Buzzcast - Demo
Buzzcast is a roundtable podcast about podcasting from the people at Buzzsprout. We'll cover current events and news, podcast strategy, tools we're using, and dip into the Customer Support mailbag to test our podcasting knowledge. If you want to stay up-to-date on what's working in podcasting, Buzzcast is the show for you. To learn more about what makes Buzzsprout the best place to host your podcast, visit Buzzsprout.com You can podcast!
I'm Leslie And this is a test.
Buzzcast - Demo
004 - Buzzsprout Sierra Update + Social Media Tips
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We just wrapped up a bunch of new features now available in Buzzsprout, so we talk about why we created them, how to use them, and where you can find them. We also chatted about how to succeed on social media and our biggest social media pet peeves!
Have an idea for something we should talk about? Post it in the Buzzsprout Podcast Community on Facebook and tag one of us to let us know!
Welcome to Buzzcast, where we're talking about all things podcasting. Everyone has an opinion. Sometimes they're right. I'm your host, Travis. We need a new opening.
SPEAKER_00:We need a new opening opening. Like that joke's it's it was funny, but now we need a new one.
SPEAKER_02:All right. The bar's gone up a little bit. All right, Alvin, kick us off.
SPEAKER_01:Hey, and welcome to Buzzcast where we talk about it.
SPEAKER_02:Welcome back to another episode of Buzzcast. We're talking about all things podcasting from three guys that work at Buzz Sprout. We've got our usual suspects. Kevin, resident co-founder and man that pays the bills. Hey Travis. Albin, marketing guru and and and magic man that makes the whole thing go.
SPEAKER_01:I'm definitely not your guru.
SPEAKER_02:And then uh and then I'm Travis. I'm the Head of Content. Head of Content. Travis. That's the official title. Right. Uh that's what I put on my my business cards. And then uh I haven't been asked too much about it yet, so I guess it makes sense. So we just wrapped up a work cycle at BuzzSprout, which was awesome. We always love the end of a work cycle. But for somebody who doesn't work at BuzzSprout, Kevin, what is a work cycle and why should BuzzSprout people be excited?
SPEAKER_00:Sure. So all the work that we do here at BuzzSprout, we work in these six-week cycles and we just call them work cycles. So at the beginning of the six-week period, we get together and we decide what we're going to do, and then we split up into teams, and then we work independently as teams to accomplish that work over the six weeks. So if you're a BuzzSprout customer, hopefully you've noticed over the past week or so, those projects have been coming to a close and we've been pushing them out. And so we pushed a couple of great enhancements that we can talk about today, and we pushed a couple things that you know was just the beginning, building blocks for future things that we won't talk about, but they're equally as exciting. If not more exciting, that's what you call a teaser. Yeah. Yes. So sometimes there are projects that span more than six weeks, and when they do, we don't talk about stuff that's not released yet, but you'll hear about it soon enough because we'll probably wrap it up next cycle.
SPEAKER_02:Awesome. So so let's jump into some of the new stuff that people that use BuzzSprout, podcasters on BuzzSprout, uh can see right now in their user dashboard and why we are excited about each of them. The first one being our Visual Soundbites 2.0. So uh if you've used them before, we we have this visual soundbite creator where you can create these 30-second video clips to use to promote your episodes in social media. And we've been getting a lot of feedback about them over the past months and years. And so we took a lot of those great ideas that we heard from you guys and created a 2.0 version based on all that feedback. Um Kevin, you were on that development team, right? Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So the main points that we were trying to hit, like what we would call the epicenter of the project, is that we wanted more customization and we wanted to um extend the length. So for purposes of creating a soundbite, you don't want to use your entire episode. You want to take a segment of it, kind of a like a highlight clip, and use that to promote your show. And so we started off with the original 1.0 version of visual soundbites, was you could create up to a 30-second clip. We've decided to move that to 60 seconds. And the reason behind that is like for Instagram stories. So now we also let you do different formats. You can do uh a landscape, a square, or a portrait version. The portrait version is great for Instagram stories, and Instagram stories will allow you to post up to a one-minute clip. Now it will break those into four separate 15-second segments, but overall you can drop a one-minute video in there and it stitches them all together. So we did that, and we did um the ability to change the background color, ability to change the text color, and change the color of the waveform. So we rolled that out last week, posted it to our Facebook group. If you're not in there, please join because you get to see stuff like this before we officially make the announcement next week. Uh and people have been using it, loving it. Albin, what do you heard?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I kind of wonder if we should tell a little bit about what the sound bites are for some people who may not know what they are yet.
