Podcast Charcuterie

Welcome to the Podcast Superfriends. Five podcast producers from across North America get together to discuss podcasting.

One, two, three. Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to the Podcast Superfriends round four. As you know, if you're tuning in for your first time, we meet every single month. And it's not just me, Matt, you can show everybody. We've got five podcast professionals, we meet every single month as a mastermind group to discuss our businesses, issues that we're having, and podcasting and generally just to share knowledge. And then we came together and decided we need to take at least some of our conversations public. So that's what we've been doing for the past three or four months. We really enjoy it and people get a lot of benefit out of it. So thank you so much for tuning in. I will kick us off with introductions. Matt Cundill joining us from Winnipeg, Canada. Matt, do you want to introduce yourself?

The owner of the Sound of Media company. We have a lot of podcasts that we work with, primarily with dynamic ad insertion and dynamic audio strategies for their podcasts.

JAG in Detroit. 

Jon Gay. JAG in Detroit Podcast. I believe nobody knows your story better than you, and I help you tell it. I specialize in creating branded podcasts and cohosting shows with you to help highlight your brand.

Ms. Katherine O'Brien.

Oh, hi everybody. My name is Catherine O'Brien. I have branch out programs in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and I like crackles.

And the King of Boston himself, David Yas.

Yeah. Thank you, Johnny Podcast. David Yas up here in Boston. Boston Podcast Network. Not for nothing, but we can spin some yarns up here in Boston. We produce podcasts, and I don't really talk like that. Not everybody here does. Thank you, Johnny.

You do get a free Dunkin Donuts gift card with every episode produced.

America Runs on Dunkin'. Go back to Starbucks.

Rounding out the group, I am Johnny Podcasts, based in Fort Worth, Texas. I'm also a podcast producer specializing in the audio and video space. So if you have a podcast and you need someone to put it together, you can reach out to any one of us and we will be more than happy to help you. But we're going to-

Fun fact by the way, Johnny Podcasts is actually his birth name. He was named before podcasts even started.

Back in old 96. It's a good year, but we are going to kick it off with kind of a hot topic. So we are all very familiar, especially with the last two years over coveted with the remote podcast experience. Podcasting started very much face to face and it is still a large facet of the industry today. However, with the access of technology with platforms like Squad Cast, Zoom, but we don't use Zoom Zencaster and my personal favorite, Riverside FM. And we're currently using StreamYard. You can access the smartest people in your niche to talk to for your podcast has made it so much easier than calling people over the phone, and it's just a beautiful piece of technology. However, the technology is not always perfect, and we're going to zero in on one platform in particular, our good old friends, Squad Cast. And I know Jag and Matt have somewhat of a bone to pick, not too much of a bone to pick, but I'll leave it over to Matt and Jag to discuss Squad Cast. Guys, apparently there was a recent update to Squad Cast and now we're seeing a little bit of issues with the platform. What are we seeing?

Matt, you want to start or do you want me to start?

Yeah, I'll start. I mean, this is a very big change for Squad Cast. This is version number five that they come out with, and both Jag and I, we're big proponents of it because it's durable, we find it works easy to use, and I think as producers, we're really in control of the situation. We can see easily what our clients are using for equipment, because when you're getting a few clients and their guests together to do a recording, you can see who's using what. And they think their microphone is working. It's not necessarily working. It's the desktop that it's connected to and not the actual microphone. So not everybody knows things all the time, but that's a feature that's disappeared. And some of the other upgrades that they've made, I'm not sure if they're necessarily upgrades because a couple of times I've gone to record and the recording has been missing. So anytime you launch anything new, I do feel for them and it's not easy, but in terms of what Jag and I do, it really puts us on uneasy ground. We don't know what's going to happen. And you get that trepidation of, Is this working?

Yeah, I think when Matt and I were talking offline about this and we were complaining originally. He said we made the comparison to when Facebook would change their newsfeed and it's the, who moved my cheese? And it's all, this is so different and this is terrible and I hate it and I can't stand it. And we kind of had to look introspectively at ourselves and say, selves, is that what this is? Or are these really issues with the actual performance? And yes, they're the initial performance. To Matt's point, it's harder to tell what microphone and speakers your hosts and guests have selected. The interface is not as easy to use. I've had several guests complain about it, and again, I am a big fan of Squad Cast. It's still my go to platform. I think that there's not a lag time in waiting for the audio to upload like there are with other platforms, usually. And I still like it, but I'm really fighting with it and I want to dig in a little bit deeper and I'm hoping to to find out what the advantages of the latest update are because I haven't found them yet.

And Jag, you're what the kids would call it day one with SquadCast. You've been with them since the very beginning. You're in touch with their engineers a lot, and I know that you reached out to them and made your concerns known, obviously. So if you as a podcast host or a producer are experiencing issues with the platform, always use that little chat box on the website. Jag, can you give any insight on what they may have said to you or have they gotten back to you at all? If they're working on the issues?

They've been super helpful, super responsive, so nothing but a good thing to say about the team over there. I did particularly call out the fact that you couldn't see how the input and output that the guests were using. It turns out you can. And that was addressed in a Facebook thread. They have a Facebook group support thread. Also the support within the app, so many different ways to get in touch with them. And they're super responsive, so I will give them that. I think they're just some kinks and bugs to work out. For example, one thing that Matt and I found out the hard way is if you're in, say, Google Chrome and you're recording and you open a second tab to look at your podcast notes or whatever else you're looking at while you're recording a podcast, the recording won't always take. If the Squadcast tab is not the active tab, sometimes that has caused an issue and Matt and I have both run into that. So now I know if I need to look something up on the Internet, either use my phone or open a separate window. But it's little things like that that we wish they'd worked out before they rolled out the upgrade.

