This is the podcast for digital creators by digital creators with me, your host, Dylan Schmidt. Let's dive into insights on content entrepreneurship, creator strategies, and the occasional random topic because why not? Whether you're on day 1 or 1,000 of being a digital creator, Let's learn and grow together. You're listening to digital creator. In today's episode, I wanted to talk about something that I saw gain some traction on threads from Instagram, from Neil Patel, who is a content marketer, SEO specialist, has his own digital marketing agency, Really well known in the content marketing world, and he posted something that I saw get a lot of pushback and a lot of differing opinions. So what I thought I would do is read his post, share a little bit about the argument that people are having around this post, and just offer some insight that I think we could learn from around podcasting and blogs. So Neil's post said, you should create a podcast, not a blog. There are more than 1,000,000,000 blogs. There are 7,800,000,000 people in this world. To put it in perspective, we have 1 blog for every 7.8 people in this world. We don't need that many blogs. That's why 87.34% of the pages in our database get no search traffic from Google. Just think about that. 87.34% of the web pages out there get no traffic from search engines. It's a big waste of time and money. On the flip side, there are roughly 4,200,000 podcasts. That's roughly 1 podcast for every 1,857 people, But that's not competitive, when compared to blogging. Plus, podcast listeners have money. 51% of podcast listeners have a household income of at least $75,000. On top of that, 61% of podcast listeners have a 4 year college degree. In comparison, only 44% of the entire population has a 4 year degree. Start a podcast. I thought that was interesting because all the pushback it received, and I don't know if it's just because of him And he's maybe polarizing maybe the way he delivered the advice he's giving in this post. But I saw one thing that was interesting. Someone with a large Following Post ID, you know, they had been podcasting for 900 plus episodes, and they had been blogging for something like 22 years and that People should focus on blogging first and then do podcasting, and that most podcasts are boring. And I found that interesting, just the whole discussion around it, because Podcasting and blogging to me are similar in some ways and absolutely different in a lot of ways. Number 1, and this is because my background in content repurposing, is a podcast Can be made into a blog, but a blog can't easily be made into a podcast. If we're looking at, like, just holistically 3 60 view of content, if you start with a podcast, You can repurpose it into so many things. You might have heard me talk about on a podcast for around 1 hour of podcast Content. You can get about 7 great clips for social media. Now depending on how you structure your podcast, you could even get a lot more. Just last week, I was making clips For a client of ContentClips, and she had a 4 and a half minute YouTube video that she made, and it was structured so well that I was able to get 6 posts from a 4 and a half minute video. Now there was 3 videos and 3 images, and then there's these beefy captions that go with them. And when we're looking at, like, the differences between podcasts and blogs, the is vastly different. Now it's not to say, you know, there's not value in blogging and writing and things like that, but they're absolutely different skill sets. I wrote for years before starting This podcast but those skills did not translate really well, at all into podcasting. What translated well was just podcasting, Was getting comfortable talking on the microphone, was getting comfortable seeing my cell phone camera, reaching out to people that I had never met, Having conversations with them, getting better at listening. When it comes to writing for podcasting, show notes, things like that, Yeah. Sure. That's gonna be helpful if you have a background in blogging. With AI tools these days like ChatGBT, and Cast Magic is another one I like to use, There's not as much need to absolutely hone your writing skills as much. Like, texts can be produced at a larger scale quicker and cheaper than it's ever been able to be done before. Your voice, Yeah. You could say there's AI tools and things like that, but from, like, an a branding perspective of what you're creating with your voice, the conversations you're having, your voice Can't be as easily duplicated by AI, especially the unique thoughts you have, the unique opinions and perspectives. And, sure, that can't be through written word as well. But when it comes from best bang for your buck as far as time spent on content creation, it's hard to argue that podcasting is not one of the best ROIs that you can get with creating content. Now, again, there's still value in blogs. I don't think it's like a big either or. Also, who's dead set on becoming a blogger in 2024? That doesn't seem like The smartest move. It seems like a core part of the strategy, but if you made podcasting your tent pole and I wrote about this recently in my newsletter, Tint poll marketing. So the main thing holding up your strategy could be a podcast, and then with podcast, everything else happens. It's the gear that makes everything else turn. You make the podcast. That is how you get your voice out into the world. That is how you meet people. That is how you network. That's how you connect. That's how you create micro pieces of content. That's how you create the blog. That's how you develop these relationships that you wouldn't have otherwise had. With blogging, from what I've seen, and I spend a lot of time in this content world. I just don't see blogs being this profitable thing as much anymore. People are going to ChatGPT and TikTok and places like that To look up answers for information, whereas blogs previously held that information people were looking for, they still do, but ChatGPT is not always gonna be giving you credit, And it's just changing. The way written content is online is just changing. For audio, is there much competition when you have a unique voice that's having unique conversations that people can't get anywhere else. Is there competition for that? I don't know. I can't say that there really is much competition if you're having, you know, that unique angle on things, And you're putting it on things like TikTok where people are looking up things and then you pop up and a clip from your podcast pops up. Just think these days When you are watching stuff on social media, clips, video clips, and stuff like that, which is more popular than images these days, those clip like, so many of clips are podcast clips. I just kind of wanted to break this down because podcasting, blogging, to me, I see them as vastly different, and you can Easily podcast to blog, but you can't easily blog to podcast. People are gonna be less interested in that. But you could also Do your research on a podcast, and that research could lay the foundation for making your blog. So it comes, I think down to having a smart approach to your content, realizing what you're gonna get out of it and how you wanna monetize it, and seeing What you're creating with your content as a vehicle, not a means to an end. For most people I meet, most creators, Their end goal is not the podcast. Their end goal is not a blog. It's not an Instagram post. That is leading people to somewhere else. I believe the best term for this would be like a flywheel where they all kind of work together. Right? They listen to the podcast, and then they go to the show notes, and then they click a link to work with you or sponsor your show. Maybe they get on your email newsletter or maybe they watch a social media clip, and then they go watch your podcast, but they also get on your email newsletter. Or maybe they watch your video on social media, a podcast clip, and they go and sign up for your newsletter, and your newsletter directs them to your podcast. They're all working together, not necessarily the end goal being just the thing that you're posting. Now for YouTube, you You might see a lot of YouTubers out there who it is their end goal. Marcus Brownlee, like, he's posting a video. He might sell other things like shoes or office gadgets or something. But for the most part, it's just getting YouTube views. It's not leading people to a service with him. There's very few people out there That are doing things at that scale to make it completely worthwhile. Not saying you can't, but majority of creators I'm speaking with are not just Posting for the views. They're posting because that's leading to something else they're doing. All of this for consideration on how you're developing your marketing strategy, especially as we go into 2024 and being smarter and not just working harder. Because if you're like most creators I speak with, you're working really hard and you're doing a lot. And there might be ways that you could do less and get a higher result through optimizing your time in the way that you structure your research and the content that you're publishing. One thing that I know I'll be doing more of in 2024 is long form content that will turn into clips, Something that hasn't changed too much dramatically in the last couple of years of what I've been doing, but it always comes back to working smarter, not harder. And one of the best ways you can do that is through podcasting and other long form types of content that you can turn into clips, that you can turn into images, And it's through making the packaging of those clips and images really high quality that make them successful. So if you wanna see how I'm doing it, just watch what I'm doing, and, yeah. Alright. That's all I got for this episode. If you don't already have a podcast or not creating long form content, 2024 might just be the year that you double down on it. Get to you in the next episode.