attainable podcast network

In today’s episode, Daniel Parscale sits down with William Smith, Executive Producer of the Attainable Podcast Network. Should you be considering adding podcasting to your marketing mix? How do you get started and what type of equipment should you get? What type of resources are needed to build a podcast?

Read the transcript:

So we’re going to flip it a little bit. Usually, you are working behind the scenes as the producer of the show. And today, we want to talk to you a little bit about podcasting– not only identifying what it is, but also identifying opportunities for people who might be interested in it. Because it’s a buzzword, and it’s been around for a while, but I think a lot of people still have some big questions about what it can be applied for. So where should we start with our big blanket understanding of what podcasting is?

Well, I think we should go way back. Let’s go back to 2004.

If you think about where we are today and where technology has kind of driven us, 2004 seems like ancient history. But podcasting kind of started with the advent of the iPod. And, back then, I had one of the original, kind of, click wheel iPods, you know. I think their marketing jargon was like, a hundred songs in your pocket, or a thousand songs in your pocket– something like that.

And podcasting kind of became one of these things, where, if you were a geek– you’re a nerd, you’re into tech stuff, Apple stuff, video game stuff– there were people that were creating their own shows that you could subscribe to. And you have to plug in your iPod into your computer, and it would download the show, and you could listen to it– kind of like you would an audio book. And so–

Or an MP3, a song, or something.

Yeah. Exactly. I mean, basically, podcasts are just MP3 files, just like a music file. But the term, “podcasting,” comes from iPod and broadcast. Those two words kind of mashed together. And it’s kind of funny because now, I don’t think Apple even sells iPods anymore. They definitely don’t sell the old– the ones that I’m talking about– the click wheel, kind of like the mechanical hard drive.

Now, everyone has a cell phone. But you can get podcast, whether you’re with your phone, you can get them in your car, you can get them on your computer, your tablet– whatever. They’re all over the place. And so it was born out of this idea that people wanted to create their own content, and they wanted to distribute it. So podcast is really just, kind of, like a portable audio show that you happened to– it started off on the iPod, but now it’s evolved, and now, it’s everywhere.

So you hear about podcasts all the time, now. Think about Serial, which has like 50 million listeners to it. None of that’s what I started off with. I started off with This Week in Tech, you know. It was just a small show at the time, and it was a couple of guys in front of a laptop, talking. But now, it’s blossomed into this huge thing– so much so that, now, in 2016, my full-time job is just creating podcasts. So it’s come a long way.

I mean, like you said, the original ones– I don’t even remember the first podcast I ever listened to or was even aware of. But I remember thinking that they were very niche, and they were small, and, maybe, I didn’t quite know what they were for. But now, we’ve got President Obama’s been on Marc Maron’s show, WTF.

There’s some that I listen to regularly, in the same way that I read news for work. I listen to these podcasts to keep up on trends. And it’s a new way to get behind the scenes. Like, I’m a music fan, and so I listen to a lot of music ones. And I get to learn stuff about my favorite artists that I wouldn’t be able to get in news or liner notes or whatever it could be. So it’s super expansive, and I think that the realization that this can be applied to a lot of things has really grown since 2004.

Yeah. I mean, I think they’re for everyone now. Back then, like I said, it was for tech geeks. Because you actually had to know about connecting up devices to your computer, going into a website, and subscribing to an RSS feed– you had to know a little bit more than you do today.

It wasn’t so much like there was a Subscribe button. There wasn’t a curated directory. You had to actually go out and seek the stuff, and then program it into your computer so that you would get the content. It wasn’t delivered to you. You had to actually go and physically check to see, oh, is there something new for me to listen to? I might go download it.

And, like you said, there are so many different topics. It was very niche back then. It was just for computer enthusiasts. And now, if you like comedy, if you like sci-fi, if you like video games, if you like music– some of my favorite podcasts are music podcasts, just like you mentioned.

Song Exploder is an awesome podcast. I actually just donated to them. They’re running a fundraising campaign to keep the show going. Most podcasts are free, but I enjoy this one so much, I’d pay for it. So there’s just every topic imaginable you can find a podcast for.

And, like you said, because this has exploded into something that is easier to access, now, I know that– I use Overcast for my iPhone to download mine. And I don’t even pay attention to whether or not there’s a new episode. I just, kind of, check it when I know I want to listen to a podcast, and it downloads automatically.