And I'll just throw this question out to the group so you get Catherine and David involved too. So one thing that we preach a lot- well, I guess I don't know how much we actually preach this, but the concept of double ending or double recording, because like Matt said, the issue that you run into, sometimes the podcast just doesn't record. And so a really easy backup that you can build into your process as a podcast host or a producer is actually having a second separate recording beyond the recording platform that you're using, whether it be Zoom, Zencaster or whatever. So I'll throw that out to the group. Do you guys have any recommendations on double end?

Can I just- one thing on that before we throw it up to Catherine and David is, SquadCast is good. To their credit, they have a cloud recorded backup that's recorded online, and I've used that. But also to your point I record on my roadcaster box here in my studio. So when you add in the primary recording, the cloud recording and the SquadCast, I have three copies of everything. You don't want to get burned if you have a hard to get guest.

Beautiful. So Jag goes over above and beyond and goes with three recordings. I know that I personally also do three recordings as well, but that's not totally necessary. Two is the absolute- two, you're perfectly fine. So I'll throw that out to the group. What is everyone's thoughts on double ending? Do you guys have an easy way to go about doing it?

I don't know if it's easy, but I'll start off by sticking up for the much maligned Zoom platform among this group. So Zoom won't give you the quality recording that Squad Cast will, but there are pluses it's reliable. I use the Zoom recording, the recording setting on Zoom as a backup. It is helpful because if you set your Zoom settings appropriately, you can record in different tracks for adjusting levels later and things like that. And also it speaks to calendar. If you are calendly person and you want to book a podcast guest, it's just so easy that it automatically sets it up. The world does speak Zoom, so I would suggest there's no crime in using Zoom and there are often things you can do to clean up that recording later if you want to use it. I typically record with the Zoom app record on my Roadcaster, and then I record directly into Descript, which is an app I think we've talked about here on the Pot. It's a transcription app and if you get a clean recording and your Zoom person isn't in some crappy zone where they keep cutting out, then you can do just fine that way. Those are my two.

And I would say just to chime in on the Zoom because of the pandemic, a lot of people are now familiar with Zoom in a way that they weren't before, and the advanced settings for audio do help a lot, so it's not completely a disaster. I would say for using Zoom, I do want to go back, just back to the user experience of some of these recording platforms. I love Zencaster Johnny, thank you so much for turning me on to Zencaster, but one of the problems that I've run into is that you can't use it everywhere. So the recording is supposed to start at 05:00 p.m. And they are only then discovering the guest of the show is discovering that Zencaster's not supported on the iPad. So then it seems like a little bit of a just trying to pull everybody to go, we're just trying to get some sort of backup. And that's always a little bit of it just doesn't feel as professional as this seamless podcasting experience that we want to offer. But I don't know. Have I complained on these live streams before? Have you heard my complaints?

No, I think it was just to us. So I would agree. So it seems like Zencaster and Squad Cast have that zencaster specifically has that issue where you can't do it on every single platform, which is weird. I've had the same issue, which is why I actually migrated over to Riverside FM. I think the best way to kind of avoid these sort of issues with connectivity, guests not being able to be tech savvy and Jack and I went back and forth on this, on Twitter, and Jag has converted me. I would agree that having zoom as a backup, if something like Zencast or Squad Cast isn't working, building in just a regular zoom like or even Google Meets. I found Google Meets has been somewhat reliable and gives a decent audio conversion, or whatever you would even call it. But I would stick with Riverside. But having a built out, very step by step instructions for your guests. Click this, click this, type this. And again with the zoom. We all like to rag on Zoom. Zoom. You can get by on Zoom if you have a USB microphone to plug in. We're all using microphones here. If you were to plug this into zoom, it's salvageable audio. And like David said, if you're using the Descript app, the studio sound, you can really salvage your audio. Or again, reach out to one of us, DM us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, wherever you can find us most. Catherine, you have something.

I do. This is my complaint that- I don't know, forgive me if it's a repeat here- is that what I'm concerned about is that there seems to be, as our podcast service providers want to upgrade things, they keep coming out with these new versions. Sometimes it seems like the improvements that they're making are simply cosmetic. And I do have to say I see a lot of different SASes, software services, where they are definitely making things look cooler but less functional. And I think that a lot of us would just really prefer to have the high quality, high function types of softwares that we use for our podcast production. That's really what we're looking for. I don't care if it's a giant red record button, as long as you can get a recording. But my concern is that in the attempt to look cool and drop the function, that there's a little bit of an emperor has no clothes situation, is that there isn't a lot of technological advance being gone. And so they put all this effort into the appearance of looking really cool. That's sort of my secret concern.

Funny, Catherine. It's almost like it's an arms race because there are now so many quality platforms in Zencaster and Riverside and Squad Cast and all of these, that part of it could be the competition where they want to look the coolest and be the best. And if for the most part, they all work, what we're doing and recording podcasts, let's have the coolest interface, let's have the coolest features, and it's to your emperor. No close analogy. They are trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist.

