Breaking the Rules of Podcasting: Myths, SEO & AI with Matthew Bliss (Part 1)

Marc Ronick  0:00  
Today on the podcasting morning chat, we're doing something a little bit different. We're breaking the so called rules of podcasting, and I'm sure you know some of the ones that I'm talking about. For example, you have to post your podcast video on YouTube and Spotify now you have to do that. Another one would be cut out all the ums and ahs, or else your audience is just gonna stop listening because they can't stand it. Or you need to follow every SEO trick in the book if you want to be discovered, if you want that podcast to be found by your audience. Well, today we're taking a hard look at these rules and asking, are they actually true? Are they just podcasting myths, or are the so called pros just trying to intimidate you into buying their products and services? And I recognize I'm one of those guys, and I hope that this community knows me well enough to know I'm not one of the guys that's just trying to scare you, and I've got a great guest to help us break all of this down, and somebody who I believe has a similar mindset as I do, and I think we can have an open and honest discussion about this. So joining me today is Matthew bliss. He's been on the show before. He's an active community member of the podcasting morning chat and empowered podcasting. He's the founder of MB podcast services and a regular contributor, like I said to this community. And Matthew knows podcast production inside and out. I've come to learn over these past several months that he's seen all kinds of advice getting thrown around, the good, the bad, the downright ridiculous. And we're gonna dive into three areas today. We we've been brainstorming behind the scenes, and we've got such a healthy list there. I was saying to Matt that there's no way we're going to cover all this, so let's pick three and then maybe this will become a little bit of a mini series with Matt and myself, and we'll, we'll deliver these episodes from time to time, questioning some of these things, and hopefully add a lot of value to the community. So those three areas, and I promise, I'll introduce Matthew in just a moment, those three interviews, AI tools and production, discovery and SEO myths and production myths, like I was talking about the ums, the odds, or maybe it's even the gear, like a Blue Yeti mic. Is it really that bad, right? So let's welcome in. Matthew bliss, officially, I've talked long enough. Good morning, Matthew, how are you?

Matthew Bliss  2:46  
I was holding my breath through that intro. I was hoping we'd get there eventually. It's great to be here. Really glad to be on

Marc Ronick  2:54  
Yeah, I am super happy. And I alluded to this one morning not too long ago, that when you first joined the group, I didn't know what to make of you the community, right? I was, I was a little hesitant, because you came in strong, and you started giving lots of really good advice. And I was triggered, I guess. And I was thinking, this guy is in here just to try to steal my community, more or less, or at least, or at least, hand pick some customers out of my community. And I don't mind that when people are a part of the community, and I've gotten to know them, I didn't know Matt, so I just reached out to him, and I believe, kindly questioned what he was doing, and I wanted to make sure, like, are you really here to pour into the community, or do you, you know, are you just here to try to get business? And look, I believe maybe, and this isn't what Matt, Matt said to me, but I believe it's probably a little bit of both, in some ways, right? I mean, that's one of the things we encourage, is, you know, if you want to try to get some some business, if you want to try to get some more audience on your podcast, go participate in pour value into other communities. So Matt, you were gracious and respectful as well. And I'm curious, because I haven't actually really asked you this, what went through your head when I reached out to you, and I was like, Hey, man, what are you up to here?