SPEAKER_02:Do it, man. Go for it.
SPEAKER_01:Um so when you're sharing something on social media, you can just post a link or you can post an image or something like that. Uh but what we found worked best was little videos. So little videos that kind of entice people to go and click on it and listen to your podcast. So the solution um that we have has always been to show these little videos, kind of like a little animation of your voice as like a waveform. That's what we call the sound bites. Um hopefully, I mean, I think a lot of people have probably used them, but every once in a while I do run into people who are like, oh, I've never noticed that I could do that.
SPEAKER_00:Right. And you might see these online posted under different names, like an audiogram or a wave. Wave is a company, they're awesome, and they make little sound bites like this. Um, another company called Headliner, another cool company, they give you a lot of customization options and stuff. So our solution isn't designed to compete with those companies. We love those companies, and they may have a great product. And if you want more advanced features than what we offer in BuzzSprout, then absolutely go check those companies out. And they've got they create awesome little video clips. Our solution is designed for somebody who needs something uh, you know, 90 the 90% solution. So I'm in there, I'm editing my podcast, I know that there's this great little clip that I can use to promote it when I'm dropping my show, and I just want to create something quick that's on brand and on message, and I don't have a lot of time to go customize it in one of these other tools.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. I read something that Headliner put out where they were trying to like express like how valuable it is to actually make these little videos rather than just an image. And so they did something kind of I really liked. They ran a bunch of Facebook ads for a podcast with different visual components. So some are images, I think they had like images with text. Um, and then they had their actual sound bites, like little videos. And the ones that had the videos, those I think were getting three times as many clicks as their images. So if you consider, you know, you're sharing it, you're actually going through this process of creating some asset to put on social media to try to drive some traffic. Um, SoundBite's gonna be able to get you quite a bit more action than just posting up a little imagey or face like dropped a new episode, hope you guys like it.
SPEAKER_00:Right. And all these social platforms use algorithms to help determine what they're gonna show people when they log into their feed. So Instagram, Facebook, um, Twitter, and Snapchat, they all use these algorithms. So if you just post content, you have a much less of a chance of being shown in someone's feed than if you post an image, which is even less than a video. So video being the highest, so you already get a bump just for the fact that you post a video, you have a better chance of showing up in people's feeds. And then as people engage with that, so they like it or they share it or they click on the link below it, then you get bumped higher and higher and higher in the algorithm.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so it's a really nifty tool. If you're creating content for social media, you're you need something to help promote new episodes. Uh it's something right inside your bus belt dashboard that you can very quickly utilize to get something that's going to work really great for you. Um now something you will notice when you go to create your visual sound byte is that we read we re uh worked the right toolbar. So it looks a lot cleaner now. It's a lot easier to see different things that you can do after you upload an episode with the visual sound byte being one of them. Uh so that was something else that came out of the work cycle, right?
