Turning Podcasting into Business

Marc Ronick  0:07  
Happy New Year and welcome to this special episode of the podcasting morning chat. Recently, I had the privilege of being interviewed by Dr Jen Reilly, a professor at Vanderbilt University's Business School for her Master's classes on digital marketing, and we dive into things like my passion for podcasting, my journey into the industry, and how businesses can use podcasts to connect with their audiences. I figured this would be a great opportunity for you to get to know me better and what I do. So whether you're a podcaster or marketer or just curious, I think you'll get a lot out of this one. So let's jump in.

Dr. Jen Riley  0:51  
Awesome. Thank you so much for being here. Very happy to have you to talk about podcasting and how that fits into the digital marketing overlay and strategy for small, medium, large businesses. So today we have Marc Ronick, yes. Ronick, awesome. So I'm so super, super happy to have you here and looking forward to your insights. You want to go ahead and introduce yourself for the students? 

Marc Ronick  1:17  
Sure. Yeah. I, my name is Marc Ronick, and I have been a podcaster for about 20 years now, so I was doing it when nobody understood what the heck I was talking about. Used to have to just say, it's like radio, but it's on the internet and that that would suffice. But I've also been a TV producer, worked with some of the known networks out there. Podcasting has always been my passion. I've done I've had different types of businesses. I've owned and or operated podcast networks, and most recently, right around, right at the pandemic, right before it, I started a company called ironic media. And what we do is we produce podcasts and we consult podcasters. So some podcasters don't have the time, or don't want to make the time to do all the production of their podcast. And then there are other peoples that are people that are just looking for advice, guidance, ideas, a collaborative partner. And so we offer that as well. And yeah, this has just been my passion for pretty much all my life.

Dr. Jen Riley  2:22  
Awesome. That's amazing. So not one of the questions that we have planned, but kind of so what makes this a passion area for you? Or how did you get started in podcasting 20 years ago? Like, I didn't even know that was a thing 20 years ago.

Marc Ronick  2:35  
well, it's actually only 20 or so years old, so I was doing it just a few couple years, maybe after it really started. And what got me into it, what it goes back to what I just said earlier, talk radio. I was a huge fan of talk radio. Growing up in high school, my best friend and I, we used to listen to the local morning show there, and it was a thing, right? We loved it, and we would call them frequently. Our mission was to try to get them to laugh as much as possible. And we did, and so much so that they ended up inviting us to the radio station and basically walked out of the station and gave it to us for an hour and let us have our own radio show for an hour on a major Washington DC radio station, and I think that was it like after I got to be in that studio, I knew I wanted a microphone in front of me, and I knew I wanted to to share whatever my passions were through a microphone and through, and ultimately through podcasting and the I the ironic part of all this is that I would say, almost 10 years ago, I was hired to be the business manager and a producer on a podcast that was hosted by that radio show that I was just referencing to you. One thing I left out was, when I was in college, I even interned for that radio show. And what happened was they their radio station changed formats, and they didn't have a home, so podcasting was just becoming a thing, and they decided, let's just do it on our own. Let's do a podcast. And I heard about it, and I said, Hey, it's your old intern. I know a thing or two about this. Do you want some help? And then they hired me soon after to be their business manager and a producer on the show. And that was a show that was generating, and which is astronomical numbers. Now when you think about it, they were generating at least 100,000 downloads a month on their podcast. And again, I mean translating that. Now you know when we think about sometimes, when we talk about inflation, and we talk about how, you know, the pricing changes over the years now, that's probably three or four times what that would be, what they'd be getting nowadays if they had started so huge. And it was a huge opportunity for me, because I was able to learn how to monetize something that wasn't really my. Monetized yet, because it was still so new, and people were still trying to figure it out. So I got a great lesson that really prepared me for where I am today through that podcast that's awesome.

Dr. Jen Riley  5:10  
So a couple things that you kind of highlighted there that I want to really zero in on. So you talked about a little bit about, like the business manager and like the back end. What are some of the roles that are involved in doing podcasting? I know some people are like doing all of those roles, but an ideal world, in an ideal world, if you had a team of people to produce or to put on a podcast, what are those different roles that you know students should

