Buzzcast

2020 Podcasting Trends + Should you own your RSS feed?

February 14, 2020 Buzzsprout Episode 19
Buzzcast
2020 Podcasting Trends + Should you own your RSS feed?
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Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

This week we talk about Buzzsprout's Podfest Party at Disney World, 2020 podcast trends across all of Buzzsprout's users, and answer an RSS feed question from Alex.

Learn more about Feedburner and Apple's Mirror Links if you're interested in controlling your RSS feed outside of your podcast host.

Have an idea for something we should talk about? Submit a topic in our Listener Suggestions form or post it in the Buzzsprout Podcast Community on Facebook.

Support the show

Contact Buzzcast


Thanks for listening & keep podcasting!

John:   0:00
Is there a bouncer?

Kevin:   0:02
I'm sure the code word? I think so. It's a Disney property sector. They'll have making many at the door.

Alban:   0:08
There's like tickets, John. Yet they, like, get a ticket. We're checking tickets. Maybe I don't think we're doing wrist bands for Maybe we could add that into the whole package.

John:   0:16
I just want to be a bouncer. It's been my dream.

Travis:   0:25
Welcome back to Buzz cast. We have the usual suspects myself. Kevin Alban and a first time special gas from right here in the office. Mr. John Pollard.

John:   0:35
Okay, I wasn't going.

Travis:   0:37
So for the good people that have never been on the receiving end of one of your glorious support E mails helping them with their stuff. More YouTube videos or you

John:   0:45
two yeses that one. But it was the most played. So that's

Travis:   0:49
right. Most popular. I think we found we found the reason. Um,

John:   0:54
I know the reason, uh, what do

Travis:   0:57
you do at bus problem?

John:   0:58
I am a programmer, and I recently helped with our statistics package, and I got to help on assistance package back in 2014.

Travis:   1:08
So the previous stats

Alban:   1:09
is a five year project,

John:   1:12
both of those, and we'll be continually updated as we as we make certain enhancements.

Travis:   1:17
Very cool. Well, yeah, I know we're excited that Jon is joining us, and, uh, you'll see why we're very excited that he's here here in a second. We hit that segment, but we're gonna start off with two podcast conferences that we have that are coming up. The 1st 1 is pod fest, not chronologically, but in the order. We're gonna talk about them pod fast in early March, down in Orlando. And not only are we super pumped about being able to take a bunch of people, but reduce something really special for all our bus. Browder's right, Kevin.

Kevin:   1:45
That's right. It's March 5th through eighth in Orlando, and we're gonna do a huge bus sprout kickoff party at Disney Springs. There's a really cool bowling alley down there called Splitsville luxury lanes. And it's at least in my experience, unlike any other bowling alley, have been, too. It's really amazing place. Think of like a high end, high end restaurant, really nice bar with a bunch of bowling alleys around it, huge space. And so everybody who got a ticket, three bus proud or got one on their own or speaking at the conference. We're inviting all of those buds sprout people to join us for this kickoff party, and it's going to start at. It's gonna be from 5 to 9 Thursday night and then we'll leave right from there and head straight up the pot fest in the pot fest. Kickoff Party is at 9 p.m.

Alban:   2:29
This is gonna be a big deal. Party Kevin, like, drove down there, scouted a bunch of locations, has, like a private area reserved. We have food, drinks, bowling games.

Kevin:   2:41
Yeah, we're talking about the holes were taking over the whole top story, which is like the main, the main space, and it's it's exciting. It's It's a really impressive space, and I'm gonna be really excited to see it packed out with Bo Sprout podcasters.

Travis:   2:56
So what? Two people need to dio if they want to be at this awesome party.

Kevin:   3:00
Well, you should have gotten an email. If you have a pot fest ticket from bus Sprout, then you should have gotten an email within the last couple days, and if you haven't, then you need to drop us an email support at boats brought dot com and let us know that you miss that email because it is an indoor space. There are, like fire codes and stuff they can't let so many people in. And we gave out more tickets to Apophis than space we have available for this party. So it is. First come first, serve on the tickets to this party, so you have to claim a ticket, and you have to bring the ticket to the door to get in. We're also afraid to mention we are providing transportation to and from the hotel. So all you have to do is get yourself to the hotel by about five. We'll have buses just running in loops from the hotel to splitsville lanes and back the whole time. Um, so just come out the main entrance to the hotel. You should see a bus. They'll have a best route name or sticker or something on the side. Help on that bus they're bringing to splitsville mains. You come have some food and drink and enjoy bowling. And maybe when surprises And when you're finished, you enjoy your time in Disney Springs. If you wanna hang out there for a while it's a very cool place when you're ready to head back, the final bus leaves at like 9 15 and that will get you back to pot fest in time for their official kickoff ceremonies. Is there a bouncer? I'm sure the code word? I think so. It's a Disney property sector. They'll have making money at the door way.

