Website Do’s And Don’ts

Don't get left behind in this digital age. Dive deep into the emerging world of podcasting. Welcome to Podcast Peeps, the mastermind. For those looking to take their podcast to the next level, this is where podcasters come together to learn and share the best strategies to help you grow and monetize your podcast. Learn how to grow your brand and your community using your podcast as a tool. Join your hosts, Tom Hazard, Tracey Hazard, and Scott Carson, as they mind share their technical marketing, monetization, and growth hacks with you.

Welcome, everybody. Good afternoon, or good evening, depending on where you are. I'm Tom Hazard, one of your hosts for Podcast Peeps Mastermind. And this is number three, I believe, isn't it?

Yeah.

Yes, it is.

Welcome back. If you've joined us before, if this is the first time, welcome and. And we're gonna try and help everybody move forward in their podcasting journey. That's what we're here for. And I'm gonna just quickly run through. Hey, and Tracy actually has just made it as well, so. That's right. We just went live. We just started.

Great.

So you need to listen. You need this. You need to put this in your ear. There you go.

I didn't know you were handing me something.

Yes, I was.

Hi, guys.

All right, so welcome, everybody, to Podcast Peeps. Just a quick, quick little recap every other Wednesday night. And those of you that have signed up probably already know this, but those of you watching on Facebook, you can go to podcastpeeps.com to sign up for this webinar. And we also have a Facebook page that you probably want to go like, so you can get updates there as well. And if it's easier for you at some point to watch live on Facebook, we're doing these live and free through the end of the year, so you can see them there. And so we're here just for experienced podcasters, new podcasters alike. People want to get started or professionals, marketers, vendors, producers, everybody is welcome. And our intent is to provide something for everybody. So just to introduce us again quickly, I'm Tom Hazard, one of your hosts. I started as a podcaster just like any of you did about five years ago. I love it and. And so much that we ended up starting a business around it. But we are here just to help everybody move forward. This is not a sales pitch. This is really just trying to answer some questions you may have, provide some.

Great thoughts, and get podcasters out there moving, making businesses.

I like it. So this is Tracy Hazzard.

Hi there. So sorry, I'm out of breath because I had to, like, do the kid pickup on the way here.

Right.

And of course, she was doing gymnastics, so, like, she wouldn't leave. You know how all you moms and family members out there, you guys know what that's like. So anyway, we're doing double duty here, but, yeah, Tom and I started our podcasting over four or five years ago. Yeah. And we just love it. It has really built our business in a way that we hadn't thought. And we really are passionate about sharing that and getting that message out there and getting people moving. And the one thing that I really want to share with people is that it's also very strategic. And that's why I think this mastermind is really powerful. And when you go in with an intent and a strategy, we can do more with this.

Yeah.

All right.

And then we have Alexandra, and, yeah.

She'S on camera this week.

Yeah, I'm on this week because we're talking about website. Yeah. So I do a lot of the operations for Potter Ties and for the podcasts. I make sure everything's running smoothly and that we get everything done that you want done in a timely manner and all that kind of stuff.

And she's just a brilliant millennial that is accelerating what we do, but has a vast amount of knowledge, especially for today's subject. So you're going to be hearing a lot from Alexandra today. Then we have Scott of We Close Notes.

What's going on, everybody? Podcast for about 16 months. Somebody called me on it the other day, said, oh, you got like, four podcasts? Like, no. Yeah, I guess I do have four podcasts, I think about it. Three we're rock and roll. And one in the works, if I can get stuff to rock and roll. We filmed another episode, though. Angie's reaching out for some guests now, so I'm excited about that because she's starting to see the light. But she's my cohort on one of my podcasts. Not Camp Season 1. She'll be also emceeing tomorrow for our big online note event. We're doing as well with four plus people. So she's actually out enjoying herself tonight, painting tonight to relax a little bit prior for tomorrow.

You're going to this intense virtual event, right?

Yeah.

Put any of those videos into a podcast series?

Say what again? What was the question?

Are you putting any of the. Any of notep into a podcast series?

Oh, you know it. Yes. We did it before six months ago at 18,000. Just one. Over 18,000 downloads today on that series from six months ago. And we'll be doing the same thing again here with note Camp 6. Turning to the second season, we've got things we bring on a lot of new speakers. So it's not all the same speakers beforehand. There's only about 30% that are repeat from six months ago. So that's the beauty of it. It drives sales, it drives information. And I'll give you an example. I had a training this weekend, this past weekend with seven people coming in for a fast track training, which is a three day intensive that we do in part Mastermind three out of the seven discovered the podcast first and then went to the website and found out more about what we do and then signed up for my $15,000 Fast Track mastermind group. So if that's a reason enough to help, a little extra fodder for tonight. There you go.

Yeah. All right, thank you, Scott. So, okay, so Stephanie's not with us tonight, but she is a key part of the team. All right, so what we want to talk about today really is about your website and. Or actually we want to talk about websites in general. And I know there's some of you on here, I recognize that are already seasoned podcasters. Hopefully there's some that are new. And I know some of you have a website. We are going to talk about some sort of fundamental, basic things today, but we're also going to be able to dive into some deeper issues for those of you that already have a website. So don't worry that you're thinking this may be all for newbies. Not necessarily the case. But we wanted to at least start with the most common questions. We hear a lot when we're interacting with new podcasters, which is, do I really need a website? You'd be surprised how often I hear that. Do I really need a website? And well, podcasters are for listeners, not viewers. Right. Well, so again, sort of going back to do I really need a website? And this is the one that kills me sometimes, hey, I have a SoundCloud page or a Libsyn page or a Podbean page for my show. That's a website, right? Well, we'll talk about that.

Yeah, we'll definitely talk about that.

And then some people even thinking, I mean, especially get this from a lot of people in radio who did like Internet radio and then migrate to podcasting. Like, well, why would a listener want to go to my website? And then isn't it just an extra cost? And can't. If I have a website, am I really going to be able to compete with big companies or other individuals that have a more established website. And how will a website get me more listeners? That's, I think, an important one that we're going to want to cover today. So we're going to answer all these questions and more. And of course, we can answer your questions as we go. This is just a framework to get started. But when it comes to a website. Yes.

Do you want me to launch the poll real fast to see kind of.

Where everybody's sitting at? Let's launch the poll. So do you have a website? Yes or no? I mean, that's just quick survey. Some of you may be new and don't have one yet, but maybe everybody does. And if everybody does, that's great. We'll then cruise through some of the fundamentals and then get to some deeper topics. But we have prepared a framework here, so Scott will monitor that as we go. So, yes, you do need a website. I mean, I personally, I don't think this is a matter of opinion. Do you think it's a matter of opinion?

No, I mean, I just look at some of the research that GoDaddy has done, for instance, and that's part of their mission is to. That's why you get like massive phone calls after you buy a GoDaddy web address, making sure you get your site up and running.

Right.

And so you have a URL, but a blank page. Oh, Peter, that's okay. You're partway there.

Right.

So that's what a lot of people do. So, you know, one of the big things is lots of people buy URLs because they think of a really cool name, but then they just don't do anything with it. Right. So this is what GoDaddy started to research. And they say basically, like, it's not having an address, like a business address today.

Right.

You don't exist. And so that's really where we're like almost split, boy, 54, 46. So, yeah, okay, that's good.

So we've got to have something for everybody here today, we promise. And so let's go over why and feel free. Scott, Alexandra, interject anytime, but here we're going to go. Why you need a website, really? As a podcaster, it is the home base for your show, your community, your listeners. And to me, this is important. Whether you're podcasting for business purposes or even if it's a passion project, you still need to, I would say, foster that community. You need to give them a place to congregate and to communicate with you and each other. And that really needs to be your way. Website communicate with you, find resources that you talk about in your show, get access to links and offers that you talk about. And for monetization, if that's your goal. And it may not be for all of you, but certainly your website is one of the best ways you can monetize your podcast. And of course, whether you're actually in this for business or for a passion project, you probably still want to build your community. Get people on your email list, because remember, itunes doesn't tell you who your subscribers are. Google Play, Google Podcasts are the Soundcloud, Libsyn.