Marc Ronick  5:38  
know? Yeah, there's so many, but I'll try to really focus on some of the most important. And I think if somebody were to ask me, you know, Okay, I'm ready to unload some of these responsibilities, where do I start? I think the first thing I would say is getting yourself a virtual assistant. I think every podcast and podcaster could use one of those, even if it's just to be a collaborative partner, but I think that a virtual assistant can really take some of the load off for you and handle a lot of the little tasks that just feel like they get in the way. Right? But otherwise, I would say an editor is probably one of the most popular, or at least most needed. Sometimes people avoid editors, because it's usually one of the bigger expenses. Because you're, you're asking a person to spend probably anywhere from one to, who knows, five hours on a project, depending on what it is. So I would say that would be probably the next step. And ideally, if you're, you've got a budget for it, ideally, a producer, somebody that can come in there and really help you shape your show, much like a producer would do for a TV show or a radio show. So that it doesn't all land on the podcasters shoulders, because we just talked about this on my podcast, where there's this term that gets thrown around in this industry called pod fade, a lot of people start their podcast. Let me give you a specific example. This year, in 2024 in January, there was a roughly 25,000 new podcasts that came to life that started in January. By the end of February, already, 30% of the people had quit done and I think, I believe a lot of that, among other things, but I think a lot of that is, is that they don't realize how much work is involved in it, or how many different roles they're going to have to play if they're intending on doing it all themselves. But yeah, so I would say those are probably the, the biggest, most helpful roles in a podcast production. 

Dr. Jen Riley  7:43  
So some of the tasks that we're talking about is, like, it goes past like, figuring out the length and the frequency and topics, right? Like, that's kind of surface level stuff, but actually planning the actual episode, determining if you're going to have guests, or if it's going to be just you, anything else that is kind of contributing to that workload, besides, like, graphics.

Marc Ronick  8:04  
Well, sure, yeah. I mean, like you said, the planning is big. And as you probably know, there are a lot of podcasts out there that are interviewing people, right and so so that in itself, finding guests, and finding the right kind of guests, and then going through that, it's like dating. I mean, there's a company out there called pod match, and pod match is like any one of these dating apps. The only difference is, you can't actually swipe left or right, but it's essentially the same thing where it's matching people up, right, but it's, it's a lot of work. So, you know, that's another one, and there are including pod match, but there are Guest Services, guest booking services, again, just like in TV or radio, it's the same kind of roles there. So yeah, I would say that. And of course, marketing, advertising and promotion is another area that's really needed in podcasting, and a lot of times podcasters have to just take on that role and figure it out themselves. So there's a strong need. In fact, if anything, I think that's the most neglected area when it comes to independent podcasters, is properly marketing and promoting your podcast. Most of the time, people think, if you build it, they will come right? I'm going to put out this podcast, it's going to be amazing, and everyone's going to find it. And you know, I'm sure you and your marketing students know that's that's not how it works. So you got to put the time, the effort, the investment, you got to learn about your audience and figure out where to where are they. How do we get in front of them, and what's the messaging that's going to make sense to them to want to go and press play on that episode of my podcast.

Dr. Jen Riley  9:41  
So I mean that it's podcasting has gotten wildly popular now, best practices, advice, like, is the interview format the only format I feel like that's the most common. Like, is that really what's best is it just depend on your audience? Like, how do you even decide the length of it? And the frequency, and there's so many platforms like, I hear people say, Oh, we're available everywhere you can get their podcast. And on the back end, knowing, as a marketer, I'm like, Man, that's a lot of work. Like to do that and to get that on all those different places. But also I'm like, I don't even know where to start with the lymph aspect, because if we think about like, social media, we say attention spans, like one to two minutes, if that So, how do you decide how to how, how long a podcast should be, and the frequency and knowing, like, what's going into this is every week too soon is, you know, is every month too far? Like, how do you how do you decide some of those things?

Marc Ronick  10:41  
I think that when we talk about frequency, first, consistency more than free matters. Okay, weekly is common. That seems to be the common thing. My show is daily. I do it every Monday through Friday, and again, talking about my my original passions, I do it as a morning show. It's for content creators. I do it every morning, Monday through Friday. But consistency doesn't have to mean every day or every week. In my opinion, I'd prefer a high quality podcast that comes out every few weeks or once a month than a lower quality one that's coming out every day or every week. Just be sure to pick something in your in the schedule that's clear and easy for the audience to remember, right? So, for example, you tell your audience a new episode every first Tuesday of the month, right? I don't care what that frequency is. Or I should say, I don't care what that consistency is, as long as you figure out that frequency and stick to that and then as far as length, I always joke about it, but when, because that's a common question, I get somebody hires me and they're like, Okay, well, how long should my episodes be? And my answer is, tongue in cheek, but really kind of serious, too. It's as long as you can deliver quality content. I don't care if it's a two hour episode, as long as I know that that's actually really highly engaging content that my audience is going to be craving and they're going to want to wait. That's why Joe Rogan does so well. That's why he's the number one podcaster and does a three hour podcast. In most cases, it's because his content is engaging and he knows what his audience enjoys, and he just delivers it and delivers it. Now all that said realistically, I would I usually tell people, aim for 20 to 40 minutes as far as each episode. I think that for the most part, that's on just the right amount. Because ultimately, I do look from a business perspective, I look at podcasts as part of a funnel, a sales funnel, and it's kind of at the top in some ways, because if you can give just enough information in that 20 to 40 minutes to give people actionable advice or tips, or what have you, enough but, but probably ultimately, when you give a piece of advice to solve one problem, then you solve That. Person solves it, and then new problems come up, and that's where they're gonna say, okay, this person helped me get past problem number one. Now I got problem number two. I gotta figure out. And, oh yeah, that's right, they talked about on their podcast that they have a course all about this stuff. I'm gonna go buy that course. And that's where the funnel starts to come into play. So I think if you can just high level 20 to 40 minutes, talk about the problem, talk about the solution, and maybe offer another solution, like a course or a workshop or a webinar, something like that, that you can continue to build through that ecosystem.

