Tips For Planning And Hosting Memorable Live Podcast Launch Events

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community at Podcasters United and podcast industry experts Tom Hazard and Tracy Hazard as they debunk all that outdated and bad advice you've been getting from the podcast gurus and find out what actually works.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 your brand Potatoes. I look so green today. I'm just gonna call it right out. I look, the lighting here is so bad. This is what happens when you record from a hotel room and I brought lighting with me and it's still green. I think it's. The walls around me are just like making me look green here.

The.

But I'm not sick. I'm just in a hotel.

Should have brought a light with like a purple gel, just like in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory for violet. And you could.

It's just like. Yeah, like offside. Yeah, exactly. I don't know. I like need that under eye stuff. That's like the different colors too, because it's making me look even greener. Anyway, this is what happens. But look, we persevere and we record live no matter where we are in the world, Right?

That's right.

So anyway, I did bring a good mic, though. It sounds the same as it normally does, just not my gorgeous camera that I have at my home setup.

Yeah. And obviously the audio, I think, is more important. Personally, I do as a podcaster and that was one of the first things we checked. You're like, hey, am I using the right mic? Because your computer didn't look like it normally does for the mic setting. Anyway, it is what it is. You're there.

It is. Yeah. And then we had a little difficulty getting started because we do use restream and it seemed like our restream and our zoom disconnected, but. But we got that reset and hopefully it'll stay reset for the future. We'll check that out for you and be able to go more timely live here. So sorry, YouTubers, if you're watching me and. Or Facebook live, wherever you're watching this on social media. Sorry, if I'm green today.

We'll live.

We'll live. You look so pink. Like, by contrast on my screen makes.

Me look even more pink or orange, I'm sure.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Anyway, I'm excited about today's topic, so let's get started with our recording of our podcast, which is how we do this here. If you are in our community at Potatoise, you're going to get to ask questions later and we don't do that on the live stream. Sorry.

That's right. All right, let's get going. Hey everyone. Welcome to Feed you'd Brand. I'm Tom Hazard with my co host Tracy and today we're going to talk about tips for planning and hosting memorable live podcast launch events.

Well, not just launch events though. It could be a season launch, it could be a season ender, it could be any type of live event that you want to do. But typically we see a lot more of these happening with launch events and or season launch events.

That's right. And we recently went to one of these in Los Angeles for a podcaster that was starting their second show. So it doesn't always mean you're completely new to podcasting when you do it in that context either. So we've had some recent experience with this and we've actually been to a few launch events a few years ago. Remember what's the show? This might get uncomfortable. Had a podcast launch event. You remember that, Tracy?

Yep. Whitney Lauritson, they did a great job. They packed people in there and it was had all kinds of activities and lots of the affiliates and other things were there. So we've actually covered this topic before here on Feed you'd Brand. We've mentioned it multiple times, but we really didn't do a whole episode on it. So we thought we would because there's been some trends going on with live events coming back and many podcasters working to interface and engage with their communities, their members. So this is why we wanted to bring this back up because it's back in the news again. Recently I was reading my hard copy, like the paper copy of Wired magazine, which is one of my favorite things to do on the weekend. And there was a big article called Sonic Boom and in the Sonic Boom article which is also available online, so of course in our community here we are linking for it and it'll be linked to the blog post in this episode at Feed you Brand. So we're reading this article and reviewing it and they were really talking about mostly, I'm going to say entertainment style shows, true crime shows with communities that are on edge waiting for the season finale or waiting for the season opener. And they were really talking about them doing a lot more of these live interfaces and getting quite an audience.

And that's actually what I was really impressed with. Both of the podcast launch events we've been to now. Admittedly, both of those events were in greater Los Angeles, which is a very populated city, one of the largest cities in the country. And so it might seem like getting 100 plus people to your launch event would not be that hard. But I have to say I was pretty impressed that each of these events that we've been to was able to really fill the room to the point where there weren't enough seats for everybody. It got to be standing room only at part of this event, which is really what you want, when you think about it, is. I know we have some specific things you may want to say here, Tracy, but just off the bat, I want to say the most impressive part, which I think as a podcast is like gold value here, like really, really good value, is at the event, they have eye contact with a hundred plus people and they say, hey, everybody, I want you to do me a favor and pull out your cell phones, because first of all, I'm sure everybody's cell phones weren't really muted at that point, but they first asked them. All right, now pull out your favorite podcasting app and please find our podcast and subscribe to it right now. Help us start with a bang with this new show so you get a whole bunch of subscribers right there on day one to help boost the show. And then of course, they ask everybody, okay, now everybody please silence your phones because we're going to record a live episode right here. So there was a benefit there? Yeah, yeah.

