Blythe Brumleve:
0:00
LinkedIn presents welcome into another episode of everything is logistics, a podcast for the thinkers in freight. I'm your host, Blythe Brumleve. And we've got a special one for you today. This is actually the audio version of a recent virtual event that I co hosted for our group called the Jacksonville podcasters. Unite. It is a local community here in Jacksonville, Florida, where we meet up once a quarter probably more frequently, in the coming months, because of the growth of the group about we talked about podcasting challenges, Getting Started software, equipment tools, you know, a lot of very similar to a lot of the same content that you hear on the show already. So coming at it from the podcasters perspective, this is a recording on what does real success and podcasting look like there's a lot of numbers out there. A lot of downloads, it can seem really overwhelming and intimidating. But you know, in this episode, we're going to be breaking down all of the ins and outs of what kind of numbers are important, what kind of numbers you should be thinking about how do you define success. So if you are a new or experienced podcaster, then this show is for you, we are also going to be covering a few different new AI tools specific for podcasters. So we kind of go through a little bit of a demo, you don't necessarily need to see the video in order to understand, you know, the the quality and the impact of some of these tools. So we kind of break that down. And then we get into some fun q&a with other members of the group. So if you're into podcasting, if you're thinking about starting a podcast, then be sure to stay tuned to this episode. Thanks again.
Badr Milligan:
1:52
But we wanted to kick things off with just a conversation really. And we wanted this to feel conversational. But there was like those topics that have mentioned that, me and life that would be a great way to kick the event off. Just very quickly, because there is some new folks and haven't chanson just myself. My name is botter Milligan, I've been podcasting for about 10 years, I'm one of the co founders of the jack's podcasters night group. And the real beauty and brains of the operation is I don't know if she's on your screen like mine, but Blythe Brumleve is a co founder as well. So we appreciate you guys hopping on for this virtual happy hour, I think we've only done maybe two, maybe this might be our third virtual event in a minute. And this is something that we're hoping to incorporate a little more. You know, it gives us the flexibility to talk about you know, industry topics and, you know, things going on in the podcast world as well as being able to do like a dedicated q&a That's a little more hands on, we could share our screen and you know, things like that, you know, obviously we'll still do the in person meetups, but we wanted to go ahead and start doing more virtual meetups. So, Blake, did you want to add anything to the intro before we dive into the topics?
Blythe Brumleve:
2:59
No, I'm ready to dive in.
Badr Milligan:
3:03
Alright, so let's go ahead and start with I guess I'll share my screen first. I was like It looks like you disabled share screen.
Blythe Brumleve:
3:14
Now you should be able to.
Badr Milligan:
3:17
It's telling me no go. Multiple person.
Blythe Brumleve:
3:21
Try now. Okay.
Badr Milligan:
3:24
Perfect. Okay, okay. Okay. Let me see. Let me see. All right. Okay, I switch over my screen. Okay. So I'm glad that rich brought up. You know, just having an idea of what are realistic steps like what you know, I don't think there is a definitive guidebook or handbook that tells you 100 downloads in one week is great, you know, 1000 is phenomenal, whatever it may be, you know, there is no definitive guide book. And I think one thing we've always preached about that we've always preached with the GPU is that, you know, everyone's goals for podcasting are going to be unique to themselves they're going to be different from person to person, you know, some people want to achieve those numbers they want to hit those high numbers. You know, some folks want to get sponsorship deal monetize your podcast or simply want to do it for you know, as a hobby or educational entertainment. I think it really comes down to what is your specific goal and that's the first thing that I would say if you are getting into podcasting or you're thinking about jumping into this medium is figuring out and kind of solidifying what are your goals for the show? I don't think they need to be you know absolutely set in stone when you first begin obviously those goals and your you know, those goals can change as you know, your progress in your podcast journey but having an idea of like, What is Success to me, is it you know, hitting getting 100 subscribers or getting a you know, a sponsor or getting opportunities or getting a business lead because of my podcast, you know, there's there's a whole there's a wide range I have goals and 16 of goals that you can have as a podcaster. And what defines success for you? And like I was saying earlier, you know, rich brought it up. That, you know, he mentioned that, in comparison to the bigger podcasts that Yeah, I think you said, you know, million downloads a second, which is pretty funny, but probably not outside the realm of possibility. But these charts like, this is the top 50 most listened to podcasts of q4 of 2022. So pretty recent, you know, you see the same name, the Joe Rogan experience crime junkie, the daily the American life, color, daddy, the Ramsey show, drink, champs, etc, etc. I mean, most of these charts look pretty, like obviously, you go to Spotify, a lot of their shows are in the top billing, but it can be easy to constantly see these shows, and, you know, understand the metrics and the listeners that they're pulling in and kind of like feel intimidated, or maybe even uninspired that you know, your show that's getting, you know, whatever, 20 downloads a week or 100 downloads a month, you know, is is a drop in the in the bucket. But I want you guys to remember that these are not your these aren't your competition, right? Like these guys, these these shows have corporate backing, they have resources well beyond, you know, any of our means. Like they've got teams, they've got dedicated marketing teams that got huge budgets, they're able, they've got teams dedicated to bringing on, you know, big name guests. So I want you guys to kind of get that out of the way and out of your mind. First and foremost is that you cannot compare yourselves to, you know, the top 50 charts to these massive shows on these top 50 charts that you constantly see. I think you're doing yourself unfair service, trying to compete with these folks here. If you want to add to him that
Blythe Brumleve:
6:47
I was gonna say really quick. If you're showing your screen, we can't see it. So I don't know if you're showing yours at that point. But you were on.
Badr Milligan:
6:55
Oh, my God, I was I was on a hot streak. What's going on?
Blythe Brumleve:
6:58
While you're doing that, I will see oh, okay, here we go. All right. So now we got the screenshare going. So I will add to the fact of when I first started podcasting in 2014. And at the time, I just wanted more experience, it just wanted to just to get that initial experience. That was my initial goal, then the next goal was okay, I want to talk to athletes, I want to talk to people in the know I started getting those goals. And then the goalposts continued to change. After that I launched a business podcast, that business podcast was a way for me to connect with folks who might potentially buy something from me. So not only is it customer research, but it's also from the lens of these people might actually do business with me, what kind of questions do they have? How can I answer that with future content in order to help not just them but maybe other people experiencing the same thing that they could then become a customer. And then it grew enough to where I started having interest in in Spa, our sponsor started showing interest in the show itself. And so the while I think everybody starts off with a podcast to say I want to make money off of this, and it would be great. But realistically, it's going it might depending on the niche that you pick, depending on what ROI looks like for you, that is going to be different for every single podcast. So to compare yourself to some of these, these big, like, look at number three on butter screen right now. Number three, the daily, you know how many people they have working on that podcast, more than 50 More than 50 people working on one podcast. So all of these shows have several people, teams of people working nonstop on these podcasts. And plus, they're also entertainment based. And so looking at it from that lens, it's it would be challenging to think that you could compete with a show that has 26 people working on it. But then there's also the glass half full, where a lot of these shows typically don't last very long, especially celebrity driven shows. But if you just keep churning out quality content, you'll find what that ROI looks like for you.
Badr Milligan:
9:10
Well said, and to add an anecdotal take as well. I remember, you know, I mentioned landing or having some form of idea of what success in a goal looks like to you early on. That was something I didn't you know, I didn't take that advice. Early on in my journey. I think you know, for the first six years of podcasting, I was simply doing it because it was fun. It was, you know, cathartic. It was a that might not be the right word, but it was fun and it gave me an opportunity. cathartic, cathartic, thank you so much. It was a fun hobby. It gave me an opportunity to hang out with friends. And there was something about being able to share you know, my passion about you know, comic books and movies with not only my friends but also listeners knowing that like people in my city were listening to the show and enjoying it. It wasn't until six years in that you know, I had kept my head down, just focusing on the content, making a good show getting better at editing, like getting better at interviews. And I think maybe my biggest goal at the time was probably to interview like someone that wrote a book I like or something like that. It wasn't until maybe six years in that my goal started shifting to Alright, well, how do I monetize this? How do I use my platform to get opportunities that wouldn't be available to me on my own, such as being able to travel to, you know, other cities to do speaking, you know, speak at conventions and host panels. So that'd be a case of like, you know, those are, I think for niche podcasts and hobbies like that, you know, mind being comic books and pop culture. Those are I in my mind realistic goals that I think anyone can achieve.
