Grow Your Content: Proven Insights from Elite Podcasters You Can’t Miss

[00:00:04] What up everybody welcome back to Content Is Profit. We are here back in StudioB, in Studio Podcast Suites. Busy week, we're about to end the year. Fonzie, are you excited? You have an Up North trip that you do every year.

[00:00:20] About the last two years, yeah. About to go be cold for a few days.

[00:00:26] Be cold up in, so if you're in Virginia, send them a text.

[00:00:29] Yeah, I won't go on to you. No, I'm kidding.

[00:00:32] But yeah, last week we had a couple of events that were pretty cool on Wednesday.

[00:00:38] We had a Jacksonville Podcasters Meetup and right before that we had our incredible PodMatch Elite Mastermind.

[00:00:46] And that was cool because that discussion we talked a lot about what are the latest trends and how do we help platforms grow?

[00:00:53] Yep.

[00:00:54] And there are about 12 experts in that room and that was pretty cool.

[00:00:58] Some of the biggest producers in the podcasting space.

[00:01:04] And it was interesting, the conversation, right?

[00:01:06] Like everybody had their own points to add.

[00:01:10] So what we're going to do today is we're going to talk a little bit about those points and how can you grow your own platform?

[00:01:16] Yes.

[00:01:17] Yes? There we go.

[00:01:18] Was that a legit intro?

[00:01:22] Legit enough.

[00:01:23] Legit enough. Okay, well, thank you.

[00:01:25] Yeah, let's do it.

[00:01:25] If you're listening, let me know.

[00:01:27] Yeah.

[00:01:27] It's a cool mastermind with very knowledgeable people.

[00:01:31] You'll be proud.

[00:01:31] I took my notes in pen.

[00:01:34] I wrote them down.

[00:01:35] Not typed.

[00:01:36] Part of you.

[00:01:37] I typed them.

[00:01:38] You typed them.

[00:01:39] Now we're flipped.

[00:01:40] Anyways, what was your, maybe your biggest, biggest one that you saw that you're like,

[00:01:44] wow, that's pretty interesting.

[00:01:45] That may be something that, you know, we might be overlooking.

[00:01:51] Honestly, this is going to sound a little coincided, but it's like, I feel like we've heard it all.

[00:01:59] Again, we're obviously a lot.

[00:02:00] We spend a lot of time in this space, but none of them were new.

[00:02:06] If anything, and again, this is going to sound super coincided.

[00:02:11] I think reinforcing some of the, actually seeing their answer to some of the hypotheses, you know,

[00:02:21] or observations that we've made in this space was my biggest takeaway.

[00:02:27] Right.

[00:02:28] For me personally, when, you know, everybody was talking about, you know, retention and obviously consistency,

[00:02:36] maybe a little more strategic on, you know, podcast swaps, ads, et cetera.

[00:02:43] And the two comments that were more observations on my end to them was first, know your baseline.

[00:02:52] Right.

[00:02:53] I think that not too many people talk about that, right.

[00:02:55] They talk about retention and all that stuff, but nobody, a lot of people might calculate their retention,

[00:03:00] see their retention based on a, you know, standard or an example that they see out there,

[00:03:06] but they don't know what is their baseline of data.

[00:03:10] When I mentioned that you could see everybody in this line was like, yes, absolutely.

[00:03:15] Yes.

[00:03:15] You got to know your baseline, meaning what are your numbers, right?

[00:03:19] Like track your data for a couple of weeks, for a month.

[00:03:23] And then, you know, those are your baseline to do better.

[00:03:28] After that, you can set your goals and say, okay, I'm going to improve my retention rates by 5%.

[00:03:33] How can I do that?

[00:03:35] And, you know, now it's an accessible goal for you and you know what you're targeting to do better.

[00:03:41] Yeah.

[00:03:41] What are some of those base numbers or what are some of those numbers that people should be measuring, right?

[00:03:46] When it comes to, you know, long form or short form in this case.

[00:03:49] I mean, the main thing in here with people was the retention on, is the most important one, right?

