Stop Posting Everywhere | Joni Deutsch | Full Battery Media

In this episode, I sit down with Joni Deutsch, Senior Vice President of Marketing and Audience Development at The Podglomerate, to uncover what it actually takes to grow a successful podcast. We discuss why so many creators experience podcast burnout, how unrealistic download goals can kill momentum, and why understanding your audience should come before trying to dominate every social media platform.

Joni breaks down the key pillars of podcast marketing, including cross-promotions, publicity, paid advertising, podcast app features, SEO, GEO, and audience data. We also explore the difference between downloads and genuine listens, why completion rates matter, and how analytics can help creators improve their content instead of relying on guesswork. From distributing your show across podcast apps to deciding whether video adds real value, this conversation offers practical strategies for both new and experienced podcasters. We also examine the importance of titles, thumbnails, branding, audience personas, and setting realistic growth benchmarks.

What is the biggest challenge currently stopping your podcast from reaching its next level?

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

I I'm all for aspiration. I I want someone to feel like they have a uh a goalpost to that they'd like to hit, whether immediately or sometime in the future, you know, it gives us something to work towards. But I think a goalpost that has been established, especially by some of the biggest podcasts in the world, has been I want to get to the top of the charts and a million downloads today or tomorrow or by the end of my first season. And um if you have a great team around you who are established in the space of podcast marketing and audience growth, um, because marketing at large is different than podcast marketing and publicity. They, they, there are different types and vehicles and um relationships built. So if you have a team that's established, if you have um, you know, uh a good production strategy, so the guests you're bringing on, are they individuals that have sizable social media audiences or even sizable substacks and sizable podcast audiences in the digital media content creator space? Um those are just a few of the considerations of what we can do to make it more feasible to get to that one million download mark. But that's not always the case if someone has those resources or those connections. And so they can't hit a million downloads in a week.

SPEAKER_01 1:21

And they just, again, they give up everybody back to the Full Battery Media Podcast. I'm your host, Sean Trace, and I have an awesome guest with me today. Would you like to tell me who you are and a little bit about what you do?

SPEAKER_02 1:42

Sure. I'm Joni Deutsch. I'm the senior vice president for marketing and audience development at the podglomerate. Uh, that's an award-winning services firm where we do production, monetization, and marketing audience growth for a wide variety of podcasts, brands, networks. List goes on.

SPEAKER_01 1:57

That's awesome. How did you start into the podcast world? What was it that kicked you off down this path?

SPEAKER_02 2:02

I've been working in media for at this point nearly 16 years. And what started me 16 years ago nearly was a love for media, pop culture, music discovery, radio, journalism. And uh, so at the time in the early 2010s, that was really um a good point to also love podcasting. Um, so I was naturally doing more radio broadcast work, public radio NPR work here in the States, um, production, hosting, editing, national programming list goes on. But part of that did include podcasting because a lot of those radio programs wanted to put their radio shows uh just entirely from radio into a podcast feed. Um, so I was experimenting around that point of well, a radio audience is not the same as a podcast audience for various reasons. So putting a one-hour show into a podcast feed and making no edits or cuts to it or additions is not going to do the trick for an audience growth strategy. So I experimented with that with public radio shows and over time did more and more work in the podcast space, podcast marketing, podcast audience growth, podcast events, podcast production, podcast hosting. And um, you know, as I did that, the industry also was evolving around me, around, you know, serials launched in 2014, which really helped spur the genre or the medium for podcasting with interest, with production, monetization. And um, you know, everyone's been learning and growing since then, myself included.

