Strategic Buzzsprout Features to Boost Discovery and Engagement with Jordan Blair

Many creators feel like they are shouting into a vacuum, putting out great episodes that aren't being discovered by new audiences or search engines. This visibility gap is a major pain point for purpose-driven podcasters who want their message to reach the right people. In this episode, we sit down with Jordan Blair from Buzzsprout to explore the high-impact features that help your show stand out. We discuss things like how to use dynamic content for evergreen updates, why fan mail is the future of listener engagement, and how providing high-quality podcast transcripts ensures your show is understood by the next generation of AI and LLMs. This week, episode 283 of Podcasting Unlocked is about strategic Buzzsprout features to boost discovery and engagement! 

Jordan Blair is the podcast producer at Buzzsprout, and the cohost of Buzzcast, Happy to Help, and the creator and host of Dreamful Bedtime Stories. 

In this episode of Podcasting Unlocked, Jordan Blair is sharing the importance of weighting the pros and cons of cohosts and actionable steps you can take right now to use Buzzsprout’s robust features to boost you show’s visibility. 

Jordan and I also chat about the following: 

• Leverage Dynamic Content for Evergreen Impact: Discover how to use dynamic ad insertion to keep your back catalog fresh. Learn how to update intros and outros across your entire library in seconds to promote new offers or events.
• Master the Art of Fan Mail: Move beyond the one-way broadcast. Learn how the Fan Mail feature creates a frictionless way for listeners to text you directly from their podcast app, driving deep audience engagement and providing instant feedback.
• Optimize for AI and Search Discovery: Understand why high-quality podcast transcripts are no longer optional. Learn how providing text versions of your episodes helps LLMs and AI bots understand your expertise, significantly improving your podcast SEO.
• Build a Home Base with Your Podcast Website: Explore why having a dedicated, host-provided website is crucial for authority. Learn how Buzzsprout’s built-in web tools help you capture search traffic and provide a professional landing page for your brand.
• Adopt a Community-First Mindset: Jordan shares the value of lean, supportive communities. Learn how being active in spaces like the Buzzsprout Facebook group can help you solve technical hurdles and find new collaboration opportunities.

Be sure to tune in to all the episodes to receive tons of practical tips on turning your podcast listeners into leads and to hear even more about the points outlined above. 

Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this episode, take a screenshot of the episode to post in your stories and tag me! And don’t forget to follow, rate and review the podcast and tell me your key takeaways!

Learn more about Podcasting Unlocked at https://galatimedia.com/podcasting-unlocked/ 

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Transcript

Alesia Galati: 0:00

If you've been listening to this show for any amount of time, you've probably heard me mention Buzzsprout at least once, if not, this is an incredible episode with someone who works at Buzzsprout as well as produces their podcast. I was so excited to have Jordan on the show to talk all things features around Buzzsprout, we talk about how to use the dynamic content, how to engage with your audience using fan mail, how to actually get your podcast understood by a lot of these llms and AI bots using their website, their transcripts. There's so many juicy details in this episode about the incredible features that Buzzsprout has. We're also going to be having Jordan back on to talk all things Buzzsprout monetization and podcast monetization. But until then, please enjoy this episode. It is so good. Welcome to podcasting unlocked. The show for purpose driven podcasters. I'm Alesia Galati, founder of Galati media, and I'm here to share actionable strategies to help you amplify your message and grow your audience. Hello, Jordan. I'm so excited to have you on if you could start by telling everyone who you are, what you do, and a bit about your podcast.

Jordan Blair: 1:17

Absolutely. I'm Jordan Blair. I am the Podcast Producer at Buzzsprout, and we have a few podcasts in the buzz sprout rotation, but the one that I am most proud of is buzzcast, and that is the podcast about all things podcasting that I co host with the co founder of Buzzsprout and our Head of Marketing at Buzzsprout. And we have a lot of fun, probably too much fun. I have to edit out a lot of the fun that we have on that podcast, but we tried to make podcasting really fun and enjoyable and accessible. And it used to be like a bi weekly thing, where it was like a little bit over an hour for the episode, and then the guys were like, you know, you're I think you'll relate to this. The guys were just like, you know, we should just go weekly. Let's just do this. Let's do a little episode. We'll just call it a quick cast, and we'll just do this little episode so that we're like weekly. And now the little episodes are starting to creep into the 20 minute mark. So I don't know whether to say we're a bi weekly podcast or weekly podcast. We're somewhere in there. It's just somewhere in the middle, but yeah, so that's where my home bases.

