Buzzcast
Buzzcast is a roundtable discussion about podcasting from the people at Buzzsprout. We'll cover current events and news, podcast strategy, tools we are using, and dip into the Customer Support mailbag to test our podcasting knowledge. If you want to stay up-to-date on what's working in podcasting, Buzzcast is the show for you.
Buzzcast
Podcast Movement 2019, Work Cycle Tango, and Rookie Mistakes (feat. Kerry-Ann Reid-Brown)
This week we share our main takeaways from Podcast Movement 2019, review some new Buzzsprout features from this past work cycle, and discuss the rookie mistakes we see podcasters making all too often.
Special thanks to Kerry-Ann Reid-Brown for sharing her two cents in this episode. You can learn about Kerry-Ann and her podcast network at breadfruitmedia.com
Registration is open for next year’s Podcast Movement conferences.
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Have a question? Shoot us an email at support@buzzsprout.com
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Thanks for listening & keep podcasting!
Well, welcome back to Buzzcast. We've got a pretty cool episode for you. Got a very special guest, Kerry-Ann joining us on the episode today. Hello Kerry-Ann.
Kerry-Ann:Hello. How are you?
Travis:Awesome. Awesome. Now we the collective we Buzzsprout uh, we've run into you a couple of times at different podcast conferences and meetups and things like that. Um, but why don't you go ahead and tell us a little bit about yourself and specifically the podcast network slash community that you've been working on.
Kerry-Ann:Sure. So my name is Ann Reed Brown. I am the host of carry on friends, the Caribbean American podcast and I am the founder of breadfruit media and also Caribbean podcast directory and the Podcast Production Company and the directory where I started really to support the community of Caribbean podcasters that are really blazing in the field right now. Podcast is growing. And so with that growth, you have communities really taken advantage of the opportunity to create their own stories. And so with breadfruit media I help produce shows and with the podcast directory it's really community building and a way to help discoverability so more people could see, hey there's a show by this Trinny guy or this Haitian person or this Jamaican person. And um, yeah. So we can help audience discover us and also build a community.
Travis:That is super cool. Well thank you for uh, gracing us with your presence. I know we're definitely excited about picking your brain about podcast movement cause.
Kerry-Ann:it's my pleasure to be here. I'm excited to talk about it. We had a great time.
Travis:Awesome. So Alvin and Kevin, you guys just spent a couple of days down in Orlando hanging out with, you know, two to 3000 of your closest friends podcast movement. Uh, what were your big takeaways from podcast movement maybe album. We'll start with you.
Alban:Yeah, so this is a couple of years in a row. I haven't been able to sneak into a talk. So this is one of the reasons I really wanted Kerry-Ann to be on here is because our experience is really different. We work a booth, we get people to come in, record episodes, we do lots of connections, lots of talking. And when we like crashed for like three days. And so it's a different experience. Um, takeaways, I mean that I've always had from podcast movement, man, it is so different from five years ago. You know, five years ago when it launched, it was like this super niche thing and there are, you know, it's just, there were not a ton of people there and now it's just growing a ton is this like industry event and it's, it's really exciting, you know, to see how much it's grown, how many new faces we see every time. Don't know. What do you feel cuff, what do you, what are some takeaways you had?
Kevin:Well it is bigger than ever. Like it's, it's shocking to walk into the Exhibitor Hall now. It feels like you're in a giant Costco. Like size space is huge. True. And there are vendors everywhere and main stages everywhere and minor stages and all these different a, I mean if there's one podcast conference that you want to go to a year, you can, this has everything from, I'm thinking about doing a show to. I've been doing a show for, you know, you know, professionally for years they have something for everyone. It's amazing. And so having that kind of as your uh, background, it can also be a little bit intimidating I think walking into something that huge. The, the great thing about, I think the podcast community in general is that that goes away really quickly because everyone is so friendly, so anxious to meet you and find out what do you do in the space and tell you about what, what they do. And it's really like this, this interesting environment where you walk into something huge and massive and you kind of feel a little bit small and then immediately start connecting with people. Uh, it's hard not to have fun in an environment like that. I think.
