Buzzcast

RIP Audio-Technica ATR2100 + We Made A Podcasting Course!

February 28, 2020 Buzzsprout Episode 20
Buzzcast
RIP Audio-Technica ATR2100 + We Made A Podcasting Course!
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Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

This week we recap the new Buzzsprout features we released in our Whiskey work cycle, take a moment of silence to commemorate the discontinuation of the Audio-Technica ATR2100, and reveal the innovative podcasts we've been listening to recently.

Join our free How to Start a Podcast online course.

Check out the Samson Q2U, our new most recommended microphone for new podcasters.

Download Travis' slides from the Spark Christian Podcast Conference on Understanding Your Analytics (and sign-up for the Digital Access Pass to watch the keynote).

Here's a list of the projects we wrapped up during the Whiskey work cycle:


Podcasts we mention in this episode:


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.

Disclosure: Some of these product links are affiliate links, which means Buzzsprout might receive a small commission if you decide to purchase them.

Support the show

Contact Buzzcast


Thanks for listening & keep podcasting!

Kevin:   0:00
I actually use it a lot. Yeah, I do a podcast with my son coming on Saturdays. What's

Travis:   0:04
the name of that? My best.

Alban:   0:05
Give it a shot as the kid critics podcasts lets hit it. But to the balance.

Kevin:   0:09
3 12 year old. Well, I think they're all 12. 12 or 13 year old kids talking about their favorite TV shows and movies.

Alban:   0:15
Well, that's a recent episode.

Travis:   0:17
We need Thio later in the show. Notes

Kevin:   0:18
there on, Ah, stranger things. Before that, they did Psycho Psycho, the 19

Alban:   0:24
just here instead of letting their

Kevin:   0:25
way. Don't let him watch horror movies. But I figured the 1960 horror movie would be They could be okay with it and they watched it during the daytime, like altogether. When did The Exorcist like that?

Travis:   0:35
That's an older movie. Yeah. Everybody, welcome back to another episode of Buzz cast. We are, and I quote, less than one week away from pod fast Awesomeness.

Alban:   0:52
Sweet. Be good. We're going to pot Fest is gonna be awesome. We're gonna go and have a lot of fun. We're gonna meet a bunch of buzz proud podcasters. We're gonna meet much punch people who are not on bus route who are working the conference or on other platforms. And it's fun because you get to connect with other podcasters. It's great.

Travis:   1:13
And we got a pretty awesome pre conference party.

Kevin:   1:17
Yeah. Did we already say on here what the parties is? I think we did think. Yeah, but it's so awesome. Why not repeat it? Yeah, we're going bowling it Disney World with 33

Travis:   1:26
150 of your closest friends.

Kevin:   1:28
Yeah, maybe more like 400. But it'll be great if you're going to pot fest. Make sure you got a ticket to that pre party. Um, yeah. You're not gonna wanna miss it.

Travis:   1:37
Yep. So that's gonna be a lot of fun. And I'm

Alban:   1:40
giving a talk on Saturday.

Travis:   1:41
You're giving a talk on Saturday? What you talking about?

Alban:   1:43
How to monetize a podcast with less than 10,000 listeners?

Travis:   1:47
Man, nobody ever asked monetization.

Alban:   1:50
It's turning out to be, like, 30 minutes of dunking on the CPM model and why it's terrible. That's fair. So I'm gonna try to tune that part down a little bit, actually. Give people what they're hoping, which is the actual strategies, how to do it. But as I've been writing it. Maura, Maura, Micah There's another reason

Kevin:   2:06
why CPM doesn't make it, he

Alban:   2:07
said, Since I'm like, Okay, this part of the park, this talk needs to tone down.

Travis:   2:12
Gotcha. So you're trying to go from, like, doomsday? Uh, you know, siren sounder to like, Let's just have a meaningful conversation about monetization.

Alban:   2:20
One of the things you're supposed to learn and writing is don't tell people something that it's not like you don't start off by saying, Hey, this isn't this isn't this you say what it is, and I'm realizing that at least my thoughts are a lot of Hey, you shouldn't do C P M here, like 12 reasons why? Well, no one's going to that talk. They're coming to the teach me out of monetize. So I need to know, Have a quick boom. Here's the death blow to CPM. And then now let's talk about how to actually make some cash,

Travis:   2:48
so that'll be really great. So if you're at pod fests, make sure you, ah, go in support. Alban, We, uh, maybe we'll make signs, pull them in the back.

Alban:   2:56
I want you to hold up a sign that's like a five star review of this of the talk here, like you have different sides and it's like, really bad you're holding up like a two star review it. I kind of connected the host with the contents. Not great. Like no.