SPEAKER_01 3:28

I love that. Like it there is this um there is this definite wave of people getting interested into it and people entering into the field. One of the things that I think is so cool of that is I worked in Hollywood. I worked in Hollywood proper. And when I was younger, I tried to break into acting. I tried to break in, and the walls were rough. Like it was tough. You would go and talk to people. And I remember this one guy that's a famous director that came to the place I worked all the time, and he was always like, Hey, Sean, if you ever need help, if you ever need this. And then suddenly, like he was just always like, Talk to me. If you need anything, let me know. And one day, he gave me my number. He's like, talk to me, give me a call. One day he was like, I saw he was casting for this big project. And I was like, dude, this guy's always told me, reach out, I'll help you out. I reached out and he was like, You need to have your agent go through the appropriate channels. And I was just like, Yeah, ouch. Like, I mean, I did you told me this. And I then talked to my agent. My agent was like, you know what? It's challenging, this and that. And years later, I when when podcasting came out, I was like, so I get to say what I want, I get to do what I want, I get to produce what I want, I get to talk to who I want. And like, there's no one, and then all I gotta do is pay this little subscription fee, and I get to host it, it goes out to the same place as all of these major shows are out at. Oh, I like that.

SPEAKER_02 4:55

It's a great equalizer. The fact that you can anyone in the world, right? So long as you have a way to record your voice and a way to upload it to the internet, you're able to do whatever you want. There are any states, there's no FCC regulation around what you can or can't say for better or worse. Um, but the fact is, this is the medium where you can get into it. You feel like it's your own, you make it your own, the format, the structure, the gas, whatever. You make it, you break it, you evolve. And there's a lot of freedom in that um and a lot of uh evolution as well, as we've seen over the last few months and years.

SPEAKER_01 5:28

I love that. And I I completely agree. I I think that um it's gonna be interesting to see where it goes now because I it it's still developing, but like there's a lot, and you know, you work with people to start podcasts. You work with people like the teams, like your company does that. Like, and I want to ask you that. Like, if someone starts a podcast today with zero audience, what should they focus on first?

SPEAKER_02 5:52

Yeah. I mean, you're right, Sean. We've worked with uh the company has been around for nearly a decade. I've only been here for about four or five-ish years of that. Um, but the time I've been here, we've been proud to represent Netflix, NPR, PBS, Harvard, um, big shows from the Boston Globe, Free Economics Radio. Um, a list goes on and on. Um, for-profit, nonprofit, independent, you name it. And whenever someone is coming to our company for uh, let's say, at least in this case, marketing, since that's the department I oversee, they come to us for marketing for a brand new show, maybe hasn't even launched yet. Um, you know, there's a few things we consider. One is what are the goals of the show and the producer and the stakeholders? Is the goal to uh drive a net new audience? Is it to drive retentive audience over time? Is it to get major features in certain publications or outlets or newsletters or other podcasts? Uh, if they want their host to be interviewed on, let's say, Joe Rogan show or on an NPR program. Um, those are all key in our internal conversations because we want to make sure that the guiding light of our marketing strategy, of our audience growth strategy, includes those elements so we can hit the mark and make our client proud and want to work with us again in the future. And that's usually the case. We do a great job. They want to work with us in the future. But the marketing tactics we employ are pretty standard across the board. We have what we've referred to as six pillars of work, um, one of them being marketing. So we look at everything that that client or that show has at their disposal, their social media, their newsletter, their website, apps, radio, television, broadcast signals to be able to optimize them, not just optimize them to, you know, get that current audience to become their podcast audience, but also SEO optimization, GEO optimization. So we want them to be ranked on LLMs. If someone is asking an LLM, hey, what are the best business podcasts, or hey, what are the best hosts in podcasting focused on this topic? We want them listed because that's where more and more people are getting their information. Um, the other pillars of our work include cross promos with other podcasts. So that way there's exchange of uh either promotional material or even guests on interviews, um, podcast app pitches. So we have close relationships with Apple, Spotify, and the other editorial apps for potential features in those apps, which are great. Um, paid advertising, if any of the shows we represent uh have budget, we create a strategy and execute upon it once we have their approval to get ads in major properties, podcasts, newsletters, podcast apps that allow for advertising. Um, and then also publicity. We're pitching for media coverage, we're pitching for interviews in prominent outlets or niche ones, depending on their target audience type. And throughout it all, we're also doing data management. So we are keeping track of their downloads, their follows, their um if they're on video, their their uh views, and also episode consumption completion and just generally attribution. Um, if we're looking at promotions running an external feed, we want to know if that actually caused the audience to convert over to our show. So it's a lot of work and we specify that a little bit towards each client because they have different goals. But generally speaking, that's what we do to help show uh with proper launch strategy.