I think that it's a great way to jumpstart your subscriber base. And if you can do that, and we know that those podcasters who start with a community do better long term. They last longer. They have subscribers who download and don't miss any episodes. So they tend to have binge listeners, which is a really great thing for the long term growth of the show. But both of these podcasters that we're talking about, that these live events that Tom's referring to here, both of them also had sponsors come to the event, and they demonstrated by putting over 100 people in the room that they were going to deliver residual value from episode one. And that is really critically important. And if you want to get sponsors that you're going to have to bring them more value than just starting the show and hoping you bring them listeners. Hope is not a plan, as we say here. And this launch event model could demonstrate otherwise to those sponsors and get them to be patient because they saw what you could do in the beginning, needs to build over time in the podcasting world. And you've created an opportunity for them to be patient for that.

Well, and it provided the sponsors real value right there in that event. Because what they did is they live streamed the recording of two different episodes at that launch event, interrupted by actual food and drink. I mean, so the event paid off in a number of ways for the physical in person attendees, but they also were able to have people attend virtually. The recordings and the sponsors all got live shout outs streaming on social media, much like we're streaming this right now. Of course, if you're listening to the podcast or watching the video on YouTube later, you're not listening to this live. But we do live stream this podcast recording. So were we having a sponsor? And we intentionally don't have sponsors on this show. It's not really our purpose in recording it. But if we had live sponsors, there's real value for that sponsor getting shout outs live on social media and being mentioned at a launch event to all the in person attendees. So that has real tangible value. Even when you can't say, I have thousands of subscribers now, you don't. But remember, if those episodes you're recording are some of the very first episodes of your show, they are going to be the most listened to episodes you ever do for that podcast. And that is something that I think people overlook and undersell the opportunity to a sponsor or to a guest who's going to be on one of your early episodes. I see this show after show after show that has guests. In particular, if you're a guest one of those episodes, sometimes guests will say, oh, you're a new podcast. Wait, come back to me when you have 20, 25 episodes. You're doing it for six months. You can tell me how many listens you're getting a month and then I'll come back. That is a huge missed opportunity for anybody who says that. I sell that as a premier opportunity for the potential guest and or a sponsor if I'm going to give them a shout out. Because anybody who listens to that show in the future, six months from now, nine months from now, a year from now, they'll listen to your latest episode. If they like it, they're going to go back and listen to the first half dozen to dozen episodes. And even if you have two or three hundred episodes by the time they join you, they're still going to do that before. Maybe they'll skip a bunch in the middle. They're always going to go back because they're curious about how the show started out. Same thing with sponsors. If you're going to record live and they're a part of the episode that isn't dynamically inserted. That sponsor will continue to get value for years to come as long as that podcast is published. So it really does provide real value for a sponsor. So remember that and you can sell that and get your sponsors to fund your launch event in reality is what that likely will do.

Additionally, if you're going to have a premier guest, someone who's premium and they're on the fence about on your because it's a new show, added benefit of a live event may just they're not likely to travel for that, but hopefully they'll be able to come in and absolutely want to join the event because you have the live interface as well, so it gives an extra opportunity. So this is a great way for you to get your premium guests in early. But let's talk about some tips Tom, for really looking at this idea of how to be better at doing a live event. Because it's different than recording your podcast. It's different than being in a studio. It's different than your home interface. You have to consider your home audience, your audience that's listening to the recording and the audience that's live there right now. You have to consider both when you're preparing this event.

