Podcast Growth Isn't Magic, It's Strategy

[00:00:07] Alright, so like I said, I'm going to ListenNotes.com and I just did a search for podcast growth tips because I'm expecting that when I see podcasts, I want to see like grow the show. I want to see maybe Podcasting Business School, Podcasting Business School. If I change from podcast to episodes, Podcasting Business School comes up.

[00:00:37] So you'll see here that so they've actually they're ranking for their individual episodes. But when you're when you're trying to rank for the show, Podcast Growth Tips, these two shows here, listen, listeners to clients, podcasting tips and podcast growth. And then podcasting for solopreneurs, they come up number one and number two. And I have heard to listeners to clients, not because I've heard of the podcast.

[00:01:02] I've heard of the person who does it, Rosemary Calendar. I'm actually connected to her on a social media platform. So I've seen because she's posted links there of her show going back and forth. But I started looking. It's like, OK, well, it's a top three percent show. When you look at podcasting for solopreneurs, it's a top two percent show. So these are these are pretty good shows. But I'm like the shows that I really would have expected to see in this list. I'm not saying. So then I said, well, let's let's do some investigation.

[00:01:30] Why is this? So when I go and I look at the the notes for each of these shows, I'm trying to figure out how to how did I do that? I was doing it on my phone before. So it's a little the interface is a little different here. But I want to I'm going to click into this show and I'm looking at the about this podcast.

[00:01:51] What I'm noticing is that they type an enormous amount of content and keywords into their podcast description. I mean, this is a very, very long podcast description. And to me, it looks like it is written specifically for search engine optimization, but it's working. So I looked at this one and then I went back and said, oh, let me look at that other show and see what they're doing, because they're ranking pretty high as well.

[00:02:18] So if I go into podcasting for solopreneurs and then look at their podcast description, same thing. Very, very long description. It's like they're using the maximum characters for the description and they're just laden with keywords that they're trying to rank for. So then my my mind goes, OK, well, I wonder if I search for this keyword would comes up and search for that keyword that comes up.

[00:02:44] So the to make the long story short, what is happening here is that these shows are ranking for the keywords that they're actually putting into their descriptions. And these descriptions, like I said, they're long. They may actually both be using the maximum characters for the description. So that just got me to thinking. I wonder if this is a strategy that a lot of people are using to where you could, you know, and I wouldn't say, you know, I want to be careful here. They're not keyword stuffing. This is not like poorly written content. You can read through this and it makes sense.

[00:03:14] This is definitely written for humans, but it's just a lot longer of a podcast description than what I am used to. Usually folks are trying to give you like maybe a 10, 12, 15 word description. They're writing multiple paragraphs on. Here's what this show is. Who is where we target? This is what we talk about. We talk about this thing and that thing and the other thing and the thing after that, the thing after that. And they are absolutely ranking for those things they put here in the keywords. Yeah, this.

[00:03:40] So ACAST gives you 4,000 characters, which isn't nothing, right? But if you put a couple of links in, long links, that counts against your character count, which is unfortunate. But this is something that I hadn't thought of. One of the things that I did start doing was giving a description. Like we do that anyway, naturally and beyond the post. But for kilowatt, I'll give a brief description in the front of the show notes.

[00:04:08] And I was hoping that would be enough to, you know, rank us or pull us up in a search, right? Or for kilowatt anyway. And but we could easily because with what's the program called? Um, uh, all phonic. It gives a description of what the show is. Right.

[00:04:34] And then I take that description or I take that the transcripts from our show and I put that into chat GPT. And I say, hey, make a YouTube description and a podcast description. We could easily add. And then I have it give me tags for YouTube and then recommend a title. We could easily do that for beyond the post. And I'm guessing that we probably should. So I just, I'm, I'm just playing around here. I'm typing in shows that, you know, that, you know, or things that, that I would actually look for.

