Arielle Nissenblatt: Resident Podcast Enthusiast

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  0:02  
The sound off podcast. The show about podcast and broadcast - starts now.

Matt Cundill  0:12  
Arielle Nissenblatt was on the show about two years ago, Episode 307. If you're scoring on the sound off home game, she was the community manager at squad cast, which is what we use to record all our episodes. She's back again to answer the burning questions of audio such as Do you need video? Why are newsletters still a great way to market your show? And why is there so much BS about how everyone should be doing their podcast? She even took to the internet to voice her frustration with all the brown colored noise. 

Arielle Nissenblatt  0:42  
I think I learned pretty early on that most people are bullshitting all the time, and that that should be called out. Also I'm bullshitting and that you're bullshitting and like everybody's bullshitting a little bit. Like I go to conferences all the time. And most people are surface leveling their talks, most people are like, here's the five top five things to do this, like, I'm sorry, but the things that you're saying are the top five are like kind of bullshit. They're not actually helpful for anybody. So I just try to when I'm speaking, whether it's in an interview like this, or on stage, or anytime I just tried to give clear takeaways. I think that that has just made me very tell it like it is.

Matt Cundill  1:21  
You see, that's why she's here and what you can expect today. We're also going to discuss social media platforms, and which ones work for her. Results may vary, of course. And now Ariel in the sublet joins me from New York City. Question number one has to be what did she think the moment she found out this script would be purchasing squad cast?

Arielle Nissenblatt  1:43  
I was pumped. This was May of last year. I think that Zach Moreno and Rocky Felder, the founders of Squadcast told me that it was in the works. And I had to be quiet about it. And I immediately was like, Oh, God, I really hate keeping secrets, but I'll do it. And then I called my mom, because that's immunity is either mother or spouse and I don't have spouse. So I did Mother. So I got to tell her, which was nice, because her company also recently had gotten acquired. So we had some, she had some advice to give, I was pumped immediately, I was just thinking about how great it would be for creators to combine these two products. So quick answer, I mean, excitement. That was my first feeling.

Matt Cundill  2:27  
Were you previously a user of descript, before the purchase, 

Arielle Nissenblatt  2:31  
Not really, I had created an account. And I had tried it a little bit. But I was not using it in my regular workflow. And it's interesting now to look back on that because I hear people who have the same hesitancy that I used to have now I now I use it at least three times a week for a bunch of different podcasts that I work on. And for fun, I just kind of go in there and test things out all the time. And I chat with people who are like, Yeah, I've tried it, but I really can't get into it. Because you do need to give it a little bit of time just like you do with every piece of software in order to you know, work the muscle and make sure that it's within your your realm of technological capability. And I remember when I was there, and I used to be such a slower editor such a slower Podcast Producer when I used other services and now I do use the script but no, I did not use it initially. I use squad cast always I use squad cast before I worked at squad cast. I barely use the script before I worked at the script. 

Matt Cundill  3:31  
Were you part of the acquisition? Because I would think that the probably like do we get Ariel to to come on over here and be community manager of this because you're doing such a good job with squad cast? It just seems like sort of a natural transition?

Arielle Nissenblatt  3:42  
Yes, most of us came over from Squadcast to Descript. So we did need to interview but mostly to figure out what positions we would occupy in the new company. Where would we best fit in? Maybe did we want to make a change? Right? So I'm, I'm in the community space. But I also at squad cast was doing a lot of marketing a lot of social media did I want to carry that over into descript? So I had some conversations with HR described but also with the people that manage the departments that I'm now part of. So yeah, I definitely feel like in addition to the software being acquired, they also acquired the talent that came along with it. 

Matt Cundill  4:22  
Has your view of video usage and podcasting changed since you've you've come on with the script, obviously, yeah, it's a lot easier to do. And there's some great ways to edit it. But did your view about usage of video and podcasting change once you got into descript?

