Speaker 1: Hey, it's Pat Flynn here, and I've been podcasting for 12, 13 years now, a very long time. Anyway, I'm here to give you 50 podcasting tips in 15 minutes, let's do this. To start off, mention other podcasts on your show. Why, because when people subscribe to those podcasts, your podcast will show up under related podcasts on their podcast pages on Apple. And what's cool is you can get new listeners just by doing that, even if you're not a guest on their podcast. The best length of your podcast, as far as how long it should be, should be exactly how long it needs to be for the value that you wanna give. Just provide value, and that's the biggest, biggest thing you should worry about. Your podcast artwork is very important. Actually, it's one of the only things, besides the title of your show, that people see before they make a decision to go and listen to your podcast and potentially subscribe. Most important, just make sure that as you design it, it looks good, even small, on a little screen. That's really important because most people listening are, in fact, on a mobile device. The best way to grow your podcast and get discovered is to be a guest on another person's podcast. Listener's apps are already open, it's more easy to find you, and they hear your voice. Not only that, you are getting endorsed by the host that has spent all this time building trust with that audience. There's no better way to do it. If you wanna be a guest on another podcast, start with people who you know first, people who have a podcast, of course. If you see a podcast that you might wanna be on, but you don't know that person, try to get an introduction and find somebody who knows both of you. Tell more stories. People absolutely love stories, even if you're teaching, even if it's something technical. Tell a story, stories get remembered, and they're more likely to get shared. Invest in a great microphone. Audio is the most important thing when it comes to podcasting, obviously, even if it's a video podcast, the microphone will make all the difference in the world. My top recommended microphones are in the description, ranging from cheap prices that sound great to nice, expensive, very high-quality podcast microphones like this one. When you speak into the microphone, speak about a fist lengths away, unless you are this guy, in which case, maybe you wanna be half a fist lengths away for the best quality sound. Use a shock mount to hold your microphone. It actually kind of suspends the microphone in the air. These little rubber bands here absorb any sort of vibrations from your desk or your computer fans or anything like that, so you don't get humming noises inside your audio. Get it, and make sure it's the right size for your microphone before you purchase it. Next, get a mic flag for your podcast microphone. It's really cool because it has your brand and your logo on it, this little cube here. You can get it at impactpbs.com, and yes, obviously, people listening don't know it's there. However, if you do happen to turn on the camera for a video podcast, it is there, it is branded to your show, and it just looks cool, it makes you feel professional, and that comes across in your podcast audio. Batch process your podcast episode production. What that means is, when you sit down to record a podcast, try to attempt to get more than one episode done at a time. This way, you can get ahead and not fall into the trap of the content hamster wheel that we've all felt before, where you feel that pressure of the next episode, which just is not a great place to be. In order to do that, you need to, in this tip, plan ahead. Actually, put time in your calendar, block out time to plan ahead and come up with the content ideas for your future episodes. This, honestly, has been one of the biggest things when it comes to revolutionizing my podcast production and just, like, fun with podcasting. When you edit your podcast, don't worry about removing too many mistakes. Yes, obviously, if you make a big mistake or sneeze or something, but removing every breath and every um just takes up too much time, plus the final product doesn't actually sound like normal human speech, it sounds fast and it doesn't sound natural. When you get on a call with a guest, number one, make sure they feel as comfortable as possible. I always tell my guests immediately that I'm not recording, it makes them feel like, okay, we're not having to be on yet. And secondly, I use this sort of script and you're welcome to take it from me, and that is, let's just pretend we're at a coffee shop having a conversation, the audience, they're just a fly on the wall, we don't need to worry about them. I just want to get to know you and understand more about what you got going on. When a guest is comfortable, it's more likely to be a great interview. Now, if you are recording a remote interview, like on your computer, do not use Zoom. Zoom will give you compressed audio, it doesn't sound great. You want the best audio quality possible on both sides, and that comes from places like squadcast.fm, that's a tool I use, full disclosure, I'm an affiliate, there's my link right now, and I'm also an advisor to the company. I wouldn't be if I didn't use this product and love it, and I use it for every single podcast interview I do, and it's great. Now, when you've had your podcast up for a while, go to your