Blythe Brumleve:
10:45
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Badr Milligan:
11:22
Speaking about so, you know, we've talked about goals and setting those and you know, obviously, those will differ from person to person. And you know, what type of show you have. I want to I want to talk about, I'm trying to move it right here. Sorry about that. Alright, there we go. Next up, I want to talk about what does realistic, I guess, benchmarks for what are good download numbers, what are good, you know, milestones to hit when it comes to gauging, like your download numbers. Because obviously, regardless of what your goal is, your you know, your stats are going to play a part in that, right, they're going to help drive where your show goes, they should you know, help you decide like how to advance your show improvements, things like that. I think, regardless of what your goal is, or what your podcast is about, stats do play an important role. And I'll never say like get obsessed with your stats to where it's, you know, driving you crazy or prohibiting you from enjoying you know what you're doing. But I do say that there is a level importance to stats that it took once again, six years, and I had no idea how to use stats for the benefit of my show. And for the longest time, I had no idea of like, well, what is good stats? You know, I think that's something that's pretty hard to find online. Prior to, you know, today's today's event I was looking for, you know, what is like? What are the metrics, what makes what is like a decent amount of stats, and I continue to come to Buzzsprout platform stats, which they publish every month. This one here is the APR 2023. One, obviously, next month, we'll have the main stats. But I have come to find that this has been the most definitive, I guess, tool when it comes to trying to figure out what is the average downloads for other podcasts look like? You know, I see the charts all the time. I know Joe Rogan's always, you know, number one, but how many downloads? Is he getting? You know, that's information that you don't? Or maybe I think in his case, you probably do have an idea. But for the average podcasts outside of the top 50? What are those numbers, and it's kind of hard to find. So I highly recommend, you know, utilizing this as much as you can, and I'll quickly kind of walk you through this. So off the bat, I think this is a good reference, because Buzzsprout being one of the largest podcast hosting companies out there. The fact that they make this information transparent is I mean, do not take it for granted. I tried to look for other podcasts, hosting sites that offer this and I'll be honest, I just had a hard time finding it. So if they do have it, I couldn't find it. So don't take advantage. All right, I guess don't overlook this very free and transparent tool. So off the bat, we know that this is a decent sample size, we're looking at 100 on Buzzsprout. Alone, there is over what's called 128,000 podcasts that hosts their podcasts on Buzzsprout. So you know that you're getting like a very strong sample size and statistics to measure off of, you know, we're seeing over 138 million monthly downloads from those 127 plus 1000 shows, you also get an idea of where a lot of these downloads are coming from, you know, regardless of how Spotify, Spotify, may market, Apple podcasts in this case is still crushing it in terms of being the number one podcast app or source for podcast downloads we see in April alone they had close to 38% of the market share or I'm sorry of downloads, were the source of downloads for podcasts on Buzzsprout and then obviously Spotify afterwards, and then you go on and on. I will stop here and say that understanding your unique stats is also very important because is, what you see here is, you know, this is an amalgam and an average for these total active podcasts. But in my case, I believe my web browser and overcast is like number two. So depending on your unique stats, your source of downloads might be coming from somewhere else. So you know, have an understanding of how your pot your stats look like. So you could look at something like this and make educated you know, comparisons. Not a major surprise here. But obviously, the US still, you know, leading in regards of countries, for podcast downloads, for Buzzsprout, Apple iPhone, which kind of correlates with Apple podcast being the number one app, then you got device types. But I think out of all of this stuff, even though it's all really great information, the most important thing I look at when it comes to this page is the episode downloads is the episode downloads. And what it's telling you here is that for every episode that comes out in his first seven days in regards to downloads, you can look at this engage, engage and tell where you sit in regards to those 127 plus 1000 podcasts. So if you're, if your new episode comes out in his first seven days gets 32 downloads, we're talking you already in the top 50%, median of podcasts, 32 downloads, how real like that is super realistic, that's reassuring, that's encouraging at that, right. You know, like, I think, when you, you hear podcasts is always aim for those big numbers that 1000s The hundreds, you know, etc, etc. But 32 would already put you at the top 50%, which I think is remarkable. And then obviously it starts jumping. And I want to highlight to the just the the range and the chasm between these different pockets 110 downloads put you at the top 25%. If you get 440 downloads in the first week, episode gets 440 downloads in the first week, you're now at the 10%. And then look how much he jumps from the 10% to the five and then the 1%. You know, we're talking top 1% of 127,000 is what 100 327 shows, um, my math is probably terrible. But I think the the picture is still very clear that success is hard. If download numbers are your metric, your main metric for success, then it is surprising how realistic and achievable the that that goal really is. Now, I mean, it depends on you know what your goal is. But if you're trying to aim for 100, then you know, you're going to break into the top 25%, which I think is great. And then in addition to that, you've also got episode duration, you know, you can understand where you're at, if you're if you do an hour plus show? Well, you know, you're you're among the 16% of podcasts on on Buzzsprout. Same thing for episodes published every couple of days, I think the you know, a majority of folks published once a week, or maybe once every two weeks. So this is a valuable resource in terms of measuring your stats, if that's your metric for success, in comparison to a very large and reliable sample. Yeah, we're not seeing like stats like this being shared, really anywhere else. The only other place that, um, you know not to show continue showing a Buzzsprout bias. The only other kind of information I found in regards to that, you know, another major kind of, sorry, another large podcast hosting company, Lipson. This was the article from 2020. This is like the last, the latest I could find, they were saying that the typical show had a median of 130 downloads during its first weeks. Well, they don't really specify what is first weeks is that the first two weeks for three weeks, etc. After publishing. To put that into perspective, their VP of podcast relations, said that if episodes are getting more than 130 downloads after 30 days, they are better than half the shows being published, which sounds encouraging, you know, 130 downloads after 130 days is pretty reasonable. It's very achievable. But we're also not sure it will, in comparison to what you're better than half of how many shows, you know, so decent stats to work off of I think they're kind of maybe they're kind of similar in line with Buzzsprout. But what I like about this page is that you have a number to to kind of bet against Blythe, did you want to chime in for this one?
Blythe Brumleve:
19:23
Yeah, so is this when I start my heart slander?
Badr Milligan:
19:28
Yes, you have full Release the Kraken.
Blythe Brumleve:
19:32
Okay, well, another thing to keep in mind too, is that a lot of these bigger players are gaming the system. One of those companies is I Heart Radio, which you know, obviously most of us are aware of the different radio stations that I heart has. They also had the iHeartRadio app. And so there's a if you notice on a lot of different podcasting charts, pod track is one of those charts where advertisers will go and check the top podcast In order to see which shows are doing the best, which shows are, you know, maybe a little bit further down the rankings, which shows aren't ranking at all. And so for a lot of these top companies, they show up consistently in the top of the list of the top publishers for the number of downloads that their shows are getting, while Bloomberg did an investigation back in October of last year, and they discovered that I Heart Radio has been gaming the system. And they the way that they game the system is that they buy mobile ads, you know, those really crappy, you know, sort of mobile games that you see an ad for on, you know, a random website or or inside of a mobile game, and you're getting served that ad, well, when people would click on that ad inside of those little games, then it would take them to a podcast page and the download for the podcast would immediately start playing. Now this is how they were counting podcast downloads. And obviously, that is a conflict of interest, because the person who is clicking that ad is likely not knowing that they're going to a page where a podcast is going to play. And so when that podcast is played, it counts towards a download towards that podcast, they were caught artificially inflating their numbers, by estimates around 6 million. And they are not the only ones I heard is not the only ones. Bloomberg also released to Ashley Carmen, who is the audio podcast writer for Bloomberg, she has a weekly newsletter, which is really, really great highly advise, you know, going and subscribing to her newsletter, but she also had an investigation last week where Spotify does the same thing, where they kind of turn a blind eye to these other you know, sort of, uh, I guess, bot accounts that are set up to stream podcast to play podcasts. And when they were doing digging, when they were doing the research on this investigation, they were finding out that you know, millions of plays were coming from one IP address, and that one IP address would only play like one entire album, or only play, you know, one podcast and they would just hit play and just keep it going on repeat. So that is the kind of like upper tier manipulation that is going on with some of these bigger platforms to make it seem like their shows are doing very well. And it justifies you know, more budget, more advertising dollars, more sponsorship revenue, but I really am a vocal opponent against this because it messes it up for everybody else, it messes it up for the other folks who are doing the hard work and trying to break into the podcasting scene. But then you have other folks out here that are gaming the system and you know, counting a radio broadcasts as a podcast download, when we all know that those are two vastly different things and two vastly different audiences. So just keeping that perspective in mind, it kind of circles back to the earlier point that boughter was making to keep your numbers in your perspective in mind, keep your ROI in mind. And just know that it even though there are nefarious actors that are out there doing the wrong thing that are you know, getting exposed. But there are lots of reasons to look at some of these stats, especially the ones that Buzzsprout provides, and have that be more you know, of a confidence boost to your own numbers into your own goals. And those goals and numbers are going to be unique to every single podcast.