Arielle Nissenblatt  4:37  
Yes, but not because of Descript more so because of the the landscape that we are now in and that is, I think if you were to go online and listen to me speaking on podcast two years ago, you'd hear me say, you do not have to do video if you are an audio podcast. And I still believe that to a certain extent you if you want to just do audio. There are people that want to consume your podcast you Just in audio, even if there are not, you will find them. You know, like if you do not want to create video, you do not have to create video. I know a lot of people love video audio because you don't have to get ready for the camera, you can just show up and shut your camera off and feel good. And you don't have to worry so much about what you look like and the implications that that has. However, I have changed my tune in the sense that now it is much easier to make video for podcasts to extract the video from your Squadcast session, edit that while you're editing your audio and make a whole episode that you can upload to YouTube or you can also go and create some clips on social and post them. I think it's easier for the average creator nowadays to do that with tools like descript or Camtasia. Or there's some other ones out there like What's That One? Capcut is a big one cap wing is another one. There's a few that Opus dot Pro allows you to clip some things and make some video quickly. It's not necessarily going to lead to immense success for every single person that does venture out into the video world. But my tune has changed in that I used to be vehemently don't do video if you don't want to do video and now I'm like, you know if you are looking to grow, and you are willing to test out video as a potential growth mechanism, it might be worth it for you to do a three month trial posting video clips. Not saying it will necessarily be successful, but it might be worth a try. 

Matt Cundill  6:25  
So why am I doing video right now? How's this gonna help my podcast? Because there's a lot of people who say, Well, I gotta do a video. Yeah,

Arielle Nissenblatt  6:31  
no, I hate that. I hate that you got to do video, nobody's got to do video, you should do video if you want to, if your listeners are asking for it. Or if you want to test out some creative juices that you know maybe you want to play with video, maybe with the with your recent. You, Matt, you did not use descript before and then you did when squad cast aquat ones class was acquired, right? Yeah. Were you ever editing video beforehand? No. So me either. The only reason I started to be able to edit video is because of the scripts. Because when we started at the script, one on our onboarding, one of the tasks that we had to complete was to make a video introducing ourselves to the team to the entire company and posted on the Slack channel. And then you get a bunch of emoji reactions. And people are like, Oh, I love to hear this about you. It's so nice to know that you also play soccer, that kind of thing. So you introduce yourself. And I had had no experience editing video before I had to jump into the deep end and record and edit video. You know, in the past, I just recorded and edited audio. But now all of a sudden, I can do that. And I take on other projects like now when my family has like a big birthday that they're celebrating somebody's celebrating like their 80th birthday, I can make a video montage pretty easily. And I can make the cuts. And I that is not something that I could do before. So it's really cool. And I think the reason that you are doing video now is to experiment. I think you are still a podcast about the product, the broadcast industry, you are still a podcast about podcasting. And because of that your listeners are mostly going to be people who have been listening to podcasts who let's listen to like the strict sense of the word podcast for a long time. But you might be able to discover some potential new listeners or consumers. If you post on social and somebody posts, somebody searches for the exact right keywords and you pop up and then maybe you have a clip that goes viral every once in a while. So

Matt Cundill  8:21  
I was like you the script wasn't for me. The script was for a lot of people. And it solved a lot of problems, especially you know, because you see sound waves and it's strange. But now you can see words and you can erase them. And then came video and I said well, I gotta do some video. But then I say, Well, I'm not I'm not great at doing this stuff I'm learning. But I'm not great at doing this. One of the things I have found is that there are people on my team who love using the script. And so tell me about some of the other experiences about description. Maybe they're a little trepidatious about coming on board and using it. But now they're all in some of the new things that have come along this, this just makes my life easier.