podcast page on Apple, scroll down to the bottom where you find your related podcasts. These are other shows that your listeners are actually listening to. That's great insight to discover what else they're listening to, but it's also a great conversation starter when you reach out to those podcasters and say, hey, we have shared audiences, let's maybe collab, and it's a good spot to go to find guest podcasting opportunities. Analytics are really important to understand, and from your host server, you can see the total number of downloads that you get. Pay attention to trends over time. You want to obviously make sure that you are increasing in downloads, and if not, you might want to make a change. In addition to that, look at the episode downloads and see which ones get more downloads than others. This is an opportunity to discover which topics your audience seems to love and enjoy, and an opportunity for you to discover what to do more of in the future. Also, pay attention to the retention graphs that Apple Podcasts or Google Podcasts Analytics will give you. If you see a huge dip or worse, just like a cliff dive, well, that means that people lost interest at that point, and you might want to go back and listen to those moments and go, well, what did I do there, and not do that again. Now, if you're looking for a large number of downloads in a short period of time, one of my favorite ways to do it is called bursting. Maybe you publish five episodes in five days in a row, just for that short period of time. You'll get more downloads, you'll get more opportunities to offer call to actions, and if it ties to a promo, even better. If you're talking about something visual on your podcast, do yourself a favor and pop that visual, that thing that you want people to look at that they can't because they're listening, onto a website and make it easy for them to go there. That's gonna be enticing enough for them to go there because they're listening to the podcast, and now they're on your website, you can collect an email, you can offer them something else. Visuals on your website for things that you talk about on your audio podcast. Now, when you mention links, don't mention too many all at once. The problem is people are often on the go, in the car, at the gym, wherever, and they don't have the opportunity to write all those links down. And actually, if the links are also complicated and hard to remember, well, it's never gonna work. So one, maybe two offers of links, but make sure they're also easy to remember. You might even want to get a GoDaddy link so that it's easy and it forwards to that particular place that you want them to go. Next, build an email list. It's the best way to understand who is in your audience and you need to entice them with something like a lead magnet, maybe a gift of some kind in order to exchange for their email. But once you do that, you have direct access, personal access to people who are listeners. Those are people who can offer you valuable feedback, who can offer you insight on what else they might need help with, and that informs what other podcast episodes you can create and create a better experience for all your listeners. Along the same lines, and you can use your email list for this, try to have a conversation with one listener per month and ask them questions like what they love about the show, what kinds of episodes would be more interesting to them than what's available, and ask them why. When you can understand not just what they might need help with in their challenges, but also hear the language and hear the stories that they're telling about those struggles or challenges, well, you're gonna be more inclined to create better episodes because you have a real person in mind, not a made-up avatar or anything like that. Now, sometimes as a podcaster, you might need to take a break. Maybe you are overwhelmed or you just didn't have time or life gets in the way sometimes. When you come back to your podcast, don't make a huge deal about it, don't apologize, maybe mention the why, but then get right onto it and if you provide value right up front, people are gonna not even remember that you were gone and be ready for the next episodes that come out. Next, pivoting is okay if you wanna make a decision to change the name of your show or your artwork or maybe even the direction of it. That's totally okay and it happens all the time. Your podcast isn't permanent ever and you can always change things, you can always upload new episodes and replace episodes or delete old ones. So don't feel like you have to be perfect right away, you gotta be a disaster before you become the master and over time, you might change direction and that's okay. Next, always remember that your subscribers are real human beings. I know a lot of podcasters who complain because they only have hundreds of downloads or because only 50 to 100 people listen to each episode. Well, imagine all those people in an actual room and how different that feels. Well, it's kinda like that when people are listening to your show, like imagine they all come to meet you every single week, I mean, that's powerful. So use that connection and use that small podcast of yours as an advantage because you get to know and contact and realize who is in your audience more than somebody who's much bigger, who doesn't have the time or availability to do