I wish Zoom would come up with a podcast specific platform. That the fundamental difference between Zoom and the others is it's a lot harder to record the track locally in Zoom. I'm thinking about a lot of DIY podcasters. You can go with one of the platforms we talked about that has better quality, zencaster Squad cast. But if you're a first time podcaster and you've got this guest you're really excited about. And you get on and they're having technological problems. And then you start sweating and five minutes has gone on. Seven minutes has gone on. And there's something wrong with their microphone or whatever. That's why I recommend maybe start with Zoom. And that way it's more or less foolproof for most of America and the world to get on. At least. But Zoom should step up, and who the heck knows? We'll complain. We'll complain about any platform. Give us a platform. We'll have some complaint.

Four out of five podcast producers do not recommend Zoom. But meet David, who is the one that will recommend it.

I'm not saying it's the best audio quality, but I'm kind of run and shoot podcast producer. I try to focus on more of the big picture stuff, but I won't claim that it's the best audio quality, because it's not.

No, but the world speaks Zoom. That's true. And then the integration with Calendar is also very helpful. It also does it with my schedule once too.

Great thoughts all around. Matt, you were uncharacteristically quiet until just now. Did you have any closing thoughts on this segment before we move on to the next topic?

No, you guys covered it all.

Okay, so we've bitched and moaned. We all have issues with the remote platforms. Let's talk about something a little more positive that we all have a very special relationship with, is that podcast movement is coming up in one month in my backyard of Dallas, Texas. So we threw out podcast movement as a potential discussion topic. I think that why don't we have Matt kick it off since he spoke in the least today. Matt, you and Katherine, I think, are the podcast movement veterans of the group I don't know about. Jack and David have gone a few more times. Definitely more than me. I've only gone once. But Matt, can you tell us about your thoughts on Podcast movement, why it might be beneficial for some podcasters producers? Basically anyone working in podcasting that has something to do with podcasting, why they should consider it?

Well, it's great to get together and meet other people and like minded people who are doing the things that you're doing, but it's really the ideas that you come away with when you go to an event like this. So, you know, the ideas were coming in 2016, and then 2017 you go again, and then 2018, you're leaving with different things every time, but at the same time, podcast movement is also changing. I think it's probably the first time I went, there was an awful lot of creators and there's fewer and fewer creators and a lot of the same people that we talk about often on this podcast who do attend this. So sometimes we don't spend nearly as much time in the sessions as we once did, but the sessions are still valuable. And I have not had a chance to go through the session schedule to decide, okay, I'm going to be going here and then here and then here, because you want to intertwine it with the meetings that you're going to have as well. Because I think a lot of the action does take place in the hallway. And podcast movements, it's always interesting the way that they put it together. If you were to take a look at the coffee budget, I think it's very eye opening to see what the coffee budget is to get these podcasters alive and kicking at nine in the morning for the early morning sessions, as it were. And I think one of the things that's a real turn off that you do want to avoid when you look at the schedule is who's going to be pitching. And listen. The podcast movement, Dan and Jared who put it together, they're very conscious about please do not pitch. And they make it clear when you're going to come on as a speaker, do not-

Pitching as a speaker, not necessarily as an attendee.

Yeah. This is really about education, right? This is an educational conference and people do come to learn and a lot of people's hearts are in the right place when it comes to teaching other people. Yes, you're going to get pitched when you go through the exhibitor area, but you're also going to meet and come away with good people on it. I think the best thing about podcast movement is coming away with the ideas.

Let's talk about potentially people that are in our shoes, people who may work with clients in podcasting, not necessarily the DIY podcast. And Catherine is the resident second in command with podcast movement experience. Do you feel that it is valuable for people that are potentially not in this group but still either produce podcasts or work in podcasting in some way? They can use this as a networking tool to either find more clients or sort of just expand their reach and get their foot further into the world of podcasting.

Okay, well, I'm going to slice up your question there a little bit. So I would say finding clients probably no, because the people who are going to podcast movement are either doing a podcast or they are otherwise represented in the podcasting industry. That's what I've found, maybe just with the people that I'm meeting. I'll say this. So I started going to Podcast movement, the second conference that they had, and this will be the first year that I'm not going. So just a disclaimer on that. So I've gone all those years, I've only missed one year that they've had it in person. And I'll say this, the biggest transition that I have seen in Podcast Movement is that the first year that I attended, so many hobbyists people who were doing hobby podcasting, they were doing it for the love of it. They wanted to get more into podcasting. It wasn't quite developed as this podcasting industry. By year four, all those hobbyists gone. I didn't meet one person who was just as a hobby for fun doing their podcast. So I always kind of lean back on, okay, this is how we've seen things shift. So I don't think that getting clients is necessarily you just don't meet those people because you meet a lot of hosts and you meet a lot of people who are coaching podcasts or they've got the experience of doing a podcasting, so they are now offering services to other podcasters. But to Matt's point, you do make great sort of other industry contacts. We all met at Podcast Movement and you do get a little bit of a bead on what is happening in the industry. You get a lot of valuable information. There are plenty of times I get information from the Podcast Movement that sort of serves me for that next year when I'm talking to my own clients, when I'm setting up helping clients set up shows, when I'm sort of planning ahead, I fall back on a lot of the information that I got at Podcast movement.

