Podcraft | How To Run A Great Podcast

In this episode of Podcraft, Matthew and Colin talk about podcasting and parenting. They discuss the joys of being a new dad, from early morning buggy walks, to "having a good moan" about one's kids. Brought to you by Alitu: The Podcast Maker and The Podcast Host PlannerParents always think they’re organized and resilient. The same's true for podcasters. Kids are unpredictable, and podcasting can be the same way. The key takeaway from this discussion about podcasting and parenting is to be honest with your audience. Colin recommends that new parents who make podcasts should plan ahead, but stay flexible, and be kind to themselves during this time. They discussed episode release schedules, such as podcasting in seasons, as opposed to publishing episodes at random intervals. Colin recommends lining up some episodes in advance of your child's arrival, then publishing each over time. For parents who can't leave their child unattended, don't try to multi-task. It's better to do one thing well, instead of multitask

Podcasting news has been hard to keep up with this past year or so. Each week seems to bring a new development in the Apple Vs Spotify saga, a new "must use" tool or platform on the market, or a company buying another company for multiple zillions. In this episode, we have a chat about what all of this actually means for the average podcaster. It can be hard to keep up with all of this stuff, after all. You can start to think that if you're not totally on the ball with all of this, your podcast is going to vanish into the ether whilst everyone else moves on without you. But the same principles apply in podcasting as they did 15 years ago. Know why you're doing it, know who you want to reach, and show up on a consistent basis for your listeners. Resources MentionedAlitu - The Podcast MakerHow to Sell Podcast EpisodesHow to Create a Private Podcast FeedPodcast Industry StatsPodland PodcastDeep Questions PodcastSupport the show

Check out the full book - Podcast Growth: How to Grow Your Podcast Audience Audiograms combine images, text, and audio to create a social media post. they are as memorable and attention-grabbing as video, without being as time-consuming or data-heavy. WNYC created an open-source code to accomplish this means of podcast promotion, and there are other options available to you now, too. Type: Short TaskTime Required: One hourPodcast Level: From the beginning The open-source code that WNYC created was intended to be a free resource for podcasters to use to promote their work. It’s great, but it can be confusing for people who don’t know how to code. Fortunately, Headliner has created an app which guides you through the process. The free version lets you make a certain number of audiograms per month. Depending on the social media platform for which you intend to make your audiogram, the size constraints vary. However, you can use the same content with different aspect ratios or time limits for different platforms.

Check out the full book - Podcast Growth: How to Grow Your Podcast Audience Overcast is one of the most popular podcast listening apps in the world today. And with good reason – it's a superb app, packed with useful features.Overcast is built for podcast listeners. But, they also provide the tools for podcasters to advertise their shows in the app. These ads appear as unobtrusive little banners, which the app’s users see at the bottom of their screen. On these banner ads, you’ll see a podcast’s name, cover art, and a little snippet description tempting the listener to click it. With Overcast ads, 100% of the folks that you reach are podcast listeners. That's why they're looking at Overcast when they see your ad. They're likely either listening to a podcast, or about to hit play on one.This means they're literally one click away from browsing your podcast inside their chosen listening app. And one more click away from hitting Play or Subscribe.There's no education needed here. There's no “what is a podcast?”,

Check out the full book - Podcast Growth: How to Grow Your Podcast Audience When you’ve published a decent amount of episodes, you might consider re-writing your scripts and notes from each one into an ebook. You can give this away as an incentive to people who contribute to you through a fundraising campaign, or as a reward for signing up for your mailing list. You can even publish it and offer it for sale through Amazon’s self-publishing channels.  It’s a good way to encapsulate your information, while also rewarding your audience for their commitment. Type: Big StrategyTime Required: One month to plan, compile, re-write, and publishPodcast Level: At least ten episodesSo, you have a basic script of talking points for each episode (or, better yet, you have transcripts). You have your show notes, and you also have any blog posts or visual aids. You also have an audience that’s interested in your show’s topic. For each episode, put together any notes or talking points you used, your transcript if you have one,

Check out the full book - Podcast Growth: How to Grow Your Podcast Audience Podcast-themed beer mats or coasters! This is a “helpful” way of distributing your podcast logo or branding around pubs and bars in your area. A little cardboard coaster is a useful thing in these places. They help keep the table dry, and some folks even collect them. If your design is intriguing enough, a person resting their glass on one may pull out their phone and subscribe to your podcast there and then. Type: Ongoing taskTime Required: One month from design through to creation and delivery. Ongoing strategy to distribute. Podcast Level: At any timeThe starting point is your coaster design. What are you going to put on there to catch people’s eye? Your podcast logo can be a good choice here, just like with stickers or magnets. But, unlike those, you have a bit more time with the person looking at your coaster. They’re also up close to it, so it doesn’t need to work in an at-a-glance sort of way.  I actually recommend getting your