Badr Milligan:
23:27
Well said, well said, the person that worked for I heart just dropped from the call. They're like, oh boy, and kind of get out here.
Blythe Brumleve:
23:34
They gotta be made aware. They they know too. So it's one of those things that I never heard of anybody listening to a podcast, and I Heart Radio. If you do, that's, you know, kudos to you. But I've never done it. I've never seen you know, I heart as you know, even ranking in any of my podcasts plays. And so when I see them at the top of all of these pod chart rankings and things like that, I grew a little suspicious. And so I'm glad that you know, Bloomberg and Ashley Carmen, they took the time to investigate, you know, what are these real numbers? Because they're still podcasting, even though it's been around for so long, there still isn't a good barometer of success. And right now everybody kind of goes off, well, what are your What are your downloads? And maybe we should kind of move away from the download metric into metrics that make more sense for you and your show. Well said,
Badr Milligan:
24:25
well said on the topic of stats, data and things like that, I'll also champion to other resources. one's gotta be above that one, right. But they in addition to that monthly global stat page, they also produce this podcast stats and data blog post that gives a little more detail to that global stat page. If that global stat page is, you know, you can kind of view that strictly as kind of like an insight and tool to the podcast being hosted on the company. I'm sorry, yeah, on the with the company. This one gives you an overall kind of look into the stats of listener behavior, most popular podcast the growth of podcasts, which I've got to say, I'm trying to find it here to the growth projections for podcasting. Anytime I see those numbers, it's just really reassuring that this medium isn't going anywhere. I'm trying to find it here, down at the bottom. But I mean, as you could tell, they break down so many helpful insights from podcast discovery trends. I mean, this one was pretty surprising to me that, what does it say? 30% of new podcast listeners, search the internet to find shows. So you know, contrary to popular belief, it's not through social media, it's not you know, so if you're stressing out about, like, you know, how you're performing on, you know, pushing your podcasts on social media, you know, reading things like this kind of gives you the tools to re strategize or maybe just, you know, be reassured that, you know, you're maybe not, you're doing something right, or maybe you've got to just shift gears.
Blythe Brumleve:
25:54
I think, too, with that, what that what that chart is showing, and what you showed earlier, if you're getting that what 30 plays an episode, and then you get into the next tear, you need about 50 plays an episode, that, to me is marketing like that, that could you know, if you're at that 30 kind of threshold, then you could just invest a little bit your of your own time into marketing, we'll kind of get into you know, some of the tools that may be able to help with that later on. But that can easily get you over the hump of being able to get into that nut next upper echelon of getting more viewers getting more awareness for your show, because podcast discovery remains the biggest challenge. And so you have to make your show discoverable, you have to be out there on social media, and then eventually build your podcast website, you can get one for free with Buzzsprout. I prefer my own because I can kind of customize it a little bit more than what you know, a podcast host would be able to let you customize it. But there are ways to grow. And all of these charts, you know, kind of, you know, hint to that.
Badr Milligan:
26:57
Yeah. This one right here, the future of podcasting. I mean, it's been growing at just this chart alone, two dates back as 2017. But I found some earlier ones that date even further back. And the trajectory has just been up and up and up. This interesting, this stat was kind of interesting current estimates project that listeners in the US, right, just the US alone could increase from 75 point 9 million to 100 million listeners in the US by next year. So you know, if you wanted a boost of confidence in regards to the growth and health of this medium, I think, you know, this is a great page to pair in connection with the global stats page. So that's a good one. And then one very quickly. This one I'll I won't lie this I'll admit this one was kind of new to me, the Edison Research page, which Edison Research is the leading podcast research company in the world they've done, they've conducted research for NPR, Spotify, ESPN, etc. And they have this survey called the infinite dial and it's one of the longest running surveys when it comes to digital media consumer behavior, but they regularly publish reports in regards to you know, how the medium is doing, how people are consuming podcasts and audio or digital media as well. So this is another good one as well to in regards to getting a snapshot of where listeners are, where they're coming from, where they go, how you know, their listening behavior, all things you know, that could benefit how you strategize, you know, your, your marketing, your, where you have your podcast, you know, who you target, etc. All right, I think we have probably spoken at least all the topics I had for stats and realistic goals, do you want to shift into AI and tools?
Blythe Brumleve:
28:48
Sure. So I would imagine that you know, the people listening to this have heard you know, check GPT AI that's come onto the scene within the last few months, it's really dominated a lot of news especially dominated a lot of the marketing world that I live in. But a few tools that I definitely wanted to shine a light on is number one first and foremost swell AI, they have quickly come right into my work processes and and been able to really streamline and turn your transcriptions your show notes, your podcast titles, and even you know social media posting things like that they have streamlined that entire process for me. So that is one tool that you know, for folks who may not be aware of a you know, a podcasting AI tool so swell AI. There's other ones that are out there as well that you can give it a try it's called decipher is another one. But what you do is you either set aside a folder or like a dropbox folder on your computer, where you upload you add new episodes, your audio file directly to that folder, or what you can do is upload it directly to the system within swell AI or you can just link to your RSS feed and they will automatically import it. Now for me and my work process is in my workflow, I would highly suggest that you take out your process of what it takes for you to publish a new episode after you've got done recording the episode. What does that process look like for you to take it from a recorded episode two, a published episode, write down all of those things that you go through and then see where these tools like I'm going to mention fit into that process. So the first one for me is swla. I've mentioned that they don't pay me to say this should probably add that as a caveat. But what happens during that process is I upload, I typically scheduled two to three podcasts a week. And so what I'll do is on a Sunday, or on a Monday, I'll upload all of them, it takes about 10 minutes for them to fully process in getting your full transcript and then getting your your show titles, it will spit out a few different show titles based on the episode itself. So you'll get you'll get pull quotes, you'll get a section on where you're going to or what you'll learn from that episode. And all of this is unique to each and each individual episode. I believe I get about 20 hours a week. So Potter just pulled it up on the screen. So it's a very, you know, just plain Jane sort of background that you see here. But there's all the different upload options that you can see. And once you upload it, there's the word Bata is showing you on that right hand side that view content, that's where you'll be able to find all of the different tools that they give you. So they have the full speaker or full transcriptions with Speaker Labels, you can export it to a Google Drive folder, you can export it to a freelancer, depending on what your process looks like. And also one of the cooler things too, that I have started playing around with is that you can use the power of chat GBT, on your podcast, individual episodes. So say you have an hour long episode. And you also have a website. Well, you could take the embed code similar, very similar to a YouTube embed code or your podcast player embed code, you can take that little chat box, and you can paste it specific, it's specific to your episode, you paste it on your website, wherever you upload new episodes, then it will allow your listeners to be able to ask any kind of question about that episode. So I find that really useful, especially for you know, maybe educational style podcasts, industry specific style podcast, this is really, really great to start training your audience that if they want to, you know, be able to figure out if this show is for them. What they're going to learn from this episode, they can either read it in the show notes that are provided. And if you don't like any of these outputs, you could also just refresh it and it will make new ones for you. So I think bada you're on I don't think you pay for this. Am I Am I correct? In that you get a few free downloads or you get a free few uploads a month, right?
