The Podcasters Podcast "Keep It Simple" Jim ‘Mr Jim’ Jacobs (Niches, Technology & Analytics)
Jim is an inspirational podcaster, but probably not for the reasons you immediately think of. An ‘ordinary man’ who demonstrates that having a niche doesn’t hold you back in the podcasting world. His podcast is all about bedtime stories and became successful completely by accident, he didn’t initially set out to become a podcaster at all!
Kane talks to Jim about why he began his podcast Kids Short Stories in the first place, why it has been so successful, the evolution of the technology he has used and what his plans are for his future in podcasting.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Jim’s podcast, Kids Short Stories, started off to fill in a need for Jim’s own family. He was travelling a lot for work but still wanted the ability to tell his unique and creative bedtime stories to his children whilst he was away, so he created a podcast just for them.
- After a little while he realised that other people were listening. He asked his wife if he had shared the podcast and she hadn’t, these were organic listeners.
- The reviews started coming in and listeners began asking for stories for their children, this helped with the shareability and ‘virality’ of the podcast. Everyone wanted their child’s story to be told.
- Jim didn’t aim to ‘create’ a podcast with a following, for the first year he literally recorded on his phone in his car. After a year, he invested in a Shure Mic for simplicity and portability. This demonstrates that you don’t need ‘all of the gear’ to get started, just begin and get perfect later.
- Kids consume a lot of content, they have a lot of free time!
- The analytics surrounding podcasting is the same as something such as YouTube or Blogs. It’s just a different medium.
- To start with, Jim focused solely on his reviews, the only way to communicate with him was by leaving him a 5* review helping tremendously with the growth of the podcast.
- Think about your content and how consumable it is. Jim’s advice is to do shorter pieces of content, you want your listener to listen to your whole episode, not many people have time to listen to something 1hour + long. If you have a long interview for example, you can break this down into more specific yet smaller bits of content.
- I Heart Radio have partnered with Jim, he will soon be releasing 15 episodes a week with them. They will own and look after the advertising on the podcast.
- Jim has created a separate RSS feed so that those who want to pay for the episodes to be ad-free can which is a brilliant monetisation tool.
- In a battle against screen time, podcasting presents a unique opportunity. It provides screen-less entertainment for children, something Jim is keen to talk about with parents.
BEST MOMENTS
“There’s plenty of technology today that is on your phone that exceeds the bar of the minimum expectations of the consumer”
“I feel like I stumbled into this but when I look back I see that there a lot of things that are intentional”
“I had zero influence online before this show”
“I believe that more content is better, so I’d rather get it all out there”
“If I could go back, I’d tell myself, story every day, go, it would have been even more awesome”
“If you really want to be a podcaster, if you really want to put out content, what’s the easiest way for me to do that now? What do I have right now to get it started? Keep it simple”
VALUABLE RESOURCES
ABOUT THE GUEST
Jim Jacobs
https://kidsshortstories.com/about
https://heymrjim.com/
ABOUT THE HOSTS
Kane Baron, Thom Luter & Aaron Nelson manage over 100 live podcasts Including Rob Moore, Kevin Clifton, Shaa Wasmand & more.
Helping Entrepreneurs Launch, Scale & Monetise their podcast for over 7 years.
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