[00:05:03] So I just typed in black tech podcast. The first show that I thought would show up, showed up black tech green money. That is one of the bigger black tech podcast out there. It is definitely something that shows up stitch, please. I honestly have not heard of that until right now. And I'm looking at, it looks like, uh, this thing was started in, uh, 2019 and it is updated as recently as four hours ago.

[00:05:26] Um, the little, the little vine thing chronicles, but, uh, but most of the things here that I'm looking at are not things that I would expect to see. Okay. I would also expect to see black tech unplugged, but what they are ranking for here is the name. I, I, I specifically typed in black tech podcast, black tech shows up in the name, black tech, green money, black tech unplugged. So I would like for like the tech John to show up here, but you know what?

[00:05:56] You don't see black tech in the name of the title. So one of the things I'm thinking, and I've been thinking about this for a while, should you use extended titles? Uh, I have seen a lot of shows that they will name their show hyphen or colon, and then they will give you the keywords of what people might actually search for. Um, giving you a long title. So instead of the name of your show, I'll just use the tech job.

[00:06:22] For example, instead of the name of the show being the tech John, and that's just the title, it would be like the tech John hyphen, uh, you know, weekly tech news from African American perspectives or something like that. Or from black tech perspectives, black tech news from, uh, black tech, you know, reporters, something like that to where people would actually search for the keywords. Because if you don't know the name, the tech John, you would never search for it. You would never find it unless you knew the name.

[00:06:49] So it's just got me thinking about, uh, naming conventions. Like if you think about daily tech news show, the name of the show tells you exactly what the show was about. Um, kilowatt doesn't necessarily tell you exactly what the name of the show or, you know, the name of the show doesn't exactly tell you what it's about. So it would be kilowatt colon. And then you would talk about, you know, you know, you would give like that 10 word description of, of what kilowatt is.

[00:07:16] And I just wonder, like, I kind of want to do it as an experiment to just see if you start adding in these long titles, um, these long titles to the name of your show. Uh, will it help you with organic search in the actual podcast apps? My gut tells me it would because pretty much everybody who talks about podcasting tells you to do these things. And it seems like it would work. Um, but I don't know. It was just, it was just interesting.

[00:07:40] So, uh, but when I, you know, I looked in listen notes and I'm seeing not only are they doing this in the title, but they're also doing it in the descriptions. And these descriptions are using, like you said, a cast has got 4,000 characters. I would imagine it both of these descriptions here are probably roughly around that amount. Kilowatt is actually not kilowatt. It is kilowatt colon a podcast about electric vehicles. Okay. Okay.

[00:08:05] So, um, cause initially when I, when I released my podcast, I was getting like 40 downloads a week and, um, I did not have expectations of huge numbers for sure. But as soon as I went through the process, I was like, well, kilowatt, it's kind of hard. First of all, my logo was, it was a volt meter.

[00:08:32] So not exactly, not exactly on the nose when it comes to what your podcast does. Um, so I, I, I did a couple of different things first, uh, through Alison and Steve's recommendations. I changed my show art. So now my show art is the title at the top. Um, there's an ionic five, although that's going to change soon. I'm changing my podcast art in the next couple of months, but there's an ionic five in the center, a white one.

[00:09:01] And then there's, uh, like, uh, a battery array for energy storage, solar, and a wind meal in, in my show art. So from there, between the, the fact that I've got a, uh, uh, a title, this is kilowatt, a podcast about electric vehicles. And those three things on there that definitely, uh, helped.

[00:09:24] But when I just changed the name, I went from like 40 downloads a week to 150 to 200 downloads a week. Just by changing the name. Just by changing the name. Now those are huge percentage numbers, not huge in download numbers in, in terms of, um, but it shows that the, the recognition is higher. If they know what you, or the, or the, uh, the, uh, engagement is higher. If they actually know what you're doing.

[00:09:52] When I changed the kilowatt artwork, which I like to do every couple of years, again, it, it, I saw an increase in the number of downloads. And I don't know if that's because, because my podcast has been around for eight years. So I don't know if that's because of the, oh, um, I remember this podcast. I'm going to check it out again. Maybe they pod faded a little bit or whatever, or if it just was a little more engaging. Like, um, the new scout motors, Tara, uh, Tara pickup truck.