SPEAKER_01 9:01

I love that. And it's it's interesting too because I think one of the things people do not realize is how much work it's gonna take. You know, um you are gonna have a lot that you do. You're gonna have a lot that you do, but the reward is amazing if you have a plan, if you have a strategy. Like it's not like um you don't want to just kind of pull a shotgun method, you know, where you're just like spraying and hoping something hits the wall. But you know, you want to make sure that you have a focused goal that you're working towards, at least in my opinion. I think that there's a lot that can be done, but sometimes the challenges, though, at the beginning, you don't know. You just start putting things out and you have to figure out who is your audience? Like what are they like and how are they engaging with you? And that that's that refinement process because in the beginning, you kind of have to just hope and put stuff out and see what you start doing. But, you know, after you get a plan in place, you can start refining it.

SPEAKER_02 10:05

It's true. Um, a lot of podcasters starting out are ones that they may, this is the first time they're going into the medium. Uh, this is, you know, maybe they're more familiar with production versus marketing or publicity or advertising. And they're usually a one-person team, right? So they're trying to do everything all on their own and they may not have the expertise, the time, the bandwidth, um, the proper strategy in place. And so that's what usually leads to podcast burnouts. And studies show that usually it's like five episodes. If you can get to five episodes, you're doing well as a podcaster because up to that point, usually people drop out because of the work involved, the late nights, the, you know, the lack of structure for what they're doing. And they don't see immediate results. So they give up on it. And um, you know, that's that's why people hire my team, my marketing team, but also the pod Guomerates production team and/or monetization team, because, you know, we have expertise in this, years and years of it, award-winning um insights. And we come in, being able to take that burden off of the podcaster's shoulders of, hey, you do the thing that you know you can do best. And that's hosting the show or producing it, um, then we can handle all the other elements to help boost you up. And we work hand in hand because you're right. Production goes hand in hand with marketing, with monetization at sales. And um, if you have those silos set up and you don't communicate, it's it's not going to be an effective holistic structure for your show at large.

SPEAKER_01 11:32

No. And I like how you say the holistic structure, because again, if you do any of these different elements in a in in a vacuum, it's it gets lopsided. You know, if you have a great conversation, but you don't have great editing or great distribution. If you don't have great people putting things out there, if you don't have people that are really knowing how to get people to listen, it can be challenged, you know? And that leads to my next question is like, why do some podcasts get lots of listeners while others don't?

SPEAKER_02 12:07

So many reasons. Uh, one is that they maybe had you referred to it as like this, it's the spray and pray strategy. So maybe they spent a lot of time uh to get the word out on various platforms. So they were on all the social media accounts, the LinkedIn, Twick, TikTok, uh IG, Facebook, um, when their audience was only on one of those. So they could have been really focused their strategy on the one and doing it extremely well. But instead, they diluted their efforts across many, many vehicles. And in doing so, they only saw a bit of the results from one rather than strong results from the one and only. Um, so it could be they didn't understand their target audience. Maybe they also didn't have proper branding. So part of our work is also consulting with the client around what is your visual branding? What is your tagline? What is the title? What are the episode titles? How are they constructed? Which all tie into SEO, but also just generally speaking, you know, if you walk into a bookstore and you look at a book cover, yes, you are judging the book cover for what it is in the few seconds you have it being in front of you. Same thing with podcast apps or with hearing an audio ad playing in your favorite podcast. If you're not framing it properly, if the uh visual design elements of it or the title are confusing or don't immediately relay what the show is about, then you're losing your audience pretty quickly before they even really get to hear you truly in your podcast feed. So that is also a key role in this. Um, also, just generally speaking, again, the audience growth. Is it that you want brand new audience and you don't care how you get it? And you can pay for your way to the very top of the podcast charts, but that's not necessarily legitimate audience. It is a vanity metric versus something that it is truly growing over time, and you know that there is a person out there in the world listening to it, and you need to monitor the analytics along with it to know that. So there's so many reasons why a podcast can fail in this day and age. And again, at the end of the day, it's also competitive. Now there are a billion shows, less than that are active, you know, they're dormant, but there's still a lot of competition out there for eyes and ears and podcasts on television, on radio, and media, and social media. So um, if you're not perfecting and knowing what you're doing and why you're doing it in the audience for it, then um probably not gonna go over well for you.