Alban:   4:17
There's like tickets, John. Yet they, like, get a ticket. We're checking tickets. Maybe I don't think we're doing wristbands for. Maybe we can add that into the whole package.

John:   4:26
I just want to be a bouncer. It's been my dream. Yeah, so if you did

Travis:   4:33
not get that email and you're going to Pot fest, please read into sports, we could make sure you get that email so you can register, get your ticket. It's gonna be a phenomenal um, and we're super excited about just having so many bus. Browder's at that podcast conference could be amazing. The other conference we want to talk about was PM, evolutions and Alban and John, You guys airheaded that one later this week. So as the sap of the episode goes out, you guys will actually be at this conference

Alban:   5:00
Yeah, movement. Evolution's obviously podcast movement is the first podcasting conference that's been around since 2014 and they're huge. Another doing a 2nd 1 out in L. A called evolutions and evolutions is a little bit smaller, a little more intimate. And I think the goal there is it's all about the changing landscape of podcasting. So a lot of the talks seem to be focused on what's changing and podcasting, new things that are happening. That's what change means. I guess I'm not defining the word change. Um, 30 Like that was gonna be fun. John and I are going to be there. So that's this Thursday to Saturday and on Thursday, our own John Pollard is actually going to be speaking a podcast movement. Evolution's Yeah,

John:   5:43
I'm excited. Should be a lot of fun.

Alban:   5:45
What's the talk on? Have you written it yet?

John:   5:47
Um, writing it right now, some podcast trends. So, um, I was able to use a lot of the day that we have a bus brow to try to figure out trends that are occurring from podcasters and listeners. And so I was able to create some really cool charts, even animated charts so really cool stuff to look at, um, and some good stuff to learn. It's it's pretty interesting data.

Alban:   6:14
So you you dug through something, like hundreds of millions of plays and all these downloads and tons of episodes to pull together stuff that's changing. Yeah. We

John:   6:26
actually took all our data, put it in a completely different database so we could run this analysis to come up with this data. So there was a lot of back end heavy work to try. Toe get this data algorithms. Aye, aye. Neural nets. Yeah. Basically had 100 people working around the clock.

Travis:   6:46
Very nice. So if you're listening to this and you happen to catch John's talk, make sure you tell him how you thought it was. Especially if

John:   6:51
it's good. Yes, we're back. I can take it.

Travis:   6:58
So let's go ahead and talk about your talk a little bit because, uh, one of the things we want to talk about in this episode were some trends. Some things we're seeing with our bus dropped podcast specifically. So, John, go ahead and kind of like, dip our toes a little bit into what you're gonna be talking about. Ah, at PM Evolutions.

John:   7:16
Yes. So a lot of the data you see going talked about online. They involve surveys. Podcasting, general. It's using more guesses. And so what I wanted to do instead of having people guess about how often they actually podcasts or do things People seem to be really bad at that. You ask him, How did it go? The gym. They say they're going to gym. Oh, yeah, I go three times a week, but they don't even go once a month. So I wanted to try to figure out the actual data to figure out what what was occurring because I would hear different things like episode durations are getting shorter. It was like, Are they? You know, it's I want to actually see if some If we see this data to be true, instead of just asking people well, how long Europe's roads How long do you think they typically are? So the first thing when over was APS and the number one app, as everyone knows, was Apple. Five years in a row, I did data from 2015 to 2020. The second big cool thing that occurred was, as we all expect from 2018 to 2019. You really sell Spotify come out of nowhere in the second place, and it makes sense there investing hundreds of millions of dollars are buying tons of original content. They're really doubling down in the podcasting space and trying to get as many podcasts as they can, as well as high quality content. The other interesting app was cast box. Cast box was even on the chart in 2015 but by 2019 was in fifth place and you can see they raise $30 million or a global lap there really investing a lot in different cultures in countries. So in China they have a social aspect to their app called community, and so they're really trying to get their own programming. And so you see them really investing, and that's really what you see in all the pockets. Anyone who's investing a lot in their app or show they're they're rising. They're doing well.

