Dave Jackson (0:00)

Hey, it's Dave. And before we start the show, I just want to let you know I'm running an audience survey and I would love to hear your feedback about this show. Simply go to schoolofpodcasting.com survey25. That's schoolofpodcasting.com Survey25. Today, on episode number 507 of the School of Podcasting, I'm going to take a look at at the podcast interview wizard. And that's kind of a visual thing, so there is a video. If you go to schoolofpodcasting.com 507, we're going to keep you updated on some podcasting news, and I'm going to peel back the curtain on last week's episode with Danny Pena. Hit it, ladies. The School of Podcasting with Dave Jackson. Podcasting since 2005. I am your professional podcast mentor, Dave Jackson. Thanking you so much for tuning in. If you're new to the show, I've been helping people understand technology for over 20 years. And what we do here on this show is we talk about all things podcasting. I help you massage your message. I help you tackle the technology. I help you face your fears. I help you flatten that learning curve and get you on the road to successful podcasting. Our website is schoolofpodcasting.com and if you want to get in, you got to get in now because the doors close April 1st, that's the end of this quarter, and basically it's going to be closed for a couple months. It'll open back up. And if you want to start your podcast, you need to get in now because the doors close on this quarter April 1st, so you got to get in on March 31st. To get into this current session of the schoolofpodcasting.com use the coupon code listener. That's L I S T E N E R. When you do that, and if you have any questions, you can contact me. Schoolofpodcasting.com contact. And last but not least, as I bombard you with calls to action here at the beginning. If you like this show and never want to miss an episode, go over to schoolofpodcasting.com subscribe and subscribe to the show and just have these episodes show up automatically. All right, so let's just jump into it, shall we? I've been asked. I've been. Next month I will celebrate 11 years in podcasting, and I don't think I've ever been asked so much about a product, maybe Odello, which got a lot of attention, but this one has gotten a lot of attention. It's called the Podcast Interview wizard by Jim Edwards. And if you're like, well, first things first, who is Jim Edwards? He's a guy that I've known about for years. I loved his I Gotta Tell youl email list. And we are talking way back in the day when I was teaching people how to make websites with Microsoft front page. Oh yeah, and I was making videos with a camcorder that I held on my shoulder and I bought one of it was Jim and he did a product with Mike Stewart on how to do video. And I gotta tell you, it was pretty cool. And I'd bought other things from quote Internet marketers at the time and his was definitely pretty quality stuff. So I've always liked his style. He takes his topics very seriously, but he always dishes them up with a good helping of sarcasm. And so in a nutshell, Jim has been writing ebooks and making products for over probably 20 years now. According to his bio, he's the founder of Guaranteed Response Marketing llc, is an Internet expert, marketing entrepreneur, newspaper columnist, author, motivational speaker and elite mentor and coach. Having gained professional and financial freedom, he shares his proven strategies with self motivated hard working people to help help them attain personal and financial independence. He has written and published dozens of ebooks, several print books and hundreds of articles. And like I say, I used to be subscribed to his I gotta tell you email list. And I was sitting here thinking about that I should resubscribe. That was some good stuff. I actually there was a day when I just unsubscribed from every email list I was on because I was just tired of just the endless barrage of stuff. But Jim's was pretty cool. And so, so he seems like a good guy. He basically produces webinars on a weekly basis. He's a frequent guest speaker at NUMIS International and Internet Marketing seminars. Good guy. And so what the heck is the Podcast Interview Wizard? Well, let me walk you through what it does. It's a software first of all that works on Mac or PC. And how I tested this was basically last week I did an interview with Danny Pena from Gamertag Radio hall of Fame guy, podcaster, great guy. Got a lot of good feedback on that. We'll be talking about that a little later in the, in the show. And I thought, well, would I have done this episode any differently if I was using this tool? So let me just walk you through now. Realize this is a very visual thing so I'm going to kind of blow through this And I do have a video for you out@schoolofpodcasting.com 507 and so basically I'm gonna. Here's the 16 questions. It asks you for your name. It asks you for your name of your podcast. It asks you for who you're interviewing. It asks you for the singular version of your audience. So in my case, in my case, my audience is made up of podcasters. And so I put podcaster. Question five is what's your audience plural? And I put podcasters. And then six, what's the key word theme for the show? So what is this? You know, in a nutshell, this interview is about? And I put audience growth. Question seven, Basically, it's looking for the show topic. So this interview will focus on. And I put growing your audience by interacting with your audience. Question eight, what's one of the biggest benefits? And this should be a verb. You, you know, your audience really wants to blank. So I put grow your audience. Question number nine, what's another benefit? And I put get paid to podcast. Question number 10, give us a third biggest benefit. And I put get more downloads. So again, the audience also really wants to and I put get more downloads. 