← Coffee with a Podcaster: Love Your Podcast Again
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Foreign welcome back to Coffee With a Podcaster. I'm Matthew Bliss, and yes, the series is back. We are back to have our coffee, have our chats, and talk about the podcasting world. But if you listen to the most recent trailer, you'll know that we're doing something a bit different this time. There's a lot that disgruntles me in the podcasting world, but it's not enough to not like or strongly detest the things that are happening in the podcasting industry. We have to see what's useful for you, and what I think is most useful is optimism. We need to look at the perspective that brings us the most joy and the most satisfaction with our own podcasts. In this episode, I'm going to give you an idea of what I'm trying to do here, an outline where joy, optimism, and fighting optimization are key to the podcaster's journey. Welcome back to Coffee with a Podcaster. It's a year on since I last released an episode on this podcast feed and I'm not sure why I continue to keep it active. I have trouble stopping things. I guess I've just left it on the shelf and I'm glad I could come back to it because it's a really interesting, very fast paced, fast moving time in the podcasting world. Over the last year I have explored, tried new things, talked to a bunch of new people, excellent creators, both in the podcasting space and other places, and I've expanded the scope of my reading. I've been on social media probably a bit more than I should, and I'm starting to see trends. There's a lot of stuff happening in the podcasting space at the moment, and it's not enough to make a comment on someone's post or throw a post into the ether of a community group where no one will appreciate it. That is just a small drop in the ocean trying to turn the tide of something that's changing quite rapidly and really affecting podcaster health, in my opinion. And that's why I'm back. I've got some things I want to share and get off my chest, and it's important that I get them off my chest because you might remember that I had a previous podcast after I finished this one called Rethinking Podcasting, and I plan to revisit that one soon as well. And that was a very philosophical, very in depth, thoughtful approach to tackling podcasting aspects. But as it turns out, it's the shallow areas of podcasting that we need to concern ourselves with as much as I want to create a deep thought in the space and motivate you all to think as deeply as possible about the fundamental aspects that guide us to create a show, we're all brought to the same external aspects. The growth, the SEO, the optimizations, all of these things that draw the focus of our attention and pull us away from what I think are the more important parts of us creating our podcast episodes. And that is the love we need to enjoy creating these podcasts. And there's a reason why we all wanted to create one. If you're an independent podcaster, this will be extremely clear to you. If you're a business podcaster or someone who's created a podcast to support their entrepreneurial efforts, maybe you're in a corporate environment creating a podcast as a marketing strategy. Either way, you can get everything correct. You can get the marketing package right, you can get the COVID art right, you can get the episode and content right, you can get the right celebrity host. But if the podcast itself isn't loved, then I don't think it's going to succeed. There's an intrinsic nature to approaching creative endeavors that I don't think we're motivated to tackle anymore. And it's not our fault. A lot of it is because of outside influence, the external expectations that are pressed upon us as new podcasters when we enter the space. Because in reality, the difference between being a podcast listener and a podcast creator is very far apart. It's almost impossible to distill the essence of how to create a podcast just from listening. And it's in that period of beginning our podcasting journey that we become incredibly influential, not just in the gear that we choose to buy, the approach and the structure of our episodes, but also the entire format, the Stephen Bartlett or Joe Rogan of things. There's a lot to unduly influence the way that we approach our podcast. And we all need to start from the outside. We all need to look to external factors to help us learn and inform us with how we approach the show. But over time, we have to start letting those things go. It has to just be about us doing what we know, what we love, and not worrying about what other people think. Except, of course, for the audience and the listener. Now, for what's going to be coming up in the episodes to follow, you're probably going to see that there's a bit of a contradiction in here. I'm going to be talking about podcasting as an intrinsic act. I'm going to be approaching my commentary on stuff that's going on in podcasting now with a smack of optimism, and there's going to be a bit of practical stuff for you guys to think about so that when you start thinking about your podcast differently or you take on the criticisms that I have, that it comes as advice. Because the motivating factor for me is to bring you into the intrinsic fulfillment, find out and discover or rediscover your why for your podcast so that when you're asking the question of how to grow, how to continue, you don't first go to Reddit or go to Facebook and ask the questions there first. You ask yourself, am I getting the most out of what I want to do here? What are the goals and am I achieving them? And if I continue, is it going to give back to me what I want? Keeping that in mind, there are important things that we need to do as tasks for our podcasts. We need to make sure that it's titled and show noted and worded up in the right way so that it can be found and discovered. It also needs to have cover art that's attractive, the book on the shelf that invites someone to pick it up and have a look at it. Where I think in what you'll see as a contradiction is the