Matthew Bliss  4:17  
Well, I kind of knew that was going to be the case, and I think, like, you're spot on. I think it's really important that even with the subject matter that we're going to talk about today, that the idea of, particularly Facebook as a thing, there's a really interesting divergence something there, where people who have podcasts do podcasts. They look for the podcast groups instead of groups where you know those podcast groups will tell you, look for your own topic. Look for your own niche to interact with. But the first place that people go to is podcast groups, and I stumbled on empowered podcasting as a group. Uh. Simply by going through the communities. I think there was a couple of other podcasting communities I was kind of done with, so I thought I'd fill out the roster and look for a new ones. And and the name of empowered podcasting in particular intrigued me. But then I did a bit of digging before I started interacting properly, and saw that you had a conference, and, you know, there was a lot of stuff around it, and I didn't even know about the whole Ronick side of things at that point, but yeah, I came in and there was probably a learned behavior that came in that was not intentional on my part. But I think one of the things I picked up on social media, and particularly Facebook at the moment, is that you sometimes have to flex to fill the space a little bit to establish some of that credibility. And, you know, sometimes I elbow people out the way by saying, and I've been, you know, I'm a, I'm a freelance podcast editor. I've been doing this for a long time. I've had plenty of clients. My clients tell me this, and that kind of comes across as both the I've done this for a while, but also the passive aggressive clients. You want to pay me some money. So it probably came in very strong. There was also probably a very combative element that sounded to the nature of my comments. And I think that's a fundamental problem with Facebook comments in themselves, that we only ever get a sliver of the picture of what anyone could be posting. And so there's probably, like, a very slim bell curve where, you know, 30 to 70% of the comments are as they appear on the surface, but there's a bottom 30% the top 30% that's like they are actually, genuinely what they are, or there's something even more insidious there that you couldn't possibly define. The fact that you reached out to me, it not only told me that you were so invested in the community and that it was so not rigorously managed, but that you were out there to make sure that the people who were participating were doing the right things that spoke quality one. But of course, I felt like I was being also dragged into the teacher's office and saying, Hey buddy, what do you what are you telling the students afraid

Marc Ronick  7:12  
of I didn't want to be here that way. It's hard to find that

Matthew Bliss  7:16  
balance. Yeah, yeah, but what I do hope is that when you did interact with me. You felt that I was genuine, that I wasn't there for nefarious purposes, nor to, you know, Hill for clients away or make anyone feel terrible in your group, for, you know, participating in what has turned out to be something that's very robust. I'd say I wasn't even aware of the clubhouse at that point, I think that was the main issue, that because I'm based in Ireland, and you guys are in the US, you hit the early morning, and yet it's the middle of my day, and it sometimes breaks a flow for me to hit the Empowered podcasting morning chat live. So I kind of miss that boat quite a lot, unknowingly, and that might have been one of the big red flags that you picked up on, but things have changed since here we are having a chat about podcasting.

Marc Ronick  8:07  
That's right, yeah, and thank you for sharing that. And what it tells me also is maybe I need to do a little bit better of a job communicating the whole live aspect of what we do over on Facebook. So when people like you join, they'll connect a little bit more and understand a little bit more as to what we're building here. So I appreciate that feedback.

Matthew Bliss  8:30  
It's a hard job. It's a hard job. Like, what more can you do except post like, you know, post five times a day. Don't worry, in six hours, the clubhouse is starting. Make sure that you're locked in and it's in the calendar, like, subscribe to this mailing list so you get notified every single day of when this is happening. Like, I think you're doing the thing. I think most of the problem is either with Facebook or with the app. And the way that, you know, lest we delve into algorithm chat already, the way that it kind of surfaces content to people. I think that's a big part of the problem too.

Marc Ronick  9:03  
Wow. Now you're making me want to get into that for a second, the whole algorithm thing, yep, yep, yeah, it's, it's, it's. So where do you stand on that? Right? So a lot of us are making content with that algorithm in mind, which, by the way, nobody really knows what that algorithm is, right? They don't know all the factors involved. There are certainly some things we can speculate on. Where do you fall on that? Do you feel like, either, yeah, you got to go all in and try to play that algorithm game. Or are you on the other side? Like, no, screw it. Or are you kind in the middle?