11, what's the big payoff? In other words, this audience really wants to know how to blank. And I put grow their community. Question 12 on this interview will also reveal, so this is some sort of cool secret that they're going to reveal. So I put how to create an event that generates attention. And Then question number 13 is basically their bio bullet points. So I put hall of fame podcaster podcasting for 11 years. Started out on a cassette deck, been featured on numerous websites and magazines, played video games with a billionaire in. He's part of the CBS radio play.it network and he flies around the country playing video games and getting paid. Question number 14, what is the call to action? So for more information, check out and I put the school of podcasting@schoolofpodcasting.com? number 15, what is your show title? And so here I put commitment to community, how Danny Pena grew his podcast audience. And then question 16, copy and paste and interview questions or show bullets. Here is what it currently says, but this is where once I'd gone through the interview, I could come back here and put the key points. And there's even a template that I could go through and get shuo bullets. Run that one. Get the bullets, put them in here. Very easy to do. So that's how I set this up. Then I went through and I looked at it. And said, hey, you know, how would this affect my interview? So I'll explain how that would work in a second. Let me go back to. So that's again, a brief. It asks you 16 questions. So what does it do with those things? Well, it's used then in a series of tools that it builds like an email template to help get the interview, an email message to set up and remind the guest about the interview. And then later, you can use it to create an email to send the guest kind of a post interview as kind of a thank you. You could ask them for referrals. It creates either a quick version of your show notes or full version. Now, this would be where it would have like, an intro, like, welcome to the school of podcasting. Today we're talking about audience growth expert Danny Pena. And then when I have the questions and they would have the. The outro with my call to action that I just specified, and it spits it all out. It also creates a thing called audience handouts. And this is a worksheet for people to fill out as they listen to your episode. And it was the first thing I looked at and went, yeah, not for me. Maybe if it was just for me, it was like, okay, I get it. And again, automatically generated show bullets. These are custom sales copy for each interview. And There are basically 12 different types of interviews. And so I'll talk about those in a second. And it generates show notes for your episode very easily, by the way, I might add. And it will generate multiple titles for your show and let you pick the best one. Now, if you are a regular listener to the show, you know I am all about the headlines. If you're new to the show, go to schoolpodcasting.com headlines and you can actually get a handout of mine that shows you how to make great headlines because they really help drive traffic to your episode. Now, it also will build ads to help promote the show on Facebook or Twitter, et cetera, et cetera. So it's pretty slick. So I looked at this, and I already knew Danny's story. I knew I wanted to walk him through the parts that focused on building his audience. And so the closest style to what I did last week was called the how the Expert got started style. And I'll talk about these different styles here in a minute. And I looked at it and said, okay, what would I have done differently using the software? Well, there are a couple questions that I was like, things like I could have asked, what roadblocks did you face early on? And how did you overcome them, didn't ask that. Pretty good question. Did you have any early mentors or did you have to figure it out all on your own? Not a bad question. I think this is a pretty good question. If you had to start all over again with audience growth in today's world, with today's tools and time constraints and other factors, what would you do differently? More of less of faster, or not at all? Pretty good question. Pretty in depth question. So those are questions that I got from the how the expert got started. And in theory, if I just kept with this, I could run this, it would generate my questions, I could take them and it would, everything would fit. I could run the show notes for the how the expert got started style, I could do the itunes, description, things like that. But you know me, I'm creative and I wanted to think outside the box. So I looked at some other styles and one of them is called myths and misconceptions. That's kind of hard to say. And it's a style of interview. And one of the questions there that I was like, that's a pretty good question, is where are the big opportunities in audience growth that many podcasters might be missing? Or here's another one, what's the best