Arielle Nissenblatt  8:59  
Well, for me, I kind of call it my descript unlock moment where I was doing one thing one way for a really long time, and I thought that that was the easiest it could possibly be. And then somebody showed me what that could look like kind of sped up through the script. And then I was like, okay, yep, I'm gonna have two hours back to my day. So for example, I was record I have a podcast about podcasts recommendations, and I used to record it into Audacity and then go through my recording and cut out my hums and ahhs and cut out my retakes and cut out a joke that I made that I didn't like. And it would take me forever, because I could only listen back to it in the speed with which I gave it with the script. I can listen back on 1.5 1.75 to speed I can go through my recording very fast and make changes. And then of course, I'm going to want to come back and listen to it at regular speed so that I can make sure that it sounds good that all my transitions are clear things like that. But being able to listen back quickly has saved me so much time so there's that there's all So the ability to shorten word gaps, that's been huge for me, because I tend to, when I record my solo podcast, I do a lot of, you know, taking a break, and I just set a line, but I want to do that line again. But I might want to get the cadence a little bit different. So I take a second to think about it. So I might leave two to three seconds of open air. And then I want to get rid of all those two to three seconds in one fell swoop, because I don't necessarily need to go through them and delete them one by one. But what the script allows me to do is to shorten my what they call word gaps, so when there is just dead air, so you can just do that by having the script, identify where that takes place in the script in the script, and then press a button and they're gone. Same with your filler words like um, and ah, and you know, and sometimes if you repeat the word, it might be considered a filler word. So those are, that's also something that you can play around with, you can either remove your filler words, or you can strike through them so that they're still there. But the playback will skip over it so that you could decide later if you want to get rid of them. And I am not a big fan of getting rid of all of your filler words, because there's some element of filler words, that sounds unnatural. But having the option is a nice thing to do. Especially if you are looking to make a very quick, fast paced video or audio piece,

Matt Cundill  11:18  
talking about some of the communities that you have here, because I know the script has a discord channel, squad cast has got the Slack channel, I've been a part of both. And then last week, I found myself going to ask a question in descript. On Facebook, Oh, interesting. I just found myself there. And I just said, Oh, look, I do have a question to ask about this. And a lot of it actually came down to leveling both sides of the video. Again, because I'm trying to do a little bit of video. Am I missing any community groups that are out there?

Arielle Nissenblatt  11:47  
Well, technically, we don't run the Facebook one. It used to be run by us and then ended up being too many things to take care of. So we actually gave it back to the people. And now it's run by users. So that's great. We do check in on it every once in a while. Try to answer some questions. You know, every once in a while people ask questions that are not necessarily going to be able to be answered by the community. And it is good for us to be able to say, hey, this actually looks like a job for the support team, please submit a ticket. Sometimes we can render aid right then in there, we can actually give support right on Facebook. But for the most part, our accepted channels are help.descript.com, which is just a forum where you can go for help. support@descript.com is our email address. And then we've got that discord that you were referring to, which has 18,000 plus people in it, we do a lot on there, I'll come back to in a second. And then you also refer to our Slack channel for squad cast, which will eventually be shutting down if you have noticed, I've been posting less and less on there because we're really trying to move people over to our descript owned channels. But back to discord we are, you know we've got a lot going on there. So we've got our introduction channel where you're supposed to post when you're new, we've got our made into script channel, which if you if you just created a new episode of something that you're proud of you are absolutely welcome to post it there and either ask for feedback or ask for people to like and comment on it or even just to be like, Look, I'm proud of this. And then we also have our community forum. So that's where people can go to ask and answer questions. And that's really where our support team is hanging out. And it's supposed to be a place where the community helps out each other because while we have a dedicated support team, we are not on the computer 24/7. And we try to rely on the community as well. There's so much shared knowledge within the community. So we love that about our our Discord channel. And then we also have office hours right on our Discord channel. So on Wednesdays we have Marcelo who is on our support team. He does an hour long office hours where he just answers any and all questions that people have about the script. And then on Thursdays, I do an office half hour with sometimes Marcelo sometimes Zack Moreno from squad cast, about remote recordings specifically. So sort of to transition over the squad cast users and make sure they have a soft place to land. We are there answering questions. And of course, things get broader than just remote recording or the scripts. But you know, we talked about production, we talked about marketing, we talk about just being a content creator on the internet. So we do all of that right within discord. So that is really the place that I like to push people to because it's also where we list our events. You can say that you're interested in an event we do events live on YouTube, like at least once a week, and we keep track of all of the community related endeavors that are going on through our Discord channel.

Matt Cundill  14:32  
There's a lot of communities that you're a part of. I mean, the podcast community is one big community. You've listed a few Have you ever gone and counted all the communities that you're involved with?

Arielle Nissenblatt  14:42  
No, because I also think the word community means different things at different times to different people, you know, like, I'm part of a listserv called Public Radio NYC, which is awesome. It's a great listserv. It's sort of a community. Sometimes there are events that might come about by way of this group, but we're not necessary. parallely like, Let's get together as the public radio NYC community. But I would also say that if I met somebody in the wild, and I found out that they are also part of this, I'd be like, oh, you know, we're in a community together, essentially.