Check out the full book - Podcast Growth: How to Grow Your Podcast Audience Despite the many hundreds of ways listeners can consume podcasts these days, Apple Podcasts/iTunes is still comfortably the biggest platform in the world. Over 60% of podcast listening happens there. We know from our own data that when listeners want to find new content to listen to, around 40% of them take to searching their podcast listening app first. Looking at those two stats, it isn’t hard to conclude that if you were listed by Apple as a “featured” podcast, you’d likely pick up a few new listeners.  In fact, we know this ourselves first hand. In August 2017, one of our shows – Hostile Worlds – was featured on the front page of iTunes and Apple Podcasts. We’ll link to the article where we break down our listening numbers from that period in the Further Reading section. Type: Big taskTime Required: Months of planning - 10 minutes to submit your podcastPodcast Level: 4 episodes or moreHow to Do ItIt’s important to stress that ther

Check out the full book - Podcast Growth: How to Grow Your Podcast Audience Nope, it’s not a new breakfast cereal. It’s a journalism and/or marketing strategy. The name comes from vox populi, or voice of the people. It’s a way of sketching out public opinion at a particular place and time. By asking a lot of different people the same question, you can get a lot of perspective on a bit of truth. This is also often used for comic effect by Jimmy Kimmel, and parodied by A Bit of Fry and Laurie. If you watch television, you have seen vox pops. Type: Short TaskTime Required: A hour to record, an hour to editPodcast Level: 5-10 episodesHow to Do ItCome up with a good episode topic, and one or maybe two related questions.  Put together a remote recording rig which you can carry easily, such as a hand-held digital recorder and a pair of headphones. Go to a place with good foot traffic, but not so crowded that you’ll have to shout to be heard. Think about places where your podcast topic would be relevant. If your podc

Check out the full book - Podcast Growth: How to Grow Your Podcast Audience A montage episode is a piece of audio content, made up of clips from different contributors.A tried and tested way of creating one is to build the episode around a single topic or question. Each participant records their answer to the question, and sends over their audio to the creator.You can collect clips from anyone from the general public, to your podcast listeners. In this particular instance, we want to create one with fellow podcasters in our niche. Type: Big StrategyTime Required: Around 3 months, from planning to publishing Podcast Level: About 10 episodes, or at the end of a seasonFirstly, you need to decide on a topic for your episode. Choose something that’s going to be interesting and useful to the audiences of all involved. Some examples of montage episodes could includeAn episode of a travel podcast, where contributors talk about their favourite holiday destinationAn episode of a sound design podcast, where contributors

Check out the full book - Podcast Growth: How to Grow Your Podcast AudienceThis is where your love of your podcast’s topic will take the wheel. Let’s say you have a podcast about thrift (charity) shops. So you join a group on Facebook dedicated to unusual thrift shops. People post pictures and talk about great shops they’ve found, unusual things they’ve seen or bought in thrift shops, and so on. If you come in on day one saying “Hello everyone, I have a podcast about thrift shops and you all should listen to it,” you’ll just alienate people. What you owe it to yourself to do is read, watch, and see what the content and dynamic of the group are. How compatible are their discussions with your podcast? What are the big concerns? Are they talking about Goodwill vs. Salvation Army, or the prevalence of costume jewellery? You might find shop owners to interview, or topics to discuss on your podcast. When you feel comfortable, and you’ve added some value to the group, then mention that you have a podcast. Task List:

Check out the full book - Podcast Growth: How to Grow Your Podcast AudienceQuestions are great. More and more, users are typing full questions into Google, rather than single words or phrases. Google can see this, and loves it when you answer them directly. If it’s obvious what you’re answering, they’ll direct ever more users to your answers. On top of that, when you think in questions, you tend to solve a real problem. Solve someone’s problem and they’ll be a loyal listener for life! That’s what powers real audience growth. So, where do we find these questions?“Answer the Public” is a great resource for this. It’s a website which is similar, in a way, to the keyword tool discussed earlier, but it’s designed to surface every possible question around a keyword or keyphrase. Type in your keyword - eg. podcasting - and you’ll see a huge list of questions. You’ll see them grouped by type - why? what? Who? - and you can refine it along the way. Wait till you see the questions that you never even considered!Next, l

Check out the full book - Podcast Growth: How to Grow Your Podcast AudienceAdmit it: you can always use the support of your colleagues. Whether other people who make podcasts have more experience, less experience, or different kinds of experience, there’s always inspiration and strength that comes from being involved with other podcasters. Creating a local group takes some work, and a long period of time, but in the end, you can build community, grow your show, and help others. Type: Regular techniqueTime Required: Put an hour a week into promoting it and an hour for each meeting. Podcast Level: 10 episodes, or when your workflow is established and comfortableYou probably participate in an online community of podcasters already. If you don’t, you certainly can. You can also survey your audience to find out where your listeners are, and what percentage of them are podcasters themselves.  Find a local coffee shop, pub, or community centre that will let a few people sit around and chat over a beverage for a whil