Alesia Galati: 2:21

That is so awesome. I am a huge fan of Buzzsprout, and anytime someone's like, Hey, I'm thinking about starting a podcast, I'm gonna go there. Yeah, literally, just go to Buzzsprout. They've got everything you need. Hands down, my favorite hosting platform, and I've haven't put my clients on any other platform. But sometimes we'll get clients in that maybe they already have a podcast and they're hosted somewhere else, and immediately I'm like, we're moving you. I love that needs to be simple, and the other platforms are not making it simple, so we're gonna keep it super simple. So yeah, love everything y'all do.

Jordan Blair: 2:58

I love that too. Yeah, that's actually where I got my start. And it's so funny, because I always tell them, You trained me for the job that I have, because buzz bro has so many resources, and their YouTube a channel is amazing, and they've got great podcasts about podcasting. And I literally listened to all their podcasts. I consumed all their videos, I looked through all their guides and blogs and stuff like that. And I just like, Nim, like consumed all of it up. And that's how I learned a podcast was through Buzzsprout. And so I started on Buzzsprout in 2019 and I've been with them for, I don't know, six or seven years now, which is so crazy to think about, but yeah, that's really how I got my start was through Buzzsprout, because it's so easy. And I was like, oh, podcasting isn't that hard. This is okay. This is doable. I can do this. And I love this

Alesia Galati: 3:47

so true. I launched my first one in 2017 with Buzz sprout, and then I launched my second one in 2019 and then in 2020 I was like, I could definitely do this for other people. Let's go Yes. Like, I think I've had five podcasts at this point, I feel like, oh, podcast bug bites you. You just, you got to keep going.

Jordan Blair: 4:06

I remember meeting people like other Buzzsprout podcasters, because we have a really great community group on Facebook and stuff. And so I met so many. And sometimes we get on a zoom call together and stuff, and they would introduce themselves and be like, Oh, hi. You know, I'm so and so, and I have seven podcasts. And I was, I just, I was like, gobsmacked, how, how do you have seven podcasts? Because my first podcast, I was such a perfectionist about it, I would spend 20 hours on one episode, which, now that I'm used to it, and I've gotten the hang of editing, and I've got the hang of content creation and planning, I'm like, That is insane that I spent that much time. So I'm looking at these people like, how many hours in a week do you have?

Alesia Galati: 4:45

Yeah, I will say most of them are not currently producing this one. And then my other one is, and I'm actually considering at the 300 mark for this one. This is literally the first time I'm saying this. But out. Loud, two podcast listeners. Hello, stopping the podcast at that point, because I feel like 300 is a lot of episodes for people to hear other people's experience with podcasting, right? The goal of the show has always been that there's no one right way to podcast. You get to decide what works best for you. Here are just a bunch of examples of people who are doing it their way, and you get to pick and choose from what they're showcasing and then having my solo episodes, but I'm at the point where I'm like, I don't know what else to talk about. Because yes, podcasting is changing, but not the actual components of it, like the marketing of it and the production of it and the things that we support our clients with. Not much has changed, really?

Jordan Blair: 5:43

Yeah, there's something about it. Depending on what kind of podcasts you have, there's gonna be so many times where you struggle with finding new content ideas. And there's some podcasts that I have where I'm well over the however, many hundreds of episodes marked, and I'm like, there's still, like, 500 more that I want to make, and I have all these ideas. And then there's others where I'm just like, I don't know how much more I can tap into the old ideas I already had, but that's one of the things that's so important when you are starting a podcast, is to sit down and really think about, Okay, how many episode ideas can I come up with? Because that's going to get you going. And then as you go, sometimes you'll be like, You know what? Maybe this was a 20 episode mini series and it's done, and that's fine, right? That's okay. You don't have to keep trying to come up with stuff, if you just don't have it. Sometimes stories are just shorter, and then other times you've got people like Dave Jackson who are like, 1000 episodes into their show. I actually had him on buzzcast A few months ago, and we were talking about episode ideas of content planning and like, how to keep coming because he had reached 1000 episodes. And I was like, okay, obviously I gotta talk to this guy, because 1000 episodes just seems insane. How do you even come up with that much content? And we discussed pod fade, because pod fade is such a nasty word in the podcasting industry, and it's such a scary thing. And it's like, Oh, you don't want to, yeah, you know, there's shame, and there's almost this urban legend sort of thing. Oh, after seven episodes, you risk pod fade. And it's such a weird campfire story kind of eeriness to it. And he was talking about, like, how pod fade actually isn't that bad. Sometimes your podcast is just done, and that's okay, but pod fade, the thing is, is, if you love podcasting, maybe follow your next passion. What's your next big idea? What's your next thing? And I loved that, because I was like, You know what? Maybe it's okay to lay some things to rest if they're no longer serving you, and just walk away from it and pursue something new, and then Ben is not truly pod fade, because you started a different kind of podcast, right? And I just love that he completely changed my mindset on it.

