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The Audacity to Podcast® - tips and how to start and grow profit in podcasting
434. It’s Okay to Break Some Podcasting “Rules”
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Take a deep breath, because I'm about to tell you something that will either upset you or give you relief. It is okay to break some podcasting rules. Thank you for joining me for the Audacity to podcast. I'm Daniel J. Lewis. You can breathe again. By the way. In podcasting we have all of these things that we call rules, or you might even see people say the ten commandments of podcasting. And you must do these things, stuff like consistency, how you speak to your audience or your co host or the format of your show, how long your show should be or how short. And all of this stuff that people will say are rules of podcasting. But like my favorite quotation from the movie the Pirates of the Caribbean, your pirates hang the code and hang the rules. They're more like guidelines. Anyway, these things in podcasting that many people will call rules are really more like guidelines. And by podcasting rules, I'm not talking about things like laws and moral code around stuff like disclosures, copyrights, trademarks, dispensing, medical advice and things like that, but the podcasting rules. Certainly many of these things that are rules can be things that help you in your podcasting journey. They can help you more towards success. And, and these ideas come from experience, from research, from care about the industry as seen, things done decently and in order. So that doesn't mean that they're bad things and that you should break them. I'm saying it's okay to break them. But this is the most important aspect of this. If you are going to break a rule, you must do so with intention. I've been a graphic designer since before podcasting was invented. And from my early days learning about graphic design, I learned about the rules of graphic design. Things like alignment, consistency, contrast, proximity, all of these different principles of design and typography. But then there's another aspect of them is breaking the rules. Let's take one of those graphic design rules for example. And you can visualize this very easily. And you'll see this in many different places. Alignment. Imagine a page, whether it's a web page, a printed page, just something that has design elements on it, and all of those elements are aligned to the left side of the page. Or at least you can see even if they're aligned also on the right side, there is a definite alignment. On the left side, you could take a ruler and literally put it up against everything on the left side and you would see that everything is lined up perfectly with that ruler. Pixel perfect, millimeter perfect, dot perfect, whatever that's alignment. But then there's a picture that breaks out of that alignment. And it doesn't just break out of it a little, but it breaks out of it a lot. That picture is breaking the rule of alignment. And in design terms, we could say it is literally a rule design joke there. Mark decote from podcastbranding co will get that one for sure. But it is breaking a rule, but it's breaking it with intention. And that intention is to make that picture stand out, to break up that consistency. And some might even say the monotony of everything being all in the same alignment. And here's this picture that breaks out of that, and it's done so with intentionality, and it's done so with a particular goal in mind of making it stand out, breaking things up, making it look more interesting, bringing more attention to that picture. Or it's maybe a poll quote or something else that's there, and it brings attention to it, and it makes the whole layout and design look more interesting because a rule was broken. And by the way, every time I say rules, just imagine air quotes along with that. So in podcasting, what are some of these rules that we have? And I'm not going to go through every one of the rules that we have in podcasting, but just to use a couple of these. For example, consistency. This is a big one that podcasters will often say. You must podcast consistently to build an audience and to rank in the charts and all of this stuff. And while there is a lot of truth to that, that certainly being consistent, whatever that consistent schedule is, whether it's daily, weekly, monthly, whatever, being consistent does make it a whole lot easier to build up your catalog, to build up an audience, to build up authority, to build up ranking, to build up all of this stuff that you need and want for your podcast. Consistency helps you get there more consistently, and it's very difficult to get there without consistency. But that is not an actual law in podcasting. You can break this rule, and there are many successful podcasters who do break this rule. They're not successful because they break the rule, but breaking the rule has not held them back from the success they've currently achieved. An example of this is Dan Carlin's hardcore history. What is his publishing schedule? He doesn't have one. You might think it's because he's being lazy, but no, he's not being lazy. He is being intentional of working really hard on his episodes. Each episode is pretty much an audiobook, and he builds those episodes with great intentionality. That takes him a lot of time to do. And if he were to restrict himself to a particular publishing consistency, I think his quality of content would actually suffer. If he were to try and maintain a weekly or a monthly consistency, either his quality of content would suffer or maybe his quality of life would suffer because he would have to sacrifice important things in his life in order to maintain the quality with that consistency for his podcast. So instead, what he does is he sacrifices the consistency. And I believe he does so with intention because he puts out an episode when it's