Travis:   3:09
So Pot Fest is gonna be awesome albums talking. That's gonna be awesome. And we just wrapped up another work cycle here at bus brought, working on some cool features to help just make the process of podcasting with bus route. Ah, lot easier and more streamlined for you and Kevin. Why don't you kind of run us through the main things that we ruled out that people will notice that

Kevin:   3:29
weren't there before? Sure. Well, in the very first couple weeks of the works, like a, we launched the stats, which we've talked about a lot on this show and through newsletters and everything else. And I imagine everyone listening right now is already had a chance to see their stats and digest them. Travis made a couple of great videos. Albom wrote a bunch of great content about it. Um, so that was how we kicked it off in the 1st 2 weeks, and then we moved on to a couple smaller projects. So let's let's go through those in a little bit of detail. Um, the first thing is, we created a new page off the bus about marketing site, which your log in to your bus right account. You probably don't see very often, but if you click log out, that's where you would land on our marketing site. Talks about what bus brought is and why. It's a great podcast host on that website. We added a new page for our support feedback. So you ever send an email into our support team and they respond to you. The bottom of that email is a couple options like How did we do to be greatly okay or needs improvement or something like that? And we wanted to make those ratings public, cause our sport team works really hard to make sure that they're responding to everybody thoroughly, accurately, quickly, great information, always happy to help. Um and so they were doing a great job. And so we wanted to promote that and make it public. So I think if you go to buzz about dot com slash support underscore team support underscore team Yeah, well, link to that in a more prominent place from the main page. But for right now, that's where it lives. And you can see how our support teams doing. So

Alban:   4:55
you can see we like the last 30 days the breakdown of how many people thought they got great responses. Okay, responses, bad responses. You can see a bunch of the comments that people have left

Travis:   5:06
and what are its live too, so that it automatically updates on, like, a rolling basis.

Kevin:   5:10
Right? So if you gotta support interaction today and you did a great rating, it would immediately be reflected on the marketing site. So right now we're at a 96% of all ratings have been great, 2% have been okay and, well, 3% have been bad,

Alban:   5:27
So 100 and 1%

Kevin:   5:28
of 1% total.

Alban:   5:29
So I think there's a round that all these air getting rounded up a little

Travis:   5:33
bit outside of that, it's voter fraud. One of the other

Alban:   5:37
blessed bride is bussing in

Kevin:   5:38
a way that rounding is working is making it 101% currently. But maybe by the end of the day, we back 200%. But anyway, 96% great. That is fantastic.

Travis:   5:47
Which, if you have ever had an interaction with a customer service representative of any company to think that 96% of those interactions are great, it's like it's like a herd of nowadays. It's like batting 50% is kind of expectation. So the fact that we got 96% just shows how awesome our support team is.

Kevin:   6:08
Yeah, one of them

Alban:   6:09
big shoutout Priscilla Natty, who field 99% of all of those and, ah, you will see tons of comments that actually it's saved them by name were like, Oh, my gosh, I add He helped so much It was great. Oh, Priscilla! Super fast response. So if you want to read their names, you can check out some these comments. What

Kevin:   6:27
was the next thing? Uh oh, how to start a podcast online course. Travis spent a lot of time on that album. Worked on a little bit. You guys talk about

Travis:   6:36
Yeah, So the idea behind the online course was Well, it's something I've been thinking about for a while because with the YouTube video Siri's that we just finished basically the beginning of 2020. It's eight videos if you go started video. Want to go all the way through video, ate it, walks you through the steps of, like, how to get your podcast started if you haven't started one yet? Um, and we cover everything. But there were lots of opportunities to go deeper into those subjects. So, like, for instance, in one of the videos, Alban offers some kind of like generic editing tips because depending on what operating system you're using, what, softly using how you edit your episode is gonna be different. And so we saw course, is an opportunity to kind of flesh out all that content, to give you examples to bring in some of our block content, to do some software tutorials and really just flesh out that whole journey of starting from. I think I want to do a podcast, but I don't really even know what I want to talk about. Two. I'm launching a podcast and have 100 people listening to it. We really wanted that journey to be as foolproof as possible. So that's that's kind of where the online course fits.

Alban:   7:38
Yeah, and where it's all built inside a teachable, and some of the nice thing that the teacher will does It allows you to have comments on all the videos. They're not just generic YouTube content comments. They're going to be people who are working through this course and now or five videos in and 10 block post that they've read and everyone's doing it together. So the comments will actually, I'm hoping we really instructive for us on how to update the contents will say I'm misunderstanding this piece. And if we see a few people saying that we can actually go back, redo the video. Riga, go back, redo the content and try to make this, you know, great course to help people. Podcast and courses. They're so much nicer because there is some psychological effect that you now have committed to the course, and you've worked part of the way through. And so when you hit a roadblock, it's a little bit easier to make it over the roadblock. When you've got people doing it together, you're working on it with someone else, and you finished 30%. You're ready to go finish last 70 and get something out there. So we're hoping it's valuable, and I think our goal is tohave. It launched by the end of the week, will promote it in the newsletter next Tuesday.

Kevin:   8:47
Yeah, so tell me, this is it Is this course designed specifically for people who were like, don't have a podcast yet and it's taking him through the very early stages. Or is there from value for people who may have been podcasting, you know, for a year more?

Alban:   8:59
Hopefully it's valuable for everybody, because I know for me and things that I've I think I already know I have gone back and taking courses because there is something really reassuring about going through the whole process and being affirmed over and over going Oh, I didn't understand, Okay, I did. I had that. And then a little nuggets dropped and go, Oh, I hadn't done that before. Now I can add it to my workflow, so we hope that it's valuable for people who are already podcasting is specifically tailored to people who are brand new. Is that after the question, right?

