632: 3 Podcast growth experiments you should try.

Speaker A: Hey there. I am Stephanie Shaw, host of hello Hot Flash. And the one thing I love about Adam is his transparency. He is never shy about sharing his knowledge as it relates to podcasting and the business of podcasting. Not because I'm a high profile client, but because that's his heart. In under 30 days, my downloads have doubled and I finally have a strategy for monetization. Thank you, Adam.

Speaker B: What's up, pod pals? It's your buddy, Adam and you are listening to Podcasting Business School. It's the show where I teach podcasters simple strategies to help you grow your audience and turn your podcast content into new clients. And today we're going to discuss three simple podcast growth experiments you should try. I'm talking about these are three things that you can do as soon as you're done listening to this episode. And I bet you if you, especially if you aren't doing any of these three yet, I bet that you see a noticeable difference within one week. Within one calendar week. So that's my big promise of this episode. Ah, so first, a quick school community update. Because I'm pumped. I'm recording this on Tuesday, July 14th. We just crossed 200 community members in two weeks inside of school. I'm thrilled with that. I'm having a blast in there. And today we are doing something, uh, that you can participate in, especially if the topic of the episode today kind of resonates with some podcast growth hacks. I'm doing a three day challenge on podcast SEO. Specifically, I tried a brand new experiment that we're not going to have time to get into today because I got to unpack it. I'm going to unpack it for three days today, tomorrow and the 30th. So July 28th through the 30th free challenge. I'm unpacking the experiment that helped me produce multiple consecutive 1000 plus download days, uh, including one of my all time best download days in a long time. Uh, 3,800 plus downloads in one single day. So I hit a little vein, a little podcast growth, uh, experiment that worked really, really well. And I'm m going to completely unpack it over three days. It's in the free tier of my community so everybody can participate. I'm going to post a, uh, video and you can apply what I teach in the video and comment below and we'll teach and compare ideas and it's going to be really good. So that's going on, uh, the next three days starting today. Uh, as you listen to this, it's the first video is probably up, ready for you, fresh out of the oven, ready to go. So I would love to have you inside, uh, that community. If you haven't joined yet, if you are in the community, go to the dang discussion board and find that first video and start implementing. Uh, and these are things that are above and beyond what we talk about today. Uh, also, just to kind of finish this point, I'm gonna keep shouting out community members today. I'm gonna shout out, uh, three people that are at the top of my community engagement leader board. So one of the things I like about school is that they give points for people that engage in the community. And I've got my top three over the last seven days. I wanna shout out Kat from the Recovery, the Recovery Catalyst podcast. Kat from the Recovery Catalyst podcast. I want to shout out Alisa from Ask Elisa Dating and relationship Stories and Advice. And a shout out my pod pal, Shar from Starting over your new chapter. Check those shows out and support my friends from inside the community. Uh, the link will be in the show notes. If you guys want to join that free challenge, join the community. Uh, here, starting today, just hit that link in the show notes. All right, I've got three experiments that are going to drastically help you grow your audience. And again, these are three things that I bet, I bet you could knock this out within 20 minutes of you finishing listening this episode. I bet that you can, you know, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 20 minutes. You got this. All right, experiment number one. I want you to go back and look through all of your previous episodes and make sure there is at least one keyword in your old podcast episode titles. All of them. Now, for somebody like me, I've got 630 plus episodes. That will take a while, but still worth it. Uh, if you're in your first year or so of podcasting, this is going to be a real quick fix. And this is important because the podcast episode name has the third most SEO power. All right, so we have to make sure that there are searchable keywords within the name. When we name an episode, we want to have two things that we accomplish. Number one, we want it to be attractive enough that somebody goes, hmm, hm. I wanna listen to that. Number two is we wanna have some SEO power and make sure that there is at least one keyword in there that somebody is searching that keyword on Google, Spotify, uh, Apple podcasts that, you know, our content will. You know, YouTube, uh, our content will pop up. All right, so, uh, this is a real quick fix now When I tell my clients to do this, one thing they're worried about is, will this mess up the order of my episodes? Will it start bouncing episodes around as, like, new content? New, fresh content? No. Uh, everything will stay in the same exact order. You're just updating. So you go in your. Inside your podcast host, go back to one of the episodes and just update the titles. I've had clients do this, and they're like, whoa, these old, you know, 100 plus episodes ago are all getting fresh listens, because I just updated a keyword in every single episode. All right, so this is a very simple, very quick, for the most part, hack. But, you know, what we don't want to do is keyword stuff. You don't want to put keywords in there that if you don't talk about that topic in the episode. So you have to kind of think, look at your notes and go, okay, what was this about? And instead of just having a creative name, so let's say I did an episode about my newsletter strategy. I can't have a name like my secret weapon for success. All right, that's intriguing, but zero keywords. Uh, so I could say how my podcast newsletter became my secret weapon for