SPEAKER_01 14:27

That's so true. I wanted to ask you this question too. Um, if I only have 10 listeners, how do I get to 100? What do I, what can I do to grow the core number of people that are tuning in? And I mean, is it is that the most important metric? Is it like should we be focused on listeners or should we have focused on the type of content we're creating? I would love to know.

SPEAKER_02 14:50

My counter question then would be what have you, you know, hypothetically, I don't think you're referring to yourself, but what have you done today to market your show? What has been your strategy and how have you been monitoring it with uh whatever metrics you have available to you? So if you're on a hosting platform, does your hosting platform of choice, whether it's video and or audio based, um, give you the analytics to know your downloads, but more than that, your plays, because a download and a play are two different things. A download gives you a sense of someone that checked out your book at the library, but doesn't give you a sense of did they actually read the book they checked out versus a play where you actually get to see that they, yes, you they checked out your book at the library, but then they also did engage with it for a certain period of time. That makes them a true listener. Um, that's a key distinction. And if you don't have access to that data, then we're kind of starting you up brand new with a marketing strategy because there really isn't anything to tell us before what was effective or not. Um, so that's one thing I'd consider with a counter question. But with the metrics that you're saying at large, yes, the downloads and plays, you know, they do go in tandem. So it's good to have both. Um, the other things I'd look into are um, you know, if you are able to have tracking established, so attribution platforms like Magellan or Swap FM or even Megaphone as a hosting platform has attribution capabilities to it. Can we use that or do you have access to that? So that way for future promotions, let's say we're doing a cross promo with your show and how I built this with Guy Ross. When we give them the script for Guy, the host to record promoting your show, can we also give his team an attribution pixel to run in that spot running in how I built this feed that promotes your show? So that way we can actually see the number of people that listen to that spot and then how many of that convert over to becoming a listener to your show and a retentive listener in the process. Those key metrics, I would say, would be core to your strategy. And it depends on your goals. If you want followers, you want to increase your followers by 100%, then we'd also want to make sure we have an understanding of where you currently are with your Apple and Spotify followers or episode consumption completion. If you look at your data right now on either your Apple Podcast Connect or your Spotify for Creators dashboard, what is your episode consumption completion rate? Is it 10%? Is it 110%? Which means that someone loves it so much they're actually listening to it after they listen to the first time around. Um, if it's 60 to 70%, that's an industry benchmark that you're doing well. If it's less than 60%, though, especially for audio, then I would say you should reconfigure the content even just a little bit. If that's reducing the duration of the episodes from 45 minutes to 10 minutes or 30, that's going to do you better in the long run because you're servicing your audio audience. So they're listening to you closer to completion, which means that they are going to be more retentive, which is then going to grow your audience even further in the long run.

