Transcript
Dave Jackson (0:00)
Last Week on episode 1000, we talked about how to grow your podcast and we focused a lot on making remarkable content. When I looked at some of the bigger shows, there was one key ingredient that all of them seemed to do, and that was they weren't just talking at their audience, they were talking with their audience. And so today I've got some free tools and insights along with some interesting news from our friends and at Spotify. Hit it, ladies.
Show Announcer (0:31)
The School of Podcasting with Dave Jackson, podcasting Sense 2005.
Dave Jackson (0:40)
I am your award winning hall of fame podcast coach, Dave Jackson, thanking you so much for tuning in. If you're new to the show, this is where I help you plan launch. And today we are still talking about growing your podcast. My website is schoolofpodcasting.com use the coupon code listener when you sign up for either a monthly, quarterly, or yearly subscription. Again, that's@schoolofpodcasting.com and so I went out and I looked at some of the bigger shows to see if I could spot any clues. They always say success leaves clues. And almost all of them had a newsletter. Most of them I saw some sort of voicemail. And then some of them I saw where there were ways to connect with the audience. And I say this and it sounds hokey, but it's true. When you can tell me the eye color of your audience, you're really doing something right. Let me tell you a quick story. And this comes from my buddy, Jared Easley, who now works for, for the national association of Broadcasters. That trade show, if you weren't aware of that, he used to work for Podcast Movement. I believe he is now working for nab. And Jared was talking about when he went to the very first John Lee Dumas meetup. Now, if you're not familiar with John Lee Dumas, he runs the show originally called Entrepreneur on Fire, now just called EO Fire, or something to do with Entrepreneur magazine. That got a little icky there. But John, here's a, here's a fun way to sum up John. John made so much money he had to move out of the country, you know, because you pay less taxes when you live in Puerto Rico. And the fact that it's Puerto Rico and it's beautiful. But John was not doing poorly. He did. He was one of the first. Not the first, but he was one of the first that did a daily show. He had a very tight format. He basically, now a lot of us would go, yeah, it's boring. He asked the same six questions over and over. But what he really did. When I saw it, I was like, oh, that's brilliant. Was. He walks people through what's called the Hero's Journey. And if you've never heard of the Hero's Journey, go to your favorite search tool, whether it's Google Perplexity ChatGPT, and ask for it. It is the backbone. If you read it, it's Star Wars. It's a hero in his normal life. A hero, you need to go save the world, not me. Oh, my gosh. And then a mentor comes along, and then the mentor goes, I don't know if I can do it. And then, you know, in the end, they win. And et cetera, et cetera. It's in the backbone of a lot of movies. And that's what John did. And so I say this because John is huge. And his very first meetup, Jared was talking about it. I believe it was an In N Out burger. And I believe Jared said there were five people counting Jared. So it was very, very tiny, right? It was intimate. I'm sorry, not tiny. It was intimate. That's how we say small in podcast world. In the. You know, it was an intimate gathering, and you gotta start someplace, but the best way to get feedback is face to face. So that's the best one. There's something weird, especially about eating food with people or a handshake or a selfie or whatever it is. If you can do that, do that. Then you get into things like zoom calls. I've said this before, but I'll say it again. I once set up my email list, so that was supposed to send out to 10 people. There was like, this filter, and I could have sworn it said, yep, this will go out to 10 people when you send it. And it said, hey, basically, I'm doing some market research. I'd like to get some feedback on the show, and I would really love your insight. Well, it didn't go to 10 people. It went to every single person on my email list. And along with that message came a link to my. My calendar. And so I had about two weeks of back to back to back to back to back to back to back to back meetings with my audience was the best mistake I've ever made. And so that is something you can do. Now. I realize you might be thinking, oh, meeting people. I don't know. I'm. I'm just so you got to remember something. These are people that like you, right? They like you. They're listening to your show now. That doesn't mean they might not have notes but you got to hear them out. What's the point of trying to promote a show that doesn't resonate with people? And I didn't have hardly any people that were like, oh, yeah, you know, I had people back then. My cat kept interrupting me and they were like, any chance you can get that cat to quit interrupting the show? And so I would recommend that and just to, you know, put my money where my mouth is. There's a cool tool because why I'm using this, I'm doing a thing on October 16th, so that's about a month from now. So you'll hear me talk about this for the next month and October 16th at 7:00pm Eastern Standard Time. So my apologies to anyone on the other side of the globe where you're like, bloody ey, it's 4am in the morning. Right? It's. That's not going to work. But it works for me. And so I need to be there so that. That kind of helps that. But I'm using a tool. I'm using two tools. You could do this in Riverside. You could do it in squad cast. I think squad cast is more one. You could do it in zoom. I mean, really, you could do it in zoom. And I'm using a tool because it's free and it's Lou Lu Ma. So Luma, I guess, and you can set it up. And why I'm using this, A, it's one click registration and then B, it reminds people, hey, remember that thing you signed up for a month ago? It's happening and it's pretty handy. So you'll see if you go to that, I'll put a link in the show notes where you