SPEAKER_00:Right. So we had to re-it was time to rework that right toolbar because as we're adding more functionality, um things were that were important start to get buried. And things like the visual sound byte, people weren't seeing as much because there was so much stuff over there. So we had to go back to the design board and figure out how do we not only kind of create a hierarchy that's appropriate and helpful, but also make sure that people aren't missing things that not not maybe not as many people use or something like that.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. I mean there's two ways to do it. One way is to kind of put it right in front of people's face when they upload an episode and be like, why don't you do these 12 other tasks? And our way has always been, you know, get the episodes up there and then do the things that matter to you. So that may be transcribing an episode, but it may not be. It may be using the share buttons, it may be creating those visual sound bites, um, you know, any number, adding chapter markers are over there. And I think the redesign makes it a little bit more clean. So you can go, okay, I'm gonna do, I'm gonna start off launching my podcast. I'm gonna do one or two of these things. And maybe down the line, as this becomes a bigger project for you, you love you really get into a podcast, you start doing more of those as you move up.
SPEAKER_00:Right. One thing that a lot of people don't use right now that I hope the redesign of the sidebar brings to the forefront a little more is chapter markers. So it was, what was it, like four months ago, roughly, we pushed out chapter markers and we built a really great chapter marker tool into BuzzSprout. If you've ever listened to a podcast in an app like Overcast or Apple Podcast now supports chapter markers, there's different ways that you can get to the chapter marker functionality of those apps, but then that allows you to skip forward and backward and move around through a long podcast episode just by jumping to the topics that you're interested in.
SPEAKER_02:Aaron Ross Powell Yeah, really nifty tool, especially if uh there's certain segments in your show that have titles or something you want to call out that's like, ooh, yes, that's exactly what I want to listen to, and it's seven minutes and eleven seconds in. You can kind of cue that up for your listeners to make listening to your episode a little more engaging in that way. Aaron Powell Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:It's also super helpful if you do any advertising, whether they be ads that somebody's just paid you up front to do, or if you do affiliate marketing or anything, it's a good idea to use chapter markers to highlight where those ads are. Not so people can skip over them, but just you know, in full transparency that this is an ad that's playing in my podcast at this point.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And you can also click like the chapter markers can have a link in them too. So it's kind of nice that if you're talking about something and you're like, hey, check out this article we're talking about, you can click through and go and actually check it out.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, chapter markers are one of those great little tools that once you start using it, you start to find more and more reasons to use it. Um, but it's just kind of breaking into it and getting started. Um the other really cool thing that we did was we changed kind of the way that you that you uh get listed in directories or the way that you can see your status in different podcast players when you're first getting started. Because I know a lot of the support questions we get are like, how do I get in Apple Podcasts? How do I get in Spotify? You know, am I listed in Spotify yet? Like those are some common questions we get. And so we wanted to redesign that part of your dashboard to make it a lot easier to at a glance see kind of what your status is on all these different things, and then kind of clarify some common questions that we get.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I know Priscilla and Addy went through all of support and they were trying to figure out like what percent of all of our questions are in these different areas. And Priscilla said it was something like a quarter of all of our emails are like a directory-related question. And we've always thought like we're doing a pretty good job getting people into directories. We're giving really good um step-by-step instructions on how to get in. That's kind of concerning. 25% are directory related. And when you get into it, a lot of time it's like, hey, have I been approved yet by Apple Podcasts? Like, oh, do you know if I have a URL for my Google Podcast? Did I ever get in? Um I know I got into Spotify, but I don't know my link. And I think as we dug into it, we're like, you know, a lot of these are things we can figure out programmatically. We can figure out, well, we know what the URL is going to be for your Google Podcast listening. And we can check for you to see, oh, you are in and actually provide that data back. So it was, you know, a cool tool, I mean, a redesign really, just so we can say, hey, we see that those are there, and then we can start adding them to different things. So we added them to the public sites. So if you use BuzzBrout public sites, now you can click like listen and it pops up this modal that's got a whole list of all the places people can listen to your podcast. Uh those links get used inside your embed players. So it's a good way for us to start collecting that data without asking people to go out and figure it out on their own.