I think what's great about Podcast Movement is now they have tracks. And this is probably different from when Johnny Katherine when you guys started going, but I've just pulled it up here in other Chrome tab and we got the recording. Yeah, somehow there are nine tracks. Given what your role in podcasting? Is, there's a creation track, an industry track, a marketing track, monetization technical, a society culture and advocacy track, audio fiction track, branded content marketing track, and a podcast growth track. So you can kind of focus your attention on one of these areas if you like, and then you can also sort of bounce around between them. So that's been really good about it. And I'll tell you, my brain needs a break. But the end of Podcast Movement because there's an old episode of Married with Children where Kelly Bundy goes on a game show and she says, daddy, I'm full, because they've been filling her head with too much information. And this is the same idea. I will have a spiral notebook and I will fill it and then I just need a day or two to decompress afterwards because there's so much information that you can glean depending on how involved you want to get.

Okay. On Podcast Movement. David, I'm going to kick it to you. Can you talk about- as we round up this topic, can you talk about the social networking aspect of us all meeting each other, joining this Mastermind group, the benefit that we've gotten from it in terms of helping each other with business issues, client issues, marketing our businesses, growing our businesses, how helpful has that been from your perspective?

It's been okay. I object. Judge Ido, he's leading the witness. But no. Yes, it's been fantastic. And that is, if you are someone that does what we do, or maybe you're a podcast editor or somehow involved in working with clients that have podcasts, it's great to be there because otherwise we would be on this metaphorical island and we got to talk about some of the challenges that we have that we share. And that's just fantastic. In general, I think podcast movement is it's a little bit of everything. I still feel like much of the industry still is, pardon the French, making shit up. That's what I say all the time about podcast, even though however old it is, 15 years old or whatever it is. So you can't go expecting to learn, like, here's what you first do and here's how you monetize, here's how you market. You're never going to get that sort of black and white education. Sometimes you'll walk into a session thinking it's one thing and it'll be kind of off, or be like, this doesn't apply to me. But then the next session of a sudden you'll be like, this stuff is great, and you're writing down. So I like, Matt, try to come away with half a dozen good ideas that are really going to inspire you and hopefully meet people, because it is a relatively easy place to meet people because you got your opening line, hey, tell me about your podcast. And everybody will. Everybody will. And then you meet people in different markets, different things going on. That, to me, is what's great about it.

Beautiful. So if you're interested in podcast movement, just Google podcast Movement, Dallas 2022. You can learn more information there. They have ticket prices, all that good stuff. We will all be there. Save for Catherine, she will be there with us in spirit. Maybe I'll carry her around one day on FaceTime and just have her with the guys when we're all hanging out. 

The Podcast Superfriends, 

We are doing this episode to be- we called it the Charcuterie Board episode. We didn't have really one large topic that we wanted to dive into. So we're just going to be hitting on a bunch of different things. And the next thing comes from our very own Matt Cundill. Summer downloads, benefits of launching a podcast during the summer and planning for the fall. Matt, can you flush out that idea a little bit for us and then we can kind of just take the ball and run?

Yes. At the Soundoff Media Company. We launched a podcast featuring Maureen Holloway and Wendy Mesley, who are Canadian broadcasters. We did it launching in the middle of June when things are slowing down and it's kind of a strange time to do it, but it's also a great time to do it. And it's because a lot of other large podcast companies are taking breaks. They're disappearing. They're shutting down a little bit for the summer. And it really opened the door for us to land some good chart spots on charitable, get a lot of downloads and get a lot of attention while other people are kind of shutting down. We showed up and I thought, okay, that's good. The other thing, though, is that these companies that I mentioned that are shut down, they're going to be coming back with their product and their stories come September. You almost have to relaunch it again. We're going to have to relaunch it again in order to keep a good standing in and amongst the competitive podcast space.

What do you mean by a relaunch? Say we launched our show tomorrow, launched on July 19, and then September 1 rolls around. How would you encourage someone to do a quote, unquote relaunch?

I would encourage everybody to reset their shows come mid August to Labor Day. Okay, everybody's relaunching. You're sending kids back to school. Summer is over. New habits are starting.

Second new year.

The second new year, as it were. So, I mean, every podcaster needs to look at that as being, okay, here's what's coming up for fall and really getting a piece of their media pie as they get set into a new school year. Let's face it, kids in school and NFL football, for instance, all those things really do mess with the immediate clock.

Happy New Year.

Happy New Year is right, every September. I did see a couple of podcasts that have podfaded or at least not in production anymore, that started to go back up the Apple charts. And I took a look in. And again, these are people right now who are off for summer. They're going to whether it's on vacation, on a train, on a plane cabin, lake, whatever it is, but they've decided to listen to a podcast for the summer. So I have seen a few shows that have podfaded jump up the charts just because it's summer.

And from a production standpoint, for people that are working in the industry, working with clients. Jag, David, Catherine, I'll throw it to the three of you. I personally have seen sort of a slowdown in the number of clients approaching me and wanting to start a podcast during the summer. It happens every year for the last four years that I've been doing this. I'm curious to hear what your experiences are. Are you actively out there looking for clients during the summer? Because we know that less people are out there podcasting, so we want to find the most motivated person. How are you going about thinking about that?

It can cut either way. I have people now that are approaching me that my. Sense is they've picked this time strategically because the rest of their business is slowing down and they figured now is a nice time to turn their attention to planning something and looking ahead for marketing. Others definitely like taking the summer off and putting it off and some people I'm talking to now are even saying this is something I'm going to budget for next year, which I'd rather they do it sooner than that. But hey, if you want to plan out five months or so, terrific. So I would say don't write off podcasting because sometimes people consider it like in a totally different bucket from the rest of their business.