Boy do you Tracy, and I'm really glad you brought that up because it is really critical. The things you have to realize is, well, unless we're editing our own show and some of us may be who are listening to this, but even if you are editing your own show, I'm gonna talk about this in a little bit different way. Our podcast editors are there to make us sound our best having pre recorded the episode. And it doesn't matter if you take breaks or fumble too many ums and ahs, they're potentially going to make you sound a whole lot better than you really are. But when you're recording live, the real you is there for everyone to see and you need to be prepared. I guess that's the biggest tip is preparation. Make sure you're prepared. Notice we're we've only talked about one podcast launch event and named that show. We're not mentioning who the other one is because we don't really want to embarrass them. I think they had a great launch event, did some good things, but there were things that could have been much better and were overlooked. So that's we're sharing some of that today.

Just because you've done hundreds of podcast episodes behind the mic in your Studio in your home, office and wherever you record doesn't make you a great interviewer live. And that is something that either needs to be practiced, you need to be sure you're capable of, or you really prepare ahead of time, is really something that if you don't do panels, and this is really what I think happened in this particular case, this host is not a bad host at all. They're a great host, but they don't normally do panels. And yet they chose the panel format of having multiple guests as the format for their live event. And I understand that because it makes it a little more engaging live and you want to have an engaging live event. But asking questions of a panel is very different than asking questions one on one in an interview.

And not only is asking the questions different, the way in which you're going to ask them and how you need to engage that panelists and hopefully get them to speak, there are some better ways to do that than I think what a lot of people do who don't have experience with it. And asking the same question to each panelist, I personally think is not a great way to go about it, but asking a different unique question to each one rather than pass the mic and go down many different techniques. Now, Tracy, you've been involved in a lot more panels at live events. You've been a moderator of panels and you who have sat on a panel as a guest. So what would you say are some recommendations for conducting the best engaging kind of a panel experience? And I would say less for the live audience, but more for the streamed audience or the recorded audience who would hear it later as a podcast.

I think actually the tips apply to both, so I'm going to cover them. That's why I think that that's really it. The thing is, is that as a host you have to have higher energy. You must be more engaging in a live event and you have to carry the whole panel because you're going to have different energy levels from the panel. So you want to raise them to your energy level. So doing some pre interviews, understanding your panelists beforehand are essential. And sometimes that doesn't happen until you get to the live event. It has happened to me many, many times where I made phone calls and I talked to the panelists, but live they're different and so it wasn't what I expected. So, you know, talk to them beforehand as well as talk to them maybe in a pre call, make sure you do both. But understanding why they're there is the most essential thing. That way you can guide your questions to what they want to get out of the event. As a guest, that's critically important. Understanding what's driving them, why are they here? Why are they interested in the subject? What drives them to be a part of this industry. That's really important to understanding that if you're going to have panelists and if you're going to be a great host of guiding the audience to really hear what that panelist has to contribute. So I never ask the same question of the panelists unless it truly is kind of a closeout. And I know they're going to give a different answer because if I don't know that they're going to give a different answer, I don't want to ask the question. It's redundant. And what it does sometimes is do this weird thing where the panelist is cognizant of the fact that they don't want to answer the same thing the last person did. And then they go way off base and just be contrary to be contrary. And it's not really useful to your listening audience. It's not really good advice. So we don't want to do that.

That's why asking the same question to each panelist might not be creating the best listening or viewing experience. Right.

And not giving the best advice as well. So that's one of the things that we do. So energy level, asking different questions that are targeted at helping that guest shine is critically important. And then the third thing that you have to remember is that your audience is sitting there and if you're not asking the right follow up question and you don't just stop this. If you're going down the panel and you're worried about that audience is sitting there going like, I want to ask this question. So if you didn't have that model planned into your life, you need to plan that into your life and allow them to have that opportunity to ask the question.