Kerry-Ann:Yeah, you are right. Because 2017 when I went to podcast movement, I was five months pregnant and struggling to deal with a three hour time difference cause it was in California and it was the first time I met a lot of people. Um, and but when I got there it was almost like I instantly made connections, connections that have really been valuable two years later. So I agree. When you first go in it's a bit overwhelming and then you start connecting and once you connect you kind of lock in with these people and for the rest of the conference you're like buddies and then you come away with a whole new set of really good friends and not superficial friends, like really good friends that you're always connecting with.
Alban:Yeah, the podcasting is really cool because it builds this sense of community among the people who listen to your show, but a lot of times you're not talking to other podcasters. So it's cool when everyone gets together. The first few years I feel like everyone's question used to be, tell me about your show, maybe I'll listen to it. And now I feel like podcasts move has grown into like, hey, tell me about your show and let's bounce ideas off each other. How to improve shows, how to collaborate. And people are kind of forging these new friendships and partnerships. Yeah.
Kevin:You meet people everywhere. I was, every time we got in the elevator, you're standing next to somebody with a podcast movement badge on. Yeah. And so, so some of the best connections we make are just riding elevators up and down. I mean, it's, it's one of those places where if you're, if you're like me, I'm an introverted person. Um, it's not hard. I'm not super comfortable walking in just pushing my way into a group of three or four or three or 400, like either one of those is not a great situation for me. Um, it's not my comfortable place, but there's always an opportunity, um, to connect on this common ground of, we have some interest in the podcasting space. So the conversations just start very naturally and they very quickly become, um, you're trying to figure out, hey, how can I help you? How can I support you? And they're doing the same. And so I think it's a great place whether you're introverted or extroverted. Again, just speaking as an introvert, I feel very comfortable in that environment. And that's not true for all conferences or all events. Yeah.
Alban:Kerry- Ann you said you had a like a method, don't you? You have like a whole system, podcast movement.
Kerry-Ann:yes, it's a system for any conference really. So the first year I go into podcast movement, I made a list. There was a list of things I wanted to accomplish and going in. And then I took a look at the conference agenda and I may tweak or ally in a real line and a little bit. And I, I remember in 2017 I hit that and I hit that in like a 15 minute conversation with Glenn The Geek, Glenn, the Geek of Horse Radio Network. I just hit that like right out the gate. He sat me down, he gave me a, a specific talk to and when I saw him this year he was like, Oh yeah, you've graduated, now you're in high school, new assignment. So it was really great. And so this year I use the same method, which is what is it that I'm looking for? Um, what do I, what I, what do I want to get out of this? And then I looked at the conference tracks and I'm like, where are the sessions? And I'm like, yeah, I want this, I want that. And then the struggle this year where a lot of the sessions were happening at the same time and it's like, how am I going to even win this? And to your point, so you guys wrote up and now the elevator, that hallway is the best place to have the conversations and the exhibit hall and the Hallway are really the best place to have conversations with people. And that's where the conference happens. Really. Not so much in the sessions but in the hallways after the sessions. Because when I think about it, I never went to a lot of sessions, a lot of what I picked up, things that I'm going to execute or based on conversations I had in the hallways talking to you guys in the exhibit hall. And I think, I think for a Newbie it could be overwhelming cause you want to go to all the sessions, but as you meet people, I think it's natural to develop those relationships because the conference is in that moment of time. Whereas the conversations, that opportunity to have those conversations and build, um, a relationship can only happen in that moment and to just go with that. And so that's been my approach. And um, I was fortunate to bring friends along this year and um, when I, and I think that's another strategy when you go with friends, it's a divide and conquer. Okay, I'm going to this session. You go to that session, okay, we split, we come back and we just kind of debrief what we've learned. So buddying up with someone else, um, is also a good approach to tackling a conference. So massive.
Alban:Yeah. One of the things podcast movement does differently than maybe like FlynnCon, which we just went to. They've got tons of different talks going on at once. So there's times you're picking between like six or seven different talks and two or three of them might sound really good to you. So having like a buddy system is great. I know they also do like virtual tickets, which people pick up so that they can watch recordings later.
