626: Tips for improving your podcast content strategy. (Q&A episode)

Speaker A: My name is Emily Murphy and I have a podcast called Health Hormones and Done With Dieting. And when I went through Adam's bootcamp, he showed me to clearly outline my customer journey and help make my podcast part of my business funnel. And then my business grew so I can clearly look back at the months of accounting and see the difference after going through Adam's bootcamp and the difference in dollar signs for sure. She helped me rebrand my podcast and make it simple and easy. And I get on sales call calls with potential leads and they would tell me, I've listened to so many of your episodes now, and it was clear that my podcast is helping my audience engage with me, getting them on sales calls and really making sure that they're hot leads before I talk to them.

Speaker B: What's up, pod pals? It's your buddy Adam and you are listening to Podcasting Business School. It's a show where I teach podcasters simple strategies to help you grow your audience and turn your podcast content into new clients. Today we are doing a special audience Q and A episode. A little bit of tips for improving your podcast content strategy. It's been a really long time since I've done one of these, uh, mainly because it requires a lot of editing and I'm taking audience audio clips that you have all submitted with your questions. I'm going to insert them into the content and I will answer those questions. I got a bunch of these in the queue, um, but also I would love to get more. So my call to action today is simply go, uh, to the show Notes. I've got a link that you can record your question for me and I will do my very best to use it in an upcoming episode. And you get to shout out your show. As you see, it's a little ad for your show as well. Uh, so it's a lot of fun. I love making sure that I'm creating the content that you all want that is helpful to you specifically. And there's no better way for me to do that then kind of opening up the door and saying, hey, use, uh, this quick and easy speak pipe link and this little 60 second or less script and submit a question that you actually want me to answer. All right, so, uh, you can go to the link in the episode notes and you can record it right from your phone. I'll try to clean it up, uh, with the old magic, uh, button on, on Descript that allows me to edit and do the studio sound and all that cool stuff. So. Well, we'll see. But this One. This episode is definitely the type of episode that tests my editing limits and capacity. Uh, so we'll see how this goes. Hopefully you guys enjoy it as much as me. So I've got four questions that I've pulled out of the list that all the questions that were submitted. We, uh, got a question from Sasmitha, uh, Rob, Cat, and Dawn. We're going to tackle four of them today, and we're going to talk about using testimonials. We're going to talk about maximizing organic discovery, some more intro outro, uh, making those unskippable strategies and how to get high level guests on your show. So that's a little preview. Let's dive in with our first audience audio clip with a question from Susmitha.

Speaker C: Hi, this is Susmitha Veganosaurus from, um, Feel Good Factor. My question for Adam is if you have only a few audio testimonial recordings for your podcast or your business or whatever it is you're promoting, how often is it okay to repeat them in your show, in the intro of your show? Because I know that, uh, Adam, you always put testimonial intros in your show and I want to start doing that too. Uh, but yes, you know, I only have a, a certain number, limited number, uh, so I don't know how often it's okay to, uh, cycle through them, you know, So I would love an answer to this question.

