Lessons Learned From 10+ Years of Podcasting
Summary
TLDRIn this insightful podcast transcript, the host reflects on the growth of his podcast from 3,300 downloads in its first year to over 100 million today. He emphasizes the importance of building an audience and business over three years, evolving content formats to avoid stagnation, and the necessity of standing out in a saturated market by 'Zigging when others Zag.' The host also shares his experience with SEO tools, the power of organic social media, and the importance of creating a compelling hook to attract viewers, ultimately stressing the value of consistency, innovation, and quality in content creation.
Takeaways
- 😀 Building a successful podcast takes time and dedication, with the speaker emphasizing that it's a process that requires at least three years to build an audience and a business.
- 🚀 The importance of evolving content formats is highlighted, as audiences can become accustomed to the same style, leading to a decline in engagement and growth.
- 🔄 The speaker shares their experience with changing the podcast format to react to trending topics, which has led to positive feedback and increased engagement from listeners.
- 💬 Unsolicited responses from the audience are a strong indicator of whether the content is resonating and on the right track, with negative feedback signaling the need for change.
- 🔑 The 'magic number' of three years is presented as a key period to build and establish a business or audience before significant growth occurs.
- 💡 The speaker advises to 'Zig where others are zagging,' meaning to differentiate and innovate in a space where many are doing the same thing, to stand out.
- 📈 A testimonial for the SEO tool 'HR' is shared, highlighting its features for analyzing site structure and traffic, which can be valuable for marketing strategies.
- 📊 The significance of a good hook in content creation is underscored, with the example of a simple change leading to a massive increase in views.
- 🔍 The importance of testing and leveraging organic social media performance to inform paid advertising strategies is discussed, as successful organic content can be amplified with ads.
- 🌐 The speaker mentions the emerging opportunities on platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter, advising to capitalize on new features as they are rolled out.
- 📈 The potential of programmatic conversion rate optimization and AI in tailoring custom messages for website visitors is introduced as part of innovative marketing strategies.
Q & A
What was the initial download count for the podcast 'Leveling Up' in its first year?
-In the first year, the podcast 'Leveling Up' had about 3,300 downloads.
How long did it take for the podcasts to reach 100 million downloads according to the speaker?
-It took approximately 10 to 11 years for the podcasts to scale to about 100 million downloads.
What is the 'magic number' the speaker refers to when building an audience or business?
-The 'magic number' the speaker refers to is three years, which is the time frame he suggests it takes to build an audience or business.
What is the second lesson the speaker shares about evolving content format?
-The second lesson is that one must evolve their content format over time. Specifically, the speaker mentions changing the Marketing School podcast from 5 to 10 minutes an episode to 15 to 20 minutes focusing on trending topics.
What is the significance of the 'unsolicited response rate' mentioned in the script?
-The 'unsolicited response rate' is a leading indicator of whether the content is on the right track. Positive, unsolicited feedback from the audience is a sign that the content is resonating well.
What is the speaker's advice regarding negative comments on content?
-The speaker suggests that negative comments are a signal to react sooner rather than later, indicating that the content format may need to be adjusted.
What is the name of the SEO tool the speaker endorses and uses at his ad agency?
-The speaker endorses an SEO tool called 'HR', which is used at his ad agency, Single Grain.
What feature of HR does the speaker find particularly useful?
-The speaker finds the site structure feature of HR particularly useful, as it allows him to analyze competitors' strategies and optimize their own website.
What is the third lesson the speaker shares about standing out in a sea of sameness?
-The third lesson is to 'Zig where other people are zagging', meaning to do something different and innovative instead of following the crowd, especially in content creation.
What mistake did the speaker acknowledge making with his YouTube strategy?
-The speaker acknowledged being too inconsistent with his YouTube strategy, which affected his growth and viewership.
What is the speaker's company called and what does it focus on?
-The speaker's company is called Single Grain, and it is an ad agency focused on driving innovation.
What is the importance of having a good 'hook' according to the speaker?
-According to the speaker, a good 'hook' is crucial for attracting views because it draws people in, whether it's through an interesting thumbnail, headline, or packaging.
What is the significance of the 'for you page' feature on platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter?
-The 'for you page' feature is significant as it provides an opportunity for content creators to get more views by being featured on these platforms, which can lead to increased visibility and growth.
What strategy did the speaker mention for growing an Instagram following?
-The speaker mentioned making all followers 'close friends' on Instagram, which would place their stories at the top of the followers' feeds, potentially increasing engagement and growth.
