← Podcast Editors Mastermind
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- [00:01]
A
What you're about to hear is a recording from a live stream about what the top 100 business podcasts do, which is a study conducted by our guest and her team at One Stone Creative. We reference slides which you can watch along with us on the YouTube version, which is a video replay of the livestream. However, this audio version is a hygiene edit, which we will define what a hygiene edit is about 22 minutes into the audio episode here. For the links to the report and all the other things we reference or to watch the video replay, you can visit our blog at podcasteditoracademy.com sobp that's podcastedteracademy.com sobp sobp stands for state of Business Podcasting. Welcome. Welcome. This is Steve Stewart, co founder of the Podcast Editor Academy, creator of the Podcast Editors Club Facebook group and host of the podcast at our Mastermind show. Today we're going to be bringing you some very awesome data about some of the biggest podcasts. What are the biggest podcasts in the business category doing? Megan Doherty is here. She's got some keen observations to share. Her and her team dissected the top 100 self identified business podcasts in Apple Podcasts and manually evaluated over 70 data points. Things from Cadence Reach, sponsorship, branding, social media, all the things. And we're going to go over some of those today as far as it pertains to people who are supporting podcasters such as ourselves, podcast editors, podcast managers, podcast directors, podcast producers, anybody on the service side of podcasting. I think you're going to get a lot out of this. So I'm going to bring in our guest today, Megan Dougherty from One Stone Creative.
- [01:45]
B
Welcome. Oh, thank you so much, Steve. It is great to be here. I've been looking forward to this so much to chat with you and with everybody who's here about my favorite topic, which is podcast data.
- [01:55]
A
Yes, yes, data. We love data. And we're going to have time for Q and A, but I'm going to be asking Megan a ton of questions about this report that she put out, which you can actually get yourself. If you'd like to get the full report, go to onestonecreative.netreport and onestone creative is now it's you and somebody else. You're the co founder, Megan, who's involved in that with you.
- [02:17]
B
So I work with a wonderful woman named Audra Casino and the whole company was actually her idea. Her background's in broadcast audio, so she was on air talent and a sound engineer in Dallas back in the 90s and early aughts. And we met by working at a marketing education company, which is what my background is, online marketing and digital business Strategy. Back in 2017, we put those two things together and we started producing podcasts for business owners.
- [02:37]
A
So it's been getting close to a decade.
- [02:40]
B
Close to a decade. Looking forward to that anniversary next year.
- [02:42]
A
Yeah. So soon you'll know what you're doing Soon. Soon will come.
- [02:46]
B
You know, after 10 years, I think we're ready to become for that instant success, you know, that overnight fame. I think we're ready for it now.
- [02:52]
A
Excellent. All right. And she's also the author of Podcasting for Business. Let me get the full title in there. You can get the book here at the URL too. Podcasting for Business, how to create a show that makes the bottom line difference for your company. A lot of words.
- [03:07]
B
And for the PDF version, the book is currently for free. If you'd like the digital version, you can still buy a hard copy, but the digital version is available for anyone for the bargain price of your email address.
- [03:16]
A
Yeah, I really enjoyed the book. You had it in segments and had these like actions. It was pretty cool. I really, really appreciated it. For those who are looking for all these links and stuff, I'm going to have them here@podcast academy.com sobp, which stands for State of Business Podcasts, which is what we'll be talking about today. Megan and her team has a report from last year, just the end of last year, called the State of Business Podcasting. And you evaluated 100 of the top ranking business podcasts and you came up with some really cool data.
- [03:50]
B
I like to think so.
- [03:51]
A
How many hours did that take to put all this together?
- [03:54]
B
It's a big lift for us in the fall. So this is the 6th annual time we've done this and it doesn't take us as long as it did the first year, but it's still about between 40 and 50 labor hours. I'd say between the research and the analysis is what we typically expect to put in. We do that over a period of about a month every fall.
- [04:10]
A
40. That's actually not. That's not too bad. Of course, then you're taking the system together. Yeah. Well, let me get the slides up here on the stage. And we're going to go to. This is what you would download if you go to. And I've got the link in the show notes@podcasteditoracademy.com sobp State of business Podcasting. We're going to go to this slide here. Megan and her team found out that 48% of the podcasts that made it into the top 100 were new to the list in 2025. They weren't there in 2024. Is that what you're saying it is?
- [04:44]
B
Yes. It's 48% new shows on the list, which means 52% would have been there last year. It seems like a surprisingly high number of new shows that weren't on the list before. Although I do notice sometimes because we've been doing this for so long now, a show will be there one year, it'll drop off the next year, it'll then come back. So there's a lot of variance in that top 100.
- [05:03]
A
And when you say new shows, they're not new shows because you show here right on the screen how long the shows have been around. But they're new to the list.
- [05:11]
B
New to the list, and some new every year. There's a few. And I think we'll get to this. When there's very, like, few downloads or shows only been around for a couple of months, it's like, how did it get to the top 100? They probably employed a launch consultant who helped them get a top 100 launch strategy. Those ones typically do not last to the second year.
- [05:26]
A
And I noticed here on the side, on the right side, you've got the average monthly downloads, but the one that says most is 16 million. I'm thinking that's like a Joe Rogan or something. But fewest in the top 100. Fewest. Average monthly is 282.
- [05:41]
B
Yeah. And that's if you've got a show that's only been around for a month or two or is really infrequent. Releases is another option. There's a couple of them that only release monthly or have stopped releasing entirely. So I think that's affecting the data as well.
- [05:52]
A
Well, it's interesting, though, because we know that downloads don't actually put shows into the top 100. It's things like the completion rates, new followers to the show in Apple podcasts, things like that. So a show with very few downloads can still make it into the top 100 business category.
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B
Oh, yeah. And knowing someone at Apple doesn't hurt, I'm sure.