that. Now, if you're gonna sell on your podcast, I mean, there's many ways to do this, you can have your own product sponsor the podcast but I actually prefer to invite the customers and students and clients onto the podcast and have them talk about not how awesome the course or product is but talk about their transformation. Before, what was life like, what were the struggles, what are the challenges that you had and then what's life like after? When people hear that transformation story, they're gonna wanna go to who they got that help from and of course, that's you and your product. Don't always worry about trying to get A-lister, huge celebrity podcast guests on your show. In fact, the best guests are the ones that are actually more relatable, the ones who are actually members of your audience or other B to C level podcasters. Plus, those podcasters are always going to enjoy conversations with other podcasters and you're more likely to build a real relationship with them. If you're traveling to a podcast or some event where your audience might be or other friends and connections and colleagues, bring a microphone. I can't tell you how many times I wish I had a microphone recording conversations I had at these events. Bring a little handy microphone, you're not gonna regret it. As far as travel recording options go, there's two that I'd recommend. You can check out something like a micro recorder, like the Zoom H6n, which is a nice and portable recorder or you can even hook up a special lavalier microphone to your iPhone or Android. I prefer the Rode SmartLav. You can get the extension and even a adapter to have two microphones plug in and that way you can have an interview or just capture some audio on the go. Now, if you're a serious podcaster and you're at home, I recommend a little box called the Rodecaster Pro. Had a video about this, a little review. You can see exactly what it does, but it processes your audio. You can input several different microphones. There's a little soundboard in there as well. It's just so, so easy to use. I also use it as a backup recording for my podcast as well. If you can, record the video version of your podcast as you are recording the audio, just so you have it. You can rip the audio out of that video and you can pop that into an audio podcast and the video could live on YouTube. Here's a quick one, if you need an interview soon for your show and you don't have a lot of time, find a friend or a colleague and maybe do a collaboration or an exchange with them and who knows, they might just say yes because you already know them. You don't have to go through the introduction period and it's just a lot easier that way. Now, when you're interviewing other people, go deeper. Ask questions to follow up the answers that come in. That's where the golden answers exist and that's where your podcast, if it's an interview show, is gonna stand out. Even questions like why or how come you did that, just extending that answer more makes it so much better. Now, if you're doing a solo podcast, it can be a little bit harder to understand, well, how do I do this because I don't have just questions to ask. I have to create and present content. The way I do it is I think about the end in mind first. What's the transformation that I want a person to have and then I reverse engineer what points, stories, case studies, et cetera, do I need to tell and of course, I always try to have a good solid hook in the beginning of the episode to make sure that they are more likely to stick around all the way through. Now, don't script your entire episodes. I've done this before and it's a huge waste of time and your podcast episodes sound like you're reading or like you're a robot. If anything, I do script maybe a little bit of the intro and hook just to make sure I get that right but the other parts, I just know what's on my roadmap and when I get there, I just talk about it naturally like I would with anybody else. Here's a big one, you need to lean into who you are. That's what makes you 100% unique and that's your unfair advantage. You're unlike anybody else that's out there. When you try to be like another podcaster or another creator, you're only gonna be second at best. When you're fully you, you're gonna attract the right kind of people into your community and that's really powerful. Now, one of the issues with podcasting is that there's no real place for the podcast listeners to connect. So if you want your podcast listeners to connect with each other, you might think about creating a community. It could be something like a Facebook group or a LinkedIn group but I recommend something like Circle where you can bring people in and form an actual sort of private community that you can control and host. You can check out Circle at smartpassiveincome.com slash Circle. Recap podcast episodes are great. Once or twice a year, especially at the end of the year, I love to do episodes where we play clips from older episodes during that year or perhaps within a certain category to remind people about those episodes and even though people maybe heard of those episodes before, it's a nice reminder and for new listeners, it's a great introduction to episodes that they should go back and listen to. Don't go into forums and groups and just start spamming your podcast episodes. Even if those podcast episodes are helpful for that group