[00:10:21] That's going to be my, my show art, um, in the, the very front. And it's going to be right now it's muted in gray. My, my artwork, it's going to be a little bit more bold and colorful. And, um, I think that'll catch more eyes when you look at all of the other EV podcasts that are out there. Cause they're all, we're all kind of muted. Um, we don't have a lot of, if you look up EV podcasts, there's not a lot of color, you know, um,

[00:10:50] there's various shades of red and white, you know, blue. Um, there's just, you know, guys standing next to a, to a car charging. It's not a, it's not a super, um, what's the word I'm looking for. We're not ostentatious in the EV podcast world. We're pretty muted. So I figure if I make something that stands out a little bit more, that might help. Cause right now I'm, I'm kind of at a stall for, for listeners.

[00:11:19] I'm growing a little bit, waning a little bit, growing a little bit, waning a little bit. Well, this is perfect, man. You were, you were holding on on me. Cause I didn't know that the name of the show was kilowatt, a podcast about electric vehicles. I just thought it was kilowatt podcast. I wish it was just kilowatt podcast. So a couple of things that happened. If I type in just the word kilowatt, you come up number two. Um, if I type in a podcast about electric vehicles, you come up number one for that.

[00:11:48] But, um, but these are both things. Now, if I'm typing nose in, I'm typing them in because I already know the name of your show. And that's how I'm trying to find it. If I'm just looking for podcast about electric vehicles, I would probably type in electric vehicle podcast and see what comes up.

[00:12:14] So we've got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. You are the eighth show. This shows up for podcast, uh, you know, electric vehicle podcast. Now I'm looking at this and I'm seeing the words that are highlighted. What my gut is telling me is that it's actually looking at the keywords, electric vehicle podcast. It sees those in your title. So it's probably doing some algorithmic stuff to determine based on these keywords that are

[00:12:42] showing up in your title, where should you rank for those specific keywords in a way that I typed them in. And you're actually eighth for that. Even though it never says electric vehicle podcast, it says specifically a podcast about electric vehicles. That search engine optimization is still getting you for that keyword phrase. So what, what I'm thinking about now, particularly for podcast, um, when creating titles, should

[00:13:09] you be creating your title for what people ultimately are going to search for, uh, to potentially find your show? Like, I'll, like, I'll, I'll go back to the example of, well, I'll give you another example because this was even worse. SMR podcast. If you do not know the name of that show, you will never find it because there is no description. We don't tell you what the show is about. It's just, that's just the name that we decided to use years and years and years ago.

[00:13:38] So we've never done any search engine optimization. Um, I don't honestly know that I could tell you what that show is about. I'd have to really think about it because it's just like three guys getting on a microphone and just talking about whatever. But if we wanted to find more listeners, it probably will behoove us to actually do a couple of things. Number one, the easiest thing, the quickest thing to do would be to actually write a really, really detailed description of what the show is about using the keywords that people would search for to find those things.

[00:14:04] And then number two, maybe do a longer name in the, uh, you know, for the name of the show. So instead of just SMR podcast, SMR podcast, a show about three guys talking about tech sometimes and everything else. Most of the time, I don't even know what that would be, but it seems to me like if I did that, I might actually get, uh, you know, some better traffic on that particular, uh, on that particular show.

[00:14:28] I did a little experiment and I just typed in Hyundai, uh, solid state battery. Cause I know I did an episode on Hyundai and solid state batteries. And, uh, mine was like the fifth or sixth one down, uh, you know, it was inside EVs, which is way bigger than me. Now, is that the episode or the show? That was under the episode. When I looked under the show, there was nothing. I didn't come up at all, but the episode, it came up. Okay.