- [06:13]
A
All right, we're going to go to the next slide I want to bring up here. And again, this is in that report that you can get from onestone. Creative.net report. Explain to me real quick. If I've got a show on the top business categories and it's a B2B type of show. Who's the audience there?
- [06:31]
B
The way we defined this was that if the podcast was talking to other businesses, we decided it was a B2B. So if it's a podcast that is like one entrepreneur talking to other entrepreneurs, we decided that was a B2B show. Whereas if a business was talking to potential customers who were not business owners, that's when we called it B2C. And in previous years we'd done that a little bit differently. And it was like if it's a business owner talking to other business owners, kind of like colleagues talking rather than industry. So that was a switch we've made this year. I think it gives a little bit more clarity to the data. But so if the audience is, for example, new business coaches, we call that a B2B show rather than a B2C one.
- [07:09]
A
Okay, that makes sense. That makes much more sense to me. Another reason why I had to bring up this slide is because on the right we've got the video first. Now what do you consider video first? What's the classification? What qualifies the show as being video first?
- [07:24]
B
Yeah, so I called it video first. If it looks as if it was designed to be in video rather than it's an audio show that just happens to have video attached to it. So if you've got a studio, if there's like good lighting setup, if it is multi cam shots, that's when we decided it was a video first show as opposed to, you know, it's people from a riverside or a zoom call that have just been popped onto YouTube. We decided that was not a video first show, but rather an audio first one. So if the video was kind of intentionally created to the extent that we could see from the outside, that's what we called it.
- [07:52]
A
So high production value.
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B
Really high production value.
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A
All right, and then you're saying 61% of the B2B and 63% of the B2C consumer are sponsored. These are sponsorships of the show. Or they just. They have sponsorships like ads that play in the middle of it.
- [08:08]
B
For the purposes of this report, Sponsored means has ads that were presumably paid for. So it could be, you know, a direct sponsor like this was presented by. Or it could be. There's a mid roll and there's some ads in there. So. So we called both of those sponsored for this report. I think we're gonna clarify that and break it down a little bit more next year though.
- [08:24]
A
Let's go to the next slide. Cause this one I thought was interesting as well. The branding, I love the visuals. The breakdown here, you're saying 32% use black. Okay. 25 use a blue or teal. 25%. That's a fourth of the different shows focus their main color on blue and teal.
- [08:41]
B
Yeah. It's interesting over the last couple of years, like when we first started doing this in 2020, there was way more variety in the colors that were used. It's like podcasts have kind of the art has been getting darker and darker, blue, black, white, focused over the years that we've been doing this, which is really fascinating. It just seems to be like kind of the standards are amalgamating into a single style almost.
- [09:01]
A
Okay. And then 41% of the time the host name was in the podcast name. Now I'm assuming that would follow like the show name and the keywords. It's not like, well, the Joe Rogan experience is Joe Rogan's name. But James Smith show isn't going to start off with Jane Smith comma, you know, financial coach of the ages.
- [09:21]
B
Yeah. We counted it as having the host name is like the great podcast show with Megan Doherty. As long as that was in the official podcast title, we would count it as having the host name. But if it was just like a little thing on the COVID art or in the description, we did not include it in having the host name.
- [09:34]
A
Yeah, I think that's important too because a lot of shows can have the same name and this separates it from being the same as all the other on fires.
- [09:43]
B
It does. Yeah. And if you are trying to build like a personal brand or if you're. The personality of the host is really important to the branding of the show, then it should probably be in there.
- [09:52]
A
Yeah.
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B
Yeah.
- [09:52]
A
Okay. Normally I don't like to put the name of the people either in the episode title or even the show title unless it really is somebody who's known in their field.
- [10:01]
B
Yeah.
- [10:01]
A
But we're seeing 41%. You know, that's almost. That's getting close to half. And I think it again, it's a differentiator between this show that's called. This is the same as the show that's got the same name and the COVID art. 70% have a photo host. Now that one really surprised me because now you are branding it with this person's face and not necessarily the topic. Especially when you talked about how many of the shows were B2B.
- [10:26]
B
Yeah. And I think, I mean this is self reported category. I think some people are stretching the bounds of the definition of business. A Little bit when they're choosing their categories in Apple. But there's a lot of the, if you'll forgive the term, kind of the podcast bro shows that makes up a big percentage of the most popular podcasts in that category. And there's a lot we can learn from them. It's interesting. They all have typically very similar presentation in the branding with the color, with the photo. It's often a close up of the face, sometimes it's in black and white. But I think ultimately people like listening to people. Right. And so having a picture of the person that you're going to be listening to or you're going to be spending the next hour or so with is a really good way to connect with people for any size of business or any type of business.
- [11:09]
A
Yeah. And we have to remember business is the major category, but there's a lot of minor categories in there. Investing, career, entrepreneurship, they're all in there. There's another one that's not necessarily what I would call a business, but it fits in there. And I'm trying to remember what was.
- [11:23]
B
But that's probably agriculture, I think, in this year.
- [11:25]
A
Oh, really? Agriculture?
- [11:27]
B
Maybe that was previous year, but yeah, it's like the business of agriculture podcast. I was like, that's really interesting.
- [11:31]
A
Yeah, it gets a little niche. All right, let's go to the next one. 34% did not use unique episode artwork. If you're looking at the pie chart on the left for the viewers, but then the rest of them have some kind of unique episode artwork. That's huge. I mean, I think a lot of people don't spend that much time or effort creating that special episode artwork. But you're saying they do.