Travis:   9:30
Yeah. So, Alban, if you were to take a guess at how much the most complete how to start a podcast online course would cost you. What would you say the value of something like that

Alban:   9:42
would be? Is this an infomercial thing? This is are you about to do? This is three easy payments of this is three easy

Travis:   9:50
payments of free 99 free cost you $0 you know, because we wanted this to be a resource that anyone could get access to because we really want to. You know, we don't want to create obstacles for people to get into podcasting. So we're excited to be able to offer our online course for free to anyone who wants to take it. Um, And like Alvin said, if you want to get in early, make sure you're on the Facebook group because we would be promoting it there first for getting people to sign up, and then we'll also be in the newsletter. So you gotta make sure. Just make sure you open that email went next Tuesday when it comes out. Yeah. So what we got next on our ah, our list of batches, Kevin

Kevin:   10:27
K. With next thing that we should go through is, um this is a funny one. It's called untitled Episode dies,

Travis:   10:35
Don't look down. What does

Kevin:   10:37
that mean? All right, so if you have been a bus for out user for any amount of time, there surely a point in your buzz about career, where you've got an email that said untitled episode has finished processing and you're like, What? That episode had a title? Why does it say untitled episode? And what happens very often is our processing is becoming faster and faster and faster, and we're making improvements on the technical side and you drag a file in and it starts up loading. And while it's uploading, you start writing the title and the description at all this stuff and you're writing it. But you haven't clicked the save button, so you haven't pushed it to our servers yet. In between you writing and clicking, save your file finishes up loading and it processes, so either we re encoded it or looked at the file on notice. We didn't need to re encode. It's perfectly ready to go, and so we go and fire off that email that your episodes ready to go live, but we don't know the name of it because you haven't could save you So that was an embarrassing amount of support. E mails around that, like, why doesn't my episode of a title and it was just a timing issue like Assumes, you click, Save It does get the title and it gets the title before it actually gets published. So there's really no problem. But we got tired of writing this email over and over and saying, Sorry, we actually do know the title of the episode. The email just went out before we got the title, so we changed the wording of that email. So now if we don't have a title, it will just say Your episode has finished. Uploading as opposed to entitled episode has finished uploading. And if we know the title, then it's the same email. You've always gotten so very simple little update. But hopefully it lowers anxiety on the podcaster side and makes life better for our support team.

Alban:   12:11
And you can see how that would be kind of. You just did all this work. You made a title. You did a whole description, and then he got an email says untitled episodes ready. And here, like please, I pray that my title is still here like I don't have to go and do this again. Writing something the second time is like five times more painful. For some reason,

Kevin:   12:29
yeah, you always feel like you never read. It is good the second time when you lose it. Yeah, I don't know why that is all right. Another update that we did, which is customer facing and exciting because a lot of people been asking for is we added a field to the episode like Details Page like when you're creating an episode and you have the title on description and artwork and all that kind of stuff. There's a field down there now is called Custom Is a Custom website. U R L is the name of the field.

Travis:   12:55
So if you go to edit and episode now, we have the main fields that you absolutely need for your podcast episodes like episode title, itjust episode description, season episode number, whether it's explicit or not. But now there's a link at the bottom. That's kind of like a Seymour options link, and so that stuff that you may or may not ever need for your episodes. But in there there's a field called Custom episode. Web page.

Kevin:   13:17
Custom episode Web page Yep, and so apple podcasts. And I mean they're the main one. There might be a couple other third party podcast players that display this is well, but Apple podcast, if you include in your RCs feed, will display a link that you can click when listening the episode to that episode Web page Like not your podcast Web page, but specific to the episode. We've always populated that with the bus proud public website. Well, public episode You are L right, Um, but some people don't use the bus brought website. They use their own website, and they create a specific, like block post or something for every podcast episode they have, and they want that linked to go there instead. And so we had to add that at the episode level, and so that's why it's there. But again, not everybody will use this. But if you do have your own website and you do create a specific page every time you create a podcast episode, this is super helpful. So now that option is there. It's out of your way if you don't ever want to use it, and it's always available if you do want to use it. So I was really nice update.

Travis:   14:16
I know several people in particular were very happy about that. Yeah,

Alban:   14:20
well, especially if you've got your own website. You want everything pointing back there. You don't want to point it to bust her out. We don't want avoid. It does. If you don't want your listeners going there, we want you to have your own home.

Kevin:   14:30
Um, next update was audio file skip for now. So in the history of bus sprout, as far back as I can remember, we've always started the new episode process by giving us your file and that allows Thea plodding process to begin while you start adding all information about the episode. So again, title description, et cetera. There are some people who don't quite have their audio file ready, but want to go ahead and get the title description. Everything written while they're waiting for their audio file. So maybe it's, you know, they're not the editors. Maybe they're using somebody else at it or it's running through a phonic or something. And while that's happening, they want to go and get start writing the details of their episode. And so we added the option to When you cook new episode Now it'll say, you know, dragged your file here selected or you can skip this for now. He's hit Skip for now. Then you can create your whole episode and add the audio file at a later time. You guys super excited about the super pumped about that one.

Travis:   15:26
I don't think I'll ever use it, but I am very excited for those.