Kerry-Ann:I mean those are good, but I, I, and I am not, I'm not dissuading anyone from them, but I also think in those sessions there are some questions that you, you want to ask right then and there you lose that opportunity. So, you know, I was in the session where um pod news.net was hosting or having a conversation about Google. So because I'm building the community, um, around the Caribbean podcast is I have specific questions. So the in audio search, which I had an experience with castbox where I was speaking very clearly, I think it was very speaking, very clear English, but it wasn't picking up anything that I said. And maybe it's because I had a slight accent. So my question was like, hey guys, what are you going to do with people who have an accent? Even people in Boston, they don't say car, they say carrr, you know, does it pick up, you know, how does it pick up the accent? And you know, when people do search, will it recognize that? And I understand it's artificial intelligence, but I also need to understand because I'm like, do you want people to create content for their community or do you want people to create content so they could rank in Google or Apple because no matter how much they say create content for your community, when people are celebrating sexy download numbers of 10,000, a million, whatever, you know, you kind of feel a little way like what am I not doing right? Cause you want sexy download numbers. And so if you know the technology is in inadvertently penalizing you because it's not able to pick up certain words because you have a slight accent, I'm not somewhat slang, then you know, what are we doing to address those? And if I only was able to watch that in the virtual ticket, I wouldn't have the opportunity to ask the head of Google podcasts or um, I can not remember his name. But the guy who runs pod news.net a lot of those questions. So I think that's the value of going to sessions and being able to ask those really good follow through questions.
Alban:Yeah, I think that's a great point. And yet a lot of cool conversations walking up and talking to people afterwards. I know I've had those experiences at like marketing conferences. You get to go up and you get to ask questions and you know you're walking out of a session with someone you can start bouncing ideas off each other.[inaudible].
Travis:Kerry-Ann, what were like the top three things that you took away that you learned from podcast movement this year from all the sessions you went to and all the interactions and conversations you had over like your, your big three takeaways.
Kerry-Ann:All right, so one of the fun sessions, or one of the best sessions was the Edison research session and it was more of podcasts is changing. And last year I believe the same gentleman spoke about how the majority of Americans or people still aren't exposed to podcasts. So this year he came back with updated research that people are aware of podcasts, but podcasts looks very different. They're not necessarily listening in apps. They're listening to youtube shows. Like that nurse Blake thing that he talked about, he didn't have a feed anywhere. It was just being listened to or watched and youtube. So I think that's very interesting that, um, and it makes sense. It really makes sense because, um, as technology proliferates and we deliver content a specific way, podcasting is gonna look different, which goes back to something that I wrote on the blog. Should we consider re changing the name from podcast? Um, because we don't use iPods, so listen to them anymore. But that was, that was a huge takeaway and it's how we deliver content to these users. So, um, you know, older, you know, older, old school podcast listeners will listen the traditional way, but newer entrance to the podcast market, they're listening to podcasts in a very different way. So to be careful of our call to actions, not to be like, hey, subscribe on this channel. Or not to be too vague and say, hey, wherever you listen to your podcast, it's really specifying your call of action based on where your specific audience is listening. So I think that was a huge takeaway. Um, too.
Travis:Another takeaway was the level of diversity that I saw this year compared to when I attended in 2017. And it just confirms the community building that I'm working on for the Caribbean Community because as podcasts is accessible and people could tell more stories, you have more people of color, you have women in the space and you'll find more stories with those perspectives. So I think that's a really great opportunity. Um, and that was a really huge takeaway from me. And three, uh, let me see. Promoting your content. I think there's just more creative ways to do that. And doing that in a way to aid discoverability is still something that everyone is trying to figure out. Um, and we could be more creative, but I think discoverability is the key and how we go about doing that is, um, based on our individual communities. So keep leveraging, um, that chartable session. I didn't get to see all of it, but it was interesting how, cause I've tried Google ads in different ways to try to get more people to listen. And he had very interesting ideas on how to do cross promotion and how to look at marketing your show differently. So I think those are my three takeaways. Think outside the box for marketing your show, not the traditional paid way through social media, et cetera. Um, podcast is of color and women are growing even more in the space. And even the Edison research confirmed that. And Edison's research, of course that podcast looks different. It's beyond the traditional, um, directories and tools that we listen. So those are my takeaway.
Alban:Yeah, that was something I know we saw that in when we put together a big post on like statistics and podcasting was it really used to be much more male-centric and a lot more women are getting into the scene. A lot of new voices definitely becoming much more diverse. And I think that's just the industry growing, you know, as we, you know, kind of evolve and start understanding what podcasting is. Um, yeah, more people are able to, you know, it's more accessible. More people can get in on it. Yeah,
Kerry-Ann:yeah, absolutely. There's, it's, you don't need permission. There's, there's not much gatekeeping and you don't need permission to tell your story. Um, and I think that more and more people, because if you notice that, you know, you have more language podcasts, I guess there was a network, I can't remember which one, which show.