Matt Cundill  15:10  
Talk a little bit about The Podcast Academy, I think it was a couple of weeks ago, you gave a lot of people an intro into video. This was not really affiliated with the script. But you did mention the script, it was really about like, all the ways you could use video. And I think one of the things you do that made it interesting was you kept people engaged. as we're going along, who's using video who is not using video? What are your experiences? And from that, I can take away that everybody seems to have a very, very varied experience about video. And its usage so far, from what you can see what things are absolutely true, involving the usage of video to this point, let's say in the last year, where a lot of people have picked it up,

Arielle Nissenblatt  15:50  
that there's no silver bullet, I know that sucks as an answer. But I will be a guest on a podcast. So say like this, and then afterwards, I'll maybe you'll you'll give me access to the video and I'll throw it into the script. And I'll create some clips for myself using the Find good clips feature. I'll upload a bunch of those, and then one of them might get 1.4 1000 views and then another might get 26. And that is I just think the only thing that is for sure true about video for podcast right now is that nobody understands the algorithm. And we just need to keep experimenting. There are some people that are putting out videos often enough that they are able to glean some truths. Like for example, there's a guy named Gary Arndt, who has a podcast called everything everywhere daily. And he is actually part of another community I'm a part of called the podcasting community on Discord, which I can talk about in a moment. And he is very transparent about how Tik Tok doesn't really do much for him. Even though he gets X number, he gets a pretty, he gets pretty big view numbers on tick tock, but they don't necessarily convert to his podcast. So there are some people that have figured that out who have figured out how to go viral, but not necessarily how to move that virality from short form to long form.

Matt Cundill  17:05  
So you're not the first person to have told a story like that. I've heard a couple like that so far, there still seems to be a lot of people who have a lot of truths. And you must and this, which sort of dovetails to you and I live favorite clip from a couple of weeks ago, which is the level of bullshitting that goes on whether it's at a conference or it's online, or people say you must end the top five reasons that how do we get away from this,

Arielle Nissenblatt  17:35  
it's so easy to fall into listening to Guru types. Because we all want a silver bullet, we all want to be able to say if I do this, this, this and this, I will be successful. You can't do this, this and this to be successful. It just every person has so many different variables. Everything that you put out into the world has so many different variables, every platform that you put it on has so many different variables, you just need to be willing to continue experimenting, and hoping that your stuff reaches the right people so that those right people must tell their friends and then you get word of mouth. I think like my main goal in life is to become word of mouth viral with any of my content. Because once you hit that once, once you are so recommendable people can't escape you they need to, they need to listen to what you make, they need to see what you make, they just need to be a part of it in some way. And I just don't think that there is one formula for any person to get there. I think that there are generalizations that we can make about certain types of content. For example, if you have a podcast about business, LinkedIn is a good place to go. If you have a comedy podcast, Instagram is a good place to go. But the only reason that is true is because it has been true doesn't necessarily mean that it will be true.

Matt Cundill  18:44  
So one of the things that is my big takeaway about Eric on this and blood is involvement is key. I mean, keep your loneliness level low, if you can, you know, be a part of communities. We don't have all the answers hanging around the people who may be able to provide you some guidance and some answers along the way. And to that the podcast community discord, I just found out about this an hour ago, because well, I just I went into my Discord to go and check on the descript one. And there's an invite you invited me to the podcast community discord. So thank you for doing that, of course. So what am I going to find in there now that I've accepted?

Arielle Nissenblatt  19:21  
Well, I started that in 22, in October of 22. Because I don't know, the timeline on when Elon Musk took over Twitter so murky to me because there was the maybe he's going to do it. And then there was the he's definitely going to do it. And then there was the delete all your stuff now get off Twitter. And then there were the people that were like, maybe we can stay but also like start divesting from it. You know, that kind of thing, put our eggs in another basket. And so in October of 22 I think I really felt a need to create another place for podcast people to hang out and really to try to replicate the I think it's like a serendipity feeling about that used to be so great about Twitter that you could do we'd added at anyone and they could see it and they could repost it, even if they were like Ira Glass or somebody super famous in podcasting or beyond, like everybody's had a cool interaction on Twitter if you experiment with posting. And I wanted to recreate that and I knew that I was never really gonna be able to recreate that on another platform because Twitter of your was one thing that can't be recaptured. But I just wanted a place where podcast community folks could go. So I put out a call on Twitter and on a few other social platforms that I was starting this discord, and it blew up pretty quickly. It like within five days had hundreds and hundreds of members now we're, I don't push it very often. But when I do we get a lot of people joining. I think we're at like 1500 members now. So it's a really great place and it stays pretty active. We've got a lot of different channels on there, one for people to recommend podcasts that they're listening to that are not there's one for self promo, one for industry events, one for resources, one for job givers, one for job seekers, a lot of different things audio magic, we've got so many different subsections sub channels within so that people can sort of choose their own adventure grade threads,