[00:14:58] Which, which is good because, um, you want a couple of things to happen. If there's something that you, let's, let's use this as a bit of a segue. One of the biggest mistakes that I think podcasters make, particularly those to create content that is, uh, definitely if it's evergreen, if it's content that doesn't change from year to year, definitely you want to, you know, do this thing. I'm going to say next, if it's an evergreen show, if you're, if you're writing a show about

[00:15:26] here's how you change a sump pump that doesn't change from week to week, it doesn't change from hour to hour. So if you're doing that, I believe that you should continually come back and hit that post with search engine, you know, search engine optimization. And you should also just kind of continue to promote it because if it was a good post a year ago, it's probably still a good post today. And people who are interested in what would want to, uh, still find that content.

[00:15:53] And I think as podcasters are probably the ones who are the most, uh, culpable with this. We will promote a show, uh, when the show is released in no time other than that. So literally, if you're talking about, you know, installing a sump pump, we will talk about that in the show. We'll do the promotion for that week's episode that week, and then we'll go on to the next thing. And we never come back and talk about sump pump again, even though that show may be a

[00:16:19] very, very good, uh, example of what kind of content you put on your content, the kind of content that you put on your show. So the problem with that is that I think that we leave a lot of opportunity for people to find your show simply because you do not, or when I say you, I mean, we, you know, just generally speaking, podcasters do not go back and, you know, and, and, and refresh their hits. I think the smart ones do, um, the ones who know that that's a very, very good strategy, but I don't know that a lot of people know that.

[00:16:46] There's another thing on, um, man, I see this on Tik TOK all the time and I'm not going to buy the service that they're recommending because I, I'm not sure the service is actually beneficial, but there are services out there that will go and check and see what's trending, right? And you can even look for yourself, but what's trending in the area that you actually talk

[00:17:09] about for content creation, whether it's podcast, YouTube, uh, social media, and you can tailor your content based on that. If, if you want to do that, I mean, that some of that is beneficial. Some of that's just chasing clicks, which I think has a finite life. Um, but there is something to be said if everybody's talking about, let's say, um, my new favorite

[00:17:35] company, Scout Motors, everybody's talking about Scout Motors and I never do an episode with Scout Motors. If anybody doesn't know as an electric vehicle company, that's building, um, two vehicles that, uh, were built in the seventies and, and beloved and now they're rebuilding the rebranding coming, coming, coming back. So, um, but the, the point of that is, is if I ignore Scout Motors and that's what people want to hear about, and it's in my wheelhouse of things that I talk about, that doesn't

[00:18:03] make a lot of sense for, for my show. And I could ignore them for a variety of different reasons. Um, but at some point I need to address the fact that they exist. It absolutely makes sense. Um, I would be lying to you if I haven't told you that I've actually had ideas, you know, two or three, four ideas that I was tossing around for an episode and I wasn't sure which one I wanted to do.

[00:18:30] And I go right over to Google trends and see which one of those is trending. Because if, if I have four ideas and one of them is in trending things on Google, it absolutely makes sense to create content on that because I know that people are already looking for it. Um, another example, um, I do, uh, daily tech headlines. Um, that is a, you know, a show is about five minutes long where I'm giving you nine to,

[00:18:58] nine to 11 tech news headlines of the day. You just, here's what's happening in the news. Well, how do we make the determination on which ones of those, you know, headlines? There's definitely more than 11 or 12, uh, you know, headlines that are happening. How do we, how do we make a determination on which ones we're going to talk about? And one of the things that I do not to get too inside Sasha's making is that, well, I will actually go look on five or six different news aggregators and see what tech news is

[00:19:28] at the top of the list. Uh, so I will go to Feedly and look across a bunch of things and see if you keep seeing the same article over and over again, written by a different, um, you know, organization. Okay. This news is kind of trending. If you go to Google news and you see it, uh, you know, Google news is definitely a, you know, a, uh, you know, a trending type of topic. It's basically the things that are popping at the top of Google news are the things that people are searching for most on Google. If I go over to tech mean, once again, the things that are at the top of tech mean are

[00:19:56] the one are the stories that most people keep linking to the, the more links that they have in coming in about the same story, the higher that story is going to get pushed up. So in the same way, I kind of make my determination on what I'm going to talk about based off of what are the news stories that people are actually most interested in based off of the things that have been searched for the most, the things that have been actually quoted the most of the things that have been written about the most. It just kind of makes sense.