So this has made it so that me– somebody who originally thought that this was an isolated kind of thing for certain people– I don’t even have to worry about it. It is sent to my phone as easily as, maybe, the radio in my car, or a TV station at home. So I’m definitely part of that expanded group.

Yeah, and it’s great from a marketing perspective. Because, just like you mentioned, you don’t even think about it. You just receive something new. And you’re probably delighted when you do, because it’s like, oh, that’s cool. I get something new to listen to.

And if you’re using podcast in the way that we’re using podcasts here, to educate people and to bring value to them, it’s nice that they can subscribe once, and then you don’t have to re-grab their attention. They just get the new stuff when it comes out. So that’s one of the really– I mean, there are a lot of reasons to do podcast, but that’s one of the big ones, from a marketing perspective.

Let’s talk about the reasons for getting into this, too. Because I know that when Attainable started coming up with ideas– it started off, I believe, as just one or two concepts, and then the discussion was brought up as– OK, here’s what we’re doing. What else can we do with it?

And Reach kind of came from that, because, like you said, we wanted to educate. But we really thought about it a little bit. I remember that you and I sat down and talked about– who is our audience going to be? What is it that we really want to provide to them?

We went through a lot of questions like that, that were pretty much branding the show in the same way that one might band their own business. What kind of things do you think were really important for us in that discussion? And what should people who are interested in podcast think about, if they’re going to go that way?

I loved listening to podcasts, but I didn’t know anything about actually making one, up until five or six months ago. At our company, Audigy Group, where we both work– full disclosure– our CEO does a lot of leadership video training. And one of the things that we do is, we go online, we look at these videos, we watch them, we take notes, and we answer questions. We try to really learn from all this content that’s been created, but it was all on the video realm.

And I had this idea originally– can I take that content and create articles out of it? Can I create web pages out of it? My background is in search marketing, so I’m always thinking about content and search engines, and people looking for things. And I thought, these videos we’re watching– there’s great stuff, but people can’t find it. And I want to expose people in the outside world to it. It was kind of locked away in our intranet site, and people couldn’t get to it.

So the first thing that I tried to figure out how to do was how to turn this content into written articles. And the best way for me to do that was to convert it to audio, and then run it through a transcription service. And I found that, as I converted it to audio, stripped away all the visuals, and just listened to it in my ear buds– I thought, this really changes how I feel about what I’m hearing.

It feels more intimate. It feels more like I’m in a room and I’m hearing people talk, and I’m learning something. And I don’t have to actually be watching what’s going on. I can consume this while I’m doing other things. And it occurred to me that, that’s what podcasts are really good for.

If I want to learn something, if I want to be educated, if I want to be entertained, if I want to be stimulated emotionally– listening to something in your ears through earbuds while I’m taking a walk or driving in the car– I have a long commute to work, so I like the idea of just testing it out and seeing what it would sound like. So the audience for our original podcast were people that wanted to learn about leadership and business principles.

And that’s what Attainable is. It’s a daily podcast. It’s two minutes. It’s a thought-of-the-day kind of thing. We were heavily influenced by John Maxwell, who does A Minute With Maxwell, Jay Baer, who does Jay Today– it’s just a snippet. It’s something just to get the wheels turning in your brain about something that you may not have thought of. And that’s where that was born out of.

We also realized later on, through talking with our membership development team, that a lot of our customers are members, as we call them here. They come to us because they want help with marketing. And they want help with marketing in a way where, a lot of it, they could probably do themselves.

And I think that, if it were up to us, we probably would like our members to manage their social media campaigns, for instance, take a hand in blogging, and do those kinds of things. We provide those services, but a lot of the people that come to us don’t even know the basics of how to get started with that. So Reach was kind of born out of– how do we appeal to small businesses and teach them these fundamental marketing skills about promoting themselves online, getting out in front of people, and so forth.

There are thousands of marketing podcasts. We want to cater to small business and tell our story, because we’ve got a lot of people in this building who have a lot of expertise and a lot of experience, and are pretty great at what they do. It’d be nice if we could expose that to people, give that away, and educate everyone. It’s that utility concept, which is another Jay Baer-ism. How can I be useful to people, build trust, and build a relationship so they’ll want to come to work with us?

