Podcast Workflows - Tips for podcasters to grow their podcast without wasting time.

Hello, hello and welcome to another three things in podcasting.

This is for June 28th, 2024.

And I'm really excited about the topics we're talking about today.

Little bit of news, a little bit of good advice, a little bit of a really good article that I want to share.

So let's dive into it.

The first thing I want to talk about today is creating content from your sawdust.

So what does this mean?

It means that when you create content, you are naturally going to have a bunch of things that are part of that content that may not make it to the main published thing, or maybe a part of the main published thing.

It's a lot like when you build a table or anything out of wood, you have the actual thing and then you have the sawdust and that sawdust can be turned into particle board or some other things that you can reuse the sawdust for.

And so that's what I'm talking about here today with creating content from your sawdust.

And I have a really good example of this from my friend Katie Mahalik.

I met Katie out at Podfest in Orlando in January and she has a podcast called True Stories Real People.

It's a yeah, or I'm sorry, it's called Shadow Clock.

True Stories Real People is like the tagline.

And so definitely check out Shadow Clock.

I will link to it in the description for this video/audio depending on where you watch it.

But what I love about this is that Katie interviewed her uncle and former NFL player Drew Mahalik and they have a full story.

She does like a deep dive story driven documentary style episode.

But while she's working on that, she is releasing these zoomed in moments, which is just a 10 minute or 11 minute segment from the full interview.

And I love this.

I mean, this like she sent this to me because she's like, look, this is like Philly sports and then New York sports and the Yankees.

And so like she knew that this like really ticked all my boxes.

And so she sent it to me, but I listened to it and it was amazing.

It was like a full story, a really interesting story.

And this may or may not make it into the final cut.

It may be parts of it in the final cut or takeaways in the final cut.

But this is just a really interesting story about how her uncle met Yogi Berra and Mickey Mantle while they were golfing.

And so really good story, really interesting episode, 10 minutes.

She took her sawdust and turned it into actual content, which I'm now sharing because I think it's great.

And yeah, Mickey Mantle and I share a birthday.

But I think this is so smart.

And so what I would challenge you to do is look at the content you're creating and see what kind of sawdust you're creating from that content.

And yeah, like this could be clips like short form video clips.

But for Katie, she actually got a podcast episode out of her podcast episode, if that makes sense.

And I think that's great.

It's a fantastic way to remain consistent and put out content while she's working on her next big piece.

And I would challenge you to do the same thing.

I tried to do something back when the Streamlined Solopreneur was called How I Built It called How I Built Bits, where I would pull out my favorite moments from certain interviews and just release that.

Now that was a lot of extra work for me because I thought of it 300 episodes in and didn't do a very good job of keeping track of that stuff.

But if I were to do it today, and especially like with the advent of AI, it might be something I'd consider.

She added a little intro to it.

She added the story, and she added a little outro.

And it for sure got me to subscribe, which is fantastic.

So I would strongly recommend that.

Again, I will link this and all the things that we talk about in the description for this episode.

OK, so moving on to something less exciting or maybe more exciting.

This is an important conversation to have.

The New York Times-- well, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that the New York Times plans to move podcasts behind a paywall.

So let's look at this article.

Publisher plans to cap number of free episodes of The Daily as it moves more podcast content behind a paywall.

So the big takeaways here-- they're exploring making only the three most recent episodes of The Daily available to non-subscribers, making new episodes of serial exclusive to subscribers for an initial period.

And the plans are still evolving and might change.

And I'm going to be honest here.

I think this is a great idea.

I think this is a great idea for The New York Times.

They are investing a lot of money into their podcasts, and they need to see a return on investment because if we want to see them and other big outlets create more podcasts and invest more in podcasting, then they need to have a reason to.

They're not just looking to burn money here for the love of the game.

And so I think this is really-- this is smart.

The Daily is a daily news podcast.

So keeping the most recent three episodes is pretty generous.

Maybe you fall behind and you want to listen.

But if you want to binge the last 20, then that feels really good for a subscriber perk.

And then serial-- early access.

I mean, that's just like a tale as old as time, right?

Really smart for them to do that.

Podcasts have proven to be popular among listeners.

That's a weird thing to say.

And offer news organizations to expand their reach.

This makes a lot of sense.

Gradually move more shows behind a paywall, eventually tying most, if not all, to a subscription service.

Again, I think that this is very smart.

This is certainly smarter than, I think, Spotify's gambit of making their biggest podcasts exclusive to their platform.

Because the Daily, one of the top podcasts on Spotify and Apple, will still be everywhere.

But it is a thing to drive more people to the New York Times, specifically.

And serial, for the people who are really into serial, who are going to want early access episodes, this is smart.

Because again, it'll eventually be released to the public.

I'm sure it'll be sponsored.

And so I think it's a really smart move for them.

What's your takeaway here?

I think if you're podcasting and you're trying to find unique ways to offer extra benefits or make money with your podcast, consider something like this.

You need a bigger following for something like that.

But I know something that Andrew Warner did with Mixergy for a while was he'd have a $300 a year membership where his podcast guest in the free episode would then do a workshop for members.