None of those pages give you any subscriber information either, because they're just hosts.

Yeah, they keep them all themselves.

They regard them as their property because they are the conduit to the podcast episode.

And that's the same with social media guys. So really listening to that is that I unfortunately didn't get to see the final slides here. So are you going to say anything about Facebook groups or did you skip?

No, that's later.

We're covering it later. We'll cover it later.

But a Facebook group is not a substitute for a website, and we're saying that right here, it's your home base. Because Facebook can change their algorithm, they can change a whole bunch of rules, and then all of a sudden you're out of your. Out of your luck and you're loud.

Of the people use Facebook as a megaphone, I would say. But you're always going to drive people back to your hub, your home base for your show, your website. So your site actually, over time, can become an incredibly valuable asset. It really can. I mean, reality, there is value in what they call link equity and value in keyword ranking equity. I mean, this really does have value. And of course, the number of unique visitors that come to your website on a monthly basis, all of that can translate to dollars or to just more value you're able to bring to your community, however you look at it. So it also builds your authority if you are, maybe you are an expert in your field. I'm sure everybody on here is an expert or becoming an expert in something. But does the world know it? It doesn't matter if you say it. It matters also what the rest of the world says. And that can come through your website and your podcast.

And I want to say quickly on that one is that we're talking about like speakers, authors, like that kind of thing. So event planners are going to look for your site and if you don't have one, that says a lot about whether or not you can draw an audience so they care about that authors. If you're not building a platform, if you're not building a website, if you're not building a community, how are you going to sell your next book even if your first one was successful? And for most people without that community building, they can't even hit the bestseller list. So important for both.

So I think I already mentioned link equity and keyword rankings. And so here's the bottom line though. Your website and we're going to talk about how can really organically market your show.

And when we say organic, we mean not paid. Like you're not paying for marketing.

Yeah. You're not paying pay per click. You're not paying for Facebook ads or LinkedIn or Instagram, whatever. So quickly, some of the fundamentals. Will any website do? Well, I would say having a website is better than not having one.

Yes.

But these drag and drop website services like Squarespace and Wix are not recommended. And this is just through long hard experience. While it may be easier to build a website with them, they're very limited in functionality, in design and at the end of the day, if you can start here, but you're going to outgrow it very quickly.

And so some of that equity that we were talking about building, that won't happen here because it's diminished in terms of the value that it gets from that organic Google traffic. So Google doesn't think of them like they're doing this drag and drop thing. So they're creating boxes around things and so it makes it harder for Google to find the data that it needs. And so it just gives up faster.

And we've done side by side comparisons, we've tested it, we've checked out the statistics and we've read all of the articles. We know that these sites don't rank as well as the next one on the list.

Yes. So I mean this is the reality of it. And like Alexandra said, we actually did recently look up there are several studies and articles that are out there and these sites built on Squarespace and WIX do not rank as well.

They still rank. They just have a harder time.

They don't rank as well. Yes.

Right.

So we were separates WordPress what makes. Why is WordPress better? Not only. And there are actual articles and we can put a link to some up on the podcast Views website or put it out on the Facebook page. We can do that. So you can read some of this yourself, but not only is WordPress itself, they've done studies and the sites do rank better than sites that are in these other drag and drop platforms. But one of the big advantages of WordPress is plugins. And really, plugins are pieces of code, pieces of functions for websites that other people have already written. It is an open architecture and you can find a plugin for anything you need to do functionally or anything you want to happen from a style or appearance perspective. In WordPress, it's very flexible. Alexandra, do you have anything?

Yeah, I just want to say one thing, Kenneth, hang on, we'll answer your question. It's, I think on one of the next slides and we'll address it directly as well later. I just want you to know that. And then also these plugins is what makes WordPress probably the best platform that you would want to be on, because you can grow your WordPress website as big as your business or your podcast grows with you. So maybe you're starting out and you don't need a shopping cart yet, but you need one six months from now because you now have a product rolling out or you have a book coming out and you want to sell it direct on your website. WordPress can now do that, whereas if you're on another platform, you may be limiting yourself on what you can do. WordPress is meant to be completely customizable. You can do pretty much anything and you can find a plugin to do pretty much anything. But even if you can't find a plugin to do it, you can find a coder who can do it. So that's really why you want to be on WordPress.

Very few companies we come across, I mean, really big corporations need hard coded sites. Nowadays is kind of an old school thing, actually. And hard coded sites are extremely difficult to even assess whether or not they're ranking on Google and they're getting the power that they want, or if it's just because this big corporation already had brand power. Like it's really hard to tell the difference.

Yeah, when I say coding, I'm not talking about hard coding a website. I'm talking about using WordPress and customizing it through WordPress coding, CSS, HTML and many others that can go into WordPress to do whatever you need it to.

Do, to grow it to a membership community or membership site or a shopping site, as Alex referred to, Alexandra referred to. Like any of those things are capable straight out of WordPress. So we just want you to understand you're buying something that is simple but can absolutely grow into Something complex.

Squarespace and WIX can do some of these things too, but it's not as customizable and that's why we stay away from it in our business and what we do.

We've got an online question actually from the Facebook Live video. Jason Bible asked the question regarding Squarespace, wix, et cetera. Do we run the same risk of nerfed ranking when search algorithms change? When ranking content from itunes, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, et cetera?

What is nerfed? What does that really mean?

I don't know. I think it's a spell check. He might have had too many beers.

It's 7 o' clock here. Jason's probably got a cold beer somewhere.

We do know that those Squarespace and wix type of drag and drop website platforms actually are limited and in general don't rank as well. And the pages within them, especially if you're putting up blog content and stuff, do not rank as well as they will on WordPress.

Your blogs are so limited in what you're allowed to do with your blogs on WordPress we can pretty much make it any layout you want on Squarespace and Wix. When we've tried to do that for people, it's almost impossible to get it to look the way you want us to make it look. And so now you're limiting yourself there too.

There are other things from a technical perspective, and I don't want to really get into the technical weeds here today, but from a technical coding perspective and Google's Spiders crawling websites and knowing what it is that's important to rank on or what you want it to rank on, the capabilities are severely limited on these other platforms.

Yeah, as I was referring to before, it's kind of like, it's like the information for Google is here and that's pretty much all that gets served up. It doesn't really go through your whole site. So you are in a sense, if that's what you mean by if nerfing actually means like gamer term, then you're weakening your ability to do that. So like if that's what you meant by that, then that's what you got. Yes, that is true.

But it probably is a typo.

So we mentioned SEO ranking benefits, scalable. I mean we have people on have a hundred thousand plus membership website built on WordPress, so you can scale quite a long ways depending on what you're doing. And then we also have a lot of people we find sometimes on these all in one podcast websites where it's supposed to be optimized for podcasting. And your podcast may actually be serving from your own website. That's another thing that actually, I wish I could see the next bullet. It's probably. Nope, I'm going to go. Can I go back?

Yep.

Yeah. Okay. So these all in one podcast websites we've also found very limiting, especially when you want to just make something look a certain way on your site or you want to even add a plugin to your own site. These types of all in one websites don't let you do that. And it's your site. You actually have to submit a help ticket to some customer service department and ask them to install a plugin on your website, and 24 or 48 hours later it will get done. Even just that amount of inconvenience is very frustrating to me as a user.

Plus, we really don't recommend serving your podcast from your website because if you get too many simultaneous requests for us, if your show gets big enough, then you could crash your site.

This is why I love working with you. You got it on cue. I love it. But it happens. And so these are one of the big reasons why. But also just in some of these people out here putting up these podcasts, websites, companies, they're such small startups, like, they don't have full teams. This is why it takes so long to get service. They really don't have expertise. They don't even know when things don't work. Like, a lot of times we're pointing out to them the stuff that doesn't work. So it gets very frustrating because they didn't even realize it. Now they've got to recode something and figure it out. So they're figuring out on your dime. And that's why it's so cheap. So keep that in mind.