This is an unsexy comment that I'm about to make, but July 1 is the start of the fiscal new year for a lot of businesses that we work with, so that's- they finally have their money. They're ready to spend it, they're ready to go for it and so July might be the time when people start to do those podcasts that they were putting off. So it's not the most exciting way to look at it, but it definitely comes into play. I definitely experienced the summer slump with a lot of my clients and I don't want to set them up for disappointment. So we spend a lot of the summer with some of the people I work with to bank episodes that we're going to be releasing in September October and just give us a little bit more of runway that we can work with time wise to get the product together and the shows that we really want to do and get them out there.

I would also say that summer can be very slow, second only to the end of the year itself around the holidays because that's when everybody has their own stuff going on. It's just basic habitual stuff. I think there's a massive amount of travel this summer because there's pent up demand from the last couple of years and people couldn't travel as much. So people are kind of focusing on themselves and doing their own thing. What I will say is if you are in the podcast services industry, definitely get on your horse August September into the fall. Be thinking about approaching folks about launching a podcast in January at the start of the year because that's a really good reset after the holidays too. Fall is a good time to start planning out for new shows in January and if you're a podcaster, the same thing, if you want to do some long term planning.

And from a listener perspective, just anecdotal data on my end, I keep refreshing my Spotify app and just in the last couple of weeks and noticing there's just not enough new content that I'm like. My favorite shows just aren't putting out episodes and so I think Matt is absolutely correct. If you are wanting to sort of get in ahead of the pack, people are taking a break right now. So consider starting your podcast during the summer. You're going to have a leg up on everybody else when everyone else starts to gear up during the fall and when they're just starting to record their first episodes and getting their host feet wet and learning how to talk behind the microphone. You've already got two months of experience ahead of them. You're doing your relaunch. You're launching at the same time as them again, except you've already got more content in the bank. And we know that people love to binge content. And that moves us to our next topic. David threw this into the mix for the group. He asked, under what circumstances might it be wise to release several episodes at the same time? Think of a mini series where you're releasing for people to binge content. I can talk from personal experience. I work with one client who does a podcast for their business where he records episodes throughout the month. We put them all together, and at the end of the month, he releases them all at once.

Why did you do that? What's the thinking behind that, Johnny?

I think it is less stress on him because podcasting in and of itself is like taking on a second job. You have to schedule guests. You have to get people on the calendar. You have to record the episodes. You have to work with me, the producer, to get things ready to go. We do transcripts. We do YouTube videos. He works with a digital marketing company to create thumbnails and personalized cover arts for every single episode. So a lot of work is going into this, and it's a lot to do that and put one out every single week. On top of the fact that, hey, I got to go to my regular job and pay the bills and spend time with my family and see my wife and see my kids and take them to graduation, soccer against, all that kind of stuff. So it's just an easier way to sort of compartmentalize the job of having a podcast and still being able to put out a lot of content for their listener base. So, David, what caused you to think about putting- to want to talk about this topic?

Yeah, I mean, at Pod617, we work with a lot of professionals across a wide variety of industries. By the way, I saw the comment from Bruce Negron, who says, is being from Boston a detriment?

No.

Well, the proof is in the pudding. All right, Bruce? So thanks for listening, kid. We love you here at Pod617. Anyway, I know he's kidding around, but I think we tend to think of releasing podcasts in blocks maybe when they're for a more specific purpose. For example, I'm working with people who are authors of a book. The name of the book is Outwitting the Manipulator, and it's about techniques used to avoid being manipulated as the manipulation is actually happening. It's a very interesting topic. It's a compliment. So the podcast series is a compliment to the book, and at least the first season of the podcast will follow it kind of chapter by chapter, bringing each one of those chapters to life in more conversational, vibrant form in the podcast. So they haven't decided what to do yet, but I could see them releasing all call it ten episodes because this is just a compliment to our book. But I can also see I hate to be wishy wash and flip flop because we haven't decided yet, but there's still some value to releasing that serially for all the reasons that we like listening to podcasts. Seriously, what's your appetite for the next one? And it gives you a chance to promote something every week to grow your audience. So every week, in other words, if you're going to release them all ten, you kind of probably aren't going to be motivated to keep posting ten weeks from now every week on LinkedIn or Facebook or whatever your Twitter or whatever you're doing. So two schools of thought. That's why we want to throw it out to the group and see if you have instances where you think it might be appropriate to drop en masse.

So, David, you were just saying the word campaign just popped into my head. If something is a campaign, like a book, and you have things doped out for this entire let's say you have eight chapters of the book, until you have eight weeks of content, you want to just drip it out. That provides a structure for why you would be reaching out to your audience. That's why you're making these social media posts. That's why you're having this new podcast episode. So I can absolutely see that something that is campaign related could follow that schedule. And I also like the idea too, that podcasting is such a great medium for give more to those who want more. So if you have a topic that you know people are just going to be clamoring to get to that next one, why not give them that binge of that next piece? Have you seen like, hopefully this is a complimentary example, but some people with all these Amazon Prime shows, a TV show, when they don't allow people to binge it, people get furious. I want to get the whole thing at once. Give me my instant gratification. I think part of it is like, what are you trying to accomplish here? As usual, that's one of our ongoing running things. What is your mission here of what you're trying to do, but also is really to just kind of know what you're giving to people and how can you help them accomplish that?

