Santa's Podcast Giftbag: Learnings from 5 Podcast Professionals in 2023

Jon Gay  0:00  
Hi, and welcome to this month's edition of the podcast Super Friends. I am John Gay from jagged Detroit podcasts, we will go around the room and it's just use ourselves very quickly. We could start with the fighting through illness. Matt Cundill.

Matt Cundill  0:14  
It's round two of COVID. twice in a row here. Oh, nice. Anyhow, so we're much better now. Matt Kondal, Winnipeg, Canada, the sound off media company is who we are. And I got my COVID on the airplane coming back from Punta Cana,

Jon Gay  0:32  
well, fortunately mess in Canada, so he's only four fits as sick as we would typically be. Johnny podcasts. Hello,

Johnny Podcasts  0:40  
I'm very excited to be here. We have a very, very special episode for you all today.

Jon Gay  0:46  
We're Katherine.

Catherine O'Brien  0:49  
Yes, I'm also this is so special. I'm Katherine O'Brien. I'm in Baton Rouge, Louisiana coming in as a Podcast Producer, just dying to talk about all these exciting topics that we have ready for you, David

David Yas  1:05  
Hohoe podcast or something? Hello, everyone. David David. Yeah, is in Boston pod 617 dot com, producing podcasts in Boston and all around the globe.

Jon Gay  1:15  
All right. So we were we kind of called an audible on today's topic. And we gotta give Johnny credit for the idea. Santas podcast, gift bag, lessons that we have learned from working with our clients, we feel you can apply to your podcast and the industry as a whole in 24. So since this was your idea, Gianni, why don't we go ahead with your first prediction?

Johnny Podcasts  1:35  
Yeah, I think mine is not so much predictions. I think it was more like lessons.

Jon Gay  1:41  
I apologize. Yeah,

Johnny Podcasts  1:42  
the the five of us. I mean, we all work on podcasts all day long, professionally, and the audience of the show is people that want to improve their podcast. So why not take all this knowledge just from the last year, I feel like over the past year, we've kind of have thrown out knowledge that we've learned over the years, but specifically this year, I feel like we all have some big takeaways that have worked for shows have not worked for shows and we want to share that with you the audience today. I'll start with my first I feel like we could just go one at a time maybe like one person does want another person

Jon Gay  2:11  
to go round robin? Sure.

Johnny Podcasts  2:14  
My biggest takeaway of 2023 is shorts are the key to marketing. And people think oh, well, the conversion rate of shorts to someone subscribing to my show are very low. And and that is just something that we have to grasp and deal with. And that's okay. Basically, you're just trying to increase your awareness, your brand awareness. And if it's someone that just subscribes to your YouTube channel for your shorts, or your Tik Tok or your Instagram, that's one more follower that you didn't have yesterday, you're already making the content, why not cut it into shorts, specifically on how to make good shorts, nay, great shorts. The first three seconds are key, everyone here that's watching this, and everyone here at the roundtable watches some sort of short form content. And if that hook doesn't grab you in the first three seconds, boom, you're gone. You're never watching that content. Again, you're never Scrolling back up to that video it's over. So when you're finding your hook for your short, it doesn't necessarily need to be the first three seconds and then it continues on to the video. If the hook is at the very end of the video, you can clip that rabbit at the very front, hit me right out of the gate, and then go into your clips. So those first three seconds are the key to keeping someone watching your video. The second one, when it comes to shorts, different content, different platforms, the stuff that you're going to post on LinkedIn, a professional website, and maybe Twitter acts a little bit more professional as well is probably not going to be the same content that you're sharing on to tick tock or Instagram reels or YouTube short where it's more sort of people are looking for entertainment and less. So business life advice. So you need to consider the platform and what type of content you share on each platform and your short should reflect each of those platforms. From the research that I've done throughout the year, it seems that 35 seconds is sort of the sweet spot I watched. I watched a really deep dive interview with this woman who's made millions and millions of followers and dollars off of shorts alone and she was like 35 seconds is my sweet spots you need to find the videos that perform super well on your channel. How long are they that is a critical part of how of why an episode or why a short performs well or why it doesn't perform well. And then the final is B roll and subtitles are key. It can't just be your talking head and nothing else. Add some background images, memes stuff on the internet that's related because we need that flashing light as humans that are addicted to our phones to keep us engaged with the video. And then a lot of times people are not watching with audio. So if they just have an open and it's muted while they're at work, they can read the video as well that will keep them watching and that's going to keep them engaged too. I know for me personally, when I watch stuff on Netflix, I always have the subtitles on even if it's an English it's just the way that people are consuming content more and more nowadays. So All shorts are key to marketing, not only yourself but your podcast.

Jon Gay  5:03  
Excellent points. John, I think you really came out of the gate strong there with, you know, there has been resistance to it all was not going to convert. But it's just like, you know, television or radio advertising, the more impressions you get with a commercial or the more impressions you get with a song until it becomes familiar back to my radio background, you make a really good point there. Any other follow up to Johnny's points before you hit our next spot in our round robin,

Matt Cundill  5:26  
I'll touch on the subtitles, which I really liked a lot. And I think one of the things that came out of subtitles that you wanted to have a lot of visuals I remember when we did radio ads on on for television, for the people who were in the bar, who were it was muted, they would look up on the screen and be able to see what the ad was. Same thing really, when it comes to photo, there's a lot of people who are double box double screened. And sometimes they don't have the phone up that loud and just have the words go across smart. like

Catherine O'Brien  5:58  
I do, I do have a tiny, little bit of a societal fear that we're now down to, we have to catch everybody not in 30 seconds in three seconds. And 35 seconds is the max of our attention span. I have a tiny bit of concern for that. But I'm going to accept what is and and take Johnny's advice to heart here.