Outlines
🎙️ Podcast Growth and Evolution Insights
The speaker shares their experience with podcasting, highlighting the challenges of discovery and growth over the years. They emphasize the importance of perseverance, stating that it typically takes three years to build a substantial audience or business. The speaker also discusses the necessity of evolving content formats to avoid stagnation and maintain audience engagement. They mention their transition from daily short episodes to longer, weekly episodes that react to trending topics, which has been well-received by the audience. Additionally, the speaker underscores the value of unsolicited feedback as a leading indicator of content success and the need to adjust strategies based on audience response.
🚀 Strategies for Marketing Innovation and Growth
The speaker introduces their company, Single Grain, an ad agency focused on driving innovation. They discuss new strategies such as programmatic conversion rate optimization and the use of AI for tailoring custom messages to enrich visitor experiences on websites. The speaker encourages staying consistent and evolving content formats to remain relevant. They also share personal anecdotes about the importance of quality and the impact of a strong hook in attracting views on social media platforms. The speaker illustrates the power of a compelling thumbnail or headline with a real-life example of a significant increase in views after a minor adjustment. They conclude by emphasizing the importance of testing and leveraging organic social content to inform paid advertising strategies.
📈 Leveraging Social Media Features for Maximum Reach
The speaker discusses strategies for maximizing views on social media platforms, particularly focusing on new features and the importance of early adoption. They mention the 'For You' pages on LinkedIn and Twitter as opportunities for increased visibility. The speaker also suggests making all followers 'close friends' on Instagram to prioritize their content in stories, a tactic that has been used to achieve massive view counts. They highlight the role of marketers in experimenting with these strategies to grow their follower base and reach. The segment concludes with a mention of the Agency Owners Association, a community for agency owners to share insights and grow their businesses, with testimonials highlighting the value of the group.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Podcast
💡Downloads
💡Content Format
💡Marketing School Podcast
💡News Cycle
💡Listener Churn
💡SEO Tool
💡Zigging and Zagging
💡Agency Owners Association
💡Organic Social
💡Hook
Highlights
It took about 11 years to achieve 100 million downloads across two podcasts.
The initial year saw only 3,300 downloads, growing to 14,000 in the second year, and 377,000 in the third year.
The 'magic number' for building an audience or a business is three years.
Content format evolution is crucial, as seen with the Marketing School podcast shifting from daily episodes to reacting to the news cycle.
Listener churn and negative reviews can indicate the need for content evolution.
Unsolicited responses from the audience are a leading indicator of being on the right track.
Negative comments are a stronger signal and should prompt quicker reactions.
H1 (a favorite SEO tool) offers insights into competitor strategies and optimization of one's own website.
Zigging when others zag is a strategy for standing out, as seen with the shift from interview podcasts to solo episodes.
Innovation in podcast formats is essential to avoid becoming stale in a saturated market.
Consistency and continuous improvement are key to staying relevant in the podcast space.
The importance of quality content and the effort put into it is recognized by the audience.
The difference between 500 views and 30 million views can be attributed to the effectiveness of the hook, such as thumbnails or headlines.
Testing organic social content and then turning successful pieces into ads is a proven strategy.
The Agency Owners Association is a community for agency owners to share leads and insights, aiming to foster growth.
Utilizing new social media features, like LinkedIn's 'For You' page, can significantly boost visibility.
Making all followers 'close friends' on Instagram can improve the visibility of your stories and potentially increase views.