May have another thing or two.

Yeah.

I think it's just really important to note that Tom is specifically talking about the biggest one right now is podcast websites. And there are some pros and cons to it, but the reality of podcast websites is it's just WordPress. At the end of the day, it's just WordPress and they've put their own face on it, so to speak. It's like putting on your makeup. They've covered it up with this branding and made it look, in their opinion, easier to use. But having been a user of WordPress and a user of podcast websites, I can tell you, for me, granted, I'm a millennial, but for me, it was harder to use podcast websites than it was to just use your basic WordPress so it's like they were trying to reinvent the wheel for podcasters to try and make it easier for them. But in my opinion there have been too many cons. It's too difficult. It's more expensive because you have to pay them monthly to host your website and do all those services things to run your podcast on it. So let's keep it simple.

It is more expensive.

Do we want to answer this question right now?

Yes, let's do that.

Yeah. So Kenneth, you say you have several websites, but a website that is a podcast website, that's different. And what does that have to do. So the reality is if you have several websites, you want to co locate your podcast with the one that's most relevant and the one that you want to grow business to.

So one thing you gotta realize too, Kenneth doesn't have a podcast currently.

Oh.

So that I did some. A private thing. I asked him did he have a podcast? And that's why he responded back the.

Fact that yeah, so we have multiple websites.

Right.

And so many of us do. And so I for instance have product launch hazards is my podcast website. It's my community. It's. I'm building a community there. I chose to separate it from my has design which is actually the business that I sell services to many of the members on that I chose to separate it because I didn't want to have a sales company in a way a company that was selling something or a consulting firm, which is what it is. Then I didn't want to have that happen and could be co located with the website that is a membership is free has information. And so I wanted it to be the community to build around this information. So there is a choice and it's strategic. And if you ever need advice and want to talk about any of those things, we're here for you to help you through that. That's actually a great.

We have information at the end on.

That.

But it's a great one for us to hot seat you here and like discuss. We had another one who was. They had their own name because they were speaker. Then they also have their sort of business coaching brand and which one should they locate it on. And we ended up telling them that it was better for them to build their speaker brand through this and keep the sales side separate.

Right. It all depends on why you're. What you want your listeners to do. So if you want your listeners to at the end of the day become your clients, then you really need to think about it might be more strategic for you to have it on your website that you already have existing for your business than to put it on a separate website. So it just depends on what your end goal is. Scott's a perfect example of that. He's got all of his podcasts on his main website and it's benefiting him in the way he wants because of that.

Yeah, yeah. For podcasts.

Your website is your main hub.

That's our main hub of information. So from your website, you can send people to affiliate links, all the channels that can listen to your show. How do you like that graphic, Scott?

Very nice. I like that. Very, very sharp.

Yeah, I'll be emailing those out to everybody next week.

You're welcome. You're welcome.

We have to give him credit.

Yeah.

All the different places they can listen to your show to subscribe. You can find instructions for how to subscribe. Anything, there's a link to that you talk about in your show, your offers and promotions, any calls to action which could be newsletter subscriptions, listener offers, rate and review the show. It's often asked for and hard to get people to do it. That's another thing we've been doing a lot with people now is creating specific page on their website really taking everybody through ABC or 1, 2, 3, how to actually rate and review a show because it's not easy to. To get people to do it and it's very confusing to people sometimes how to do it. Yeah.

So Jason responded back to the link here he goes first. He goes de ranking versus de nerding or whatever. Deranking. He goes, heck yeah. Tracy gets it. So something. Gary Vee recommended Anchor as a means to distribute your podcast through multi channels. We've got a lot of heartburn of what the best practices are for getting the best ROI long term. This is why we follow you guys. And Scott.

Yeah.

Do not use Anchor distribution platform for podcasts.

They're stealing your authority.

Yeah. If that's what he's talking about.

Anchor, tell him he needs to call us tomorrow if he is using Anchor like that is such a bad idea. Anchor claims that they own your content, that you do not own it. They do. And it's a huge problem. We've actually had someone who was on anchor and we had to help them and it was a whole mess. So don't go on anchor.

It can be attractive because it's free to host your podcast, but for free you're giving up ownership of your content, among other negative aspects.

So I just want to say to you guys out there, there's a Lot of misinformation out there coming from people like Gary Vee and John Lee Dumas. And look, they've helped pioneer the podcast, so I have to give them credit for it. And they've done a lot for podcasters to get going, but they, but they also are making money off of the information, not off of doing. And so if you go through. Because John Lee Dumas exposes his, how he makes his money, and you see he makes a tremendous amount of money off the podcast websites. He makes a tremendous amount of money not off of his actual podcast itself. He makes that off of the affiliations Gary Vee does as well. So them being affiliated and selling anchor is in their best interest, not necessarily in yours. And so that's where we read the fine print. Read the fine print.

He responds, not using anchorage.

Oh, good.

So that is how they monetize.

So okay, okay, okay, okay.

Whole nother thing.

We can certainly address at some point in deeper.

Perfect.

Alexander, you monitoring the chats and stuff? Okay, I was a real quick primer on if you don't have a website because half of you or if you.

Have a URL but you haven't started the website part of it, what should.

Your website have, how many pages and things like that. First of all, we're going to say keep it simple to start, don't overdo it. Menu items up at the top, three to five at max. If you've got a lot of other pages you need to have, that's fine. But then sub menus are highly recommended. It gets too confusing. If you have the yellow pages up at the top of your.

Right. And this is because most sites need to be mobile capable.

Right.

And we don't want to see a whole giant menu at the top. And that's because that's all they'll see at the top.

So here's what we want to talk about. Podcasting with your website. That goes to a little bit what Tracy was saying before about what website or URL you put it on. But at the same point on the website, we highly recommend a podcast be a part of your site, but not the whole site being ingredient, not the main dish.

Unless you don't have any other websites and this is your site, that's okay to do it that way because it's better to have a site and a site focused around what people are going to be searching for.

Right, right. But that's why you build it on WordPress. So as you define your business, if the podcast is the first part of that, you can Grow into whatever you need.

Right, so we're going to talk about using a podcast to drive eyes, drive people to your website. It should have a blog page. And I want those of you that are podcasters out there, I want to talk about how show notes and a blog page are the same thing. Show notes are a blog. The only issue is how comprehensive is that blog page. And the longer it is, the better. Minimum 2,500 words to rank well on Google and to start getting good keyword rankings or your typical show notes post. That's 3, 400 words and some links or timestamps doesn't cut it today.

That's not even a blog.

Blog is usually defined by being 600 to 800 or more, and it really needs to be more characters. So 300 word doesn't even rank on Google.

Right. And we've gotten a lot of people coming to us who are saying like, oh, my blog post is ready, but where are my show notes? We call them blogs when we talk about them internally because they are over 300 words and most of the time around 6,000 words. Because that's what's going to rank spots are even longer.

You speak at light speed, like Mr. Carson. I always say he speaks at like 150 words a minute. With Gus, up to 250.

Yes. Those of us that talk about.

That's great, though. Speaking your way to a blog post is a heck of a lot easier than thinking it and typing it.

And let me explain the difference here between the podcast page and the blog page. On the podcast page, people are going to see what we call a blog feed. That's where they list all of your blogs, where they can click and go read each one, listen to each one. There's also usually some sort of player that can play any episode of your podcast. Not just one, any of them. And then there's some subscribing, some join my newsletter or some sort of call to action like that. Normally there's a way to find the rate and review page right there on that podcast page. So the podcast page is like the homepage for the podcast. And then you need a blog page separately because on that homepage, you don't want to list every episode you've ever had. Once you get over 150, 200 episodes, you want to list the top 12 most recent and then let them go to a separate page, the blog page, to find whatever episode they need.

But anyway, so starter website, homepage, blog page services, or offer page that generates leads.

And it can just have to be services.

Yeah, it could just be a subscribe.