Jon Gay  6:17  
I'll follow up on Johnny's point about different platforms to Catherine, I think when you expand to a larger full podcast, someone can create consumer that long form content, they say the first 30 seconds is the or minute is key to your podcast, that here, we're just scaling it all down where we're just saying, Okay, three seconds to catch somebody for 30 seconds shorter 35 seconds short to Johnny's example. So I think it's the same idea just you know, scaled down by the medium.

Catherine O'Brien  6:42  
I agree. But there is a little bit of a, don't you have a little bit of like, Oh, it's just it's getting faster and faster and faster. Just having to deal with it. Yeah,

Johnny Podcasts  6:52  
it is. And it's just, I mean, we can either fight it in the name sake of, you know, going back to the Stone Age, or we can do what's best for our clients. And what's best for our clients is to promote is to be as knowledgeable about this stuff as possible. And I did say, listening. I'm accepting

Catherine O'Brien  7:10  
of what is but yeah, I just being Yeah, I'm sorry.

Jon Gay  7:15  
It's been three seconds. What are we talking about? Yeah,

Catherine O'Brien  7:16  
I've forgotten already doesn't matter

Johnny Podcasts  7:18  
shorts, and I was grabbed my phone. This is a weird way

Matt Cundill  7:21  
to start a conversation.

Jon Gay  7:23  
So Johnny makes the point about about shorts and creating that content. Let me bounce it over to Dave, because Dave makes a really good point. In our notes here where we did prep for our podcast here, by the way, always prep for your podcast. Avoiding pod fading by creating new segments and keeping it fun. I think so many of us, both ourselves in our clients have hit a wall, sometimes the podcasts where it's the same thing every week, you get into a rhythm and you forget this is supposed to be fun. So Dave, take it away with your first point.

David Yas  7:50  
Sure. Even if you have simple most of us have interview podcasts. It's a long form interview, it's probably the most common format. And well, but But whether it's that's your format or not, it's it's always good to add a little sizzle to the steak. So even if you're just asking your guests questions in sort of a different form, turn it into something fun. I produce a baseball podcast for the New England baseball journal. We do a segment at the end called three up three down. And I throw out three random questions about baseball was your first baseball glove? What's your favorite baseball card? And we play a quick sound intro to it. Three, up three down. spectrum. And the guest always gets a kick out of it i The guest and the host both to answer the question. So it's just another way of packaging that content doing something interesting. I hope I co host a music podcast where I was looking about new ways of talking about music nostalgia, we decided to do something called the ABCs of rock fantasy draft, where we would start with letter A in one episode and actually have a draft and go back and forth. And I'll take Aerosmith. I'll take AC DC, just a different way of doing things. Yes, I created a sound stink for that too. Yes, I'm going to play it for you. See? Anyone? Thank you. So it really is just a matter of getting a little bit creative. And then the if it works well, the listeners will dig it, they'll it'll be something they'll look forward to. So it's like, Oh, I wonder if they're gonna play that little quiz game at the end or whatever it is. Or I love it when they do the, you know, ask the lawyer segment when somebody writes in a question. You can do something I do something on my show called good stuff where I just have the guests recommend something good. It could be a good book they just read it could be a good TV show they just saw. So I think not only does it create some variety to the content you're you're providing it gives a listener something to look forward to. And it's gonna keep you and the guests sort of Jazz in a different way.

Jon Gay  10:02  
That time, Jack. Dave, you make another side point to make off of your comments there. The audio production piece, though I love the baseball piece of radio, we call it imaging as you call it, imaging and podcast too. But that I love that. It adds that fun element. But it's the whole surprise and delight thing, not only you surprising and delighting your audience, you're surprising and delighting your guests that oh, that sounds fun. Let's sit let's let's play with this. So that's something that can really be used to keep things fresh as Production and Sound Design as well.

David Yas  10:31  
Yeah, it's amazing how people will get a kick out of that. It also just gives you an air of professionalism. You know, this is you play your show, Intro lot live, or you play it as you record the show. But you play a little sound sting like that just adjusting. So yeah, it's, it's fun. And it's when when speaking

Jon Gay  10:50  
of your audience, Katherine, one of your points that you had brought forward was know your audience, which is a word, a phrase that many of us try to live by. It's it's such an important piece of advice and so many things, but especially in podcasting, will talk to me about that phrase, know your audience?

Catherine O'Brien  11:06  
Well, I really have come to the conclusion that knowing your audience and the audience factor is so critical in podcasting. And if you don't know your audience, you don't know who you're talking to, you don't know who you're trying to put your show in front of. There's just so many factors that depend on knowing your audience, it's, I think, it's kind of like I have really come to the conclusion that it's a little bit of a undersold element of the podcasting, we can talk a lot about our technical side, we can talk about how we want the show to be, but then eventually, we're trying to present it to somebody to somebody's and if we we don't know who that person is, we're going to come up short. One of my shows that I work on, we've really been dealing with a lot of the audience, knowing your audience piece. Specifically, I think it's really important that you know, where, first of all, there is a demand in that group that you want to put the podcast to. A lot of the things I've been dealing with have been about the average number of podcast listeners, knowing that maybe podcasting is best approached as a niche product. And that you're, you're presenting it to your niche audience. For example, one of the shows I work on, it's we're so proud of the work that we're doing, but we're having a little bit of trouble connecting with our desired audience. And I started, we started asking questions like, do they want a podcast? Are they familiar with podcasting? Are they in an age group that is sort of in that sweet spot of podcast listeners, and really doing that assessment? Do they want a podcast having to really ask those tough questions. And even back to sort of trailing on Johnny's original point about social media. I was kind of pushing a lot of things for the audience, this particular podcast audience towards things like Instagram, because I like Instagram. And I like what the the what the my client does on Instagram? Well, we've come to the conclusion that this is really these the people that we are trying to target for the show, or on Facebook, I don't, I don't use Facebook, I don't like Facebook. But again, we're falling in love with what is now we're having to gear a lot of our things to Facebook, because that's where the audience is, you can't fish in a pond where there are no fish, you've got to really know your audience know where they are, know what they're doing. Because audience growth is really at the bottom line, what is going to make your podcast succeed or not.