Badr Milligan:
32:51
Yeah, I'm on that broke boy plan. So the free plan. But it's only because I shifted to using D script because it offers just about everything as well AI does, why at least the the main components I want, which is the transcript, well, mainly just the transcript, but they also, you know, it's also a podcast editing video service. But anyways, I was using swell as you could tell, I think I used up all my free tokens this month. But what I liked about swell AI was looking at the suggestions for like the summary, right, like the episode description and seeing if there was a different way for me to tackle it, that might be a little more, you know, I guess popular or, you know, SEO friendly, things like that. So between the summaries, I thought the timestamps was was always a great feature as well, especially if you're not taking timestamps, while editing, this gives you a pretty good idea of like the big topics that you'd want to share. And then titles as well, you know, like coming up, I guess. I guess for me, swell AI and things like AI, if you're looking at them as a tool, to maybe get rid of some of that decision making right to make to streamline that decision making and, you know, I get I get a few options, but is this is the episode title. So I have a few options off the bat and I can customize it, if I feel like some of these are missing the point. So to life's point, finding parts of your process and thinking like what are the parts I don't want to do? What are the parts that you know, I just need maybe a list to pick from an automate, I think is a great way to incorporate it.
Blythe Brumleve:
34:28
Yeah, for sure. And one thing to keep in mind is that you know, with AI tools right now today is the worst they're ever going to be. They're only going to get better from here. So the more you use it, the more you get familiar with it, it can really really help with not only the you know, the shownotes portion of your podcasts but also with the promotion. So going back to swell for a minute I personally do not like their transcripts. I think their transcripts need a little bit of work. I love I note bar I know you love the Script transcripts, I personally love otter.ai There's a you know, there's my AI, you know, copilot is in here right now taking listening to this conversation and transcribing it and taking notes. And then right after the conversation is over, everybody will get emailed with key takeaways from that episode. And so what I like to do is I will look at that otter.ai, I will look at the transcript and I will look at their key takeaways. That key takeaway will also hint towards what could make for a good social media clip I saw there was a couple questions about you know, marketing, your your shows, and the social media aspects side of things. That personally helps me. I'm sure most of us in here are all one person teams. So being able to have a hint of where I can go back into the episode and be able to pull a clip from social media helps a ton. And it cuts down on the time spent doing the post production of your episodes, it's turned my process from three hours to probably 20 minutes per episode. And while you know AI is never going is out I want to say never, it's not perfect, but it will get you about 80% there and then you can massage it to get it the get it to that 100% of where you feel comfortable publishing it. So otter.ai descript are great for transcript to script to script is also great for editing your podcast, we're moving filler words like arms and ahhs, long pauses. And then descript is also really good for social media editing I've recently started using to script to because I recorded a video first format. So the other guests is on video, I'm on video. And I want to be able to have those clips, like what you see on YouTube on social media tick tock, I want to be able to have those clips, and descript is able to provide that for you in a much cleaner editing environment. So even if you're not using video today, if you don't have any plans to use video, you might want to consider recording in a video first environment which, you know, maybe a lot of you do, but then you can think about using those maybe you never publish to YouTube. But you could use clips from that video portion of your show to promote out to social media because those are going to go a lot farther than say an audio gram or you know, the little wavy lines on, you know, a photo that you post insert, those are going to go a lot further than some of these other you know, just I guess marketing methods of trying to get your show out there, which all marketing is if you're marketing your show, that's a good first step. But that next step is to see what is working well for other podcasters and see how you can, you can sort of use the same process and get that done yourself. And the good thing about it too, is that a lot of these tools are very cost effective. descript is about $20 a month, and you can edit video, audio transcripts, make your social clips, and also push it directly to YouTube push it directly to Buzzsprout. And a variety of other integrations. Now there's other you know, lots of people have they're they're very picky and botters very picky about his editing process, believe you use Audacity and Camtasia. But there's also there's always room to grow with adapting new technologies or adapting new tools. But it really goes back to that initial process of what you mapped out and figuring out where software plays a role. Because you're going to end up if you just buy all the software things, you're going to end up with a very high bill and no work done. And you're going to waste a lot of time trying to learn these new tools. So just write out your process First, figure out where software plays a role. And then you can start experimenting with some of these different tools. Another one that I did want to quickly mention or two Oh, sorry, two, Adobe podcast editing has is very new, I think it's still in beta, almost, I think you still have to request an invite to it. But from the videos that I've seen and my own personal experience using it, it is very, very good. It removes background noise, it makes your audio sound really crisp, I saw a demo of a guy that was using a vacuum cleaner in the background. And he edited his podcast with Adobe and it cut out you could if you weren't looking at the video and seeing the vacuum cleaner rolling, then you wouldn't have known that it was actually you know, on in the background. So it's it's that good. And Adobe is coming out with a lot of different AI tools, especially like I just played around with their logo maker the other day, it can make a logo for you for free. So if you're looking for show art, if you're looking for podcast art, then I would absolutely head over to Adobe and check out some of those new tools. And then the last one that I did want to mention, if you are recording and sending your podcast to YouTube, YouTube also has a podcast tab as well. But then you can use this tool so once you send your podcast to YouTube, you can then take that URL, go to the site Opus clips, N O P you s clip.com, I think yeah, there you go. And they all you have to do is paste the URL from the video. And it will take about 15 minutes and it will cut 10 Social media clips for you, just like the pros have with captions with those key moments from your episode, not in or they're not going to be exactly perfect. But you can go in there and you can kind of mess with the settings and you can get at a 10 clips, I would guarantee that at least four or five of them are worth publishing and for a lot of us four or five clips is more than enough for every episode. So those are the tools that I have personally use that I have, you know I some of them have are now in my regular process in my regular routine. And more and more of these tools are coming out all the time. And the thing that you want to think about when we talk about YouTube is that their YouTube is placing a greater importance on podcast itself too. And with a lot of these social media platforms, when you think about, okay, well how do I get more discoverability brand awareness around my show, that still works great for say a tick tock or you know, Instagram to get your message out there. But YouTube is really the only platform that you can use both short form video, and long form video. So you can use I think, I use this phrase all the time. But think of it as like a content drug dealer, you are sprinkling out your little short form videos in order to get people to come to the long form content. And so YouTube is really best positioned, in order to take advantage of that strategy of using short form content, get that brand awareness, get that discoverability that YouTube is so powerful for and hopefully it leads to the viewer seeing that clip, and then wanting to watch more and they go to the long form content, they subscribe to the podcast, and all that good stuff.
Badr Milligan:
41:48
The 30 seconds is free. hour and a half is gonna cost you nothing as well. I was gonna try to show an example of Opus Eclipse, but it wants me to sign in. But I trust me, it's as simple as life said I you input your URL for your long form video and it does spit out like 10 clips. And I tried it last week when I first showed me. And I'll be honest, I think of the 10 four were ones that I'd like oh, I would definitely share that. Those are good enough to share. But I'm OCD and very controlling for my content. So you know, Oh, yeah. Good. Real
Blythe Brumleve:
42:30
quick to shout out to Alex for for mentioning this Buzzsprout. Also for the bus route truthers out here just just like us, I haven't tried it yet. But Buzzsprout also has an AI feature available with their Yep. Right. kind of explain, I guess, have you had a chance to use this yet?
Badr Milligan:
42:48
No. But if we want to try it, see if we can really quickly see if it'll be too complicated. But for my understanding is much like the script like I was mentioning that they I liked the suggestions like the summary suggests. Crap, I probably didn't do that. Right. All right. Well, I don't want to go ahead and trial this. embarrass myself. But my understanding is that they rolled out this cohosts AI.
Blythe Brumleve:
43:16
More, let's see what happens.
Badr Milligan:
43:19
Okay, I have to I have to enable it. Okay. But let's see what offers here. So you get episode title suggestions, show notes, chapter markers, and a transcript Oh, and a transcript.