client acquisition or something like that. So we've got the word podcast, the word newsletter, client acquisition. So some searchable terms are in there. This really makes a difference. All right, so, you know, go back to some, especially some of those earlier episodes when you had no idea what you're doing. This is before you were listening to Podcasting Business School. You were an unexperienced podcaster, and you had a show named the Mr. Cutie Pie Pants show with no SEO in the name. You didn't understand all these things I'm always getting preachy about. So go back to those early ones, and maybe this is something you do a little bit at a time. If you've got hundreds of episodes, maybe you update like 10 a week. You go back, think through it, start episode one through ten. Okay, how do I get keywords in this? Update them all. And it kind of goes in a way, so it doesn't have to be an all at once thing, but definitely work through your back catalog and make sure there's at least one keyword in every single podcast episode title. That is experiment number one. Experiment number two, this has to do with your podcast art. All right, I want you to look at your podcast art. And you guys know, if you listen to my show, what's the. What's the biggest rule for my. For Podcast art, in my opinion, is that the. The text, the words need to be the star of the show, not a big, giant picture of your face. All right, now we can have both. You know, you guys can look at my beautiful new art. Look at that freshly updated, uh, again in the challenge that's happening inside of, uh, the podcasting business school community. I'm, um, gonna unpack exactly what I did with that art. But I'm gonna give you one little tip today. Uh, if you look at my show art, to me, the most important word on that image is the word podcasting. And what do you notice about it? It's in hot pink. It really stands out. You're not seeing any other word with that hot pink font. And you also notice that it goes all the way across the square. I made it as big as possible in thick, chunky, easy to read font. Okay, so I want you to identify one word. What is the most important word that if somebody is searching something, your show is in that list on the screen of, uh, 15 other shows based off of what they searched. What word do you want to make sure that that ideal fit listener sees? I want you to make it big, bold, and a different color than anywhere else on that screen on your art. Now, pro tip would be to make sure that this is what I call a keyword plus identifying term. This is a two for one special. So a, uh, keyword plus identifying term is a, a highly searched keyword, but also B, it is a term that your ideal listener uses to describe themselves. So the word podcasting is a representation of podcaster. Podcasters. Uh, so that represents a keyword plus identifying term. Another one would be like, real estate agents, personal trainers, dentists, um, social media marketers, people. That, uh, that's a, an identifying term. That. That's me. They see that word. Ooh, that's me. People see podcasting, they say, oh, I'm a podcaster. That's how I describe myself. Also a highly searched keyword for my niche. Okay, so. And, okay, another. Let's just bring this up. Let's. Let's, uh, talk about the, uh, elephant in the room here. If you don't have one of these in the name of your show, I would highly recommend a slight rebrand to make sure that you get one in. This is huge for growth and SEO. If, if you have a name of your. Of a show that does not have any keywords or especially a keyword plus identifying term, you're missing out in a huge way. And I also, I don't care if you already trademarked it, I don't care if it's your Instagram handle. I don't care if you wrote a book about it. I don't care if you have a book by the same course, uh, by the same name. Don't care if you want your podcast to grow, you have to optimize it as a podcast. And having some cute, cuddly, inside, jokey name for your show is a huge mistake in my opinion. Uh, I can for sure say that I would never have crossed 1 million downloads without this strategy. Right. So that is experiment number two, kind of. Level one is whatever word that you really want to make sure that your ideal fit audience members sees when they're scanning through, uh, the search screen on Apple or Spotify. We put that in a different color. Also, stay away from, like, italicized fonts for that word that's really hard to read. Is it really big, bold, different color, easy to read. And then if we can make that a keyword plus identifying term, bonus points. Okay, experiment number three. Uh, we are diving right in here. This is what I call a quick and dirty rebrand. You guys have heard me talk about, like, a title extension, where, you know. So let's say that with the previous experiment, you're like, I don't have a keyword plus identifying term. My. Let's say you have a, um, let's say that you have a health podcast, but you, you coach, like, personal trainers. And your show is called Monetizing Muscle. All right? That doesn't have any keywords in it, just FYI. Monetizing muscle. Nobody just puts the word muscle in there, especially if they're searching for your, uh, you know, if they're a personal trainer looking for somebody to help them grow their business, they're not going to put that in there. So a title extension would be Monetizing Muscle. Uh, business tips for Personal Trainers. That would be a title extension. But, uh, we also know if you have listened, especially if you listened to, like, episode 608 of this podcast, a, uh, little, little pro tip there, I really dive into the first word keyword important. So the name of your show, the very first word, carries the most SEO power. All right, so in Monetizing Muscle, the first word is monetizing, and that's not. It might be a keyword, but it's not a strong one. Uh, I would not roll with that as my number one keyword. So, uh, with a quick and dirty Rebrand strategy, all you do is you go inside your podcast host. So I host Inside of Libsyn. I've been with Libsyn for 10 years. Uh, the three hosts that I really like a lot that I recommend would be Libsyn, Buzzsprout, Captivate, FM