Yeah, it's possible that a lot of podcasters, their goal is not as counterintuitive as it sounds. It's not to build an audience. It might be a resource to your clients. Let's say you just want to get out this ten part series on retirement planning and you want that on your website. Well, then there's nothing wrong with releasing them altogether, but I'll be quite an iron.

It's a branding tool at that point as well. Dave, you mentioned financial Advisors, which I have several of those clients. It's a resource, yes, for their existing clients, but many of my clients have gotten new clients by them discovering the podcast or having seen the podcast. That's some great advice. I like the way this person thinks, let me talk to them about managing my money. So it's a branding tool in that situation as well.

And I've done ones like that Jag, where the voices on the podcast are the people at that one company. Maybe this is an obvious point, but if you have a different guest every week on your podcast, you probably want to lean away from dropping them on mass, because why not give that guest a week to shine, to be the person. It was so good to have this person as a guest on my podcast and promote that all week and then you're on to the next one.

Yeah, it's much easier to market it that way when it's a guest to person. A guest to person. But if you do have a series or a theme that runs throughout all the episodes, and especially in the summertime, why not drop ten of them? How bingeable is it? If it's Bingeable, let it rip, because you're going to be marketing probably the podcast as a whole as one big Bingeable bunch. Which would be quite nice, actually. Just going back to launching. Launching with three episodes, always a good idea.

And you can also still do this campaign that Katherine was talking about. You can release the entire ten episodes at once. That doesn't mean that you're not allowed to market a new episode every single day if you're releasing six episodes. Week one, we're talking about episode one, and every single day is a different post about why episode one is so great. Week two, by the way, episode one is still there, and two and three and four and five and six, you're still highlighting a different episode every single week. So the marketing campaign doesn't go out the window just by the fact that you're taking this track of releasing them all at once. But we've hit on this word marketing, and people were saying campaign and marketing, and I think this segues into the topic that I actually threw out to the group was short form content. We're talking video clips, TikTok, instagram reels, audiograms basically as podcasters. This is something that I've been thinking about the last couple of days, is we are so fortunate. There's long form content and there's short form content. There is a whole audience of people that love podcasts. For one, I can sit through a three hour podcast, no problem if it's something that I'm really interested in and I have no problem listening to that whole thing. There is a whole world of people that can't do that. It's Gen Z, it's people coming up, the younger generations that are growing up right now, younger millennials, they love TikTok, they love Instagram real, they love swipe 60 seconds, I laugh. Swipe 60 seconds, I laugh. And they can do that for hours. Where we're fortunate, as podcasters is we can take long form content and we can throw all of that, hundreds of hours of content that we have recorded into the short form space. The people in the short form space, they can't take their content, they can't take 60 TikToks and cram them together and turn it into a podcast. They're stuck on that side of the pond versus us. We have a big freaking yacht and we can go back and forth and play in both spaces. So I'm curious, I know I've been going on a spiel, but what are your guys'thoughts on in terms of what content people should be pulling from their podcast to use as the best possible clips? Because what we're really doing here is we're marking our podcast to a whole new audience, a whole new set of social media users to these other platforms.

I think a little bit of his life and Matt and I, from our radio background, he'll probably agree here. It's like taking a morning show promo. It's like taking a 32nd clip from your morning show. You want to have a highlight, you will need to have an in and out. You need to start the clip at a point where it's not going to be foreign to somebody who's just catching it from that point. And you have to have a good out. It's either going to be a good laugh, it's got to be a really salient point. It's got to be the end of a thought as opposed to just cutting it in the middle. So, yes, short videos really are the way of the world right now because we all have the attention span of goldfish that YouTube is now doing YouTube shorts to compete with TikTok, which competes Instagram, Reels and so on and so on and so on. So having that short form content is a great way to market your podcast. You're not necessarily going to get somebody to click a link and listen to your podcast from that, but you're creating awareness and you can get those reps and they see the name of the podcast enough times, they might check it out.

So I would agree with what Jack said to the point where when you threw this idea out this morning, johnny, I think I'm doing my YouTube strategy wrong for the Sound Off podcast by putting up the graphic on YouTube and letting the entire show play. I'm probably better off with a shorter clip of one, two, maybe three minutes that people will watch to the completion. That is really entertaining that I can repurpose onto the blog page. And the reason why I think that is because my latest episode features exactly what Jack was talking about. A morning show host personality who said something really super funny that had a punchline, that felt a lot like a morning show promo. And of course, he did a morning show for many years, so that's what it was. And I said, why am I not just running that? Because that's the real goal. Why am I bothering with putting the entire show up on YouTube? I'm still going to get the SEO.

Why not both? If podcast is being discovered podcasts are being discovered and listened to on YouTube, why not use the shortcut to promote it? And then if people are consuming the content on YouTube, the long content is there if they want it.

I'll tell you why. Because there's just not enough hours in the day to do all the things that we would like to do. But yes, between that and that was going to be a subject I wanted to talk about. When is enough enough for all the things that we want to do in the marketing? And so I know we threw out the reels and doing Tik tok, but yes, short videos are really the future for this. And again, you don't need to get people listening to your show, but the recognition is wonderful.