And one of the things that you pointed out that resonates with me is the way that this material changes when you go from, for instance, video to just audio. I listen to most of my podcasts in my car during my commute also. And most of the news that I absorb comes either through radio or through podcasts. And I find that I get all the way to the end of the story way more often than if I’m reading it or if there’s another visual component.

Like, I will never go and watch news on YouTube. I don’t know the last time that I watched the news on TV. But I always get it on radio stations or whatever particular podcast I happen to be listening to. So transforming it into that actually makes it more likely that I will absorb it. And I think, too– tell me what you think about this– that a podcast format really works well for keeping current because it is constantly updating new material.

When is the last time that– well, maybe a while ago for you, because you’ve been in this for a long, long time. But if you’re searching for a new SEO topic or something like that, or just what’s going on in search engine optimization– I get so many articles, and some of them are from 2009 or some of them are from 2014 or whatever, and I don’t know where to actually begin. And podcasts, because they’re updated, tell me that we’re dealing with the newest material. And I think that keeping the conversation fresh with that is really critical, too.

It’s interesting because as you say that, I reflect on one of the issues that I have with podcasts and one of the limitations– it’s not actually a limitation, but the kind of thing that I wish would be improved through podcasting is that people tend to dispose of the content afterwards. Like, they listen to a podcast, and they don’t go back and listen to it. There’s not a lot of great ways to share information through podcast. It’s still such a new– even though it was 2004 when you first started seeing podcast, it’s not a medium that’s been really developed from a technological standpoint– I mean, other than that it’s easy to subscribe to things now and you can get it from anywhere. But discovery– searching them is not easy. Sharing parts of a podcast that you like with other people– like, let’s say that you’re listening to something and it really speaks to you. Sharing just that snippet– that’s not easy. It’s still easier to do that with a web page. Take a screenshot. You can send someone a link. It’s a lot easier, still, that way. But everyone learns differently. Some people have to be hands-on. Reading an article is not going to cut it for them. They have to actually dig in and do something. So they want, maybe, a step-by-step guide. Some people like to read. I actually like to read along with what I’m listening to. For me, that’s the ultimate way of retaining information. I’m even at the point now, where we watch Netflix, and I turn on the captions, because I like to read what they’re saying. It’s kind of annoying because it takes up half the screen, but some people– that’s just how they process information.

I have to do that if it’s anything from BBC. I can’t understand the accents. But it really does help out.

For sure. There’s definitely, with podcasts, the ability to push things out and be more current. Another one of the reasons that we’ve been looking into this is that it’s much easier to collect information from people if you’re talking to them. And recording– once you get past the fact that you have this microphone in your face– it’s so much easier to transfer information from an expert if you’re just talking to them, rather than say, hey, could you take two hours out of your day and write me a blog post? Write me a white paper or a step-by-step guide on how to do something.

It’s an easier way to collect the information if you’re just talking through it and recording it. Then, you can take that information and you can convert it to whatever format you want. So podcasts, to me, have so many advantages in terms of what you’re talking about– like, getting information out to people quickly, formatting it in a way where it’s accessible to people so they can process it however they want or wherever they want. For all the limitations that they have, they’re still superior, in many ways, to what you said– reading an article on a web page.

You brought up that you had an interest in this because you were transcribing it and using it as content. And I’m thinking about other forms of content and how podcasting can fit into this. And one of the things that occurs to me is that most of the podcasts that jump to mind as soon as I hear that word– Serial is one that you brought up, or– I don’t know. Take your pick. WTF, again– Marc Maron’s one. Those are supplements to other products and other content they’re putting out, too.

So there are limitations, but I think that most of the people who are using these– I guess you could say, “correctly.” I would say, “wisely.” They are using those in addition to other content that they’re producing. They’re not relying entirely on this, because it’s hard to find, like you said. The medium might not be the right way for other people, but it’s a good way to supplement these kinds of things.

You brought up that you had an interest in this because you were transcribing it and using it as content. And I’m thinking about other forms of content and how podcasting can fit into this. And one of the things that occurs to me is that most of the podcasts that jump to mind as soon as I hear that word– Serial is one that you brought up, or– I don’t know. Take your pick. WTF, again– Marc Maron’s one. Those are supplements to other products and other content they’re putting out, too.