Transcripts
podcast Discovery is really hard my
first podcast leveling up I started that
one maybe 11 years ago or so this is a
lot of hard work people respect it more
when they see that more work is being
put into
it we've scaled to about 100 million
downloads through the two podcasts that
we have and year one I remember about
3,300 downloads for the year and then
year two was about 14,000 or so and then
year three maybe 377,000 downloads so
you can see it starting to compound over
time now we're year 10 year 11 or so and
we're over 100 million downloads so
there's a couple lessons that I I I want
to share from there the first lesson is
to build over time the magic number is
three years three years to build an
audience three years to build a business
and I found the magic number to always
be three it takes you know year you're
kind of slugging it out two years three
years three years is when you're like oh
man I I kind of have something right so
magic number is three years and uh don't
give up before that the second thing I
would say is you must evolve your
content format and what I mean by that
is with the marketing School podcast we
were doing 5 to 10 minutes an episode
for seven days a week and we're teaching
everything that we knew about marketing
but after two three years of doing that
you've basically shared all your base
knowledge your foundational knowledge
and so you have to evolve we didn't
evolve for another one two years after
that and that's when we started to get
bad reviews it's like oh you know
they're saying the same things over and
over and that's where you start to get
listener churn and you're not growing as
fast as you used to and so we knew that
that format became stale and we took a
little too long to adjust but we did
adjust eventually and I would say the
format that we have now where we publish
five times per week so Monday through
Friday each episode is 15 to 20 minutes
and the main difference now is that
we're reacting to the news cycle so it's
trending topics and you have two
operators two marketers that are sharing
knowledge and now we get a lot of text
from people saying how much they enjoy
this content and we can see the UN
unsolicited response rate in YouTube
about how much people are enjoying this
content and even right now we just
started the another YouTube channel for
marketing school and there's a lot of
people saying oh my God I don't know why
you're not getting more views so when
you're starting out look for those
unsolicited responses from people those
comments from people and that is a
signal that's a leading indicator that
you're you're on the right track if
you're getting no comments or negative
comments you're probably on the wrong
track right and when you get negative
comments that's to me is more of a
signal than anything and you should
react to it sooner I think we took too
long to to react to it I wanted to take
a second to talk about today's sponsor
HR HR is my favorite SEO tool in fact we
use it at my Ad Agency single grain for
internal uses and also for clients and
we've been using it for years and years
and the cool thing is they have a great
Academy that you can go to if you're
looking to just learn SEO and they have
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hrs.com
webmaster tools my favorite feature with
HR it's a sneaky feature here but I'm
just looking at zapier.com and what I'm
doing is I'm looking at oh wow they they
got 10 million visits in the last I
don't know 6 months or so compared to
the previous 6 months well okay how are
they doing it I can look at their site
structure so if I click on site
structure I can see that their Blog has
driven the vast majority of it and it
was a five million a plus five million
change right so basically what I can do
is I can look at the pages that are
driving that traffic and now I have a
sense for what they're doing in terms of
strategy so I can look at competitors I
can also look at our own stuff too to
figure out how we can optimize our own
website so you can just check out hr's
Web Master tools that's completely free
or you can go to the HFS Academy that's
also free as well to learn more and that
being said back to the video and the
final thing I'll say the third lesson
here is you must Zig where other people
are zagging and what I mean by that is
my first podcast leveling up I started
that one maybe 11 years ago or so and
that was Interview podcast and I was
interviewing entrepreneurs but I was
focused on marketing and so that was
novel at the time that was new and I
actually was getting a lot of views I
would post them to I'd post to Skype
interviews you guys remember Skype I was
post a Skype interview to YouTube and
they would get a lot of views some some
videos would get 20 30 40,000 views or
so that's that back in the day YouTube
was easy right that's maybe another side
quest sticking with something that's
working doubling tripling down on it
that's something I should have done with
YouTube I was too inconsistent with it
but going back to number three you have
to Zig when other people are zagging and
so the problem now with interviews is
everybody does an interview show and
nobody's really innovating on it now
every now and then someone you might get
a really good guest and the content is
going to be really interesting and the
interviewer knows how to ask good
questions but most of the time most
interviewers don't know how to ask good
questions and everyone's doing interview
podcasts and so well then then how are
you going to stand out in a in a sea of
samess and so now I've kind of changed
my format to focus maybe 10 20% of the
time I'll still do interview podcasts
for someone that I people that I
genuinely want to talk to and but I I
I've been doing more solo episodes and
I've been enjoying those a lot more and
I actually don't care if I'm getting
less viewership on those solo episodes
one I'm enjoying it two I know I'm going
to reach the people that I need to reach
because I know the YouTube algorithm um
is going to continue to work for me all
the time um in addition to me posting to
all the the audio channels too so um
when you feel quote unquote that a a
format's no longer serving you that's
when you should think about changing it
all right quick note this is about my
company it's called single grain and
single grain is an ad agency where we're
focused on driving Innovation and so I
want to talk about a couple new
strategies and if you need help with
marketing great if not hear a couple new