Jon Gay  13:45  
That really is such a good point, Catherine, about what you may use for social media may not be what a podcast audience is using for social media. There's so many different flavors. It's like Baskin Robbins at this point, right.

Catherine O'Brien  13:56  
And so and again, back to, I'm just gonna Johnny, I'm just using your point completely. I like I like what Twitter is doing. I see the potential of you know, that they're trying to have this mat, be a media platform, you see it happening, and we're seeing it being unveiled at real time. But I also know that that does not necessarily mean the audience for a particular podcast that I'm working on is on Twitter, they just aren't there's somebody somewhere else. So I'm we're having to adjust to what the audience is actually doing actually wants. I can't make them get on a platform that they're not already on. That's just that is just asking for trouble and my perspective. So there's a lot of bit of just knowing what your audience is actually doing and then responding to it.

Johnny Podcasts  14:43  
And so how do you as the you listening to this now you podcaster you're asking, Okay, that's all fine and dandy said but how do we do it? How do we find out who our audiences audience survey? Yes, really easy to put together and Google Forms. It's free And you just asked the questions that you want your audience to answer. I've run two of these for two of my shows over the past year, they may have been a little excessive for your show. They were like 60 questions each. But that's because of the audience and who they are. We wanted to get as much information about them as possible. If you want to answer three simple questions, what other podcasts Do you listen to? What social media do you use the most? What do you want to see more from from the show, just get that, throw it in the description of your show on your hosting website, put it in the show description of all your episodes, and get their email as well at the end, that is how you reach that is the best possible way to figure out who your core listeners are. Because the people who are obsessed with your podcasts that feel like they know you super well, because they're listening to you every single week, they will be the ones to actually sit down for the two or three minutes and fill out that form. You may not get a ton of responses. But the information that you do get will be valuable,

David Yas  15:53  
I would suggest you use pardon me sorry. I would suggest you use something around your content to suck people into that survey, rather than just a headline that says Help help us with feedback on our podcast. If your podcast on cycling, say what's your favorite place, tell us your favorite places to cycle. And when they click through, they get to the survey. And that's one of the questions about the actual content that your podcast is on. And then there'll be happy to answer some questions about what they'd like to hear in the pot. You can also bribe them again, giveaway.

Johnny Podcasts  16:28  
So we didn't get offered yet. We offered cash giveaways for but you had to put your email in there because that's how we selected it would be. The

Catherine O'Brien  16:35  
other thing though, to John Johnny is that an audience survey is for people who are already listening to your podcast, there are procedures for people to do what the you know, like a customer avatar or an audience member avatar, just you know, you're you're deciding who are we going to target to begin with. Once you do that, then you then you make adjustments on what actually happens. So again, back to the example of Instagram versus Facebook. So you know, we were targeting an audience that I presumed would be Instagram people, they're not right. But that but that it was okay for me to say predict, okay, they are going to be coming to us through Instagram, and then we just have to adjust once they are, it would be foolish then for me to keep pushing it Instagram. And then you know without adjusting to Facebook, but when you're starting out when you're just going and you don't you don't have the audience, it's okay to sort of say we predict that they're going to be you know, this is who we're picturing, or picturing they are female, they are this age, they are this socio economic level. They are Instagram users, they are whatever.

Johnny Podcasts  17:38  
And then how did you find out that they were Facebook users?

Catherine O'Brien  17:41  
Because that was where we were getting the actual response from listing the pod podcast episode. And from the other of the other content that she is putting out this particular show. It wasn't just the podcast, that's that's where everything was getting the most traction.

Johnny Podcasts  17:57  
Okay, so she has like a business tied to the show, right? And all of this was coming from Facebook. I just wanted to just get because I feel like in the in the sense of like, we're giving away the secrets, we should give as much detail as possible, like, Oh, how did we find this out?

Catherine O'Brien  18:12  
Right? Well, yeah. And that's, I mean, I would, I would say, probably most businesses, they're they're trying at least all of them. Right. So we've all dealt with people who that you know, they like a miracle they find out oh, Link, LinkedIn is actually where I'm getting the most traction. By the way, I'm hearing more and more people saying that, which is it's kind of a surprise to me. But once again, just accepting what is. But most businesses will put out information on all platforms. And then it's not a it's not a question of, oh, you know, Twitter, Twitter's potential is so much greater because it's not doing well. Now? The answer is really no, we're responding to it doing where is it doing? Well, you know, where are you getting the most people you put gas on the fire you don't you know, you don't try and stoke the the low flame. So I think

Jon Gay  19:01  
that's a really good point, Catherine, because there are small, you know, larger companies can do all that experimentation. If you're a one person operation, maybe you're only able to do a little bit at a time, you can use the tracking links and see what links are getting the most clicks on various platforms, and then you know where to focus your energy because you don't have the time and bandwidth to do it everywhere all the time. Speaking of every good one

Johnny Podcasts  19:23  
last thing on the clickable links Bitly offers that for free, you can get 100 links per month, you drop any link you want in there and it gives you a short Bitly link and it keeps them all organized for you. And you can go in and check them retroactively and see how many people click those. So that's a that's a great call out.

Jon Gay  19:39  
Bi T dot L y Matt Cundill says bigger is not always better.