Alban:Yeah, we saw that with a, I think it was doctor death, they rereleased in like a bunch of languages. And then I talked to Ant and he was telling me about people that are redoing podcasts in German because I guess in Germany there's quite a bit of interest in podcasting. And then I talked to somebody who, he was doing all the Spanish speaking podcasts and he was talking to me about how much podcasting is growing in Latin America. So it's just incredible to see all these different areas of growth. And it's not all just like the tech scene anymore. A lot of other people are realizing the power of communicating and connecting via podcasting.
Travis:So I believe that you can go ahead and get tickets for next year's podcast movement and there's two of them now, right? Y'All not mistaken.
Alban:So we've got podcast movement evolutions, which I think is going to be a little bit more scaled down and it's going to be out in LA. We are looking at our booth today. We're where we're going to be. And then we've got podcast movement 2020 the big one in Dallas.
Travis:So we just wrapped up a, another work cycle here at Buzzsprout. When you're listening to this episode, we have just finished work cycle Tango, which is how they say T, in the military but also the Latin dance. Um, and so with that we rolled out some new features specifically for Buzzsprout. So Kevin, you want to kind of roll through some new things that we, well tell me what we rolled out and then I can, I'll try to explain it for everyone. Well, the first thing that we rolled out was the, uh, directories and embedded players for, for people that in bed, the episode players in their websites.
Kevin:So if you grab one of the buzz Bret players and you stick it on your website or if you embed it in a blog post, there were subscribed buttons in there before, but they were only, was it only apple, apple, iTunes find maybe Spotify. Yeah. So now there is an a more button listed next to that and if you click that, you get a whole sheet of every app that we know that your podcast is in. So we talked about this and when we were wrapping up the previous work cycle was we have a new way of uh, listing your podcast and all the directories. And then as a result of getting in those directories, you would also appear in all these different apps. So now we're putting that to work in the, uh, the portable embed player that you can put on your own website. And so if somebody likes to listen and overcast or pocketcasts or app of their choice right from their in bed player, now they can click subscribe more, find the player they like click it and they're subscribed.
Travis:Yeah, and the benefit of this from a podcast or perspective is if you have a podcast website, are you using the Buzzsprout website? Then you can just tell people, go to your website and then regardless of what kind of device they're on, they can very easily navigate to the app of their choice. Right? Like that's the huge plus and it's not just limited to the Buzzsprout website anymore. Now you have that same functionality in your own website. Yeah. One of the cool things that I know John and Dave worked on there was they're finding all these automatically. It's not, you're not going through and going, okay, let me copy and paste a ton of links. We're figuring these out for you and creating those little buttons so it takes a little bit of the workload off of the podcaster and makes it easier for listeners to find you. John and Dave are ours. Some are of our awesome besides behind the scenes coders that make Buzzsprout possible. So shout out to John and Dave.
Kerry-Ann:Yeah, shout out to John and Dave. I think that's a really good feature and especially since a lot of these other places, they're aggregating content or there places and you know as a podcast, so you don't always know what's the newest thing that people listened to. So it's kind of great that you have this and in a way where it's kind of collapsed so it doesn't look like there's like a whole sprinkling of all these little icons. Um,
Alban:yeah, you're like click a button and then it brings up the whole list. So it's not like an overwhelming like here are your 80 options. It's hey, click here and see which one are you using. One of these players go right into the player and subscribe rather than, you know, telling people, open it up yourself, search for it, and hopefully you find me.
Kerry-Ann:Yeah, I liked that. And strategically it's sending people to your website as opposed to saying, Hey, follow us on like the Edison Guy said on your favorite podcast app, you know, go to our website, find your app of choice and click subscribe. That's an easier message to deliver than doing a roll call. Exactly. Yeah.
Travis:So another thing that we rolled out was the, what we called internally, the podcast switcher. Yeah. Which had been kind of like a, a long simmering feature and uh, but we, we came up with a pretty cool solution I think in Alban. You wanna kind of explain what we did and it's going to help.