[00:20:21] And I think that, uh, this is probably a good way to structure a show for determining how you're going to create your content. You want to create the content that people are trying to consume right now in real time. And if you have some choices on things you can talk about or write about or read about, uh, you know, you, you, you will behoove yourself to talk about what's kind of popular, what's in the zeitgeist right now. So to speak, I'm going to, I'm going to take, I'm going to take this and I'm going to, I'm

[00:20:47] going to flip it a little bit, you know, uh, popular gaming streamers, right? Like people who play Fortnite and stuff like that. The thing that made them popular was Fortnite. Fortnite, the thing that they hate doing every day, but they make money at it is Fortnite. Like if you talk to somebody, they're like, I would like to try a different game out. And their fans are like, no, no, no, no, no, no. So it's definitely important to have a, a, a variety of things in there.

[00:21:13] We're not saying, you know, if, if you are making, um, content about, you know, uh, Africanized bees or whatever, uh, maybe you talk about other things that have to do with bees and not just the fact that they're Africanized or, or whatever. There's like, there's, we had a bee call the other day, so this is worse. It's on the top of my mind. But, um, you know, you have to, you have to be, you have to have a, you have to present

[00:21:40] a diverse amount of content in your area, but you will find like every now and again, like when I do certain, um, earnings calls for, for kilowatt, I will get way more downloads than other content that I do, but I'm not going to only do earnings. First of all, it only comes around once a quarter, but I'm not going to only do earnings calls for my podcast. Right. There is a podcast in there for somebody to do, but that's not right for kilowatt.

[00:22:09] So I think I'm talking in circles. No, it, it, it completely, it completely makes sense, uh, where you have to be careful. Let me, let me start over. I am a fan and a proponent of niching down. I think that way too many, and this is not just podcasters. This is people who create newsletters, people who podcast, people who create YouTube videos,

[00:22:36] people who create newsletters. I think that something that is, that does not serve you well is being so broad that no one is specifically ever looking for you. So, um, I'll give you an example. Um, this is actually a family member of mine. Um, hit me up and say, Hey, I'm starting a podcast. Um, I want you to listen to it and tell me what you think as a family member. So this is my family.

[00:23:03] So I'm going to, I'm going to let my, you know, someone who I'm close to, so they know my sense of humor and they know how I operate. So I just asked the question, okay, so what is your podcast about? And she tells me, Oh, it's a little bit about this, a little bit about that. You're going to just have to listen to it to get the gist of it. And my immediate response was, heck no, I'm not doing all that, you know, because if I don't know what your show is about, I don't know if it's something that would be interested in listening to.

[00:23:33] If you tell me that your show is about underwater basket weaving, I know that I'm not interested in that. If you tell me that your show is about football, I know I'm interested in that. You know, you've piqued my interest, but if you tell me your show is about underwater basket weaving, bike riding, um, the way that, uh, bowling pins are constructed and why we shouldn't use copper, uh, to being as compared to PVC. Um, if those are all the things you're talking about, I would never search for any of those things together.

[00:24:03] Uh, so I wouldn't think to ever come up on your show. So I do believe that niching down is a great thing to do. So instead of maybe just having, I, my show is about football. My show is about, you know, my particular team that I, that I like, or my team is about quarterbacks. You know, you can kind of niche down, but you are right that if all you do is talk about this one quarterback and their stats every single week, you can get very bored with that very, very quickly.

[00:24:31] So you might want to kind of expand that to just make sure that you are a little bit more rounded. Your show is still about that one quarterback and it's going to be probably 60, 70% about that one quarterback, but you give yourself some leeway. Talk about other things just so you don't bore yourself and your, and your listeners out of their mind talking about the same thing every single week. Yeah. I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to give a little praise to SMR podcast here. Cause you, you both, you're, you're, you guys definitely have a format.