Kevin:   9:09
John, who was number two before Spotify took that spot

John:   9:13
Number two and 2015 was the Web browser. So just general and you see it it The Web browser remains, um, number three by 2020 or 2019 then of 2019. But with that, you see the bus brought website, which was fourth and 2015 ends up leaving the charts from the top 10 for multiple years and then comes back in 2019 to number eight. And I suspect that both those is due to S ee Oh, how people are sharing their episodes. Churches are big, you know. It's big part of the podcast community, and they push a lot of their audio online. And so you can kind of see the traction in the funneling that's happening for some of these APS. I didn't just do mobile app, so I did their sources. That's why you see the browser and embed players in the top 10. And so the bus brow website called the Comeback Kid. He comes back, and I think a lot of has to do with what we've done with it. We don't regard redesign Yeah, in transcripts surgery. So now people are finding it, which is something of the website. People are now finding it, um,

Alban:   10:25
I guess Google podcast, too, because that's often the page that Google indexes vehicle podcasts. I wonder if that drives more people to find podcasts

John:   10:34
on Google. Podcast finished 11th. But when I looked at a month by month comparison, it actually was rising up to be in the top about seven. So I suspect in 2020 it will be well into the top 10. But you see it rising tonight. Yeah, I agree with you now. When you search for podcast in Google, you'll find many podcasts. Eso It's just another place that they're funneling traffic to find people discover ability of podcasts. One interesting thing that that was luminary, considering all the companies that spend a lot of money that see luminary and part of that should make sense is we're trying to own a lot of their own content, so it's not going to show up in our charts. You know, they spent, I think, the second most amount on podcasting. But they're not in the chart minutes, see, and on a lot of other charts.

Travis:   11:21
And there's still a pod catcher. So they're still scraping Probably Apple Podcast directory to fill out their their app in addition to their silent content, right?

John:   11:30
Yeah, I suspect, not as much. I don't think they like Spotify winds just like cast box because they have so many podcasts. And when you have so many plus, you have really good content and original content. The investing in you're just driving the traffic to your app because then that's what listeners are going to use. Another thing that took a look at was countries Countries is a little more consistent with the app. See saw the ranking differ per year on every single year where countries was pretty consistent. US and UK remained at the top. You have Canada in Australia battling out for third and fourth. Whether things that that was really interesting is in 2015. The ranking of all the top countries where plays are coming from was exact same in 2019. Interesting. Yeah, so far Top 10. Exactly. Same now they bounced around India, came on the scene for a while. So did Sweden, but in the end, actually finished in the in the same ranking. When you look at a month by month comparison and I look at it over over that time, you see that the country's air actually catching up to the U. S. Now that could be descriptive of bus sprout could be a podcasting in general, I think it's a both. I think both are expanding as it gets more popular in other countries as people's mobile devices and technology also gets better. They're getting better access to podcasts.

Kevin:   12:54
Yeah, well, I would expect, though, that if any stat was gonna be more skewed because of buzz propping the source of the data, it might be that one being that bus brought was a U. S. Company, primarily English speaking customers. I would expect that the majority of the listens come from English speaking countries, Which is kind of what we're seeing in the data, right? Yeah. I think podcasting again from other data sources. It seems, though it is growing pretty significantly, like in Asia and stuff. But we're not seeing a ton of that. Most likely because our customers don't represent those countries.

John:   13:26
Yeah, I took a look of some other companies in what statistics they had, um, countries. I mean, we're similar, but I would suspect that we're missing a piece of the pie just from our customers. So it's more descriptive of us. I agree. Nothing I took a look at was percentiles. So what's the top percentile of all our podcasters. How many plays are they getting within 90 days? So I took the average for the 99% tile 95 90 57 5 bunch of percentiles so I could just compare the data, and I did it over 90 days so I can actually see at seven days. How many plays do they have at 30 days? How many plays do they have? And I can compare a couple cool things was 99%. They leave the pack almost immediately, and they keep leaving the pack. So by day 60 while 50 percentile may not be getting that made more plays, nine percentile are still getting a lot of plays, so it's really interesting to compare 99%. I was getting 70 times more plays than the 50 percentile. The 90% tile was getting seven times were placed in the fifth percentile.

Travis:   14:35
And so those percentiles That's just in reference to out of the podcast that we host. You know, let's say we have 100,000 podcasts. So the top 1000 podcasts this was their download trajectories, and then the top 95 fouls or the top 95% of you. Like the top 5000 podcast in their trajectories, Right?

John:   14:53
Correct Would be the the average of Alder place for their episodes at the 90 day mark.

Travis:   14:59
Gotcha. And so what were some of those numbers? Because I know a lot of people will ask, you know, I'm getting this money downloads for episode. Is that normal? Am I doing well? Should I? You know, am I in the right spot for how young My podcast is? So what? I guess give us. Give us some, uh, some ideas of what those numbers look like. Phyllis. Different percentile breakdowns.