Join our list, right, and an about page. This is where you can have testimonials, credibility, your story, who are you and why should people care? Some of these things can be on your homepage as well. Personally, I'm a fan of getting to a website and having that homepage not be the podcast page, even if it's all about the podcast right now. But some people do, like Tracy said, like to have that podcast be just on that first page. Either way, people are going to get there.

The about page is not something you can skip nowadays because we're in a world of what they call real Personas on Google ranking. And so that means that Google is saying if there's no human involved in this website, we're going to question whether or not it's of any value. And so then they do a tighter screening, they take longer to review it. So having an about page with your picture, with your information, all of that is going to put you up into a better positioning with Google to begin with. So that is already going to catapult you. And then having your podcast allows your voice to be a part of it. So now you've got even additional ranking and additional information coming in through Google.

At the same time. So actually, pro tip, newsflash, those of you experienced podcasters, I know there's some of you on here that have websites and are doing long blogs. You're gonna be happy to hear we have just learned from some of the foremost SEO experts in the country.

Hang on, hang on a second.

Okay, so we have learned periodically, Google goes through an algorithm shift and how they rank sites and content. They are going through one again now. And as Tracy said, they're moving to this concept of Personas. And there is a company we work with that has over 1100 revenue generating websites and they are scrambling to get ready for this algorithm change because a lot of their websites don't have a real Persona, a human being behind them. So all of you with podcasts, or all of you that are considering starting a podcast, a podcast is ideal for having a Persona that is the foundation of the website or that the website is built around. And your content, if you already have one, is going to continue to rank high, if not rank higher. And those of you that don't have one yet, well, you need to, you.

Know, so remember that question about how.

To compete with the big brands?

That's how you're going to compete. There are brands with no or there are authority websites with no People behind them. With blogs that were written overseas, it happens all the time. And you're going to be able to compete against them because the algorithm is shifting in your favor. So this is why a podcast is the best idea to be putting onto your website right now.

And in fact, over all the years we've been doing this, podcasting with websites like this, with the written blog post for every episode, every Google algorithm shift that's happened has not hurt, deranked, or delisted any of ourselves or any other people we work with. It's only helped them and it really makes sense because it's original content.

Yeah.

And typically you can see you'll have a 30% shift in what we call a 30% shift in traffic. So you'll either lose 30% of your traffic if you were doing some Google, no one knows, and you'll get 30% more each algorithm shift. And so that's what we've seen is we've seen about a 30% growth each time. So. And we've been through, I think, five.

Of them at least.

Yeah.

Actually, there are tools you can use to look up how many Google algorithm shifts there's been. You can see it. It happens every couple, three months usually.

Some of them are major, though.

Some of them are major, some are minor. All right, so let's talk quick about website style, because we heard there was.

A question about that big.

Well, we get a lot of questions about that. Here's the thing. Clean, crisp, easy to read, clear direction. And Alexandra can touch a little more on this, but I want to say don't over design a website.

And I want to add that you're talking about not just easy to read on the computer and whatever browser you're using, because there are multiple browsers that people use. You want to check all the browsers and you want to check mobile. That is really important because a lot of people choose these like, really fine, thin, light face typefaces and you can't read them on your phone.

Or they choose a black background and go with white text. That's a lot harder to read for a lot of people. So. So you got to think about that stuff. Be cautious of podcasting themes and plugins. So when we're talking about website style, I love to use Scott's website as the ideal example because it's a white background, it's got black text. Green is his accent color, which green means equals money in our minds and equals go. So it gets people's brains psychologically excited to click on whatever's highlighted in green. But it's also just easy to read and understand. He's got it clear. He knows what he wants his site visitors to do, and he's got clear direction for them on how to get there. And he leaves it at that and lets the rest take care of itself. Right? So a lot of people try and be like, oh, but I need to have all of my elements on my website. I have to have me on my website, like, everything that I am and everything that my business is, you don't. You just need to make sure that your listeners and your visitors know where they need to go to get the information they want to get from. And you need to make sure that you're capturing those people's information so you can reach out to them and serve them up that content. Right? So that's why we say clean, crisp, easy to read, keep it as simple as possible and be cautious of the podcasting themes and plugins. Lately, I've been seeing a lot of these existing podcasters, longtime standing podcasters using podcasting themes, and they come to me and they say, alex, I'd love to change how my blog page looks. Right now, it's forcing my podcast player to be in this spot and I'd like to move it down. And I go, sorry, I can't change it because you have a podcasting theme. And in order to change that one aspect, I have to completely change your.

Theme or you would require custom coding of a very expensive or PHP coder, which is not something any of us, even if we're building our own websites, are going to do or be. It's talking about doing surgery.

So what I do also want to say is those of you who are just starting out and you're going to build a website from scratch, and it's. And it's really your first. You don't already have an existing business. You don't already have a communication with your audience. You don't know who your audience is. So do not overthink the logos and all of the branding behind this. Do not spend too much money here. Like, I'm of the real opinion that if you spend more than $5,000 on a starter website, you have way overspent.

That's coming.

Up.

Well, I don't.

That's very funny, actually.

It would be like you guys actually know what you're talking about. And I've talked it a few times.

Yeah, it's so funny because I wrote.

She wasn't here when we made this PowerPoint. And so she's Jumping ahead and not even knowing.

I'm sorry, I just want to say that because branding is a part of design, like people think about that. And so I call it a starter or a hypothesis brand.

Right?

You want to spend a little less money until you really know who your audience is. And if you find out your audience is all millennials, well, now you have a better idea of how to redesign your site.

Oh, we're going to get to it, Greg. Don't worry. What's coming here on this page. So website resources. So obviously, here are your options. You can do it yourself and you can do it yourself. WordPress, you got to get to learn it. Lots of tutorials and YouTube videos available. You can do it. The problem is for if you're anything like most of us, it's a time suck and you don't have time. You should be spending time working on your business, not in your business, you know that cliche. And doing it yourself. Maybe you're bootstrapping it and you're starting out and that's what you got to do. And if you've got the time, by all means, more power to you. I mean, Tracy's done it. You've built two websites. Yeah, but no longer. We don't do it anymore.

Yeah, Tracy and I have both done it multiple times and we taught ourselves. So it can be done.

Fiverr. You can hire somebody. Fiverr.

Free up has an extra E in it.

You missed it.

Free up has a 30.

30.

I didn't know that.

Apologies to Nathan. If you're seeing this. Nathan Hirsch, the owner of Free Up. So Free up or hiring a local millennial or maybe your niece or nephew or something, you know, by all means, nothing wrong with that at all. It's another option for you. It's cheaper, but you may just need to be prepared for it not to be a priority.

Did you mention GoDaddy and network solutions and those kind of companies? Companies that you buy your URLs from also have very inexpensive packages. Now granted, they're very like simple sites. And so you have to be careful and ask the right questions about the plugins and everything.

Be wary when you're doing that because, for example, GoDaddy has a, oh, easy to use website building program, but it's not WordPress. So you got to be very careful that you're buying the right thing. Read the fine print. If you don't know if you're buying the right thing, send me an email. My email will be on the final side. I'll just point you in the right.

Direction at the end of this. So definitely you can reach out, you can hire a professional web development company. It can be very costly and they can be overbuilt, say, Scott.

Overbuilt? Yeah. This is the number one complaint we find. And look, I mean, I think there's some great web development companies out there who do some great, tremendous services in terms of when you build complex sites. But they also are very comfortable in their coding world that they are in, and they like to push you into what they want and not necessarily what's best for you.

And the thing is, if you then later need to hire another company to do work on that website, it can. Like you're getting a sound effect, I have a feeling.

So the thing is, you can end up spending a whole lot of money having company B figure out what company A did, trying to make what you need. So, I mean, look, there are times and places for websites like that. In fact, our productized hosting platform, heavily custom coded. You can't get away from it when you're doing an advanced function like, and.

We need security or you need those things, but you also need to put them on contract to be responsive to you when you need changes. And that's what most people don't do. They hire the web development company and then they walk away from it. And now they can't get their changes and they can't get fixes made in any timely manner. So that's a big problem.