Kevin:   15:28
I actually use it a lot. Yeah, I do a podcast with my son coming on Saturdays, and those kids are always giving around and doing a 1,000,000 things. And so I do like to go and get the title on description going on while they're in the studio recording.

Travis:   15:41
What's the name of that? Just

Alban:   15:43
give it a shadows. The kid critics, podcasts lets hit it. But to the balance

Kevin:   15:46
3 12 year old Well, I think they're all 12 12 or 13 year old kids talking about their favorite TV shows and movies.

Travis:   15:53
That sounds.

Alban:   15:54
What's a recent

Travis:   15:55
episode? We need Thio later in the show, notes

Kevin:   15:57
there on. Ah, stranger things bit right now, So I've done stranger things season. One stranger things he's into and Season three. Before that, they did Psycho Psycho, the 19 parents letting their way. Don't let him watch horror movies, but I figured the 1960 horror movie would be They could be okay with it and then watched it during the daytime. Like altogether. When did The Exorcist like that?

Travis:   16:19
That's an older movie.

Kevin:   16:20
Yeah, but that was probably cocks. The birds they were looking for something like horror thriller like, uh, we'll start here. So yeah, it's a fun podcast, but so we have any younger listeners,

Travis:   16:36
and that's an instance where having this new feature is helpful, you have to be able to kind of get things rolling. The other reason that you might use it is let's say that you're kind of planning out your future episodes and you just come on. You want to kind of keep everything laid out in your bus, brought account, then you can clearly see Oh, these are the next one we need to record or upload or like, kind of mapping out your future episodes, right? You're

Kevin:   16:57
gonna Siri's or something? Yeah, work ahead on those.

Travis:   16:58
Yeah, you can go ahead and like, start putting those as placeholders. And then when you have those upside stun, you can add the audio file and then yep,

Kevin:   17:05
cool. So and there was a handful of other things. Um, not nothing. I don't think else that's, like super exciting or customer facing, but lots of stuff setting us up for enhancements in the next cycle. Like we did a bunch of a P I research and, um, research on how we can make up loads faster. So if you upload large files to bus route, which people do all the time everyday, how can we make that as fast as possible? How can we make a more bulletproof like if your Internet drops off in between the upload? Can we presume that upload without it, you know, having to start from scratch things like that. All right,

Alban:   17:37
so stay tuned. Maur knew things would come out every eight weeks, so he

Travis:   17:42
had two more months. We'll do another one of these episodes and a lot more fun stuff. Way had some really sad news in the world of podcasting recently. One of

Kevin:   17:52
our Wait, Don't do that. Just setting up, man. Oh my God, it's not that sad one. Sounds like someone passed away. But

Alban:   18:00
Kevin, actually this something has moved on to a higher realm and it's the well, we're not sure We think they're rumors there. Rumors of the demise of the 80 are 2100 um audio Technica, uh, with a lack of respect for all the content we put up looks five years decided that the audio Technica 2100 may not have a future life and may be replaced by the 18 21 100 ex addition,

Kevin:   18:31
right? Following in the footsteps of apples naming. So they came out with a new version of the 18 or 2100 called the 18 21 100 X, and it does look like a really nice upgrade. We But he also upgraded the price. They upgraded the price, but it's come down a little bit like when it first launched. I think 120. Now it's down to 99 okay? And I don't know if that price drop is in response to the fact that the original 18 or 2100 seems to be no longer available anywhere. Right? Travis, you said that being a tch has it showing his

Travis:   19:02
you cannot order it from being a TSH, which was always kind of like the go to place of like, if anyone would have it listed, it's being h. They don't have a listed. Ah, the Amazon page has disappeared. Now, if you search 80 or 2100 it shows you other stuff.

Kevin:   19:16
Yeah, and people are following them. Use yeah, Amazon for more than they originally. 71

Alban:   19:22
dollars used is the only one I can see. That's like a

Travis:   19:24
10% up up charge right there. So

Kevin:   19:27
if you have any, like, new in box 80 2100 you might be quick profit on him.

Travis:   19:32
I mean, this could be the new The new Beanie Baby is crazy, You know, like, 10 years from now, you're a beginner level entry level microphone. Might be worth $80. Yeah, collector item.

Kevin:   19:42
So what do we think of the 2100 X?

Alban:   19:45
I feel like we're moving on a little fast. I mean, there's this is something we talked about recommended for five years or something. We need There's, like, a moment of silence or something that in order, I don't know what it is.

Travis:   19:57
Let's let's take a moment of science. I'll I'll, uh, edit in Cem Cem fitting music For us,

Alban:   20:06
it's just a microphone, but it is kind of a bummer, because it it hits so many things. That's such a good price point. Um, the positive is the Samson Q. To you is a very similar Mike. It's a little bit cheaper than the HR 2100 ever waas, and there's actually quite a few people. I'm not one of them, but I've seen quite a few people say they actually enjoy the sound more so It's an easy swap for us. Tow. Recommend that cause now it's like, $52. You're actually saving a little bit? Um,

Travis:   20:38
yeah, as faras. I mean, we'll definitely start, uh, testing the Q to you. I think we got some plans for some other microphone test videos in the future. Um, just apples to apples. Compare that 18 21 hundred's got a little bit more low end. Thank you to you does. So. If you if you like that for your voice, then you're gonna love the proximity effect on this bad boy. Um, but

Kevin:   21:00
you know what? That means, but

Alban:   21:02
hell, okay, so my boom arm is, like, so squeaky also literally nudge it.