You didn't. That's really important because that live audience is really dissatisfied with that. More so than your listening audience, because your listening audience know this already happened. Like it's a little bit more passive and how they're listening to it. But your live audience is sitting there engaged, and they want to walk up and ask the question. So they'll bombard your guest afterwards with questions that you should have allowed them to ask live. So making sure that you have a live interface to guest interface, live questioning as a part of your process is really important and making sure that those questions are either relayed to you and you Repeat them so that they are captured in the recorded episode. Or making sure that you have a microphone that is live to the recording is important as well. So that's a technical thing that you want to accomplish in your event. But the last tip that I have, that, like those are the three major tip areas, is really just thinking through the effect of that live event. Like, what is that real draw? You can't just hope that that guest is a big enough draw. It also has to be that guest and a topic draw, making sure that. That you're guiding that panel to a particular topic area ahead of time and you planned it, which you may not always do. I don't do that with my guests. When I do a guest interview, I. I plan the topic or I title it after I've interviewed them. But you cannot do that when you're doing a live event. You need to have the topic be the draw and the guests be the draw in case people don't know who they are.

I agree with that, Tracy. And I want to point something out here that is an advantage of having a panel. And one of these launch events had two different podcast recordings, and each of them had, I believe, three panelists involved in that episode. And the advantage of that is you've got three people that you can incentivize to promote that episode when it publishes as a podcast and as a video on YouTube. If you're doing video and promote the live event, and, well, promote the live event ahead of time, for sure. Yes. But even after the fact, just you have three people promoting each episode rather than just one as a single guest. So those episodes are probably going to get a lot more exposure and attention so that you're multiplying the potential share factor of an episode by three in this case, when you're having that. But the other thing I guess I wanted to share, Tracy, as a tip, has to do with how you are introducing your guests and what kind of context you're putting on them for. For the audience, the live audience, and the recorded audience for the podcast episode. How are you introducing them? Are you reading their bios? And I have to say, I was not impressed at all with that at one of these launch events we went to, because clearly the speakers had not really prepared, and they're pulling out their phones and they're scrolling, trying to find notes they had made on their phone, and then it's too small and one of them is having to find their reading glasses and trying to figure it out, and it just was not smooth and not prepared it was kind of embarrassing. And reading the bios of each of the guests was very mechanical and not heartfelt. It just did not seem. It wasn't to the level of professionalism that I would want to have if I were doing such a launch event. And it really made the. It feel kind of like it was amateur hour there for that time.

Yeah. And for the same thing for the sponsors. If you do not have prepared ahead of time, reviewed it with your sponsors about what you're going to say about them and then you make a mistake live.

And that happened.

And that happened, you're going to have some really upset sponsors who are not going to be happy continuing forward with you. And that is a huge miss because you've now done it in front of a group and either given the wrong link or given the wrong message or pronounced their name wrong. Right. All of those things happen live. And in this particular case, they did a repeat and did re recorded it.

They actually rerecorded at the end. So they cut it in right to the recorded episode, but the value of the live was already lost.

But also what happened is the host was embarrassed and you could sense it and did not want to record it again. So didn't do a great job of rerecording it even. It had really bad energy, almost anger. And that's not a good thing either. So it's okay if you want to rerecord your sponsor spots for your recorded episode later and cut them out of the live, but you need to do a good job with the live in person. And if you're not going to do that kind of shout out, then let the sponsor have an opportunity to say.

A few words that I think would have been a better idea is to invite the sponsor to speak about their own call to action, company, whatever. Then really in a live event, that's an opportunity you don't normally have to do. That might have been a better idea or at least give them the opportunity to do it, even if they decline and want you to do it for them. But same thing as preparation, preparation, preparation. Right. And I think that with introduction of the guest, so much more important because I agree with you, Tracy, even on podcast interviews that I do, and I recommend this with new podcasters that they don't just try to record their episode from start to finish all in one take and introduce the guests first because they don't have all that experience with the guests. And what was so great about the episode? I tell them record their interview or discussion with their guest first, then you know what was so good about it? Say goodbye to them. And now you record an introduction to them because you have that experience in context. Well, you. You can't do that in a live event. So you've got to be prepared. Either do a pre interview like you suggested, or do some more research on them, but have prepared remarks, prepare yourself one way or another. That's why live events are much more difficult, aren't they?