And then here's where Tracy was.

I blew it.

For a website, if you're paying more than $5,000 for a website, that would cover what the vast majority of you need, you're paying way too much. 5,000 may even be significantly too much.

And then I would also like is too much. Even if you're building a membership website, it's not for what you guys need. You do not need to spend that much.

Yeah. And then the other part of that is, if it takes more than four weeks, I think you're taking. You're also taking too long.

That's the other thing. We encounter so many people, really podcasters, right, who needed a new website and they figured they have to have their website done before they launch their podcast. That's debatable, but it's a good idea if you can. But they pay a company 2,500, $3,500, whatever it is, and then nine months later, they still don't have a website. That is inexcusable. Website can be built in two weeks to four weeks maximum. Even complex with a lot of information.

The simple kind that we were talking about before.

Right.

That's the kind you really need. And so yes, I think, Peter, to answer your question, what range to pay for website development? So if you're not doing membership sites or stores on it, I think you should pay $3,500 or less is really what we think. Yeah. I mean, if you go too cheap, like we've had some that are 1500, they're so simplified that you don't usually get what you want.

Well, and when you ask for what you want is where the nickels and dimes start adding up beyond what they. Or a lot of dissatisfaction of what you thought you were going to get. But what the company really was willing to do for that amount of money, there usually are major disconnects. So I agree with Tracy about 3,500.

She gets you customized.

So it's your brand custom fully WordPress site with whatever functions you need and five or six main pages and completely detailed for all you need. And again, two to four weeks, it's all it should take. Okay, so let's see if anybody has some more detailed questions or would like to have time for that last time. Let's do it.

You all need that? Yep.

Scott, did you see the Q and A question now directed at you here?

Everybody needs your sound effects for Christmas.

Anonymous attendee. Oh, I'm curious.

Yeah, so I put my email up here for everyone because even if after today, after this conversation, you have more questions or you want to talk specifically about your website and your situation because you feel like it's unique and we didn't have time to address it here in this next part of the Mastermind here where we're going to let you, let us go on a case by case basis here. If we don't get to you and you have more questions, just shoot me an email and I'll take some time to guide you in the right direction and talk about you specifically. But we can go ahead and specifically let people share their questions and stuff. So. Okay, Peter, do you see Peter's question?

Let's promote Peter up so we can talk to him because I want to ask some questions.

Oh, wait.

So I was going to say we got to give Peter big congratulations because he had his interview with Lewis Howes this last week as well too for him. So he did some great stuff. Let me promote him up here to a panelist.

And should we stop sharing the screen for now or leave it up?

Just leave it up for now.

Leave it up for now.

Hi, Peter.

Hello.

How are you doing?

Well. Hey, Scott.

Good to be here.

So you're using Anchor now?

Yes.

Are you hosting on Anchor? So that's your hosting?

Yes.

Okay, so how many episodes have you done?

20.

20.

Not too far.

So I think you want to examine your terms of service and your contract and confirm if what you are signed on for is the same as the others that we have.

Sure it is.

It probably is where they actually own your content, which is problematic going forward. And if that's acceptable to you, fine. If it's not, then it's not too painful to switch hosts. There are still ways to monetize even if you don't use them.

All hosting services, ours included, but Libsyns, all of them, they offer transition, so they'll move you. But if you don't have rights to it, that's another problem.

Right.

And so you have to definitely read your terms of service. So what does that mean? Well, if you have your raw audio, like someone could just re edit it. Like it just. It's the files there and then it's in two places and you have to pay a little extra money to have somebody else edit it or edit it a second time, if that's. What are you doing?

Yeah, I'm recording it separately and then downloading it onto the Anchor website and then uploading it from there. So I have all the raw audio files.

Okay, that's cool.

So I'm not. I'm not using them to. I see what you're saying. I'm not using them to host. My first one was where it was just right through Anchor and my guest had to download Anchor as well and record it, but all the other ones have been through a different program. And then I downloaded that MPEG onto the Anchor site.

Okay, great. So that may help you. And from the fact that you do have your own. You have your files. Cause that's what they won't give up. If you wanted to try to get the files off there, you can't.

I got you.

So you're in a better place than those that recorded directly.

But they may have the right to continue to make it available if they want to. I actually don't remember to you, Alexandra, about separating from Anchor, how we're gonna.

Have to read the terms again, because last time I did it, I had a customer who lost it. He wasn't allowed to pull his files from Anchor, and so he just started fresh. And so I don't know exactly what the terms are. If you wanted to if, because you have them what the rules are on that. So I'd have to go read the terms and conditions which I can do for you, Peter, and get back to you.

Well, if he's a creator, he should own the inherent copyright in it. So you'd think he could re syndicate elsewhere.

But you could check.

Alex, can you look up Peter's show? What's your show called, Peter?

The Travel Winds.

And so if you look that up, Alex, does it have anchor on their cover art?

Yeah, you remember they had that logo on.

So what happens is that they've kind of circumvented your itunes listing. So like they're serving it to itunes and they control that. And so you won't get any notification through itunes or you won't have access to that. They're syndicating for you and they're also circumventing that. And so that was one of the problems we had with a client moving them over was that all of a sudden they found out that we couldn't move them, we couldn't transition them and so we had to start them fresh. And so that's part of the problem there. So because you can't redirect, anything's fixable.

It'S just a matter of how painful it's going to be.

But you definitely do want to own your content.

Yeah, own your content, have full rights to it to do whatever you want with it. And if you evaluate your contract, terms of service and it's not meeting your needs now, I would rip the band aid off sooner rather than later because it's only going to get more painful the deeper you get into your show.

So I'm looking it up.

That's right.

All right, so we'll get back for you on that. So does that answer your question, Peter? And you're at a stage where you're getting bigger visibility. That loose house, that's a big deal. So it's time for you to have a place because you want those big names to come find you and go, this guy is really legitimate. I want to be on a show. So that also is an important part about your website is that it is a place for those high level guests that you want to invite on to check you out and check out your authority.

That was my question with the website is, I mean, right now I'm not selling anything. I have no monetization whatsoever. I have no services to sell. I'm simply providing a podcast for people that travel for work and that's it. So I haven't focused on a website because I'm not selling anything. But now there's some other bigger name people that are saying send me the link. So I would like to have a website to send it to them. But.

Well, and that's what you need to offer them because a lot of podcast guests are looking for that link back to their sites.

Right.

So if you don't have a website to link back to them, then you're not as of value from a PR standpoint and from being a great show to be on because you're not providing them any more publicity than just the podcast alone. And so that's why we love video, audio and the blog provides them three levels of publicity and they like that. And that's where how we can attract better and stronger guests for our show.

But even just fundamentally on a getting new listeners for your show, here's the reality of it, okay? While there are increasing numbers of people listening to podcasts today and every month and year going forward, podcast audiences continue to grow. That is true. However, there's a lot more people interested in your subject of I'm sure people that travel for work that are searching on questions they have areas of interest, pain points they have regarding that in Google search. When they search in Google, they are not going to find you near as well, even though you have a podcast. And maybe each individual episode's title may have been indexed by Google from Google podcasts or itunes or somewhere and might show up in a search. But everything that you say within your episode in that MP3 file is not indexed anywhere. Google doesn't pay attention to that and your show won't come up because of that. So having a website and having a blog post for every episode that is based on what was said in the episode, those posts will get indexed by Google and they will come up in those Google searches. And so that's how all those people searching on Google who don't know about you can find you. It is organic marketing even just to get more listeners, if nothing else.

Yeah. So for instance, I was just in Hong Kong and I typed into Google while I was there because I didn't have time to listen to a podcast, right? So I would, if I had planned better, I probably would have. But I typed into Google where to shop in Kowloon and what pops up? A bunch of blog posts that pop up. And if a podcast had popped up, I would have gone, oh, I'm going to bookmark that. I'll listen to podcasts later, but I'll go through and see what they suggest. And so that would have been fantastic because I'm a podcast listener, so it would have been served up to me, likely, and I would have checked that out.