Dr. Jen Riley  13:40  
Awesome. That's great. In regards to high quality, is that talking about the content that you're delivering and the value of the information that you're sharing, or the interview or the interviewee, or is that production value? Or is it a combination of both?

Marc Ronick  13:58  
It's a combination of everything, really, because, you know, first of all, audio quality is probably one, should probably be one of your top priorities, after the content itself, because more people will stop engaging with your content if it's bad audio than if it's bad video, as long as the if the audio is high quality, and they can consume the information even if the video doesn't look the best, if it's a zoom type quality video, it doesn't matter as much, because they can still consume it. And there are plenty of studies that prove that. So I would say that's a big area, but I am, I believe if I'm going to be putting out high quality audio, then I want, of course, my content to be high quality, and I want high quality video as well. I think if you want to leverage your podcast to be above and beyond, then go all in and deliver high quality from all angles. There is something I wanted to get back to you had asked me about. Out interview formats. Oh, right. Like, is that really the, you know, is that the only one? Well, first of all, the the top genre in podcasting right now is true crime. And those are not interview always. Some of them can be, but they're not more of them. If we think about, you know, the the one that really kicked off, that this genre, uh, a serial, right that? That one, you know, it's more storytelling right there, there, there. There's a narrator telling you the story and taking you through it, and then playing sound bites and clips, maybe of an interview or what have you. So I think that is going to be more of what we see in the future in podcasting is more of the storytelling narrative. Because, to a point you made earlier, it seems like that's what podcasting is, right now, it's just interviews and and it's going to start to get just to become more noise, and people aren't going to, I don't believe are going to stop getting excited about interviews all the time, because there's just a plethora of them out there, right? So you wanted me to show you

Dr. Jen Riley  16:04  
all for audio and then some offer both, or is that? So YouTube play?

Marc Ronick  16:10  
Yeah, YouTube offers both. But just recently, over the past year or two, YouTube has finally started embracing audio only podcasts so you can actually go play in one of their players. You can play an audio podcast. It'll just have that static picture there, but you can, you can hook up your podcast the way you hook it up to Apple and Spotify. Now you can do that to YouTube too, but you will have to do with YouTube right now. You have to, if you have a video version, you actually have to create a separate video, and it doesn't live with the podcast. It's kind of two separate animals all within the same channel. So it's a little confusing. But again, like I said, YouTube, it is newer to this part of it, so I'm sure it's going to evolve over time. And then there's Spotify. So Spotify was welcoming a lot of audio podcasts, and just recently, they've really gone all in on video because they're seeing from their users, more people are engaging with video podcasts than the audio ones. So now you can share to Spotify. You can upload your content as video if you choose. I always tell people, even if you want to do audio only, that's fine, like we can make that work, but I still encourage them to put a camera on them and on their guests if they have guests, because that's content you can use in other places, like social media being a big platform for organic growth. Yeah, you want to, you want to still capture that video, because it's going to do a heck of a lot better on tick tock if it's video than if it's just a static picture with some audio playing.

Dr. Jen Riley  17:52  
So from an execution perspective, do you advise that they try to be on all of these different places, of YouTube, podcasts and Spotify and Apple like, Is that necessary? Or can you be on one place and then just send your audience to that one place? I don't believe

Marc Ronick  18:08  
anything is necessary, but I do think it will help to be on all the different platforms where it's available, because some people go to one platform versus another, and we want this to be out there, to be exposed to as many people as possible. So I would say, strategically, it's a great move to be on these different platforms, if you're doing it on your own, if you haven't built that team out yet, that can sometimes feel overwhelming. But the beautiful part about it all is that to be on any of these platforms, you actually need a third party, a third party platform. And the way I explain this, they're called podcast hosting platforms, and what it is is it's basically like a distribution center. So think about a distribution center, and think about my episodes that I deliver to my distribution center, and then the distribution center is connected to Spotify, Apple, YouTube, all of them, and I can schedule the podcast on that third party platform. Then when it goes live, it gets shot out to all of those different platforms