Speaker B: All right, so first things first, Susmitha, uh, is one of my favorite old school pod pals and probably the happiest person I've ever met in my life. So I had to kick this off with a little joyous note from a pod pal. Susmitha. Uh, so thank you for submitting your question. Let's talk about how often we should use a testimonial and intro that testimonial rotation. So real quick, a review on my testimonial intro strategy. So instead of doing a canned song and dance intro outro or an ad, I like to kick it off with proven results with, uh, an audio clip from a happy testimonial, uh, from a happy client. All right, so that's, uh, it's unique. Not many people are doing it, but a lot of you are picking up on that, like Sus myth, then go, hey, how can I do this? Too natural question. I get a lot. How often should I reuse or cycle through these testimonials? Or another variation of the question is how many do I need before I start using this strategy? So first things first, we have to get organized and start collecting testimonials. This is really important and I feel like this is one of the areas where we tend to be a little bit lazy as, as online business owners, we create an awesome result and we just let that kind of float off into the ether. And this is one of the most valuable marketing tools that we have. If you aren't so great at selling and you feel nervous about being salesy, uh, let your clients do that for you, please. And that's my exact strategy in a nutshell. So start collecting and organize your testimonials. So I've got all of my testimonials on an external hard drive and I've also got them in a Google, uh, sheet where I can search them by topic, by what type of a result, what program that they did. Uh, so I can search through those and leverage them. Now as far as how often to repeat, I would say shoot for once every four plus weeks. Four or more weeks. Uh, so as you build things up, let's say you have, uh, three testimonials. I would put them out week one, week two, week three, maybe take a week or two off and then cycle through them again. All right, so once every four or more weeks, I tend to do probably about eight to 12 weeks in between. If, uh, I reuse a testimonial. Some of them I reuse a lot because they're just like really hot testimonials. And I like to marry the testimonial with the thing I'm promoting or the, the topic or the result we're trying to produce, uh, with the, the content in the episode that's more advanced. So I would say step one, please start getting testimonials from your clients. Organize them, save them, make notes. You can easily find them. You'll build up that Rolodex and then we can start rotating through them about once a month. So if you have four or five, you're good. I would just go 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, straight through and put it on repeat. As you get more clients, add one to the mix and you're good. You're golden, I think. And you're gonna get that repetition as well because a lot of people still tend to skip through intros until they realize that this is different. So I think that, uh, that, that four plus weeks per testimonial, uh, on the show, I think that's going to be the sweet spot for you. So. Great question, Susmitha. Uh, uh, now we got a question from Rob. Let's see what Rob has To say, hey, Adam, this is Rob with the Softball Central podcast. I wanted to ask you, if your niche category is not listed like mine under sports does not have softball listed, what's the best course of action to get more organic discovery? Thanks, buddy. All right, Rob, great question. So let's talk about how to maximize organic discovery if your show topic isn't listed in a category. Uh, first let's talk about what is a category. How does that fit in? So what I believe Rob is talking about is our listed category. We go to our podcast host. Like I host podcasting business school inside of Libsyn, and I can go into Libsyn and the place where I have like the name of my podcast, my host description. There, uh, are a couple like dropdown list boxes where I can pick which category and or subcategory, uh, my show fits into. So on Lipson, you have two options. I've currently got it listed in business entrepreneurship subcategory, and then business marketing, I believe. So these categories, I don't think just from personal experience. I don't think they have a ton to do with the organic discovery SEO. What I know for sure, uh, the impact is rankings, like which category your show will get ranked in an Apple and Spotify. So if you, uh, want to show up in the entrepreneurship subcategory rankings and Apple, uh, you want to make sure that's your first listed category in your podcast host. All right, so, uh, that's. And if you are trying to get ranked, you want to list that first thing should be a subcategory, not a big category. So the big category is business. The subcategory is entrepreneurship. You want to list. In my, my opinion, my personal strategy is always list in subcategories, not big categories because it's kind of, it's a two for one. If you list your show and business entrepreneurship, you are getting both of those. And if you just listen business, that's just the big category. Uh, so that's where categories fit in. So I don't think that has a lot to do with organic discovery unless people are just searching rankings than it would. Uh, so for organic discovery, we still want to optimize, uh, for keywords in the big three. And we think about keywords that are being searched in Apple and Spotify specifically. So what are your ideal fit listeners searching on Apple and Spotify? And we want to optimize the name of your podcast, the podcast host description, and