- [11:56]
B
Yeah, they definitely are. And you can tell when you're looking at it like in Spotify or in Apple, they're not all specifically designed. Like often it's one unique episode art that could be, say, a YouTube thumb that gets uploaded everywhere. So the alignment isn't always great, but you know, there is usually at least some kind of differentiator. This is what this episode is about. Often it'll be a guest thumbnail. It'll be a title card that has maybe like a typographic of the title of the episode, what that's going to be. It's a. Photos of the guest do feature really heavily in this, which I think from a strategic standpoint, especially if you're trying to network and relationship build, providing the guest a copy of the art with the show branding in their headshot, that's a good thing to do. And my favorite of all of these, however, is the different types of art for episode types rather than individual episodes. I think that's so smart. If you do, like, occasionally solo episodes, for example, versus like you, alternate solos and interviews, differentiating those by colors. Or if you've got a special series that has generally the same art but a different background. Brilliant way to visually identify what type of show somebody's going to be getting into. I think it's very clever.
- [12:56]
A
But still following the same branding or outline or template type of thing.
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B
Exactly, yeah.
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A
Do you believe. Well, this is your opinion I'm asking for here, and maybe you see it in the data. Do you think that actually helps these shows to rank better than shows that don't?
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B
That's a good question, and it's a hard one to ask. Yes, it's a hard one to ask about the data. Well, I'd like to. I think it brings up a really important point about this report and about the data, because with the information that we're looking at now, we're talking about, it's not necessarily a formula for being a successful podcast. It's a snapshot of what successful podcasts are doing. But we don't necessarily know which things go into making them a top 100 show. We don't know how many people work on those shows. We don't know what their advertising budgets are. It's a moment in time of what the top 100 shows look like. But it's not necessarily, if you do A, B, C and D, you're going to be just like them because we don't know all of the other stuff that's going into it. So I think that's an important thing to keep in mind, is that it's descriptive, not prescriptive in terms of what we're seeing.
- [13:53]
A
Well, I'll give my opinion. I think it does help. I'm looking at, when I look at the podcast editors, Mastermind show landing page, the homepage on the website, and it's got the featured image of. It's got the episode player there. We don't do episode artwork there. They used to. The former host did up until episode 100, and I just never did. And there's one, there's one that I did it for, which was talking about podcast chapters. It just made sense to do it for that one. But the rest of them are just the logo. And I'm like, okay, this doesn't look as professional. It doesn't look as serious and like, okay, yeah, I need to fix that so in my mind, I think it helps, I think it does help to make unique episode artwork. Now if we do break down what the ones who are showing different artwork in the pie chart there, one slice is 29% is YouTube only. So if they got a video on YouTube that's got a thumbnail, doesn't necessarily mean the show on Apple podcasts or anywhere else has a special thumbnail that might just be the logo. And I think it's a mandatory thing that you create a thumbnail for videos on YouTube. You just can't get away with it.
- [14:52]
B
Unless you want your face.
- [14:55]
A
Yeah, you use the same one every time. That's different. Wow. Okay, let's go on to this slide here. Now we're talking about stuff that actually can impact the search results when people are searching for podcasts. You've got here show titles. You have a number. You know how many people have. Well, here, you explain it. You explain it better than me.
- [15:20]
B
Yeah, so we were looking at, just for like the name of the show, how many words are in the title? So let's say the podcast show is a three word title. This is new data this year actually, so it's very, very exciting. We haven't looked at this before, but we wanted to see if what the commonalities were basically in these very successful podcasts with how long their titles were. And we found like overwhelmingly 3 and 4 were the most popular. So, you know, short, sticky, easy to remember, clear, simple podcast titles. They perform the best.
- [15:47]
A
Yeah, we see that in movies. I mean, one word movies. Jaws or television shows. Silo, Star Wars. Okay, there you go. Star Trek. All the ones. Yeah. Two to three words makes you seem like you own that topic. But then it could be easily taken by somebody else too. Whereas, you know, if you put the comma with, you know, Megan Doherty at the end, then that would be more words. But we go to the bottom of that left side and you show that 33%. The first word is kind of an article. What is article? What do you mean by article? There, that's what I understand.
- [16:21]
B
This was a little funny. So article is the names of the different parts of words to give just a little context for this. My original version of this was much more simple and I just had like noun, verb, adjective. I was going to skip the the and the us altogether, but my spouse has a background in linguistics. So I showed them the data and they looked at it and they're just like, darling, this is pathetic. Your understanding is shallow. So I gave them the data and they Figured this out and they did the deeper dive into the grammatical parts of speech. And so the most popular title format all around was articles like the. Just a quick kind of transitive word like that, then a noun or a proper noun. So either like a name or a word like podcast or show, and then another noun, usually show. So like, the podcast show is kind of the, er, Podcast title that tends to be the most popular.
- [17:10]
A
Yeah, yeah, you got to get away from trying to use the word the. That's just ruined search. But it's interesting and yet it makes.
- [17:16]
B
It makes a nice sticky podcast title. You know, the. The Power Hour.
- [17:21]
A
Yes, but. Okay, let's take this out here for a second. Yes, that makes sense. But then I can say the Podcast Editor Mastermind show, but not have the. In the title. I mean, it might be on the logo. I'm going to say it all over the place. But the show title for search is podcast. And I'm already beating myself up with the word podcast. It's the first word. But Podcast Editor Mastermind Show. Yeah, I try to stay away from the. In the title. As far as what's going into the RSS feed showing, you know, this is the name of the show. Yeah, I think that's gonna help. That's my personal opinion. So when I'm helping someone launch. We're not putting the. At the beginning of the title, but we're gonna say it left and right if we have to. Wow, I really beat that one up.
- [18:04]
B
All right.
- [18:05]
A
Oh, and at the bottom here, it says most popular title format article. So the A. Whatever plus a noun or proper noun plus another noun.
- [18:14]
B
Yep. So that would be like the Megan Doherty Show.
- [18:17]
A
Okay.
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B
Or the Steve Stewart show. Or that's. That was just the most popular of all of the possible combinations.