You’d be really hard-pressed, I think, to start a podcast as the foundation of your business. But a lot of people clearly do get wider exposure and reach a lot more people because of this. So I think that’s a really astute thing to keep in mind for anyone who is going to be considering this. Don’t go selling off your business just yet so you could start your podcast career, because–

It’d be cool if you could do that, because I love doing it. So that would be great if I didn’t have to worry about all the other stuff. Yeah, I mean, you hit it right on the head, Dan. It’s part of an overall content marketing strategy. I would say that it’s actually, kind of, a– maybe “pillar” is the right word. I think it could be a pillar of a content marketing strategy.

And when we say, “content marketing,” we’re talking about producing information for people that helps them in some way– either to make a decision, to solve a problem that they have, or to build trust with them. Like I mentioned, it’s so much easier for us to sit down and talk, because we’re going to actually transcribe this anyway and probably use quotes from it. We’ll probably tweet things about it, we’ll share graphics on Facebook. It could be the basis of a blog post about how to create podcasts and why you should use them.

But it’s all starting here, at a table with two microphones and just two people talking. So I think it’s part of your strategy. It’s not the only part of your strategy. I know so many things that we’ve talked about with previous guests– you know, it’s having a mix. You don’t just do paid, you also do organic. You want to consider the message that you have in all the different forms that it could be conveyed and consumed in.

So it is part of a strategy. It’s not the only strategy. You will have to leverage, heavily, your other media to get the word out about your podcast. And we’re learning that the hard way, because that’s the most difficult thing about podcasting– getting in front of people so they know that it exists and they can listen to it.

But you could, to some degree, share this stuff the same way that you would. Like, I know a lot people will reference podcasts in their articles that they write, and that makes total sense. If you want to drive attention to your podcast, you could be like, here’s a topic about which we’ll be going into greater detail.

By subscribing to the podcast you can find that kind of thing out. And it is a trick. I am really glad that you’re spearheading that, because I wouldn’t know where to begin with it exactly. But it is part of a greater whole that we’re already familiar with as marketers.

Yeah, absolutely.

All right. So let’s get to the question that a lot of people are going to be asking. How do you get started? Maybe we can start with the equipment that you got, since we’ve got these mics right here in our faces. It’s top of mind. Do we need these expensive microphones? These luxury items that–

Yes, and no. You can get by, creating a podcast in a very bare-bones way. I mean, mean, you can pretty much do it for free if you’ve got a cell phone. And that’s the most primitive way to create a podcast. We actually started just with a MacBook Pro and sitting in front of it, and having two people talk.

That has many, many, many disadvantages. Namely, the microphone is not that great. If somebody turns their head, then, all of a sudden, they drop off. You can’t hear them. It’s not the most professional setup. It’s a way to get started. It’s a way to learn. I always suggest to people that they start off in a bare-bones way like that.

I think, with anything, if you learn how to make something sound good with the worst equipment, then, by the time that you are fully on board and committed to following through with podcasting– we could talk about what that means– when you get good equipment, then you’ll be great. You’ll sound awesome. And that’s, kind of, how we started– with no investment, at all, other than my own laptop.

We just sat in a room and had conversations. Figured out we need to get some sort of an external microphone. Then, we moved to headsets. You can have a combo headset you can buy for $20 to $30 on Amazon. You put it on, and you’ve got a little microphone that goes in front of your mouth. You kind of look like Garth Brooks, but you get a better sound that way.

Then, when you decide, oh, I want to start adding multiple people, there’s some more complexity. Because most laptops don’t have multiple sound inputs. So then, you need to invest in more equipment. And then, eventually, you get to the point where you’ve got a bunch of people talking and you need to edit.

We’ve tried, actually, no editing. Some of my favorite podcasts are not edited. I’m thinking of Joe Rogan Experience. It’s, like, three hours– so much so that they have to cut off their show after three hours, because the site that they upload it to won’t hold more than a three-hour show, and they don’t do any editing. So I actually like that style. I like when the conversation just flows– it’s not edited.