important part that I want you to consider, which is that if your creative approach or the goals you have run up against all of the advice that we see and hear in different podcasting spaces, then what you want to do creatively should come first. Whatever you want from your podcast, disregarding any of that advice that should always come first. For example, their common advice from podcasting influencers don't put a microphone in your cover art just because it's a podcast. Because of course we know it's a podcast, and of course we know a microphone is going to be involved. Every podcast usually involves a microphone, so why should you include it? But on the other hand, if your podcast is about microphone analysis voiceover, then it makes sense to have a microphone in there. Or maybe you just want to chuck one in for good measure. Maybe it's your network podcast podcast network's icon, in which case it must be there. There are some rules that, while being followed with the best intentions, really don't need to be there if you're making creative decisions for yourself. And this is where the optimism comes in for me. So when I share advice with you in the coming episodes, and there's going to be a lot of them, I think there's quite a few things that I'd like to tackle in These episodes I want you to think about first, what brings you the most joy. Refer to that. Why? And think about it in the context of what brings you fulfillment. That's going to be the key. That's the optimism that I want to bring with the commentaries and criticisms to different aspects of the podcasting industry here. That's a lot of waffling to say. I've got the best of intentions. So if you want to hang around and listen on, then I would urge you to, because I think it's really important to bring up an alternative perspective to a lot of the issues here. The podcasting industry is rife with what people would call common wisdom. There's a lot of groupthink out there. People take advice for granted and then regurgitate it to others, presuming that it's the common advice that must be correct. But of course, podcasting is an open medium. There are literally no rules. And almost as many times as there is a rigid answer, there is also the answer it depends. And if you see it depends, then you've got some creative wiggle room there. You can do whatever brings you joy. You don't have to change what you do just because someone tells you. You can't have that word in your podcast title because that's going to prevent your monetization opportunities. If monetization is your goal, then maybe it's important to take that on, but then that meets your goal. That's the important thing. This is all about you. It's all about goals, intrinsic values, optimism, finding love in your podcast. But it's also about avoiding optimism. Optimism is a tricky thing. As humans, we always want to make things more efficient, make them better, make them faster so we can do less work. But in the forever goal of the perfectly optimized system, perfectly optimized, structure, format, audience, listener, we're eventually going to run out of space to optimize, and perfect never happens. And so in further stretches of optimization, we can never get it done all ourselves in what we expect to be able to do. So we seek external validation for that. And this is where a lot of the unfortunate gurus and influencers and people that don't really know what they're talking about in the podcasting space can share things with you, not because they are incredibly valuable, but because you are so desperate to seek a further optimization to reach what you think is your goal, that they will give you whatever you'll pay for. And then it's bad money after good. So avoiding this optimization is the other component that we're going to be addressing with a lot of the criticisms I have here, and I'm gonna be addressing these criticisms quite casually, just like this episode is quite casual. Very little editing happening here because I want to be straight and upfront with you and I just want this to be an across the table commentary of the podcast space directly from me. There's not gonna be a lot of dressing up here. There's no scripted performance stuff. You're just going to be getting whatever I think and what want to discuss with you in any particular episode. So anything that can come up in the podcast space Podcaster Health the idea of SEO strategies thinking about it as a business before you monetize, expecting success from day one. The idea of consistency being the most important thing. There is an argument against all of them and with a bit of anchoring in some social posts or some videos or things that I see out there, I'm going to contextualize it for you. But most importantly, we are going to be changing our perspective, exploring different ideas, sometimes not overly critical, but just different. To change your thinking. We're going to expand the space in podcasting for what is useful and what isn't, and making sure that you can find your intrinsic contextual decision space so that you can sit back, quiz the thing and decide if it's best for you before deciding it's best for you. Because 20 people on the Internet tell you it's the most amazing thing in the world. Bringing joy back, bringing creativity back. Those are the things that I'd like to bring. So if that suits you, make sure you subscribe for further episodes. Subscribe if you'd like to get in touch about the podcast, there will be an email shortly. I'm open to questions and queries that you'd like to ask me to unpack on episodes and share this with a friend. If you think that there's going to be good stuff coming up. I do want to get this out to as many people as possible, but it's not really my goal here. As long as you're listening and you're getting something out of it, then that's the most important thing for me. So that was a pretty empty one, but I had a lot to say. Hopefully that sets you up for what's coming up next. Not sure what I'm going to do in the next episode, but I hope to see you there. Thanks for sticking around.