Matthew Bliss  9:43  
It's a really tough question for me, because there have been a lot of times where I've considered going to YouTube and creating YouTube content for myself, and then I've done the research. I've had a look at Jay Klaus and what he's been up to. I've looked at film slash creator booth and seen. It takes to do your thing on YouTube, and I think the algorithm thing makes me tired. Yeah, at the moment, I kind of, I think we're on the same page there. Like podcasts for podcasting sake, that's not going to sustain it. Also podcasting for the sake of algorithmic and search engine optimization purposes is also just gonna make you tired. And there's absolutely there's a thing to do with podcasting as well, which is, there was a comment I saw on LinkedIn recently, and it made me think that a major thing that podcasters do to achieve things like algorithmic potential, or, you know, SEO priority all those things, is that they outsource stuff to do it well, and they're not really invested in doing it themselves. And it made me realize that so many times podcasters are looking to do too much, and so what they what they ask for is for these things to be done for them so that they can reap the benefits that they're not entirely sure that they want or even know about. So it's this kind of an open ended both sides of this thing. People just, I think even YouTubers, they say they blame the algorithm for things. You know, the algorithm. It's like there's an ethereal unknown power that kind of influences everything, but only conveniently, the things that I haven't been able to do well, like the algorithm did it. It was the algorithms fault, but at the same time, it works in both directions. Like, if you try to do things for the algorithm, for this machine learning that constantly evolves and changes, and honestly, is motivated to gather as much attention that you have as possible, then it's going to be a failed exercise. And sometimes the passion disappears doing that. So it's incredibly complex, but yeah, it just makes me tired trying to think about it. Yeah,

Marc Ronick  12:00  
yeah, me too, and that's why I always, whenever this topic comes up, I encourage people just make the content for your audience, learn your audience know what they want, and everything else falls into place. Then you don't have to play that algorithmic game, because if people are consuming the content, if, if the content is resonating with them, it will start to get shared with others, and it will start to, you know, get that engagement that you're looking for. And that's, that's something we all know about the algorithm, is it wants to see engagement, and if it sees people engaging with your content, then it's going to keep pushing it out to more people who would be interested in that. So I'm with you there. Just focus on your audience and the rest can fall into place. All right, so then let's talk about these rules, quote, unquote, of podcasting in general. Why do you, Matt, think it's important to question those rules instead of just doing what everyone says to do?

Matthew Bliss  12:58  
So it's really funny. There was a film that I watched recently, and I hesitate to bring it up, if only because, kind of like in TV, you don't work with kids, like some on some podcasts, you don't talk politics or religion a thing, yeah, but the film conclave that came out recently, excellent film, by the way, even if you aren't a religious person, which I am not, but there's a very pertinent thing in a bit of a soliloquy that one of the characters says. They say, the worst thing that you could possibly have is certainty, that with certainty and without the unknown, there is no mystery. And in that context, for the religious context, is that if someone is certain of something that they don't have faith. But the important derivation here is that it's the gurus, it's the strategists, it's the producers pumping their products that really want these rules to be very locked in place, foundational, yeah, just like we talked about the algorithm being a completely ethereal thing, there are rules they create that are derived from research work. You know, they might do a lot of things that there is stuff out there that people can say with a certainty is a foundational rule of whatever they are talking about, but they're driving for that certainty. There is a strong need for the industry to be able to sell a thing, and the only way they can do that is with certainty. Whereas I think if you avoid certainty for the most part, that leaves room for the creative, and that's where podcasting emerges as an engaging medium that is different from any of any other medium. Podcasting is in that race, surging ahead in terms of engagement, in terms of intimacy, in terms of let's talk about it, add by like politics. Marc, the two US presidential potential elects, they were on podcasts for the last run of their their campaigns. And there's a reason for that, but I think once you establish very strong rules, like the ones we're going to be talking about, it doesn't actually create effective help for podcasters, it just puts barriers up, and then people think and feel like they need to do these certain things, when in reality, they really don't. So what I'm hoping is that we'll bring up some of these rules. Will crack open what they actually mean and how much value there actually is, and people will start reflecting on them and for themselves and thinking, wow, I've been doing my cover art that way, or I've been, you know, making sure my intro is exactly 10 and a half seconds long. And then, you know, the podcast goes into it, and then just thinking, Maybe I should just, you know, do my own thing for a bit and see what happens. Yeah,

Marc Ronick  16:02  
so how do podcasters figure out which rules actually matter and which ones are just those opinions or those fears that some of the gurus we'll call them are are instilling in them?