But for some of the things that we’re talking about, we want to consolidate. We want to make sure that we’re keeping the attention span of the listener. We’ve done some focus groups internally to figure out what the ideal length is for a show– how much is too much information that we’re conveying once we break things up?

So then, you need to get editing software, and that costs something. There are free alternatives almost all of these things. As you get more and more complex, you’re going to want to invest more. So we started off with a $0 investment, just using free things– and we can include, in the notes of the show, what some of those resources are– to where we are today, where we actually have a dedicated studio. We have a room that we always get together in. It’s got–

Just like the holidays.

Just like the– yeah. So it’s got plenty of accommodations for multiple people. We have some really nice mics. We have some Shure SM7B mics. They’re about $350 apiece. But they make it sound good. And sound quality is important. So we have that. We use a MacBook Pro. We use a program called Logic Pro– which you can get for $200 on the App Store– and some other equipment, cables– stuff like that.

But it’s still a pretty small investment when you think about other things that you spend money on in marketing. If you were just to outsource graphic design for an ad campaign or something, you’d probably spend more than our entire investment in podcasting, which would last us years.

Oh, yeah. We’ll never have to– well, we probably won’t ever have to invest in this stuff again, or we may, and it would be a one-time fee.

Yeah. The investment at this point is just adding more microphones if we wanted to have more people. We started off with just one person talking. That’s kind of boring. We added two My preference is to have two, three, four people talking. I think that’s more interesting for a conversation.

But, yeah, the investment, now, is just scaling up to add more of what we already have, and what we have works pretty well. For $2,000, you can get a pretty good professional setup. The expense and time is more of the factor, I think, with podcasting than the equipment expense.

Yeah, that was going through my mind as we were thinking about this, too. Because you and I try our best to do, usually, one episode a week. And we record for about an hour a week, and then the editing, kind of, gets it down to our preferred time. But before we do that, there’s brainstorming. There’s scheduling. There’s, maybe, a little bit of rehearsing. And then, afterwards, like you said, there’s editing. There’s a whole bunch of stuff that goes into this, which is– time is money, so that’s an investment as well.

But another factor, too, is that commitment. If you have a podcast that releases one thing sporadically, a quarter, or whatever it’s going to be, and people are not regularly expecting that new material from here, then they’re going to be less excited to listen to it even if they like the content that you’re providing. We keep mentioning Serial, and I think that’s one that a lot of people are familiar with. But I know that when Serial is releasing new episodes, it’s usually going to be every week, and I almost have it on my calendar. I know to start checking.

Your mental calendar.

Totally. Yeah. Because I’ve got to find out what happens. But if they didn’t– like, over the holiday break, for instance, they didn’t release for a week or two, or something like that. And that kind of threw my game off, and now, it’s off of my radar again, too. The same is probably true for any company or individual who is going to be releasing something like this. And that is a resource.

Yeah. Absolutely. The editing process takes, usually, about a week. Even though I do a lot of podcasting for us, it’s not my full-time job. I mean, I’d love for it to be my full-time job. Being a host is not your full-time job. It’s sometimes tough to find people who can devote even an hour out of their day to record.

So that’s a huge part of it. The editing part is a huge part of it. The promotion part is a huge part of it. That’s the part that I actually don’t enjoy at all. If I had my choice of creating this stuff or promoting it or having someone help me, I would just want them to be doing the promotion.

I think, with anything in marketing– especially content marketing, the promotion part is the part that’s kind of a bummer. You know, it’s like, how do I get people to find this? How do I get the people to listen to it and give me feedback? That kind of stuff. That’s a huge investment. But one of the things you were talking about– the releasing on a schedule. I was thinking about it this morning. There’s this new show called, The Expanse. Have you heard of that?

It’s on Sci-Fi.They released, like, four episodes on their website. But they’ve not released another episode. It’s been like a month now. I know the holidays, kind of, screwed things up, but, like you said, that’s off my radar now. I don’t even remember what happened. I binge-watched all four episodes when they came out, and there’s been nothing new since.

And so, it’s the same way with podcasts. A lot of the ones I listen to are daily. And so, if I don’t get something new daily, it just puts me in a bad mood. I’m just, like, oh my god, I’m expecting, on my drive home, to listen to First Take ESPN. Whatever.

And when I don’t have it, it just makes me cranky. I hate that I’ve become so dependent upon hearing these podcasts. So being consistent is the most important thing, I think.