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And that that turned out to be a really challenging project. Yeah. It seemed simple when we stepped into it, but turns out the majority of these directories don't do things the same way. And so the way that you get listed in Apple is very different than the way you get listed in Google Podcasts is very different than the way you get listed in Spotify. It's different than the way you get listed in Stitcher and iHeart and TuneIn. They all have their own unique way of doing things and their own unique way of displaying your link or telling us once you are listed. And the majority of them don't tell us. So we've got to go out there and and ask them specifically, is this podcast listed? And then they say yes or no. So it was a it was a tougher project than we thought going into it, but I'm really excited about where we landed and the solution that we have. And I think we did a good job. Again, let us know if you're a BuzzProc customer and you agree or not. But I think we did a good job of hiding that complexity. Right? It looks the same from the front end anyway, to submit to if you're submitting to Apple Podcasts or Spotify or Stitcher, we try to make it as simple as possible and push all that complexity to the back end and let the computers do the hard work.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and I just wanted to clarify one thing, um, because we we throw around some of these terms a lot in in the office, but it might not be as obvious. So when Alvin was talking about public sites, that's the free website that we give you when you sign up with BuzzSprout, where you can send people and they can listen to your episodes and they can see your description. And on those included podcast websites, there's now a button that says listen, and when they click on that, there's like a pop-up screen that has all these different podcast apps that your podcast is listed in. And so if somebody goes to your website and they're like, Oh, I want to subscribe to this, and I listen to stuff on Stitcher, and they click that button and you're listed in Stitcher, then there's a direct link for them to be able to go and subscribe. So it just makes it a lot easier for people to take that next step of going from discovering your podcast and seeing it on your website to then subscribing to your show in their app.
SPEAKER_00:Right. And it might be worth clarifying as well the difference between like directories and podcatchers or podcast apps.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, go for it, Kevin. What's what's the difference? Because even when I was doing research on these initially, it was it almost felt like splitting hairs trying to figure out how to how to define them.
SPEAKER_00:Right. Well, some are both. So like Apple Podcasts is an app that lives on your phone and allows you to listen to podcasts through it and subscribe and stuff, but it's also a directory, a place where you would want to have your podcasts listed. And Spotify is the same way. Um now we get to like Google Podcasts, that's a little bit different. Right now, that's primarily a directory. There is a Google Podcast app that runs on Android phones, but it's brand new. It doesn't have a ton of functionality. So uh I say that one's just slightly different because it's not like something that you would need to go to the Android store and download and load up with all your podcasts. Google's trying to be really clever and maybe they crack a new way to do podcast apps, but the m the biggest benefit of Google Podcasts right now is it being a directory.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so if you're trying to think of the two big categories, you've got directories, which that's like the phone book of all the different podcasts to listen to. Anywhere that you're going through big lists, that's a directory. Anywhere that you are subscribing to a show and probably listening to those shows, that's a pod catcher, or most people just call it podcast app. And you can remember that because it's catching all of your podcasts as they're being made available and it's downloading them.
SPEAKER_00:And so then we go on to Stitcher, again, an app and a directory. Uh iHeartRadio, an app and a directory, and TuneIn, which is an app and a directory. And that's kind of the end of the directory list. Like those are the big six in the directory world. If you get your podcast in those big six directories, you're pretty much going to be everywhere you want to be. Yeah. Uh and then we start talking about podcatchers only, podcast apps. And those are the popular ones are like Pocket Cast and Overcast, Castro. Am I missing a few? Castbox is another one. Castbox. Breaker, yeah. And so usually with how those work, since they're not, they don't have directories behind them, they they pull from another directory. And the majority of them use Apple Podcasts. So that's why we recommend everyone start with Apple Podcasts. Get your podcast listed there first, and then you'll automatically be available on all these podcast apps.