- [18:24]
A
Okay. Well, the Steve Stewart show would never make it in the top 100. All right, let's move on to. I think we're going to this slide here. Again. You can get this report for yourself if you want to. At Megan's site, onestonecreative.net report, we see that the most popular format, I'm not too surprised, is Interview. And then when we look at the. Down at the bottom right. Average length. There's so many people have conversations. How long should a show be? We're showing the top 100 podcasts in the business category are 46 minutes, with the shortest being two minutes. Okay. That's gotta be like Merriam Webster's word of the day. I subscribe to that. Longest is three hours. That's Gotta be like Joe Rogan. Most common is 60, so the average is 46 to 60 in there. That makes sense to me because a lot of my. My clients are in that business category. I don't see the need. Well, actually, I do have some shows that are 15, 20 minutes long. So I don't know why I'm going on and on about this. It's just this is the finding. You came with your data. Anything you got as far as an
- [19:27]
B
insight interesting about this is this has been. Of all of the data points that we've looked at since the beginning of the report, since 2020, this has been the most robust. It's been, I think, 43 minutes. It's been 44 minutes, it's been 45 minutes. But it's always been within like five, 44 to 46 minutes every single year. If there is maybe like a universal law of podcasting, it's the business. Podcasts average out to about 45 minutes in length, but it's just a remarkably consistent data point over time. And I think it's a good amount of time. You know, you can really get into something in 45 minutes sometimes, especially for newer podcasters. And maybe you and your community here have noticed newer podcasters, they can drag after an hour. If you have a bit of a shorter time cycle, you get to the good stuff a little bit faster. So I think always make your show as long as it needs to be. But 45 minutes, very common.
- [20:15]
A
Well, we also saw that the graph showed that a huge. I mean, about 50% of the shows were interview. Those will go longer. Whereas the clients I have who do monologues, they are shorter just because, like you said, how long can you listen to this show? And if it's one voice, how much information can you give? And it's usually scripted or structured in a way where it doesn't take a whole lot for them to figure out what they're saying. But do you think that, and this is your opinion, I'm asking again, if so many shows are interview, could a show maybe stand out if they did a solo or, you know, like a new show in the business category, that'd be fantastic. Something different. Would that make them stand out and be a little more successful? Maybe?
- [20:59]
B
I think so. I think, and. Well, it's interesting you asked that because in preparing for this, you asked a little bit about how some things related to the popularity of shows. So I did a little looking into that. And when it comes to interviews, the most popular shows of the top 25 of these top 100, less than half of them were interviews. And the interviews were more common the further down the list you got. I think it was the 26 to 50 listings had the most interviews at about 76%. So I thought it was really interesting. Among the very, very best podcasts, half aren't just interviews. Either they alternate formats or they're co host or panel discussions or their solos. And I thought that was really, really, really fascinating.
- [21:39]
A
Okay, that is interesting. I'm gonna have to go look at the top 100 list again to see what shows they are.
- [21:45]
B
But no, it has changed since last October when we pulled the data because that churn is going on all the time.
- [21:51]
A
Right. But I still think it's going to be about the same as far as the type of shows that are still written, the ones that are not over produced. Go ahead.
- [21:59]
B
I love a solo or a co host conversation, especially if like getting your own thought leadership out there is your goal. Like you've got to be talking yourself if you want your IP to be the focus. So I'm a big fan of solo or alternating episodes.
- [22:12]
A
Or it could be like one of my clients who is one of the biggest shows that I've ever worked on, he's kind of all those. Every, every episode is all of those. He's got a co host, he's got a guest, he's got news, it's. And he's got call ins. So I think he's hitting all these. Yeah. In fact, on Friday show he does a panel too. So. Hmm. There you go. Just do them all and you can do it, you can make it. Moving on. Shows that start, they begin with a hook. Now I guess what we're saying here, what you're saying in this survey is it's not just the static played every single time. Welcome to the Entrepreneur Fire show. It's a unique recording per episode and some have music, some don't. Some use a clip from the show. So we're seeing a lot of that
- [22:57]
B
way a hook, or some people call it a sizzle clip. Anything to kind of really get that first 30 seconds or so of interest in the episode. And this is the thing that's also been really interesting and changing over years. We saw kind of hooks get more popular for a little while and get slightly less popular and they seem to be coming back. A lot of them are not necessarily like the clips from the show, still a very, very solid format. But more and more are the host introducing the idea personally with or without music before, like the produced intro with the music. Welcome to the show with the guitar. And so it's interesting to see. I usually recommend that kind of personal welcome from the host. It's a nice place to greet your audience.
- [23:32]
A
Yeah, I've got a client who does that, but it's only like six seconds. She asks a question or poses something and then answers it with another couple words like, you know, having a problem with this? This is what's going to happen. Or, you know, she does it really well.
- [23:47]
B
Yeah, that's great.
- [23:48]
A
And just bam. Hits you with it. It's really great. What's interesting to me here as well is that 42% do not start off with a hook. So it's not saying you will be in the top 100. If you're doing this, you can be in the top 100 with just starting off with the same, you know, welcome to the Entrepreneur on Fire show. And I'm sorry, I keep picking on John Lee Dumas. I shouldn't be doing that.
- [24:09]
B
He can take it. I think that's interesting because sometimes, like, there's some of the things that we notice here. Like, like, well, I'm sure we're about to talk about minimal editing or shows, like just starting, like just dumping you into a conversation without. Without any preamble. I'm just like, why? Why? But some of these hosts are famous. If they can do anything and they're going to be in the top 100, you know, they came into this famous. So that's important to remember as well.
- [24:30]
A
Yeah. I was listening to a show a while back by an author and kind of a famous guy in our niche. His name is Carl Richards. And he would just start talking and you're like, oh, because I have my playlist playing. It, you know, plays this one, plays the next one. It's. It's just whenever it downloads to my device, that's the next one. And be like, what? What's going on? What happened to my. Did my app just skip to something?