Matt Cundill  21:08  
one out of 10 A to F effectiveness.

Arielle Nissenblatt  21:12  
I think it sort of sucks mostly in the podcasts land, because I mean, here's the thing, it's very highly engaged in that if you go and you post about podcast stuff, you'll probably get a lot of people commenting or liking or, or being involved engaged in some way. But it's also a lot of that energy of like, follow for follow, leave a comment and I will follow back everybody who has the word podcasts in their profile. And that's not to say that I didn't do that, too. I did that a few months ago when threads was newer, because I have also done that on LinkedIn. I've said like I want to be connected to everybody in the world that does podcasting for business or that that has a podcast. I really do. I'm genuinely curious about that. But there are clearly people on threads who are doing it for engagement, baiting for engagement farming. And I think you can tell when people are doing it because they just want a whole bunch of new followers. So I think there's a lot of that there's also a lot of really bad BSC advice on there for podcast marketing, a lot of people speaking in absolutes, a lot of people speaking without doing research, but just doing going off of their own personal experience, as opposed to the experience of like having tested out multiple software's that do certain things. So I think that it can be honed. But I think for some reason algorithm there is really strange like I have a friend who wants to be known in the podcast space, she posted one thing about parenting and now she's going viral for parenting all the time. And she's like, I don't want to do parenting.

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  22:36  
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Matt Cundill  23:07  
Are you still a part of Twitter? Because I know at one point, or maybe you still are moderator of podcasting, Twitter. But I know as you mentioned, a lot of people bailed. Yeah,

Arielle Nissenblatt  23:16  
I'm still on Twitter, I have not been posting as much. But that's not necessarily because of Elon Musk, it's more so just because I'm tired. And I also like have enough going on. When I am on Twitter and I'm posting on Twitter, I give myself work. So for example, I'll be like, post your favorite podcast cover art, and I will give it a rating from one to 10. So then I have to go through all the responses and rate the podcast cover arts, or like post your the the one line or description of your podcast. And I'll tell you, if it is something that is compelling. Based on that, you know, 10 words alone, then I give myself homework. So I stopped doing that. I still do post every once in a while, you know, if I if I have if somebody posts something really BSc in terms of advice for podcasters or advice for content creators online, I'll go in and I'll quote, tweet it and make fun of it in a nice way. So I will still do that every once in a while. But I haven't been necessarily doing a lot of community building on Twitter lately. I do still moderate the community, the podcasting Twitter community. I used to do it with Alvin Brook from Buzzsprout. And we just haven't coordinated on it in a while. So we haven't really done anything new with it. But there is still that community. So if folks aren't familiar, you can still tweet within certain communities so that those tweets are available just to that community and you can join different communities on different topics.

Matt Cundill  24:36  
So one of my favorite things that you've got going is trailer park. I love trailers and trailers are so important. It's one of the things I see missing from a lot of podcasts. So why is it important for somebody to have a trailer for their podcast?

Arielle Nissenblatt  24:48  
You got to have a trailer for your podcasts, you just gotta. It's important for a number of reasons. One is because it allows you to populate your RSS feed maybe before you're ready to buy populate your RSS feed with actual content. With actual episodes, it allows you to launch before you launch. So you can start sending people to your podcast, which is now available on Apple and Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts. Before, you know, maybe you still need to do a few more weeks of research for your first episode, or a few more weeks of honing your post production for that first episode. So it allows you to have a place to go. And that contributes to the next reason it's important to have a trailer which is it allows you to market before you're ready to market. You know, it allows you to potentially start reaching out to a bunch of other shows that are similar to yours or that you find that you have some synchronicity with and to say, I have this trailer, would you consider dropping it at the end of your next episode, maybe you can say something like, there's a new show that I think you're going to love. We're going to play the trailer after this episode. So it allows you to do that. And, you know, maybe you do something for those collaborative partners. In exchange, you're building these relationships with them. It also allows you to make sure you know what your podcast is about. It allows you to it forces you to hone the information that takes place over your however many episodes season and say what is this podcast really about? It forces you to say who am I? What's this podcast about? Why am I making it and who is it made for? So those are just three reasons.