can sign up for that because I'm really, really dying to hear. Here's what it says when you go there. Says, look, I always say your podcast is a recipe, not a statue. And so I'm inviting you into my podcast kitchen where I'm asking you what you would like for dinner. Because that's really what this show is. Hey, what do you want? And then you can help me pick future topics of the show. You can help me add things you want to hear and maybe remove some things you're tired of hearing about. I will take your suggestions. I will put them in the oven for future episodes of the School of Podcasting. The best way to grow your show is to find out what your audience wants and give it to them. And I really, really hope you join me in helping me make this show the show you've always wanted. So sign up for that, if you would like to, even if it's just to say, this is what I really like about this show. But if you have things, and I have one thing that I think is gonna be one of those, like, could you please quit doing that? And I'm gonna offer that up because as much as my ego would love to have people just go, dave, you're the best, Roy. You know, I. I'm really interested more the like, well, this is why I tune out. You know, I'm trying to find out what you really liked about the show and. And what you really didn't. And for me, kind of that constant improvement, I'm always looking for things that I can do better. So it's not just me saying this, I'm gonna do it. And I realize that you might be afraid of this, and I'm gonna go back to my favorite mistake. It was the best thing I've ever done. And so I thought, well, let's lead by example. And I'll have to see. I'm trying to figure out if I'm going to record it because people may not be as willing to really be brutally honest if it's being recorded. So we'll see how that goes. But that if you want to grow your show, step one, we always say, is, who is your audience? And so it can be a live zoom call with a group of people. It could be a live zoom call, one on one. That really is the best. I just right now, at this point in my life, don't have the time. I've got a lot of things on my plate. I'm like, well, it'll be one to many. And that's always tricky because you might run into group speak where somebody goes, hey, I wish you did more of this. And then everybody else on the call goes, oh, yeah, me too. You know, so that's the only kind of downside. One to one is the best. But also, keep in mind, there are things like email lists. And so if somebody replies to your email, reply back. If somebody sends you just an email and it's not a newsletter, they just send you from your contact page. You do have a contact page, right? You know, or if they slide into your DMs, always, always, always talk to your audience. And I know that's kind of a duh, but I am amazed that some people have never thought of this or they're waiting for people to contact them. I talked about it in the last episode. One of the coolest things, like here I'm requesting feedback so the best kind of feedback is the stuff you didn't request when somebody just out of the blue goes, man, that was a great episode. That's one of the things I'm like, I'm gonna start tracking that. And so I'm just here to say, don't be afraid to talk to your audience. I'll give you another example. I am the head of podcasting at PodPage, and we kind of have almost a mantra where we're not afraid of our customers. We actually, you can schedule live support calls at podpage. We have monthly meetups with our people. We have all sorts of stuff. Because why I was at Podcast movement in Washington, D.C. and a customer came up and said, hey, you know how you have all these cool quick links like contact and follow all these things to make it really easy for the audience to remember your website while you get them to wherever they want to go, and they go, why don't you have a slash newsletter? And I thought, well, surely we must have a slash newsletter. That'd be dumb not to wait, we don't have a slash newsletter. And so I went to Brendan, I said, hey, we don't have a slash newsletter. He went, ah, you're nab deep. Hey, we don't have a slash newsletter. And so it's that kind of stuff that. And we made it, you know, you can now go to, you know, slash newsletter on your POD page. And there it is. There's your newsletter sign up. And so it's one of those things that we all want to grow our audience. And the easiest way to grow the audience is to have the audience tell their friends about it. Well, how do you get your friends to tell people about it? Well, you give them what they want in a way that's including. And that's what last episode was about. Right? We want to make remarkable content. Well, what's remarkable content? Well, go listen to episode 1000. And so find some way to connect with your audience. And if you're like, I'm not getting any audience connection, then make it easy and give them a time and place to meet you, because they can't figure it out. And always explain it to them how they're going to help shape the show. You can help me make the show you always wanted. And in theory, some people should act on that again, probably around 3%. But if, you know, somebody came to me and said, hey, Dave, or I know you like the Zoom PodTrack P4. I'm from Zoom. We're thinking of redesigning the P4 would you like to be involved? I would go, oh, yeah. Can we do that right now, please? So explain it in a way that you're. And be wide open. Bring an extra set of skin, because you really, really want to find out what's not working. Many moons ago, I won an award for a customer service position I was in, and I was there to teach people how to run their office equipment. That's what we told them. But what I was really there to do was to throw in hints on how to not run your office equipment. Do not put paperclips on the copier. Do not do this. Do not do. Then it was always just these little, you know, what do you call it? Passive aggressive things. And that's really what you want to do. Why? Because one of the easiest ways to grow your audience is. Is to stop the current audience from leaving.