Blythe Brumleve:
43:28
And it's only$20 a month, I would say is 20 bucks from swell. But you know, there's,
Badr Milligan:
43:35
I'm like everyone close your eyes. So I can input my credit card info. Now this is actually yeah, this is actually a wonderful addition, because this is everything I was using swell AI. And, you know, we mentioned the script, the script offers a lot, especially if you're looking to replace your current podcast, editing software or platform, or you want to upgrade to video editing, like, I'm kind of in like that weird middle spot where I'm still using my old process, but I'm also trying to incorporate new things. So I'm paying for something like the script. But all I'm truthfully using it for at that moment, is for transcription, because I think their transcriptions are done really well. And I've personally seen an uptick in downloads as well as my performance, adding transcriptions, mainly because I asked I have a pot a website for my podcast that, you know, loads those transcriptions in a blog post. It's good for SEO, blah, blah. So I think to to piggyback off what Blythe was saying, if you're someone like me, that's been podcasting for 10 years that is very reluctant in upgrading and you know, trying incorporating new things because you feel safe with your current process. I highly recommend you know, even if it's baby steps, incorporating you know, small things, I like to think of like the script and you know, all these AI tools as very competent like college interns. It's like if I had to hire a college intern, what would I have them do? Like, what are the tasks and annoyances or things that slow me down on my process that I wish I could pass off to someone that could do it pretty competently? And I think, you know, tools like these scripts while AI and now Buzzsprout. You know, there's, it's a great time to start thinking about these tools, it feels like we're in like an AI gold rush. And I think it's only a matter of time, like for D script at the, you know, they've just, in the last maybe month, they started rolling out all these features like aI voices as new transcript, I don't think transcription has always been their thing. But they've just been, you know, adapting to all the new features as well. So regardless of where you land, or where your loyalties are, whether it's, you know, paying for soil AI, or D script, or Buzzsprout, I think everyone is, you know, trying to stay competitive, and everyone's watching all the developments. And, you know, luckily, a lot of this stuff is open source. So a lot of these companies are incorporating it, which just means like, you know, it's benefits for us, right? So, yeah, shared a lot of a lot of different tools.
Blythe Brumleve:
46:01
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Badr Milligan:
47:10
Life I wanted to go to QA I think we've we've given a lot of information here. What if anyone's got any questions?
Blythe Brumleve:
47:18
Yes. So we have one that's related around marketing. It says I'm looking to pay someone to do my social media marketing, but I'm not sure what the going rate is for strategy, implementation and management. So far, I've gotten a really wide range of fees from 400 a month to 3100 for strategy and implementation. What is a good rate? What should I bring to the conversation? You want to answer that first? Or?
Badr Milligan:
47:44
Hold on one second? I was trying to go through it. Sorry, sorry,
Blythe Brumleve:
47:47
I'll take this one. So I would say that the wide range of fees is very normal. Because you have folks that aren't necessarily familiar with what your posting strategy looks like, what, how many times a week, how many platforms, all of that is going to play a role? Are you going to provide the assets to them to just upload and schedule? Because then you have to think about that post production yourself? Are you going to be editing that stuff? Are you going to have a social media agency, you know, be able to take it, you know, a video file, maybe an edited video file, and be able to take that and make the clips themselves. I will say that I had the same experience I was quoted a couple weeks ago for to take my podcast and to or take the video portion into turn it into social media clips for videos a month, up to an hour for those four videos, they were going to watch it and make clips from each one around 10 clips for each episode. They quoted me at $3,000. And then I said, Okay, we're going to hold off on that. And then Opus clips comes out a week later. So that solves a big problem for me, because they weren't going to schedule the posts, they were just billing for their time to actually go through the content, which does take a lot of time to watch your content, find those good moments. And that's where the AI really comes into play. Because it can find those inflection points in your voice it can find, you know, certain key words that you're using without the throughout the episode. And that's how it finds these different clips to use. It's not an exact science, but a free products is a hell of a lot better $1,000 a month. So I would say to look at your own processes, I would say to look at where your what makes the most sense of if you if you have video, I would highly suggest you know publishing to YouTube, at least having that additional sort of discoverability YouTube is great for discoverability and finding shows that you normally wouldn't watch related shows and kind of piggyback off of you know the episode and plus For a lot of podcasts, if there is an if I, if I am given the choice of an audio version or a video version, I am watching the video version 10 out of 10 times unless I'm you know, I'm driving or something like that where it doesn't matter a whole heck of a lot. So I would figure out what your ideal process would look like. And then I would think about hiring a ghostwriter a ghost writer because the captions on your social media posts are vastly more important than anything else. Because, well, I would say the intro image of whatever you use on social media, like say, for example, there's there's one podcast that I follow a lot, and they're posting strategy is to post an image of the of the podcast, and then you swipe for a video clip. Those kinds of different formats and strategies are changing all the time. So I would find a podcast that you kind of look up to, what does their social media sort of, I guess gameplan look like dissect it and figure out what do you like about their process, and then write down what your ideal process would look like. Because then you can take that ideal process, practice it yourself, and then figure out what you like and what you don't like about that process. Because from my experience, even if you hire someone, there are still occasions where you're going to have to step in, and you're going to have to do it yourself too, because they're going to get sick, or they're going to take a week off to go on vacation. And then or maybe you get to a point where it's better served that you invest that money in real advertisement, not mobile game advertisement, you have the I would map out your process, first, do it yourself first. And then you have a better idea of what you want to do, what you would like to do and what you hate doing. And then yet you you farm out to Fiverr or a freelancer and you say this is exactly what I need done, you typically will give them access to a shared folder where those assets are uploaded to so you can set up your distribution system, long term where you can have maybe a podcast editor that edits the files, and they upload it to a specific folder. And then that freelance content creator, maybe a ghostwriter can see that content, write a cool caption for you and get those scheduled up. Another caveat to keep in mind is that for a lot of these social media strategists, they're going to use third party tools and third party tools are going to affect the overall reach of your organic posts. So you want to also tell these people that they need to do direct uploads to these platforms. That's what helps the most all Instagram can tell if you're uploading a video with a tick tock watermark, YouTube can tell if you have a tick tock watermark or an Instagram reels watermark. So you have to practice what you preach. And or I practice what I preach in going direct to these platforms doing direct uploads, and then focus don't overwhelm yourself to pick one or two social media platforms tops, focus on those, get those right figure out what you like about your process. And then you can offload the rest of it to the process that you don't like you can offload it to someone else. A good rate for these services is very subjective. That's why I suggest it to map out those processes first, and then you can find a specific Fiverr Freelancer that can handle one specific thing. But I would just recommend going after a ghostwriter. First because they can actually listen to what the clip is, and be able to write a clever caption and be able to do a direct upload. And the next question, what do brands conferences look for and podcast stats to hire you as a speaker or to work with sponsorships? What does a brand pitch look like for a podcast? Okay, so a brand pitch, I would actually include your media kit. So there's, you can make a media kit, you can go to Canva. And in order to you know, speaking of AI tools, they actually have a suite of fully AI tools within the Canvas system that you can go to Canva you know, find a media kit template, and you can make one yourself and be able to send it off to potential advertisers or sponsors. What I like to do is I like to actually interview the sponsors because then they get a firsthand invite them on your podcast and via and and talk to them interview them, they have a great experience that they're more likely to want to invest in you in the future. I found a little bit of success with doing it with taking that route. Another route that I would think about is for brands and conferences. I would also it depends on the type of conference if it's an industry conference, or if it's one that's specific to your podcast as well. I like to look at who is sponsoring that conference, and who is sponsoring podcasts that I look up to and dissect what they're doing and who is advertising on their podcast and how they're structuring that advertisement. So for example, you know, I know Buzzsprout has you know, an ADS library where you can add you know, different ads to your podcast. I personally go the opposite Set route with that I like to have intimate relationships with not not not intimate, I guess, I don't know what the right phrase is this. But I like to have personal relationships with my sponsors. And so for that I will do a host read ad, I won't do the you know, a mattress ad or you know, Sleep Number or meal kits or anything, I won't do those types of advertisements on my show. Number one, they pay a very, very low bar. And if you actually go direct to work with sponsors there, you're going to get much more of quality of the work that eventually is heard on your show. And then also, you're going to get a higher premium by working direct. So that's what I would do. But also study the conferences that are in your industry or in your niche and study the podcasts that are in your industry in your niche, and they're doing a little bit better. See who's advertising there. And if they're advertising there, they're spending money. And if they're spending money there, there's a higher likelihood that they'll spend money with you.