Let me switch it a little bit. We’ve talked a lot about resources and what people should be expecting if they want to get started on this. Now, we’re talking a little bit more about people who are consuming this.

So what kind of things should a person be considering when they’re evaluating who they’re actually going to be marketing to? Can they just take their client base and say, this is exactly what I’m going to build this podcast for? Should they evaluate it in a different way? Or how does that compare to the rest of their marketing?

I wish I could say that there was some website you go to or some research you do that informs you on what you should be creating for your audience, but I’ve always found the best thing to do is just ask them, with anything. One of the things that we’ve done in building websites, building marketing campaigns, and doing podcasting is, we involve the actual people that we expect are going to be our audience, and let them hear it first.

So we did a whole bunch of focus groups and testing, where we actually reached out to some members, and then, said, hey, we’re putting together this podcast as a show. Here’s, conceptually, the idea. What do you think of it? And we got feedback that way.

Some of our shows are actually targeted to our internal staff. There’s a show called Intersections, which is about interviewing people that you work with every day. We work in a company– I guess it’s probably 300 people. And there are many people on the second floor and third floor that I’ve never even met. I’ve seen them walk around. I don’t know where they went to school, what their background is, or what their interests are.

I’m actually, oftentimes surprised by how much I have in common with a lot of people around here that I’ve never even talked to. So we did a bunch of internal, kind of, prototyping. We sat down and had conversations with people. Megyn Kelly, who’s the host of that show– we sat her down with other people and just riffed, talked, and recorded– basically just sat down, turned on the microphone, and recorded, and then, ended up where we are.

But I find that you just ask people. You ask your audience. Just be prepared that you don’t always get a response from them. Again, people are busy. I find some parallels in this kind of stuff with the conversations that you’re having– I think it was with Maggie episode– about local reviews and Yelp, and things like that.

People don’t usually take the time to give you feedback, unless they’re pissed off about something. And that’s the same way with this. Even when you try to include people and say, hey, I want to build something for you. What do you think about this idea? You’re not always going to get a response.

But I just find, in general, the best thing is to ask. Just ask people. And it’s so simple. I would love it if there was, like I said, a website. You just go to it and say, what topics out there are not being covered by podcasts? And then you just go create one. But unfortunately, it’s not that easy.

No. Because there are already a lot of these, too. And even considering compiling all that– it would take a ton of time, if it was even feasible.

We asked people. We started off with, do you even listen to podcasts?

Do you know what podcasts are? What type of phone do you have? Because although podcasts are not just for people that have iPhones, it’s easier to get to the podcast that are out there via iTunes, because that’s a curated directory. Whereas, on the Google side, there’s not a directory for podcasts at this point. So people on Android phones tend not to be the people that listen to podcasts, because they’re not as readily available.

Of course there are exceptions to every rule like that, but, in general, that’s who the people are. And I went and did some online research– went to PUE, which– a lot of people go there when they want to get their marketing facts. And the penetration of podcast– they’re saying that 15% of the American population listens to podcast every month–

That’s a big chunk.

–which is huge. I mean, that’s actually more than people who use Twitter every month, and that surprises a lot of people. There are millions and millions of people that listen to this stuff. Again, it’s not the only thing we’re doing. It’s part of what we’re doing.

Another interesting story from the origination of this whole thing was– I remember talking to some people in the focus group stage, where I was asking them about what they thought about the podcast. And they were like, you know what, I don’t get anything from listening to this. This just doesn’t speak to me. I’d rather watch a video. I’d rather read. Whatever.

And that’s not something to be discouraged over, because we’re recording these and putting these out for people that do like podcasts. Like we started at the beginning, not everyone consumes information the same way. So, just because some people may not get it, like it, or appreciate it, that doesn’t mean that you have to change what you’re creating for them. You can also create other stuff for them.

Like I say, if you use podcasting as the pillar for the overall content marketing delivery– it’s the starting place to collect the content by having a conversation and recording it– then you can use that content in any number of ways.

Yeah, that makes sense, because that’s what we do with a lot of, especially, digital marketing. We get super-focused on what exactly is the most likely thing to tie into a person’s wants and needs. And then, we hit on that. We send them an ad or direct them to a landing page that is hyper-focused on what we anticipate their want to be. And when it doesn’t work, then we know that we need to change something else if we want to reach that potential client. So it makes sense that we want to this kind of thing.