ready, not when he feels like it, and certainly not on some kind of regular routine schedule. But he puts it out when it's ready. And they're good episodes because he pours so much effort and quality into the episodes. He also doesn't stick with the standard length of the episodes, and the episodes are very long, practically audiobooks, for each episode. But people still love it. They don't love it because of the inconsistency in timing. They don't love it because of the length of the episodes. They love the episodes because of the quality of the episodes. And that's why they love his podcast. He is breaking that rule with intention. There are other rules that you might break with intention. Things like the common one that some people might say is, oh, you shouldn't have inside jokes in your podcast. And I did a whole episode about inside jokes back in episode 389, if you want to go back and listen to that, if you haven't listened to it already. And the point I make in that episode is that it is okay and sometimes good to have inside jokes. Don't think that just because you have certain inside jokes with your audience that it means you're excluding people. It can actually be a way that you develop rapport with your audience. Inside jokes with your co host might not work very well in the podcast because then your audience is completely clueless. But if you can bring your audience into the joke, they become part of the inside circle. So you have an inside joke with the audience and the new audience members as they catch up with the inside jokes, start to be welcomed into that circle and can make those inside jokes themselves. Or sometimes I've seen and even been on the listening side of this as well. Certain inside jokes that I have no idea how they started, but just hearing them is funny. And every time they're used, they're funny to me and I have no idea where they came from. But now I'm part of the community and now I can laugh at those inside jokes. Because they're somehow funny, and I can't quite explain it. It's okay to break a rule like that. Or in my previous episode, 433, if you haven't listened to it, I talked about niches in podcasting, and many people will say, oh, you must niche down. You must pick a niche for your podcast. You must make sure that your podcast has a niche topic to it. And listen to that episode, please, if you haven't already. I've gotten some really good feedback on that episode, by the way, so I highly recommend listening to it. It's the previous episode right before this, but in there I talked about how niches don't always have to mean the topics that your podcast is about. You could niche down in other ways. So you could break that rule of having a niche topic by having a niche in another way. And there are many successful podcasters who do that. And even though you see top podcasters sometimes breaking these rules, that doesn't mean that they're breaking the rules contributed to their success. That is a bit of a myth, the whole it's not hurting their podcast idea. Well, it could actually be hurting their podcast, and you wouldn't even know it. Go Back to episode 373, where I talked about debunking that myth of it's not hurting their podcast. If you want to learn more about that thinking behind there, because we just can't know. It's very possible that some of these podcasters who are breaking certain rules could have a bigger audience, make more money, have deeper engagement and relationships with their audience if they weren't breaking those rules. But we just can't know. What we can see, at least, is that whatever rules they're breaking has not prevented them from reaching the status they've currently reached. Whatever that is, and whatever success level that is, it might have contributed to their success. It might have held them back from even greater success, that you just wouldn't know. But they're often breaking these rules with intention, and you can do that, too. There is even a place for breaking certain rules in order to make a point. And there are even things that are considered rules in podcasting that are just outright dumb rules. In fact, just ask the Internet for dumb rules around the country and you'll find all kinds of ridiculous, stupid things. Here's one, for example, that at least last I knew when I learned how to drive, it was in the early 2000s in the state of Ohio. And at that time, maybe it's still the case now. But in the driver's handbook for the State of Ohio. It said that it was law for if you are passing a vehicle on a two lane road where the lanes are going both directions. So you have to pass a vehicle because they're going too slow below the speed limit, whatever reason you're needing to pass them. If you're going to pass them, you're supposed to honk while you pass them. Now just imagine you're that person being passed and someone honks at you as they're passing you. What are you going to think? You're going to think that they're angry at you. You're going to think that they are being passive aggressive. They might run you off the road or something like that because they're honking at you as they pass by you. It's a dumb rule, and I don't think anybody in Ohio follows that rule. It's dumb. And there are, I think, even some dumb rules in podcasting. Some things that have been carried over from radio. One of those things is the idea of the ad break and the way that certain commercials are done. And I understand that certain things work in certain contexts and stuff. That doesn't mean that's the way you have to do it. And things that work, by the way, in the Internet marketing space. And that's a space I have to deal in because I run software products for podcasters. Please check them out if you haven't already. Podchapters.com helps you transcribe and chapter your podcast episodes and Podgagement.com helps you supercharge your audience engagement. Please check them out. Podchapters.com, podgagement.com, those