Badr Milligan:
55:59
Who might drop right there.
Blythe Brumleve:
56:02
Oh, email list who that was the next question. Where did you guys start building email list to start funnel people like a sales page. Start first and foremost, get a website, simple four or five page website, you don't need much. You can build a landing page on there. You can put other brands that you've worked with people that you've interviewed, you can really use it as you know, sort of a showcase for your podcast to show all of the fantastic work that you've done. That also looks really good to sponsors and other brands that maybe want to collaborate with you because they know that you're serious. No more than 90% of all podcasts fail after 10 episodes. If you want to showcase your podcast, the best way to do that is to show all the best work that you've been doing and highlight it like make your own highlight reel. Use the website in order to gather emails for people who are interested in hearing more episodes. And then also to gather lead info for people who want to eventually sponsor the sponsor an episode sponsor a month, a quarter or six months, hopefully a year. Depends on what your advertising packages look like. And I need some water.
Badr Milligan:
57:01
Okay, and I'm gonna jump in here so you can you can refresh. Alright, her last question was Lastly, if anyone knows any social media strategist, I would appreciate recommendations. We'll leave that one up to the group anyone's got any recommendations in regards to social media strategist? Leave that in the chat. Right? Good questions. And I want to address funny man, Cory torjussen. Over here at class clown Cory torjussen. And Warren Evans in the back. Corey had a question. I think that one was probably geared towards me. Are you happy? Have you been happy with the script for transcript over Riverside? Yes, 100%. And that might have to do with the fact that Riverside trans. So Riverside is a great example of an existing platform that's adopting new tools that's rolling out new tools to its users without really up charging, I haven't noticed them increase their prices. But recently, they got on the whole transcription game, and offering like, as soon as you're done recording, it'll spit out like a video podcast for you with transcription. And it kind of mimics descript, where you can actually edit the video part of the transcription. So you're not really editing via sound waves where you're editing via transcription, like you're deleting a whole sentence, and it would cut that out of the recording. My issue is that I think my particular setup is that I have a co host here with me in the studio. So our audio so it's technically receiving two audio files in one and then obviously, my, you know, guest or person on the other, you know, that called in. So I found that my unique setup is a little challenging for transcriptions, because it's feeding it as it's reading as one audio file. So that can be a little challenging. But long story short, I found that D script, because I'm uploading the finished episode, it seems to read it just a lot better in the fact that D script also there identify speaker, actually, I will show you what it looks like if you guys don't mind. Okay, so this is an example of the transcriptions I'm talking about. So like I said, I have found that adding transcriptions is a very quick step, I save it towards the very end. All of this basically my podcast website is it just rips everything here as a blog post. And you know, all of these all this text is very helpful in SEO blah, blah, blah. But this is what my current transcription looks like. And it does a fair, I mean, obviously, it spells my name wrong, it gets certain words wrong and all that. So you know, if you wanted to go through this with fine tooth comb, I could find probably a bunch of grammar errors and you know, misspellings and things like that. But for the most part it identify speakers really well it could tell my voice between EDS and Gregg's. Now obviously, we're talking over one another, that's when it gets jumbled up and I don't blame it at all. But the fact that it spits this entire transcription out for an hour and 20 minute episode, and I didn't have to do anything, but upload the transcript. I'm sorry, the script is fantastic. Like I said Riverside, I will continue to pay for Riverside because I like recording and Riverside because it gives me video and the raw audio. But until I figure out how to fine tune it, I think I'm going to continue just using the script for my transcriptions. I am curious to trial Buzzsprout, though, if they're saying that their AI, which is 20 bucks a month, does everything that like, swell in the script does, I'm curious to see how good their transcription services. But to answer your question, yes, I'm much happier using the script instead of Riverside for transcriptions. And then I wanted to go back to I won't even share my screen, I was even sharing my screen this whole time. You were on a good fly was you know what it is, I keep forgetting to hit share. But I click it. And then I forget to hit share my bugs. Alright, I am sharing it this time. And it looks terrible, because it's got all these windows. But let me just show it one more time. So the transcription, like I was saying, an hour and 20 minute episode, it breaks down by speaker by timestamps. And the thing with the script is you can actually change the current settings like you can make it show my name first. And then the timestamp at the end, you can kind of even fine tune that you can even fine tune like the amount of gaps in between timestamps, I think I have it set to default. So it'll just like, write it out by who's speaking. But yeah, it's fantastic. So I mean, you know, I think it's a good it's very easy. Like I said, I'm just uploading episode, it spits out a transcription. I might go through it, but it's way too long to be going through. So to answer your question, yes. And then I wanted to go back to I wanted to add to end this question when she had asked about, I think the question was, what do brands slash conferences look for in podcast, so hire you as a speaker or work with sponsorships? And I'll say, from a look, I ain't out here getting, you know, the sponsorship deals like, you know, life is out here again, right? She's, Look, she's killing it. As long as I've had sponsors on my show, which has been a couple of years, none of them have ever asked me for my stats or metrics. I have a comic book, a local comic shop that's here in Jacksonville, Florida, that has sponsored the show for the last three, four years, we do a quarterly sponsorship, they cut me a check every quarter to, you know, promote the promote the shop. And then every year, I also get comic book, conferences and conventions that asked me to run an ad on the podcast as well. They have never asked me for stats, because I think for a few reasons. I think the layman you know, regular person doesn't even know what are good stats, which has kind of been, you know, which was the topic of today, right, like the first topic. I think a lot of people, you know, don't have an idea of what realistic stats are. So they don't even know what to ask, right? They don't even know what you know, what they're measuring against, obviously, if they're a company that's used to dealing podcasters, I think that standard is like, you know, 1000 downloads an episode or 5000. But for your everyday like independent businesses, and you know, mom and pop shops that want to get into digital marketing, I think they really look towards you to kind of like, you know, give them that confidence. And luckily, for me, the fact that I'm catering to his market, right, like the comic shop, Gotham city limit, I didn't even pitch them at one point, you know, enough people had went into the shop, they knew that I was shopping there, you know, buying comics, they would go in there and ask him if he heard about the short box. So it was a lot of word of mouth. And now just one thing I'm really proud about for my podcast is that we have a dedicated fan base where, you know, if I'm to ask them to if I have a call to action, I'm confident that at least you know, 1020 of them are going to take that call to action. And I think that that means a lot. I read a headline a few months ago that was talking about some influencer that had millions of followers and constant engagement was doing like a book signing or something like that. And they could not get, you know, 10 people to show up. And I think that is the reality and that's followers. Yeah. Possibly, right 100% I heart. And I think Alex wrote it in the chat as well. And I love that viewpoint. Even if you're getting 3050 downloads or you have 3050 consistent loyal followers, imagine them in a room imagine speaking to them in a you know, Convention Center is something that's a lot of people, right and if even if you get like 30 of them to buy a book of yours, or you know, to buy whatever, buy this product, that's that's, that's strong. So I'll say that I'll say that that I've leveraged you know, word of mouth and perception as well. Like I carry myself as you know, the best conduct podcasts out there. I you know, the people that listen are willing to support and get our name out as well. So you could do go go about it that route where you're not particularly showcasing. Well, even if you do decide to share your stats, I think even giving your potential sponsor Like a crash course in education, showing them exactly what we showed you, right? Like, hey, here's where my stats are. And I'm already in the whatever top 50 25% My Location, right? Like, if you're appealing to a Jax business, like in my case, I think 20% of my listeners are consistently from Jacksonville. Right? So like, there is your target demographic, I talk comic books, they buy what you sell, and they're here in town, like who wouldn't want to at least, you know, take a gamble on that. I think there was a another question. So hopefully, that adds a little bit more. I think Cory had one more question that I really wanted to answer. And that was, where was it? It? Sorry? Gotta scroll down.
