority influence side, great content first, that's right fit for an audience test and make sure that audience is coming in and getting attracted to it and subscribing to your show. And once that starts working, then you start expanding to a growth strategy of downloads and viewers and listeners. And so you start expanding out of that. But get the right fit first. Because if at the end of the day you meant to attract CEOs or we've had one like this, you meant to attract HR managers, instead all you got were poor people who want or trying to get jobs. Like, you know, like they were out there, they were looking for work instead of, instead of the HR managers. Then you haven't gotten the right audience. Who's going to pay for your business tool? Your coach, your whatever that is, right? You've got the audience with no money who's you're giving great value to and you want them to still have that value. But you didn't get your core audience too. And you need to get your core audience. You need to get the ones who are going to buy whatever it is that you have to sell. Make sure that fits first, then expand it, then expand out. If you aren't doing video, add video. If you are already great, add blogging. Add the things that are going to make a difference to you long term. And then honestly, and I've seen this again and again, I would choose blogging over social media. It is a whole lot harder to expand into social media if you're not there first than it is to expand into blogging and have that working for you right away for your website. Blogging will sell more stuff and more.

Sponsor long term blogging will always work. And the thing is, it's another thing that's created from your spoken content in the podcast. So I mean there is work involved in it, don't get me wrong. Unless you're having it done for you and you can, you can pay to have that done for you. That's a big part of what we do. But you need to convert your podcast content into written content for your website. That's gonna Attract people from Google Search and everybody who then visits your site. There are tools that are available that you can data mine anybody who visits your site and get their email address. It's not that hard. And they don't even have to opt in. But you can also invite them to opt in, obviously, when they get there.

Right. But the other side of that is that it lives longer. Right. If I'm going to do something that it takes a lot of effort, and it takes a lot of effort to make good Instagram videos and clips and stories that attract enough of an audience that then buys my stuff, Right? Like, it's just the conversion factor is so low, it's in the single digits that the time and effort to do that isn't worth the results. When I can 10x that. And it will live around for years on my blog, right? It will live around for minutes in TikTok. It will live around for hours in Instagram, days on Pinterest.

In fact, I remember one of our podcasters who has a great show called the Note Closer Show, Scott Carson. He gave us a slide from some conference he attended. There was a slide produced by Google. And I know we have it summer because we've used it in some of our own presentations.

I have it sitting on the wall right here.

Do you? Okay. Which basically tells you about the life cycle of different kinds of content.

It's called the relevancy of content types.

And you go from social posts that live, like you said, for minutes to different things that last longer and the two toward the very bottom. And I forget if they're the biggest two, but podcasts have a very long life of years and blogs have the longest. So it's a way to have your content live on forever. And it's true. I mean, I've said it on past episodes and we have episodes of feed you'd brand that we did six years ago that are still ranked on the first page of Google Search for certain really valuable keyword phrases people are searching on in Google every month. And that traffic goes to our website. And it's interesting, Tracy. We moved the feed you'd brand blogs from Politize.com to Podcasters United because we shifted where this podcast content is. And now the Podcasters United blog of that same episode that's over six years old is now showing up on the first page of Google for that same search term. It took a couple months for Google to see the adjustment and see it and then re ranked it for the same stuff on our alternate website. So the power of this is really the important thing. I'm not trying to brag about this because we do this for all of our customers. We did. Done for you. Production for the blog is incredibly powerful and it is how you're going to get the greatest value out of every episode.

But it's no good if what you talked about isn't relevant today. Because if you're following the trend, if you're just sharing the momentary things, that's not going to work. And that's why you have to have a secondary content strategy as a social media influencer coming onto podcasting, because you have to have something that becomes timeless. But first do what your goal was, which was to amass an audience. So this is why I want to point this out, because the choices that you make and the recommendations that we make. So if you're listening to our show, I want you to be really clear here. Only once in a while are we talking to the social media influencer, the social media star view of podcasting. Because it is less than 1% of our client base. Of the people that we're advising, we do do it, we do advise them. Our services are good for them, but their focus is on a completely different thing than the prevailing advice we give to 99% of our client base. It's just different. So when they hear us, they go, that doesn't apply to me. Like, that's not what I'm doing. Right. Like, they discount it. But they will eventually have to come to this to stick with it.

We've seen a couple of social media influencers try to move to podcasting. They lose interest in it very quickly because you don't have the quick hit of all the likes and all the shares. It takes time. You have to really invest in serving your podcast audience to build it and get the long term real value out of it. And I think it's easier to sort of go the other way, establish the podcast.

So I did a tracking Tom, because I did in the early days of the binge factor, I was interviewing a lot of social media influencers who were starting their podcasts because it was just kind of like the thing to do at that time. When I started the binge factor, like a lot of social media influencers were being advised to do it and none of them, not one, still has a show today. They were all 100% of them. And I interviewed about a hundred total over the entire 500 episodes of the binge factor that I've done or something, 400 or something. Because I did some in our show, the feature brand before that. And so I had to discontinue their episodes. So, like, I cut them out, I removed them because they're no value, that they couldn't stick with it. So if you take their advice, you'd be failing. So I removed them from the show. That's why I have so many interims, so many that need to get moved out of the feed. Right. Because when I looked back on it, I did. I was really hoping there was going to be one I could come back to and say, like, what'd you do that worked. Not one could I re interview. They all quit. And they all quit faster than most regular business podcasters.

Well, it's because we're all getting really, I would say, tangible value from what we're doing and feedback. We're serving people. I love serving our community. We get great questions.

And I think that the big thing that influencers don't like is they get very accustomed to the algorithm supporting and helping them. The podcast algorithm is not built to help you, the podcaster. It's built to help the listener. It's built to help Apple, it's built to help Spotify. It is not built for the podcaster, it's not built for the content producer.

That's why you need to look out for yourself as a podcaster and make sure all roads from your podcast lead back to benefit you. You're going to benefit the listener, you're going to provide them value, no question. But the biggest thing is send them back to your website to get that value to your home base, your platform.

Absolutely. Okay, well, I think we should wrap it here, and I hope that whichever path you choose, and it's totally up to you, just make sure that that starting strategy is right for you.

Heard something valuable today, but didn't get a chance to write it down. No worries, we've got you covered. We partnered up with podcasters united.org where podcast hosts like you can get free resources, free masterclasses, the largest podcast tip library assembled, and free promotion opportunities while you're there. Don't forget to follow us on YouTube and on social @United Wepod so you can get feed your brand live. Until next time, keep podcasting.