So you’ve got your podcast, you’ve just recorded your first episode, you have put it out into the world, and people are starting to listen to it. And you obviously want to start figuring out a little bit more about how it’s doing, the same way you do with the rest of your marketing. In my mind, I always go to analytics, and I know that, sometimes, the podcast analytics data is a little bit less comprehensive– that’s may be the place to put it, right?

You look at those numbers a lot more frequently than I do, as the producer the show. But we had some discussions. I don’t think it’s as robust– is maybe a better way to put it. It’s like your typical GA stuff.

No. In fact, podcast analytics stink. I mean, they’re not good. They’re severely lacking. I was actually telling our CEO that that might be a cool side business to get into– solving the problem with podcast analytics. Because I get asked, how many subscribers do we have? The answer is, I don’t know.

Because there are many, many different ways to reach our podcast. You can get them through iTunes. You can get them through our website. You get them through SoundCloud. You can get them through a soon-to-be– there’s another site called TuneIn Radio, which we’re thinking about syndicating the content to, to get a wider listenership. So there are many different ways.

We host our podcast on a service called Libsyn, L-I-B-S-Y-N. They provide some analytics, but it’s not very robust. It’s just the total number of downloads. And, like I said, if you go to the website, which is where we do all of our social sharing– like, when I post to Twitter, Facebook, things like that– hey, we have a new episode, I always direct them to the website. Because I can’t direct them to an individual episode on iTunes through a link.

So there are a lot of different places. I don’t know how many people subscribe. I know many people download, but I don’t how many people fully listen. Somebody could download this episode. They could get to this part and they could cut it off without finishing it and to me, it–

Don’t you dare, if you’re listening–

Yeah. Don’t do that. (LAUGHING) That’s rude. So, I don’t know. I’ve been thinking a lot about that problem, and I think that, from a KPI standpoint, I’m looking at the average number per episode as being a number that I want to look at. That tells me how many different people.

I mean, people can subscribe– for instance, I have the podcast on my phone, but I also have them on my iPad. So that counts as two. And there’s no way for me to see that in the analytics, so I know. I’m always looking for– is the graph moving up into the right? Are we getting more than we had last time? Are we getting shares? Are people sharing it? Are they tweeting about it? That kind of stuff.

Those things could be easily measured. The number of just actual subscribers– I’m deriving from looking at the average number of downloads per episode, and how that’s growing. But I can’t say with absolute certainty. And that’s a problem with this industry in general. Not even podcast. Just digital in general– digital metrics. It’s very difficult to measure with precision. You’d think it would be easy, but it’s not. Even website traffic–

There’s a lot of guesswork that goes into that. You have to, kind of, make some inferences based off of what you expect them to be doing.

OK, so, if we don’t know exactly how many people are going to listening to this, we do know that there have got to be some ways that we can hopefully influence people to listen to it, right? You’ve already mentioned shares, which make sense. That’s how we share most of our content.

Are we going to take the same approaches that we do with blog posts or whatever other content we’re creating, and apply that directly to podcasts? Or is there something else we need to be thinking about?

Yeah. I think the mode for promoting the podcast does follow a similar style that you would employ if you had a blog post, a white paper, a video– things like that. You’re going to want to post it socially. That’s how we get a lot of people that listen– Facebook, Twitter. LinkedIn is a big source of our listenership right now.

I can tell, because whenever I post to LinkedIn, I see a spike in people that are actually listening. But that’s because the content that I share there is very focused on professionals, like leadership, business skills, things like that. That’s the Attainable show, but also Reach. So we use all the normal social channels.

One thing that I do– you have to hustle a little bit when you’re getting anything new that you build. You have to write to people, ask them to listen to it– give me your opinion on this– even internally.

I’ve experimented with sending out a mass email to everyone, saying, hey, there’s a new Reach. Go listen to it. We’d love to hear what you think. Give us a review. And it’s crickets. People see that there’s a mass email. They just disregard it. Hey, this is not directed to me. It’s directed to everyone. Whatever.