Blythe Brumleve:
1:05:39
Oh, I think it was about the adding too many tools has a feel overwhelming. And yes, it does feel overwhelming.
Badr Milligan:
1:05:45
Yeah, I think Corey wrote, do you feel like staying in the cutting edge of new process less technology is better than staying with your personal process that is tried and true? Or is there a balance that you slowly implement over time, this one spoke to me, I've been podcasting for 10 years, and I, for the most part have followed the same process, I want to say, in the last three years, I have fine tuned my process like i It goes from here to the computer, I use Audacity uploaded Buzzsprout, I use the video for social media clips, like I have a fine tuned process that I don't feel like changing. But I also know that there are certain things that I don't want to do anymore, that are time consuming that after 10 years, I just don't feel like doing anymore. And if there's a way to make things, to do it quicker, or have, like I said, a competent intern handled it for me, then I want to pursue it. The hard part is as someone who feels confident in their process, and and you know, as a one man team, for the most part, when it comes to the back end of podcasting, I do all the editing, I do all the posting, etc, etc. I am very hesitant to try new things. Because I just don't feel like making mistakes. I don't feel like the learn. I don't feel like learning new things. Because it's time consuming. It's like well, why try something new possibly spend two, three hours getting it fine tune when I can just stick to the tried and true. And I think there's only so long I can go before eventually, you know, I'm missing out, you know, like I'm setting myself back. So it's definitely a challenge to like set up, set aside time to try and learn new technology. But you also don't want to get left behind. And who knows, you know, by the time you get a handle on it. It might be you know, it might be worth dividends. In the end, you're a little bit of investment, you know, an hour or two extra here to learn this new program might benefit in the long run where it's like, Well, damn, what took me an hour before. takes me five minutes now, you know. So hopefully that that's insightful.
Blythe Brumleve:
1:07:44
Is there any other don't be afraid to try new tools? either? I heard you play? I get it. I'm gonna try it. All right. Oh, great question about everyone's podcast that actually brings up a good opportunity to, we actually have a Jacksonville podcasters directory. So if you have a podcast and you haven't submitted already, be sure to go to Jack's podcasters unite.com. Submit your show, and we'll get you added to the directory, I will go ahead and drop a link in the chat just to check it out. But here are all of the local Jacksonville podcasters, which we have a bunch, but you can select by topic, this all ties into your RSS feed. So whatever category you have selected on within your podcast host, then you'll be able to, you know you'll be filtered into that category within the site itself you do not have to be it doesn't have to be Jacksonville local focus in order to be listed in the directory, you just have to be a Jacksonville podcaster. But we list them in here we have some, some some new marketing that we're going to be doing, we actually, you know, have an LLC now for the GPU. So it's only we're actually treating this less as a hobby and more as a business. So that's why you're seeing this virtual event tonight, we're probably going to talk about it here in a little bit about future events coming up both virtual and in person. So we got some cool stuff coming up. We want to do more of these virtual lessons, because it's definitely more interactive. A lot of folks can't make the in person ones. And this is a way for us to, you know, for us to showcase our knowledge because, you know, for a lot of for a lot of people out there you don't necessarily hear from the folks who are in the trenches building a podcast that covers a specific topic, right. So you have you know, maybe some podcast, you know, if you go to like a podcast conference, you'll see a lot of you know, talks on how to make money from your podcast and things like that. But those are generally taught by people who haven't actually built a podcast themselves. And so that's where we bought her and I really, you know, that's our lane. We've done it, you know, in addition to running a full time job, I'm lucky enough now that I do get a full time income from podcasting. But it took 10 years, more than 10 years of work to get to this part, or to get to this portion of my career. But that's why we're so passionate about this group. And so passionate about this project is because we are able to offer that in the trenches, insight that in the trenches, knowledge that you guys are experiencing just as much as we are. And that's what the goal of this site, that's the goal of this group, is to be able to help you cut to the chase and cut through our years of experience in order to help you grow your show faster.
Badr Milligan:
1:10:30
Awesome, well said. And I got an ad too. For anyone that maybe think there was a few folks maybe that haven't started podcasts that don't have anything to submit to the directory just yet. If you want to stay up to date with, you know, our events, and you know, we're getting our email newsletter built up as well. If you scroll to the bottom of the website, you can just enter your email that way and subscribe to everything we got going on that way as well. But highly recommend if you have a podcast, submit your show to the directory. I think I had it pulled up a few seconds ago. But any plays or if someone comes across this that has maybe a hyper, you know, Jacksonville or fan of you know, supporting everything in Jax if they play your episode here. It the downloads count towards yours, right? Like there's no, yeah, there's no risk whatsoever. It's an extra distribution for Exactly, exactly. So submit your show up top. And I believe it was Francis that had asked us in the chat about the targeting or advertising your podcast to Jacksonville and specific I think if your show isn't, you know Jack's specific than that, then maybe continue, you know, marketing your podcast to a wider audience. But if you do want to do more things Jack's related as someone who for the longest time only had my blinders on for being like, you know, Jacksonville's comic book podcast, I'll tell you some of the things that worked for me. For starters, print media, I used to print I use, I, I've always looked at, like, I'm a huge Hip Hop head. So I've always looked at, like, you know, record labels, my favorite record labels and street teams and how they market you know, their artists and their albums. Like, you know, for the most part, everything that's done in like music, I've always felt like is kind of applicable to podcasting in terms of marketing. So I adopted a lot of those strategies early on, where I was printing out flyers and posters and going to comic shops, bookstores, movie theaters, and asking, if I could put up my flyer, you know, put up my poster and put a stack of flyers there, you'd be surprised by how many people in those early years would send us an email and say, Yo, I seen your poster at this shop, and I checked out the podcast, you know, I just picked up your flyer from, you know, this store, check out the podcast. So you know, print media worked out for me. And then even events to like we were just doing, we are offering our services to, to movie theaters, right? Like when they would host when they would premiere comic book movies or the latest MCU movies, we'd offer to do a giveaway or, you know, just let us get in front of the folks and do a giveaway or at least introduced a movie. And you know, cost you nothing. We don't want charge. We just want that exposure. So I think just like getting out in front of your core, your core demographic goes a long way for them to place a face, you know, to the voice that they're about to hear and things like that. I mean, how last earlier this month, big, big holiday in a big kind of retail event. And comic books a call Free Comic Book Day, every year, I go hit up the shop that sponsors us, and I grabbed my recorder. And I get quick little streetstyle interviews, little three five minute interviews. And I put that out as an episode. So now people are like, oh shit, this guy is here on my hometown. He's got a podcast and I get to hear myself like, let me go check that out or tell someone I know that might you know, be interested in that. And I found things like that really work. So but once again, it's because I am talking about a hobby, a topic that is applicable to Jacksonville. There are comic shops, there's fans of comics here in town, that I could reach through these avenues.
Blythe Brumleve:
1:14:13
You You're definitely really good at the guerilla marketing. I think at our house, we have a box that comes from Sticker mule at least once a month.
Badr Milligan:
1:14:25
Very, very, very good point. And was that for instance? Yeah, I think was either Francis Arish, I'll mention one other thing that I've started doing is that I've been going to comic conventions because you know, once again, is thinking who are my demographic? Who are my ideal listeners, where did they go? And luckily, I am those same people that I'm trying to target. So it's like, well, where do I normally go? So when I go to comic conventions, now, I've got like a stack of flyers. I've got pins that I give away for free. And then I start incorporating, you know, like, there's little NFC chips, where you could program like a link right in When someone taps their phone against it, it, you know, asked open the link. I've been handing those out. So it looks like I'm handing out like old school pugs for your 90s kids. And people are like, Whoa, this is really cool. And you know, they get a chance to check out the podcast that way. So it's just thinking like outside of the box. If you have the opportunity to interact with potential listeners in person, I think there's just that it's just a level up from saying hey, check out my podcast, there's like something intimate and you know, tangible they can they can hold. All right. Oh, Cory, you brought up a good point, the live shows to he said borders and in person introduction and straight Shannon's first live show or the reason I listened to those podcasts. So once again, like just Alex said, Whatever pugs. What happened to pugs
Blythe Brumleve:
1:15:47
collaborating on other shows, I mean, it Alex, this is a probably a great time for maybe you to talk about pod match. And being a guest on other people's show, that's also a great way to grow your audience because it's it's a little bit of, I don't wanna say leeching off of their audience, but it kind of is. But it's in a good way you could do you know, guest swaps and things like that, which work out really well, especially if that podcast is in your niche, because you can kind of, you know, increase your discoverability in that regard, because they've already done the hard work of earning their audience. And if they liked that topic, then they'll likely come over and follow you as well.
