PodCraft | How to Podcast & Craft a Fantastic Show

Check out the full book - Podcast Growth: How to Grow Your Podcast Audience Nope, it’s not a new breakfast cereal. It’s a journalism and/or marketing strategy. The name comes from vox populi, or voice of the people. It’s a way of sketching out public opinion at a particular place and time. By asking a lot of different people the same question, you can get a lot of perspective on a bit of truth. This is also often used for comic effect by Jimmy Kimmel, and parodied by A Bit of Fry and Laurie. If you watch television, you have seen vox pops. Type: Short TaskTime Required: A hour to record, an hour to editPodcast Level: 5-10 episodesHow to Do ItCome up with a good episode topic, and one or maybe two related questions.  Put together a remote recording rig which you can carry easily, such as a hand-held digital recorder and a pair of headphones. Go to a place with good foot traffic, but not so crowded that you’ll have to shout to be heard. Think about places where your podcast topic would be relevant. If your podcast is about fly fishing, try the parking lot of a fishing spot, or partner with a bait and tackle shop. If your podcast is about quilting, check out a fabric shop. Bring some of your podcast business cards with you so you can easily share details of where to find the show. Participants do have to give you permission to record them. But you don’t have to fill out a contract, just keep a recording of them saying “yes, you have my permission to record me.”If you see people who look like they might be interested, ask if they’d be up for participating in an interview for a podcast. Be aware that people might not be, and that has nothing to do with you: they might be on their way to work, headed home, or simply wanting privacy. Some people will want to participate. Keep it light, keep it quick, and give them a card so they can listen later. Task List: Come up with a good episode topic, and one or maybe two related questions.  Practice working with your remote recording rig, and saving the sound files.  Get some business cards with your show information on them. Take your recording rig to a local spot with a reasonable amount of foot traffic. Bring a friend. Ask people if they’d be interested in participating in an interview for a podcast.Tell them about your podcast and offer them a card right away. That way, even if they say no, they’ve heard of your podcast. After you record them, thank them. Remind them that they’ll be able to hear themselves on your podcast, and they should tell their friends. Also MentionedThe Best Podcast Digital Recorders on the MarketShure SM58 MicSamson Q2U MicZoom PodTrak P4 Podcast RecorderCheck out the full book - Podcast Growth: How to Grow Your Podcast Audience Support the show (https://pod.academy)

Check out the full book - Podcast Growth: How to Grow Your Podcast Audience A montage episode is a piece of audio content, made up of clips from different contributors.A tried and tested way of creating one is to build the episode around a single topic or question. Each participant records their answer to the question, and sends over their audio to the creator.You can collect clips from anyone from the general public, to your podcast listeners. In this particular instance, we want to create one with fellow podcasters in our niche. Type: Big StrategyTime Required: Around 3 months, from planning to publishing Podcast Level: About 10 episodes, or at the end of a seasonFirstly, you need to decide on a topic for your episode. Choose something that’s going to be interesting and useful to the audiences of all involved. Some examples of montage episodes could includeAn episode of a travel podcast, where contributors talk about their favourite holiday destinationAn episode of a sound design podcast, where contributors talk about their favourite audio production softwareAn episode of a health podcast, where contributors talk about their morning routinesYou may be asking a single question, but it's a good idea to have some prompts alongside it.Imagine the hypothetical travel podcast creates a montage episode titled “The World's Best Holiday Destinations”, and one of the clips is someone simply saying “Jamaica”. That would be a pretty dull and pointless episode.When asking for contributions, you might expand on the question “what is your favourite holiday destination?” with any of the following;Why did you choose to go there?What’s your favourite memory of the place?What’s something that surprised you about it?What's your top tip for someone planning to go there in the future?This will help give yourself the best possible chance of gathering great, insightful content.Decide too, if you'd like to put an approximate time guide on answers. Between 3-5 minutes is always a good sweet spot. But don't be too strict with this, or you'll discourage folks from participating.You’ll want to set a deadline for getting the clips back, so you can begin production. Lay out specific instructions in an easy-to-skim manner. These are things likeWhen you need the clip sent over byWhere or how to send itAny file format or naming preferences Once you have the clips together, assemble them in a good running order. You can then script your own parts in the episode - the intro and outro, as well as any commentary you’d like to add in between clips. When you’ve published a montage episode, be sure to reach out to everyone involved and ask them to share it with their own listeners. Everyone’s podcast can grow with this strategy, on top of it being great content for the collective audience. Everyone wins! Task List: Identify the podcasts you’d like to collaborate withCome up with a useful and interesting episode topicReach out to them with your proposalSell the benefits to them - this can help grow their reach!Lay out your specific instructionsGather in audio clipsRecord and intro and outro, and any commentary Mix episode togetherPublish Share with all involved - ask them to share it tooCheck out the full book - Podcast Growth: How to Grow Your Podcast AudienceSupport the show (https://pod.academy)