- [24:50]
B
Yeah.
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A
Yeah. So I kind of need to have that little introduction. Hey, welcome to the show. Somehow I don't know. That's just me. But you're saying now, talk about highly produced and hygiene. I love that you guys evaluated it this way. How do you define a highly produced edited show versus a hygiene edited show?
- [25:11]
B
Yeah. So a highly produced show would not be amiss on npr. You know, it sounds. It's got some music, it's got maybe different voices, different media sources are going to be involved in the production. And it just sounds really good. And it's got that kind of that fancier, more editorial style editing. Whereas a hygiene episode, if we couldn't really tell that stuff had been done, they're well edited shows. There's no obvious mistakes. The flow is really good. And the contrast there is minimal. Where it's just like, you couldn't have even run a silencer on that guy, right? Come on record in a quiet room, please, buddy. So that was the difference. And I think the interesting thing with hygiene is that a lot of work can go into those shows, as you'll know well. And it's completely unknowable to the end user. So if it didn't have those obvious markers of, you know, this has been editorialized. We've got different media sources. There is that music and that sound design happening. We call that hygiene.
- [26:00]
A
Excellent. That's where all my shows live.
- [26:02]
B
The shows, mine too.
- [26:03]
A
Nobody knows they're edited, but they don't have. They don't have the bad audio like in the minimal section. That's for sure. Unless the guest just has the war set up. I can tell you a story later. We won't go into that, but please do. That's interesting. So where I live is hygiene, but then highly produced. That's where, man, we've got the teams and the producers and the hours of tape.
- [26:24]
B
I find. And this is probably a common experience, like among producers and editors. There's a lot of people come in, they're like, oh yeah, I'd like that. Highly edited NPR style. And then we have a discussion about the reality of what that would look like from a recording and a post production standpoint. And they're like, you know What? Hygiene's great.
- [26:38]
A
10th the cost.
- [26:40]
B
Very much so.
- [26:41]
A
Yeah. I've been in the podcast industry for a long time. Podcasting since 2010, podcast editing professionally since 2016. And in that time I've learned a lot of stuff. A lot of stuff. And I've also learned you can never learn enough. Everything keeps changing. Look at what AI and video is doing in the past couple of years. The Podcast Editor Academy has a goal of helping you to migrate through all of these changes as well. Draw on my over 10 years of professional podcast editing experience in my more than 30 years of running small businesses. Wait, is that right? 30 years? No, wait, it's 35 years. More than 35 years of running small businesses. Get access to me and other resources in the Podcast Editor Academy. Register now for a 249 quarterly membership. Every week I send out a weekly challenge. Get some of that windshield University Zig Ziglar always talked about with our private podcast you can take on the road with you and of course our monthly office hours where you can get together with other professionals in this industry where the real learning takes place. Join now podcasteditoracademy.com that's podcasteditoracademy.com. This next one has something to do again with the stuff that goes. It's not in the recording, it's not me setting up a recording or my guest setting up a recording or my client. I should say this is talking about websites and what you're seeing on the websites. I want to get your impression or your opinion on this slide. As far as the stuff on the left hand side, 17% podcast only website, 59% have episodes on individual website pages or what we might call blog posts, and then 21% provide a transcript which could go under either one of those.
- [28:21]
B
Most businesses who podcast, there's not a good reason for their podcast to have its very own website. If you have someone who's interested enough to go to a website to read the show notes or do something else, you want them where they can also book a call with you and learn about your services. Right. So like I think for most businesses it makes sense to embed your podcast within your existing business website, unless of course it is kind of an offshoot or the branding is a little bit different or maybe it's, you know, a project that one advocate within a company got that isn't really associated with a larger organization. Those are good reasons to have a podcast only website. But I think, you know, for the most part it makes a lot more sense to have podcasts on main websites so that when people go there, they're in that ecosystem. And from an SEO and a content repurposing standpoint, please put episodes on individual website pages. Each one should be a blog post or it's, come on, you gotta be able to find it easily. You want the Internet robots to be able to find it easily. And there's just no good reason not to make use of the content on individual website pages. Yes, I believe in that very strongly.
- [29:18]
A
Yes. And that's where you could put like just a two paragraph summary, maybe some key points in the show notes, you know, the description with a link back to the blog post which has everything you want, images, videos, emojis, all of your social links, where to get the newsletter, all that stuff. Agreed, Totally agreed. And then on the right hand side, I'm have to make this bigger here you've got the Podcasters, obviously, Apple podcasts, you're showing as the number one. Of course, you're looking at the top 100 business podcasts in Apple Podcast.
- [29:50]
B
Yeah. And more specifically, what we're looking at here is on the main podcast page on the website, what are the podcatchers that are being linked to?
- [29:57]
A
Oh, so just like icons and pointing to.
- [30:00]
B
Exactly. So it's like, what are the subscribe options on the main podcast page? And these were the results. So Apple, of course, still the most popular. Spotify catching right up there. YouTube's had a meteoric climb over the last couple of years and most of the smaller ones have been dropping off. So I think we're kind of seeing this, this conglomeration of, or the, the condensing of options into just the big players, which is new and shocking and it's never happened in history before.
- [30:26]
A
What I think would be interesting is to put up the main three, Apple, Spotify and YouTube and then have a final link that takes them to a podlink page which has every single audio listening app available. You've already got YouTube covered with that one link for the video. And Spotify, if you're putting your video on Spotify, you've already got that covered. So that really covers almost all the bases. And if they're on your website. Yeah, you're either converting someone to be a podcast listener or they were listening to the show already and they're coming here for the resources, so you don't need it for them, but for the new people. And of course, to show that you're in all the places that YouTube branding, I mean, gotta have that. And Apple's logo, I mean, you gotta have that. And Spotify. Yeah, gotta have that on the site. Makes you look big, big time.