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. I think one of the most valuable things is getting to go back to projects that we've done work on before. Like so this directories, since I've been here, I can think we've worked on them three, four separate times. And the sound bites, this is the second big project on them. And the uh, you know, the place where you upload an episode and then you have all these extra options. We've worked on that 15 times since I've been here. And so the nice thing is when people write in, I think it's always good to get lots of feedback from customers like, hey, this works really well, I love it, or hey, I'm running into this new issue, or here's something that I could envision that would be useful for me. Not every single thing that's written in is that we're going to be able to build. Um, and it may not always be an idea that fits with the product, but it is always great to get that feedback. So if you ever have a you know some insight or you notice something you like, you know, write it in because our support team, one of the things I love that we always do, they take that and they end up sending it to the team that built it. So there's a lot of times like we'll be we use something called Basecamp to manage all the projects. And like Addy will get an email and it will come in and she's like, hey, great job, John and Dave, like this project you just worked on, it's awesome. And it's fun like seeing the person's uh you know thing they wrote in to support.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, just support at buzzprout.com. If you and even if you run into any quirks or difficulties, like we we do a really thorough job of testing stuff before you see it to make sure that it's not gonna break on you. Uh but if you discover something or if you're having trouble doing something that should be easy, please write us into support. We want to help you figure out any bugs that you're encountering to get you back to doing awesome podcasting stuff. So, one of the reasons that we decided to revamp the soundbite at all is because a lot of podcasters lean on social media to help promote their podcast. Um, and so we wanted to kind of take a minute to just share some things that we've observed, uh some best practices, so to speak, about how to utilize social media to help your podcast. Not necessarily just with getting more listeners, but other metrics, other things that podcasters are can are interested in. And I think the the first thing that I want to cue up for us to talk about is what is the most effective thing or the most effective platform for podcasters? Like is it Facebook, is it Instagram, is it Pinterest, LinkedIn? And this is a trick question, but I'm curious what your initial thoughts are.
SPEAKER_00:I don't know that I want to answer the most effective. Can we just talk about effective platforms in general? Or is this you really want to trap me on this one?
SPEAKER_02:Aaron Powell Oh no, it's not a trap. It's not a trap. I just have uh I guess a non-intuitive answer coming on the back end of this. Oh, okay. Yeah. So what so what do you think? Like if somebody asked you, hey, what social media platform should I be on for my podcast, what would you say?
SPEAKER_00:Well, I don't love the answer uh because I don't love the platform, but I think you have to be on Facebook. Um here's what's exciting, just so I don't spend time harping on Facebook. I mean, Facebook is great and everyone's there and you can get a lot of engagement. But I've I've heard recently that people are talking more and more about LinkedIn and how people are finding more and more podcasts on LinkedIn. And so that's something that we're actually pitching for the next work cycle would be to include the ability to share to LinkedIn. And um especially if you have any anything like professionally related or work-related where your podcast talks about the workplace or job opportunities or anything like that, like that's a fantastic social media network to get plugged into with your podcast.
SPEAKER_01:One really good piece of advice, and now this makes me think it kind of answers your question uh which platform should you be on. I read this article and a guy was like, you know, often people talk about, hey, you should be trying to build a brand online by yourself and like market yourself and talk and do all this stuff online. Start a podcast, do a blog, do this, do that. And he goes, really what you've got to do is you kind of gotta build a little group, like a like a technology stack. You're doing kind of just a stack of the things that you do. I like to blog, I don't like to podcast. Okay, do a blog. You don't have to do a blog and a podcast and a video. You can just do the blog. And if you're only want to be on one social platform, because that's the one you're on and you like and you think your audience is on, just do that one. You're better off doing Pinterest really well. Like I don't know Pinterest at all, but I bet doing Pinterest really well is better than doing Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest poorly. And it's better to and you know, invest in one and meet people and reach out and build a little community somewhere rather than just this idea of I've got to be on all of them, so I'm just gonna put in 15 minutes into all of them and burn out and never really do anything that great. Does that kind of answer your question? Well, yeah, you stole my answer.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so so whenever somebody asks me like what social media platform do I need to be on, uh my first the first thing that I say is it's better to do a couple things really well than be mediocre at everything. Right. So this is just echoing what you just said, Alvin, right? Like choose, like make a choice and say, I'm gonna I have my podcast, that's something I do consistently, that's one way that I engage with my my audience, my listeners. And then if you are never on Facebook, but you're always on Instagram, which I know is like owned by Facebook, but we'll just ignore that for now. Um if you're on Instagram all the time and that's what you enjoy doing, and that's how you you know communicate with people, then make that the focus of your podcast, you know, of how you're gonna interact with your listeners on social media. If you're all over Pinterest because you're Always getting ideas of how