Travis:   21:11
Yeah, the thing. Apologies. Well, welcome to the world of a podcaster s. Oh, yes. To the Q to you, I think for now is gonna be the microphone that we recommend. For most people, they're getting started because it has the same feature. Set theater 2100 did. And it's half the price currently of the 2100 X. And so until we can get that in the studio and start playing with and testing it to see if it's really worth twice as much as the Q to you, thank you to you is gonna be our go to. And I'll leave a link in the show that for those episodes, you could go and check out that microphone if you're interested. All right, so it's been a little while since we did the what podcasts. Are you listening to? Segments? And I wanted to bring this back because, Kevin, you know, a week ago you sent a link internally letting people know about this very interesting podcast podcast. Tell us about this new podcast.

Kevin:   22:02
Well, the podcast itself is the panic podcast. I didn't get hooked on it. They only have three episodes but didn't get hooked on it until Episode two and found it through reading, Ah, block post of an unrelated site. And the episode was called Pants Cast, which evidently was a podcast app, like one of the first podcast APS in the APP store, where we like 8 4009 Maybe on so they didn't episode about them, you know, building this app and launching in the APP store and what they were trying to learn. And Chief, they're doing this. And they stumbled upon actually having a really nice podcast listening out, and they walk you through that journey and the guys were laughing because it is a really funny story. And there's, um there's some twists and because

Alban:   22:44
you're setting it up like this beautiful app, and

Kevin:   22:47
it doesn't No, I'm not about it. I'm not gonna do any spoilers. I want everyone to go search your podcast player. App of Joyce. Go search for panic podcasts and listen to Episode two. It's called Pants Cast and listen to the story yourself.

Travis:   23:00
We will leave a link in the show notes.

Kevin:   23:02
It's I don't want to rob you of 45 minutes of pure joy. Not gonna spoil anything.

Travis:   23:07
I will say I was when you put the link and then I started seeing people's comments. I had no idea what to expect. I could never have anticipated that. That's what they were gonna be talking about. Yeah, And it was I was even thinking like, I'm not gonna laugh everyone else, e t. I'm not gonna laugh. And then there I am on the airplane, going from Jackson to Houston, and I am cracking up in my window seat.

Kevin:   23:29
And it's not a comedy podcast, and I think it's just some more like a business podcast.

Travis:   23:33
If you listen to a lot of podcasts, you will. You will get a kick out

Kevin:   23:35
of Overture. So that's my share. Panic Podcast Episode two Pants cast

Travis:   23:40
What about you, Alvin?

Alban:   23:42
Well, we talked about, like, innovative podcast styles in the past. And did either of you know who knew of all is your Follow him on Twitter is like the founder Angel list. Does ton of start ups

Travis:   23:53
okay? Constantly with angel ist.

Alban:   23:55
He did this like tweet store a while back called How to Get Rich without getting luck without getting lucky. Um, and he basically did a podcast, which were like five minute episodes on each of the tweets, explaining his thought process to building wealth. Well, he then combine them all into this, like three hour massive podcast. So I listen to that on my flight back from L. A. And it was like, shockingly good. It was like I would not have thought a Tweetstorm turned into many podcast connected into one big one on how to make a lot of money was going to be interesting. Um, it was really smart, and it was like tons. There's so much stuff that was like writing No told him, like all it's really a point. So that was only I listened to weaken like that one in the show notes as well.

Travis:   24:38
Yeah, and it's always interesting to me. Like when I find podcasts that have either follow a format that's unique or the the approach of the strategy is different because it's very easy to kind of find. Okay, here's another interview podcast. They just happen to be talking to people about X, or here's another news podcast. And there's two people talking about the news, right? Three people talking about podcasting news that's original, you know? So we're gonna We're gonna own that here, but and so it is always, like, refreshing to see. Okay, there's still a lot of innovation going into podcasting space, and there is a lot of blue ocean and opportunity for you to tryingto create something unique that can really pop. Something I've been noticing a lot recently is more and more short run standalone podcast Siri's. So it'd be like a five or six episode podcast. And the really the goal of that podcast is we're gonna spend five or six episodes talking about something that is in the zeitgeist that everyone is talking about on social media right now. Everybody's talking about online, and we know we're gonna get a lot of search traffic and a lot of people landing on this particular podcast. We're gonna use that either point back to our podcast network where all our other shows are, or two point back to the main podcast. And so the example they were talking about before the show started was that you know, a lot of people are talking about the Corona virus right now. And so if you have, like a medical podcast, then you should do 56 episodes talking about the Corona virus and then take those episodes and make a stand alone podcast, Siri's and in that podcast series point people to your main podcast. Um, so just seeing that become more of a strategy to kind of bring people in from different places and point them back to your main content just has a way of continuing to promote your your podcast content and find listeners in new ways.

Kevin:   26:19
Yeah, almost like in the marketing world. That's kind of like a lead magnet, right? Like a traditional.

Travis:   26:23
Yeah, you essentially create a podcast as a lead magnet for your main podcast.