[00:03:57] Because the more people listen to your episodes, then the more visibility you're going to, your episodes are going to get, right?

[00:04:05] It's probably going to get recommended a little bit more, although it's still kind of iffy.

[00:04:11] The whole, say, discovery of how the podcasting algorithm work and people are trying to figure it out.

[00:04:18] There's not too many recommendations and all that stuff.

[00:04:21] But again, retention is what you want.

[00:04:24] Another thing that is important to clarify is that podcasting is not a platform for growth.

[00:04:31] Yes, growth can happen, but it's not a platform that people should go into with the objective of I'm going to create a massive audience.

[00:04:43] Objective number one should be I'm going to cultivate a community.

[00:04:46] I'm going to nurture the relationships that, you know, already have the immediate relationships, first degree.

[00:04:54] And then that first degree relationships can, you know, recommend your podcast to other people and therefore you can grow.

[00:05:03] So again, as per stat, what is the most important is?

[00:05:08] I mean, the most important one is retention, right?

[00:05:10] And then listens, obviously.

[00:05:13] You know, are people actually interested in what you're putting out there, right?

[00:05:17] Are your titles generating curiosity enough for people to want to click on the episode and then listen to the first couple of minutes?

[00:05:26] And then your retention is going to tell you whether you're delivering or not.

[00:05:30] Yeah, I think that piggybacks off of like probably what was my biggest takeaway, right?

[00:05:34] Like when Seth was talking about the new features of Spotify as a podcasting platform.

[00:05:40] And I've got the chance to now play with a few of those and kind of dig deep.

[00:05:45] And, you know, they manage and they run the strategy behind Alex Hormosi's podcast, Leila Hormosi's podcast.

[00:05:53] And they have pretty interesting data.

[00:05:54] So I was also listening to a recent interview with the Spotify CEO.

[00:05:59] And the guy that was interviewing him, he said like, hey, YouTube kind of accidentally became a podcasting platform, right?

[00:06:07] Like for new podcasts, it's just crazy.

[00:06:08] Like they think YouTube as the main podcasting platform.

[00:06:13] Yesterday, we just had to call somebody that they don't even want the audio side.

[00:06:17] They just want to publish on YouTube.

[00:06:18] And this is what's interesting, right?

[00:06:20] Because Spotify as an audio platform, total different model now is competing with YouTube for the podcasting market.

[00:06:26] And one of those new features that they're doing is like you can actually upload your videos to Spotify and they will be playing us videos.

[00:06:32] And one of the things that they said is like, okay,

[00:06:34] they're rewarding a lot of the shows that are providing with the video itself, right?

[00:06:39] It's a new way to consume content.

[00:06:41] So they're really going after that market.

[00:06:42] So for me, that was pretty interesting because, you know, until then we just published the audio on Spotify.

[00:06:47] And it was like, okay, let's start testing.

[00:06:49] Can we do the video also in there?

[00:06:51] We're already producing it for YouTube.

[00:06:53] And on top of that, you can also create different clips that you can add to that episode.

[00:06:58] And that's a feature for people to discover you.

[00:07:01] So they actually process the clip and then supposedly they're going to drive traffic to it.

[00:07:06] Here's the thing.

[00:07:06] Like, obviously that is very tactical, but like Fonzie was saying, focusing on obviously, you know, the, are people going through to your podcast, right?

[00:07:15] So looking at your seven day data, like after you post an episode, what are those numbers going back to your baseline?

[00:07:22] What is your seven day data based on?

[00:07:24] What is your 30 day, uh, base data?

[00:07:27] And then you can start making adjustments to make it better.

[00:07:30] After that, what I think is, I don't know if you've logged into the backend of Spotify or Megaphone where we publish the show,

[00:07:35] but it gives you a pretty good funnel on like, how do you get discovered?

[00:07:40] Where do you get discovered on Spotify if it's by recommendation or by homepage?

[00:07:44] Um, and then how many people transfer from looking at your cover or your show to into your show.

[00:07:51] So those are all these benchmarks that now with that platform specifically, you can start looking at.