Dr. Jen Riley  19:16  
when you're doing like so I see you have a mic and you have earphones, and be the just use a camera on your laptop or your preference. Or is there like a best practice? I'll answer

Marc Ronick  19:28  
this as best practice, because the reality is, is you can make a lot of things work with very little equipment. Right the microphone I'm using right now is by Sure, S, H, u, r, e, as you probably can see going across it. This is called the M, v7 it works with a USB, so I could plug it right into my computer, and what I have it plugged into. This is an XLR cable, which is delivers higher quality audio, usually than a USB connection would. And. It's plugged into. I have a little board here. I don't know, maybe I can show you to you a little bit. Yeah, see, here's my board, and it's called a rodecaster Pro. This is the two model, and I have it plugged into. Here. I have my camera. It's an Elgato face cam Pro. It's a really high quality streaming camera, and

Dr. Jen Riley  20:24  
not like a camera. It

Marc Ronick  20:26  
is technically a webcam, but it is. There are very few that deliver in 4k quality. This is one of them, but, yeah, a lot of people will use Sony's and other types of cameras. This one is like a $300 camera versus some of those Sony models that you know, you could spend over $1,000 easily on things like lighting. You want to invest a little bit too, as I told you earlier, I don't think we did it during the recording, but I'm not in my usual space right now, and I usually have some pretty good lights that are helping to light me up. In this office that I'm in, there are three huge windows in front of me, and to me, there is nothing better than natural lighting to make a to make a podcast look good, to really capture everything you want to capture. I have a little tiny ring light over here just to add a little bit. But you know, sometimes you can make do with just the windows in your space, but you can absolutely a lot of content that I make. I actually just use the back of my iPhone, right? So I have a pro, an iPhone Pro, so, you know, it's got the better quality camera, and people compliment it actually more than this camera that I'm using. Oh, wow. Okay, get it on a zoom. When I'm using my iPhone the back of the cameras, a lot of time, people will stop and just, how do you get it to look so good? So you can, you can make it work with a lot of the technology probably already have. And I would encourage getting a podcast mic, getting yourself some kind of camera, besides your webcam, get yourself a little bit lighting if you need it, and go from there. But yeah, it could cost you anywhere from $0 if you're just using your phone for the microphone too, to if you're, if I'm being realistic, like with all of this setup, a few couple 1000 bucks.

Dr. Jen Riley  22:19  
Okay, that's great information to note. So getting kind of now we have some background. You know, how do we actually tactically do this? Let's talk a little more about, like, the business side of podcasting. When we think about, like, we're not only you love radio in the podcast area, but there's also a financial component, and we want to monetize it. What does that even like? Is that just sponsorships? Like, how does that monetization of podcasts work?

Marc Ronick  22:49  
That is the traditional way, you know, when I'm talking about, like, what I did when with that old radio show that ended up hiring me for their podcast. Yeah, the big, the biggest way that they were focused on to monetize was through sponsorship, affiliate marketing. And I actually got them to start selling premium content, meaning paid. You know, people have to pay to listen to it at the time. If I could only go back and have recordings of this. I mean, I had to fight tooth and nail for this, this podcast, to actually start charging for some content, because I saw this need. They had like, I was telling you, telling you they were having around, like 20,000 downloads per episode, and people wanting more. And so I said to these guys, like, they want more, and I know you guys don't want to do more because you're putting out this free content, other than getting it sponsored or advertised, why not just get paid to do an extra one, extra show? And it's actually to this day, still, years later, they're one of their best revenue streams. And now you'll see some platforms that have really embraced that. There's a platform called Patreon, and there are similar ones, like, buy me a coffee is another one. But these are set up for creators to sell content and other stuff, right? Like merchandise, for example. So sponsors, advertisers, affiliate marketing, absolutely. Merch would be another one. But also, live events is a thing now. A lot of podcasts, once they've built up a little bit of a following, they could go and say, Okay, I'm gonna be, you know, at whatever coffee shop, or maybe like this show that I've been telling you about. We had so many people that we were doing live shows that were filling up venues of 1000 2000 people, and charging tickets for it and selling merchandise for it. Right? There are so many ways that you can monetize it, and here's the one way that a lot of people don't think about, especially when we're talking business. So let's go meta for a second. I do you know I have a business for. Podcasters. So I have a podcast about podcasting. It's helping podcasters, talking about a lot of the questions that you're asking me right now, and a big part of it is, is to drive people to to hire me. Maybe you want me to or my company to edit your podcast, or maybe you want to hire me as your consultant. Well, this is my way of showcasing myself and my knowledge and my expertise, and if the right people who resonate with what I'm saying are going to reach out to me, and I've basically built a business out of that, among other things, but that's a big part of my business is having a podcast and then offering different ways to purchase my product or service.