you want to, you know, redesign your house and plan for your wedding and you know just get craft ideas or cooking ideas or whatever. Um then figure out how can you use that to interact with people that listen to your podcast. Um because you're right, i if you just try and do everything, like start your TikTok account because that's a new thing now, um it's Musically 2.0, it's the new TikTok app. Um it's like that's cool, like you can do that. But it's not the you know, checking all the boxes, filling in content on all these uh uh profiles that's gonna be successful for you. Right. It's where you can be consistent with something and actually enjoy doing it. Because when you enjoy doing it, you're gonna stick with it. Right. If you hate writing articles for LinkedIn because that's what works, like you're not you're not gonna be successful because you you won't stick with it long enough to actually pick up the traction you need.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. I and you've gotta also find where your audience is. So in different stages of my life, that's been in different places. I mean, I think college, like everyone I knew is on Facebook. And then when I was practicing law, everything's like, you've got to be on LinkedIn. And all of my like buddies from law school now, all they do is post on LinkedIn. And now in the marketing world, it's all Twitter. Like nobody is like, hey, come to our secret Facebook group. Everyone's like, hey, publish all this stuff on Twitter and that's where we interact. Maybe like a Slack group, actually, also. But there's you know, I've just seen it myself, like moving from one platform to the next in different stages of my life. That exists for different interest areas. So I know if you're going to write about, I don't know, let's say you're really into rescue animals for something like dogs, and there's probably Facebook groups for that. But then there's other things, I bet like a World of Warcraft group, like that's probably on Reddit. And find the place where your audience is hanging out. That's where you want to engage. Because you're not trying to engage just to blast all of this stuff like new episode, check it out. You've got to get out there and be like discussing things with people, talking to them, and uh, you know, engage with your audience.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and I think we should say, I think we would all agree, that you don't want to just jump into these groups wherever they are and just start promoting your stuff. Like you want to add value first. You want to never works. Yeah. You want to be a member of the community, you want to be one of them. And then maybe you start off by just adding value to this community and being a participant. And if somebody wants to learn more about you, they click through to your profile or your bio or whatever, and that's where they see that, hey, you're a podcaster and you have this podcast. Now, if the opportunity comes up where someone's asking a question and you covered it in a recent podcast episode or something, and you want to drop a link, totally fine. But you can't lead with that stuff and regardless of what social network you jump into.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. I see this one the most on Reddit, and I always think it's hilarious. Like people will come with like a clear, they they throw a question out there or they have like a total reason why they're coming to the conversation. They're like, oh, very interesting question. I addressed this on my podcast drop link and then move on. And they always just Reddit seems especially cruel in this aspect that people will just be like, uh this is total pandering, like knock this out. We don't like stop trying to just promote your own stuff, engage. Downvote, yes. But sometimes people will discuss something and you'll notice they talk about a podcast, and people then were clamoring and they're like, hey, is there a podcast that like you're into? Like, I'd love to listen to it. And that stuff's so much more authentic. And those opportunities do come up when you're engaging with an audience. They don't come up just by you manufacturing and trying to trick people into listening to your show.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and there's actually I think that this can be a helpful distinction. There's there's kind of like two reasons that you have a social media account or use social media to promote your podcast. One is to interact with people that aren't listening yet and get in a conversation with them to then lead them to your podcast content. But then the second reason would be people that already listen to your podcast that you want to start more of a dialogue with. Because when they when they listen, they just get you talking into their ear, which is great. It's great for you. It's always great when people listen to your podcast, right? But then there are times where you want to talk back, like you you want to hear from them. You want to hear, what do you like about the show? What could I make better? Um, you know, what was your favorite episode? And and when you start that kind of a online community around your podcast, what that does is that that brings people closer into feeling like they're a part of something, feeling like they're a part of making your podcast what it is, and then they're more excited about sharing it. They're more excited about telling their friends about your podcast because they're like, hey, not only is this an awesome show that I listen to, but like I am always messaging the host back and forth, like he answered my question on an episode, it was so cool. If you're into this, this is a podcast you have to listen to.