Alesia Galati: 7:49

Yeah, I think that's so important. I even think about some of the clients that maybe we supported over the years, and they transitioned out of what they were currently offering and decided to move into a different type of offering, and the podcast just didn't make sense to continue, so we, very intentionally, book ended it. But Buzzsprout has the feature literally five bucks a month. It's so affordable

Jordan Blair: 8:12

to

Alesia Galati: 8:12

just have the archives there for people to listen. And every week, Buzzsprout also sends an email of here's how many downloads your podcast got this week, and I saw one of them that had been quote unquote pod faded for almost two years now, and it had like 350 downloads just in the last week. And it's like, it's okay you get to decide if this is not going to work for you anymore. And there's there doesn't have to be shame to it

Jordan Blair: 9:24

well, and sometimes you just don't know when things are going to pick up. It could be, well, after you've kind of hung up the towel and been like, all right, that was fun, and then a couple years later it just takes off, and you go, Oh, okay, maybe this is good. Maybe I'll pick it back up again. Would you totally can and podcasting, like we always say, keep podcasting. That's buzz sprouts, big thing, and a huge part of that is because podcasting is, like, it's such a long game, you're just trying to create content that people can discover, and then that discovery is going to lead to them binging your back catalog. And then they'll be like, Oh my gosh, this is amazing. And there's this one story. There was this one podcaster who, one of his episodes just went bananas. He was like a medical podcaster. And what happened was, years ago, he had done an episode on Ebola, and

Alesia Galati: 10:15

there was, like this huge, like, years later, there was this huge Ebola outbreak, and so people are searching it on their podcast apps, and Ebola was this keyword that he had used years ago, and it just made his podcast rocket into popularity. And so it's really funny, like it is such a long game, like you just don't know what's gonna stick and what's gonna pick up steam later and become current, even if it's old for you. Yeah, that's so true. I'm curious if, how. Having co hosts helps with that too. Right? To have other people to bounce ideas off of that can help with longevity? Is that something that you found

Jordan Blair: 10:56

yes and no? I think that having co hosts, it can help and it can also be a hindrance. There's just cons and pros to like every single bit of it. So I personally have a solo podcast that is like hundreds and hundreds of episodes in and I don't have to rely on anyone for what ideas I'm going to do, what direction I want to take it. Do I want to be a little bit more artsy about this? Do I want to write something? Do I want to use something in public domain, whatever, and I don't have anyone else that is telling me I don't really like the idea, or you have to explain to me how it's gonna work. Like that takes so much energy for me sometimes is to explain my creative process. And at the same time, having co hosts can be so awesome, because there's some weeks where, man, I just, I'm not into it. My energy is not good. I don't want to podcast, but my co hosts are going to be waiting for me in the recording room, and I have to show up, and I have to bring the good energy. And sometimes they'll be like, hey, like, I know that you weren't super excited about this outline or this topic, but we actually brought this and we're just gonna run with it. I'm like, great. And I love that. I love it when there's times that, like, my energy is just down, but it could be like, Moon Phases, or maybe I eat McDonald's or who knows what. There's a million reasons why you might not be filling up to podcasting, but having those co hosts to lift you up and bring the energy for you, and they're just like, Oh, you're having a down day. I'm having a great day, so I'm just gonna take the reins on this. And it's like, awesome, but the same time you could potentially have a co host who doesn't really want a podcast anymore, and then you're like, stuck, kind of like, dragging them along with you. Like, I've heard horror stories of people choosing the wrong co host, and then the person like isn't contributing equally to the podcast. They don't want to do the ideas. They don't like anything, but they are also not providing ideas themselves. I don't know it's so hard, because when you're a solo podcaster, like, everything falls on you, but you also only have to rely on yourself. And I'm a very independent person, so for me, that's, like, excellent. That is ideal. But when you have co hosts, you have other people lift you up, but then they can also team efforts, like, they can also drag you down, too. So I think it's even Steven. I think it just depends on your personality. I think it depends on how much passion and like Audacity you have to, like, just do everything. I

Alesia Galati: 13:24

even think about when I started my bookish account. I had it co hosted with a friend, because I didn't want to have to do all the work myself, and I would have to run ideas by her, or maybe something would happen in the bookish space, and I wanted to address it. And she was like, I actually don't want to address that. And so then we wouldn't be able to, right? And then I'd feel almost stilted a little bit, but still respect her, because she's my friend. And then it ended up being that she wanted to create more content around Disney, which I'm not a Disney girly at all, yeah? And she was like, finding just such a love of it, and affiliate marketing with outfits and the whole like, go off. Yeah, fun. And so she was like, I think that I want to transition into this. Are you good with taking over the account and whatever you need, just let me know. And I was like, yes, let's do that. And it's been three years since we made that split, and we're both doing fantastic in our own spaces. And so I think, yes, picking the right person is so incredibly important, but you do have to run things by them, and then when you do make that split, sometimes it can be difficult. Okay, now everything goes to me. Here are things that she was handling that now I have to handle, but now I also don't have to run anything by and if I say something wrong, it falls to me. That's okay, yeah.