But the blog post can lead to your podcast because every blog post will have a track player within it that has that episode. People can listen right there if they.

Want, so they can sample it and say, hey, I want to subscribe.

Video is increasing in popularity, in exposure, and it's great. I mean, I don't know how many of our customers do video record their stuff as video now. Is it like a quarter or more now? Alexandra, do you know.

Sorry, I'm not listening to the question because I'm looking up the anchor terms. Sorry, what was the question?

I think, I think it's like probably a quarter, but it keeps increasing. I mean, Scott's certainly doing everything as video because it gets more exposure.

Oh, yes.

Whether you're recording your podcast as video first and then it becomes a podcast or you just recording audio, either way, it doesn't matter. Still, the blog post is critical for organic search traffic to your website.

So just as an example, so with feed your brand our podcasts for podcasters, when I did feed your brand, when we first started, it was just straight podcasts, and then I started doing Facebook lives occasionally. And our Facebook lives are more popular episodes because we're getting traffic through there. Then we're getting it on the website, and then we're also getting it through the podcast. So we're getting it at three levels. And so. And we put them up on YouTube. So we, we get YouTube traffic from it. So there are more popular or higher ranked episodes. So even within a show, we're seeing better traffic from our video episodes. So we do more of it now.

I think we can speak to that too. I mean, Scott, your total audience is a certain size. And then your podcast audience versus your video audience, is it about split or what do you feel about what can you share about those numbers?

I can actually share specific numbers if everybody would like to see.

Sure.

I literally, I'm constantly tracking this Here, let me pull it up here real fast.

I'll stop. Do you need to share?

And then I just want to note, update on the anchor issue. It seems that when you record through their program, they own it. But if you're uploading because they can't own it, when you do that legally because you're the one who originated it and upload it. So if you're recording it on a separate program and upload it to their hosting, then it is not owned by them.

Great. So that's good for you, Peter.

So should I switch?

They're still stealing your authority with the way that they push your show through, so they're still putting it more under their umbrella than yours. So, I mean.

But they're not putting. They're not putting their logo on your cover art, though. I checked.

I asked them to not. Yeah, it actually came up when I started download because only the first episode was through Anchorage. And then it asked me subsequently when I was uploading if I wanted their logo on it, and I said no.

Okay, good.

So you only have one episode on anchor. Then I would just take a recording of it, play and record it, and.

Then I'd like to burn it because it was my first one. It was so bad.

Well, there you go. You tested it out. You won't play that one again. You can always delete them.

It's my number one listen to podcast, though, because it's the first one that comes up.

Yeah, I think you would very much benefit from turning that to getting a website going for you, because then you have a place where people can come to you as the authority on the travel and everything you talk about. And the website can be an opportunity too, for you to put some sort of directory or top travel to places that I talk about on the show. Like, things like that can become your sort of subpages so you can be more of a resource for your listeners aside from just listening to an episode.

And that would be a faster way to monetization on your show eventually.

That's what I was saying, too. One thing Lewis said to me at our dinner, which was very cool because we went to a really nice place and LL Cool J was sitting at the table next to us. He actually came over and said hi to us because he knows Louis Lewis said to grow faster would be to try and get attached to a Travelocity or an Expedia or something like that, saying the travel podcast show by Travelocity, then they would kind of sponsor it that way. And he said that would get you faster versus growing organically.

That's true. I agree with that. There are lots of other travel oriented websites.

Yeah, yeah.

Not have a podcast associated with them. And if you were willing to allow your podcast and then the written content from each episode to be posted on that site, you could get another site to pay for professional production of your episodes. So you didn't have to do it even to get them to monetize as a sponsor or even get other sponsors to it if you're not in that place where you feel you need to own it all and to have the ability to monetize it yourself, if you're willing to share that with another company in lieu, or getting them to even they may, you may get some revenue for them just for your time to do it, if that's of interest to you. There are plenty of websites who would love to be the home for your travel podcast.

And were we just talking with another company about that?

We actually recently we were talking with a flight attendant who wants to start a travel related podcast. A different I think focus than yours. But there are, we were researching and finding, there are other travel related sites that would be very happy to at minimum incur all the costs, pay for production, make it easy for you to do what you do and not cost you anything. They benefit from the web traffic and the written content because they're going to monetize it. And then there may even be opportunities to revenue share where you, you get paid essentially for doing this. So think about that. There are options.

You would certainly get paid for advertisements that were placed on your show. Right. You benefit from the website as well. So that's future for, future for you because you're in a good niche.

I guess my question was too is would I want to set up a contract with those people where I still own the content or would they want to own it?

That's going to be the debate and the give and take because if they're going to incur costs, they're going to want to make sure that they get a return on that and the content may need to continue to live on their site. At least the written content. You can probably get permission easily to have the podcast audio be available on your own website if you wanted to. Or maybe you don't want to do it in the future. Yeah, I mean there probably are give and take, but with any kind of relationship like that, and the ones that we've been helping people with, they don't want to edit their own shows and deal with the time doing that. They want to have them professionally done, but they don't want to pay for it. And another company can absolutely pay for that, subsidize that cost. But they need a benefit too. Usually that means the content is going to reside on their website and a.

Lot of them just want a year minimum, so minimum contract. So it also helps you build it up and figure out what are you going to sell, what am I going to do, what's my attraction and get you to a place where you have 100 episodes or 50 plus episodes, if you're only doing one a week and really get you to a stage at which you're ready to really go off on your own and do what you want to do next with it could.

Help build your credibility. And then you do another show a year from now or two years from now.

So I'm going to answer Christina's question.

We were actually just dealing with this question today.

So Christina's question for those of you.

Who can't see it is, are your.

Facebook Live sessions then being posted to your podcast host? And so, yeah, so I go on and I do a Facebook Live. There are lots of people who do them on a regular session. So, like they. Every Monday at noon, they do one. I don't do that. I'm random. So it's whenever I feel like it and I'm available, I go on Facebook Live. And so I recognize that not everybody's going to be on and doing live. They're going to watch the recording. But as soon as I'm done with that live session, you go back to where it says the recording is going to be available in a few minutes. And then as soon as it is.

There'S three dots in the corner and.

I download the video instantly.

That's it.

That's all I do. Okay. And then I load it up to potitize and Alex will tell you what happens next.

So basically, we were just dealing with a client today who was like, guys, my last four episodes. And they're a DIY client, so they upload their own videos or I guess their Facebook lives to our system to send it to itunes and everywhere. And he was uploading the video files and he was like, guys, my last five episodes are not on itunes. Why aren't they on all these places? And I end up assuming he did it right, contacting iheartradio and Spotify and all the support people and being like, what's going on? It's not updating. You guys are like, I'm basically saying, you guys messed up and didn't update my client's feed, even though it's up to date. And they all come back to me and saying, well, it's because they're video files. So make sure you're not uploading your video files. They have to be audio files. Now, I think itunes does work for video, actually. It's the Spotify, iHeartRadio, all the stitcher, tunein, all of those other ones that are only audio.

You actually have to upload an MP3 file to be distributed on those platforms. Now, you record your Facebook Live, it's very easy to strip the audio from that and save it as an MP3 file and then upload that to your podcast RSS feed.

What is the tool we use to do that?

Well, we use. There are several tools we use. One that actually isn't available anymore. I have one called convert to MP3. It's a little program that runs on Mac where you just drag and drop any media file, video, audio of any kind, and it'll convert it to an MP3.

There's also free online converters. You just gotta make sure you're getting the right ones. Actually, I think I can drop one here in the chat.

And the only reason I'm this convert to MP3. I still use it, but it's no longer supported and made. And every time I upgrade my Mac os, it tells me this program is not optimized for this operating system. So one of these days it's going to break. Can no longer work.

So Christina saying she has a convert to MP3 for PC2.

Okay, good. Well, if you have that and it works, by all means. I love it. It's really simple for me. But there's a number of different converters there. Most of them are free. Pretty easy.