Matthew Bliss  16:16  
It's really hard. It I'm I'm not going to tell I'm like, I have to be on message, right? I don't have the answers. I am uncertain, but that's why you should listen to me, right? Or listen to us rather, but like you really just have to see what resonates strongly with you and realize what is actually fundamental to what you do and what isn't. Because the value of the answers is what we'll be talking about today. But it's the value of the questions that gets asked too some of them are far too general to take everything into account. And podcasting is a medium of which there is very little to control. There is very little that is regulated. It is, I'd argue, 100% unregulated, except for the platforms, and you know how well they are off and how much moderation they do, and all that kind of thing. So figuring out what your podcast is for yourself is a good start. I think the foundational rules that we really should be adhering to are the basic ones, like leveling in volume super important, making sure that you can be heard, making the audio as clean as possible, as you said on a recent PMC recording, audio is the thing that, if bad, will make people switch off, whereas video can be forgiven. That has proven to be the case more often than not, and the more I think about it, it's because you're right in people's ears. Like, as a parallel, I'd like people to think like, why do you remove so many arms and breaths? Have someone next to you breathe heavily in your ear, and then figure out if you like that or not. And then you'll probably realize why the podcasts remove all the breaths, even though it's not natural. But yeah, those those steadfast rules, the things that help you create the better product, more easily and faster, is, you know, the stuff that you'll you'll realize is good. But when people say things like, Oh no, no, no, you need to not have any music at all, why are you editing your show entirely? It should be raw. It should be, you know, completely unedited in any way. That's when you should step back and go, yeah. But have you listened to my show? Like, have you realized my vision? I mean, I've got an audio drama here. If I do no editing, I can't soundscape this thing. So, yeah, how do I make it sound good? Like, those are the things, yeah, when you ask yourself, why? Why are you telling me this? You interrogate it, and if it doesn't suit you, you know, be ever questioning, challenge everything.

Marc Ronick  18:47  
Love that. Thank you for that. And so then, why don't we do it? Let's dig in, and let's start with what I'm sure you know is one of my favorite topics these days, is AI, right? Artificial intelligence. And there's all sorts of tools popping up, from tools that will write your show notes, write your scripts, to editing your whole podcast for you, if you so choose. Some people say that when, if we use AI to say, write our show notes, and we literally just copy and paste it, right, let's say I give it the transcript to this very episode we're recording now, and I tell it to write the show notes in a typical or popular format, the way that show notes are written, it'll spit it out, and it'll probably do a pretty solid job of mapping it all out and summarizing the show. Is that a bad thing, just to copy and paste, if it's actually pulling information that's coming straight from your transcript and translating it in a way that your audience will be able to digest it. Is that so wrong to do

Matthew Bliss  19:53  
this is an extremely complex topic, because there are so many different roads that people can. Take with it. And this one, I don't even think is a rule, just because of how nuanced the discussion of AI can be like, whenever I see a comment like the one that was mentioned earlier, at the time of recording this week at the PMC chat, you mentioned a comment thread where someone asked AI, show notes, good if I see them, should I like? Give the podcast a wide berth. There is no nuance there, I think, and there has to be, because if someone asked me the question, do you use AI to create your podcasts for your clients? I would have to say yes, because I do. But the tool that I use is one to easily and quickly repair audio. It's entirely local. Works on my machine. It has a number of algorithmic approaches to boost the quality of that audio, so that's like my secret weapon for zoom conversations and stuff when people are using those particular platforms. But it's aI driven, and yet, every other aspect of the show may be human generated, for lack of a better phrase, so the nuance there, like I'm using AI to do it, it doesn't use server or web or cloud based resources to do that processing. It's just electricity on my machine. So we avoid the climate change issue. What's What's the issue there? So when people bring up AI, I think the base rule has to be, well, what kind of AI are we talking about, and do you use it? Like you said, bit of human touch can really spruce up those AI show notes a little bit. I don't think the question about the rule should be, do I use it or not. It's, How do you use it? How do you intend to use it? Then bouncing the question back to them and saying, Why are you asking this? We need more information. I think that's the key thing.