Jordan Blair: 14:45

And if that's honestly, I think that you have a success story with splitting with a co host, because I've heard of stories where it's not amicable. They will go in and delete the podcast account and everything's deleted because they were, like, petty about something. I've heard horror stories, not like scare people into having a co host, but just be careful. Don't just meet strangers off of Craigslist, and they're the ones I see people posting all the time where they're like, I'm doing a podcast about horse racing, and I'm looking for a co host. I'm like, no, no,

Alesia Galati: 15:15

I wouldn't do that. Man. I would find some friends in the horse racing circles and then ask those people that you once you've built up trust and you've gotten to know them, then ask those people to start up. Don't just be posting in Reddit, looking for a co host, because you just don't know what you're gonna get. You might work out might be okay. That's very similar, like online dating, where you could be in danger and your podcast might suffer a lot for it, yeah. Oh man. So one thing I did with my hobby. Podcast that I think people could who want, maybe that co host experience, and don't want to do a ton of solo episodes, but also don't want to do a lot of interviews, is so it's all about smut. It's called, we read smut. And what I do is I reached out to some of the other bookish content creators, whether it was Tik Tok, Instagram or BookTube, and I said, Hey, I want to create an episode around this topic. Do you want to almost Instagram Live or, like a video live, have a discussion with me about it, so then they don't have a lot of like, I'm still hosting and I'm still running it, but they can come in and I can have more of a conversation. Instead of just being like, Okay, I want to talk about this topic to myself and the camera. Okay, let's do this right. Like that. Can feel uncomfortable if you haven't done it before, and so I found that was fun. Not only did I get to highlight them and go follow them, go check them out, but then now I'm even having them say, Hey, can I come back and talk about this topic. So it's,

Unknown: 16:46

I love it. It's

Alesia Galati: 16:47

been so much fun.

Jordan Blair: 16:48

What a great reframing, too. Because there's something that happens. I think when you ask somebody to be a guest on your podcast, obviously us as podcasters, so even in a professional sense, we know that it's not that serious, right? But a lot of times people are like, Oh my gosh, I have to do, like, interview prep, and I have to make sure that, like, I look camera ready, and I have to do a set. Do I need to rent a studio? And I think that reframing it as, Hey, do you want to come out alive with me? And we'll just talk about this thing that you're really into. Because I love that. I love your thoughts on this thing, they go, Oh yeah, sure. And it's very casual. And then they're like, in their bedroom, and they're able to just talk to you about it, and then you have a great podcast episode. It's just like, they're already at ease. I just love that reframing of it, where it's just, Hey, do you want to just, like, hop on and talk about this? That's so much more casual than being like, do you want to come on my podcast and I can interview you about your thoughts around, like, whatever topic that's so scary, especially for non podcasters.

Alesia Galati: 17:49

Yes, and I just try to reframe it as Hey, and usually it is, hey, you talked about this topic. I'd love to go deeper, and let's go ahead and have this conversation more of a collaborative episode where we can talk about it, and then I edit it afterwards to make sure we both sound fantastic. Yes, everybody feels good. Yeah,

Jordan Blair: 18:07

that is the key. It's so funny because all the podcasts that, like, I produce and stuff, like, whenever we have, like, guests on, you know this, I know this, like, there's sometimes you go on a podcast and, like, they'll leave stuff in where, I don't know, I choked on my spit, and I have to, like, clear my throat, or something, like, they leave it in there. I'm just like, why would you do that to me? You don't do that. Be respectful to your guests. And I love when people come on, like my show, and I will just perfectly edit out every little flub or, like, maybe if they took a while to come up with the structure of their sentence, like, what they were trying to say, if they took a little while to get there, I'll just cut out all the extra little bits of it, and they're gonna sound so concise. They're gonna sound like they know exactly what they're talking about. And they're gonna sound like their train of thought is like, heading straight from point A to point B. And it's perfect. And I love it, because if they return to the podcast, they're like, man, you say made me sound so great. That's awesome. And then there's so much more at ease, because they know that they're in safe hands that actually end up editing a lot less than if they're like, nervous and flubbing everything. It's really cool.

Alesia Galati: 19:12

So true. And there's so many tools out there, editing tools that can help with so much of that anytime someone's like, so what tools do you use? I'm like, How long do you have? Like, I like how Riverside records, but I don't like how it edits. I prefer script edits, and Buzzsprout will always be the place I host, but I also have so many different things. But I do want to talk about some of the features that Buzzsprout has. You guys have been having some really fun new features coming out, but one that I think that is so core and so important is the website that each podcast gets. I cannot tell you how many times I have said, Hey, can you send me the link for that episode? Or can you send me the link for your podcast? And they send me to Apple podcasts. I am not an apple podcast user. I am not an Apple user at all. So when I get that, I'm like, now I have to go out of my way to find it, whereas with a buzz sprout website link, you can simply say, here's the website. They can listen right there, or you can find the apps right there on the side, it makes it so much easier to not stop your audience from being able to engage with the content quickly and easily. So that is my favorite feature.