Alban:Yeah. The days of Yore we used to, you have to log in separately for every podcast is years ago. And then we made it so you can log into one account and switch, but there was never, we didn't do a ton of work around that. Like switch between podcasts that you had. Yeah. So you gotta have multiple podcasts and you could switch between them. And then Dave at one point was like, you know, I want to make this better. I want to make it so that people with networks, it's a bit easier for the managed larger amounts of shows. So you click my podcasts, pulls up this really cool little pop up and it has all of your shows artwork for each one, shows you how many episodes you have, and you kind of get this high level overview me, switch over to a new one and manage that. Or you can create a new podcast right there. So it's adding a bit more functionality that's especially useful for people who are managing lots of shows. Yeah.
Kevin:What I mean, one of the problems that this also solves is that oftentimes people would get confused between creating a new episode on existing podcast or creating a new podcast altogether. So that was also a subtle goal of this project. Make it easier for people to switch if they already have multiple podcasts. And also clarifying, do I really need a new podcast or am I just trying to upload a new episode to one of my existing podcasts?
Travis:Yeah. So we hope it's made it easier. I think it's made it easier as someone who manages multiple Buzzsprout podcasts because I just click a button and it's like, oh, that's the one I want click and then exactly where I need to be. Okay.
Kerry-Ann:Yeah, that sounds like it would be right up my alley with breadfruit media. I manage a lot of different shows right now, so yeah, that sounds cool. Always something easier. And I'm not like, Ooh, I uploaded the wrong thing to the wrong show.
Alban:Have you got this? I'm loving this, like real time feedback as we're launching stuff. This is good. So have you ever done that before where you launched, you uploaded episode to the wrong show went, oh man, I gotta move it over somewhere else.
Kerry-Ann:Um, uh, I did, but it wasn't ready to launch when I realized it, I was like, oops, let's go back and change that. So, um, but, and it happens when you're doing multiple things. Luckily it was my show, so I'm, um, I uploaded a client's episode. It's a, my show. Say it wasn't a big deal. If it was the other way around, it'd be like, that's not good.
Alban:That sounds like you were doing additional promo efforts for them.
Kerry-Ann:I actually, I do think so because there's this feature that I'd like to do where you drop episodes and other people's feeds. I'm like, all right, it would have been a good deal. But um, yeah, it's, it's very easy. I think it's easier to give me the opportunity to streamline my efforts and juggling multiple sign in. So I think if there's a really good way to sign in, know what I'm doing. You see it, the little, uh, I guess, um, podcast artwork. So you know, okay. That's carry on friends or that style and vibes. It's makes it easier and manageable and I don't have to remember multiple passwords.
Alban:Yeah. And we've got a couple other little guy, other little rollouts that are dear to my heart. What's your for podcast promotion. Hmm. So one is full. We updated. So now we made it easier for people to share episodes into Linkedin, right? Yeah.
Kevin:So forever you could, when you post a new episode, you could publish it to Twitter very easily or post it to your Facebook feed very easily. And Alvin's going to talk about that cause we actually touched the Facebook one as well, but now we've added linkedin. So linkedin has become a much more popular destination for podcasters to share their episodes, especially if they are professionally related or professional content. And so it just has made sense now at this point to give an easy way to share your latest episode or any episode to Linkedin.
Alban:Yeah, whenever I go to Linkedin I'm always shocked by the amount of podcasting content that's in there. It's, you know, there's lots of communities that live in Linkedin and there's communities in slack and there's communities on reddit and there's people that are only used Facebook, but there is this group of people that love Linkedin and use it a lot. And we were just seeing more and more people requesting better share tools for linkedin. Yeah,
Kerry-Ann:like negotiate anything which is hosted through Buzzsprout with Kwame[inaudible].
Alban:I always see it on linkedin. It is. It's one of my, this is actually some of my favorite things to see on linkedin. Yeah.
Kerry-Ann:Now I have a question for you. So what you've done, you have Facebook, you have linkedin, like from a marketing standpoint, what's the situation with Instagram? Because I don't know, I find that I see a lot of people on Instagram. Is there any issue in terms of the API? What's the deal with sharing to Instagram?