So. So that's the difference is because we're a production house and a host, our clients can upload the video and it gets converted through us. Yeah, so that's why it's a little bit different with us normally. But if it's in the DIY section, where you're only hosting with us and you're not having us produce, you have to put up the audio file as this client found it. You have to put up the MP3.

MP3 is the podcast standard and for the foreseeable future will be. I see no hints of that changing anytime soon.

Now, there is a difference in that your MP3, if you're going from the raw, Facebook Live, doesn't have bumpers on it.

Right.

So it doesn't have your intro and outro, it doesn't have a little music transition and things like that. So that is something that we do. Our system will be able to do for you in the future. So stay in touch with us if you want to use our hosting. We actually can do that automatically within our system. So you don't have to actually learn any editing software to do that yourself.

Is your hosting program in essence like Anchor, where I send you my file and then you put it out to all the platforms.

You upload the file to the system and create a post with like a title and description. And once you publish it, then it automatically goes out from our system to all those different platforms.

All those places that Scott. Yeah. That you saw Scott's logo. Yeah, yeah, we syndicate to all of them. Because the more you're on, the more listeners you're going to capture because they have their preferred platforms. Not everyone's an itunes listener. I'm not. I like Google podcasts best, but I also can't find everybody on Google podcasts. So then sometimes I use stitcher.

So I hope that answered your question there.

Anyone else have anything? Do we have anyone on Facebook? Scott?

That's what I'm pulling up right now.

Okay, good.

Can I ask more?

Yeah, go ahead. We don't have any questions. Feel free.

With the basic website for a podcast only page, would it be just an about me and then just a listing of my podcast?

Yeah. So if you were to say like five pages. So like, I'm a fan of an about me page.

Right.

So that they know who the host is. They know about you. I'm a fan of having a separated podcast page from your homepage. So your homepage might be the like top couple of episodes and it might be the what they would call blog world page. I like that there because you're providing the information first. Right. And that's why people are coming to you because you're serving up a podcast and they want to check out your latest episode. So I like that having a player page, as Alex was talking about, like how to subscribe to the show but have the player all in one place, they can look at others. You can have that as a separate page as well. The other page that I like is though, for you to have is, you know, want to be a guest on my show and have a page just have a form, like it's a little more professional. Or you can even have an application if you want to ask a few questions. You can even put that right in that form that always just looks a little more pro. And then you do have a place for people to send them a link to get to it. And being able to schedule with you, if you choose, you can send that separately later.

Do you guys set up the SEO parameters on that?

Anyone who sets up a website should be doing that automatically. And it's set up in those pages. Right. They're set up and configured to bring the SEO to the name of your show and your name. Right. Those two things matter the most in your pages overall. The blogs themselves send people to the content, send people to the information and the keywords that your site will become associated with. So it's a little bit different than it used to be. You just have to like embed all these, like, hidden words. No one does that anymore. It doesn't work and you don't need to. So it's just really about what is your site about. And that's why you want to have a, like, here's what my podcast is about, here's what you're going to get from me, and here's our mission, right? To get you great travel information from insiders so the next time you're on business, you can enjoy yourself and get your business done, right, Whatever that message is.

So, so we got some comments here. John Poppedich thumbs up. Jason Bible says live video kills it because Jason does a live video all the time with his right path real estate. Jason also says that travel video is killing on YouTube. We follow a litany of travel channels. Watch what Airstream is doing with content creators.

Yeah. So really good tip. If you're Facebook Live and then take it off, make sure you put it on YouTube. We talked about YouTube last week. We talked about how Scott's stats are going on YouTube and Vimeo. I mean, this is really important to be able to maximize the search that's going on in those video themselves in the video world. We have a question here from Tim Bush. Hey Tim, how are you? Should there be a place to subscribe to your podcast on your website or is that only on itunes, et cetera? So Alexandra was referring to. She's been building pages, so you should get one because she's been going through clients and doing it. So she'll make sure you get one. But building pages to show people how to subscribe because it's not clear. So when you ask your listeners to subscribe, you want to instead send them to. Yours is on the shelf. What is it, Alex? It's on the shelf.

Now, there's something called the smart podcast player that we use. And on that player there's a little three dots on it that indicates more because that's the new standard symbol for more. Now on the Internet, evidently you click it and it shows you subscribe and you hover over it and it shows all the links to where you can subscribe. However, they don't have Google podcasts and they don't have Player FM or like some of the. Or Spotify. So like there's a few of them that they don't have. And that's why I've been implementing this because I realized that was the gap on all of our clients websites. So Scott's going to be getting my email to introduce him to what I'm doing to get it. Tim will get it. But I'll show you guys real quick. Quick what? I'm there.

Oh yeah.

Share your screen.

Share, share. But let me just say I will.

But I'm pulling it up. I'm going to let it load.

But Tim, what I want you to understand is people cannot subscribe to your podcast on those different platforms on your website. They have to subscribe within an app on their phone or within the app on their laptop. Like if you have the itunes app or something, itunes desktop, that you can subscribe there and then if you're using the app, it'll push to your app because you did it on the desktop. But it is. Subscribing to podcasts is not easy for the average people to do or the inexperienced people to do. There's several steps to it to the.

Ones who come to your website. First, keep in mind, because if they came to you through itunes, they're already itunes users.

Right?

So it's a little bit different there.

Right?

You're right, Tim. You got to tell them where to go. But also we are proponents of actually having a mini tutorial on your website showing them screenshots and instructions of how to do it. Like using sock puppets, telling them, here's how you do it. You know, otherwise a lot, not as many people will bother to do it. The other trend that we're seeing, for those of you that are new, starting a podcast new, a lot of people really want to, I guess, execute a strategy to get as high in the rankings on itunes as they can. Because itunes is one of the only in the major platform that has the top 200 podcasts in every category that are listed. Those rankings are active and change daily based on a combination of factors. The most significant one is downloads and then there's also ratings and reviews and the amount of time people listen and all that sort of stuff. A lot of people are executing this strategy of in the first couple months of their show, although it's syndicated everywhere and when you work with us, we put you on, I think it's nine different platforms now. Standard 12 as we add more. 12. Okay, 12. Geez, I'm a couple weeks behind. But they only advertise and solicit people to subscribe on itunes in the beginning. Because if you've Got multiple places you're sending people to subscribe. The ratings on itunes only come from people listening through itunes or Apple podcasts app or anything like that. So to rank faster, you may want to drive people just to itunes initially. Now the reality is if people are regular podcast listeners on Spotify or regular listeners on tunein, they're gonna know they can go find your show and they'll go search for it on their favorite app or platform anyway. But in terms of new people, that may not be attached to a way to listen yet if you want to try to rank and get up in those rankings. And we have had two shows launch on our platform in the last three weeks. Each get into the top 200 within the first week, driving as much people listen on itunes as possible. So I mean, it can be done early on in a show. So I'm sorry, go ahead, Alexandra.

Now.

Okay, so the thing that I've started doing now on itunes, I put it, this is our description that we put on itunes. It's also the little blurb that we put at the top of the blog post because then when it pulls into a blog feed, you can read itunes description.

Right? Episode.

It's an episode description, yep. And so on itunes, this is the only thing that goes to itunes. Now this part I'm going to show you below. At the bottom of the blog post is also what we've been putting below the description on itunes as well. So it's just in a different place on the blog post, but on itunes it's right under that paragraph. So down here, sorry, it's a long blog post because it's an hour long episode. So here it says love the show, subscribe, rate, review and share. Here's how. And it also says join the feed, you'd brand community and let's all of our social media links. Okay. So they can find us wherever they want to on social media. And I'm going to show them exactly how to subscribe, rate and review on this page we have here. So see how to subscribe to our podcast. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Seven of the platforms have buttons, so I put them here. I'm working on getting a button together, but we have to create them for a couple of the other platforms because they actually don't provide buttons. So this is where they can subscribe. They can click any of these links and go subscribe right on those channels, easy. So it's easy for them to understand where to go. And then down here we have how to rate our podcast five stars.

So in your head, right. That you want to review. Right? You should say that. Don't just say how to rate our podcast. How to rate our podcast as outstanding.