Dr. Jen Riley  25:43  
When we talking about, like the planning of things and like the differentiation, if you do an interview style, there's an opportunity for controversial topics to always come up. If you don't do interview style, there's still the opportunity for controversial topics to come up. How do you find that balance between freedom of speech and virality of what's happening right now versus cancel culture and controversial topics?

Marc Ronick  26:15  
There's no foolproof answer to this, especially with what you just said with cancel culture, because you know you could say something with without the intention of how it was interpreted, and you're now, you have to deal with that, right? I think the some key points here, first is to know your audience, understand who they are and what they value. And I think that really helps, it does for me, it helps me focus on topics that resonate without being unnecessarily provocative. So knowing your audience and calling it out right, calling out like this is not where I'm going. So set clear boundaries, I guess, is really the way to put it. Decide ahead of time what those topics are that that are off limits, and communicate those boundaries and right and staying true to it? Yeah, I think authenticity it. I know it's a buzzword. I know a lot of people say it, and it's it's very near and dear to my heart, especially when it comes to podcasting, the more authentically you you are, the more your audience will connect with you. It's those moments where we are forcing stuff and we're doing stuff because we know this is what the majority think or say, and we don't want to push that. You know, that's where things start to feel uncomfortable. That's where you can get dangerous too. So I think the more you are true to yourself, the safer you are from this particular area. Focus on presenting facts or different perspectives without taking a strong personal stance that might alienate listeners or, you know, offend so and I know there's that's a thin there's a thin line there, because you're trying to be authentic. But being authentic doesn't mean you always have to share every opinion you have, right?

Dr. Jen Riley  27:59  
It's a hard one. It's a hard question. When I saw, when I saw it submitted, I was like, that's really hard. It's a hard thing to do. But I think, you know, as marketers, from a podcast perspective, from a branding perspective, it's one of those things that you have to from my perspective, it's something that you have to plan for. There's

Marc Ronick  28:18  
also the other thing is, is there's always editing, right? So it's important to take the time to listen through before you put that episode out there, to make sure, you know, with a fresh set of ears, or maybe you have a trusted partner, friend, somebody who could then listen to it and then get their feedback. And maybe somebody will say, Oh, you know, I don't like that. You guys are talking about that, and then dig into why that is, and then you have that freedom to then edit things out if, if you think it's going to cause a problem. Yeah,

Dr. Jen Riley  28:49  
I like that. Awesome. Thank you for sharing. I know that was a kind of a tough question, a little bit about it, but where do you see podcasts kind of going in the future, especially when we look, when we think about the overlap of AI, I mean,

Marc Ronick  29:02  
I'm going to give you a little bit about, in general, the growth, and I'll throw in some AI. I know, for me, AI really helped me with my content creating, in other words, the brainstorming, the ideas, fleshing out those ideas, just literally going into chat GPT, telling it what I'm thinking about, and then fleshing it out. It's a great way to have that, to have a collaborative partner without having one, you know, with AI, I think that's going to also open more and more to things like AR and VR. As that advances, I think we're going to start having more of these interactive podcasts where, you know, I'd be hosting kind of like this, but I could have these goggles on and have my audience literally in front of me, so I think we'll see a lot of that. And it's hard for me to even wrap my brain around the different directions that could go, but I know that we will see more AR and VR in our content moving forward. Forward, and then, as I mentioned earlier, video podcasting too. I think that's a big one that is going to continue to grow and rise, and I think AI will help that along, because it's already editing our content for us. And a lot of people, it's hard to learn how to do it yourself. Video Editing is super complicated in comparison to audio editing. So a lot of podcasters get into it, doing the audio, and then now finding out you really need to do video too. So having technology like ai do it for you, I think that's gonna open a lot of doors for a lot of people in this space. I

Dr. Jen Riley  30:38  
was video editing about 20 years ago is when I started video editing, or maybe a little bit more than that, maybe 22 years ago, and now it's like, I used captive, Captivate, Captivate, and this push a button, and then it's like, then it's done, and I'm like, wait what that's like? That's crazy. So it's definitely, it's definitely changed a lot when we think about like so a lot of these students are going to be coming out, and, you know, we have an individual brand, but we also work for companies. How do you think companies and brands can differentiate from the consumer or from the individuals doing podcasts? Is there space for businesses to have their own podcast, and what does that look like in your estimation? Yeah,