Marc Ronick  21:54  
I appreciate that answer, and I let's get specific to what I was saying here, because the show notes, I think, yeah, the show notes specifically, right, like, because I think that one is probably Matt. I've seen this so many times now, when I'm looking at show notes for other podcasts, not not even my own clients, just all sorts of podcasts, I feel like everybody is just copying and pasting their AI show notes and that's, and that's part of that, I think, is just I'm so hypersensitive to it because I'm always using it, so I've started to learn the nuances of how AI writes, and I can automatically spot it now from a mile away. And is that, you know, is that a bad thing, right? Because it's probably not only accomplishing getting the message across. It could be also incorporating SEO strategies, which we'll get into too. And you also referenced one of the episodes recently that I talked about, where I polled people on social media and probably got like 100 responses. Asking people, Do you even read the show notes? You know, asking listeners, do you look at the show notes, and the vast majority either said, once in a while, no or only to find resources and links that were mentioned during the show. It was overwhelming. So why do the gurus? Why do other podcasters think it's so important to not copy and paste and put their own voice in those show notes.

Matthew Bliss  23:25  
One of my previous clients and close personal friend, Perry Carpenter, of eight layer insights and know before, he's been doing a lot of work in AI, and he has a brilliant approach to thinking about it. I don't know why I mentioned that. I guess that was one of my flexes that I accidentally did

Marc Ronick  23:45  
in the chat. I love when we can shout out our clients. That's awesome.

Matthew Bliss  23:48  
Yeah, yeah. Well, he's great. His book is great. F, F, A, I K, fake. He's also got a podcast about it with Mason Amadeus. But there is an ick that you're talking about, like when you see AI generated show notes. That may not be so, but there's an ick about them, and I think it becomes a meme eventually, the same way that we as podcasters look at YouTubers with the tiny little lapel microphones that they hold in front of their face to record content, because that's what tik tokers do. It's a meme at the end of it, so that the true question, looking at the show notes, regardless of whether people do or not, is, what do you want them to do as a podcaster? And if it's about including information, then you can do that job, pull it from the show note, from the AI generated transcript, and you've done it. But if it's about including a story, a narrative, finely crafted thing, then you absolutely do it. And you have to consider your audience too. The audience is an important thing, the listener, yeah, so maybe asking, you know, a couple. 1000 people on Facebook who had a bad experience with chat GPT or get got all up up in the in the beehive with Sora and feel bad about the rest of the planet. Maybe their response isn't as valuable to you about AI generated show notes instead what your audience thinks about it, and if they're not reading them, but they should be. Maybe that's something else to look at. And look, I'm kind of, I'm kind of wandering around in a forest of answers here for people to think about. It's not, we're not about making rules for this discussion, right? We're about challenging norms. So hopefully, what the person is thinking about that's listening to this episode is thinking, oh yeah. Well, you know, I know that AI uses the word god. I can't even think of the words that it uses, Delve, Delve. That is big one, yeah. Listen in, listen in, tune in,

Marc Ronick  25:56  
yeah. Big one, yeah. And then the ever changing landscapes, oh, God, that's a big common one. As someone

Matthew Bliss  26:04  
who works in Ireland and often prompts in an Irish use Irish language or Irish phrases for things, I use chat, GPT or whatever to generate it will either reference the Emerald isles, which no one in Ireland does like the rest of the world does. Maybe America does. That's some of the bias that you see in the AI. And then sometimes it just gives up on me and puts in an Irish accent in brackets at the very top of the phrase. But yeah, those are the things you see that give you the ick. You know, the the topic mentions the emojis in front of sentences. AI has gotten pretty good at doing that. You look at those things and you think, not, oh, wow, that's yuck. This person's lazy. As podcasters, we should look at what the feedback is, and then think about how we construct the approach. And a really interesting thing that I think people should start thinking about For show notes, particularly, put no effort in. Yeah, make them short. They don't need to be full essays. They don't need to be blog posts. You might have blog posts as a result of transcripts, but the show notes themselves. They don't have to be massive.