John:   15:18
Yeah, it's a great question. At the 25th percentile again, 25 plays, 50 percentile, 50 plays senti five percentile, 125 plays, 90 percentile, 350 plays. And then, if you went to 99% towelettes 3500 plays. Now I think for some people, when I first read the 50% I thought that's lower. That's lower than what I expected. I think it's due to two things. One we'll see later with churches in the religion and spirituality and how they push content. They don't get very many plays you also I think people are download number fraud. I think Israel. I think people are inflating their numbers to make themselves feel better toe push out to try to get more traction with their podcast. And it's just not the truth. The exciting part about it is that if you're getting more than 50 plays an episode in 90 days, you're in the top 50% of all our podcasts. And that should be exciting. If you think that there are over 30 million YouTube channels, only a 1,000,000 podcasts and for plays, we're talking 50 plays in 90 days. That should give you a lot of hope and optimism that by just trying who had to push content to your podcast episodes and being in the apse doing the transcripts, you are goingto be in that upper echelon,

Kevin:   16:41
right? And I think there's a really important numbers for our audience to hear, because bus brow is the everyday podcasters. Podcasting host, right? Like we absolutely have a few clients that do tens of thousands of downloads purposes. But that's not our target market. Our target market is somebody who's excited about getting into podcasting for whatever their reason, and we want to make it really easy for that to happen for them. Um and so there are a lot of hosting companies that target high profile celebrity podcasters. And because of that, their data is skewed because those you know, a Conan O'Brien a Marc Maron Ah, Joe Rogan, they're gonna do hundreds of thousands of plays per episode. And so when you look at the average play count for episodes across that network, those numbers were gonna be inflated by having those celebrity podcasts on their network buzz about being a podcast host for the everyday podcaster. These numbers are more in line with the numbers that anybody listening this show should be shooting for. So again, we have a few that are hugely successful. But the vast majority of our customers, like John said, are doing the 50 percentile. If you're doing 50 plays per episode, you're in the top 50% of of hundreds of thousands of podcast that we have on our platform,

Travis:   17:56
right? Well and even the 94 was a 95% number again.

John:   18:00
The 95th percentile was 750 plays, right, so 700

Travis:   18:04
and 50 plays if you're, you know, really focused on creating high quality content and you consistently push out episodes every single week that is extremely achievable over the course of a year or two to be in that top 5% of our podcasts. Um and so there certainly is a path to being able to grow your show and grow your audience. Um, if you apply the right principles and really put some effort behind it. Yeah,

John:   18:30
Yeah. I'm reminded of a guy who had a medical podcast. He rode in and he said, consoling, Look at my stats. One of the upsides is getting a lot of place. He had good content. He had good podcast, good descriptions, transcript story. So he had everything to draw the people to his podcast. He was in a lot of different APS and was happening. Is he had a pockets upset on the Ebola virus? Well, what was trending for that week was the Ebola virus. And so people were searching, finding his podcast and playing it and sharing it. And so he was in the top 10% of all our podcasts from having all of those things mixed together and So if anyone is creating great content and pushing it, I'd believe that sooner or later you will be in the top 10%.

Kevin:   19:16
Now everyone is listening to this is gonna name their next episode Corona buyers.

John:   19:20
I just think that yeah, I mean, that's part of driving traffic and driving. Driving the CEO.

Travis:   19:27
I mean, there was what, at least a dozen impeachment podcast that came out in the last several months, just with everything going on with the U. S. Politics, there's there's a reason they know that people are looking for that content. So give the people what they want, right?

John:   19:42
So nothing I want to take a look at was podcast categories. So looking at the main category that podcasts are in at bus brow

Travis:   19:50
and these are the apple podcast categories, correct?

John:   19:53
Correct. So what I did is I took apple Parkus says the new categories, but I make some of those in with the old categories just the limit. The number of sheer categories over 60% of all our podcast earn five categories. Religion, spirituality, arts, business, society and culture and comedy. And you see religion spirituality not only reflective of the pockets Airbus brought, but also a podcast in general, from every other study, I confined religion. Spirituality are the most, and you see that in churches, churches have tons of content. They're constantly speaking every Sunday during the week, and so they just want to get their audio online for people to find it. And so they push it online.

Alban:   20:37
Are there any of the categories gotta stand out? Is having more potential than other ones?

John:   20:43
You know, I read a lot of articles of people trying to figure out what podcast kind of really should be in. But I really don't think you should choose based on the size of a category I think you should choose based on the relevancy of your content. And so I think it's one of those one of those charts that when you see it, you go. Oh, it looks like there's opportunity in that place, but you forget what you know. You forget what you can talk about. You forget who you are, and I think you just have to realign yourself in focus Well, but what content can I provide? That would be great content. That's what's really gonna win in the end, whether it's a category that doesn't have many people in there, Well, maybe that's good. Maybe you'll stand out, you know, really easily made. It's a role popular podcasts category, and then you have a lot of people searching for it. So

Alban:   21:31
if you're doing like a Christian crow, Shea Arts and Crafts podcast don't go and like like, I'm scrapping it going into true crime because it was opportunity there. Stick with what year? Enjoying what you're doing Well,

Kevin:   21:44
Did you overlay like the play data with the popularity of the categories?