Jordan Blair: 20:28

It's a huge feature, and it's so cool because it's just included in your plan. We don't charge extra for you to have a podcast website, and honestly, we went back and revamped the website. I don't know, time's kind of all twirly whirly for me a year ago. To you. I don't know how long ago we did it, but they're great. They look so good. You can customize your website. And we've had so many updates in the last few years where we kind of had to update the website. And I love your thought about, hey, don't send listeners to one single thing. Yeah, the podcast apps obviously want you to do that. Apple recommends. Send them to Apple podcasts, and they recommend that. But you don't really need to. And having a website is just so great, because especially like on Buzzsprout, we've got listener support and Buzzsprout subscriptions where you can have bonus episodes and ad free episodes, whatever, and then you can also have links to like all of your socials and your transcripts live on Buzzsprout. That's another thing that we've done recently is we've updated it so that's free transcripts for all. So we're just going back and on the new plans that we've revamped. We are going back and transcribing all the past episodes for people, and what that's doing is this is building in podcast discovery, because all these AI chat bots and stuff, they're just searching through all of these transcripts like crazy, and that's where people are starting to find more podcasts. And so for us to have these websites built in for all Buzzsprout users, where we're just automatically going back and transcribing it, which is really cool to do, because it used to be so expensive to transcribe episodes. Do you remember this? It was insane.

Alesia Galati: 22:15

I would use otter

Jordan Blair: 22:16

me too.

Alesia Galati: 22:17

I still use otter just because they go to all of my Zoom meetings with me, like, help me. And so we still use otter, but I would have to go into otter. That's actually why I even started with otter, was because I saw I needed the SRT file, yes, and so then I would use that. And so we would run all the episodes through that. But this has made it. We're like, oh, I don't have to do it for this client. We just uploaded. And we're good,

Jordan Blair: 22:40

yeah, it's done. It's totally done. And they're getting, like, all these AI transcription models are getting so accurate too, like, freaky accurate, and it's so awesome. How much I'm trying to think of what the word is like, how much tactile function is built into the buzz sprout websites. Because it helps with discovery. It helps with accessibility. It helps with people finding your podcast. It helps with people finding out how to support your podcast, if by it just it helps with absolutely everything. And so I also love the buzz bar websites too, and they look really professional, and it too doesn't cost extra. It's so cool.

Alesia Galati: 23:19

What about the contributors? Because that is a feature that you can have on your website, and I'm finding that to be really cool. What does it do on the I'm so curious on what it is, what is for. I think it looks great just to see, oh, this is the guest ad, and here's their bio, and here's their little profile page. But what are maybe some ways that we're maybe not understanding, I'm not fully understanding it.

Jordan Blair: 23:40

It's so funny, like we have so many things on our websites, like so many tools and stuff like this. I completely forgot about contributors, and they said it, and I got and they said it, and I got really excited for a second. It does. It looks so professional, so the contributors, so this is going to be like the podcast host, the producer, editor, any guests that you have, we've updated a lot of the titles, because it used to just be the the host and the guests, and that was it. And so with the podcast taxonomy project, they've been trying to really fine tune jobs in the podcasting industry. And so we decided to also adopt that into the contributors. Yeah, you can have like, host, co hosts, guest, producer, all that kind of stuff, and it looks so good, and that information actually gets pulled into a lot of podcast apps that will use the podcast standards, Project tags. So this is all like bunch of gobbledygook. I've been hanging out with tech guys for too long. I'm starting to speak like them. Basically. What happens is some of these podcast apps that are allowing the use of these tools, like they've integrated it into it, they will pull in the host information, guest information, and what's really cool is it all ties together, and so you can click on the host, or you can click on the guest, it'll show other things that they're so again, podcast discovery, it will show other things that they've taken part in the podcasting space. And I think that the first podcast app to do this was Apple podcasts. But the way that they do it is you have to fill out a form and have the headshot just so and it has to be, like, certain specs, and then you have to email them with the podcast ID, and, like, an ID so, like, it

Alesia Galati: 25:21

gets so hard.