SPEAKER_01 17:46

That's so interesting. And I'm sitting here listening as a person who has four podcasts. I'm a bit weird like that. I but I mean, I do a lot of things right. And yet I do a lot of things wrong. And this is like, I have a can I share a little bit about my podcast? I don't know if you know all of them. I I don't talk about all this all the time, and I don't didn't send it over in my bio. Um, I have my the Sean Trace show, which is all about like self-help. I talk to like Navy SEALs and athletes and people that do cool stuff that I'm just fascinated by. Then I have my Growing Money with Sean Trace podcast, which is a financial podcast, that I talk to financial planning professionals because my 10-year-old daughter started asking me about money, and I had no idea what I was doing. And so I wanted to learn about that, and that's become a thing, man, and it's become an awesome podcast. And then I've got my Barrels and Roots podcast, which is all about wine, because I grew up in the Napa Valley and I love talking to winemakers. It's just so fascinating to me. And then I have this podcast, my Full Battery Media Podcast, because I love talking to content people. Now, why do I do it? Because all of them are centered around my curiosity of life. And I am regular, I have a great team that I, because I live in Vietnam, I'm able to do that, you know. But it's easier for me just because I have done a lot of it myself and I'm a, you know, in video production. But like, let me take a couple of steps back. What I'm trying to get at is I put up nine episodes a week, two episodes per show, you know, three episodes for another show. And we, we, we hammer it out, and I know how I get things out, and I know how I'm marketing and I know how I'm building things. But there's so here's the thing, when you're talking, and I would consider myself someone who's done this and who I've got 300 episodes on the Sean Trade show. Growing Money has 170. Uh, Barrels and Roots has 50. This one has 50. You know, I feel like I'm doing stuff right. But you know what, Johnny, I'm gonna admit straight up to you, when you were just talking there, I realized how much I don't know. Like, there is so much that I do not know. You can't know everything. And that's why I'm so glad there are companies like what you guys are doing that are helping people. And there are people out there that are helping people because if you don't know what you don't know, how do you even know what questions to ask for growth? You know, it's like that's one of the challenges for me. Like, I feel like I'm doing it right. My team's like, are we doing everything right? I'm like, I hope so, you know. But it leads to my next question. Like, what's one mistake that almost every podcaster or new creator makes that hurts their growth?

SPEAKER_02 20:29

I think uh I'm all for aspiration. I I want someone to feel like they have a uh a goalpost to that they'd like to hit, whether immediately or sometime in the future, you know, it gives us something to work towards. But I think a goalpost that has been established, especially by some of the biggest podcasts in the world, has been I want to get to the top of the charts and a million downloads today or tomorrow or by the end of my first season. And um if you have a great team around you who are established in the space of podcast marketing and audience growth, um, because marketing at large is different than podcast marketing and publicity. They, they, there are different types and vehicles and um relationships built. So if you have a team that's established, if you have um, you know, uh a good production strategy, so the guests you're bringing on, are they individuals that have sizable social media audiences or even sizable substacks and sizable podcast audiences in the digital media content creator space? Um those are just a few of the considerations of what can we do to make it more feasible to get to that one million download mark. But that's not always the case if someone has those resources or those connections. And so they can't hit a million downloads in a week and they just again they give up. So I think it's one to help uh offset that. It's one. Connecting with as many folks in the podcast space, following their work, to get a better understanding of what are benchmarks for your show to realistically look towards for success. There's some great resources resources online. If you go to Pod News, P O D and EWS, our website, in fact, the Podglomerate, if you go to the Podglomerate.comslash blog, we have a variety of guides, resources, webinars on various topics that can help. But first understand the medium you're getting into. And then from that, a good sense of what you want to make, why you want to make it, what makes you different than the others and the audience you're making it for. And then from that strategy point, you can grow to, okay, let's make it a hundred downloads per episode in our first year. And then from that point, if you need it, it surpass it, then increase that. And just do that incrementally rather than thinking, I'm gonna eat the whole shark right now. Let's just take little bites of the shark and then eventually you'll eat the full one.

SPEAKER_01 23:00

I love that. I love that. It's interesting too because if you can incrementally go step up, you know, I remember I'm a black belt in judo. And the first day that I showed up, I was out of my element. And I remember the first time falling on the ground. It did not feel good. And yet I saw these guys across the room that were throwing people, and these guys that were just doing these crazy falls. And my teacher's like, you'll be there soon. I was like, Yeah, I don't think so. But every day he worked with me gradually. He was a great teacher. Dan Linder, you are an awesome human being and even amazing, teacher, more amazing teacher. Step by step I got there, you know, and it was like something that I had to kind of just go through the motions. But once you get the confidence at each step, it's amazing. Like, and that's one of the things, too, is I feel like people quit because of two things. One, they don't realize how challenging it can be to do some of the steps, but also because I feel like there's this imposter syndrome that shuts a lot of people down. They feel like I don't know what I'm doing. I don't feel like I should be doing this. Or they, you know what? I don't watch a lot uh of my podcasts. Like, I don't go and rewatch things because I just I get embarrassed of myself and like, oh, did I say that? Did I do that wrong? Like, so I just stopped watching it. I used to edit everything, but now I feel bad for my editor, Tree. Tree, I see he sits right there. I'm sorry. I'm sorry that you have to listen to my bad jokes all day, man. But, you know, it is what it is. I had to step back. I want to ask you this though. Should people be on every platform or just focus on one? And connected to that, do you need to do video or is audio okay in 2026?