Marc Ronick  27:16  
You know, I saw John Lee Dumas. I was, every once in a while, I'll go and look and see what he's up to, because he's made a lot of noise in this space back in the day, and I was appreciating his show notes. It it looks like they may have even changed slightly over the past couple years. And what I really appreciate his are also pretty short, what I what I recall, and also what he does is what we often see in articles and blogs where he starts with like the three or four key takeaways or key points of the episode, which not only gives the listener a quick overview of what they can expect to get into, but it's also just playing to that SEO again, right? Because you can really get those you're just giving those big headlines that, and that's the thing that SEO is paying attention to. Are are you listing here what people are searching for? And if you can find that nice balance, I think that's maybe all we really need. To your point is just list those key highlights, maybe a little maybe a sentence or two to tidy it all up. But otherwise, I agree with you. I think that's all we really need.

Matthew Bliss  28:23  
It's a thing to try. And this is where I think a lot of problems we have with the rules. We're talking about is that marketing and marketers, the things that they do, are an incredibly pivotal component to what we do as podcasters, to be successful, at least marketed and visible. And one of those aspects is the F model for websites. You know, put all of the value at the top of the web page, and then as the web page goes down, less and less value so new sites, you'll see it the main headline and the top topic paragraph gives you all the information you need, and if you click away, you still have the main you know through lines of the story that you're gonna you would have been reading or just had to put down. Same with show notes, and that's exactly what those key takeaways do. And odds are that bloke has listened to his audience and says, okay, the SEO optimized titles I give for episodes aren't enough, so let's put the headlines at the top. Make sure they know what they're getting. They can decide if they want to listen to it or not, and then odds are, they may not see their downloads increase, but they'll see retention, because the people who are listening are the ones who want to stay there and continue listening to the episode. There is a lot of marketing advice out there that we can apply to podcasting, but it's just really hard to get at that information in a really good way, absolutely. And

Marc Ronick  29:55  
the other thing about that to that point is like. You were talking about, you always want to. It's important to cater it to your audience. And I think it's safe to say that the vast majority of people that listen to podcasts, no matter what target audience they fall into, I think that they don't want to sit there and read a whole blog in the show notes, right? They're there to consume the information through their ears and or eyes, and giving them a book to read before they get into the episode may not be serving the podcast or podcaster. Well, instead, if you can just give them, in this day and age of short attention spans, a quick and easy to digest piece of information before they go in, I think you're setting that episode up for a lot more success. Yep.

Matthew Bliss  30:45  
And from the podcasters perspective as well, the way that show notes get generated, this way you create a transcript. Transcript gets show notes, gets all these other pieces that are just recommended and you like, bolt them on to create the podcast, an example I keep thinking about in terms of the emergence of AI in big corporations, where it's starting to build emails for you, we are getting very close, if not there already, to the stage where someone will use AI to generate an email because they don't want to create the big, long email about that meeting they just had, and then the person who receives it will also be using AI to deconstruct that email into a concise sentence, probably the same one that the person put into the AI in the first place to be able to do it. So that kind of redundant activity, if it's providing no value, or if you see that there's an easy way to get at the thing that you want to deliver to the audience, but just because it's automated, you bolt it on because it's easy. Like, I don't think I've seen anyone say long show notes are great. They are the hair, the secret, oh, you have Yes,

Marc Ronick  31:56  
yes, and I'm not, and I am not. What did they say, I'm not throwing shade by any stretch. And somebody who I used to do a little bit of collaboration with, Larry Roberts, he's the Red Hat Guy, for those that may know. I know he was always big on using every single character for your show notes, because he felt like, Yeah, let's just load it up with SEO, and again, not throwing shade. Like there, there's a camp that believes that and it works for but yeah, I have, I have heard people say that before. It's just not a camp that I subscribe