So is that something that you could do where you can leverage your podcast for monetization with a smaller audience?

Because New York Times is a pretty expensive subscription as far as digital subscriptions go.

But you're probably not going to make ends meet if you have a small audience with $10 per month.

I mean, I certainly don't.

But if you could get, I don't know, 40 people or 30 people paying $200 a year, that's a nice chunk of change.

So I would consider that as well.

But again, I think this is really smart for New York Times.

They might catch some flack for people who like having free access to stuff, but I understand it and I think it makes sense.

There was a Bad Blood podcast, right, from Elizabeth-- oh my gosh, I'm forgetting her name-- from Theranos.

But I was really into the book, Elizabeth Holmes, right?

I was really into the book.

And then they did a podcast and the podcast had bonus episodes only available on Apple Podcasts, which is not where I consume podcasts, but I did for that.

I wanted the extra stuff.

And so if you have the biggest fans, they are going to pay.

And I think this is really smart of the New York Times.

OK, last thing for today, why podcasts fail.

Let's just dive into this.

This is from audio insurgent Eric Newsome.

I hope I'm saying that right.

I'm sorry, Eric, if I'm not.

This is in my Omnivore account because I made some highlights, but I would-- again, it's a 15 minute read.

I will link to it in the description.

Strongly recommend you listen to the whole or read the whole thing.

I think that this offers a really good outline and a perspective of why podcasts fail.

Between us, I am working on a long form-- it's going to be very long-- a long form piece called The Seven Deadly Sins of Podcasting, and what he covers here is a lot of what I talk about just kind of framed differently.

So number one, you don't know what you are making or why.

Something really poignant here.

It's a book show.

Like he's talking to a client.

She says it's a book show.

He says, what does that mean?

And then she digs into it even more.

And he said, I told her it sounds like this is a podcast for everyone.

She replied, it was.

And then he points out something really important.

When you try to appeal to everyone, you end up appealing to no one.

Really important, something I say all the time.

Define your mission statement.

Who is your audience?

What problem do they have?

How do you help them solve that problem?

Be specific.

No one wants-- everybody wants to feel like you're talking to them.

No one wants to feel like you're just addressing the masses.

So I really love this and how he expands upon that.

That's the first point I wanted to highlight.

I think that's really good.

Reason number two is marketing.

This is a mistake I usually make.

I don't think I market my episodes enough.

Because it's really hard.

I'm not a marketer.

I don't have a marketing brain.

But it's something that I need to be better about.

The poignant thing he mentions here is that they got some earned media that resulted in not a lot of downloads.

Were we grateful for the coverage?

For sure we were.

We were also very proud of it.

We spent hundreds of dollars getting a framed copy for our office.

But did it bring more audience to the show?

No.

The media has the same effect.

Yet this is what most creators think is good marketing.

Something you can send to your mom or frame on the wall.

That often isn't what makes something successful at all.

So he-- I mean, he talks about it up here, about marketing.

But I think this is a really important bit.

We'll get into some of the solutions in a second.

This is such a good quote, I think.

Number three is putting it out there.

I often hear people willing to invest money, time, and attention into a podcast project.

And when I raise some of these issues to them, the response is, well, we are just going to put it out there and see what happens.

Nothing's going to happen.

It's not if you build it, they will come.

You need to actually put effort into getting it in front of people by doing podcast swaps, and actively marketing your show, and working with other people, and partnering, and getting it in front of your audience, and making something shareable.

Making incorrect guesses, he talks a lot here.

I think this is really-- again, there's a lot of information here.

But I want to skip right to number five, too locked in.

Too many people have a plan, and they want to stick to the plan.

But when you're so wedded to the plan that you can't make a change, that's a problem.

I held off on renaming my podcast for years, because I liked the name, and that was the plan, and the domain was great.

But I really started to feel like the name doesn't match the mission anymore.

And so I eventually went through and changed it.

And it was a smart thing for me to do.

So then he says five things that make success.

You need a gang, the audience, a group of people who care about the subject.

You need a leader, the host, someone who both represents the gang and leads them.

You need something the gang and the leader really care about, a story, idea, or subject that they are all passionate about.

You need to connect those three things.

And you need a definition of success.

So a little oversimplified, maybe.

But without this, you will not have a successful podcast.

I just want to have cool, raw conversations.

Nope, everybody does that.

Everybody does that all the time forever.

If people wanted that, Clubhouse would be the number one social app, but it's not.

Twitter Spaces would be the number one Twitter feature, but it's not.

People listen to podcasts to learn things.

And so when you have something people care about, and you can connect them, and you know what success looks like, you will have a successful podcast.

Really think that's a great article.

And that's it for three things in podcasting.

I'm really staying true to my goal of staying under 20 minutes here.

Really good.

I hope you enjoyed it.

If you did, join the newsletter over at podcastworkflows.com/join.

I really hope you enjoyed this episode.

If you have a thing you want me to cover, let me know.

You can write in over at podcastworkflows.com/feedback.

I'm also @jcassebona on most social networks.

But that's it for this episode.

Until next time, I'll see you out there.

Bye.