[00:07:56] And I'm pretty sure all their publishing platforms are going to start catching up, right?

[00:08:00] For us specifically, Apple podcast is, is the main traffic is about 60% of the traffic, right?

[00:08:05] So you can go to, you know, the connect backend and you can still see some of that data and start improving based off of that.

[00:08:12] Yeah.

[00:08:13] I mean, I think the advantage of use using the new features is the fact that the platform itself wants to test them.

[00:08:21] So you might see your podcast or your content being rewarded with, you know, more visibility due to the fact that you're using those features.

[00:08:31] Now, my, you know, if I, if I look at that, my first thought is, well, I don't really go on Spotify to scroll through clips, you know, like that, that's not what, what that app is for me.

[00:08:42] You know, it's not, and again, I know this is.

[00:08:45] But that's not how it's not like a social media where you see clips popping up.

[00:08:49] It's almost, it's almost like I recommend it.

[00:08:51] Have you, have you seen it?

[00:08:51] Have you experienced it yet?

[00:08:52] No.

[00:08:53] I mean, I've seen that I've actually, Spotify has a swipeable, like real, like feed that even for music, when you're, it says like discover like music like this one, right.

[00:09:04] And you tap it and it's like little bits of songs from other similar artists.

[00:09:10] And, and again, I, I just found that out because I was like looking at some stuff, but as soon as I popped up, I was like, I don't want another, another scrollable doom scroll feed, you know?

[00:09:20] But again, my point here was sure.

[00:09:23] Take advantage of those.

[00:09:24] If it doesn't add friction to your process, right.

[00:09:27] If you have the capacity, we talk about that on our episode of the publishing pyramid.

[00:09:31] If you have the capacity to do so, sure.

[00:09:34] You can test it out.

[00:09:35] If it's going to add, you know, a lot of friction to your process, probably it's not wise to do that.

[00:09:42] Yeah.

[00:09:42] I mean, apart from that, right.

[00:09:43] Like one of the biggest indicators that they're looking at is retention rates, like you mentioned, right.

[00:09:47] Right.

[00:09:48] And what they saw was a direct connection of retention with the platform promoting your show.

[00:09:54] Right.

[00:09:54] It's almost like the YouTube aspect as in like the more people watch your video, consume your content.

[00:09:59] It tells the platform that people are enjoying that.

[00:10:01] And then they're going to help you promote it natively inside of that platform.

[00:10:06] Right.

[00:10:06] So again, for those specific examples, we talk YouTube and we talk Spotify, but kind of top level, right.

[00:10:12] Like a lot of the strategies that we've heard, you know, for example, the podcast swaps, if you can interact with that, obviously, can you put your message in front of somebody else's audience?

[00:10:22] Right.

[00:10:22] Those could be ad reads.

[00:10:24] Those could be like intro swaps.

[00:10:26] Those could be full episode swaps.

[00:10:27] Those could be mid-rolls, end-rolls, pre-rolls.

[00:10:32] Right.

[00:10:35] A big indicator, obviously, you know, try to find shows or publications like newsletters, for example, that translate into podcast listenership.

[00:10:44] Maybe promoting your show in a different medium that maybe most of the consumers are not familiar with podcasting that will reduce your chance to do it.

[00:10:51] So it's like, okay, where is your audience?

[00:10:53] Right.

[00:10:53] Where is that correlation or like that relationship with your own type of content?

[00:11:00] In our specific case, you know, when we promoted, when the show was promoted with Jenna Kutcher and My First Million, we saw a huge spike in people that came into our show and started interacting with us because it's a very similar audience.

[00:11:14] So I think that's interesting.

[00:11:15] You know, sometimes, you know, we go guests or we go interact with shows that maybe have nothing to do with, you know, the business or the topic that you're talking about.

[00:11:22] And we don't see those desired results.

[00:11:24] Yeah.

[00:11:24] I'm going to have my own back here a little bit again.

[00:11:27] And I know one of the observations that I, you know, share with the group and I saw them saying, actually, that is true.