SPEAKER_01:It's like the number one content marketing idea generator, too, where if you can just go, I mean, Quora's really good for this, Reddit's really good for this, Facebook groups are good for this. Just go and start looking for questions people have. And people will say, you know, hey, I don't know, going back to my rescue dogs group that I've invented now, someone's like, oh, I've always wanted to do a rescue. How do I find a good dog? How do I, what do I know? How do I know if it's going to be a good dog for me? How do I figure these things out? Well, if you're in that community and you're podcasting audio, you probably know the answer to that. And you can go and go, oh, cool, great answer. I can write up at something nice for them, but then that can become the lead for my next episode. And then you can start generating content that people are really interested in listening to. Even if you don't answer that specific person later on and say, hey, I podcasted about this for you. Uh you have answered hundreds of people who have that question as well.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, Quora is an amazing community that I've just recently stumbled into, but I do that all the time. I'll Quora is smart, like all social networks are. And so they will start to recognize patterns of answers or answer or answers from people that I am interested in or that I click to read more about their answer. And then sooner or later, like, I don't even know. Like, I don't on core, do you like follow people? I don't even know. You'll just start getting emails.
SPEAKER_02:They'll be like, hey, you you answered a question about this in the past. I bet you could also answer this question really well.
SPEAKER_00:Trevor Burrus, Jr.: It's crazy. And then the emails I get, I see a lot of the same people answering questions because they're topics that I'm interested in. And then inevitably I end up clicking on their profile and I find out that they work at this company, and then I check out the product from that company.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And so I think it's a really interesting and non-kind of like sleazy way of marketing and becoming an expert and getting some influence without just posting your podcast link everywhere.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. One thing that Marketer Online, Justin Jackson, talks about is being helpful online. And if that's the way you're approaching a social media to be helpful to people who are on that platform, you're doing something good. If you're going there with the explicit purpose of I've got to get them to buy my ebook, you're already taking the wrong mindset in. But if you can go and provide real help, something good will come out of it.
SPEAKER_02:That just gave me a really fun idea. Uh I'm really curious if you guys have social media pet peeves when it comes to people promoting their podcast. Uh I can tell you mine right off the bat, which is when they join a Facebook group that's completely unrelated to anything that they're talking about and immediately share a live video of them sitting at a table not talking. I don't know if you've guys have ever seen that. I've never seen that. They're like live streaming their podcast, but it's like in the setup phase or they're like just getting like set up and uh maybe they're like small talking or whatever. But it's just totally random. It's like, why am I looking at somebody's living room and there's just a like a couple dudes sitting on a couch? There's no microphones in the shot, there's no nothing. It's just like, hey, watch the stuff.
SPEAKER_01:Does this happen to the Buzzsprout group on Facebook?
SPEAKER_02:It's happened a couple times and and people flag it, or I'm quick quick to delete it. Uh one of the two. But that's one of my pet peeves. Because it's like, it's not even like clear what you're trying to spam me with.
SPEAKER_01:It's not even good spam.
SPEAKER_02:It's not even it's not even spam where I understand what you're trying to do, right? At least then I'm like, I see what you're doing there. And then I delete it. But with this, I'm like, you're wasting my time with me trying to figure out what you're spamming me with. Oh yeah. And then I see, oh, new member, never posted before. They're just sharing this live video. It's like, nope, this that's that's that's one of my biggest pet peeves with social media.
