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Let's Start a Podcast! - A Step-By-Step Guide to Launching Your Show On Any Budget
Why Listeners Quit Your Podcast (And Exactly How to Fix It)
00:11:31
You could have a brilliant idea, a genuine passion, and content worth hearing. and still lose listeners by episode two. Not because your show is bad. Because of a handful of totally avoidable habits that drive audiences absolutely crazy — and most...
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You could have a brilliant idea for a podcast, a killer topic, a genuine passion, and still lose listeners by episode two. Not because your content is bad, but because of a handful of totally avoidable habits that drive podcast audiences absolutely crazy. Today, we're calling them out, but more importantly, we are fixing them. Welcome back to let's Start a Podcast. I'm Will, your host. Now, we've been building your foundation step by step, and today we have arrived at a chapter that I think is honestly one of the most valuable in the entire series. See this chapter, this lesson. This episode is all about listener pet peeves. The mistakes that podcasters make that cost them their audience, usually without them even realizing it. Now, I've read a lot of listener feedback over the years, including some very honest Reddit threads that I probably could have gone without. I've noticed there are some serious patterns there, universal ones. Things that make podcast listeners hit unsubscribe no matter how much they were originally enjoying the show. Things that make podcast listeners hit unsubscribe no matter how much they were originally enjoying the show. Let's talk about what they are and how to avoid every single one of them. Pet peeve number one poor audio quality. Now, we spent an entire episode on gear and I want to revisit why it matters. Because it's not a about spending a lot of money. It is not about spending a lot of money. And if you haven't listened to that episode about the gear, I urge you strongly to go back and listen to that. Because you'd be surprised how easy it is to start with no money at all. Probably have all the gear that you need in your hand right now. So no, it's not about spending a lot of money on gear. It is about respecting your listeners ears. The most common audio complaints? Inconsistent volume levels. You know, if a listener has to ride that volume knob because one host is loud, the other is barely audible, or the guest is barely audible, they're going to get frustrated really fast. Background noise and echo. Also huge because recording in a reflective empty room or near a humming appliance screams amateur to the listener subconscious, even if they can't identify exactly why they feel uncomfortable. And then there are the mouth noises, the smacks, the clicks, the heavy breathing. These are things that you often can't hear in the moment, but they will absolutely show up in the recording fixes. Super straightforward. Use a pop filter record in a soft padded space. Run your audio through tool like a phonic.com it's a u p h o n I c.com I'll try to put the link in the show notes for you because this tool is outstanding. The book's got a lot more detail on this, but those basics alone is going to put you ahead of the majority of shows out Pet Peeve Number two Taking forever to get to the point. This is one of the number one reasons listeners to announce long, rambling intros, extended inside jokes between the hosts that new listeners have no clue about. Personal updates that go on and on for 10 or 15 minutes before the actual episode begins. I get it. It feels natural to warm up and have a conversation with your host or your guest. But your listeners on a commute or they're at the gym, they have given you their time and they want value in exchange for that. And if you make them wait too long, it's just not going to wait. Now. The fix is simple in concept. Lead with your hook within the first 30 seconds. Tell your listeners what they're going to get and why it matters. Save the banter for after the content has landed, or weave it in between the segments. You can't go wrong with doing that. Trust me. Capture their attention the first 30 seconds and they'll put the phone in their pocket and then you probably usually have them for the remainder of the show. Believe me, it'll go a long way. Pet peeve number three. I call it Interviewing gone wrong. For those of you doing interview shows, this section is especially important for you. The most common interview mistakes are talking over your guests, using too many verbal affirmations like right and left, turning the interview into a monologue where you're doing most of the talking and showing up without doing your research. Let's get something really straight here right now. Tell me about yourself is not an interview question your guest has heard a hundred times. Tell me about yourself. Please. Do the homework. Know their story. Ask the question that opens a door that they have not walked through before. For it's not only good for your guest, it's going to be really good for your audience. Especially if your guest is one that you has been on a lot of shows, people might have heard his or her story before. Finding that hook that maybe is less commonly known is going to be really important for the quality of the show. And a good rule of thumb, your guest should be speaking at least 65 to 75% of the time. If that ratio is flipped, you're not interviewing. You're having a conversation that happens to have a guest in it. Now, when it comes to talking over your guest, that's pretty obvious. You gotta let them speak, give them a moment. If there are some guests out there that are a little verbose, if that's what happens, then you are in your every right. Say sorry to interrupt or