M. They're both doing great. Very sturdy, fair pricing, great customer service, great quality of everything. So, uh, shout out to those three companies doing it right. Um, so you go into your host service where you, like, list the name of your show. So my show is called Podcasting Business School. Like, where I type that in, like, this is the name of my podcast. There's always a section inside your host, and you create your title extension, but you flip the position of the title extension and the name of the show so this they are reversed. All right, so the. In our first example, Business Tips, Business Growth Tips for Personal Trainers. Colon Monetizing muscle. Now, the first word is business. Business Growth Tips for Personal Trainers. That's a much more effective keyword. Uh, let me give you a real life example. I just thought that one up off the top of my head. Let me give you a real life example and the actual real life results of how this impacted one of my clients. So shout out to, uh, Ms. Lorianne Murbito. Uh, she came to me with a show named Be in Demand. Be In Demand. No keywords. There's no keywords. There's no identifying terms that are keywords in there. And when I talk about keywords, you have to think about the name of your show and look at each word individually and go, is anybody searching this? Anybody searching this specific word? So in her old show name, B. Be N Demand. Is anybody searching B? No. Is anybody searching N? No. Is anybody searching Demand? No. All right, I might get a little push back on Demand, but who just puts demand into Spotify or Apple? I. I would say zero. So we added a title extension that was Public Speaking tips for whatever. And I think at this point, she had 200 plus episodes. This wasn't like a brand new show. And she added public speaking tips for, uh, professional solopreneurs, whatever it was. She had another word in there, and I can't recall exactly what it is, but her show's about public speaking, getting on stages, being an in demand public speaker. So now she has public speaking tips in there, which is a great little phrase for SEO. And we rolled with that, uh, as just a title extension. And that worked well. But then I go, hey, Lorianne, let's try something right now. The first word in the name of your show is B. B. That's a waste of that first word keyword superpower. Let's do an experiment. And I, uh, and this is where I invented the quick and dirty rebrand. I said log into your host and just flip flop the title extension and the name as the listed name. So it became public speaking tips for whatever colon be in demand. And when she did this, she reported back in a week later. She was freaking out. I was freaking out because again, over 200 plus episodes at this point, not a young spring, uh, chicken podcast. This is an established show. Over the next seven days, she had four times more downloads than she had ever had in a seven day period ever. Just because of this simple little flip flop. She didn't. I, uh, call it the quick and dirty rebrand because you don't have to make an announcement about this. You don't have to tell anybody. You don't have to change your podcast art, you know. You know, she always, she still calls it be in demand. Like when she announces the show. Welcome to be in demand. Nothing else changed at all other than that we flip flop the title extension and the name of the show as the listed name. So now public speaking, we moved a keyword into the front as the very first word. Now this will not do anything for you. If you do a, uh, quick and dirty rebrand and you don't move a keyword to that first position, it's not going to help. So only do this if that thing that you're moving into the very first position as the first word in the show is an actual keyword. So for her public speaking. Yes. Home run. Okay, so that's something that we're going to work on that a little bit in the three day challenge over the, the next three days inside of the school community. Uh, because the big question for most of you will be, well, what keyword? What are my keywords? How do I figure these out? Which, which ones, uh, are, are the most important. And honestly, before you guys go to race to AI, I feel like chat GPT does not do a good job of podcasting keywords because they are more about like Google or YouTube or like website SEO. Website SEO and Google SEO and YouTube SEO is way different than audio podcast, Apple Spotify SEO way different. All right, so that's what I am excellent at. That's what we're gonna get hands on with over the next three days inside of the community. And y' all like, this isn't one of those communities where like the, the leader person isn't around. I'm in there. I'm obsessed with this, I'll just say it. I'm obsessed. I'm in there all the time. Uh, even in my off days, I've been a very bad, free, uh, day taker because I'm in that group and I'm, like, responding and I'm posing questions, I'm posting extra articles, and I freaking love it. I love it in there. I love the energy. I love how active it is and how much progress people are already making. So, um, if these are three experiments that you're going to try, especially that last one with the quick and dirty rebrand, I would absolutely love to have you in there. It's free. This whole challenge, this three day challenge we're doing for the next three days is on the, the free tier. We do have a premium and VIP tier that we can upgrade into. And, uh, right now the premium tier is only nine bucks a month. So, you know, buy me a Starbucks coffee every month and you get access to weekly trainings, and that's gonna be going up. My goal, August 26th, I'm gonna move that up to $19 per month. By the end of the year, it'll be $70 per month. But if you lock in at $9, you are locked in, you are grandfathered in, and that will not raise for you. Uh, anyway, very excited about seeing, uh, what we can produce over the next three days inside the community. We'd love to have you join us. The link is in the episode notes and, uh, pod pals. I appreciate you. I'm gonna send you out in the world. Wishing you health, happiness, and many downloads. I will see you on the next episode.