I’ve actually switched now, to where I just individually email people, and say, hey, your co-worker, your friend, whatever, was just on an episode of Reach or just on Intersections, or whatever. Would love to get your feedback on it. It’s individually presented to somebody, and people respond to that.

When you’re trying to get a podcast out in front of people, one of the ways that you do it is, you need reviews on iTunes. And that’s what bubbles your podcast up to the top of the other 115,000 podcasts that are active, that are on iTunes. The way you do that, too, is, you individually ask people to review it. You make it easy for them. You send them an email.

You put a screen shot, here’s where you click to get to the Reviews section. Here’s the number of stars– I never tell people, give me five stars. I say, I want you to listen it. I want your honest feedback. I don’t want you just to give me a five-star review if you don’t think it deserves one, but tell me why you don’t think it deserves one.

It actually like what Maggie was saying in her episode. It doesn’t really matter so much what the review is. It’s the fact that you have a review. Which stinks, because Google, Apple, others– they haven’t figured out that people tend to review things only when they’re pissed off.

Or they love it, and they want to be known for loving it, too. Like, I was going through and updating some of my own reviews for Google’s review platform now. And I was going through the list of places I’ve been to, and I was only going through places I thought were five stars, because I wanted my profile to have nothing but really cool places attached to it.

I think you’re the exception. I don’t think that’s the rule. I think generally, people only pay attention to reviews or are giving a review when they’re mad about something, which is unfortunate. Because it would be nice to– or people are skeptical. If they only see positive reviews, it’s like, oh, well, those must be planted. That kind of thing.

That’s a separate rant for another day. I just wish there were better ways to surface content than a review. Unfortunately, there isn’t, at this point. So, individually asking people to check it out, asking them– I find inviting people that are popular– you call it, “influencer marketing” in other scenarios– but people that have a lot of friends that would want to listen to something– that’s a good way to get started to get more exposure.

We’ve done Facebook ads, which have gotten us some good exposure– targeting keywords, things that people say they’re interested in, or their title.

So that kind of stuff works. But it’s a lot of hustle. And, like I mentioned in the beginning, that’s the part that I don’t enjoy. I’d rather be on the creative side, not on the promotional side, but you have to have both in order to move this project forward.

Not to make sweeping statements, but it does sound like, if you’re going to be thinking about podcasts for your business, you definitely want to take into consideration that it can be a totally affordable way to create unique content that honestly, probably, a lot of your competitors are not doing just yet, because it’s still at that stage. That’s my guess, anyway. But if you’re going to do this right, you need to be prepared to do a pretty substantial investment of your time and creative energy as well.

This is exciting. This is going to be the first top three take-aways that I’ve gotten to put to you. You already know the drill. What are the top three things that people listening should remember about podcasts?

I would say, first of all, podcasts are for everyone. There are podcasts out there that’ll probably fill any niche. Or is it “neesh”?

I’m gonna say niche. But I’m probably wrong. If I’m wrong, you can correct us, please. But there’s probably a podcast out there that will fill any niche. So if you want to be educated or you want to be entertained, there’s something out there for you. It’s not just for geeks.

If you’re interested in getting started with it, I would recommend, definitely, starting at the low end of the spectrum to see if it’s something that you like doing. See if it’s something that you could fit into your schedule. Start off with this laptop. Start off with your iPhone and just a microphone. Either pick one up cheaply or you could just set your iPhone in the middle of a table, and a speaker.

You’re not going to get the best quality, but you’re going to get something that’s going to kind of inform you and teach you about– am I comfortable talking about what I know? Do I have something to share with people that’s gonna be useful? Do I have other people that I can lean on– that can help provide some of that content.

So try things out really lo-fi before you– don’t just go to, like, Guitar Center, and buy a bunch of stuff, and then find out, oh, podcast isn’t for me. And then, I would say that the absolute most important thing is to be consistent. And that’s the real struggle. It’s carving out that time in your day. It’s finding people that you can rely on that are going to come and bring it when you have a conversation, and be interesting, and be informational.

You want to provide value. But you need to do it consistently.

That sounds– I couldn’t have put it any better. Well, thanks for being on the podcast. Thank you also for all the behind-the-scenes work you do and the scheduling and stuff. It’s great to work with you, and I really appreciate having you on the show as a guest.