Yeah, it's all about bringing on new people to discover who you are. Essentially, we're all becoming brands, and it's a great way to reach a whole new audience. And Matt said something really interesting. There just aren't enough hours in the day. And just like that, there are people out there that pay us to produce their podcast for them. Because, again, there aren't enough hours in the day. There are people out there that specialize exclusively in creating. Not creating, but pulling out the butcher knife and just chopping your podcast up and creating really bright, flashy, colorful, short form pieces of content from your podcast. You've got everything already. You don't have to do anything more. You just have to find these people. And if you check out my newsletter that I put out this morning, there's a great company, a group of kids that I just met last week called Authentic Marketing. And it's authentic, but instead of IC at the end, it's IQ. You can find them on Twitter. They specialize in this exclusively. I don't know if other people that are doing it, but I'm sure you can outsource it to upwork fiverr. You can hack your way around it, but I think it's something that too many people are leaving on the table and they shouldn't be.

I have a very pertinent tweet that I liked today that was about this very subject from Amy Woods, who does Content Ten X. She wrote a book about how to repurpose one piece of content ten different ways and she's been very helpful in the podcasting world. And she said this, remember this, short form content and long form content serve different purposes. Short form attracts people, new audiences, but also those who kind of already know you. Long form adds value, goes deeper, and satisfies established fans. And I thought, wow, that really could not be said better in my opinion.

I agree.

Johnny, can I ask a related question? Okay. It'll be in the form of a hypothetical. It does sort of build upon something you just said. I do a music podcast called Past Tense and we're quite proud of it. A lot of work goes into it and we have a loyal audience that is always giving us great feedback. It's a music nostalgia podcast. Anyway, end of luck. But the question is this, and I think there's a lot of podcasters out there and a lot of our clients are facing this question. You get up to call it 300 downloads per episode or somewhere between $201,000 maybe and you're very proud of yourself, but that's not going to satisfy you. Or maybe it does. I mean, there's nothing wrong with that. But let's say you do want to get up into 10,000 downloads per episode and let's say further, you have this magical intern that showed up one day and said, I'm going to work for free, I'm going to work for 20 hours a week for you. Okay, so not quite full time, but 20 hours a week, that's a lot of time. Would you use that intern too? I'll give you a few options here and then you can go other to one. Create things like video content, audiograms video clips, and other things that look very appealing on social media and just blast those out according to some pre planned schedule. Would you put that into work trying to get terrific guests, like headlining guests or like music stars that you can get on the show? Or would you use that intern to book you being the host of the show on other popular music podcasts to sort of capitalize on their audience? Those are the three I thought of. Maybe there are others. I'm curious to hear what you guys would do.

I think it depends on the individual. If the person was a music head, like they just know everything about every aspect of music and they love it, it's their passion, then I would put them in the guest space because they're going to know who to get on your show. If they're just someone that's really interested in working with you, then and they're a younger person, I would have them go to work on creating extra content to help market my podcast.

So are you saying all things mean equal? All the things I mentioned in a vacuum?

In a vacuum I would probably have them do the first thing. I would have them doing the extra work that I don't have the time to do to help put my podcast that's already all the content that I already have to get it out in front of more eyeballs.

Jack, I would agree with the content piece. There are so many ways to match points for a moment ago to create content, so many platforms, so many different things you can do across platforms. If I had an infinite amount of time in the day, I'd probably do that, but I don't. And having somebody that could do that and also maybe even a good point for our listeners and viewers today might be AB test a bunch of stuff. Try different social platforms, try different styles of videos, try many different things. You don't possibly have time to do all these different things. See what gets you the most traction consistently. And when you find out what that is, focus your attention there.

Do number one and make sure they leave the template behind so that you can do a few more in the future. They'll build you a nice template right for the audiograms and if it's easy enough then some of it can be automated now. I mean, Headliner does some automation. I think the script is becoming a little bit easier with it. It can be a pain in the ass to go and get the clip. But I think if there's one job that you're going to do is really you do need to go and choose your own clip and then give the clip to person to put together.

You do want to do that. Well now we're back to your original question Johnny, and that is that when I do an audiogram for a client, you want to be able to in a way being as busy as we are, we want to be able to do it as short amount of time as possible. But take some care with those things. Just because some guy is an expert in, I don't know, Macrame, don't pick a sound clip that just explains like how he got into Macrame, like pick something where he uses a colorful turn of phrase or something, right. I do like the captioned audiograms because that will catch your eye, I think, quicker than a non captioned audiogram.

All about stopping the scroll.

Stop the scroll, right. And make sure that there's a slide at the end that tells you where to find the podcast because a lot of people don't and it's like, well, you got to have the link somewhere.

On there.

Yeah. So you guys have missed the boat here 20 hours a week in all the hip bars, coffee shops in the Boston area, just talking up your show. This has to be an attractive person and you have to plant it and they have to say, oh, this new podcast. I was listening to everybody and then pretend that they're just talking to the person across. Everybody's going to start listening. It's going to be a word of mouth campaign in the streets. Guerrilla marketing. I see no problem with this at all.

Well, you have to have a stipend.

For the coffees and the cocktails that this person will be consumed.

Yeah. I take it you're 100% serious, Catherine, because that's a lesson that we shouldn't forget, is that you have to make your podcast shareable. We learned that at last year's podcast, which is a big message. It's like the reason why people stop, the reason why your audience stopped growing is because your podcast wasn't yours. Showing people how to share it in a simple way, because that's the way you're going to learn about most podcasts from somebody else. And I remember there was someone in Seattle at Podcast Movement who said that the biggest boost to their audience was when they went to some open flea market or some big open festival and set up a booth about their podcast. And they were the only podcast there. Everyone else is selling mugs or whatever they're doing, and all they said was, hey, subscribe to our podcast. And that's so, like, grassroots. And yet it worked for them. And I think it's a good reminder.