Your current listeners are the best PR team to increase audience growth. Get to know your current listeners. They'll tell their friends about your podcast. Find out what their interests and habits are. Get them to tell you what they want your podcast to do. This way, you can fine-tune your podcast to increase your audience and reach more listeners.I'm not suggesting you take each individual listener out for a chat over a cup of coffee (though that would be very nice of you). The best way to get the information about your audience that you need, is with a short and carefully crafted podcast survey.Podcast Survey Tools For GrowthI like a free tool as much as the next podcaster, so let's start with a couple of them. And I'll include one paid option if you want to really ramp up your data gathering.Google Forms has a gallery of templates which you can use to create a standard type of form. It's easy to use, and everyone knows the brand, so it's pretty low-barrier. The look is, for me, a bit dated, but it's totall

We're delighted to announce our latest book. It's called Podcast Growth: How to Grow Your Podcast AudienceTo celebrate, we're making season 13 of Podcraft all about podcast promotion and growth. We'll be going through the book, chapter by chapter, and picking out a single task to focus each episode around. On this episode, we're pulling from the first chapter - Enabling Your Existing Audience - and the task in question is around Calls to Action. Calls to Action (CTAs) are low-hanging fruit that many podcasters miss a huge opportunity with. There are some key questions to ask yourself when thinking about your CTAs. Questions like how does your CTA uniquely engage your listeners? And what do you want your listener to do? A specific, memorable Call to Action engages your audience and drives them in the direction you want. You should also make it easy for them to do it. If you’re sending them to a particular web page, use a shortlink to get them there. If you want them to talk about your show on social media, inv

Now that we’ve covered the stacking process, in the episode, I want to cover some extra resources that’ll help you. That includes equipment, software, and much more. I also want to give you some next steps, so you can get started on this right away. By the end of this episode you’ll be fully armed to start building your own stack!Support the show

Now you know how to create a content stack, getting so much more from every piece of content you create. Next, we’re going to amplify that through the wonder of seasons. Not just a tool for fiction or documentaries, seasons can work for everyone. They make it easier for you, and more effective for your audience. That combination leads to quicker growth, bigger reach and even more fans. Before we jump in, I just want to say thanks to Memberful for support this episode. They make membership sites really really easy, and they just launched private podcasting too - so you can do private website content, private newsletter AND a private podcast now, for all your members. Pop over to memberful.com to read more about it.Support the show

Last week, we covered the content stack, and how it works. This week, we’ll get right into how to create it, from start to finish. If you don't have the time to create great quality blogs, videos and Podcasts, then I’ll show you how through smart repurposing. This isn’t just plain cutting and paste. Instead, I'll show you a way of creating and repurposing which takes advantages of the direct strengths of each. Not only that, but every element links and builds, so that you build engagement and trust with every episode. Before we jump in, I just want to say thanks to Memberful for support this episode. They make membership sites really really easy, and they just launched private podcasting too - so you can do private website content, private newsletter AND a private podcast now, for all your members. Pop over to memberful.com to read more about it. Support the show

Hey folks, Colin here from thePodcastHost.com and bringing you a special short series on podcraft, starting today and continuing another 3 weeks. The aim of the series is to cover something I call the content stack. This is a concept around creating much more content, much more easily. Specifically that means making planning super simple, and creating a podcast episode, a blog post and at least 1 video, all in one process - often in the same time it takes you right now to create your podcast, so you're getting tonnes more benefit out of the time you spend creating. So, I'm going to cover the whole process over the next 4 weeks - all actionable, showing you exactly how to do it. This was originally recorded for the brilliant Boagworld podcast - one of the first shows I ever subscribed to and still going strong, so when I mention Paul, that's who I'm talking about, over at Boagworld.com.  Before we jump in, I just want to say thanks to Memberful for supporting this episode. They make membership sites really, re

In this series on video conferencing for remote or big teams, we're looking at how best to setup, prepare for and run your online calls. On this episode, it's the final step: running the call! What's the etiquette, online? How does it differ from in-person meetings? That's what we explore here. We'll show you how to think about it differently, so that you get the most value from the time you spend with your team, and keep everyone engaged throughout. Support the show

In this series on video conferencing for remote or big teams, we're looking at how best to setup, prepare for and run your online calls. This episode is all about the preparation. What can you do, ahead of your online meeting, to make sure it runs smoothly? In some ways it's no different from an in-person meeting, but in others, there are some very specific things you can do in the online context. Let's find out what!Support the show