They really are. And what I like to do is I don't purposefully allow a written bio in my own hands when I'm doing a live event. That way it prevents me from reading it. I put bullet points. I know the one key thing that I want to express when I'm introducing something is what, why they're on that panel, why they're here at that live event. So I want to make sure I get that across. And then I might have a couple of bullet points that remind me of their credentials or remind me of their book title or something like that that I might glance at to remind myself so I don't mess it up, because I definitely don't want to do that live in front of them because I don't want to be embarrassed by saying that wrong. And so that allows me to do that. But too often the cop out that happens with inexperienced moderators at all kinds of live events, not even recordings of podcasts, but just almost every live event. I go whenever I see a panel. What they cop out and do is they say, introduce yourself. And that is the worst thing you can ever do for your podcast and for your authority as the moderator and host of that panel. You have just said your guests are way more important than you and you're nobody. You can't even be trusted with doing the passive authority and introduction. So that's critical. Do not pass up that opportunity to do a great job and set them up and make that guest feel valuable and important. Your whole panel is going to change its tone from that first moment.

Great advice, Tracy.

Well, let's talk a little bit before we go here, because I do want to end this, but let's talk about a little bit of technical issues. If you don't normally edit your episodes like you like to do, this whole livestream model and you just live it and then you do it. But you have your microphone and you have your great setup and it's controlled environment in your home studio, but in a live event, you can't control the way the environment is around you. There's a lot more echoes. There's Coughing happening in the audience. There's stuff happening there. Even if you can't afford to do it on your regular episodes, make sure that you plan for that as a part of your life. It will not be a great experience for your listening audience. And because it's one of your early episodes, if you're using it as the launch part of your event, or in the case of some of these true crime shows that are using it for their finale, you need to make sure those are going to be some of, as Tom mentioned earlier, some of the most downloaded episodes. But to have them be a bad listening experience is going to make it so that the listeners say, I don't. This is the common experience. They don't know what it's going to be like in the future. They may not give it a shot. And that would be an absolute shame. So make sure you plan into your budget that you will do some sound leveling, some fixes to the audio, have planned to be using an editor.

And you gotta have some tech and be prepared. Now the best way to go live is from your cell phone. Sure it is. And having that somebody on that cell phone to be able to point it to each guest. And you can zoom in and out. When you're doing live on most of the phones, certainly on iPhones you can, but you've gotta pipe in the sound from a mixing board. You gotta have the right cable that is connected to microphones for each person. You need to have somebody operating that mixing board to try to level that sound, is listening to it in their own ears.

And if you plan to do more than just stream live on your social channels, but you want to do and put it as a YouTube video later, you want a landscape view. So you're going to also want an external camera as well because you're going to want to capture a wide shot that you can break in and out from the individual that you're capturing on it. So you're going to need multiple people supporting you as well. This is a key good technical lots, extra equipment that you can rent. I mean there's lots of places good lighting if you're going to record that video. Because sometimes the spaces you're in have terrible lighting. Today is a good example of that. If you're watching this video, my lighting is terrible today as we mentioned before we started recording here. But it can happen because you don't always control the environment that you're in there.

And this doesn't have to be high budget stuff. It's just a matter of preparation and making sure that the outcome achieves what you want it to, what your intention is. And really, it's just thought and planning. You can definitely do this.

And thought and planning for the live audience experience as well as the recorded audience experience. Remember to cover both. And then the last thing I want to say before we go, Tom, about a live event is if you're not delivering a really great value like the True Crime, have great if you're going to deliver your finale and those alive people get to hear it before the recorded audience, they're going to have a compelling reason to show up at your event. Or if, let's say, you're in a True Crime and you haven't announced who your new season is about and they're going to get to hear it first, and then you'll put out the press release and then you drop your episodes next. Great. You're giving them an added value to show up. You're giving members an excuse to belong to a membership group, maybe drop some money in Patreon so that they can come to the event. Giving yourself these opportunities and reasons for them to come and to show up to the live are really critically important because there's a lot of complacency today. It's so easy to listen to it in my podcast, in my environment, the way I'm going to do it. Why would I show up live? Give them a compelling reason why and that will create a better engagement and audience future for you at any point in your podcast.

All right, thanks so much, Tracy. Let's leave it there. You can find the blog post for this episode with the links to everything that we talked about today@potatoes.com and let's see, we do this every week, so we'll be back next time with another great episode. Thanks for listening everybody. This has been Tom and Tracy Hazard on Feed. You'd brand.

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