Jordan Blair: 25:22

I know they make it so hard, and it's so funny because it's, actually, it's not that hard, but it sounds hard and scary, but it's, yeah, it's not that hard. And they're really good about updating that kind of stuff, and they'll make the images look good, like, I've noticed that they will change the backgrounds on the headshots if they don't like the backgrounds. Apple is so funny. They're so particular. But I mean, it looks. Good, but I think that they were the first ones to do it. And so if you're on a podcast and they have updated that information with Apple, which you can't do on your Apple dashboard for whatever reason, I really hope that Apple just adopts the tag for this and just starts pulling it in from the hosting companies, because it looks so professional. And like I said, it helps so much with podcast discovery. If you're like this guest or this co host is awesome. I want to hear what else they've been in. It's so easy to just click their picture and then you can see everything else that they've been in. It's really cool. Yeah,

Alesia Galati: 26:15

I'm even thinking too, like some of the CO hosts that I've been having on my show, and I call them co hosts loosely, right? Friends that I've had on my show to co host episodes with me. They're now coming back in future seasons, so under their profile as contributors, they have multiple episodes from my podcast that they've been on that can showcase on their profile page too. So yeah, it's so interesting. There's so many cool things, so

Jordan Blair: 26:42

many cool things. And again, I think that this is another thing that these llms or these chat bots can pull from. It's more information. They just eat information all the time. And so the more information you're providing them, the more discoverability your podcast is going to have, because if someone's interested in a guest that you had or they look them up, it'll mention that so and so was on this podcast and they talked about this, and they'd be like, Oh, that podcast sounds interesting. I want to listen up so and they click this. And they click the source, and then now they're listening to your podcast. It's more ways for things to get discovered. And it all kind of adds up. And it all seems really small, like just adding guests, adding transcripts, adding descriptions, making sure that your titles are nice and searchable, just all these little things really add up. And then over time, like the Ebola guy at one point, like something's gonna happen and people are gonna be really interested in whatever topic you covered.

Alesia Galati: 27:30

Yeah, so true. Another feature that I do want to make sure that we touch on, because I've seen this work in a really strangely incredible way, is fan mail.

Jordan Blair: 27:41

Bit

Alesia Galati: 27:42

about that.

Jordan Blair: 27:44

Fan Mail is my favorite. It's one of those things. I go to a lot of podcasting conferences and stuff, and when people come up and they're like, hey, what does buzz bro have? I'm like, Look at this. I love fan mail. It's my favorite. I get physically giddy of over it. And what? Okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do a little background on it. I told you that I co host the podcast about podcasting, and you know how important call to actions are on your podcast? I know this because I know that I noticed that you use dynamic content, which is another thing that we have to talk about. It's so powerful and it's so funny because a lot of people don't know about it, which is blows my mind. Yeah, so

Alesia Galati: 28:21

every client I have, we use dynamic content.

Jordan Blair: 28:23

I'm obsessed. It's so underutilized. So what would happen is we do a call to action at the end of every episode. Hey, we're going to talk about this topic next episode. Send in your questions. Send in stories that you have things like that. And I would do the whole rigmarole of being like and you can email us here, and you can tap the link to send us a message here, and you can use speak pipe, and you can send us a voicemail, and you can find us on Twitter, and you can send us a DM there. And what would happen is, as I'm episode planning, I'm suddenly pulling from like five different sources and trying to keep up with all these different messages, and then people are messaging me on different platforms about older episodes, and it just it was like madness. Our call to action got so long and so convoluted that Kevin, the co founder of Buzzsprout, he's like, there's gotta be a better way to do this. And so he and Alvin were just tinkering, and they figured out a way to link to SMS text messages, and they're like, Hey, Jordan, we linked up this phone number to the link, and we put in the thing. So now you're just gonna say that. And I was like, Okay, I don't understand the technicality of this, but whatever, I'm just gonna do it. And it was so funny because I so just tapped the Texas show link, and then you can message us. And the volume of messages that we were getting through. This was abnormal, like, just completely abnormal, because it was so accessible to everybody, whether you're on Android or on iPhone. It was so easy for people to just, like, in their phone, like, just tap that link, and then it opened up their text messaging app, and they just sent us a message. And we're like, oh, hang on, we got something here. As they run immediately to the developers, and they're like, Okay, we gotta start working on this. And we have a whole episode about the development of fan mail, because it's such a weird story. So they go to them, and then we develop it as a feature. And we just are like, You know what? We're just gonna include it in all plans, because this is awesome. Everyone should have this. And so we added fan mail, and then we recently added the ability to reply to fan mail, because before we want it to be like a back and forth thing, like you could have a segment on your show, but that doesn't work for everybody, and so we had the ability to reply to fan mail. And we also added voice messages, because voice messages are awesome, and you can pin them to again. Here we go again to the buzz bar website. Right? You can actually pin fan mail messages to your Buzzsprout website, and it's like a social proof sort of thing, where people can just say, Hey, I love your podcast so much. This has been so helpful. And you go, Great, thank you. And you pin it to your website, and it shows as a quote of someone saying how awesome you are. And yeah, so we've done fan mail and voicemails now with that too, and that's been so much fun.