One of the points for local podcasts that often gets missed is like paper flyers in the coffee shops in your area. There are opportunities I was kidding. But there are opportunities for podcasts to do that. Kind of old school flyers, everybody. Now, big QR code caused the pandemic so that they could have a resurgence. We all know that you can even have QR codes, that people take people right to your podcast. So there are some creative things that you can do. And back to the booth. I'm sorry, just one more thing about the booth. I don't know if you guys how familiar you are with how big Libertarian podcasts are. Well, Freedom Fest is happening. There are several podcasts that are actual sponsors of Freedom Fest. They have exhibitor booths because that is a niche where the podcasting is really taking off. They have that audience. They are doing that booth in there and really connecting with new audience members.

Fish where the fish are.

You guys just hit the nail on the head. And I'm going to spell it out in kindergarten level language. If you're going to be doing the guerrilla marketing in person stuff, who is your ideal listener? Where do they hang out? What do they like to do? Go to those places. Don't just cast a super wide net. Be very deliberate with your time. Like Matt said, we don't have all the time in the world to be doing all this kind of marketing extra work. So if you do have extra time to actually get your boots on the ground and go market your podcast, go to where the people are most likely going to be fans of the type of content you're putting out. Think about the bars, the nightlife, the events. Like catherine said that are happening in the area. I think those are fantastic. To round out this topic, you mentioned Headliner. Where else can you actually go to actually put these types of shorter form contents together? I use Veed IO. That's V-E-E-D IO. Matt mentioned Headliner. Are there any other places people can go.

To starting them talk over each.

Other again so we don't get it?

Jack said the script is starting it. I haven't tried that yet. I will. I use getaudiogramcom G-E-T getaudiogramcom. It's a little clunky, but it gets the job done.

Okay. I know, Jack, I know you're big on Headliner and Matt said that one already. Catherine, is there anything else? Or jag?

I might have one and I actually think I could share the screen. There's something here called wave.

Yeah, Wave is a good one.

I've used that too. It is good.

W-A-V-V-E-I found it very expensive because I got very upset because Headliners started to charge. They wanted to charge me double and I asked them what constituted a 100% price increase. And they said, well, we're working very hard. And so I said, that's it, I'm going to the competition. And I went and checked these guys out and they were twice the price of Headliner.

It's very easy to use for non captioned. I haven't experimented with the captioned one, which is it can take some time. You got to retranscribe your clip and make sure that all the words are correct.

Top secret freebie option is on canva. Now you can do 1 minute clips with video and audio, and you can make a video out of an audio. And that's a free way to do it.

Oh, yeah, on Canva, that's huge. If you have the Adobe suite in Adobe Premiere, their video editor, you can transcribe a video or you can just drop audio into it. Transcribe that. I have found Adobe's transcription to be very accurate as well as Headliners.

And finally be brave and just do a 1 minute video. Isn't that the whole thing is to just do a video of yourself?

You just got to start doing it. Same as podcasting, you just got to start. So we've thrown out a ton of options for you guys, all your listeners and viewers. There is no excuse. Same with the remote podcasting options. There are just as many options out there for creating the short form content. That's about everything that we're going to talk about on today's Charcuterie Board episode. So we will give one final word to everybody. Matt, where can people find you online? And do you have one piece of parting advice?

Yeah. I would like everybody to go and check out Dan Meisner's latest blog or Tweet. He left about 14 points about how to really get perspective about podcasting, even when it comes to marketing. I was going to mention, as we were talking about marketing, just. That all this content that we're talking about creating is really about sampling. So Dan really breaks it down. He's got a way of really sort of sharing his knowledge in very short form. He did it in a Twitter thread and he's also done it on the blog. He's now departed from Pacific Content and wherever he winds up, they're going to be very fortunate to have one of the smartest minds in podcasting. So congratulations and good luck to Dan. You can find me- sorry, go ahead.

No, I'm sorry. Thank you so much for sharing that article. It was incredible and it's a must read if you're making a podcast. Back to you, Matt.

Soundoff.network is where you can find me.

Catherine O'Brien.

I'm a chronic interrupter. Sorry about that, everybody. My name is Catherine O'Brien. Branch Out Programs in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and you can find me on Twitter and Instagram at Hello Catherine O. Thanks so much.

David Yas.

It's David Yas. It's David Boston. And it's Pod617.com. If you want your own podcast, we'll produce it for you. And just for the heck of it, because I'm shameless, I'll plug that music podcast. Go to top ten time machine. No, sorry, go to Timemachinepod.com, timemachinepod.com. If you're a music fan, you'll dig that show. Thank you.

J-A-G bring us home.

Jag in Detroit podcast. My one piece of advice would be before you do any show, prep it. Prep it and then prep it some more. Know what you're going to do, where you're going to go and how you're going to get there. And if you need help with that, or the production element or the co hosting element of your podcast, you can find me on my website, jagindetroit.com. That's J-A-G, or on social, everything is Jag in Detroit.

And I'm Johnny Podcasts. You can follow me on Twitter under the same name. We have been the podcast super friends. Thank you so much for tuning in. Share the show, subscribe, follow, all the good stuff. See you next time.

Thanks for listening to the Podcast Superfriends. For a transcript of the show, or to connect with the Superfriends, go to the show notes of this episode or go to soundoff.network. Produced and distributed by the Soundoff Media Company.