Matt Cundill  26:18  
So I will sort of just present the difference between a show promo which can go about you know, 30 seconds to 45 seconds or 60 seconds, a trailer can still be that length. But trailers are often maybe just a touch longer. I'll give you one fun use I did for a trailer, I had a guest on this podcast. And one of the reasons he was on was because he has a brand new podcast. And about a week before I put a feed dropped the trailer and and said this person is going to be a guest in advance. By the way, you should probably hook up and get to know this podcast, we're going to be talking with him in another week. So there's your right, there's all sorts of things you can do with it. I think that idea that you have about putting the trailer at the end of an episode on somebody else's show is just it's gold. Yeah.

Arielle Nissenblatt  27:05  
Another reason to have a trailer is because the podcast hosting providers at this point, most if not all of them allow you to mark your episodes as either bonus episodes, regular episodes or trailers. And you should use that space, you should use that real estate also, because podcasts listening apps usually also delineate that so if you go to Apple, you can see when something is marked as a trailer. And it's supposed to be something that you are pushing your listeners to so that if they just come across your cover art, they're attracted to your cover art, they're attracted to your title, the next thing their eyes are gonna go to is your trailer. So you're gonna have a lot of plays on your trailer, like for all of my podcasts, the most plays are on the trailer. And that is because that is the first thing they're exposed to. It's going to reach the widest audience, then of course, it's going to funnel from there. So podcasts about podcast trailers is not for everybody. But a lot of people were maybe interested in finding out if it was for them. So they hit play on the trailer and then decide,

Matt Cundill  27:57  
well, I think it's a great place to find ideas for a trailer. You can also redo your trailer once a year.

Arielle Nissenblatt  28:03  
Anytime. Yeah, anytime you have a new season anytime you maybe have a series like you could really go all out.

Matt Cundill  28:09  
And I loved your co host Tim, I am firmly camping beside him on the trailer being short and effective. Although I think one of your recent episodes it did go along and it was very good. It did not bore by by any stretch of the imagination. And I'm all for a short trailer except for I think mine is over three minutes. So

Arielle Nissenblatt  28:29  
I'm like, You're not even taking your own advice, bro.

Matt Cundill  28:33  
Oh, come on. I think I'm so important.

Arielle Nissenblatt  28:36  
As it must be long, we must hear absolutely everything that you have to say. Yeah,

Matt Cundill  28:39  
I might be. I might be in the market to redo my my trailer. Well,

Arielle Nissenblatt  28:44  
you should do it as like a learn along with me as I redo my trailer.

Matt Cundill  28:48  
How's your podcast idea coming along? In the one where you know, parents tried to explain what their adult children do for a living? And when can I be on an episode? context,

Arielle Nissenblatt  28:57  
I think it was July 9 2021. I tweeted that there should be a podcast where parents try to explain what their adult children do for a living. I was at my parents house at the time, and just visiting for a few days. And I think my dad asked me earlier that morning, how's the podcast world? And I was like, You have no clue what I do. You have no clue what I do. And he doesn't know how to access a podcast. He still has questions about the difference between podcasts and radio, he still just doesn't quite understand. And it just made me realize that a lot of parents probably can't explain what their adult children do for a living. And I will say because I have gotten the ageism accusation here. I also can't explain what my mom does. I can't explain what what the next generation does. So it's it really goes both ways. It's really this fundamental disconnect. And I will also say, I don't think we know a lot of what our friends do. You know, so sometimes it is people who are completely on your, in your age in your generation. We don't always know but it's kind of like this interesting thing that it's wholesome to figure out like how your parents are when they're at dinner parties explaining what their beloved children are doing for a living. So I tweeted this thinking it would maybe, you know, do some numbers in the podcast world, but it did numbers beyond the podcast world. Hundreds of 1000s of impressions, lots and lots of comments, a lot of people reaching out to me and saying, You got to make this podcast. So this was, of course, almost three years ago. And I have made some attempts at making the podcast, I recorded a bunch of interviews in 2021 2022. Put together a trailer put together a deck pitched it to iHeartRadio they ultimately passed. So I took a little bit of a break from it, but I do intend to eventually make it because the meme accounts on Instagram and on Twitter and even on other social platforms. Start reposting this every once in a while and every time they do I get new followers, I get new people telling me I must make this show. And it's the tweet that will never die.