Alban:   26:30
Yeah, I'm also thinking, There's New York Times did 16 19 and that was a limited series. And then I think it was Vox's that did. Impeachment explained. That was pretty. I think it's over or it was just It's all focused on the impeachment of Donald Trump, and then it links back to all their other shows. But I think that's going to be like a stand alone. It just lived forever. How long? And that's Ah, he has been impeached. A spoiler alert. Anybody's listening to buy chest,

Travis:   26:59
right? So, like, you know, another thing that's coming up this summer is the Olympics. So if you have ah, sports related podcasts and one of the sport's you cover or the sport you cover is gonna be at the Olympics, it might be wise to say, Okay, well, let's let's create a podcast is just for the Olympic aspect of this and then have that point back to remain podcast. So people discover us over there cause there searching for the Olympics. They want to hear about what's going on. I want to hear about the results in the events and things like that, and you can use that to point people back to your main podcast. So when the Olympics are over, they stick around and keep listening.

Alban:   27:29
Yes, So what criteria would you use to decide when you would want to do a limited series? I mean, I'm thinking it's valuable when there's a lot of search volume around something in particular. So impeachment or Corona virus or the Olympics like there's a big spike in search volume for one thing, you know, it's only gonna have a definitive length, and then it will end. Um, I don't know. You maybe want to go deeper than you ever could go in your typical podcasts. Are there other things people should be thinking about if they want to launch a standalone Siris?

Travis:   28:04
So I think the thing that I think about is you want to be able to I guess, take that opportunity to, like you said, go deeper, right? So use the Corona virus example because I think we did a search and there's only, like, one Corona wires podcast that's out there right now. Um and so you're free advice. If you're a medical expert and you won't do this, go for it. Um, let us know how it goes. But I think, yeah, you want to go really deep on something that a lot of people are interested in learning about. But let's say OK, after six or eight episodes, I'm gonna exhaust my knowledge or understanding of this concept or it's gonna time out, is gonna phase out. It's kind of like a flash in the pan, you know, catch it while it's hot. Let's see if we can get some some additional, uh, traffic to this. Um, those would be the kinds of things. So, like, if it's an event that, like you know, is coming up like, let's say you have a Christian podcast, you're like, I'm gonna do an episode about Christmas. It's like That's really important. That's good. When you get the December, you should do a December episode on Christmas. But I wouldn't necessarily make a whole separate podcast to try and catch some Christmas traffic if that makes sense,

Alban:   29:06
yeah, you need to have some cultural moment that's happening, something that's going on that there makes. It makes sense to actually create this separate thing,

Travis:   29:15
right? So, like, if you're a political podcast than making a separate podcast about the Democratic National Convention, the whole lead up to that with the primaries and everything is going out with caucuses and the candidates like, Okay, that's something that people are interested in right now. Once they choose the candidate and they're going up against Donald Trump, that content has kind of expired, in a sense, because people are now shifted towards the general election, Um, so that be another example of something you could do now that could point people back to your main podcast where you want them to stay. But again, Yeah, it's it's really catching something in the moment and making a podcast that really serves people that are interested in that topic.

Alban:   29:53
Yeah, you actually, I don't know if you meant to allude to this, but you know, that crooked media did like a standalone Iowa caucus podcast.

Travis:   30:01
No, I had no idea.

Alban:   30:02
You really just fell in that on your own. I thought you're setting so smart. So they did a podcast. It was like five episodes. I'm pulling it up now on the ground in Iowa and it's a I think it's just about the history of, like, Why does Io even have caucuses and how do they go? Which makes sense, like, probably their main political broadcast. Most people aren't super like I've gotta learn everything about the Iowa caucuses, but probably after all, the everything was, like, so confused for a few days, probably a lot of people were like, Okay, why does this happen? How does this work? And they're now they pulled in millions of people to listen to it

Travis:   30:34
Yeah, and it would not surprise me if four years from now they re released that podcast because people will be searching for it again. So So, yeah, so that's just a really interesting thing that I've picked up on. Um, specifically, you'll find you'll find this happening in the new and noteworthy section of iTunes. So there's the podcast that a relatively new to have seen that are getting a lot of, Ah, lot of plays very quickly on DSO. You'll start to notice that either podcasts about TV shows that are coming out or about these kind of cultural topics.

Alban:   31:03
All right, so one last thing, and maybe I'll run this little bit since Travis, I'm gonna be peppering you with questions. Will flip the script. Um, you just got back from spark, which was a podcast conference that you went with. Think Marshall

Travis:   31:17
Marshall? Yes.

Alban:   31:18
And ah, tell us what happened. And I know you gave a talk and you told people something's so tell us what happened and what you thought and maybe what you talked about.

Travis:   31:27
Yeah, sure. So I So I think it's it's interesting. Eso Spark is the first Christian podcast conference that that I know of, that's that's Ah been run. Is that in Houston, Texas? It was a phenomenal conference, especially for like, the first year is really well done. Ah, shadow to Misty. She did a great job, and ah, and I was invited to go and do a keynote on understanding your podcast analytics, which I thought was fitting since we've been working so hard on rolling out our advanced podcast stats and what it did was it allowed me to kind of go deeper than just hear some stats and look, aren't they pretty? But really think too? Okay. What are the key questions that you would want answers to? That you would use your stats to be able to answer those questions right? So I think some very common ones are like, How is my podcast doing? Is it am I good or am I bad? And you know, that's kind of the first level of questions. But then you go deeper than that. There's some really specific questions that you can ask that give you a sense of how you're doing compared to how you were doing, which I've always found to be the most useful metric to look at. It's not how am I doing compared to other people? But how am I doing compared to my earlier episodes?