strategies that you should try out one
is programmatic cro so we are doing
programmatic conversion rate
optimization on our site we're building
products that will automatically
optimize your site to increase
conversion rates we're also Auto
optimizing auto updating uh from a from
a SEO standpoint and we're constantly
thinking about what else we can do in
terms of enriching the visitors that are
hitting your website and also tailoring
custom messages for them using Ai and so
there's a handful of things that we're
doing from a marketing standpoint and
our mission is just to drive more
Innovation so if you want to learn more
just go to single grain.com grain like
rice so single grain.com to learn more
and we'll see you inside so the the
wrap-up basically you just got to stay
in the game and you have to continue to
get better and that's easier said than
done and I can tell you I did too many
things over 11 years I was inconsistent
I was talking about different things and
you know I took too long to evolve uh my
content formats or you know I just just
a lot of things there right so um again
three years it takes to to build
something great evolve your content
format Zig where other people are
zagging and stay consistent and you're
going to be fine podcast Discovery is
really hard and we're trying to put more
of our efforts into YouTube so for
example you're seeing me record this
right now um this is this is a lot of
hard work we we have a we have a great
you know AV person that comes in Brad
and um you know we sit down record in
person I I have to drive over here um
and so there there's actually manual
work to be done with with this and so
you get what you put in I do tend to
think that people respect it more when
they see that more work is being put
into it um and I can see that with my my
reals too my reals my Tik toks and some
of my reals you know they'll get
millions of views or so and um it's
because I think we're putting in the
extra work so quality matters uh quite a
bit now the other thing I want to talk
about is the difference between 500
views and 30 million views so I kind of
talked about this in in the past but
this guy that that used to work for me
um he basically created two new
Instagram channels and one had 700k
followers the other one had 600k he
started a brand new show and he released
a video 500 views basically crickets he
was really sad because well he put a lot
of time and effort into it and he's like
you know what I need to change something
so he basically just added in the very
first the thumbnail or you can say the
the the first image was a title on what
people were going to see and that was
the only change just right before you
watch there's a little title right and
that was the difference between 30
million views versus 500 views and that
makes a big difference so those of you
that that are into creating anything you
have to think about your hook if you
don't have a good hook then you're not
going to get the views that you need
because people are so busy you got to
think about how how you can hook people
in whether it's a very interesting
thumbnail or a really good headline
that's what's going to draw people in
because it doesn't matter that that this
is a perfect example of it doesn't
matter how good your content is 80 cents
on the dollar is spent on your head line
or your thumbnail or your packaging
right so when it comes to YouTube when
it comes to Tik Tok when it comes to
Instagram you have to think about how
you hook people in and the beauty of
organic social now is that you can test
how well your organic social videos do
and the ones that do well you can make
them into an ad because it's already
proven to work it's already proven to
work with Organic social it's proven
itself out there in the wild so now you
can actually put add dollars to it and I
think that's going to continue to be a
really big opportunity probably for the
next 12 months or so probably going into
2025 and and that's how you're going to
get get more more views right I got to
take a minute to tell you about the
agency Owners Association this is a pure
group for agency owners think YPO or EO
but for agency owners and I just wanted
to read you a couple of testimonials so
this first one comes from Carrie and we
asked her what do you like most about
the group she said having a group of
people to discuss and bounce ideas the
leads are great too yes we share leads
in this group as well this one from alen
he says the ability to really post
whatever I want and need and the group
responds great experienced members
getting a lot of insights from
conversations with other members getting
a lot of value from sessions from Eric
getting advice from others as well and
so if you want to grow your agency
faster and you want a peer group to do
so just go to marketing school.i agency
this is a group that both Neil and I
created and our hope here is to create a
Vibrant Community of agency owners and
do a lot more with it in the future so
again marketing school. i/ agency and
we'll see you inside and the the other
thing too talking about views is when
you think about LinkedIn
LinkedIn now is adding in a for you page
okay Twitter or X has basically added a
for you I think they've added a for you
page but they they're going a lot harder
on video all that to say is when these
new social or new social when these
platforms launch new features you want
to go all in on them right so we're
going to go all in on LinkedIn with um
with the the foru page they're they're
slowly rolling that out right now and
then X is going to get more serious over
time as well and um that's what I would
say the other thing I would say too
talking about getting more views is one
thing you can do on your Instagram is
you can make everyone on your all your
followers you can make them your close
friends and if they become your close
friends that means you're first in line
on the stories right um and that this is
like a a recent hack people are are
using to grow their their follower
account I think someone got um 100
million views or something like that and
so that's something that we might
consider testing or playing around with
because you know we're marketers and we
want to experiment with things and we
had someone reach out to us that that
specializes in in in doing it so might
be interesting to to try out and that's
what I would say
so that being said that's it for this
segment
[Music]
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