SPEAKER_02 24:53

When you say every platform, are you referring to podcast apps or are you referring to social media platforms?

SPEAKER_01 24:59

Ooh, let's can we break that down into both? Do you need to be on all podcast apps? Because, you know, there's a lot of them. I know we have the big, the big ones, you know, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, but there's others, you know, too. Do you need to be on everything?

SPEAKER_02 25:15

I would say yes, but uh there's um some some additional context to that. So if you're wanting to grow your audience, that means you need to be where the audience is. And the audience for podcasts, the majority of it are within the podcast apps. Now they may come to your website, you know, they might, but um, it is through the podcast app. So if you're not on iHeart or you're not on Amazon Music, or you're not on Pocket Cast, Podcast Addict, Castro, Castbox, Podcast, there's so many out there, then um that that is an audience that you're losing, especially since some of these apps they do cater towards maybe a slightly different audience. Uh, podcast addict, uh, in the history that or the um the time I've been at the podglomerate, that app does lean a little bit more towards tech and business podcasts. So if you're a tech or business podcast, your audience is likely going to be more so on that app. And if you're not, your show's not on that app, then you're missing out on that audience. Um, and it should be easy to get on all these apps. Generally speaking, your hosting platform that you use, your hosting platform that distributes your show to these apps, should do the bulk of the work for you. And if it's not, then it might be time to re-re consider what your hosting platform is doing for you and what another one could do better for you. Um, but if that doesn't work out, your hosting platform isn't doing that job, then you go to Pod News. Um, they have actually a list of all the major and secondary and tertiary podcast apps and platforms out there. And you can click into each of those links to those apps and platforms. And usually you just need your RSS URL and you will plug that into that app or platform. And then within 24 hours or a week, your show will now be on that app. So it should be a very simple process. But I would say that if your show, you only are aware of your show being on a few major apps, I would encourage you to take 15 minutes, check out that full list, click through is your show available on them? No, put it in there, it'll be done within minutes. Now for social media though, I would say Yeah, let's go to social media.

SPEAKER_00 27:18

That's that was my next good question.

SPEAKER_02 27:20

If you know who your audience is, if you're going for millennials, Gen Z or Gen Alpha, Boomers, somewhere in between or beyond, I would encourage you to look at the uh there's social media studies out there of which platforms cater to which types of audiences, maybe a more professional audience if you work in business and education for LinkedIn versus um you know a more social uh like audience friendly uh like video clip content where you're gonna look to TikTok or IG or even Snapchat. I would then cater your social media strategy to that platform. Now, as for video content, your hosting platform may allow for you to have video content along with your audio, and that might be distributed to a podcast app or platform. Um, or you can upload the video content to the platform, like Spotify, for instance. If you don't host your show in Megaphone, which is a Spotify product, then um you can still have your video on Spotify via Spotify for creators, and that's okay. Um I think it's a good question for you out there. Why are you creating video? What element does it add that audio cannot? And if that's, you know, you have celebrity guests on and you really want the you know, um audience to see them, catch them on camera, and that could be maybe social media worthy clips of them because they're notable, great, you should do video. But if you're doing long-form investigative journalism that's audio focused first and you're not capturing any video, but then after fact you say, Oh, I really wish I could do a video episode of this, then um it's worth considering what would video add to this that you didn't negatively capture when you were reporting on the story. And instead of doing, you know, human-faced uh video, do you want to go to a graphic designer, artwork artist to make uh basically a motion uh like um uh cartoon or graphic design of the audio to make it into a visual format? There's lots of ways to bypass it if you're only doing audio, but um again, key question is does your audience need video or do are they comfortable with just it being an audio show?