Right.

Put that in.

And so these images are customized. This background is only used on our feed your ground podcast. When I did it for the other podcast we just launched, we changed the backgrounds, changed the colors, made it their brand. See, here's feed your brand. This was before we changed the logo, though. So anyway, this is feed your brand where to search it. It's really how to rate and review step by step for them. So that way there's no question how to do it. And then we go and show them on itunes and then Stitcher, because those are the only platforms, itunes in the itunes application and the Apple podcast app, both can do it, and then Stitcher can do it. So I make sure this is available to everyone. And I just now got it down to a formula where I can now, for Scott and Tim, go ahead and offer that to create it for you guys. But I needed to make sure I had a lockdown system before I offered it. And so we'll add that little. What we call is a call to action, where it says, come, subscribe, rate and review. And here's where you can find us on social media, we're going to put that in every episode description. So every platform you're on, it says it in every episode description. And we're going to create that page for them. You can do that yourself, too. It's really easy to do. You don't have to have the fancy graphics that we just have a graphics team at our disposal. So I can have them create, customize it for each person. But if you don't have a graphics team at your disposal, you can just take simple screenshots and put screenshots in those places instead.

So, yeah, thank you, Alexandra.

That's great.

We just want to mention that these are the things that we really want people to maximize and utilize the techniques that we're using. That's why we're sharing them with you. We happen to do this for us. So if you happen to be one of our clients, like Tim is, like, you're going to get it done for you, because that's what we believe in. We like telling you you should do this and getting you to do it are two different things. So the faster we do it for you, the faster you're going to benefit from it, the more your show is going to grow, and that helps the whole community. And so that's what we believe in. And that's why we're here serving you.

Actually, I want to add something to what Alex Gender was doing. And I don't know if you all realized when she was talking about the podcast description, where it was a very basically a short paragraph of information about the show that the goes in. The podcast app is displayed there. When you look at each episode, you can read what it's about. Then she talked about our social media links and other things that were down below in that rate and review that you can. I want to make it clear in your podcast description, no matter where your podcast is hosted or served from, you can put standard HTML links in your podcast description. So when somebody is looking at your episode in their app on their phone and there's that social media link on Facebook, they click it. Boom. It's going to open up Facebook to your Facebook page or whatever you've linked to. It's going to then go to your browser, if that's where it is. If it's an Internet link, it's going to jump over and link people right there. That's very convenient and highly recommend if you're not using a sort of boilerplate standard at the end of your description. Key bullets and links to anything about you, your website even. I mean, all that stuff can be in there.

You just copy and paste it each.

Time into the bottom for your show.

Yeah. And then add whatever's new above it.

Because your show has some of that information, but it's kind of hidden. It says website over to the side on itunes. So you have to navigate to it and find it. And it's a lot harder to find it on mobile than it is on the browser in itunes. And so you want to definitely have it in a place in each episode when they're within an episode that they can find you.

Oh, that actually also reminds me that now on the Apple podcast app, they have a link to the episode page. And you want to be wary of that and you want to make sure you're capturing their attention to go to you and not to that episode page. Because all of us hosters, when Apple did one of their recent software updates on all the apps, they added that feature. And all of the hosters, Libsyn podbean anchor, I'm sure too send them to the page on your host's website of the episode. And we have no control over where that link goes. And now we're working within our team to internally try and hard code it to tell it where to go. But it's taking Time. Because Apple didn't warn any of us. So I do know Libsyn and Podbean and all of them. It's going to their websites and not to the podcasters. Episode blog. There's no input for it. You can't tell it where to go. So it's super important that in your description, you're telling them where you want them to go to find you, because otherwise they're going to click that link and go to Libsyn and be like.

There'S nothing here but a sound.

Right. It's the player. And play in the Apple app anyway. Right.

For sure.

Peter, Tim is sending you a link to a blog. He wrote Airport notes. You'll enjoy it.

Yeah, copy that link out of there, Peter, before.

So for those of you know. So Tim Bush is one of our partners on Product Launch Hazards and a good friend of mine and we just adore his podcast. It's called on the Shelf now, it's his website, but on the Shelf podcast. And so it's for those who want to launch products into Costco and Walmart and all of those things. And it's a great show and we have fun because Tom and I get to occasionally do a panel with him. Yeah, we have a lot of fun on the show. So it's a great show.

I got it. Thanks, Tim.

All right, so any other questions before we end tonight? Nope. Scott's like, nope, I'm done. Okay.

We just don't have anything else. Nobody else is commenting on Facebook.

That's great.

So Scott's big event he's gearing up for this is done.

Well, so that's the other thing is that we'll be sending it on an email. Alex, can you make sure that the podcast peeps, people who have registered get the email? I'm going to run a strategy session that's free. And so this is a strategic planning for your episodes and guest for 2019. I'm going to run it in three parts and as long as you register for the webinar, get it, then you'll get the recordings for free. And so if you're registered on it. And so even if you missed that, but the first one will happen to be the day before our next podcast Peep. So there you go. I want to make sure that you guys know about that as well because you're all welcome to join us there. So just make sure that you register for it because then you'll get the recordings because otherwise they're not going to be available. So we'll be Dropping them off after the initials. But it's going to run how to plan for episodes so you'll be more strategic with your episode planning how to plan your guests so that you have a year worth of guests. And then we're going to pull that together with the very first one will be what your strategy is and making sure that you have a plan and a strategy rather than a sort of ad hoc way which many people go through it. That will be the very first one and then it will be episodes and then guests. And then I'm going to just do a push out video so it won't be live. Then turning that into social media. So to make sure you have your social media plan in place as well for the year. So your whole marketing plan could be all done if you really got on it, wouldn't that be awesome?

And we also planned another. Hey, thanks, Greg. I'm glad you're getting value out of this. That's the whole idea. Feel free to think of some questions for next time and plan to come on live with us. That'd be awesome.

And the other thing that we will be sharing next time is about our guest directory and Tracy will probably talk about it a little bit on the webinars she's doing, but we just are finalizing our guest directory this week and we'll be launching it, I think in time for your webinar we'll be ready. And the next podcast as well. It'll be ready for you guys and we'll give you, we'll share with you when that's ready. And if you want to be listed as a guest or a host, you'll be able to do that.

So that's what our focus will be for the next Mastermind. We'll talk about guesting, choosing good guests and some of those things. And that way we can have kind of a deeper discussion on it and where to find them. And if you're having trouble, this is a great time to ask us questions about how about how we do it and how each other and get some insights into the sort of guesting model of that and the guesting side of podcasting. So that will make our focus.

Yeah. Tracy's webinars will be more lecture y and more this is how to do it and what we do and not so much session can be more question and answer based and deeper. Dive into your specific questions.

Yep, absolutely.

Good.

Any final thoughts, Scott? Alexandra? No, we're all good. All right. Hey everybody. Thank you for joining us for the third edition of Podcast Peeps. We'll be back in two weeks. We look forward to it. And don't forget to let other people know about this and think about any questions you might have. Try and let us know ahead of time. We can even consider that.

Yeah, if you can't make next time, send us one in advance. We'll still answer them and you can watch the recording.

You know what I'll do is I'll. I'll go ahead and send it Sunday night or sometime this next week. I'll send a survey at everybody with one or two questions and ask, hey, what would they like to see? Anything. And we maybe start packing some stuff into the last couple of the year.

That sounds good.

Yeah. All right.

And anyone has any questions in between Masterminds, feel free to post on our Facebook page. We're always on there. I'm posting there about the Masterminds. We can also have discussions on there as well if you need help in between sessions.

All right.

Thanks, Alexandra.

Thanks, everybody. Signing off for today. Thanks for Podcast Peeps.

You've reached the end of another episode of Podcast Peeps with Tom Hazzard, Tracy Hazzard, and Scott Carson to become an exclusive member of the Podcast Peeps Mastermind. Go to podcastpeeps.com and apply today. Catch us next time to get a peek into our mindshare with the top podcasters in the industry.