Matt Cundill  30:47  
You and Lauren Purcell at Podcast Movement last year you were up on stage you've got your doctor's coats on you are the podcast medics as it were to repair podcasts and solve the problems and maybe issue a prescription or two. So what do you find needs to be prescribed the most podcasters these days, what mistakes are you seeing them make the most of the

Arielle Nissenblatt  31:10  
mistakes that podcasters make now are not super different from the mistakes that they were making. Five years ago, two years ago, it's going in without a marketing plan. going in without outlining a season going in thinking your show is going to be always on and not necessarily planning for it to take a break at times, not having a plan for if you take a break. So maybe you're going to set up some feed swaps or feed drops. And also not listening to podcasts not listening to other podcasts before you start your own.

Matt Cundill  31:42  
So you've given a couple of pieces of advice in the last year, I don't know where and when they just popped up. But I can sort of hear Ariel saying that I need to make this change in my life. And one of them is involving newsletters. So for years I had one, then I stopped. Now I've got one it is back. And I'm sticking with it. And I'm doing it every week. So for anybody who doesn't have one, why did these things work?

Arielle Nissenblatt  32:08  
Newsletters work, caveat asterisk. I think you should have a newsletter you should at least be as a podcaster collecting email addresses because you don't own access to a list of the people that subscribe to your podcast. Yes, there are people that might leave you a rating and review on Apple star rating on Spotify. Maybe on other platforms, they're, you know, raising their hand and saying I listened to this podcast, maybe they're going to your fan list website and leaving you a voice note or go on your Patreon and contributing to the projects that you make. But there's no master list somewhere of all the people that regularly tune into your RSS feed. And because of that you sort of need to seek that out on your own, so that when people sign up for a newsletter, when they opt in to receive correspondence from you, you now have permission to send them emails. And hopefully those emails are going to be good emails, and they're not going to be spammy. And they're going to be they're going to be additive to the podcast listening experience. But the reason that newsletters can work, and I think that's maybe how the asterisk how we can navigate that asterisk is because it gives you yet another touch point with your listeners. And hopefully some of those listeners are loyal listeners who want to hear from you. And the reason they've subscribed is because they understand the value proposition. And

Matt Cundill  33:29  
I think that's a great point. Because I know I said why do these things work. And so this assumption that all newsletters are going to work, and why my newsletter didn't really work the first time around was because I don't think I was as authentic as I could have been. And so the commitment every week is to sit down and write something that I'm feeling that I believe in that I want to share. And if it's podcast advice, I'm now just going to sort of preface it with this may or may not be true. Just given all the BS that goes on.

Arielle Nissenblatt  33:56  
The funny thing about podcasts advice, advice about any creative thing in general is the answer should always be it depends. Unless I am sitting down with you. And I have listened to a bunch of your episodes and I've looked at your website and I've looked at your social and I can actually answer individual questions about your show not shows in general. lots

Matt Cundill  34:17  
to choose from, there's MailChimp, there's constant contact and you suggested to me beehive. Yeah, like beehive. Yeah, thank you for that. Why does it work? Why do you like it?