- [31:11]
B
Yeah. I was surprised by how many this year had no links to different podcasters. Like that new this year. That was very, very interesting.
- [31:19]
A
That's sad. I have to look and see, you know, what shows might not be. Why wouldn't you have one if you were the New York Times? Maybe, but.
- [31:29]
B
Yeah, but even like the NPR and the TED shows have their links, so it's just choice the ones that are biggest on YouTube. So like some of these video first shows, they're really TV shows. They're TV shows that live on YouTube that have an RSS feed. And so I think that kind of skews the data a little bit.
- [31:46]
A
So then are they bringing people to the website from YouTube? You know, they're discovered on YouTube or
- [31:51]
B
I guess, or the website just exists for People who somehow for some reason looked them up or maybe wanted to buy a T shirt or you know, wanted to join the membership. But I think most of their, their audience and most of their engagement lives on YouTube.
- [32:04]
A
Yeah. Okay. Different, different purposes, different goals. Moving on to the next one. Talking about show note style. I've always loved blogging. I've always loved the SEO behind all the things that you can do with a blog post. You've got on here that 33% use one to two paragraphs in their show notes. Now is this specifically the show description in Apple or are you talking about what might be on their website?
- [32:33]
B
Yeah, so we, to determine this, we look first to the website if it's available. If not, we go. We usually check. Spotify is where we'll most easily find the information. So it could be on either. But kind of the deciding vote is what they have on the website. And it's, it's kind of getting, it's getting shorter year over year.
- [32:51]
A
I thought this was the episode description in the apps which then directs you to a longer.
- [32:55]
B
Usually is often it's the same but if they were different, we went with what was on the blog or on the website.
- [33:00]
A
Okay. Then you get 26 have description plus bullets. But 23% minimal one to two sentences. I mean, yep, a top 100 business podcast has one to two sentences. 23, almost a fourth of them. That's.
- [33:13]
B
Isn't it wild?
- [33:15]
A
I feel like that's just, it's throwing me for a loop. I don't get it. It's an opportunity that's missed.
- [33:21]
B
Yeah, it is. I mean, I don't know why this is happening exactly, but I think it's. If I had to guess, I would say it's because these are such media heavy productions. You know, they're getting their money from video, from sponsorship, from Playtime and they're, they're just not worried about like their on site SEO or individual humans listening and converting, you know, because they're getting their money from ad marketplaces or big sponsors. In previous years we saw there was a lot more show notes, there were more two and three. There were more blog post style. I think there is a trend towards what's the easiest thing we can get out there that's going to kind of fit the bill. And I don't love that because I mean at heart, I mean I work in podcasting course. I love audio, I love video, but I'm a reader first so it kind of, it makes me a little sad to see the written content being emphasized a little bit less because it can be so valuable.
- [34:14]
A
I think the reason why I'm bothered by it is because they're a top 100 podcast. The show got there somehow, and they're doing something right.
- [34:22]
B
Yeah, they're doing things right.
- [34:24]
A
Yeah. If it was just an ITB podcaster who's doing it all themselves and doesn't feel like writing out all the show notes, I. I was there myself. I get it. I get it. And I'm all with you. I'm on you. But our top 100 podcasts, it's like. It's kind of like, are you representing the medium properly? But I shouldn't think that way. I shouldn't think.
- [34:42]
B
I think. I mean, it's the top 100 podcasters. They're not the top 100 passionate podcast industry people.
- [34:50]
A
Is 100 too big of a list, then? Should we cut it down to 50?
- [34:54]
B
That would save me a lot of time.
- [34:58]
A
All right, let's move on to the next one here. Now we're talking about shows that have the episode number in the title, which I have all the reasons to disagree with, and I've got a solution that will make everybody happy. And then 59% include the guest name. Hey, I get that. And that makes sense to me as well. Do you see anything in here that's noteworthy that you got from the data that you were examining?
- [35:25]
B
Just something that'll make you happy. I think, Steve, is that the episode numbers in the title are down from 45% last year to only 30% this year. So they're definitely. It seems like the trend is going away from episode numbers and titles.
- [35:38]
A
Okay. All right. And I'll give everybody the solution that one of my clients actually had a listener who suggested this, because Apple doesn't want the episode number in the title, because there's the Apple episode number tag, which we use, but we do put the episode number somewhere. It's at the beginning of the episode description.
- [35:56]
B
I like that.
- [35:56]
A
So if you say, hey, go check out episode one, two, three, and I'm in the app and I'm scrolling through, I'm going to see episode numbers. I'm going to be able to find, even if there's an episode title that knocks out the whole description from the. The list view, I'm going to find one or two, and I'm going to be able to hone in on it pretty quickly. That eliminates the whole episode numbers at the beginning, which takes up valuable real estate and ruins search. Or putting at the end, which a lot of people can't see because again, the title gets truncated. So what's the benefit of that space?
- [36:26]
B
Yeah, so I like that because, yeah, numbers, like, can be helpful. Like, if. Especially if you refer to past episodes a lot, it can be really, like, so much easier to say, go to number 231, rather than, you know, find my conversation with Jane Doe about widgets. But it's also a matter of I always find, like, you know, episode 27 is not nearly as impressive as episode 531. Right. So it really changes how that looks, I think, as you get up there. In numbers.
- [36:51]
A
Yeah. And by saying the number in the, you know, in. Hey, go reference this episode number. If you're using some kind of a redirect plugin, like pretty link or redirect on a WordPress website. So my podcast that I did from 2010 to 2015, I use episode numbers, but that wasn't the URL, it was a redirect. So if I say go to episode123, then go to moneyplanetsource.com 123. I set it. They can read it, they can link on it. It's all there. And if they're scrolling through the library, it's in the description. It's at the very beginning of the description. So we'll take up the characters there, which nobody uses in search. Anyway, I just think that's the best solution. We've been doing that for one of my shows for maybe seven years now. It's been fantastic.