Check out the full book - Podcast Growth: How to Grow Your Podcast AudienceThis is where your love of your podcast’s topic will take the wheel. Let’s say you have a podcast about thrift (charity) shops. So you join a group on Facebook dedicated to unusual thrift shops. People post pictures and talk about great shops they’ve found, unusual things they’ve seen or bought in thrift shops, and so on. If you come in on day one saying “Hello everyone, I have a podcast about thrift shops and you all should listen to it,” you’ll just alienate people. What you owe it to yourself to do is read, watch, and see what the content and dynamic of the group are. How compatible are their discussions with your podcast? What are the big concerns? Are they talking about Goodwill vs. Salvation Army, or the prevalence of costume jewellery? You might find shop owners to interview, or topics to discuss on your podcast. When you feel comfortable, and you’ve added some value to the group, then mention that you have a podcast. Task List: Find a few online communities related to your podcast’s topic. Join them, follow the group guidelines, read and watch the group for a few weeks. Let yourself be inspired by what’s happening in the group. If there are discussions where you can honestly add value (i.e., “I know a great way to get stains out of velvet!”), then participate. Use your knowledge and expertise with compassion. Links Creating a 'Real Life' Podcast CommunityBuilding a Community Around Your PodcastDo Podcasters Need Social Media?Check out the full book - Podcast Growth: How to Grow Your Podcast AudienceSupport the show

Check out the full book - Podcast Growth: How to Grow Your Podcast AudienceQuestions are great. More and more, users are typing full questions into Google, rather than single words or phrases. Google can see this, and loves it when you answer them directly. If it’s obvious what you’re answering, they’ll direct ever more users to your answers. On top of that, when you think in questions, you tend to solve a real problem. Solve someone’s problem and they’ll be a loyal listener for life! That’s what powers real audience growth. So, where do we find these questions?“Answer the Public” is a great resource for this. It’s a website which is similar, in a way, to the keyword tool discussed earlier, but it’s designed to surface every possible question around a keyword or keyphrase. Type in your keyword - eg. podcasting - and you’ll see a huge list of questions. You’ll see them grouped by type - why? what? Who? - and you can refine it along the way. Wait till you see the questions that you never even considered!Next, let’s use social media, and Twitter in particular, to see what people are asking, right now! The technique is simple: type in your keyword AND a ? or a question word. This prompts twitter to surface all tweets that ask a question related to your topic. Eg. Podcast AND ?meditation AND howNutrition AND whatAnother great resource is Quora, an entire website of questions! Type in your topic, or related keywords, and see what questions pop up.Finally, try Buzzsumo to see what type of content is really resonating with your niche right now. Type in your keywords and it’ll surface the most shared content in your niche. This should give you ideas on what people are really connecting with right now. Task List: Pick at least one of the above tools and go in deep on it.Try all your topic or keyword variations and see if you can write down at least 10 of the most common questions people are asking.Use these as your next set of podcast topics and you'll increase your search visibility by a huge amount.Bonus points: use the Google keyword tool from above to check search volume and prioritise your questionsCheck out the full book - Podcast Growth: How to Grow Your Podcast AudienceSupport the show (https://pod.academy)

Check out the full book - Podcast Growth: How to Grow Your Podcast AudienceAdmit it: you can always use the support of your colleagues. Whether other people who make podcasts have more experience, less experience, or different kinds of experience, there’s always inspiration and strength that comes from being involved with other podcasters. Creating a local group takes some work, and a long period of time, but in the end, you can build community, grow your show, and help others. Type: Regular techniqueTime Required: Put an hour a week into promoting it and an hour for each meeting. Podcast Level: 10 episodes, or when your workflow is established and comfortableYou probably participate in an online community of podcasters already. If you don’t, you certainly can. You can also survey your audience to find out where your listeners are, and what percentage of them are podcasters themselves.  Find a local coffee shop, pub, or community centre that will let a few people sit around and chat over a beverage for a while.  Plan a recurring meeting, brainstorm some discussion topics, and promote the meeting to your friends and followers. It can be handy to set a topic in advance for each meeting. This can encourage people to turn up. You can also create meetups online. This gives you the option to meet people anywhere in the world, but removes the impact of face to face interaction. Whichever you choose, be open to listening, use your best manners, and empower others to do the same. Task List: Decide if you want the meeting to be virtual or actual (online or in-person). Find an online platform to use, or a venue to meet up in. Arrange a time and date. Mention the meeting on your social media, and in your podcast’s call to action. You want to be able to do this for at least three episodes of your podcast. Set a topic (or topics) in advance.  Get to the meeting early, greet people when they arrive. If you meet in a physical location, make sure that you leave it clean, and in better shape than you found it. Further Reading: Building a CommunityCreating a ‘Real Life’ Podcast CommunityCheck out the full book - Podcast Growth: How to Grow Your Podcast AudienceSupport the show