SPEAKER_00:If you're marketing your podcast, the idea that people shouldn't listen to other podcasts because they should listen to yours is not it's it's it's just not true. It's not a great marketing strategy. And so we would never talk bad about another podcast and say, don't waste your time listening to that because they get everything wrong or they're boring people. You should listen to this one instead. There are plenty of listeners out there. And so we we believe that you don't need to knock the competition to be able to build your own show. Just talk about what's great about your own show.
SPEAKER_02:I like that. Alvin, any any pet peeves from you?
SPEAKER_01:The ambiguous complaint that's like you're trying to get somebody to ask you what's wrong so that you can be like, no, I can't talk about it. So it's always like, I can't believe it. Dot dot dot. What can't you believe? Like sometimes people disappoint me, dot dot dot. And you're like, all right, I guess something happened bad. And it's like people are like, oh my gosh. And you're like, what was it? Like, who is she? I guess this is a girlfriend or something. Something happened, and like, I don't want to get into it on Facebook. No, actually, you do want to get onto Facebook because you just posted it. I don't know if there's like a uh a podcast promotion version of this, but probably not.
SPEAKER_00:I feel like we just hit on a hot button that has nothing to do with podcasting. But Alvin's all excited.
SPEAKER_01:Travis is like, what's your pet peeve? And then one like popped in. I was like, ooh, gotta get it.
SPEAKER_02:So you don't like it when people are fishing for your engagement and your comments.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. I guess that's it. It's then if I know they're trying to get me to engage, they're using this tactic of like, why don't you ask me what I want to tell you? I'm like, I don't want to ask. I don't care.
SPEAKER_02:Or do you just not like that they're that you know that they're manipulating you and they're doing something that you really don't care about? Aaron Powell Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:As soon as I know that someone's trying to manipulate me, then I'm like allergic to it. And I'm like, oh, I'm gonna do my best not to get excited. But well, I'll check back later and make sure, you know, if I find the details are posted.
SPEAKER_02:So so yeah, so I think just high level, some things to take away. Uh don't worry about trying to do everything. Just pick one or two things that you can really zero in on and do to the best of your ability, not just for effectiveness, but also because you don't want to spend your entire life and all your free time posting stuff on social media. Um like there there are better things to do with your with your time. Um so just make the best use of your time by focusing on a couple things. Make sure to provide more value than you're asking for in exchange, and then don't be uh don't be posting ambiguous posts. And then you should be ready to rock and roll.
SPEAKER_01:Sometimes a podcast episode is so good. Dot dot dot. Oh, which which podcast episode? What I just put up. Oh, check it out. Here's my link. Buzzcast.
SPEAKER_02:Any any closing remarks, guys? Any any thoughts before we uh wrap up?
SPEAKER_00:Just to put a bow on that, I just want everyone to remember the internet is this really big place. So the idea that Facebook works great, or you have to be on Facebook, or you have to be on Twitter, or you have to be on Instagram, I mean that's it's just garbage. It's not true. You want to go where your listeners are, where your people are, where you spend time, be authentic, find the people in those in those places. They will be your true loyal listeners. Uh they will engage with you. You won't have to spam people with the links or put on false pretenses to try to engage with people. Find the place that's right for you online, on the internet, and engage with them there. And don't try to do what everyone else is doing just because they say you have to be there.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And uh if there's anything that you engaged in with uh you know Buzz Sprout over the last few weeks, one of the things that we just launched, like the new directories or the new sound bites, definitely write in because we always want to hear your feedback and hear what you like and what you don't.
SPEAKER_02:And a perfect place to do that is plug, plug, plug. Oh gosh. The Buzz Sprout Podcast community on Facebook, our public Facebook group, where we're always posting links to content that we're coming out with blogs, videos, podcast episodes, uh answering questions, interacting with other podcasters. If you are a podcaster, the Buzz Sprout Podcast community is the place to be. Be there or be square. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of BuzzCast. Uh, thank you for your attention, your subscription, all the love you guys send us. As always, keep podcasting.
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