Alban:Yeah, so the best thing to do for Instagram is you want to share a little video clips. So what we do is we have the visual soundbite where you create a little video clip for each episode and so they're mostly 30 seconds long where you grab a clip out of a podcast and it creates a cool little wave form with your colors, your artwork, and we will send you that as a video for you to share into Instagram. One thing Instagram has always done, and I think they mainly did this to combat spam, is they don't make it easy for you to share content from outside sources into Instagram. Um, so they don't do that for anyone. I think that unless you're a business account, they won't let you do any posting from the outside. But uh, yeah, that's what we recommend.
Kerry-Ann:Yeah. I think the connection between fee, if you have to have a Facebook business account or something weird, but that's good to know. That's good to know that you guys have the audiogram type feature to share. Yep. Visual sound byte. Visual sound. Yeah.
Alban:That's a much catchier name. Yeah. Trademark. Yeah. Trademark. Legally we have to say trademark every time. Right, Kevin? All right, you're the lawyer. And then the last thing that we added was, I know, I think Dave just did this one. I don't know if this was like a pitched accepted thing. We sometimes when you shared a Buzzsprout episode, instead of giving you like a nice, you know how Facebook will like actually do a preview for you of what the content is. There's sometimes where they, if you just shared the website, they gave you a goofy photo. Like they, it's, it's a big square photo and they turned it into a rectangle.
Kevin:Yeah, they chopped off the top and the bottom. So, depending on your photo, it could look really weird. Like you share a picture of yourself as your cover art and it's just like your torso.
Alban:Yeah. I think that's the exact example that somebody said today. If they're like, what's going on here? And he's like, well, you can change the image of yourself. And I think Dave just was like, Nah, I'm doing this myself. So we now create a different image for those pages so that it shows up as a square and it looks great. Yeah. Kudos today. Have once again. Yeah. Day's getting a lot of shout out.
Travis:I want to make sure he listened to this episode of games working hard. He is. He is. So, uh, so yeah, so that's what we were able to no, there's, yeah,
Kevin:there's one more. There's one more. Oh, there's one more. Just one more, more thing. And most people would probably not even notice this, but we did an update where if you ever have to come back and change out your audio file for some reason, um, and who knows? There's a million reasons, right? Yeah. There's a million reasons why you might want to change your audio file at some point on the future. Spotify since they cache your audio wasn't always getting that latest version. And so the solution to that was that you had to change the title of your podcast episode and you could just change it for a day. They would update and then you could change it back. But that was annoying. Yeah. And so we found a technical way to do that in the background for you magically to force Spotify to grab the new file. And so we need to mention it because other people, you know, you wouldn't know that otherwise. But now if you need to replace your audio, you just replace it. You don't worry about it. We update everyone and who doesn't like a little magic, you know?[inaudible]
Kerry-Ann:yeah, I know. I learned something because at podcast movement they talked about, um, you know, Spotify caching and um, you know, my zero episode that I did over five years ago, you know, every now and then I go in and update that zero episode because now there's new information. So it's good to know this really is. Yeah. Oh yeah.
Travis:So yeah, a lot of fun stuff. Uh, cool. New features that we rolled out and then we've got another work cycle coming up in a couple of weeks and we'll start rolling out some new projects. And as things become available to you to use to help promote your show to make your dashboard easier to navigate those kinds of things, we will certainly let you know.
Alban:All right, so we're going to talk about some rookie podcasting mistakes
Travis:key podcasting mistakes. Yes. Murky podcasting mistakes. And I thought, I thought this could be a cool segment simply because like whenever I'm interacting with people in the Facebook group or coaching people, um, I get a lot of like similar type questions and I see a lot of common things that like thought if we just spent 20 minutes addressing them, we could, we could help hundreds of people potentially with, you know, some of these common just things that you don't know until you know them. Right. It's just like just part of the growth process as a podcast here. Um, but I was curious if there are any kind of rookie podcasting mistakes that you see crop up time and time again that you know, people be kind of, it'd be good to know those things ahead of time so you can, you can avoid them.
Kerry-Ann:I think the biggest rookie one is, um, especially when you have, you're using a apple device and everything is connected and you don't turn your phone off and every time you're recording something, the phone's ringing and your computer's ringing and a lot of stuff just really turning your devices off. I think it's, it's so simple, but it's important because then you have to stop your guests. You have to all right, repeat questions. So I think that is like a critical for me, a rookie mistake.