[00:25:01] You don't have, well, it doesn't seem like from the outset anyway, you don't have anything that you won't necessarily talk about. You, I've heard you talk about a variety of different things, but there are common themes through every episode. Rod's going to bring up electric vehicles. Chris is going to bring up cooking. You're going to come in with a take on something that those two are arguing about that nobody had thought of to that point.

[00:25:27] Or, you know, there's going to be a little back and forth, not arguing is not the right word, but discussion back and forth. And there's some jibes thrown and there's some laughing and stuff like that. But because you have common themes, you know, Rod's family is, uh, you know, his kids are in sports and all this other stuff. It just goes on and on and on, right? Because you guys have these common themes that you, you kind of base the show around that

[00:25:54] allows you to branch out to something that's going to be a little bit more, uh, different. Like when, when you talk about, oh, I had this problem, this is what I had, this is how I had to solve it. But it was, you know, we had to go through these, these steps. Maybe that problem is based in technology or maybe it's based in something else. It doesn't really matter because you have that, uh, that core content. And then from there you are able to branch out to things that are different, like underwater

[00:26:22] basket weaving with copper pipes. You know, you can, you can definitely make that work, but you have to have a core theme and then you branch out. You just can't be so wide. You could definitely lose an audience that way. This is, um, when in my consulting work, when I'm talking with, with clients and they're trying to figure out, well, you know, I'm just, I'm trying almost everyone that I talked

[00:26:48] to, I would say that one, everyone that I talked to, how do I get more listeners? What do I do to get more listeners? And I would say that a lot of the time, oh, your show's really wide. So we'll, we'll, we'll do things. We'll look at things like, okay, what is your, you know, what is your drop-off rate? How many people are churning like in the first 30 seconds of your show? Um, you know, first, you know, first minute, first two minutes of your show, because usually

[00:27:18] if you can get someone to listen beyond minute three, they'll listen to the entire episode or until they run out of time, whichever comes first, but usually they will listen. They're invested after minute three, because by three minutes in, they figured out, uh, that this is something that they're interested in. Now we'll also tell you that this is for podcasting. If it's a YouTube video, you don't have three minutes. You might have three seconds. If that, if it's a TikTok or, you know, Instagram video or something like that, you may have milliseconds to actually, you know, hook them and get them in. So it's different for different platforms.

[00:27:48] But with podcasting specifically, you want to make sure that you are, uh, you know, looking at your numbers so you can see how many people are churning in the first few minutes of a show, because that tells you what there was a, you know, a segment of people who just weren't interested in that particular topic and they moved on to the next show. So, um, you, one of the things that we do with SMR, and this is, there's no script. There's, there's no rhyme or reason. I think it's just that we've all been podcasting for so long.

[00:28:16] We kind of have figured out what works and are unconsciously competent about how we do some things. We know that people come to hear about, you know, what, what is Chris smoking as far as what is Chris smoking with his smoker? You know, what kind of food is Chris? What kind of food is Chris smoking? Rod is going to talk about EVs. In fact, I believe you and he are trying to hook up so he could talk about something, you know, is it, you know, he's going to talk about his new Rivian on your show or something like that. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:28:47] Trying to get together on that. Cause he actually mentioned it, uh, you know, this week when we're talking about it. So we know he's going to talk, uh, about, uh, you know, about that Rod and I are both really into investing and stuff like that. So that's a, that's a cornerstone. We'll have those kinds of conversations. Chris will completely tune us out when we do, but Rod and I will, we'll, we'll have, you know, a 10 minute conversation about whatever stock we're looking at. So we know that. And then this, this, you know, we're all really into tech. So it kind of revolves around that, but you never know what you're going to get.