John:   21:49
Good question. Yes, I did So want things I want to look at was for each category. What's the average number of plays are really the median number of place for each of those categories. And I did media instead of average because some pa Castor's, as we saw, were just It's it's exponential scale of how I mean plays they're getting. So our number one category was 300 plays for meeting, and that was history. Now, if you see our categories history, we actually don't have a ton of podcast mystery, but the ones that we do are just high quality. They're getting a lot of plays. The 2nd 1 is was you. Anyone would suspect true crime to 80. And then it really goes down to about 100 plays for leisure science, medicine, technology fiction until you down toe religion, spirituality, which gets about 22 plays. So you really see that 50 play mark? You know it's gonna be held down from that religion. Spirituality. You can tell from which podcast category urine, How many plays you would expect.

Kevin:   22:50
So if you're doing a really religion spirituality podcast and you're getting 25 plays per episode, you're in top 50%. You're doing better than average. Go to here in the truth, true crime category, and you're doing what was the number there, too. Something

John:   23:04
to 83

Kevin:   23:06
to 83. To be in the top of the person

John:   23:09
and you see true crimes popular. It's a lot of people want to go find true Crime podcast. They search for a nap. There's other podcasts are very similar that pushing content to you of true crime podcast, religion, spirituality, lock, churches. But the podcast online. They're not driving traffic. They're not pushing. They're just trying to get their audio online and move on with

Kevin:   23:29
differentiator because religious organizations are probably not gonna market their content nearly as much as some of these other categories.

John:   23:35
Yeah, you see, people, they put a player with all their episodes. Well, that's not gonna drive content. You don't have any content saying any s e o keywords, any of optimization. They're not gonna find your pockets that way. And you're probably not marketing pushing it as all these other categories are. One of the things I also wanna look at was the episode durations. So what's the length of the average episode? And I saw a bunch of reports saying it was trending downward for us. I did not find that it seems about consistent 38 39 minutes every year since 2013.

Travis:   24:09
What a coincidence. That buzz cast is 38 or 30 mine nine minutes about everywhere

John:   24:13
every other week. Yes, I saw it be pretty consistent in A lot of people want to know how long from episode be, and again I think they wanted. They want to derive some answer from data instead of should come from your content. This arbitrary time shouldn't dictate how long it is it should be the mount of high quality you have, or the content shouldn't just fit some arbitrary length. The link should fit your great content.

Alban:   24:38
Yeah, I mean, imagine if you were like, Oh, what's the right length for a movie? And then you went and looked at all like the best picture winners for the last 30 years and then did the average like That's the number. Cut that one scene at the end because we want to hit the magic, you know, Oscar number like that. It would make no sense. It's all about the content,

John:   24:57
all right, so with the abso durations being pretty much the same every year, the other thing wanted to look at was how long our episodes per publishing schedule. So if you publish every day, how long are they? Typically, if you publish every week, once a month and just as you would expect every day was about 20 minutes every other day, 28 minutes, and it quickly goes up about 40 41 minutes. It's actually a little longer until you get to past 22 days, which I think are people not podcasting regularly or having ah consistent episodes.

Kevin:   25:30
So, like 40 41 minutes for publishing on a weekly schedule?

John:   25:34
Yes, so it's pretty cool to see it makes sense, right? If you're publishing every day, there's a couple things you may be doing. One got pushed out a lot of lot of contents, so it can't be as long the other is. I think flash briefings are becoming more popular or you have, like, five minute Mondays. So you see, while that the length of Europe so shouldn't dictate your show. You see certain shows that are geared towards those links, and those the only people that really should be carrying if you're doing a flash briefing, it has to be short, given the nature, if you are trying to be there for certain listeners on a commute or something, you wanted to be short, something they're gonna listen to often. Then it is gonna be like a five minute Monday. Quick tips, things to help people so those only times and actually see durations matter. But I think we make the absurd duration more important than it. That should be.

Kevin:   26:24
What about publishing frequency? How does that Italian too, like the numbers that shows you're doing

John:   26:31
so, Yeah, I took the publishing schedule. So again I looked at every single day. What were the percent of podcasters that published each of those those days? The most common, as you would expect once a week. If you're trying to decide again by a publishing schedule, how often you should be publishing your episodes? I looked at the top percent top 1%. 5% 10%. 25% looked at the bottom. They're all within on average, 10 to 13 days. So again, no real statistical significance. And I think it's the same is true, as we all suspect, be consistent quality over quantity. The great content is gonna live on the pork content dies quickly, and you have to remember that the content is king and podcasting. Still, it's not the tech. What's going to your content? You see that with all the big gaps. They're trying to get the best content they can. You see all of the best shows they published a different times. They have different absolute links there in different categories, but they have great content. Alvin, do you want to share the naz marketing cause? I feel like that is a perfect example of someone succeeding by pushing audio in driving traffic.