audience growth tools every podcaster needs to use and know about? Okay, now if I did that, the software is meant for you to use one style of interview and then have everything kind of tie in together. But, but if you're looking to come up with good questions, I can see where basically spitting out multiple versions of the interview might help you spotlight questions that really spur. And here's the key point, other questions that aren't in the software. So for me, I like this tool as a way to brainstorm with myself. And I realized that show notes and other templates are meant to come from just a single template, right? A single style, I should say, not multiple ones. So if you mix and match questions from different styles, you're gonna have to mix and match some other things. But that's really. I watched a webinar on the software and basically what it said is this is designed for people who basically hate to write, they hate to type, and it's so much easier to edit than it is to create. And so I believe in most cases you're gonna have to do a little editing. And by that I mean changing a word here, changing a word there, maybe a little copy and paste, but it does create a lot of things for you. So let's go through these. And one is podcast show Notes. I'm gonna talk about each style here, each tool that it spits out, and would I use this? So podcast show notes. Yes. I could see using this really in many places like G or Facebook. Even though it's meant for show notes, I could see this as blog post out on social media. There's an email announce. And yes, this could be cool. Even if it, you know, again, you might have to copy and paste some bullets in here, but yeah, it's a good starting spot. In fact, there's an itunes episode description. This one, I was like, wow. This gave me seven different descriptions and a slew of titles that I was like, wow, that's pretty cool. The show title templates here, again, a great way to brainstorm with yourself. Here are all these potential titles for your episode. Because I don't know about you. For me, I'm often making my title at the very end when I'm tired. It's 2 in the morning, I got to go to bed, and I'm like, this will do. It'll make ads. These are very similar to titles and descriptions. And again, useful. Absolutely. Now, it does make all these email templates, and I just want to say here, they are all great starting points. And I always, always, always recommend personalizing the templates, but they are focused and they are to the point. So they're a good starting point. But trust me, if people start using the software a lot, we're all going to be able to smell. Oh, they're using piw, which is the cool, you know, you know how we hate words that are long? We shorten everything down. It's piw Podcast interview wizard. Somebody's using PIW and they're using the whatever, whatever template. We'll be able to smell it a mile away. So I highly recommend that you personalize these. Another style of interview is called the beginner style. And at first when I saw this one, I was kind of like, meh. Because it was kind of like, what's the first thing you need to do? What's the second thing you need to do? But then it had this question, what's the perfect mindset for a beginner podcaster at this point that would virtually guarantee their success? And I went, that's a pretty cool question because again, it's not just. It's not a yes or no question. That's what I liked about that. There's a style of interview called book review nonfiction. And this was kind of a who, what, why, when, and where. Nothing earth shattering here. But if I was absolutely New to interviewing. This would be helpful. If you're not absolutely new to to interviewing, you're probably going, yeah. Critical skills interview. This is a cool template because it has built in follow up questions. So yes, at first I was kind of like. Because it's like, what's the first critical skill? What's the second critical skill? What's the third? But it also then had follow up questions that had you digging deeper. So again, thumbs up here. There's an FAQ interview style, probably my favorite style, mainly because it just had a lot of good questions. There's a getting started now. This is a good set of questions. And again, one of the key things it's trying to do here is focus. So it does exactly what it's supposed to do. It focuses on how your guest got started. There's a mistake style interview. And somewhere in the future I'm gonna have Gordon Firemark on the show. I reached out to him at the beginning of the year and we've kind of been busy back and forth and. But this would be an interesting interview template for me to use to kind of go, what are like the top three things that people are doing that they might find out later are bad from a legal aspect? And this would be a good template for Gordon. There's a style of interview called Myths and Misunderstandings. Say that three times fast. And at first this one seemed kind of simple, but again, it had good follow up questions. So I was like, all right, thumbs up. There's a new idea interview. And it would work for that type of interview if somebody had a new idea. But this one for me didn't really hit home because I never have a new interview kind of or new idea kind of interview. But I could see or be useful a new products interview. Again, kind of the who, what, why, when and where. But it's great for beginners. And in some of