[00:11:35] And that I don't see discussed very often is the time, right?

[00:11:41] The total addressable market.

[00:11:43] When people start podcasting, right?

[00:11:45] Let's say you have your niche.

[00:11:46] A lot of people don't really take into consideration the actual amount of listeners that are interested in that one topic.

[00:11:54] And not only that, but also the length for which those people are interested in that topic.

[00:12:01] So to elaborate or own podcast content is profit, right?

[00:12:07] Is, you know, definitely in the marketing industry where it's niched down into how people turn their content into profit, right?

[00:12:15] It is very specific.

[00:12:17] Yeah.

[00:12:17] Now, when we saw our data, actually, in one of the episodes, I don't remember his name, but he told us, you guys actually don't have a new listener problem.

[00:12:27] When we share with the data with him, he said, you guys have a retention problem.

[00:12:31] Yeah.

[00:12:31] And that actually got me thinking.

[00:12:32] I said, wow, like, why can't we retain people for so long?

[00:12:35] And one of the thoughts that arise was, well, because we're, for the most part.

[00:12:43] As in listeners staying with the podcast for a long period of time.

[00:12:46] Correct.

[00:12:46] Not per episode, but like.

[00:12:48] From one episode to another.

[00:12:49] Us being in their podcast list.

[00:12:51] Exactly.

[00:12:52] I guess.

[00:12:52] So listening consistently to our podcast.

[00:12:55] Correct.

[00:12:55] And when I started thinking about it, it was because, or at least the observation that I had is because we were a very niche down podcast.

[00:13:06] So you listen to, you know, let's say five, 10 episodes and you really get a good grasp of the foundations and the principles.

[00:13:16] Right.

[00:13:17] And then you're like, okay, well, let me move on to my next skill or, you know, the next objective that I might have in my business, the next problem I need to solve.

[00:13:27] You know, because in here, obviously we highlight those principles about, you know, turning your content into profit through the interviews that we do with different entrepreneurs.

[00:13:37] And even though they might, they might have different mediums with which they turn their content into profit.

[00:13:43] At the end of the day, the principles that we highlight on that we talk about, they're very consistent throughout the 500 episodes that we have.

[00:13:51] So of course, when you see it that way, you're like, well, it makes sense why people don't, you know, listen to a hundred of our episodes, you know, and they binge them all.

[00:14:00] Right.

[00:14:00] And they just come and listen for a few.

[00:14:02] And then after they get those principles, they move on now, which by the way, you can get them at business.co forward slash monetize.

[00:14:09] Go ahead and download those frameworks.

[00:14:10] They're there for you.

[00:14:11] Yeah.

[00:14:12] But what I was going to say is that, well, if you have a type of business like that, then you might want to start thinking on, okay, well, how do I leverage those episodes when people come in?

[00:14:21] And that's when it's important for you to have your call to actions, you know, where are you redirecting people?

[00:14:26] Are you getting their information, et cetera?

[00:14:28] So that is very important because then when you contrast this type of podcast versus, you know, somebody like Jenna Kutcher's Gold Digger, right?

[00:14:37] Or the Joe Rogan experience for those that don't know who Jenna Kutcher is.

[00:14:41] Those are more personality-based podcasts.

[00:14:44] Like Joe Rogan talks about any topic that he might be interested in.

[00:14:48] He's following his curiosity.

[00:14:50] And therefore the audience kind of like attached in a journey with him, right?

[00:14:54] They're not just learning about one single topic.

[00:14:56] He might have a series of five episodes back to back where he's talking about politics and then he go and talks about neuroscience, right?

[00:15:04] And that obviously I think has a higher rate of stickability, if you want to call it that way, right?

[00:15:11] For the listener.

[00:15:12] I'm interested, for example, in the diary of a CEO.

[00:15:15] At the diary of a CEO, at first you listen to it and you hear the name and you're like, oh, that's a business podcast.

[00:15:21] But in reality, he's transitioned not just from a business podcast.

[00:15:26] He has business experts in there, great CEOs, you know, very big personalities in business.