Alban:   27:48
Yeah, you're about little Naz ex doing the ah, his old town road stuff. Yeah. Yeah. John, I found this. Somebody did a whole tweetstorm about Old Town Road, and apparently he was running this, like, mim account for years, just getting tons of people involved in just building an audience. And he built in audience long before he had a product, his own music, and then when he realized he would get thousands of likes on means, but only, like, 10 likes on his music. And so it's this whole threat of, like, iterating dozens of times going Okay, what if I like creative means with my music in the background and then probably was also seeding a lot of questions like, Man, that song is awesome. What? Who is that and then linking to that, I get to be like, yo, check out this song I just found. Here it is, Um, but is this a great threat of, like, over and over trying new marketing techniques? And eventually they're all hitting and he'd find loopholes like he was like, okay, getting into hip hop charts or so much harder than country seems like Yell Town Roads, a country song That's it was just so to get the charts. And then everyone got mad was like, We're kicking out a country so that it even got bigger because it was a controversy. Um, just like, kind of a cool story of If you're trying to market something, you are going to have to fail a ton of times, but, ah, the one things that land you get a few of those in a row and things could really take off.

John:   29:23
Yeah, I was really impressed with how strategic an intent ful every step seemed of. I want a lot of people listen, my music because I want to be a rapper. I want to be hip hop star. Well, I need a lot of people listen to it when I share. People don't really want to hear just another thing that's just shared out into the world. But if I can draw interest, people do like means. I'm gonna have my song to that, and then people start asking, he said. At one point, people were asking, What's that song with the horses in the back. It was in the name of the song, so we changed the title of the song to be in quotations or parentheses, horses in the back. So he's making it easy for people to find it. Yeah, he's put in places. It makes it really accessible. And he's now generating audience where he's pushing that content and he's very successful. So you see someone who has a lot of intentionality who has a really working step by step to push their content and push good content, how successful they are. So that was a great story, mean that one was a music file, but it could be a podcast audio file. You know, it could be anyone really tryingto push the content.

Kevin:   30:29
Yeah, that's really interesting. The idea of changing the title of the track, I think, is really interesting and applicable to podcasting, because we can totally do that. You can always log into your account. You can edit a previous podcast episode, and so there might have been some of that you talked about months ago that, for whatever reason, is now becoming a more popular topic, and you might want to rename the title or update your show notes for anybody who hasn't subscribed and download that episode already, Then that information becomes available in the different directories. So when people search on the stuff that is trending now, they're more likely to find your show.

Alban:   31:00
Yeah, well, if you have a title, that's something like Episode 424. And then there's a quote, which is like a joke from the episode that's not going to get really any cliques. Like a lot of people do this kind of inside joke from the episode, and then you find out what it is later is the title, and that is not gonna drive anything. But if you are a doctor talking about diseases like name things Hey, I'm talking about Ebola virus today. Hey, I'm talking about this topic today, and podcast is so There's so much to talk about in the world. And yet so few podcasts in comparison. When you look at which YouTube content there is a written content podcast is still so tiny, and so if you're gonna talk about something, try to own that name space, and we could put it up, and especially with Apple podcast is a pretty basic search algorithm. I mean, people who interview Seth Godin should always have Seth Godin in the title. You know, put the name of the people you're interviewing in there, but your main topics in and ah, I mean, there's been quite a few people that have looked at us and seeing really big results when they change their titles to be a specific keyword, Um, the people might be looking for.

Travis:   32:11
Now I've got a question about just kind of looking at the durations or the the gap between new episodes published. Did you happen to see any data on popular days of the week of what Day? During the week? People like to publish episodes

John:   32:25
that does not look at it from that perspective, I think the biggest thing overall, everything where I could try to find some statistical significance it was I could not find it when it came to publishing schedules or absolute links. I would look at episodes and I would see when they're published, and sometimes it even looked like a rhyme or reason they published. It was high quality content. They're driving traffic to it. So became popular. It didn't matter. Nothing else really mattered it can. Maybe we'll get a few more likes if you have ah, American audience and you publish it during a popular American time of travel commute. But,

Kevin:   33:03
well, it aligns with the medium. I mean, podcasting is as a passive medium. And so most of the time, at least on my phone anyway, all my podcast episodes I listen to your downloaded in the background. Whenever that happens, I don't even know when half the show's drop. I just know that, you know, in certain days, I wasn't certain things on my podcast happen. There's a new unavailable. I know basically how often these shows release. Like I know in my most popular shows. For the most part, I'm gonna get a new episode every week, and if I don't, I miss it. But I don't know exactly what day they drop. That's really not important thing.