and you know that, if you just come in like hot like that, I mean, you're gonna get banned. Be a part of those communities first. Join the conversation and have those things that you talk about come out naturally. You wanna get to a point where people are asking you for more information and you can drop those things in with permission. To take that even further, one amazing strategy to get featured in these groups is to actually have the forum or group owner present your podcast in front of the audience. How do you do that? Well, interview that forum owner. They're likely not asked to do that very often. If they have really good information to share, you can make them look great and they will be more likely to share it because you've made them look like a hero in front of their people. Don't compare your podcast numbers to others. You're a different people, you're different beings, you're in different timelines, you have different audiences. You cannot do that or else you're just gonna sink in a deep, dark hole, trust me. You should be comparing yourself to yourself last week, to yourself last month. How is your episode this week compared to last week? Are you incrementally improving? You should be comparing yourself to yourself before and always trying to improve. When you share your podcast on social media, you have to realize that you cannot force a person to listen on a directory or app that they just don't normally listen to podcasts on. There are two places I recommend you link on social media in regards to your podcast. Number one, your website, preferably the show notes page where there is a player, but also they could subscribe on all the different platforms in that one spot. Or two, on social, many people do this, you can do a link tree link, where when people click, there's additional links there. One for every particular platform and even other websites that you wanna link to as well. At the start of your podcast episodes, you wanna create an amazing hook, a reason for people to stick till the end. Because if a person's not gonna stick around, well, the rest of the episode doesn't really matter. What could you say to a person to get them to put that phone in their pocket and then go on that run or go to the gym or go on that commute? That's what you wanna nail. Here's one of my favorite tips. Ask your audience on social media who listened to the recent episode. Every single person who comments, reach out to them in a direct message and respond with a video and just thank them. Don't ask them for anything, just thank them. They're gonna blow their minds, you're gonna build super fans, and you're gonna realize that there are real human beings on the other end who appreciate you and your podcast. Now imagine conducting a podcast interview and it just wasn't that great. Maybe the guest was a little dry or their answers weren't all that great. Here's a secret. Take one or two clips from the podcast episode and edit those into a show that's mostly gonna be you. You can reach out to that person and say, you know what, I was so inspired by your answers to just the single question that I actually created an entire podcast episode just about that. So I play your clip but I go deeper on it and I just wanna thank you for that. And now you didn't hurt the person's feeling and you have a good episode that's gonna come out. Listical episodes or episodes like top 10 this or the top five this or a list of whatever. People love lists. However, if you wanna take this one step further, before you reveal what's on the list, tell a story that leads up to it. In fact, the punchline will be the number or that particular tip. All the music that you play on your podcast should be royalty free or custom made for you from somebody that you hired and you know you have the rights to use. I had a friend who licensed music from a band that he enjoyed and that's all great, right? You could do that, you could pay for that but those licenses often end and this person's did and as soon as that happened, he wasn't allowed to publish any of those episodes anymore and he had to actually remove the entire podcast from all directories. Don't do that. Custom music, royalty free, that's it. Have fun. Podcasting is super fun. You can connect with amazing people. You can build relationships. You can build an audience. You can build super fans. It is one of the most fun things I've ever done and this is why I've been doing it for so long. It's just so, so fun. As you're ending a podcast episode, don't spend too much time summarizing and going on and on and on about the things that happened and the things that are coming up. I mean, you can mention some of those things to tease and get people excited. Call to action, great but err on the side of quick. Here's why. If you give clues that your stuff is ending, people are more likely to be in that mindset to leave and maybe they're already going to try to find something else but if you kind of end almost abruptly, I mean, you want to close off, right? But if you end almost abruptly, it's now an opportunity for them to already start diving into the next episode. This is similar to the kinds of things we do on YouTube to hold people's attention and get people into the next video. Speaking of, the next video for you as a podcaster is right there. Thank you so much for watching. Appreciate you. See you in the next one.