your episode titles. So, uh, in Rob's case here, softball is the key word. So we got to make sure that's in the name of the podcast. Ideally, first word, uh, the podcast host description, all the softball related terms, and then in the episode titles. Right? So that is how we still leverage that organic discovery, even if Apple, uh, and Spotify, uh, you know, don't have that category. Now the other thing about categories is that certain podcast player apps have different categories and then even different hosts have more or fewer categories. So, uh, depending on where you host, your niche topic may be a subcategory. Uh, and in certain players, especially in smaller players, they kind of tend to niche down a little bit more as far as what I've noticed. So anyway, uh, hopefully that wasn't too confusing of an answer. Uh, the long story, short summary, Rob, is just make sure you're good on the name of your podcast host description, episode titles with keywords, and you are maxing out organic discovery. Now we've got our next question from a pod pal, Kat. Let's see what Kat has to say. Hi, this is Kat York from Call Her Cat Podcast. My question for Adam is how can I create an effective, brief and entertaining intro and outro for my podcast that includes essential information about my guests and my show without it sounding scripted or redundant week to week? Cat, great question. I love this topic because I think that the intro and outro question and getting strategic around the intro and outro of our podcast, there's a lot of room for experimentation optimization there because those are the most skippable parts of every podcast. Think about your own podcast listening experience as the user. Like, my skip finger is strong. You know that 15 second forward, you know, 32nd forward. If I hear that same song and dance, I'm going skip, skip, skip to my Lou until the good stuff starts. All right, Getting through, uh, the five minutes of Joe Rogan ads or whatever, whatever happens at the beginning of most podcasts, 39 different calls to action. So how do we get around that? How do we get around those most skippable moments? So I think the first thing that we should all do, and some, some of y', all, it's going to rub you the wrong way. I think you need to get rid of the canned song and dance. Like we are putting too much into, we're giving too much worth to that like, branding strategy of it's got to have this highly produced sound at the beginning, the song. And a lot of you are like paying people to do a song and, and have, you know, an intro jingle and all this stuff and people are just skipping it. People are Just skipping it. Uh, so. Or maybe they listen to it once and then they're skipping it. So I think we need to get rid of that. Like, let's disrupt that pattern. Do something a little bit different. Now, if you are going to have a can, song and dance, 15 seconds or less, it's gotta be less than that 15 second skip button. So hustle it up, do the thing, say the thing, welcome the people. Uh, so if you're gonna do it, I would make it 15 seconds or less if it's a canned song and dance intro. Now, something that's working. I know Kat does a lot of interview episodes is that spicy clip intro. So the first thing they hear is something a little spicy, A, uh, hot take. And again, it's definitely less than 60 seconds. And then you get right into the episode. So maybe it looks like this. If you're doing interview episodes, you have that, that 60 second or less spicy, hot clip intro into the 15 second or less song, song and dance that welcomes them to the show. And then the episode starts. That's something that I would look at doing. Now, if you're solo episodes, get right into it. I would do a live open and close. I know that freaks some of you out. Have a few little, little basic notes. I got my, my little live intro that I read, which is like two lines. I always have my two lines, so I can just kind of spit it out correctly depending on how much caffeine I've had. Sometimes, you know, it ends up, uh, I go rogue a little bit there. But I hear from you all, I hear this from you all specifically. Adam. I appreciate that you just get into it, and I don't have to work my skip finger too hard. I don't want that skip finger cramping up on my show. All right, I want you to sit down, sit back, listen to it. Enjoy the entire audio experience. Uh, obviously earlier in this episode, we did talk about leveraging the, uh, the testimonials in the beginning pattern disrupts in the intro and outro work. Well, another outro technique that I like a lot that, uh, I'll have at the end of this episode is if you listen all the way through, you got a little surprise because you're going to get a, another audience clip where somebody recommended one of their favorite episodes. I love doing that as well. I don't always do that, but I'm spicing it up. I'm keeping you all on your toes. You got to listen to that full thing. You never know what little Easter egg Golden nuggets, uh, are out there in the audio in podcasting business school. So, uh, I like doing things differently. How do we improve the user experience and do a little bit of a pattern disrupt? So those are just a few thoughts. If, you know, bare minimum, I like the idea of just ditching the song and dance. Get right into it, do a live read, open and close. And uh, you'll get better and better and better. And don't feel like you have to be so produced and polished and have these taglines and all this stuff. Just your content. Your audience will appreciate your content if it delivers value. Period, end of story. So hopefully that helps. Kat, we got one more question here. Uh, we got a question from Dawn.