- [37:36]
B
Yeah, I think that's a really elegant solution.
- [37:38]
A
Thank you. Oh, I've got some people in the chat. Sorry, I didn't see this. Here we got Matthew. I don't think numbers and names is a huge amount of value, but there are cases where including the number works in the title. For narrative podcasts, for example. For narrative podcasts, I think that's a great point.
- [37:53]
B
Like, if there's a narrative structure that if people need to listen to episodes in a certain order in order to kind of understand what's going on, I think, yeah, you better put the numbers in there. That's. That's very worthwhile.
- [38:01]
A
Okay. I would call that seasonal in my brain. I don't know why. Or a series. A series of shows. That makes total sense. Here's another one he's got. I also don't think the number reference being important. To include the number somewhere is a strong argument to include it. This is something that can't be optimized and become a golden rule. Well, this is the world of podcasting. The answer is it depends. So some shows will benefit from having numbers at the beginning of the title. I think we can get away with it the way I described in most cases. But yeah, serial shows or like he said, what was it? Narrative. Yeah, narrative shows. Narrative podcasts where they've got the series of. You gotta go in this order. That makes sense to me too. Thanks for being here, Matthew. Appreciate it. We've got just a few more slides I want to go through. This one was talking about video. Okay. We've got the first item there. It says 58% video for shows that was talking about the filming of it. And what you saw was. It was very forward as far as being produced for the visual element. And 97% of these top 100 shows, which I guess you'd say is 97 of them have YouTube channels. That's a lot. I guess they all.
- [39:09]
B
Yeah.
- [39:09]
A
Did you determine they had a channel just because they had a channel or it was because their episodes were on the YouTube channel?
- [39:15]
B
No, we just looked for if they had a channel. There are some businesses that have top 100 podcasts that don't put their full episodes. There were a few that didn't put their full episodes on the channel. And then there were some, like bigger agencies or networks that have one channel for the whole network. And so they've got, you know, their playlist for podcast A and their playlist for podcast B. We counted those among having. Having YouTube channels. Okay.
- [39:37]
A
Yeah. I cannot dispute the importance of video and how everybody keeps talking about you need to have video. I discount the word need, but I'll tell you what, it's a. It's inexpensive to do video these days compared to 10 years ago when we used to record Skype video calls. Come on, now, we got Riverside and Squadcat, or, excuse me, Descript rooms and Zencaster. And what's the observation? You could capture yourself. Twitch.
- [40:06]
B
Yeah, I think video, I mean, it is important. It's becoming more and more popular for a reason. It's, you know, it gets the engagement. It's better for conversions. You know, you get the knowing, liking, trusting faster when you've got that extra sense being input. But I still really do also believe in audio only shows, especially if adding video adds too much friction. And, you know, it's not just in the post production. It's. Do I have to put on makeup for this? Do I have to mess with my lighting? Do I have to make my background look more attractive? Do I have to worry about if any of my guests are feeling any of that, if I have them, is that going to add friction or difficulty for them? And I think for some people it's like, if it had to be video, it wouldn't happen. And so in those cases, I think, yeah, go with an audio show. Like if your main goals is to like connect with people and like build relationships, for example, you can do that in audio just fine. And you know, maybe you can support your show with video like by doing like purpose recording shorts or something like that to get in on the game a little bit without making your whole show video. I think there's middle ground and I'm going to stand firm in maintaining that there's still a place for audio only podcasts.
- [41:03]
A
Steve Meropoulos wrote a wonderful post. It was more about Apple's offering HLS streaming for video podcasts to their app. And he made some really great points about, well, if I'm going to go video first, you know, he mostly listens to audio podcasts. He does. Here's the guy who does video. He's strong in video in every manner of the word, but he listens to audio podcasts. I don't want that experience to be diminished because of video. Very good article. I should probably put that in the links in the show notes, which I'll have later on. I'll put it in the show notes, which will be at podcastobp podcasty.com sobp bookmark that and come back to it. We'll keep going with the slides here. I'm going to move on to social media. No, I don't want to talk about social media. I don't. You know what, I'm just going to take it away. We're done, we're done.
- [41:55]
B
We kind of do that part of the research resentfully as well.
- [42:00]
A
Well, is there something maybe that stood out that you thought, okay, that's clever, or that looks like a best practice?
- [42:06]
B
One interesting thing, and this is more of a year over year trend than was unique in this data is it seems like in terms of at least business podcast promotion, the number of social media platforms being used by each show is getting smaller. They're using fewer channels, but they are posting on those channels that they are using more frequently. And so I thought that was a really interesting kind of outcome from this year. In previous years it would be like, okay, now you're going three times a week on LinkedIn and on Instagram and on Facebook and on YouTube. But this year it's like, no, you're going, you know, twice a week on Instagram and three times a week on YouTube. And that's pretty much it. And it is interesting to see how that trend is changing. And it's like people are focusing more on a smaller number of platforms, typically with short form video.
- [42:43]
A
Hmm. I think that's a good thing. We're also seeing that people who have been, again, we're talking about business podcasts here. We're not talking about the two guys in the basement drinking beer, telling stories. We're talking about business podcasts. They have a purpose for doing the show. In most cases they're putting the effort behind it. They might even have a track record. I know you said 48% of the shows in the list this year are new to the list this year. But they're focused on making an impact where it makes sense, focusing their efforts in the strongest points, which if on social media it's gonna be where they can get their face in front of people who are viewing it. Yeah, I see it with my clients as well. That's very interesting. I'm glad you brought that up.