Matt Cundill  19:43  
And you know what that includes guests. So one of the things that I've wandered through this year and discovered that there's some of our bigger podcasts are complicated. They take a lot of time. There's a lot of teeth gnashing over it. exactly what Catherine said, Where's the audience? What's the audience? Sometimes there's celebrity driven, and there's many guests, and we get a big guest on, and it doesn't necessarily resonate. So when you're working with a podcast that has a very narrow audience niche subject matter, it is going to be easier to market and to find that audience because you know exactly where to look for them. They're hanging out exactly where the products are, and where the subject matter is. But when you're dealing with a little bit more wider topics, it is going to be harder to to get people to come back to the show every week. One of the pieces of research that we discovered when we had a big guest on the show, and I really implore people to stop, stop, stop trying to get big guests on the show. So we'll use an example Gordon Ramsay, if you can get Gordon Ramsay on your podcast, is that a good thing? Well, maybe it's not going to get any more downloads than any other episode. Because Gordon Ramsay is on every week. He's also on the internet. He's also on YouTube, he's also an Instagram, and your podcast is not going to be the first choice for them to go to consume Gordon Ramsay. So that was something that came back a number of times when we did have big guests on the show. So bigger is not always better. And that that includes when you're trying to, you know, have a very large podcast, a celebrity driven one, you're probably better off if you have the opportunity to dig into a very niche subject matter. You're probably better off and as well as if you're the host of the show. People are listening to show you're the constant. People are coming to the show for the host and they're listening to you and the way you deliver your content. And going and getting a guest is not going to change that people are still coming for you.

Jon Gay  21:44  
That's a really good point, Matt. By the way, I went down a YouTube rabbit hole last night and watch the Gordon Ramsay episode of Hot ones that trivia show which was hysterical.

Matt Cundill  21:55  
I mean, you didn't hear him on my podcast last week?

Jon Gay  21:56  
No, I did not.

Johnny Podcasts  21:58  
He wasn't chugging Pepto Bismol on your podcast? No, it was

Jon Gay  22:01  
not. Johnny says that x slash Twitter slash whatever you want to call it these days will be the future of content consumption. What do you mean?

Johnny Podcasts  22:11  
I think it's called Go f yourself. Now I think you want

Jon Gay  22:16  
in chief, this,

Johnny Podcasts  22:17  
I'm very biased when it comes to this because a lot of my most of my clients started off by having really big platforms on Twitter. So I feel like this can be applicable to where ever your client base or wherever you're building your social media platform. I'll start at the top by saying the best way that you can grow your podcast is by growing on a social media channel, whether that's Instagram, whether that's LinkedIn with leveraging that audience, you can now bring them into your podcast because they're already following you for your content. So all that to be said, most of my clients are very big on Twitter. And I'll just give you a hard numbers example. So right when we started at four o'clock, part of our content strategy for one of our shows is that we post what we feel is the most interesting five to 10 minutes from the episode that we'll be releasing tomorrow morning, we put that out on Twitter X, I'm going to pull up the analytics for you right now. This post went out 20 minutes ago, it already has 2500 impressions and 1000 unique views on a five minute clip. So that is doing much better than just tweeting out a link to your episode when it's out. So a platform like Twitter, those analytics can then be combined with our overall RSS feed, because Twitter also allows you to put the entire video podcast up on to the platform, and you can add clickable timecode. So people can jump around. That's something that we noticed, as a lot of feedback that we got from our audience as well was, hey, we're really busy. We love that you're putting out our plus episodes, however, it would be really nice to be able to just jump to the parts of the podcast that I would really like. So that hits home on two things that I've talked about all year long. You need to have some kind of video component to your podcast, you need to be doing time codes for your podcast. And you need to be leveraging platforms like this where you're able to get the entire episode up onto a whole new social media platform that doesn't incorporate the RSS feed. There'll be no way to get your podcasts on a Twitter now there is there's no way to get a full episode on Instagram. There's no way to get a full episode on the Youtube or on the LinkedIn. You can get it on Twitter. You can do it on YouTube as well. YouTube is its own kind of thing. But I think in terms of a social media platform where people are engaging with each other, you're building followings that's not based solely on video uploads. I think that that's going to be a huge benefit for people going forward if you're trying to grow a following in general that your podcast can be encompassed within.

Jon Gay  24:42  
Johnny loving counterpoint of our Katherine's race, please You know, the news as we're recording this on December 11 of 23 news that Elon Musk is going to reap lat form Alex Jones, let him go back on Twitter. I know you're avid Twitter user, I know it's been very helpful for you and your business. What do You say that the pushback of Twitter is losing folks due to controversy as Jimmy Fallon would say?

Johnny Podcasts  25:07  
Yeah, I mean, I think everyone's entitled to their own opinions. I won't speak on Alex Jones specifically. But I think that there are a lot of Twitter accounts, there, terrorist Middle Eastern accounts that still are allowed to be on there, the Ayatollah is allowed to be on Twitter, there are a lot of people on Twitter that you could make the argument are worse than Alex Jones. But again, everyone has the right to their own opinion, I just think that if you don't like what he has to say, you can mute him, you can block him. I think that's another thing I harp on with Twitter specifically, is if you mute and block all of the politics, I built my entire career off of Twitter, and I don't tweet anything political. I don't talk about politics. I don't follow the politics on there. So the platform is really what you make of it. So that that would be my response to it.

Unknown Speaker  25:53  
Fair point, I've also seen

Matt Cundill  25:54  
things where when controversy does hit, you might lose some people, but you just get it back with time spent from the core user I see that often happen with platforms. I have a question, though, for Johnny about this show. And we're a video. We're streaming live right now to some Twitter accounts and YouTube, should we be making changes to how we do this?

Johnny Podcasts  26:22  
I want to post them, I think that we can do a better job of the copy that we can do with this. So how we have it right now is this sort of automatically posted with sort of a generic headline of what it's about, I think that all of us could do a better job as if we got the video file ourselves. And we tweeted it out with our own custom copy. That's based on how we tweet out how we write our own content. And then adding the timecode. I know that this is like we're doing this for free, Matt does an amazing job with doing all the Production Pro Bono, which we really appreciate. I don't think we necessarily need to jump on a time codes just right away just because of the time that it would take and no one's paying anybody to do that. But I do think that rather than auto posting at a random time, I think that the individual user being the five of us should be posting the full video uploading it, talking about our experience, because how I would write it out right now is I'm giving away everything that I learned about podcasting and 2023 for free right now, in this video, you can watch it right here. I'm not charging anybody anything for this. Yeah, exactly. So something like that's how I would improve this specific show.