Matthew Bliss  32:32  
to, no, and it's look. You can optimize for everything. Like, if there's going to be someone who eats the apple core, because there's going to be some nutrients there, like, it doesn't taste good, right? You know, you might have read that weird article that came out 20 years ago that there's trace amounts of cyanide in apple seeds. You don't care. Wastage is bad. Let's eat that entire apple core and all. We're not throwing anything away, you know, toothpick, the stem, or whatever it is you do with it afterwards. You know it's there is some nutritional value in filling out whatever they give you. But at the end of the day, is that, like the 2% at the expense of the 80% that's driving the most value for what you get out of it for your passion for your podcast, I don't know, but look, yeah, as you said, we're not gonna hit a yuck, yuck, people's Yum, right? As they said five years ago. I don't know if the kids are saying that today, but idea,

Marc Ronick  33:35  
I still say, don't use it, yeah. So is there a line to be drawn. Okay, I know we're doing our best here to just break these things down and not try to tell people do this, don't do that. And there's a big fear that a lot of people have about AI taking that human element away, especially with podcasting in particular, people so afraid that it's going to become literally robotic, and we're gonna have these Google notebook LMS doing podcasts for us, and we're gonna lose something. So is, do you believe for you, is there a line where, yeah, you just don't cross this if you want to have a successful podcast?

Matthew Bliss  34:18  
I think I'm a really big fan of the it depends answer on Facebook, it does a lot of work. The only problem is the it depends answer pushes the podcaster to do a bit more work than the question they wanted to post on the thread. So I think challenging yourself and asking if it serves you, I think that can be the only thing we say applies to everybody, and it will apply to everybody. For every topic that we'll talk about today, there are going to be things that work well for you that don't. I think ultimately it has to come down to evidence. Make sure that you've got people that you try. Cast and rely on, like, an empowered podcasting Facebook group with a very exclusive cast of professionals that can give you that advice if you need it, and at the end of the day, like, just, just, do you man, like, do your thing. I don't think like getting bullied by the Internet is one of the things that we're we're susceptible to these days because of the world that we're growing up in. But if you're gonna let Facebook bully you into not using AI because, you know, they don't want you to stuff them, it's about you. You are the person at the center of your podcasting universe, you are the one that people are listening to on your podcast.

Marc Ronick  35:46  
You to you, right? And the more you do you, and the more in many cases, you do you, and that goes against what everyone else is saying, that very well may position you for much bigger success, because you are breaking the norms. You are doing things a little differently, and that gets noticed a lot more than just doing it like everybody else. Yeah, you

Matthew Bliss  36:09  
can be the guy who says, I'm the 1% that has the secret, and I can tell you,

Marc Ronick  36:17  
right, are there that? Are there any other areas of AI before we move into the next category that you feel is important to share? And if not, that's fine, but I just want to make sure we cover all of AI, or as much of AI as we can. I'm going

Matthew Bliss  36:33  
to use this time to very specifically say that saying that notebook LM creates a podcast for you was a poorly worded marketing exercise from Google. It has been broken. The meme is over. None of us are here for it. There are some great use cases I talk about this a lot. Danny Brown from Captivate. He did. He made a suggestion on a Facebook post that I made a little while ago that said that people who have a traumatic story to share but don't want to be present for that story can submit the information and then have the story shared through the conversation that the notebook LM creates without making the person known. And there are people out there asking how to disguise voices with certain tools so that you know their identity isn't revealed. So it was an interesting use case, but I don't think anyone is here anymore, the same way they were four months ago, for notebook LM to generate their podcast for them, great tool for research for people to create audio content for themselves. Podcasting. Big no no,