these where I was kind of like, I noticed that some of these like will have bonus questions at the bottom. And I was like, well, all right, that's cool. Because rules of the road for me, probably my least favorite template of interview style because it was just. It would have a question and then the follow up questions were exactly the same. So it's kind of like what's. What's rule of the road number one. And then it was like, follow up, follow up, follow up. What's rule number two? Same follow up, same follow up, same follow up. And I was like, yeah, the state of the union. I could see using these. It's a style of Interview to interview Rob Walsh from Libsyn, Todd Cochran from Blueberry, Rob Greenlee from Spreaker. And I see this as a tool that's going to eliminate you getting off Skype and going, oh, I forgot to ask them because it has a lot of the really good basic questions covered the step by step roadmap style of interview. This is kind of the distant cousin of the rules of the road. And I just kind of went, yeah, not for me. Tips and tricks here, again, pretty basic, nothing earth shattering, but I do like again that this was one that had bonus quant bonus questions at the bottom that I went, okay, pretty cool. So now how much does this bad boy cost? Now what this does, if you go out to Podcast Interview Wizard, I'm going to go out there right with you and put on slash sop. So Podcast Interview wizard, sop. And it says here that the Interview wizard software, and it works both on Mac or PC, is a $997 value. Now, in a world where we can get apps on our phone for, you know, $7 and people like, mmm, man, I don't know, $7, that's the price of a coffee at Starbucks. And that software, literally five years ago would have been $300. I get that he's trying to show that because the actual price is 197 to get to the punchline. So I'm kind of like really 997. All right, but here's something to think about with this because you're like even 200, 197. And I'll get to more. There's more to this than that. Do you know my buddy Darrell over atgolden spiral media.com, he does all sorts of audio editing and consulting and one of the things he does is he will do your show notes for $85 an episode. So if you're having Darrell do your episode, your show notes at $85 an episode, having a piece of software for $200 could easily pay for itself then. But wait, there's more. There are. It's a six part training. And I gotta say, with Jim's background of working in newspapers and all this other stuff, I really thought to myself, I hope this isn't one of those, oh, we need a bonus, so just throw something together. I've only watched one video of this and it actually was pretty in depth and I was like, all right, pretty cool. It's again, is also a nine ninety seven dollar value. Okay, then there's the podcast episode prep blueprint. And what this is is something I usually call directions basically in a nutshell. Now it is handy because you basically when you walk through this blueprint, it kind of walks you through how to use the podcast interview wizard, what to build first, what to build second. So it flattens the learning curve. I just thought it was kind of funny that it was called a prep blueprint. There is a 30 day money back guarantee. It's a secure payment and yeah, you can pick this up for currently for 197. So again, depending on what you're doing. If you're a person who hates typing show notes, has a hard time coming up with headlines and you just want to have it all kind of speed things up a little bit and you want to have posts for Facebook and Google and emails to your guests and things like that, this could come in really handy. Now speaking of that, I want to talk about how I'm going to use this. Now this doesn't mean that you have to use it this way, but I do have some things and some concerns about this. Make sure your podcast, if you're doing interviews, is a conversation and not an interrogation just because you have your next question ready. Now, please, please, in the immortal words of James Brown, please listen, listen to your guest. Because the best question to ask may not be on the paper in front of you. If you're missing what your guest is saying, there's probably a great follow up question and that's not going to come from the software. It's not. So you still are going to have to actively listen and don't just sit there and go to the next question. I've been interviewed by people where I swear they have a question, they have a list of questions. Their goal is to get through all the questions in 20 minutes or less and they're just flying through them. And I've said, I think I've said it before in this show, I know I said it on the podcasters roundtable that the next time I really feel somebody's doing that, I am going to throw in the phrase and I once shot a man for snoring. So if somebody says, hey Dave, what's your favorite microphone? And I'll go, hmm, that's a good question. I hate that by the way, because it's not a good question. What's your favorite microphone? For me, that's a pretty good question. It's an expected question, but I would say, hey, it's the Audio Technica ATR 2100. You could get that@bestpodcastinggear.com and, you know, it's dynamic microphone, and I one shot a man for snoring. It also works as a USB and it's great. It's under $60 just to see if they catch it. So don't make it just question, question, question. Be sure to listen for that. Don't