Matt Cundill  27:27  
Okay, so really, it's a really simple change. Normally, what I was doing was I was having a repeat, and we still might repeat the show on the Twitter accounts. There's only one Twitter account being used live right now. And that's Catherine's. But tomorrow, I was going to just replay the whole thing on our Twitter accounts. Instead of doing that, what I can do is just make the video available to everybody. And we can run wild with what Johnny says, which is why we do this, by the way is to learn new stuff,

Jon Gay  27:53  
how many to put up on my Twitter feed tomorrow, we send the video file, absolutely. Okay,

Matt Cundill  27:56  
so you're saying I can take the file and I just upload it to my Twitter. And

Johnny Podcasts  28:00  
as long as it's under two gigabytes, you can post in which a hack around that for everybody there. So for example, a lot of the videos that I post are we're using really high end cameras. They're big files I just exported to today they were each 20 gigabytes each. Obviously that's not going to fly on Twitter, how do you get around that? You upload it to YouTube, YouTube process, it processes it in a full HD version, and then you can redownload it and I've never downloaded one that's more than one gigabyte afterwards. All thing, very high quality, upload it to YouTube redownload it yourself to your computer, you post that one to Instagram.

Matt Cundill  28:34  
I'm the kid in the class who's just asking all the questions when when the teacher just wants to move on. I'm sure

Johnny Podcasts  28:39  
most of the people in the audience are probably thinking the exact same thing. So let's just let's just say,

Jon Gay  28:43  
I'd have you bring me an apple map, you've got COVID So I'm not gonna take your apple right now. You know, and it's funny you mentioned video, I upgraded my laptop because I started doing more video production for my clients thanks to Johnny and Matt and others making you know, dragging my feet into it. And I got an external Thunderbolt hard drive because some of these files if they're high quality can be massive. But speaking of videos, David Yes says specific videos can be done on a budget for those who are a little intimidated by this part of the conversation. That's

David Yas  29:14  
right. So here are a few of my pointers for making videos, video versions of your podcast or whatever they may be. And you can you can do this even if you're just on a zoom call or using another recording platform, connecting with your guests remotely or whether you're doing it in person. First of all, invest in a green screen you can I'm using one now. It's it makes a big difference Believe me you don't want to see like what's behind me in my apartment. But here you know the you can let your imagination run wild as to what kind of background you can use. You can get one on Amazon, the I mean, there are any of a number of brands there's one called E Mart E M AR T It's 18 bucks. It's the one that's hanging by me works works just fine. You know to do if you're intimidated by the idea of video editing, you know, don't be a short, you know, tutorial on even iMovie, I use iMovie. It's the simplest of programs, it's the most basic, it comes with the Mac. And if you're get even slightly familiar with that, you can put up a logo that comes up before the video, you can do an overlay, you could maybe add a little intro music there. And then what I do is I if I'm doing a video and audio version of a podcast, I'll do the video, you don't really need to edit out, you know, pregnant pauses arms and ahhs and other things only something really drastic that doesn't belong in the video is what I would recommend. That's kind of the way video podcasts have gone. After that, I take the audio version of that video file. And I use that to then do a more meticulous editing as I would do for an audio podcast. So it's kind of a timesaver. Jack, do you want me to share one example of what I'm talking about? Or please? Yeah,

Jon Gay  31:01  
okay, you're able to share it into the session here? I think so. Matt's our tech guy for stream yard here. So yeah, once you get the share there, I'll

Matt Cundill  31:11  
just punch it up.

David Yas  31:12  
No, I yeah, I got it. So I'll just play the first not even 30 seconds of this.

Okay, so to kick things off, sort of the idea for this, Jamie was, oh, it's awesome, too. All right. So thank you. Really simple the background image I made in Adobe Express, you can use Canva just a simple editing program. The logo, I gotta give credit to my client, Brian Roberts commissioned someone to do that logo. But then I created just this this overlay. And that is just the footage from a zoom call, just as simple as recording the Zoom call downloading it later. And you put this, this overlay over it and it looks kind of spiffy. So. And you know, you saw the logo at the beginning, you can throw a logo on at the end, etc. I can do one more quick one. It'll be an example of one only if

Johnny Podcasts  32:17  
it's your music podcast.

David Yas  32:18  
Now, we don't do. We don't do a video version of that, because we'd get kicked off YouTube for the Oh yeah, the music clips,

Johnny Podcasts  32:26  
we play not off X.

David Yas  32:29  
Here's another one where they I mean, I have a studio in Boston area. And it was recorded here, but we use the green screen. So it's a good example of that. Welcome to the DD and alotau show. Advice. Not very sophisticated animation here, of course helpful, pretty simple in cybersecurity, technology, and life in general. Now, here are your hosts, Ed and Latasha. Hello, and welcome to the DND towel show. I'm leetle Hi, didi. Hey, little, it's okay. So that you can see that the use of the green screen, I mean, you can tell it's a green screen. But it's not painfully obvious. And I think it looks fine. And you know, just using a fade in feature on the iMovie you get them kind of appearing out of thin air, which is kind of a cool effect. You get the obviously the imaging the logo. And so that's, that's my 101 on video editing on the cheap. But Johnny, I don't want you to know I bought the expensive camera, and I'm going to be calling you to figure out how to use it. Sitting right over,

Johnny Podcasts  33:31  
it's gonna look amazing.

Jon Gay  33:32  
There you go. There you go. You know, I think the theme I'm picking up on here in a way as Darwinism because technology has improved so much, especially in 2023, where we talk about accessibility to you know, things like Canva video editing programs, audio editing, programs, AI, things like that. It makes the space a lot easier to get into. And it really does become a case of the cream rising to the top because now there's a lot of competition, the barrier to entry is lower than it ever has been. So that's why we're talking about all these things to do to make your podcasts more successful. And to Catherine's next point. There's a lot of baloney out there.