are my products and services that I made as a podcaster for you, as a fellow podcaster. And many of the features are great for agencies too. So if you are providing a service to other podcasters, you might want to roll in some of the features that Podgagement and POD Chapters offers so you can extend those to your clients as well. Please reach out if you have any questions about any of that. But I have to deal in the Internet marketing space in order to promote these products. Because if I just let it out there, while the field of dreams thing is just a dream, the whole if you build it, he will come thing does not apply in the Internet space. If I built a product and just let it sit out there, it's not going to grow. It's not going to get the customers the income that it needs. Intentional marketing must be behind growing a product as well. As growing a podcast too, by the way. You can't just put a podcast out there and expect people to just discover it. You have to be intentional with things. But like in the Internet marketing space, there are all of these kinds of rules of this is what you should do or must do in order to increase your conversion rates and all of this stuff. And one of these things. Okay, here comes a rant. One of these things is artificial scarcity or deadlines of some sort, a sense of urgency. Because people are more likely to take action on something if they feel some kind of urgency to it, like a limited supply, a limited time on the deal. And there is actually a product that I fell victim to their marketing that was like this, where they were advertising a particular deal and they said, last chance to get this deal. I looked at the deal, I felt like it seems like a fair price for this. I went ahead, I took advantage of the deal, started using the product. I don't use the product very much yet, but certainly I kind of feel like I got a good enough deal with it. But here's what really bugs me. A year after I purchased, they're still running ads which for some reason still display to me on Facebook and other platforms even though I am already a customer. But they're still running ads that say last chance or final call or this offer expires soon. And that really bugs me because that means they lied to me when they told me it was the last chance for that deal. No, it wasn't. And I believed them. I know not to believe certain things like countdown timers on websites and tangent to a tangent here. If you ever see a countdown timer on a website, here's something that you can do. Wait five or 10 minutes, then open an incognito browser window or a private window or try a different device or go somewhere else. Different wifi connection and a private browser window. Try the same webpage again and see if the countdown timer has reset. Usually they're not going to reset to zeros, like five days, zero hours or minutes, zero seconds like that. Usually they change it so that it looks like some time has already passed on the timer. But on some sites you can easily see this with a private browser window. Wait five minutes, open the website in the private browser window, you're going to see the timer resets, close that window, reopen a private browser window so you get fresh browsing history, no cookies, no history, anything like that. Visit the website again, you'll see that the timer has refreshed and it's Back to what it was, or this one takes longer. If you actually leave the browser open on that page for however many days or hours that it says, see what happens when it reaches zero, they're effectively lying to you. And I hate that. And I know that they say this is effective. I don't care. I am not going to do that. When you see a countdown timer from me, can you tell I'm really passionate about this? When you see a countdown timer from me, believe it. Because I do not do fake countdown timers. If I put a countdown timer on something, that thing will expire. Now there is space for extending offers. That's kind of like a grace, a sort of grace period. Or maybe they decided, well, we didn't quite market this as much as we wanted to, or we want to extend this offer a little bit more. We want to be a little bit more generous, that's fine. There is certainly a place for that. I don't think that's unethical to extend an offer like that. Like, you frequently see this around what we call in America, or I guess now worldwide, Black Friday, where sometimes they'll say, you know, last day for this sale and then they extend the sale until Cyber Monday. You can almost expect that now with Black Friday sales or that they might do the same sale again on Monday. That I'm not going to call that unethical because they are just extending the sale, giving you more opportunity. What would be unethical is if they say this sale ends Friday and you come next week and it's the exact same sale that then still says this sale ends Friday and the next week it's the same thing. This sale ends Friday, same price, same offer, same all of that. That's lying. And I will never do that. When you see a countdown timer from me, believe it. It's a true countdown timer. I will not lie to you. In my marketing, other things like pop ups, this whole thing of, oh, you need to display a pop up when people first get to the page or within 30 seconds or when they start scrolling down this much or that much or whatever kinds of conditions that they say around pop ups. And the truth is that those things work and that's why Internet marketers do them, or button colors and all of this stuff. And it bugs me because, well, I'm frustrated that these things work. I'm frustrated that they exist because some of this stuff just really annoys me and a lot of this stuff doesn't work on me. I say a lot because obviously the lie about last Chance did work on me. I fell victim to that. But at least I still do feel like I got a good deal on what I bought. But when it comes to these certain things like that, that they