Marc Ronick  31:26  
I think that actually part of the boom of podcasting is because businesses are starting their podcasts, because they've started to recognize that it really develops a relationship between them and their clients or customers and potential customers, and in most cases, even more so than social media. You can build a huge following on social media, but the connections aren't nearly as deep as strong as they are in podcasting. Why is that? Because it's long form content, and people get to spend some time with you and get to know you. It's not just some random people just dancing on a screen, right? This is, this is deeper. It's more engaging. So you create that space, and then people are going to likely purchase from you. I mean, there, I wish I had it off the top of my head, and I can't remember now, but there have been some studies and some reports that have come out that advertising on podcasts is way more effective these days than television or radio. The funny part about that is, is a lot of people's heads then go to, Okay, I gotta get advertisers. You gotta get sponsors. No, just be your own advertiser. Be your own sponsor, you're capturing an audience that is specifically interested in the types of products and services you're offering. So yeah, go all in on that. So specifically, how could they differentiate themselves from every other podcast? Because that's the real challenge right now, is there's so many podcasts out there. It's like, how do people know whether or not to go check out this business podcast, or these two guys doing their hobby podcast? Right? I think that, again, speaks to the content quality, from from video to audio to the content itself. That goes to the consistency. As a business you likely have a budget, and if you're going to invest in the podcast, make sure that you're going to also earmark a budget for it to promote and advertise it. Yes, you you're already, you already have this advertising budget for whatever that product or service is. But that's not enough to get them to come check out the podcast. You got to treat it almost like another product within your business, draw that audience in, and again, it's like that funnel, and then they'll start to learn about you, your business, what you offer, and then they're going to be way more likely to make that sale, make that purchase, than they would if they just kind of saw you randomly on Tiktok.

Dr. Jen Riley  33:57  
Okay, that's super interesting. When we talk about like the marketing of your podcast, are we leaning into SEO? Are we trying to promote it on social? Any advice you have for the promotion of a podcast? A

Marc Ronick  34:14  
lot of podcasters sleep on SEO, so and it's probably one of the more effective ways to get people to find your podcast. So I would absolutely encourage yes to SEO and do all the work to make that work for you. There was something else you said too, and I can't remember, besides SEO, social. Social, yeah, absolutely. The problem with social is, most podcasters are going into it for with the intention of organic growth. And it can, can work for organic growth, but just like podcasting, it's a little bit of a slow burn, right? You gotta, you gotta build it up, and you gotta kind of wait for that one that's gonna go off to start really building up, right? So. So I think the advantage for business is to spend money on advertising on those platforms. And I don't mean like boosting your content, because on Instagram, you can pay extra to have a particular piece of content go out. I mean, like taking advantage of Facebook ads, Instagram ads, I spoke to the other day, I did a consult call with these podcasters, two guys, and they started their podcast in 2022 within a year, they were up to over 100,000 downloads a month, doing a show, I think, once a week. And I asked him, How did you do it? Well, he actually had some marketing experience, and he was spending money on Instagram ads, and within a month, he had already built up his audience to over 2000 people, and he's continued to do that with that very specific niche targeted advertising, and it's built up to what it is now. The other thing is getting on other podcasts. As far as promoting, that's another area that people sometimes sleep on. Go and find similar podcasts to your similar genre that has a similar target audience, and be a guest there, because you're in front of an audience, a captured audience that already knows podcasting, already listens to podcasts. It's an easy sell at that point. As long as you're you're delivering as a guest. Yeah, they're gonna, more than likely, at least go check something out that you've done, and then that's where you can hopefully sell them to keep coming back. But yeah, so guesting on, as far as organic, being a guest on other podcasts on a regular basis, I think helps a lot. Do

Dr. Jen Riley  36:38  
you think that a podcast? So if it's an individual person, or if it's a brand that has a podcast, do you think that podcast needs its own dedicated set of social media accounts and dedicated website and all of that for the podcast, all separate from the brand? Or should it be folded up into the brand? I think

Marc Ronick  36:59  
that depends on the messaging. So if your podcast is truly aligned with the other content you're making on your current account, for example, then by all means, just keep it there, right? But we we learn that if we start to stray a lot from the usual content, we're going to start losing people, and then none of your content gets consumed. I'm still on the fence. Quite frankly, yes, my own podcast. I do have a separate account, and it doesn't do nearly as well as my main account. I could probably get away with not having a separate account, because all of my content is constantly podcasting. But I don't want to pigeon hole myself in case I pivot sometime. And if I still, May, I still may want to do my morning show, and I still may want to promote it, but I may have other interests in my main account, I may want to go in a different direction. So it's, it's really more of a strategic move down the road for me. But yeah, I guess at the end of the day talking this through with you, I would say having separate accounts are good. What I'd like to do is, like, Instagram, I have those separate accounts, and then I just do those collaboration that collaboration feature, so that it's going to appear on both platforms, on both profiles. Yeah,