Catherine O'Brien  34:12  
Oh, we're going to this one already. I thought that was gonna be my crowning Opus does send this on home. But yeah, I I'm gonna say this in 2023. A lot of things were exposed to be either if I'm going to be very generous, I'm gonna say unfounded or if I'm going to be uncharitable, I would say actually untrue. We're still seeing a lot of shaking out of the, let's say the in outside investor, the VC investors from 2021 into podcasting. And for the difference between that and the majority of podcasters, which have smaller modest shows. We've even seen a lot of critically acclaimed shows these sort of big names and podcasts, proven to be not able to deliver a return Turn on investment for some of these big podcasting outlets. So I know that I really personally, I reached sort of a threshold, we'll just say that when a lot of the experts at a large podcasting conference, were undermining all of the things that they had been previously telling us for years on end, is that was that a diplomatic way of saying it, Jack, I tried really hard, right there. And even even when we had that great conversation with Jay, we, a lot of podcasters are having to let go of a podcast means an RSS feed it, if you want to build an audience, if you want to have people consuming the content that you're creating, you might have to let go of some of those preconceived ideas, and get used to putting out your show on all of the platforms get used to putting out your show in a way that you weren't thinking you had to before. There's just been a lot of things proven untrue. I know that it after I got ticked off, I decided, you know, I'm just going to maybe rely on our own experience of what we're doing with our clients and with the podcasts that we're producing. You know, like, just rely on your take things with a grain of salt and go by what the experience is of the shows that you're actually putting out there. That's that's going to guide you a lot more than some of the expert advice out there.

Jon Gay  36:28  
Related to that, Matt, before I move on to Matt, any follow up, sir Katherine there, I think she's spot on with everything she's saying here.

Catherine O'Brien  36:36  
You know, everybody's nodding for the listening only audience.

Jon Gay  36:40  
Thank you for the translation. Related to this point, Matt makes the point that podcasters are not on the same page. Yeah.

Matt Cundill  36:48  
And that goes back to what Catherine said. And that's, you know, a lot of the baloney that things have to be done in a particular way. So I'll go back to that era, when there were ways that were encouraged to market podcasts, where to put your podcasts. And one of those things I'll use, for example, you know, IB certification, that way, we can all find out exactly what a download is. And you shouldn't have an IAB certified host in order to, you know, so that we know what a download is, so you can sell it. And listen, it's a lot easier to know what a download is, when, when we know that it doesn't come from a Russian boss. There's many different ways to count. But now I'm beginning to see that, you know, IAB certification, if you've been following along with POD news, and James Canadaland, there's a lot of companies that have not re upped. And you know, it's something that you do have to re up every few years. And so they're coming around to when they're slow. But I think a lot of companies are slow to get this recertification, because I think they don't want to pay this one because it does cost about $30,000 to do it, but I think they looking for another way or hoping that another metric comes along. In the way we can count our metrics and the way we can sort of determine, you know, who's listening and what's, what's a download.

Johnny Podcasts  38:07  
I mean, it makes sense, though, because who wants to pay if I owned a company, I don't want to pay $30,000 Every two years to be told that I'm actually not getting as many downloads?

Matt Cundill  38:17  
Well, if you're selling and advertising, then you're not getting that $500,000 Check then. Yeah, right. So you know, there would be there would be reasons for that. You know, why you would need it. Listen, it's standards are important. I'm not I'm not decrying this stuff. But I'm just finding that that, you know, podcasting. 2.0 is another example, are, you know, finding new ways to use RSS, there's been no changes, right, but not everybody wants to take the time to make those changes and to get together and to really push the ball forward. So there's a lot of podcasters that are not on the same page 80% of our RSS downloads are coming from Apple and Spotify. And whatever changes they make are the changes that we have to live with a lot of apps are disappearing. Where stitcher we lost that this year. We're gonna lose the Google app as soon as April for those of you in the United States. So the Google app is going away. So, you know,

Jon Gay  39:12  
Google podcast app, let's specify the Google app itself is not going to hear anybody here.

Johnny Podcasts  39:16  
Yeah. And raise your hand if you started listening to all your podcasts on YouTube music.

Matt Cundill  39:24  
Crickets. Exactly. I was supposed to check to see if one of my clients had it up there today, but I forgot.

Jon Gay  39:31  
Clearly, it was a big priority for you, Matt.

Matt Cundill  39:33  
I'll do it later.

Jon Gay  39:36  
When you know one thing I want to mention from my observation, my biggest lesson from 2023 is how ubiquitous AI is but it seemingly seems to me that AI is only as good as the human gatekeeper that is using it. I really can't emphasize that enough. There are AI tools that I use to process audio with Adobe studio sound On descript as well, and you got to go through and do the Edit afterwards because sometimes it's gonna lop off an S at the end of a word, it might think of a couple of consonants our breath and might cut those out, it might distort a piece of audio, you, you can't just set it and forget it, you really got to go through it. Same thing with the description, you don't want something embarrassing in your transcription that it thinks is a naughty word. For example, that is not a naughty word, I've had that happen, you have to, you really can't just trust the AI to set and forget, it's improving. But you it's a time saver, because you don't have to do all the actual work. But you've got to check whether it's audio text, whatever it is, you really have to follow through whenever I you know, I had a client catch something and a transcription error today, because I I'll admit, I didn't go through and it didn't check it by hand.

David Yas  40:52  
It's um, it's like you say, jag, it's a, it's a tool. It's it can't produce the creativity, and it can't really produce great content. And that's we're in the business. And really, if you're podcasting, it's it is at the end of the day about the content, you're producing a good compelling show. Jag, I don't know about you, I do use it for certain things like the list of topics. And, you know, Johnny talked about the importance of that, and putting those in the show notes of both video and audio. It's a, it's a godsend for me for that because Man, I hate doing that. Just go going through the transcript of a show and go, alright, at 12 minutes, he talked about his dog, and then at 13 and a half minutes talked about his cat and you know, and it just, but if you put the entire transcript into chat GPT and say, you know, give me time coded topics, and give me about two dozen of them, it will do that. And, and to be honest with you, the the, it may not be perfect, but one, you give it a quick look and you take out anything that's tragically wrong and to I don't know if I'm supposed to say this out loud. But you know, the stakes aren't particularly high on shownotes. You want them in there for SEO. But if if something's off a little here or there you forget a topic is not the end of the world. So that's that's the type of thing I would leave to artificial intelligence.