Badr Milligan:
1:16:25
Yeah, and I'll drop out. Oh, good. Okay. I
Unknown:
1:16:28
didn't I mean, if you if you want me to say somebody? Yeah. Thanks for that plug. Yeah, I mean, for me, being a guest on podcast has been really good for growing my show. But also just finding the right guests. I mean, not necessarily big names, but just the right guest help a lot when you bring on the right people, because the right people will share it because it's gonna be a good conversation. So yeah, for anyone not familiar with POD match, is a software that automatically connects podcast guests and hosts together for interviews. I like to say it works just like a dating app. But instead of connecting for dates, it can actually for podcast interviews, and it's got built in monetization on it for the host side as well. So if you're just interviewing people using the platform, it will automatically give you a cut. So we'd love to see some of you on there if it makes sense. But thanks for giving me a chance to plug that I appreciate it.
Blythe Brumleve:
1:17:09
Okay, yeah, we kind of have a little bit of almost like a dynasty growing in Jacksonville with Sproul being here, pod match, we got the GPU Of course, am I forgetting anybody else as far as like, you know, podcast companies, we have a bunch of new studio suites, we have. What's the other one Shannon's downtown, mix theory, her studio. So we've got different. So those those different solutions will really help a ton if you're looking for guests. So hit a pod match if you're looking for guests. And then also from a local perspective, if you really want to score really, if you have a good interview with a high profile guests, and you really want to impress them. And you don't necessarily have that set up at your home, you can go to Gary at Studio suites, or or Shannon over at mix theory. And you can rent a studio for less than 100 bucks. And you can have a great showcase for your show, get the audio file, get the video file, and you can leave a lasting impression, maybe on a really good guest that hopefully would become a sponsor afterwards.
Badr Milligan:
1:18:10
Well said, and I'm dropping the links for these studios in the chat as well. But you bringing up the talent that we have in regards to podcasting here. And Jack's kind of reminds me of one other thing that we wanted to mention before we close out. And before I say that last call for any questions, if you've got a burning question or something you want us to touch on, we've still got a little bit time, please drop that in the chat. While I say you know, like I said it all really, when it comes to podcasting in Jack's, I feel like it's never been stronger in regards to Buzzsprout jpgu pod match the different podcast studios. And I feel like there's still even more assets and and people out there doing great things that we have yet to meet. So I'm excited to continue seeing, you know, the GPU grow and become like a central hub for podcasting in the 904. Which brings us to, I guess you guys are kind of getting an exclusive all all of you that are on board. And regards to our next events. Like I said, we want to do more virtual events, because it gives us the opportunity to really dive into topics, obviously we have, you know, we can share screens and things like that. But our goal, we have to we have some big dreams and big goals for the GPU in regards to elevating what we offer, and you know, being of service to all of you podcasters and everyone in the community. We have two ambitious events that we want to try to do before the year is over. And we can't share a bunch of details because we both believe in you know, not just teasing things and not being able to actually you know, get them done. But one of them would be an educational series where it's hands on training and in regards to podcasts and kind of like a you know from newbie to published, you know episode in one sitting so you know, we're hoping to offer or an educational hyperfocus educational event this year. And then one other one that will keep under wraps. But that one will really be a celebration of all things. podcast here in jack so
Blythe Brumleve:
1:20:14
TOCOM Don't spill the beans yet. We're not ready.
Badr Milligan:
1:20:19
But yeah, we've got some ambitious goals for the GPU. And we're hoping that you know, you guys, stick continue being down for the ride.
Blythe Brumleve:
1:20:27
Thank you very well said.
Badr Milligan:
1:20:29
All right, any last minute quick? Did we get anything done? Okay, let's see, should we have released forms for Francis has got one should we have at least forums for our guests if they are family, friends and or strangers?
Blythe Brumleve:
1:20:40
No. I think it it prohibits or it adds an extra layer of should actually go on the show. kind of worried to the guest. So I, if I've met, I've been doing podcasting for more than 10 years, or close to 10 years. And if I were I've never once been asked to sign a guest release. And I've done, you know, major interviews on major platforms, you know, ESPN, Fox, you know, a bunch of other different platforms, they've never asked me to sign an NDA, they've never asked me to sign a guest release form. So I would hammer out those details ahead of time. But I wouldn't ask your guests to sign that form, it really offers, you know, really no protection, whatsoever. And I think it also adds a level of almost like anxiety for the guest to appear because you want to facilitate a good conversation, you want to facilitate you want to make sure that they're they're coming to a safe place to have that conversation. So what I personally do is I tell folks, if you say something that you are before every recording, I'm like, if you say something that you absolutely don't want in the show, I am willing to take it out. And I say that because I'm not a an investigative journalist, I want to set my guests up for success. I want them to come on the show and be able to feel completely comfortable. So I don't want that to add that extra layer of anxiety to them. I want to be them to be able to feel fully comfortable and talking openly. And honestly, I would say only, you know, I've recorded probably over 500 episodes in my total career. But I would say there's only been less than five instances where somebody has asked me to take something out. And that's only because they miss worded it or it was announcement that they weren't quite ready to make.
Badr Milligan:
1:22:29
Yeah, and I'll piggyback off that to that. I don't think I've ever given a, you know, release form or anything like that. And I've interviewed a good bit of folks. I think giving them that reassurance early on, like I always try to do a like, you know, a prep, you know, like, hey, this isn't live, we can re record anything, stop me at any moment, you know, and there's also time and editing. So I think just giving them that reassurance that um, you know, you're not out to get them. This isn't gotcha journalism. This is just, you know, a podcast and things like that, I think goes a long way.
Blythe Brumleve:
1:23:01
Yeah, this isn't PBS Frontline. We're not, you know, working for major news organizations. We're having conversations, not dissertations.
Badr Milligan:
1:23:08
Yeah. That'd be wild. If I got one for like a comic was like, what does this or this? Yeah. All right. Any other questions? Anything else? Any other topics we could talk about? This has been a really good conversation I was expecting. Yeah. All right, eight o'clock. But yeah, it flew by. Alright, last call, Last call. Last call. Where you guys are figuring that out. Once again, if you guys will do us the big a big favor. Sign up for our email blasts on Jack's [email protected]. Submit your if you have a podcast, submit your podcast to the official Jack's podcasters directory. And yeah, stay tuned with for what else we got coming up. Like I said, we got some ambitious and big goals for the jack's podcast community. And I don't think we've got anything else. I think I think we'd get our
Blythe Brumleve:
1:24:00
job tired of hearing us talk. Go spend some time with your family.
Badr Milligan:
1:24:05
All right. Shall we appreciate everyone that hung out today? That that kept the chat lively as well. Some really great conversations mean a lot of great questions. Yeah, for sure. Great questions. Great topics. You guys have a great and fantastic evening. And this won't be the last time hear from us at all right? Be well everyone
Blythe Brumleve:
1:24:29
I hope you enjoy this episode of everything is logistics, a podcast for the thinkers in freight telling the stories behind how your favorite stuff and people get from point A to B. If you liked this episode, do me a favor and sign up for our newsletter. I know what you're probably thinking, oh God, another newsletter, but it's the easiest way to stay updated when new episodes are released. Plus, we drop a lot of gems in that email to help the one person Marketing team and folks like yourself who are probably wearing a lot of hats at work in order to help you navigate this digital world a little bit easier. You could find that email signup link along with our socials in past episodes. Over at everything is logistics.com And until next time, I'm Blythe and go Jags