SPEAKER_00 29:21

That's a good question. That's a really good question.

SPEAKER_01 29:25

I I think for me, one of the things that I enjoyed was because I knew about production, I was able to do it in a way that I felt like was able to establish a level of quality, of perceived quality, even though it wasn't super fancy. I was able to know how to make things look nicer. And people were like right away said, Oh, wow, your podcast looks really polished. And it's like, okay, thank you, you know, and I was able to get guests that might not have been willing to talk to me, you know? And so I think that it's interesting because for different people, I don't know. I mean if you're rocking the white wall background, I don't know how important it is, you know. I mean, not white wall, like I had one guest that called me from a closet the other day. And I was like, Where are you right now? He's like, I'm in my closet. And I was like, why are you in your closet?

SPEAKER_02 30:14

A closet does sound better for audio. I that's what he said. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:19

Exactly what he said. Exactly what he said. He's like, Well, my room is really boomy, so I could get into my closet. And I was like, Well, you know, there is a rational and reason, and that's what he said. And I was like, Well, good for you, man. But stepping away from that, something else that I've been really fascinated by lately, and I'm actually going through and doing a massive overhaul on this are titles and thumbnails. How important are titles and thumbnails for a podcast episode?

SPEAKER_02 30:46

For video, massive. For audio, still significant, but um, for that, I mean, it's significant in a different way. So let me start with video, especially if you're on YouTube. I mean, the thumbnail and the title are critical to have someone want to even click in and watch it. They, in what we've seen over the years when talking to YouTube's team, is that there is a certain formula for what is successful on a thumbna with a thumbnail. Um, you can actually take it from the cues of like Mr. Beast or a Diary of a CEO. If you look at their thumbnails, you're likely gonna see the faces of the guest and the host in question, um, or you know, um, like a very expressive uh moment that's captured on the thumbnail, even if it looks a little cartoonish or really cartoonish. Um, color schemes, the template of it usually remains the same. So you know the left side of the thumbnail is gonna have the host and the right's gonna have the guest or what have you. And um, they apply that template across everything they do, but they also do beta testing. And they, when the diary of CEOs team um were at a conference this past year, they made a note of saying that they generate, I think, 200 different thumbnails for a single episode. And they diligently look at the results of each one to see what was the most effective and then determining what that was, they lean into it and have it be the one for the episode. That is for one episode. That's not 200 across 200 episodes.

SPEAKER_00 32:13

That's wild.

SPEAKER_02 32:14

So, but they are they are the best of what they do in uh optimizing their algorithm for a YouTube audience because that is the level of detail they look at, or they look at, you know, they have a room full of chairs, they have test-driven hundreds of chairs to know what is the chair that is going to be on camera for an interview based off the size, the look of it, the comfortability of it, everything. So I'm not saying that everyone out there should look at that level of detail for their video packaging and branding, but just take your strategy one step forward. So get out of your comfort zone and say, what if we tried out a few different things on camera? Or we tried out a few different thumbnails, not 200, and maybe three, and look at the results of each one and see what was effective or what was not. Now for audio metadata, it's comparable. I would say that having episode-specific artwork has been more and more key on the podcast apps. So not just your 3000 by 3000 square logo for your podcast, but also for each episode you produce and release, having a specific thumbnail upload for that episode that is, you know, capturing what is the tone or what is the guest or the topic. Um, the apps are doing more features around episodes. So that could also unlock a capability for you. Your question of being, should you be on all apps? Well, if your show isn't on an app that does editorial features, you're also losing out on the potential of your show getting featured on the app, whether in a new noteworthy show category, in a new episode category, in a new video episode category, which is another reason why it's good to double check where you're located.

SPEAKER_01 33:46

I love that. I I think it's really interesting too, because again, that's like some people just don't know. I wanted to ask you this one, because you just mentioned something about the diary of the CEO that just really made me think, yeah, that's interesting. But what do big podcasts do that small creators can copy right now?