Your current listeners are the best PR team to increase audience growth. Get to know your current listeners. They'll tell their friends about your podcast. Find out what their interests and habits are. Get them to tell you what they want your podcast to do. This way, you can fine-tune your podcast to increase your audience and reach more listeners.I'm not suggesting you take each individual listener out for a chat over a cup of coffee (though that would be very nice of you). The best way to get the information about your audience that you need, is with a short and carefully crafted podcast survey.Podcast Survey Tools For GrowthI like a free tool as much as the next podcaster, so let's start with a couple of them. And I'll include one paid option if you want to really ramp up your data gathering.Google Forms has a gallery of templates which you can use to create a standard type of form. It's easy to use, and everyone knows the brand, so it's pretty low-barrier. The look is, for me, a bit dated, but it's totally adequate for your average survey.SurveyMonkey is a lot more flexible. It's a paid product, normally, but the freemium tier will let you make a short podcast survey with ten questions or less, for nothing. If you don't need to go long, or need any of their other premium options, it could suit well.Paperform is my final recommendation, for those who want the full power of a paid product. Full flexibility and a range of beautiful templates, you can make a survey that looks great and really draws people in.One of the best Paperform features is the ability to create what they call a ‘landing form.' In plain English, it's a page creator that includes survey elements, so you can build a great looking ‘audience welcome page' which asks them questions, gets your data, but also gives them a bunch of value through episode guides, downloads, contact info and more. You can build a place where you give as value them as they give to you in filling in their data.You really don't want your podcast survey to be longer than ten questions. Your listeners are already giving you their time and mental effort. Ask for a little, and you'll get a lot.Multiple-choice questions will get you results that are focused and specific. Open-ended questions can give you results you hadn't expected. They can also lead listeners to use them as a personal soapbox or open-mic night. Limit the amount of characters responders can use, so they have to keep their response short.Read the guide at Running an Audience SurveyCheck out the full book - Podcast Growth: How to Grow Your Podcast AudienceSupport the show

We're delighted to announce our latest book. It's called Podcast Growth: How to Grow Your Podcast AudienceTo celebrate, we're making season 13 of Podcraft all about podcast promotion and growth. We'll be going through the book, chapter by chapter, and picking out a single task to focus each episode around. On this episode, we're pulling from the first chapter - Enabling Your Existing Audience - and the task in question is around Calls to Action. Calls to Action (CTAs) are low-hanging fruit that many podcasters miss a huge opportunity with. There are some key questions to ask yourself when thinking about your CTAs. Questions like how does your CTA uniquely engage your listeners? And what do you want your listener to do? A specific, memorable Call to Action engages your audience and drives them in the direction you want. You should also make it easy for them to do it. If you’re sending them to a particular web page, use a shortlink to get them there. If you want them to talk about your show on social media, invent a hashtag so you can track it.  Your CTAs will totally depend on your content and motivations. But some of the most common and effective podcast CTAs we see are;Subscribe to the show in your listening app of choiceShare this episode with someone you think will benefit from itLeave a rating and review on your listening app of choice, or in PodchaserGet in touch (solicit particular questions so this is more effective)Download a resource, sign up for something, or purchase an upgradeFinally, include your CTAs in the show notes of each episode, in the episode outro, and if possible, linked in a button on your website podcast player. Task List: For your next Call to Action, what do you want your listeners to do? Sum it up in a short sentence or less, such as “sign up for our email list.” Look at the ‘Creating Memorable Links’ task, and practice making a short link. Practice your intros and outros. How can you fit your new CTA into your outros?Related to: Creating Memorable links, Encouraging ReviewsFurther Reading: thepodcasthost.com/driveaction - How to Drive Action From a Podcastthepodcasthost.com/outros - Introducing & Ending Your EpisodeCheck out the full book - Podcast Growth: How to Grow Your Podcast AudienceSupport the show

Now that we’ve covered the stacking process, in the episode, I want to cover some extra resources that’ll help you. That includes equipment, software, and much more. I also want to give you some next steps, so you can get started on this right away. By the end of this episode you’ll be fully armed to start building your own stack!Support the show

Now you know how to create a content stack, getting so much more from every piece of content you create. Next, we’re going to amplify that through the wonder of seasons. Not just a tool for fiction or documentaries, seasons can work for everyone. They make it easier for you, and more effective for your audience. That combination leads to quicker growth, bigger reach and even more fans. Before we jump in, I just want to say thanks to Memberful for support this episode. They make membership sites really really easy, and they just launched private podcasting too - so you can do private website content, private newsletter AND a private podcast now, for all your members. Pop over to memberful.com to read more about it.Support the show

Last week, we covered the content stack, and how it works. This week, we’ll get right into how to create it, from start to finish. If you don't have the time to create great quality blogs, videos and Podcasts, then I’ll show you how through smart repurposing. This isn’t just plain cutting and paste. Instead, I'll show you a way of creating and repurposing which takes advantages of the direct strengths of each. Not only that, but every element links and builds, so that you build engagement and trust with every episode. Before we jump in, I just want to say thanks to Memberful for support this episode. They make membership sites really really easy, and they just launched private podcasting too - so you can do private website content, private newsletter AND a private podcast now, for all your members. Pop over to memberful.com to read more about it. Support the show