John:   33:35
Yeah, I think that's if someone were that ask advice, I would say publishing regularly. People are habitual. They like the routines. They expect it. They like your podcasts. They're gonna expect something coming out. But beyond that, I mean, you can miss an episode. The person is just gonna miss your episode. They were waiting for the next one. But more than anything, you just gotta push good contact.

Travis:   34:06
All right, So to wrap up this episode, we've got a listener question, because you know how we mentioned at the end of episode. So there's a link that you could submit topics. Well, we read those, and Alex submitted a question about owning your podcast R S s feed. So I'll read the question, and I'll cue it up for discussion. And so Alex wrote in saying, I am worried about not owning my podcast R S s feed despite the 301 reader Rex, Is there an option for that? There many posts online about Apple's mirror links and fi burner forwarding. It's all very confusing. Can you help clarify all this? So I think first of all the conversation about owning your podcast, our assess feed like, what is that? And maybe like the second part of kind of the conversation could be, what do we think about the mirror links and fi burger and pros and cons and that kind of stuff?

Kevin:   34:59
Sure. I mean, I'll have been so the idea about owning your own podcast RCs feed. It could mean two different things. It can mean, um, like owning your content and having all the rights of the content that you push out through your podcast. Um, and that's that's something that you really don't have to worry a lot about with with any reputable podcast. So so pretty much anyone that you've ever heard of in the podcast host in space, it's been pretty much a non issue. There was a time in the last year or so when that came in under scrutiny, specifically with anchor in some of the terms. In their terms of service. Um, we're very questionable. And so anchor went back and they revised those, um, and made people a lot more comfortable. Basically, detective legalese. They translated it and made a few adjustments. And most people are comfortable with way that reads now. More than likely, though, what I think you're asking about when you say this is Alex? Yes. So, Alex, I think what you're asking about is that the the idea that there are some podcast does that make this a big part of their marketing message? They say you need to own your podcast feed. And that's because, historically, so, like podcasting been around. For about 15 years or so, there have been a lot of people have come in and out of the podcast hosted space during that time. There were some people who came to the podcast hosting space and didn't do a good job of providing a good product, and unfortunately, they went out of business. Some of those people were able to do the right thing when they closed doors and offered everyone to redirect off of their platform to a new platform of their choice. There were some people who either I don't want to think that they didn't care enough, but maybe they weren't able to just because they just ran out of money had to close up shop, but they weren't able to offer that to their customer basis. Some people ended up losing subscribers because the host of there with just closed up shop one day, um, I think that's Mawr in line with the message that people are talking about when they say you have to own your own podcast feed so you don't run into that situation. So I think that's what we want to talk about, right?

Alban:   36:58
Yeah. I mean, Alex, you're not alone. It is confusing there. So many options, and you're not the first person that I've heard. Ask it. Um, you know, feed burner is pretty cool. You can basically put something in the middle so that no matter what happens, you've got an insurance policy, and that's kind of the right way to think about it. You mean feed burner? You don't own it as much just the same way that you don't have complete control of other places. You know, like you can't completely control your bus brought our assess feed. Um, but it is kind of an insurance policy. Is that a fair way of putting it? Cause you it's still on a Google domain,

Kevin:   37:38
right? So it's a It's a shaky insurance policy one. It's kind of it's expensive in the fact that it takes a little bit of work to set it up, and there are drawbacks, so ah, buzz, not a bus problem. Feed burner feed can only be one megabyte like that's the largest size it could be. So as soon as your source feed. So let's say you host on bus route and you get to two or 300 episodes. And all of those episodes have pretty lengthy descriptions or show notes. Then that feed is going to start to grow over a megabyte, and as soon as it does feed burner stops updating. So what you'll see is your log in the apple podcast in office, and your new episodes aren't showing up there anymore because your feet has exist exceeded the size limit on feed burner. So you always have to. Then keep ah, what we call it a max feed. Are we a feed limit? That's right. We call it a feed limits. One of the main reasons that features in bus brow is for people who are using feed burner. So that's one of the expenses that you'll pay besides the initial setup. Um, the other thing to think about is that you're buying an insurance policy on, and we don't know how long they're gonna continue to offer that product. Yeah, like I'm carrying the insurance analogy that maybe a little bit too far now. But the idea that Google has not updated feed burner in years and years and years I mean, I think the last time they updated that product was probably six or seven years ago. They pretty much like sunset it, but they haven't taken it off the market yet, so you could make an argument for Hey, that's it's nice to have that in there, because if you want to switch hosts, then you just you don't need to rely on three or one redirect anymore. You just change your source feed in feed burner. But feed burner could up and shut down any day. And the chances of that happening, I would say, are higher than if you're with one of like the top five podcasting hosts and and I'll name those. And this is just my opinion. It's not necessarily based on the size of the company. It's based on our interactions with the company and what we know about them. So we bump into a lot of our competitors at these conferences, and we get to know some of them personally, and we just know a little bit about their business model. So in my mind that the top five, our bus brown, of course, um, lips in blueberry pod bean and speaker. I think if you're on any of those five, then you have nothing to worry about in terms of stability of the company. And if something unforeseen or unannounced happens, I think all of this company's would do everything in their power to make sure that all of their customers have the opportunity and plenty of time to move off of their platform and find a new home for their podcast without anything to worry about. I would feel comfortable making that recommendation to anyone. Now. There's a lot of other podcast host. There's probably another 15 or 20 that we could all rattle off the top of our heads. I'm not saying anything negative about this cos I'm just saying I don't they don't have the track record or we don't have the personal relationships with them To be able to make that statement about them