Alesia Galati: 31:09

Yeah, so I saw it work really well for a client recently where someone reached out to them a via fan mail and said, Hey, this is and it was a she offers like consulting and like support around like boundaries and things like that, like personal coaching type of services. And someone reached out and was like, Hey, this is something I'm struggling with. What's the best action? And then she responded, No problem. Here's where you can book a call like to be able to have that kind of into I mean, texting is intimate. Nobody responds to texts, even their friends, even their parents, right at the time my husband's, are you gonna respond to my text messages? I'm like, You're literally in the other room. Do I need to? Can you just come talk to me? Right? I don't like responding, but to have, like, actually message somebody that you've put on some type of pedestal, right? Because there's something about being a podcast host that kind of puts you at this, like, fan girl kind of thing with people who listen, it's always very fascinating, and someone needs to study the psychology of that.

Jordan Blair: 33:16

Oh, yeah, they have. I've been reading the parasocial relationships like studies and everything, and it's a real thing. It's so real,

Alesia Galati: 33:24

yes, so like to have that conversation with a potential client, right? Who might it? Might have gotten lost in an email, or they might not have gone out of their way to actually send you a DM on social media that you maybe have missed because you don't check your DMS, right? To have somebody be able to easily text you shows right up in your inbox. See it on your buzz. Sprout account makes it so easy, and the fact that it's included in every single account, gold.

Jordan Blair: 33:52

And what I love about it is, obviously, I have a bunch of different social media accounts. I am a garbage millennial. I hate social media. I'm so bad at it. I'm so bad at social media. Do not follow me there. Don't do it. But fan mail. What I love about it is, so we have Buzzsprout mobile, which is, like the app, and this is what I love showing people when I go to conferences and they're like, oh, what's fan mail? What's that? And I'm like, let me show you. And I go to my podcast, and I'll just type a message to myself, like, hey, love your show, and it pops up as a little notification on my phone. And what I love about it is I know when I see the buzz sprout banner, it's going to be something really meaningful, right? Whereas when I keep getting these constant pings from Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and Reddit, I don't even want to look at it. It can be my mom sending me something like I and I will wait five days to even open it. I always tell people, do not message me on social media, because I'm gonna I just it gets blocked out. I don't look at it, but when I see a Buzzsprout little ping, because I know it's either going to be an achievement notification or a fan mail notification, and those are the two things I'm interested in, and that's it. And so I'll always open those immediately, because I get so excited.

Alesia Galati: 35:06

Yeah, it's such a cool feature. Okay, we do need to talk about dynamic content 1000s, because it is such an incredible use, I think, of our time and our effort and the amount of work that we put into, pre, roll content, post, roll every single outro for all of our clients, we always run through the dynamic content for the outro. And the reason we do that is because our outros change as our podcast evolves, as our accounts evolve, as things change, or maybe even the main title of your podcast changes. Maybe the topic didn't change, but the title changed. Like this. Show used to be called listeners to leads, but I wanted to go broader with talking more about podcasting stories. So change it to podcasting unlocked, and I didn't have to change every single previous episode. I could just insert a new outro. Thank you for listening to podcasting unlocked without having to go back. And I think that's such a good strategy. Let's talk about dynamic content. What is it for the uninitiated, who don't know what we're talking about, and what are some ways that we can use it,