Marc Ronick  37:40  
yeah. I so appreciate you mentioning that too. It was really just a poorly worded effort to get the word out, because it isn't a podcast. I know it feels like it, because you have these same two people talking on whatever subject you feed it, but it really isn't a podcast, especially because it's also not initially. I mean, I know the podcaster could put it out there on RSS feeds, but it's not on an RSS feed. It's not going up on YouTube. It's something private. It's like you said, it's just another way for us to research and maybe educate ourselves. I think I've mentioned that on the show before. That's a way I love using something like Google LM is I learn through conversation. That's why I do this. That's why I have podcasting in my blood is because that's the best way for me to learn. So having a tool like that is perfect, but it's not a tool that I personally would want to use to connect with people, because I won't be able to connect with them in that same way as just doing the show myself with my own words, my own voice,

Matthew Bliss  38:45  
yep, and there's no podcaster there, like there's no connection, but you can have a bit of fun. And there is a there we go, a little bit sour on the subject matter. There is someone who uploaded about 10 pages of just poo and fart throughout the entire 10 documents, and the conversation that was generated was pretty brilliant. Oh well,

Marc Ronick  39:08  
we have to get a link to that. I have not heard that, and I want to include that in the show notes. And, of course, I just want to hear it myself. But, yeah, that's awesome. I love that.

Matthew Bliss  39:17  
But yeah, AI generally just stay up with the times, create your position, stick to your position. You don't have to follow the entire minority, vocal minorities, about the way that you use AI or don't. And I wasn't present for the discussion. I know Sora was mentioned as a topic on a PMC this week. I'm waiting for the first person to generate a podcast using people that's voice matched to a transcript and audio in video for a podcast, again, that is going to be a flash in the pan. Do what you what you like, you know, it's going to be a bit of fun. I think the thing we have to derive after that is how we derive. Five, the nature of truth and what is real, what is generated. All

Marc Ronick  40:05  
right, I'm with you there, and before we go further, I want to just stop and take a second to ask you, please share with the audience. How can they connect with you? Where is the best place to go? And then my second question to that is, what are you up to for 2025 is there something that you're excited about that maybe our audience would be excited about too?

Matthew Bliss  40:28  
Yeah, I'm hoping so. Well, look, if you want to get in touch with me and find out what I'm all about, direct email would be business@mbpod.com but I'm on LinkedIn as well. I was very early. I got the only Matthew bliss, no numbers behind my name or anything. So it's great. I might be doing a bit of a rebrand. Actually, the website you mentioned, MB, podcast services is like the coverall for the services that I offer to people at the moment, which largely has been editing for the last year and a half. But I'm moving closer to bit of coaching, bit of learning, trying to to find a way in to share what I know about editing efficiently as well as creating successful podcasts. And I use the word successful with, you know, two or three asterisks, however many you think that is needed, but yeah, like basically helping people arrive at a podcast that's sustainable and activates them. And I've actually had a lot of opportunity to talk to businesses about their podcasts recently, and that's actually a very fulfilling area for me, not because it's where the money's at, but because with the right client, you could share a lot. So if you're a business, sorry, I can never drill in on the video problems with video finding where the lens is looking down the barrel very hard on a webcam. But anyway, if you're interested and would like to talk to me, because you've been through Marc, and not that he's not good enough, but he's like, I'm too good for you, right, right? Yes, Matt. Matt, you take this one. Yeah, I'd be happy to have those discussions with people.

Marc Ronick  42:11  
Thanks again to Matt bliss for joining me for part one of this two part series. If there's one major takeaway, it's this, don't just follow the so called rules blindly challenge them, question what actually works for your show and audience. But we're not done yet. In part two, we're tackling one of the hottest topics in podcasting right now, video. Do you really need to be on YouTube and Spotify to get discovered? Is video podcasting A must or just another myth, plus, we'll get into the mindset shifts that can make or break your podcast journey. So make sure to follow us on your favorite podcast platform and stay tuned. Part two will be coming out next week. Until then, make it a great day. Everybody. Take care. You.

Buzz Burbank  43:03  
An ironick media production. Visit us at I R O N, I C, K, media.com you.

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