Alban:Yeah, Kerry-Ann. We're all just turning off our phones and putting them in our pocket. Multiple votes of all of us have our phones out on the table. So yes, Kevin and I are sheepishly putting them away. Uh,
Travis:that's so true though. That's so true. Like you're right in the middle of this incredible line of thought. Like you're just about to make the perfect point and then your mother in law calls you and wants to know what's for dinner and you're like, well Dang it now I gotta I gotta make this work. No, I think that's a great tip, one that I see, um, that you don't really know this until you know it, but naming the podcast after yourself and nobody knows who you are. Like I've seen that a couple like quite often where it's like, I want to be the, the, the Jim Brown podcast. It's like, cool, we'll the only people looking for the Jim Brown podcast are your, your, your spouse, your best friend and your mom. And so as far as findability goes and people being able to discover your podcast and know what it's about, maybe naming it after yourself is, is definitely up there. And like a rookie mistake to avoid.
Kerry-Ann:I think naming is just really hard. And I think, um, a session or a something maybe Alvin you could do like a whole summer workshop, like naming your podcast cause years ago calling my podcast, carry on friends. They're like, what does that mean? And it was at podcast movement. It was clarified to be carry on friends, the Caribbean American podcast. So naming is hard and I think part of the why, the reason why naming is hard, you have multiple shows with the same name and you know, apple or none, none of them tell you that, oops, this name is taken. So it just needs a whole primer by itself. You're right, you shouldn't name it by yourself, but I think we need like a whole series of like how you guys did, how to start a podcast on how to name your podcast.
Alban:Yeah, that's a great idea
Travis:there. There may or may not be a five minute Monday episode coming out very soon on how to name your podcast.
Alban:Yeah, we've got a blog post out there, but I know we're looking to revisit that one. A couple of some tips we give people you don't want to have. We try to mean most people probably don't need podcasts in the name. Um, most people don't want to name it after themselves. Uh, avoid puns. If they're going to require you to spell something in a unique way, sometimes, um, that can get tricky. Those are good. Uh, we, and then you want to get some search terms in there. So what sometimes people do is it's like, Hey, this is the Alvin show talking about entrepreneurship, this, this, this, and it's like seven keywords. Well, Apple is now get a kick you out of apple podcasts if you do that. But you still would like for your title to be about the subject of the podcast. So if your show is about marketing, you want to get the name like marketing in there. So doing something like, you know, online marketing made easy with Amy Porterfield, you've got a lot of good online marketing, you've got marketing in there, you've got Amy Porterfield, you've got the whole Shebang. Like you've got all the keywords in there. So finding ways to make sure people will find this and they can remember it. That's like the gold standard.
Kerry-Ann:That's a nice little formula. Albin. It's like headline, byline, like it's about, yeah.
Travis:Cause remember to like when someone's scrolling through a podcast app and they're looking for something new to start listening to your name is not gonna be what moves them to decide to listen to an episode. It's going to be, oh, I think that podcast talks about something that I'm interested in just based on the title. So yeah.
Kevin:Well, unless your name is the name of the show, you'll get rejected by apple now. So you can't say online marketing with Amy Porterfield anymore. Like she might be grandfathered in, but you could do the Amy Porterfield show. That's totally fine. But that's interesting. But if you say with, and then the artists, they're going to say nope. Can't be in the title and[inaudible]. Yup. Yeah.
Travis:So unless you're Oprah or Conan O'Brien, don't put your name as the name of your podcast. Um, good, good little podcasting one-on-one. Do you guys have any other, any other rookie mistakes you can think about?
Kevin:Uh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, rookie mistakes. So maybe I'm just, cause I'm coming off a couple of conferences, but like equipment paralysis is a common one. So people are overwhelmed with which microphone should I get? Which mixer, which audio interface, what cables do I need? How much is this all going to cost? Kevin, are you talking about me? Can know every, everybody asks about it, right? And then I think it's totally fine and there's a lot of people who geek out on equipment and if that's you, then fine. Have Fun with that. But there are people who get paralyzed by it. Like, I can't make a decision because I'm too afraid of making the wrong decision, or I'm too afraid it's gonna be too hard for me to use or I'm going to, I'm on a tight budget, so I can't afford the mistake of buying the wrong thing. Like that's, that's a bummer if you get stuck in that spot. And so if you go like, there are great resources and we have some of them, and so I'll just promote them now. Like if you go to the Buzzsprout blog or the how to start a podcast page on Buzzsprout and you can scroll down to the equipment recommendations, we have everything that you need on that one page and just look at what's recommended there. Figuring out how that fits into your budget and the commitment level that you want to start at and just throw it in your Amazon cart and check out. Like don't sit in this space of, I have to get everything right up front. I've got to get the best equipment. Just just grab the$60 Mike and the, you know,$10 table stand and let's start creating some great content. Yeah.