[00:29:16] Uh, it could be, it could be, it's usually going to be one of those things, but it will always be many, many other things. And that's what people, uh, you know, say that they love about the show. So just, you know, just bring it full circle, Bodie. Um, I think you're right. You, um, you definitely want to have some wiggle room to where you can talk about something a little bit different, not so different that is jarring to your listeners. Um, but overall, I believe that it is better to niche down than it is to have a wide show

[00:29:45] because if your show is wide, who are you making your show for? Um, something that I find, I find myself saying all the time, you don't want to create your podcast. Like you're having a conversation with the room, you know, a 500 people, you might have 500 people that download and listen to it, but you don't want to create it. Like you're talking to 500 people all at the same time. Like you're on stage. You literally have the opportunity to have 500 individual conversations because podcasting generally is a very personal thing.

[00:30:13] Unless you keep someone captive and listen and make them listen to your show that you're listening to in the car, you usually are listening to your podcast in front of a computer, in front of a TV by yourself, um, or with some earbuds or headphones on, and you're the only one hearing it. So as a creator, I believe you should create the show with that in mind. So you want to make sure that, well, if this person is really interested in this thing, I'm going to talk about that thing.

[00:30:39] And the initial thought for a lot of new people who are creating content is like, well, if I only talk about that, aren't I eliminating everyone who isn't into that thing? And the answer is yes. And you want that because what you end up getting is that if it's, if it's intended for one person, we're talking about 8 billion possible people who could listen to your show. And you're only trying to do, you know, you know, put this in front of 500 of them. You're going to have 500 people out of 8 billion who, let's not go 8 billion. Let's go with the 4 billion who potentially could listen.

[00:31:09] 500 are interested in the exact thing that you're talking about. So if you talk to specifically them, you are eliminating a lot of people, but you're getting those who want to listen to you very specifically. And what I have always found is that if I talk specifically about podcasting and always having, you know, this type of microphone, I'm going to get a very specific type of person is going to listen to that. But if I branch out and talk about other microphones, I'm going to get a few more, even though I

[00:31:37] may specifically talk about this one microphone. If I talk about another microphone, I think it's cool. You're going to bring more people in. And I think that's the point you were trying to make. And I think that, and we'll wrap it up, Rob, but I think that that's a good point. If you talk about, I think we're both planning on buying the RE20 microphone. I actually have money, like when I get back from someplace and I have cash, I throw it in the drawer that's just to my left here.

[00:32:07] And I am a few dollars short of having an RE20. Um, I just need to, uh, make sure that the refrigerator repair guy that comes today isn't going to charge me too much money. That's, that's why I haven't bought it. We had a refrigerator problem, but, um, anyway, the point is, is that if you talk about the RE20 all the time and that for you is the gold standard microphone, and then you talk about the Heil PR40 and you compare it to the RE20.

[00:32:36] Now people have something to reference it on. So you could say, this is what I like about the RE20 it, you know, I can be off access and I still picks up my voice just fine. And all these other things, it's good for deep voices, all these other things that the RE20 is good for. And when you compare that to the PR40, the Heil, you can say, here's where the Heil excels over the RE20. So you have a benchmark, you have something to compare it to. I think that's, uh, that's a beneficial, uh, and actually that might be a podcast we want

[00:33:06] to do my, uh, Rob, now that I'm thinking about it, maybe we don't give this idea out. Um, so you, you mentioned Rob, the one thing I want to end with is analytics. If you look at the analytics and people say, or it shows that people dropped off in the first minute. Well, that's something you have to fix in the first minute. There's something that you're doing that is, that is turning people off in that one minute.

[00:33:31] And it's a little harder for podcasts because we don't have a, uh, a dashboard that we can look at that shows as a general rule where people dropped off globally, but you can go to Apple podcasts, you can go to Spotify and you can look and see where people, um, dropped off. But what really is beneficial to those folks that are doing YouTube content or short form media is the analytics for Tik TOK, Instagram and YouTube shorts and things like that.

[00:33:59] And YouTube in general, it really shows where, where people were the most people watched, uh, what, what people, uh, where they clipped. Like there, there's a bunch of different, uh, uh, analytics that you can go to and kind of tailor your show to help boost your listeners or at least, uh, retain listeners or viewers. Oh, absolutely. Um, I was having a conversation with a client probably not a month ago.