do that. And don't forget to be you. The one thing I'm worried about this is if everybody buys this software and just uses it verbatim, we're going to be able to smell these email templates a mile away. And so you want to personalize those. You want to personalize those to stand out. It doesn't take much to stand out. Definitely do that. But what does this tool do? It helps you come up with an angle for your interview. Right. What do I really want to get out of this particular guest? What angle am I going at? And it helps you get there quickly. Get to the meat of the interview that's going to connect with your audience, and there are going to be things that won't fit into a template, and that's where you come into play. Don't forget to insert you into the interview. That's key here. I mean, I grew up listening to DJs on the radio. I'm not that old, but back in the day in Cleveland, there was Denny Sanders, there was Kid Leo, and these are the guys that I listened to when I got home from school. And I kind of felt like I know them. I felt like some people played better music than the others, although in reality is probably a program director. But now the DJ at night here is Siri, who says awesome things like, eddie Money, two tickets to paradise, that's it. And then they play five minutes of commercials. So don't take you out of the conversation. Be sure to inject you in there, because the software doesn't know your audience. I mean, last week when I asked my private Facebook group, hey, I'm interviewing Danny Pena. What do you think we should talk about? And they said, ask him about his crew. How does he handle that? How does he handle that dynamic and make sure everybody's happy. That question would not come from a template. So you're gonna have to inject some of you into it. But this is a great place to brainstorm and a great place to start from. So if you're interested in this again, I'll have a video out@schoolofpodcasting.com 507. If you're interested in the software, go to podcastinterviewwizard.com SOP and you can pick it up again. 1, 9, 7. And it's like I say for me, I like it as a brainstorming tool for me getting ready for an interview. I can also see this as we wrap this up. If I use this a lot, and this is kind of a weird thought, I could see where this software would actually kind of train itself out of a job. Now hold on here just a second, let me finish this thought. I could see if I use this, let's say I did interviews every single week. I could see after three months knowing what questions are going to fit and really not needing the software for the questions. Now that would be kind of using it halfway because if I don't put all the questions in and answer those 16 questions, then I don't get the email templates and the show notes and, and the ads and the handouts and everything else. But I can see where this would make you a better interviewer in a way to get those core hard basic questions that you should be thinking about. I could see this software teaching you those. And if you think about that, how much would it cost to hire a coach to teach you to ask better interview questions is probably going to be more than $197. So I do like that. The only thing that kind of. I went, but I get it, what are you gonna do? Is the first question of every single interview style was, tell me a little bit about yourself. Now I get that because the software doesn't know who you're interviewing. And it's an easy way to start out. I like to interview. Listen to Jimmy Fallon or any of those guys. When they're interviewing a guest, they're explaining why the person is on your show, you know, coming to the stage. Now he's an Academy Award winning actor, he's currently on Broadway, he's here to promote his new movie. You know him, you love him, you can't live without him. Ladies and gentlemen, you know, Biff Henderson or whoever, that's an, that's. Don't have somebody go, well, I was, you know, born in Akron, Ohio and did it. That's the way I prefer. That's an opinion thing. I think when somebody goes, tell me a little bit about yourself, it seems a little lazy. But that's an opinion of Dave, not a fact of Dave. But that's the first question in every single template. And I was like, okay, I get why a software would have you ask that. To me, I think there's a better way because you really want that first question to get the podcast going in the direction you want to go. And to me, tell me a little bit about yourself. Not my favorite first question, but that's just me. That's an opinion. So check it out again. Go to schoolpodcasting.com 507. I'll have a video where you can see some of the stuff I was talking about. This podcast is part of the Power of Podcasting Network. Find it at powerofpodcasting.com changing the world, one download at a time. You know, one of the things I always love to hear is there are two segments I have on the show. One is because of my podcast, blank, however you want to answer that question. If there's something that happened in your life and it wouldn't happen unless you had a podcast, I would love to hear about it. And today, the other one, just to round out that that idea. The other one is the last five podcasts you listen to. Tell us a little bit about them and where we can find them. It's a fun way to let people find out about shows. And today we're going to hear from Gary and Margaret who do the Kiwi Mana podcast. Take it away, Gary.