Jon Gay  42:14  
Really related to that. Dave, you say this, you're still matters, expunge upon that expand upon that.

David Yas  42:21  
I'll expunge I'll expand upon it if you don't expunge it. Yeah, that's fair to your charge here. Okay,

Jon Gay  42:26  
been a long day.

David Yas  42:28  
Yes, I'd like to make a motion to expand. So great. I just I just noticed this this is this might be captain obvious. But you know, a lot of us do do get lazy when it comes to you. You put on a podcast, you edit it later, you put in the intro music and the outro music. And you finally you're ready to upload it then you're like I didn't do the show notes yet. I didn't do the show description. I didn't do that. It does matter. And I've noticed it recently because some of the the pods that I'll use example, the mute music podcast again, and I worked on, I noticed that I put in a whole bunch of list of topics that we had covered in past episodes, I put them all in the very show description. I'm not talking about the show on the show description of the show itself. And I put things like things that we had done like the best party songs ever the best mashups ever, the best country songs ever, and a whole laundry list of them. And believe it or not, we got a little spike just that. And so the lesson I took and you guys, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this is think about when you want your podcast to pop up when someone Google's something. So if you are, you know, doing a show on gambling, or let's say, let's make it more innocent than that. Card tricks. You teach card tricks and your podcast cartridge. I don't know if anyone has plugins like that. I just made it up. But anyway, if you do card tricks expert, Chicago, that's a that's you. So put that question in. Or, you know, if you want your podcast to come up when it says what are the best places to hike in the Greater Chicago area? If you want, then get that info in your show description in your episode notes if, and, and you'll be surprised because you can test it later and see if it comes up. And if you're specific enough, you know, geography is a good way to narrow down your show. Then your podcast is gonna pop up and all of a sudden, you're the answer to the question that you want to answer. So that's my two cents.

Jon Gay  44:30  
Be the answer. I like it. Yeah. Okay, related tangentially to SEO and text is transcription. Matt, your thoughts there?

Matt Cundill  44:42  
They're a pain in the ass.

Jon Gay  44:45  
I'm gonna leave it in for you. Yeah, and

Matt Cundill  44:48  
David summed it up, you know about having to go through it and check in a minute 12 minute 13 But you do have to really pay attention. First of all, your client really wants it Perfect. Whether or not we say we're doing it for SEO and whatnot, it's really tough to talk line. Yeah, we did the transcription. Yeah, it's not perfect. Hey, Patsy, sorry that your name came out Nazi by the way. True story that happened, call it

Johnny Podcasts  45:14  
a rough transcript.

Matt Cundill  45:16  
Yeah, and again, it matters, right. So you do want to be perfect with it. People get upset with the name with the way names are spelled and what the way that comes out Melissa with one L instead of two. I had a case last week with a Hillary with one L instead of two. And you know, it does matter. Things do get a little bit complex. I know we'd like to think that it works. 93% is good. But that's if everybody's got a nice, crisp American accent. If one of the guests is got a Scottish accent, you're doomed. That's going to be a few hours of fixing

Jon Gay  45:49  
Irish as well, a great Irish broke,

Matt Cundill  45:51  
I've got a I've got a few podcasts that have indigenous land acknowledgments at the front. There's no hope for getting that, right. It's I don't mean to be rude about it. But unless it's like English words with an American accent, transcription can struggle with this stuff. And it takes time to go in to get it right. And you do have to get it right. Because if it's at the top of the show, especially, you know, it words matter. And it shows how much care does go into the show. There also. And again, it's the time that it does that. David, I don't know how long it takes about a one hour show like this one is going to take a solid, you know, half hour to go through and get correct. And again, the more niche the subject. I mean, if it's medical Good luck, you know,

Jon Gay  46:45  
I have a I have a service that I use that is they pride themselves as being a native English speaker as people transcribing and not not AI. And typically it runs you know, depending on a few factors, such as number of people accents, bad audio can run anywhere from, you know, 90 cents to $1 $10.20 per minute, and that certainly adds up quickly. But I got one back from the service today where the host and the guests had similar voices, particularly after I ran, ran it through a bit of AI. And there were a couple parts were there. They were flipped. And I also learned today that this was also missed Sheboygan, Michigan and Sheboygan, Wisconsin are spelled differently. Michigan has a C in Wisconsin as an S. I learned that today because the guests saw the transcription and said Sheboygan spelled wrong. I'm in the Michigan one, not the Wisconsin one.

Matt Cundill  47:32  
I would I only preface and mention all this because I started down the transcription Road in 2020. In March of 2022, you were an early adopter, Matt of the group here. Yeah. And I thought maybe you know, we would hit a point of improvement. But it got worse. The deeper I got into it, the more time it took. And it's gotten slightly better in places. But in terms of the amount of time invested into the transcription part of creating a podcast, it is still long.

David Yas  47:59  
I agree. Yeah. I mean, I tend to use it only when necessary, so to speak. I mean, if you try to generate a list of topics for your podcast, you can go with an unedited transcript, and you're still gonna be able to ferret out those those topics. I have certain clients I work with that they want a transcript, they want to put it on their website, that's got to be accurate. I won't use descript for that, just to call out a couple apps here. Descriptive getting better, but it's still only in I know it's in the 90s as far as accuracy, I happen to use something called Trent. I don't get any kickback for this, but trent.com. Now there's a fee for that. But you know, if you want it accurate, seek out the transcription service that is going to give you the most accurate one.

Catherine O'Brien  48:45  
Question didn't didn't I make a pledge in 2023. I would not be talking about transcription again.