Jordan Blair: 36:15

dynamic content? So what this is, this is a tool that I think typically will register to people as an advertising tool. Typically, when you talk about dynamically inserted content, people think ads, they immediately go to ads. It is so much more powerful than just ads. There are some people that have a lot of luck with using dynamic pre roll, which is the content that goes before the episode for their theme intro. I don't always recommend using the pre roll for that, because you might have an announce. Meant that you need to make or something like that. But for some people, it works really well for them, and that's just so much easier for them. It's easier for them to just piece it together. They'll just have their intro in there, and then they have their content, and then they have their outro, and that's it. And then the outro would be the post role, which is behind the episode, and then the mid roll is what goes like right in the middle of the podcast content. And what's really cool is that's, like, algorithmically inserted, and we have an algorithm that's, like, very careful about where it puts the content, and there's this nice little transition music that goes into it, and then you'll hear, like, the message, and that transitions back into your episode, and it sounds really good. It chooses great places for it to be, and you can adjust those too if you need to. But dynamic content is so good for timely information. This could be if you have a special going on with your merch store, or if you're doing a class or a course, and it's just this timely thing that you don't want to be sitting in your podcast content forever. So for example, my husband is he has a podcast about, like, UFOs and aliens, and we're going to a UFO festival next month in Oregon. And so, like, it's one of those things, like he was talking about, oh, I want to tell listeners that we're going to be there and look out for us. And I was like, use dynamic content because you don't want it to be in there forever, because then people are gonna be listening two, three months from now, and they'll go, dang, yeah, I missed that. And then, like, a year from now, they might be listening and think that it's for the UFO festival the next year, and they'll get confused. So it's so much easier just to record that and put it on your entire back catalog. Or you can even select what episodes you want to use, we'll sometimes use it if we're going to, like different conferences, just announcements for like, meetups too. It works really well. There's just so many things. Or if you need to take a break from your podcast, you can totally do that. You can record just like, a quick message and say, like, Hey guys, my kids are on spring break, and I need a little bit of a break too. So I will see you all in two weeks. Until then, enjoy the rest of the back catalog and make sure to follow the show. And it works just so well for timely things like that. They just don't want to live in your podcast forever. Also like affiliate marketing, it's awesome. You can record host, read sponsorships, if we want to go the monetization route. You could use it to record a promo for supporting your podcast. Hey, if you get value from this podcast, you want to help me continue creating it. Tap the support the show button in the show notes, like you can do that. And what's really cool about dynamic content is that if you record a message, you can actually attach a description and a link to that dynamic content, and we will automatically insert it into your show notes. So no matter what you can say, hey, click the link in the episode description, or I have details in the episode description about how to fill out our listener survey for this year, whatever it is, you can just use it for all sorts of things. And I'm sure I'm just even scraping the surface of what people are always surprising me, you're the first person I've talked to that's, oh yeah, I use it for the outro. And I'm like, That's so smart. I never even thought about that. I've heard intro a million times, but not outro. Maybe you have a different call to action. Maybe instead of using speak pipe and Facebook and your email and all that stuff. Now maybe the thing to get a hold of you is going to be fan mail, and so you can just update your outro to tap the text to show link, and it's so much easier.

Alesia Galati: 40:19

So much easier. Yeah, I have a whole episode on dynamic content, how to use it from a like selling your own products, and like, how to make sure for that mid roll doing, and we'll link it in the show notes, in the YouTube description. But usually I recommend a free product, a low price product, and then a hey, book a call, and let's talk about your specific problem. And that tends to work really well. We had a client recently use the pre roll for like, an affiliate discount that she was just a part of for a limited time. I recently used it on my hobby podcast because I changed the release date from I think it was Wednesdays to Fridays, or Mondays to Fridays, and so I just put it in for about a month of paid just a heads up to all the past episodes. Our episodes are now releasing on Fridays instead of whatever day it was before. So just be sure to make sure that you're not looking for it on this day. We're on this day now. And I didn't get any messages of saying, Hey, where's the episode this week? No, I count that as a win. It

Jordan Blair: 41:22

is such a win, I'm just reminded now I've also used it for episode creation. I used to do this a lot. I don't do it anymore because it took a lot of time, but I used to do a listener poetry episodes in April, because April is Poetry Month. And I would do a call to action from February to March. And I would tell them, hey, April is Poetry Month. Make sure to send in your poetry if you like writing poetry, if you want it featured on the thing we'll do. Whole episode reading listener poetry, and it was one of my most popular episodes I've done, and I was able to just insert it as a pre roll in all my episodes, calling for it, and I'd get 40 submissions for listener poetry, and I would just put them all together, and then take off the pre roll when I was done, and like, yeah, no one had to hear it. It's so good. It's such a good tool, and so many people don't know about it. It just it makes me go, like, what you gotta know all about this?

Alesia Galati: 42:15

How dare you? Yeah, we could literally talk for hours about all the incredible features. There's a monetization. There's like so much that we could go deeper on so much. Yeah, maybe we need to have you back.

Jordan Blair: 42:26

I was gonna say, if you want me back, I would love I can talk about this all day,

Alesia Galati: 42:30

but for people who are like, Okay, you sold me fine. I'm gonna join Buzzsprout. We do have the affiliate link in the show notes, so go grab that. But where can people connect with you? Get to know more about the Buzzsprout podcast as well.

Jordan Blair: 42:45

Absolutely. You can find us@buzzsprout.com but be sure to use that affiliate link in alesia's show notes. And I can also be found at the Facebook community group. It's the buzz brow Facebook community group. I'm the admin there. I am always active. I'm always flitting around and talking to people. It's a huge group. It's really supportive group. Everyone's really awesome. And you can also find me@buzzcast.buzzsprout.com super easy. That's our podcast about all things podcasting. And if you enjoy this show, I'm sure you'll enjoy that one too. Yeah,

Alesia Galati: 43:18

absolutely. And we'll have all those links in the show notes and the YouTube description for anyone listening while doing other things. Jordan, this was so much fun. Thank you so much for being on. Thank

Jordan Blair: 43:29

you.

Unknown: 43:29

You.