try to do something, but just talking over them, it becomes really uncomfortable for a listener. And then using too many verbal affirmations like right, uh huh. I'm sure you've heard it before. You're hearing a show and the host is constantly yeah, huh, Right. Oh yeah. Every time the guest is answering something that gets really old really, really fast, it becomes noise and it just makes you tune out. So for me, when I. When I hear that, all I can focus on is how many times I'm going to say the word right or mm. So I start counting that and I forget I completely ignored the guest because I'm focused on the ahams. So don't do that. All right, Pet peeve number four, and that is ad overload. Okay? Ads are a legitimate part of podcasting and we'll get into monetization in a future episode. There's absolutely nothing wrong with ads, but there is absolutely a wrong way to do them. Repetitive ads hearing the same 30 second jingle six times in one episode are torture. Torture. If I hear an ad more than once, maybe twice in a single episode, I am going bananas. Mid sentence insertions where the dynamic ad literally cuts you off the middle of a word they feel violating. They really do. All of a sudden you're into the conversation and they cut to a commercial mid sentence. It's so unbelievably sad to hear. And then of course, irrelevant ads. Ads are promoting something that's got nothing at all to do with your show's audience or your content or your show overall. Sadly, that they erode trust fast. Now I, believe me, on my show, skeptical musicians, we do have programmatic ads that have nothing to do with the content or the guest or anything like that. And they are necessary evil. So if you're going to pick one bad thing to do out of those three, make it that irrelevant ads, but work hard to get rid of them. We are getting rid of them very soon, so I'm excited about that. The fix for that mid sentence insertion is to place ads at natural breaks, like between segments or topic shifts. Keep them relevant to your audience, right? And whenever you can, host red ads in your own voice and tone are way better than generic ads. Those are going to perform better because they feel like a genuine recommendation from you rather than an interruption. So pet peeve number five Filler words and verbal crutches. A few ums are human. Totally get it. That's fine. And they actually add a sense of genuine, authentic ness to the conversation. But when your listener starts counting your likes and your no's instead of absorbing your content, the spell's broken. We talked about the from you, the host of the show, as they're talking to the guest. This goes both ways. The likes and you knows and and ums. Those are really, really bad. The best fix? Replace your filler words with silence. It's going to take some time to do that, but a deliberate pause sounds confident. A filler word sounds nervous. Try it. You're going to be amazed at the difference. Record yourself talking to someone and listen to how many ums and you say as a way to give yourself a second to think about what you're going to say next. Instead, go ahead and take the pause. It's not bad. Just don't make it a minute long. The next one. I can't stress this enough. Please, please, please, please, for the love of God, please listen back to your own episodes. I mean, if you can't listen to your show for quality control, why would your audience? If you feel bored listening to your episode, what do you think audience is feeling? If you use a transcription tool like Descript to visually see your patterns in a text version of your episodes, it's easy to see them and it's super eye opening. Not to mention Descript can remove your filler words for you if they accidentally get into the recording. A few other things worth mentioning. Dead air of more than four seconds. Well, they make people think that their app froze. Go ahead and edit those out. Missing show notes are a missed opportunity. Every resource, every guest, every link you mention should be right there in your show notes. Don't make your audience go Google it or go find it. You're going to lose them that way. And fake enthusiasm. Man, your listeners can smell that like a mile away. So promote only the things that you actually believe in and only in a way that feels authentic to you. Don't use other people's words. People can feel the difference. The golden rule. All of these point to one truth. Respect your listener's time, attention. Make it easy for them to hear you, to listen to you. Don't make them work to try to understand what you're saying. They chose you out of millions of podcasts. Literally, they chose to listen to you out of millions of podcasts. They gave you something irreplaceable. That's their attention. Treat that as sacred. Your audience doesn't expect perfection. They expect care. Least you can do, right? Let's Start a Podcast. The book has a full quick reference chart with every major listener pet peeve, and it's fixed side by side. It's the kind of thing that you want printed out and sitting next to you when you record. You can grab the book at the link in the show notes for $5.99 and it's got that and way, way more information. So it's easy for you to do the right thing the first time. All right, next time we're going to talk about launch strategy, how to actually put your show out into the world in a way that makes a real splash without burning yourself out in the process. That's important. It's one of my favorite topics and I think you're going to get a lot out of it, so be sure to tune in on the next episode. Until next time, I'm Will Rodriguez. This is let's Start a Podcast Now. Go Make Something. Support is available 247 with VRBoCare. We're here day or night, ready whenever you need help because a great trip starts with the right support.