Alban:   32:33
Yeah. What makes a good episode for Joe Rogan is not a good episode or wait. What would make a great episode for us is not great. Good for Joe Rogan. He has higher expectations. And so Sarah Koenig with cereal they need to be doing operating this high level. Whereas we we got 1/10 of their listeners, we'd be blowing our minds.

Travis:   32:51
Yeah, we could probably all retire at that point. Um, so yeah, so I will leave a link to the pdf for my slides in the show notes. If you're curious, you want to download them. But there were a couple questions in particular that I thought would be really interesting that we get that I get a lot, especially the Facebook group that I thought would be good. Ah, the first question is, is my podcast growing? So a lot of people will like, look at their stats and be like, Well, am I getting more listeners? Your listeners? And if you just look at, like, all of your stats, all at once. It could be difficult to really see trends. Um, because if you're just looking at all your downloads than okay, that's great that my new podcast has 50 downloads. My first episode has, ah, 150 downloads. Does that mean I'm growing or not? Right. And so if you are looking at everything all at once, that could be a bit confusing. But a really easy way to see if your audience is growing is to look at the total number of downloads your episodes get 30 days after publishing. And so by applying that filter to it, you're able to see the size of your audience overtime. And so one of the charts that I used in the keynote was looking at bus cast and looking at the download numbers we had when we first launched this version of it when we shifted to the industry news podcast and then seeing the trend of the downloads within the 1st 30 days overtime. And when you look at it that way, the first few episodes we were getting around 300 downloads within the 1st 30 days, who was a pretty new podcast. But then, if we looked at episodes were getting at the beginning of this year. Now that we've had seven months of consistent episodes, now we're jumping up until, like, 909 150 downloads in the 1st 30 days. And so that allows us to see that even if Episode one and the most recent episode have the same number of downloads, we can see kind of the acceleration of how the audience has grown.

Alban:   34:40
And you often see this. This is pretty common to see the biggest episodes of the oldest episodes because they've lived the longest. They had a little bit of traction the beginning. But now they've had sometimes years Thio grow and more more people listen to him in the block post. They have ranking so it can actually look to some people. If you just look at the total number of plays Oh, my podcast is shrinking. Well, it's not that it's tricky is actually growing quite a bit, but you don't. So you want to actually put that filter on there so you can actually see in the 1st 30 days of this thing being out, where were they at that point and then you start seeing of these new episodes. Air really taking off much faster than the old ones?

Travis:   35:21
Yep. Definitely another question that you can answer with analytics is how long are people listening to each episode Sorry. Listen to the full episode. Half of the episode are people dropping off at a certain point, Um, you know, how can you figure that out? Because you can't really see that by is looking at the download number, cause the download them accounts if they download it and listen to five minutes where they downloaded and listen to the

Alban:   35:44
whole thing. All right, So how do you get this number inside of bus, bro?

Travis:   35:47
So you can't get inside a bus route, but you can get it in the apple podcasts Analytics on. That's because they're able to kind of see their listener behavior within the APP, and they don't give that information to us, and we're not really keen on trying to grab that from them. But you can certainly go into the Podcast Analytics platform and look at your consumption charts by your episodes. And again, I'll put the slides in the show notes so you can follow along and see what I'm talking about. But essentially, it's a graph showing you know where people are dropping off. And so if it's a good episode, then you'll see a relatively horizontal line, which means most people are listening to the entire episode and then the trail off at the end. But if something really catastrophic happens in your episode, then you'll see this sharp decline where all of a sudden goes from, like, 80% of your listeners air hanging around tow like 10%. And that would be a clue to go back and see. OK, what did I do at that point in time that made so many people want to stop listening to this episode so that I never make that mistake again?

Alban:   36:49
So what kind of have you seen examples of this, like, what are things that people might do that they see a drop off? Then they can actually rectify Make a change in the future.

Travis:   36:59
So the example that I gave him the talk was actually from one of our podcast how to start a podcast where when we initially launched it, we saw the sharp drop off around 18 and 1/2 minutes into the episode. And so when you go back and you listen to that, you actually are able to see that we shifted topics right at that time stamp. And at that point we stopped talking about microphones, and we started talking about, like, recording software, which, you know, you wouldn't necessarily think anything of it until you noticed that the title of the episode was the best microphone for podcasters and into that clue to send that. Okay, people showed up expecting to hear about microphones. And as soon as we stop talking on microphones, they didn't care anymore. Like they were done with the episode. They're ready to move on. And so, you know, moving forward. We want to make sure that the title, either you know, accurately describe what we're talking about in the episode. Or, at the very least, that we arrange the segment in such a way that entices somebody to continue listening

Alban:   37:54
all the way through. And you could see I could see. Also, you have multiple formats on one show. Maybe people are listening and then you go okay, and I'm doing an interview and maybe some people to turn into the interviews. Or maybe the interview ends and you start doing a like news round up, people drop out for that segment. It could help you figure out what perch people love and what part people don't love. And if people are only there for the thing, that's easier, and you enjoy more. Well, now you can simplify the show and dropped part of it out and ah, double down on what everyone's enjoying.