Speaker A: Hi, this is dawn from Unleash youh Freedom. Here's my question for Adam. Why do most people fail to get responses from high level people? And what do the ones who succeed do differently?

Speaker C: Thank you.

Speaker B: All right, Don, thanks for submitting your question. I'm going to make an assumption here. I'm assuming we're talking about how to get high level or like large audience type of guests for your show. I think that's what you meant. So that's how I'm going to answer this one. So how do we get high level, large audience, fancy and famous people guests on our show? Uh, so if you've got an interview based show, this is a, ah, strategy. Well, first things first, if this is an attempt to grow your audience, you gotta know that this, um, probably isn't gonna grow your audience as much as you think. I just have to kind of put that asterisk in there. A lot of people get into podcasts and they go, oh, I'm gonna interview big people with big audiences. They will share it out, I will scoop up their audience, I will grow my show. And these people aren't coming on your show for the most part, uh, to help you grow your audience, they are wanting to scoop up your audience and make it a part of their show. So that's just got to put that asterisk out there to keep it real. All right, so let's say we want to get these people with larger audiences, uh, onto our show. High, ah, level guests, fancy, famous people, how do we get them on our show? Let me tell you what has worked for me in the past. Uh, and I'll use some examples from my health podcast and from podcasting business school. But there's uh, a couple things that have worked a lot better than reaching out via email. Uh, the email for famous authors, you know, Ders, what are comedians? Whatever. These, these people with large audiences, their emails usually got a gatekeeper that it's really, really hard to get through. So, um, if you are going to reach out via email, make sure in the email title it is very obvious that you are asking them to be on your podcast, that you aren't trying to sell them something. You don't want to be on their podcast. It's like invite to blah blah blah podcast, invite to be a guest on blah blah blah, the name of your podcast. That's probably what I would title the email. You could blast that out there and don't expect them to reply. What has happened for me, what's produced results is I try to figure out the guest their, their most active social media platform. Because a lot of times these people won't give up full control to somebody else. They won't completely, uh, delegate their most active social media platform. They will delegate some of them, but if one is definitely seems to be their baby and their favorite one, they will be in the DMs. So we're going to figure out what that social media platform is and we're going to reach out via social media. If that social media has a voice dm, uh option, I would use that. And we want to reach out when they're actively or getting ready to be actively selling or promoting something. A couple of examples that this worked out with two, uh, of my favorite authors, Michael Hyatt and Gretchen Rubin. They both been on the show. Um, like these are people that have very large audiences, they have big podcasts, several books. Uh, you know, they're, they're big, they're big time people in the, in my niche. So I did exactly the strategy. I just unpacked with both of them. Both of them are very active on Instagram. I kind of made a play like, okay, I think that they're probably at least checking their DMs. So I sent a voice DM. That voice DM on Instagram is uh, interesting because they don't know what's on the other side of that. That could be somebody wanting to hire them. That could be somebody wanting to give them money. So instead of like a text dm, um, a voice dm, um, uh, that's, that's what I've used before. And it allows me to be a real human and, and convey how excited I would be at the prospect of having them on my show and just be a real person. All right, so I reached out to both of them. They're both getting ready to promote new books. So the timing was right. I go, hey, I know your new book's coming out. I would love to have you on my show to promote this. I've read all your books. I'm so excited about it. I know you're super busy, but I think this would be a real quality, uh, use of your time. Because my audience, I'll give them a few things about who they're gonna be talking to. My audience of entrepreneurs, podcasters, whatever, and leave it at that. And then we sit back and we don't be, like, super pushy, uh, about it and let it sit back. And I think Michael Hyatt got back to me almost immediately, like, that dude is a good dude. I mean, Gretchen Ruben is also a really great person. Michael Hyatt, like, kind of blew me away a little bit. I'm like, this, this guy I know he's got a big team. And, uh, anyway, so that really impressed me. And then Gretchen Rubin, uh, followed up within a couple of weeks. I just kind of sat back and took it easy. And I'm not going to just hammer these people, uh, now. So that's worked for me a few times. I don't think enough of us that are, that are doing guests that are looking for this level of guests are utilizing the strategy. We just have to, we have to make our ask on their timeline, not on ours. We can't go, oh, I want this person. I'm going to email them every week until they say yes. We have to really think, like, when are they more likely to be out there promoting? All right, uh, like, I just picked up a new client. This is just an example in the health space. He's a pretty famous doctor as the show has 20 million plus downloads on his health podcast. And he's just so busy, he doesn't even go on other podcasts until, uh, he is actively promoting a book or a new program, and then he kind of does them all. So that's just an example of me kind of being behind the scenes going, okay, these people are really busy. They got a lot of irons in the fire. They have large teams. They're doing a lot of things. Many of these larger people are not, uh, just podcast focus. Their media empire is really, really big. So if we can find that sweet spot of they're ready to, to be in that promotion window. And you got to be plugged in enough to the world to know when that is, that's the sweet spot. That's when we strike, when the iron is hot. Uh, so I would try like, okay, we got wind. A book is coming out. They're probably going to go on a promotional tour. Let's DM them. If they don't get back to me, I would probably reach out again, like right before when the book goes live or the first week. Um, because they're gonna be in heavy, heavy promotion mode. I'd reach out again and then I've kind of just. I'd give it a couple, a couple of shots there and then maybe send an email as well. So that's the strategy, Don. I hope that that has helped you out. Okay, so those are the four questions. Uh, I've got, uh, I think about five or six more in the queue. We'll do another one of these in a couple weeks. But I would love, love, love my only ask today, my only call to action. I would love to get a few more of these questions from you all. So if you want to talk about podcast launch stuff, podcast monetization stuff, uh, you know, any of the questions, I don't normally cover that you're like, I was always wondering what you would say to this question. Fire away. All right, uh, I've got the link. It's a speak pipe link in the episode notes. All right, you can go in there. There's a little script just to like, help you make sure this isn't like a five minute thing. I needed, honestly, I needed to be about 60 seconds or less, 90 seconds max. But 60 seconds or less would be great. And just hit the. Even if you're just on your phone, I'll try to clean up the audio. I'm not going to stress out about like, you got to be on your professional mic and all this stuff. Uh, I just want the question because it's going to help me create really good, really specific content that's going to help my audience and that's what these episodes are all about. And, uh, make sure you stay tuned to the end here. Like I mentioned earlier, uh, I'm adding little clips of fellow, uh, listeners and their, their favorite episode of the show. So you're going to get an episode recommendation from a fellow listener here as soon as I'm done talking in the outro. And that might be the next episode that you want to check out. So with, uh, that pod pals, I'm going to send you out into the world wishing you health, happiness and many downloads. I will see you on the next episode.

Speaker A: Hi, this is Kim Stewart, host of the book Marketing Mania Podcast and one of my favorite episodes of podcasting. Business is episode 591, how to make sales. If you hate selling. Oh, Adam spoke directly to my heart because I've always hated selling and I was so encouraged with the tips he shared on that episode especially. So thanks, Adam. I really appreciate all you do for your listeners like me.