Dr. Jen Riley  38:16  
I think they did really good when they added that one

Marc Ronick  38:19  
too. I wish more had it. Yeah,

Dr. Jen Riley  38:21  
they've been adding some features, and I'm like, why? But I think one was a really good one. Yeah, agreed. So you've said some some stuff, a little here and there, about, like, number of downloads. What other metrics should we be looking for to really tell us if this is a success or not?

Marc Ronick  38:39  
Yeah, great question. And downloads. Unfortunately, the reason why that's so such a focus is because for so long, that's been almost the only metric that podcasters get. Oh, it's changing. It's changing, especially now that we're putting our content on YouTube. But it's changing now. And the stat that I like to focus on the most is retention rate, right? Because, look, downloads is great, but really, all that's saying is that somebody downloaded that episode to their phone, right? That's all it's saying. We don't know if they played it right. So, yeah, it's great. It looks good that, yeah, okay, we got X number of downloads, but if no one's listened to it, no one's listening to it, it's never going to grow. And you got to figure out why. So how do you figure out why the retention rate? Where are you losing people? You know, and I know Tiktok does this too, and so does Instagram and a lot of the others. You can see, where are people dropping off, and then start to focus on that. Okay, so 20 minutes into the episode, or, you know, maybe that, maybe it's an hour episode, I'm losing people what's happening 20 minutes in. Maybe it's the questions I'm asking. Maybe, maybe, you know, whatever, you can start digging into what's happening there. And the ultimate goal for me is. Because for me and for my clients, is if they're listening to 80, 85% or more of the episode, I think you're in good shape. That helps you grow. You can promote a lot of things. You can really get your messaging out there. Pay attention to that number and make adjustments accordingly. So

Dr. Jen Riley  40:19  
to that point, maybe we've been doing a podcast. We're following your advice. So we're super consistent. We see we post something, let's say every other week, where it's a bi weekly podcast and it's 45 minutes long, and we're noticing people drop off at 20 minutes. Yeah. So you say, Okay, this obviously isn't working, either we're too frequent or the duration isn't really hitting for our target audience. How do you pivot at that point? Do you just kind of announce it and then change it? Or do you have to scrap that whole podcast and start a new like how do you adjust setting that expectation for your audience and then adjusting what you're doing to try to make it more successful. I

Marc Ronick  41:04  
personally, for myself, and what I tell others is, yeah, if you're making a change that you feel is significant, or you feel like your audience is going to think it's significant, talk about it again. This is this is developing the relationship between you and the audience. So talk about it. Tell them why? Tell them, yeah, I'm noticing that I'm losing my audience. And let's use one of your examples. I'm noticing I'm losing my audience 20 minutes in. And I've asked a lot of you why I'm losing you 20 minutes in, and you're telling me you don't have any more time to spend on the episode. You know, a great example is, if you're doing a podcast that you're where your target audience are doctors. A lot of times doctors aren't. Don't have more than 20 minutes to just sit and listen to something, right? And a lot of people will deliver an hour, hour and a half show and then wonder what's going on. Well, that's a perfect example, a perfect way of taking advantage of those retention rates and doing something about it, but yeah, communicate it, and you don't always have to pivot. I would say the times you would want to pivot into an entirely new podcast is if you've recognized this content isn't working. But yeah, if you're gonna end up appealing to an entirely different audience, I would recommend starting from scratch, because there's no sense in delivering this content to people that probably won't care about it, you know, meaning using your existing podcast that audience isn't interested. So, yeah, start fresh, start over. And I think that's also helpful for the podcaster to do too, because they have that clean slate, they can put that other one to bed and then move forward. So

Dr. Jen Riley  42:40  
in your estimation, we talked a little bit about it, high quality, that consistency. Is there anything else that you would add to the list that kind of separates the successful one from the unsuccessful podcast? Anything else you'd add there,

Marc Ronick  42:54  
the biggest separator is the podcasts that actually put intention behind their podcast, the ones that have a strategy, the ones that are constantly shifting because they've seen either a change in the numbers or they're receiving a ton of feedback from their audience, really digging into who your audience is. What are they struggling with, and how are you going to help serve them.