Travis:   38:25
Yeah, and the great thing about these consumption chart says they don't lie, right? So even when you ask people like what parts of the podcast you like not like, you know, sometimes they'll tell you often times they don't even know what to say. They're like, Oh, I just like it. But if you notice okay, they're all They all stopped listening right around here that I know not to do that anymore, even if they can't even verbalize the thing that they want you to change. Another thing that you can get in Apple Podcast Analytics that is really fascinating is you can answer the question of Am I converting new listeners into subscribers because Apple contract, whether someone clicks that subscribe button or not, that's not something that we can get necessarily in the bus route stats. But if you go to your overview page and scroll down in the bottom, we have links to that analytics platform, so we make it really easy to jump over there. But they have this really interesting number called devices subscribed, and it's measured as a percentage. So if you go to any of your individual episodes and look at the bottom right corner, you'll see this number. And what that number represents is the number of people that listen to that episode of your podcast that decided to then subscribe to your podcast. They weren't subscribed, and then they decided to subscribe. And the power of that is you can see which topics are really interesting to people in the sense of they want to hear more from you. They want to continue to hear episodes like this because they found your podcasts through this one episode, and they want they want to stick around and continue to hear content like that. So if you notice that some some of your episodes of like 80 or 90% devices subscribed, that's an indicator that that's what people want to stick around for. And then if you get, like 10 and 20% that is okay, Maybe this isn't something I want to continue to make episodes about from a topical standpoint, because it's not converting new listeners into subscribers.

Alban:   40:11
Yeah, you could probably notice not just topics, but also how well did you sell the podcast and say, Hey, you came for learning about this one thing? Well, I'm teaching this all the time. This podcast always dives into this topic and showing them the value of subscribing and listening to 10 more episodes rather than feeling like I got the one interview that I was hoping born. Now I left

Travis:   40:33
another way that you could use. This number is it is to test your calls to action at the end of your podcast. So let's say that you you haven't been telling people to subscribe to your podcast. And then you're like, OK, for the next five episodes, I'm gonna tell people literally, if you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to this podcast and see if your number jumps and see people actually respond to that call to action or not. So that's the way that you can use that number to test. Okay, Are people actually listening to this part of the episode and taking action, or is there something else I need to do to entice them to subscribe? So it'll continue to stick around for the long term. So I answered a bunch of other questions as well, and you can see all those in the slide. So if you're interested in learning more about how to understand your analytics and how to use them to make your podcast better in the future than definitely click the link in the show notes and download the pdf

Alban:   41:19
Was the talk filmed? Did you film it or did anybody film it?

Travis:   41:23
It was filmed. And so if you'd like to see it and all the other talks that were at the Spark Podcast conference, I believe you can purchase a Web pass or an online pass. Virtual past, I think, is the word that they used for. And ah, and I'll leave a link to that as well, if I can find that. Okay, so if you want to go and what they were all really great talks all the talks I was in when I wasn't working the booth were really high quality. And so that's something you're interested in. Then I'll leave a link for that, and you can go watch the video. Cool. Well, that does it for this week's episode of Buzz Cast. If you're in Orlando next week for Pied best, make sure that you come by and say hi. Make sure you get a T shirt. Make sure you come bowling with us. Um, if not, we're just still super happy that you're here with us.

Kevin:   42:01
And we have a brand new swag item never before released at any podcasting conference coming, Thio. But sprout, it'll be at our booth, maybe at the bowling party.

Alban:   42:10
What is it? I'm

Kevin:   42:11
teasing it. No, you got to come see it.

Travis:   42:13
It is pretty

Alban:   42:13
a lot of this episode of Kevin going like maybe this episode of this podcast. I'm Linky, too is amazing. Go check it out. I'm not gonna tell you what it's about. Got some new swag, never telling you what it is.

Travis:   42:23
I'm gonna start calling you Kevin. Cliffhanger. Finn,

Kevin:   42:25
I'm excited about this news while I get school.

Travis:   42:28
It's definitely useful, like often you go to these conferences and the swags like, Here's a pen. Here's a lanyard. It's like I don't dress balls. Yeah, yeah. And so now

Kevin:   42:37
it is none of those things.

Travis:   42:38
It is actually something that you, as a podcaster, will love and appreciate and cherish and hand down to your Children as a

Alban:   42:43
family. And people are gonna come by being so excited that Oh, cool. This is useful. Uh, I'm not passing this on to my great.

Travis:   42:55
You never know you. They might be starting their own podcast. You're very soon. Um, the other thing we would encourage you to do if you haven't yet is going join our our Facebook group. The bus brought podcast community fantastic community for you to share your winds. Uh, sure. Your struggles get help when you need it. And your personal data? Yeah, connect with other podcasters. And I lied. Third thing, if there's something that you want us to talk about on a future episode of Buzz cast, you can click the link and show notes, felt the two questions survey and, uh, cue that up for a future segment. But thanks for joining us for this week's episode, and we'll talk to you soon.

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