say, these are the rules of Internet marketing, to have more success, increase your conversion rates, grow your podcast, grow your business, grow your email list, whatever, all of this stuff, I don't care. I'm going to break those rules. Because what matters more to me is to be a man of my word and to do what I say I'm going to do sometimes, even if it takes me longer to get to it. Still, I want to be a man who does what he says he's going to do. And I do not want to lie to you, to any of my other future customers. So I will not do those things. I do not want to annoy you into buying something. There was a certain place for sending out multiple messages because some people might miss something, certain reminders, approaching things differently multiple times. I get that, and, yes, I do that sometimes. I don't see that as unethical. It might be borderline annoying at certain times. But I also try to provide value in these different things. And many other people try and do that, too. But the lying, the deception, the fake numbers, the stuff like, oh, this is a $5 million offer that we're now offering for only $47, but you must buy within the next four hours and six minutes because after that, the offer won't be available. Come on, check it again in four hours and six minutes and see if the offer is still there. And it probably will be. Okay, that rant aside, those are examples of rules that I break with intention because to me, I would rather maintain my ethical code than make more money. Because I know. I know I'm making less money because I do some of these things and decide not to do certain things. I know that. I know I could be making more money if I push my products harder or if I spam certain places more, or if I do all of these things, these artificial things. I know I could be making a lot more money than I make right now if I did these things. I don't care. I'm breaking those rules with intention. Because to me, what I consider ethical is more important to me than how much money I make from my products or services. I feel like maybe I should say, if that resonates with you, then please buy one of my products and services, which I would love for you to do because you want to do it. I don't want you to Feel like you have to do it because I'm annoying you to death to buy my products or services. I make them to be enjoyed, to be used, to be of benefit to fellow podcasters, not just to make money. I've made these products and services to fill a need, not to make money. But I do need them to make money, because this is how I make my living. I feed a starving child my own with the money that I make from my products and services. So in podcasting, there are these different rules, there are guidelines, there are best practices, and many of them are very good to try to follow and certainly do try to stick with these things. Do try to have a consistent schedule, do try to do all of these things that are best practices. But if you're going to break a rule, do it with intention, not out of laziness. Not feeling like, ah, I don't feel like doing it today. I don't feel like being consistent today. I don't feel like being passionate, I don't feel like engaging with my audience. I don't feel this or that. Instead of that, do something with intentionality. If you need to break from a consistent schedule, be intentional about it. Maybe even let your audience know, I need to break from my schedule here. I need to take a hiatus. I'll be back on such and such date, or I need to take care of this particular thing and many times your audience will understand. Maybe you've been with me for years and you stuck with me, kept the audacity to podcast in your podcast app for the years that I was away because I had to try to save my family. I need to try to protect my son and provide the best for him. And that's what I was doing with intentionality during my hiatus. I put aside the podcast. I sacrificed that rule of being consistent with the podcast, and my business took a huge hit because of that. My growth, my authority, my influence took huge hits. But I broke those rules with intentionality because my son was more important to me. So for your podcast, it might not be so serious. Some of these things, if you have to break one of these rules, do it intentionally for a specific goal, recognizing that it could hurt some of your success. But maybe you're okay with that because you would rather do certain things a different way. You'd rather not niche down on your topic, but niche down on your personality, on your approach, on your voice, on your audience. So it is okay to break some podcasting rules. Just don't make a habit of it. We might then call that the podcast criminal. But it's okay to break some of these rules, because they're really not rules, they're guidelines. And you could have success without following these rules. You could have success by following the rules, but it is okay to break the rules. Whether this has upset you or it's given you some relief, I would love to hear from you. Please reach out on X at the Daniel J. Lewis. Or you can contact me by sending a message or voicemail@podcastfeedback.com Audacity now that I've given you some of the guts to break some rules and taught you some of the tools, it's time for you to go start and grow your own podcast for passion and profit. See, just in this episode and in many of my episodes, I break the rules of how I do my outro. Sometimes I insert little things here and there in my tagline. And even for this episode, I knew what I wanted to talk about, but I did not write an outline. I did not script it. And some people would say, oh, that's a rule. You must script your episodes. You must make an outline for your episodes. Those are all good guidelines. I did not want to do this for this episode because I wanted this to be completely from my heart to you. And I'm Daniel D. Lewis from the audacity2podcast.com thanks for listening.