David Yas  48:53  
Yes, so I think okay.

Catherine O'Brien  48:57  
Just as closing it out, I just

Johnny Podcasts  48:59  
yeah, we can have this show be the year of the transcription. That's the topic we've covered the most.

David Yas  49:05  
Weight Katherine said transcription.

Jon Gay  49:09  
Well, we'll get we'll give Katherine the last last point here, which is a lot of your podcast is specific to you. Yes. It's very niche to yourself. Right.

Catherine O'Brien  49:19  
Okay, this is this is like a come to truth moment. We have, all of us have said it. The goal is to for your show to do as best as it can. You're you not worried about the download load numbers, you're not going to be shooting for 1000s and 1000s of downloads that you're trying to make the best show you can for your audience. And I have to say this year has been a real just a testament to that. That advice that we've given out many, many times. Matt, you'll have to give me the exact number but we all know as podcast producers, the average number of pod podcast downloads that a show gets is something in the range of let's just say 150 to 106 have only five downloads, it's that is a modest number for the amount of love and preparation and time that goes into making a very good podcast episode. Sometimes it can feel like there's a little bit of a mismatch between the amount that goes into a good podcast and the number of downloads that you get. However, if you do things well, that that 150 to 175 people that you connect with, if you are bringing your podcast to the right people, it can be successful beyond your wildest imagination. So I have some great examples of one show in particular that I'm thinking about is that we're really hitting that right audience. We it's it is a niche show for an niche audience. It was designed when we started it up to be a tool of connection. So this has to be telling stories that are connection based. They're there to open doors of communication that maybe have been closed in the past. And the way that I know that this is a success is because my client hears from people, every single week, every single week, she is hearing from that ideal client that we're trying to that ideal audience member that we're trying to reach, she's getting feedback, she's getting comments, she's getting all kinds of information that saying we are hitting that bullseye. And so even though a lot of people would look at the download numbers and not be wowed or impressed, that is probably I would say that's probably my most successful show because of the impact it's having. And because of the feedback that my client my client is receiving. So I just have learned a lot about just just making that connection is getting that feedback, having that impact, you can do it with the numbers that an average podcast will give you.

Matt Cundill  51:53  
Can I push deeper on this Katherine, of course, because I kind of reiterated the same thing earlier in the Senate in a different way. When I sort of was dumping on the bigger podcasts not being as effective, but plant, can you talk about activity. So when we talk about okay, this show is resonating, this show is doing well. Talking about the activity that would lead you to believe that you've got a winner?

Catherine O'Brien  52:20  
Well, okay, so in this particular instance, and I'll say this, I've I've talked to people who have more experience in the podcast industry than I do, and they have for a long time said, engagement is what you should be looking for. And I kind of took that as like, okay, yes. But I frankly, I kind of discounted it a little bit because I thought, Oh, well, that's coping for the fact that you're not getting download numbers that you that we all want. I mean, we're human beings, we want the accolades and the response. And, you know, see the download number go up. But for example, in this, the example of the show that I'm talking about, specifically, we have a way to email the host in every single show note, we say that's the way you know, this is the way to reach out to the show, we mentioned that on the show, she gets those emails, again, because it's a niche audience. She's actually exposed to the people that we're trying to reach very frequently, and they verbally tell her Oh, I listen to the show. I love this. I never would have heard this story, had it not been for your show. So she's not only we've given her a means to get that information, the email address, she's getting those emails, but then you know, she's exposed to the audience, and she's hearing it from people directly. Is that does that answer your question, Matt? Oh, yeah,

Jon Gay  53:36  
you know, you get hung up on that number of 100 anywhere from 130 to 150. As the average number for podcast listeners are the mean, median, I forgot to skip those terms confused. But after 30 days, after 30 days, that's a big number. If you're getting 20 or 30 downloads every episode, imagine being onstage to a group of 2020 or 30 folks and they have your you have their wrapped and undivided attention. That's really not a bad place to be as as the numbers continue to grow with that if anybody we're going to say Merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah, happy new year and all everything else that we have not covered. Any final thoughts from around the room as we say goodbye.

David Yas  54:17  
Great job jag

Jon Gay  54:19  
jags. We'll do our final plugs starting up north of the border. Matt

Matt Cundill  54:24  
Cundill the sound off media company Winnipeg, Canada where it remains above 40 degrees.

Jon Gay  54:32  
Climate change is a hoax right down south to Johnny.

Johnny Podcasts  54:35  
You can follow me on AIX and my closing thought would be do one thing that we recommended today. Don't do all of it. But if there's one thing that interested you of what we learned this year, just take it on yourself January 1. I'm gonna get my show on Twitter. I'm going to add a video components my podcasts I'm gonna make one short of my show. I'm gonna learn how to do it. Well,

Jon Gay  54:59  
well said Not to a county but to a parish and Catherine. That's

Catherine O'Brien  55:02  
right. You know what I'm going to say and this is something I'm thinking for myself is I am going to try and find a way to support one podcast that I really liked that's made an impact for me. Whether that be subscribe to their premium or whatever, I'm going to do that so because I want to be a person of integrity like you can't ask people to support you if you're not doing that for other shows that you care about. So just think about during this time of giving maybe supporting one of the podcasts that you really like, that's my and maybe I should have a report for you all like what happens when use when you start supporting a podcast that you love that would that might be something I'll be able to report on in the new year. That

Jon Gay  55:44  
is a great idea. And over two, it's not quite six Eastern yet so it is still zappy our David

David Yas  55:52  
Jack, do you like apples? Well, podcasting should be fun and that's what we said pod 617 dot com and pod we trust. How do you like them? Apple?

Jon Gay  56:02  
Wicked Tessa. I am John Gay from Jenkins Android podcast. You can find me on social or online at jag in Detroit. detroit.com is the website jack in Detroit is the social. Thank you everybody have a wonderful holiday season. Happy New Year and we'll talk to you in January.