Arielle Nissenblatt  34:26  
I use MailChimp for years and years and years and it just kept getting more expensive. It was the thing that I learned email marketing on because of cereal because they advertised with cereal, which is great. I'm really grateful to MailChimp for like being an inside joke for podcast listeners everywhere MailChimp. That's really fun for us as podcast listeners. And yeah, I spent a lot of money with MailChimp over the years and grateful to them but also want something that's going to be a little bit more sustainable. So beehive is one set price as of now and they have all these really cool creator coordinate I should networks within. So I can recommend other newsletters and those newsletters can recommend me, which is really fun. I can also get paid to recommend and potentially refer other newsletters refer people to those newsletters. So that's great. And I've really been enjoying that. So and I also will say, it's a lot easier to set up than MailChimp is it's less mysterious, much easier to build templates. And also, they're really fun on social media. And I think honestly, that's how I became aware of them in the first place was social media, word of mouth, a friend recommended it. And I actually got to get on a call with somebody from beehive two years ago or so who was like, here's why this would work for your newsletter. So nice customer service, too. And

Matt Cundill  35:43  
tell me about your buds collective. This one arrives, sometime Sunday night, Monday in that zone. I love opening it up. It's it's podcast recommendations, generally. And you'll have to, um, this is a test. By the way, I just want to repeat this so that I tell the story properly to other people. And that somebody will curate a list of podcasts one of those episodes could be a podcast that they have done themselves, but five others from that particular genre to a list that sort of form a you know, a collective and a comprehensive listening piece.

Arielle Nissenblatt  36:13  
So that sounds right for others for others. So five total. Yeah. So

Matt Cundill  36:17  
why do podcasts recommendation newsletters work?

Arielle Nissenblatt  36:20  
They work for me. I subscribe to so many newsletters. I subscribe to so many podcasts newsletters, so many podcasts, recommendation newsletters, industry, newsletters, everything. I just love being up to date on all of that. I started the newsletter because I in 2017 was realizing that there were so many podcasts and I wanted there to be some sort of way to cut through what might be worth my time what might not be worth my time. So I started this newsletter hoping that other people could curate lists for me so that I would always know what to listen to. So that's why I started it. Other newsletters have other types of other podcasts newsletters have other types of missions. So for example, podcast delivery comes out every Monday and it's one new podcast of the last seven to 14 days. Find that pod comes out on Fridays, and it's also five podcast episodes not on the theme but sort of just curated by the founder of find that pod. Podcast review is interesting because it's podcast, it's reviews, a podcast plus a few listicles here and there. Podcast, the newsletter is Lauren Patel's newsletter, where it's just everything that she loves. She calls it a love letter to podcasting, pretty much everything she listened to in the past week, she writes about it, and it's great. So I think podcasts newsletters work, because people have varied interests. And we need to find a way to highlight the podcasts that are out there that are not necessarily going to find audiences on their own. That's why we've got curators who listen to all these podcasts, and then hopefully evangelize those podcasts to the right audience, to what might be the right audience.

Matt Cundill  37:48  
congratulations on your election to the Board of Governors of the podcast Academy. I've been a member since its inception. I think it's great. It's affordable, too, I believe. I actually have accidentally renewed for two years, which you're not even supposed to be able to do. But I accidentally hit Refresh when you're not supposed to hit refresh after you're giving your credit card. So I'm sitting here on an extended membership. But for those who just you know want to come up for one year, tell us why we should all be a part of the podcast Academy.

Arielle Nissenblatt  38:15  
The podcast Academy is still definitely in its infancy. So I think now is the time to really get behind it and offer your time offer your services offer your mentorship so that we can grow the academy so that it can be where I think other creative academies are. And the podcast Academy is the engine behind the ambitious, which is the awards for excellence in audio. There's mentorship programs as part of the podcast Academy. There are real life and virtual events that you can take part in that are member only and open to the public. And there's just some really cool discounts that you can get by being a member of the podcasts Academy. So I think people need to join because it further professionalize the industry. And the more people that join, the more we professionalize the industry and give ourselves and each other more opportunities to grow and to meet new listeners and to meet new collaborators. And

Matt Cundill  39:09  
I pointed this out earlier because I saw you last at an event which was sponsored by the podcast Academy about video and you know, when these things come up, it is very, very helpful to grab some information. So thank you, and thanks for being a part of the show today. I really appreciate it. It's so good to talk to you again. Aereo.

Unknown Speaker  39:27  
A blast and a half. Thank you for having me.

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  39:30  
The sound off podcast is written and hosted by Matt Cundill produced by Evan Surminski, edited by Chloe Emo-Lane social media by Aidan Glassey another great creation from the sound off media company there's always more at sound off podcast.com