[00:34:26] And one of the things that they were saying, you know, we were asking about, well, let's dig into your analytics. I don't care about that. And it's like, what do you mean by you don't care about that? Um, it's like, I don't pay attention to that. I just create content on what I feel like creating it on. And if you like it, listen to it. If you don't, don't say that's cool. But you are talking to me about how do you get more people to listen to your show? And at the same time, you're saying, I want more people to listen, but I don't care why

[00:34:56] people listen in the first place. Those two things don't jive. So I had a very, very smart person tell me, um, when I first got into my IT career, um, we were talking about analytics and numbers like this. And one of the things that he would always say is that you cannot measure what you cannot count. And if I can't count it, it doesn't count. So me telling him what I think is going to happen or what I think happened, or I have felt about something, didn't care about that. Show me the numbers. What actually happened from a number standpoint? That's what we would always go off of.

[00:35:25] Not how we felt about a thing. What did the numbers tell us about a thing? And I think that goes to your analytics as well. So we'll go back to, uh, you know, your drop-off time. If you created a episode on X, Y, and Z, and then in the first, you know, you, you go look at your Apple podcast analytics, you look at your Spotify analytics, or you look in, you know, other applications that you may use. And you see that in the first minute people were dropping off. That gives you an indication.

[00:35:52] Well, there's, you know, the drop-off rate for my, my average drop-off rate is X, but the drop-off rate here was 500% higher. Why was that? You know, use that and understand that you've done, you did something in that show that people didn't like, and that's what made them drop off. It wasn't something they were rocking with. So if you're trying to increase your numbers, one of the things that, uh, you know, I will say a lot of people will say this around podcasting is that it's not always about getting more listeners is getting the people who've already listened to come and listen again.

[00:36:20] And if you can do anything to enhance that, it is way easier to get somebody to listen to a second episode, a third episode, a fourth episode than it is to get a net new person to, you know, to listen to the first episode. So you do want to look at those metrics and understand why are people listening? How are people listening? What are they rocking to? What are they resonating with when they are, um, listening, the more information you have on that, the better you are equipped to create shows specifically for that to ultimately try

[00:36:46] to generate more of that, to keep more people listening, um, which will ultimately, you know, keep your numbers up higher. Yeah. And I completely agree with that. And I think that's a good place to end, Rob. We covered a lot of subjects. This was the SMR style show. Um, we knew there was going to probably come back around to content creation and podcast week at some point, but, uh, yeah, we, this is, this is the hotspot episode. I think that we covered a lot here and I really am. And I'm, you know, like, so we started off talking about listen notes.

[00:37:15] I want to dig into this because I've, I've now seen a few shows that they're using all of the characters that they have available to them and their podcast descriptions. And these are shows that, I mean, you know, they are good shows. Every show that we've talked about is a top 5% show thus far, but there are shows that are ranking number one, number two, number three, and the top 10 that I just wouldn't expect to based off of where they are from a top percentage standpoint, there are much larger shows.

[00:37:44] When I go look at some of those much larger shows, they aren't necessarily doing the same things with keywords. So I kind of want to, I kind of want to dig into this and understand what's going on there. Same. Same. I just looked, Alison's show is in the top 1%. So we, we, well, I bet you Tom's show is in the top 0.5% actually. Should probably spell daily, right?

[00:38:12] So the no silica is in the top 1% and a daily tech new show is in the top 0.1%. That's a, that's a good number. All right, Rob. If people want to email us, it's Bodie at beyond the post.fm and Rob at beyond the post.fm. And that is Rob with two B's R O B B at beyond the post.fm.

[00:38:38] And then, uh, we have Patreon, Rob, where do people go to find the Patreon? You can head over to beyond the post.fm forward slash Patreon, or you can head over to patreon.com forward slash beyond the post. Either one of those ways will get you to our, get you to our landing page. Well, thank you everybody. And we will talk to you next time. Have a good one.