[00:15:31] Yeah.

[00:15:31] But then he also talks a lot of, you know, he follows his curiosity and he looks for guests that maybe they're talking in the health industry.

[00:15:39] You know, all these other topics, which makes it very, very interesting to follow.

[00:15:44] That's kind of, we've talked about it before.

[00:15:46] There's a little tangent, but we've talked about potentially having another podcast that allows us to do that.

[00:15:52] Because again, content is profit, it's that niche down podcast.

[00:15:54] But we want to have something that allows to kind of talk to a bigger audience, but at the same time, follow our curiosity and learn about other things.

[00:16:05] So again, keep in mind your total addressable market.

[00:16:09] And if you don't have a huge rate of stickability, I'm going to call it like that stickability within your podcast, right?

[00:16:15] With that people stick from one episode to the other for a very long period of time.

[00:16:19] Then you got to make sure you're leveraging the time that you have with them to capture that attention and redirect it to whether that is your offers, you know, your email list, whatever it is that you're doing to promote your business.

[00:16:32] Yeah, no, absolutely.

[00:16:33] I mean, I think part of it is we try to get all this right before we start podcast, right?

[00:16:39] For those that are brand new or bigger platforms, right?

[00:16:41] We try to figure this out before launch because obviously you are about to put in some resources into it, right?

[00:16:46] You might be your time, you might be your money.

[00:16:50] And I think if you are brand new, there's a lot of value to start testing and putting your message out there to start seeing these data, right?

[00:16:57] And your first podcast is not going to be your last podcast.

[00:17:00] I promise you that or your first piece of content is not going to be the, you know, the first concept, the last concept.

[00:17:05] Sorry.

[00:17:06] So we encourage you to start testing it out.

[00:17:07] If you already have a running podcast or a running platform, go back and look at that data.

[00:17:12] When was the last time that you saw that data?

[00:17:13] And how can you get it start improving, right?

[00:17:15] We're talking about the relationship between that with a sales process, right?

[00:17:18] Like if you run a sales process, you have, you know, discovery call and then put them on a call.

[00:17:25] And then after the call, it's like, did they close or not close?

[00:17:27] So did the people show into the call?

[00:17:29] If they don't show up to the call, we cannot talk to them and ask the questions that we need to ask.

[00:17:33] So what are those almost like bumps that you see along the side so you can start improving?

[00:17:39] It's like, how can we bring people into the show initially?

[00:17:42] Perfect.

[00:17:42] Out of these hundred people, how many actually listen to the episode?

[00:17:45] Out of those that listen to the episode, how many say till the very end?

[00:17:49] And if you can start, you know, pinpointing and improving in those stats little by little, I promise you that in a year, your podcast or your platform is going to be so much better for it.

[00:18:00] So I think like general sense, focus on the framework, right?

[00:18:04] Focus on what's working for you.

[00:18:06] We had some, an amazing lady Karen coming yesterday asking for the, for some support here with her podcast and a lot of, you know, the desire to go and have like this massive podcast and what it requires to do it.

[00:18:19] That she doesn't want to do.

[00:18:21] And she's totally okay with having a different version of a podcast that serves her and her business in a, in a little bit different way.

[00:18:28] So start experimenting.

[00:18:29] If you have any questions, don't, don't hesitate to reach out.

[00:18:32] Um, I'll be as Rose go on any social media and we're happy to support you in any way we can.

[00:18:37] Anything else once before we head out?

[00:18:39] No.

[00:18:41] Let me see if I, maybe see, let me see if these buttons are, are the right ones.

[00:18:46] I don't think they are.

[00:18:51] With that said guys, thank you so much for tuning into the content's profit podcast.

[00:18:55] Go ahead and follow the show in your favorite podcasting platform and on social media at this brosco.

[00:19:00] That is Ryan.

[00:19:01] As today's episode, help you move one step closer towards your goal.

[00:19:03] Please don't forget to share this episode.

[00:19:05] And of course, don't forget to leave a five-star review.

[00:19:08] See ya.

[00:19:08] Bye guys.