- [43:26]
B
Yeah. And I think there is just a little, I mean I can't be the only one who's feeling a little bit of social media burnout. It's just like I'm really restricting how much time I'm spending on these platforms, you know, both in my personal life and in my professional life. It's just, it's so much. Yeah, it's gotta end at some point.
- [43:40]
A
I was a die hard Twitter fan even through the change over to X. But after a couple months I'm like, it doesn't feel the same. Even though I didn't really notice a difference. So even I stepped back from social media. Different social media channels.
- [43:53]
B
Because you brought up X, because we've been doing this since 2020. It was for me at least wildly interesting to see how the Twitter X behavior changed over the course and how.
- [44:04]
A
Tell us more.
- [44:05]
B
Back when we first started, before the takeover, everyone was on Twitter Every pod. Like 97% had Twitter accounts. Like 80% of those were active, like really, really high usage of Twitter. The year after, like the, as soon as it, the takeover happened it dropped to like less than like 70% had accounts. Most of those were inactive. There was a lot of major brands that were distancing themselves immediately and it was really clear in the year over year data around Twitter X it became a less, less safe place for a lot of brands to be, which I just thought was so interesting.
- [44:40]
A
Let's take a side tangent. Do you remember when X.com redirected you to PayPal. Oh, gosh, it was like 15 years ago.
- [44:46]
B
Do I remember that? No, I don't think I know that it was a thing, but I don't think. I don't remember actually experiencing it.
- [44:53]
A
Yeah, I remember discovering that one time, like, oh, cool, because I gotta send somebody a payment for this thing I bought on ebay and we used PayPal. You know, boy, am I dating myself. Yes, this white in the beard is. Is real. Matthew comes up and says, you don't need video. It can be useful. Strategy needs to be the first question before utility. Is video important to your podcast success and why? Those are the question to ask. Video for discovery kills show quickly. Hmm. Because that's the opposite of that, Matthew. Yeah, we got more here with the social media. Oh, we're switching over to social media now. It sounds like you've measured activity. How was that activity relative to the success of social media to create listeners and watchers?
- [45:34]
B
Oh, that unfortunately, at least to the best of my knowledge, is unknowable. I don't have any visibility on what, say, conversion is from these shows, social media platforms, to their podcast listening platforms, or to their YouTube channels. I would love that data, but at least I don't know of a way to get that without asking people to self report. And most of these top 100 podcasters are way too famous to talk to the likes of me.
- [45:58]
A
All right, we have another question.
- [46:00]
B
Great.
- [46:00]
A
I should have just had Matthew join us in the stream here. Do you take a health check on podcast progress and happiness from businesses in the report, whether they would or would not continue next year, et cetera?
- [46:12]
B
Thank you for bringing that, Matthew. It gives me a chance to touch on methodology. So I am not actually in touch with the podcast in this report. All of the data that we're looking at is what we can see from the outside. So we pull the top list, usually in mid October, from Apple Podcasts. What's the top 100 business podcasts? And then we look at things that we can see from the outside or that sometimes using a tool like Captivate or podchaser in the past to get like, their basic download numbers, gender, that kind of stuff. And then we look at their websites and we listen to Episodes and we look at their social media accounts, and that's how we get this data. So it isn't really a survey in the sense of we're asking these businesses to self report on all of these different elements. We're just going to their websites and to their social feeds. And filling in the data manually. So when I say it's self reported, it's the category that's self reported rather than all of the rest of the data in the report.
- [46:59]
A
You can visit Megan and all of her stuff over@OnestoneCreative.net you can get the report@OnestoneCreative.net report. Megan, I appreciate your time being here. Is there anything else that's coming up that we should know about that you're doing? Because you're doing some really cool stuff.
- [47:13]
B
Thank you. Well, this year's report is going to be coming out in November of 2026, so of course that is coming. And in the meantime, if you download a copy of the report or you decide to download a copy of the book, you will be informed of an AI Internet robot schema workshop that I'm going to be hosting in early maybe to help tell all of the little creatures that roam the Internet exactly what your show is about and what individual episodes are about. So that's next on my list of cool data oriented things to be working on.
- [47:38]
A
And maybe you'll create an agent that'll help do the survey for you so you don't have to 48 hours.
- [47:43]
B
No. I tried to use AI to help with some of this, just to test it out. I'm not a big fan of most of the current uses of the AI tools. It counted numbers in a column wrong. It was just easier for me to do it or to have team members do it and know that it was done correctly than to have to go and manually recheck everything.
- [48:03]
A
All right, Megan, I appreciate you being here. Thank you so much. You can find everything she does over@onestonecreative.net
- [48:09]
B
thank you so much. It's been a pleasure.
- [48:11]
A
Well, this has been a presentation of Podcast Editor Academy for the Podcast Editors Club Facebook group. And if you want the replay, we've got it posted@podcastedteracademy.com SOBP. SOBP stands for State of Business Podcasts. I'll have more links there too now that we've discussed a few more of the things for you available there. So I appreciate everybody watching. Thank you for joining us. Hopefully I'll do another live stream soon because this one was awesome. A free automated multi camera plugin for Premiere. Yeah, that's what two of the members of the Podcast Editor Academy received when I was connected with somebody who's building that plugin. This is just one of the many benefits that come to us from time to time that we just don't know is going to come. So we really can't tell you that these are benefits that you'll get by joining the Academy because, well, we don't know they're coming. Sometimes they're conference tickets, sometimes they're podcasters looking for editors. And members of the Podcast Editor Academy get first dibs. Join us at the Podcast Editor Academy. And you can have access to these strange benefits, too. You know, you've been thinking about joining for a while. The time is now. Podcasteditoracademy.com Sign up for a recurring quarterly membership or save a bundle on an annual membership. Join me in the Podcast Editor Academy today. You just never know what you might get.