Dr. Jen Riley  43:21  
Any skill that you think would help somebody be more successful in podcasting, that they could hone or practice or build up or research, anything that you'd say, if you want to do podcasting, you want to be successful, you need this skill,

Marc Ronick  43:38  
effective communication skills, knowing how to listen, when to listen, and to listen. In other words, there are a lot of interviews that I hear where the podcaster has their questions and all they're focused on is waiting to ask the next one, and they're not paying attention to the guest, and the guest is probably dropping lots of nuggets in there that probably need more explanation. And they're not stopping because you've, you've done a great job at this where you stop like, I know you have your canned questions, but you've also steered away from that script. And you're you're following up, you're asking me follow up questions. And too many people fail to do that. That's

Dr. Jen Riley  44:27  
good. That's great advice. Um, so just couple more questions. When we planning this, like, Are there any planning documents? Are there any like, do you actually script it out and say, like, I'm gonna say this, and then I'm gonna say this, knowing that we'll kind of go with the flow. How much do you plan ahead of time? Is there a document or a flow that you can recommend? Like, hey, if you're gonna do a podcast, it's gonna be this kind of podcast. Try to go with some of this, or try to do some of these things before as you plan. Yeah.

Marc Ronick  44:59  
Yes, and I have something that I can give to you, that you can hand off to the students. Yes, I know I feel like a broken record, but again, it's, it's really first narrowing down, what do you want to talk about, and who's interested in that, right? Who's that audience? And then look, I would say the first, first answer I'll give you is, come to me, I'm happy to help you. I do free consult sessions all the time. There are plenty of podcasts, whether it's mine or others that teach these things. YouTube and Tiktok University has plenty of information over there as well. Ultimately, I think that a big strategy that you could use going into it is not only plan your content ahead of time, like the first one of the first things I do with my clients is when they're ready to go. It's like, all right, before we do anything, I want you to list out 20 different topics that you think you're going to be able to talk about at length on your podcast. And what happens a lot of times is they get to, I don't know, 789, and then they're like, Oh, I gotta come up with more now, right? And the truth of the matter is, is, if you're gonna do this every week, yeah, you do now, of course, you can repurpose, you can revisit content all the time, but you still need to plan ahead that way and then record as many of those episodes as you can before you even launch, as we call it, batch recording. So get as many I tell my clients like I just launched a podcast a couple weeks ago for a client, and I did not let her launch until she had 10 episodes recorded. I don't do that with every client, but I do know certain clients need that padding, because if they don't, they're going to get behind, and then that consistency factor is out the window. So not only plan ahead, but record ahead, edit ahead, get everything way ahead, so that when life happens, you can keep putting out that content and not worry

Dr. Jen Riley  47:02  
about it. Yeah, that's awesome. Great advice. Thank you so much. Any final thoughts you want to share and things you want the students to know for sure? Yeah?

Marc Ronick  47:10  
I mean, look, the strategy for podcasting isn't terribly different than social media. If you've got the knowledge experience, etc, in that arena. It can easily be applied to this one. It's just the biggest difference is long, long versus short. But I that would be one thing. And then, of course, come check out my show in the mornings. Or, you know, we it's a podcast as well. I do it live, and I put it out as podcast, and, yeah, be a part of of our community, and if not, find a community as well, because there are the podcaster community has been amazing. I learned how accepting and collaborative they are, how willing they are to help other podcasters who are starting out. It's a really amazing community that I would encourage anyone to be a part of if they want to go down this road. Yeah,

Dr. Jen Riley  48:01  
awesome. Great advice for podcasting, great advice in general. You never know all the things. Tapping into your network, tapping into other people that do it as well, is a surefire way to make sure you stay current and you have a community that helps you so you say, like, hey, nobody responding. Am I crazy? Like, what's happening here? Somebody else to throw stuff off the throwing things against the wall with. It's always great. So where can the students find you to follow your podcast? Sure.

Marc Ronick  48:31  
So it's called the podcasting morning chat. So you could certainly search for that anywhere. Otherwise you can find it at pod page.com/p, M, C, and my business website is actually I'm going to give you two ironic media.com and that's I, R, O, N, I, C, K, or you can check out next gen podcaster.com so next G, E, N, podcaster, that is a community we've started, we've built up that specifically helping podcasters integrate AI into what they do. Help them figure out what are the best ways I can use AI to help me and stay true to myself, true to my content, not make it sound robotic at the same time, or be robotic at the same time. So we're we work with podcasters on that kind of stuff as well. So any one of those, please check it out.

Dr. Jen Riley  49:25  
Great. Thank you so much. We appreciate it. And he is on LinkedIn as well. So build those networks. Thank you so much, Marc. Thank you appreciate it.

Buzz Burbank  49:41  
An iRonick Media Productions visit us at i r, O N, I C, K, media.com.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai