Welcome to Digital Podcaster. My name is Dylan Schmidt, your host. And in this episode, I want to talk about how to grow your content and audience. Because what made me want to make this is I was reading a survey the other day that a company did. And they were asking podcasters, what are the most challenging things they have making a podcast and the biggest, like the top three things, were growing an audience consistently and attracting listeners and getting discovered by listeners. And I found that to be really interesting, because at the bottom of the list, there were like 10, things, the smallest thing was editing, people had the least amount of problems with editing. But when it came to marketing, and growing their show, that was the biggest thing, and is right in line with what I've been seeing, but I didn't have a survey data to back it up like they did, I would love to do a survey of my own in the future. But right now I don't. So I was using their survey or reading their survey. And what I found there realizing that is, it's in line with what I see and what I was thinking, because I see this problem consistently across the board with podcasters, with people who are making content is they make the content, and then they maybe enjoy the process of it, maybe they enjoy making it, they start to maybe get a little bit of traction, but then they stop because they're not seeing any feedback. And it's weird, because there's that fine line of balance between making the content and getting feedback, like people will say, I don't do it for the numbers or the likes or the views or this or that. But the reality is you're publishing it on a public platform and you want feedback, you want engagement, you want results, that's why you'd be doing it. If you didn't do that, you would just make it for yourself and not have any goal like that. So I'm going to talk about ways that I think you can improve. And it's a lot simpler than you would think on how you can grow consistently and get your content discovered by more people. Because I've seen it, I speak regularly with a lot of podcasters, who are frustrated by this, and they give up or they fade away because they think nobody's paying attention. And maybe you've created content, and you aren't getting any traction with what you're making. And maybe you're tired of making something for nobody because I know I have been the last thing in the world is you make it and then nobody sees it, or nobody hears it, whatever it is. So the problem is, so many people think that it's either too late, or it's too hard to get discovered and stand out. And 99.9% of the time when I see someone say this, and then I look at their content, it's so obvious to me why their content and why their audience isn't growing, it's hard to objectively or subjectively look at your content, because you put so much into it, you're so close to it, it's if a musician was making an album, and then you know, they release it to the world. And everybody has their own interpretation of what the album means to them. And I don't know if you've ever heard this, but sometimes musicians will be like, Oh, no, I wrote that song about my ex girlfriend. And everyone thought it was about some world thing going on. Maybe they thought it was like something to do with war. But in reality, it was actually just about their ex girlfriend and a heart breakup song. So everyone has their own interpretation of what something might mean, it's not saying this is right or wrong, you need to be clear in that way. But you got to get feedback from a credible source on how your content is if you want to grow because it's just so hard to do naturally. And that's why I think growing your audience is important in the first place. If you can get that feedback, then you can grow without feedback, it's really hard to grow. So if your goal is to monetize your content as well, it's got to be engaging. And if you're not growing your content and audience regularly, it's a clear indication that your content isn't engaging. And I'll share a little bit more about that on how you can make your content more engaging, because that's a key piece to making your content better and more discovered and growing. And that's the biggest reason also, like I mentioned, why people stopped making content is because the audience isn't engaged, if the audience can stay engaged, then they're going to be more likely to share it, they're going to be more likely to stick around and they're going to be more likely to consume more of what you put out there the solution for you. So one of the key pieces I've found when it comes to podcasters content creators to improve their engagement to improve their retention rate to improve their marketing efforts is to focus on what's called the 8020 rule. And you might be familiar with this, you might not so I'll explain it, the 8020 rule in marketing means 80% of your results should come from 20% of your effort. 80% of your results should be coming from 20% of your effort. That means you need to be doing less and getting more results. And that's upside down for most people. Because most people think they need to be omnipresent meaning they need to publish everywhere. If you got a podcast, you got to post on all the social media platforms. If you're on one social media platform, you got to do all of them. But that's couldn't be further from the truth. When you're just starting out. Especially you should focus on the key piece. Notice I didn't say pieces, the key piece that's going to move it forward the most that's going to get you the most traction and that looks different for everybody. I can't tell you the exact thing you need to do, but I can give you some ideas. And I've been doing a lot of podcasts coaching interviews each Tuesday on my podcast Digital Podcaster. And a common theme has been when I talk with people there's not a list of things that I give them to do. It always has There's one theme, and it's a different theme each week. So some of the themes from the podcast, for example, have been oh, this person needs to focus on growing an email list, or this person needs to improve the design of their content. Notice, that's two different things like the design of their content and growing an email list are two different things. And people with different goals and different stages of whether ad should have different focuses. But I wouldn't focus on improving the design of your content and making an email list at the same time, go super deep on improving the design of your content. And then maybe it might make sense for your next step to be growing your email list, or it might be publishing more something like that. Or it might be creating a content calendar and sticking with it, or it might be improving the headlines that you're using for your content, you have to identify that one key piece, for example, I was talking with someone on the podcast yesterday, and they do a podcast with their friends. And they do a great job at the podcast on the podcast. But I noticed they're putting in all this effort to try and join Facebook groups to promote their podcast, they are trying to dominate YouTube, they're trying to do everything and they're not seeing any results. And it gets, it's just, it's like spending a bunch of money, you're not going to get the return on the investment, it bums me out seeing that because I'm like you're doing all this hard work and you're not getting the traction. So one of the ways you can do even the same amount of work or less, oftentimes less is focusing on that key piece you need to fix. So again, that could be improving the design of your content, because that's going to get someone's attention could be growing an email list, maybe your designs are great, but you need to start getting an email list. So you can have a more one to one connection with your people. Maybe it's you're at a stage where you need to start delivering or offering some type of service or digital product to work closer with you. That makes sense for some people as well. So whatever it is, you got to identify that key piece that's going to do that 20% It's gonna give you the 80% of the results. I hope that helped. My goal is helping creators get better at growing an audience consistently. And just like I recommended for you to do is identify that one key piece, if you notice, I didn't give you 18 strategies on how to grow because I'm not saying for you. It's the same as going to a Facebook group and spamming that I'm not saying join Reddit and do all that. All I'm saying is the one piece of homework for you to take away is identify the key piece for you to focus on and then build on that for like the next month or so or whatever timeline it makes sense. But a real quick too when we talk about improving the design of your content. I'm not saying oh, I just made this design and ago I'm saying also test to write if you're improving the design of your content, that doesn't simply mean making something in Canva and then moving on. No, it's like improving the design means you've got to create the design. You've got to test the design over time and tweak it so that it's catching the most people's attention and they're clearly understanding the value you're trying to add in that content. I hope that helps. Let me know feel free to send me an email at hello at Digital podcaster.com Let me know what key thing you have that you want to focus on. And let's keep the conversation going. So I will talk to you soon.