Kerry-Ann:And I've had my$60 Mike for a very long time and it works very well. So yeah, just Kinda pick, like Kevin said, just pick your mic and work with it. If it doesn't work, then it doesn't work. But you can't be in the lab testing for a long time and be stuck in paralysis. Oh yeah, that's, that's a good one because I get asked that question too.
Alban:Yeah. One I see is people who they get hung up on like their shows just going to be about like all these cool things. Like I'm going to talk about stuff. People don't talk about relationships and politics and let's talk about some current events. I'm also into comic books and we're going to do all that in one show and I'm like, who's going to listen to it? It's going to be like your three friends that are on the podcast are going to listen to this show. For most people, you want to hone in on one or maybe two subject areas that you're gonna talk about consistently. If it's cool, you know, if the whole subject matter is like things Alban is into, it's a really, there's only a, there's an audience of one for that show, right?
Travis:Which if that's what matters to you, then go for it. If you, if you want to have, if you want to make a show around the audience of one that is you, we're, we're not gonna stand in the way, but if you have aspirations of reaching a larger audience, we would certainly discourage you from, from having a podcast, which is everything but the kitchen sink, right? Yeah.
Kerry-Ann:So I think a rookie mistake is not managing expectations, right? So when it comes to podcast, success is a long game. And um, you know, success is not going to come over night and you just have to make sure you remain consistent in frequency of how you publish your podcast consistent with a topic. Um, you don't want to do one topic this week. You there off and scratch. You know, people are scratching your head because you are really trying to get the downloads, especially if you're a niche podcast or, and you do not have a large studio producing your content. It is important to manage your expectation and understand that success is a long game. And the little tips I gave just have a vision of what you want your show to be. Um, build community with other podcasters. Um, three is just understand success is gonna look differently and be open to receive what that success looks like. So maybe it's not downloads. You have a really big, big community that was like, oh my gosh, you finally created a show that we love. So just look at success differently and it's not necessarily money or overnight success in tens and thousands of downloads.
Travis:And then the other, the other thing that I see a lot of people come into as far as like an unmet expectation is that they come from like a youtube bish world where they're used to seeing videos with millions of views being normal. Like they see the trending and they're like, look at all these different channels that have three, five, 10 million views on a single video. That would be, that would eclipse and surpass even the most popular podcast shows in the world. Right? So to get 100,000 downloads on an episode or a million downloads on an episode, you're talking about like the top 0.1 of 1% of all podcasts. And so just also recognizing that downloads for podcasts, that number that is going to look very different than what you would think is normal for a successful youtube channel. And I've, I've seen that a couple times where the expectation is, well I need the equivalent of a 100,000 subscribers to have a meaningful show where in a podcasting sense it, you don't even have to get close to that number to have a really meaningful impact.
Alban:Yeah, that's good. Good point. And maybe I'll drop one last one before we kind of close it out. And this was from man, when I first started, we asked some people for tips and this is one that's always stuck with me and it's, you know, try to write down a little bit of where you're going in your episodes. It's pretty common that you talk to people or you listen to a show and they kind of started with one topic and they hit another topic and then they hit a third. But they kind of just meander for a long time. Hopefully Kevin edits this episode down. So I'm not doing that in this one. But you know, write a little outline, have some main points you want to hit, and then have a free flowing conversation. You'll notice you get a lot more focused, good content, less editing if you've done a little bit of work on the front end.
Kerry-Ann:I like that. I do that all the time. So even for this episode, your, I'm like, yeah, we're gonna talk about conference, we're going to talk about this. I was like, check, check, check. So yeah. Perfect.
Travis:Awesome. Well thank you guys for sticking around for another episode of Buzz cast. If there's something you want us to talk about on a future episode, make sure you're a part of our Buzzsprout podcast community over on Facebook. It's our public Facebook group. You can get in there and get your questions answered and interact with us. And uh, yeah, keep podcasting guys. We'll see you in a couple of weeks.