SPEAKER_02 34:04

I think looking at data and being data oriented, uh, I'm not I'm not saying that an independent podcaster out there needs to live and die by the data in their fee because they may not have that much data. Uh, I've seen some shows and friends of mine who work in podcasting that, you know, they may not get to a certain threshold of downloads or listens just yet because their show is so new. And um, because of that, they can't really make any data-motivated decisions because there's not really anything there. So they need to wait a little bit longer. And that might mean a few more episodes or a few more months to get to a point where they're actually seeing trends come up. But I would say these major shows, these major networks, they aren't necessarily just creating content because it feels good to them or because the audience is requesting it. They are backing that up with the conversion data, the episode consumption completion data, the number of downloads or plays or listens or followers that are coming to the feed, and whatever else. Maybe it is also they're using that in relation to um the branding of their website or the product that they're selling. Because some shows are branded shows, right? They're not just creating a show. They're also saying, hey, we're a high-be league institution creating podcasts, and we want you, the potential student, to apply to our program or come to our website to learn more about our curriculum. Uh, so I would say for any podcaster out there listening or watching, it's yes, have a content strategy, but also take time every week, even if that's 10 minutes or 30 minutes, to go through your hosting platform dashboard, your Apple Podcast Connect account, your Spotify Your Creators account, or your YouTube data if you have video YouTube um episodes and look and see how you are performing with your trailer, with your episodes, with anything in your feed. And also maybe even do like a GEO search. So find ways that you can monitor how your show is beyond analytics. So set up a Google alert for whenever your name, your first and last name, and/or the show title is brought up in conversations online on Reddit or in media or in other podcast feeds. And then you can see if you're gaining traction with people mentioning you, especially if you're doing publicity efforts where you are pitching yourself for interviews on other podcasts or pitching yourself for interviews or features in podcast newsletters. And if you're looking for that list of newsletters, we actually have that on our website. It's podglomerat.com slash blog, and subscribe to them, pitch your show or your show launch to any and all of them that uh receive feature editorial uh pitches.

SPEAKER_01 36:32

Masterclass right there. I want to ask you one last question. Like if someone wanted to start a podcast this week, what would you tell them to do?

SPEAKER_02 36:44

I would say make sure you have an understanding of why you're doing this and who you're doing this for. And that can be also as simple as the person maybe doing a five-question poll to the community that they think is their representative community for their podcast and asking them, hey, uh, what are the shows that you listen to? Why do you listen to those shows? Uh, you know, where did you first encounter those shows uh where you're introduced to them for the first time? And like basic demographic, like what is your age range and um, you know, your where you live in city, state, country? Basic details, but you can create an audience persona uh profile from that data to then help guide what you want to make and comparable shows that would be great collaborators for your marketing audience growth strategy. If you want to do cross promos with them, pitch yourself for interviews on them, something. Um, or at least give you a sense of if this is your target audience, this is what they're saying to you, what they like, what they dislike, how they discover their shows. And if you really want this audience, then take to heart what they're saying to you. And if you don't want this audience, then you know the opposite of what you should be doing. Don't do those things that they told you. Find a different audience that aligns with who you actually think you are or wanting to target. Um, but have those things ironed out. Also just consider that the first few episodes you produce and release are probably gonna be very different from what you're going to be releasing in a year's time. And that's okay. The beautiful thing about this medium, to circle back to the top of the conversation, is that it can evolve with you your format, your structure, your hosting style. So don't be hard on yourself. Get it out there, test it out, monitor it. But over time, if you want to make changes to it, drastic changes, small changes, you can do that. There's a freedom in it, and it's a wonderful point of creativity. So don't squander it and don't feel like you're you're shooed into one corner and you can't come out of it. You can. That's what you can do here that you can't really do with like a broadcast clock on television or radio.

SPEAKER_01 38:45

I love that. Where can people go to learn more about you and what you do?

SPEAKER_02 38:50

Uh, they can follow us at the podglomerate, uh, follow us on LinkedIn. You can also find our free email newsletter. It comes out every other week with great resources in it. Uh, we just had one this past week about how to get featured on the podcast apps like Apple and Spotify. Um, and you can find all that and our resource blog of tons of content for free on thepyglomerate.com slash blog.