Travis:   40:18
right And coming back, I guess, to the origin of the question, Really. The worry here is not that, like all of a sudden you don't have your audio files anymore or anything like that. It's that the people that had subscribe to your podcast like if your feed disappears and you put it on a new host and you push your episodes out, they're not gonna get those. And unless they re subscribe to your podcast, right,

Kevin:   40:39
That's right. So it's really a fear of, um, potentially losing subscribers because the host that you have shuts down with without giving you the ability or the timeto to redirect your your feet to a new host. And it certainly could happen there are there, and there are other hosts that, like, um, like any free hosts, So I don't need a name the free host, But there are some free podcasting host. Ah, and I wouldn't have, um I wouldn't trust a free host to host my podcast R s s feed because I'm not paying them anything, so they don't really owe me anything. So the idea if one of these podcasts, these free podcast house, shuts down tomorrow like what? Right do I have to go to you and say, Hey, you just totally messed up my podcast. I lost all my subscribers. Well, like I haven't done anything for haven't paid you. We have no agreement. We have no contractual obligation one way or the other. And so it's something to think about when you're sending up a podcast like, if you're getting it for free, there's gonna be a cost for it, like it's not really ever free. One of those costs might be that, Hey, if they want to shut down and then I'm gonna change the way they do things like you don't really have a whole lot of reason to get upset about that. If they want to start putting ads in between your shows or around your shows or in their proprietary players, they wanna start showing ads. What People are listening to your content. You don't really have a whole lot of, ah reason to argue that there have expectations otherwise. So again, it's not. I'm not knocking them or dinging them or anything. I'm just I think we should just be aware that one. The idea of owning your own podcast feed there is some legitimacy to it, But more often than not, it's kind of a marketing message. And, um, and two, if you're on a free podcast host, I think it is something you should think about. If you're on a paid house, especially one of the five that I listed, I think that it's it's probably not worth the trouble because it's again. Your options are using somebody like feed burner that may change things tomorrow. Or, um or like even the apple mirror. Link's a whole other conversation. But the idea of using apple, they provide your link very similar to like what fi burner provides to you. And then using that to submit your show to Spotify or anybody else. I'm an apple could change things tomorrow as well. And there you're not paying them anything. They, um they don't owe you anything. In terms of continuing to keep that mirror link up. That's something new. They just interest. A couple years ago before that, they didn't have it, and we have no idea how interested they are in keeping it down for the long term. So my recommendation would be go with one of the established podcast hosting and the five that I wasted Where buster out, Lipson, Pod Bean speaker and blueberry and blueberry. Yeah, if you're with one of those five, you're perfectly safe. They're good companies, backed by good people who care about podcasters, and they're gonna try their best to always do the right thing regardless of the circumstances of their business, they will give. I believe they would give their customers plenty of time to move. Should something unforeseen happened with their business.

Travis:   43:25
Marine, I saw Alex. Hopefully that was helpful. Clarified that question for you. If you have a question or a topic that you wanted to discuss on a future episode of Buzz cast, and you can click the link in the show notes and submit, it's a to question Google for him. What's your name? What do you want to talk about? So try to make it as easy as possible for you to send us your feedback. And if you aren't already a part of our Facebook group of more than 6000 podcasters and to you use Facebook, then make sure you're part of that because it's a really cool community. Everyone's and they're helping each other, offering tips and feedback and celebrating winds and things like that. It's a really cool community to be a part of, and if you are at pod fast coming up in March, then we're super pumped to see you. Um, but that's all we have for this week until the next episode. Keep broadcasting

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