Neal Veglio: Peak Podmastery

Tara Sands  0:02  
The sound off podcast. The show about podcast and broadcast starts now.

Matt Cundill  0:13  
This week, Neil velio is my guest. He is the founder and owner of PodKnows, which does a few things, including podcast production for brands, small business and corporate, also podcast coaching and podcast auditing. I know Neil because of how he's marketed himself. I didn't see a billboard or an ad or anything like that. He does what any good marketer does, and that's getting really involved. He's busy on LinkedIn, and I ran into him at the Podshow in London, where we knew one another without actually having met one another. What a time to be alive. Neil Veglio joins me from Oxford in the UK, just in case you're having trouble recognizing the accent. What was the first podcast that you did,

Neil Veglio  1:01  
personally, that I did for myself. It comes the skeleton straight like Thanks, Matt.

Matt Cundill  1:10  
We gotta get rid of the dead bodies first before we can get down to the logistics of everything.

Neil Veglio  1:15  
I'll get arrested before the end of the recording. Oh, my God. Okay, so there was a show I did in, like, what was it? 2012 like, first proper show, you know, avoiding all the like, I'll do six episodes and see how it goes through Spreaker, the first proper show that I went all in with, probably one in 2007 actually, which was the Neil value show. Oh, my God, how bad was my strategy. And then 2012 a show called Chaos in theory, which was basically the Neil value show, but even worse title. And

Matt Cundill  1:53  
in 2007 I mean, that was the time when we started to upload these things to iTunes, right? That's

Neil Veglio  1:59  
right, yeah, there was no Apple podcast back then, all iTunes, all iPod, all cables connecting your mp three player. But

Matt Cundill  2:07  
the roots of your audio experience goes right back to radio, though, right? That's

Neil Veglio  2:11  
where I learned my trade, absolutely small radio stations in the mid 90s and then sort of moved to London, kind of 1999 2000 got gigs on national radio stations, and then, yeah, kind of survived about three or four years.

Matt Cundill  2:31  
That's no big deal. I was on national radio things like Capital Radio, yeah, not a big deal.

Neil Veglio  2:38  
Well, my bank balance at the time would have agreed with you,

Matt Cundill  2:43  
was radio, your first audio love, believe

Neil Veglio  2:46  
it or not. No, no, it wasn't my first audio love was actually music. I was one of the sort of kids that was messing around with samplers, you know, home computers, taking, you know, dance records and sampling bits of it and then on a floppy disk and playing around. And, yeah, that was my first love. I mean, I'd always, I'd grown up with a guy called Kenny Everett when I was a kid, my mom and dad used to watch the television show that he had, but I was more interested in his radio stuff, and he was on Capitol radio when I was about seven or eight. But I, you know, I never imagined in a million years that I would ever be working in radio. I thought, for me, the best outlet is music. And so that's kind of what I went into. But as I got older, I realized actually this radio thing, it's just really talking to a microphone. I can probably do that. And then I just started practicing. And yeah, for sure, like when I turned kind of you know, around 13 or 14, there was a local radio station called Radio cracker, which was a charity station for kids charities. And they had a local outlet in my town, did cop, and they were looking for volunteer presenters. And I went down there, and it was what we call an RSL restricted service license. So 30 days on air, local transmitter, and I had 30 days of basically playing late night shock jock. Essentially all my callers were just other kids calling up, you know, doing armpit farts, you know, and thinking it was hilarious, but I was like, I love this. I want to do this for the rest of my life. And then, yeah, cue work experience, Q, college Q, first gig in tiny radio station in the middle of the woods somewhere, went all in from music to exclusively radio at that point. So

Matt Cundill  4:33  
what music did you enjoy and like? It must have been the early 90s, mid 90s.

Neil Veglio  4:37  
I mean, I started falling in love with music in the mid 80s, actually. So I always remember my dad one Christmas his his friend used to bootleg old cassettes for me of people like Paul Hardcastle, so very synthesizer, you know, Axel F Harold fultimer, all of his stuff. And that's kind that was my introduction. You know, lamal kajigu. Goo goo, Spandau Ballet, all that kind of stuff. And then as I got slightly older, of course, you can't listen to that music when you're a teenager. So it became, you know, all about the dance music, Euro dance trance, the rave era and all that. But I mean, my if I was to show you my currently non existent CD collection, because it's all been burned to streaming now, hasn't it, but you know, if I were to show you my Spotify playlist, you'd be like, What is this guy on? I mean, it's everything from Pavarotti through to prodigy, through to Rage Against the Machine on there. So music overall, which I think helped the radio career, because unlike some that get really attacked. I mean, one of my best friends is still in radio. She works on a station called absolute which is we play real music station in like a rock station, whereas I didn't have that attachment to any particular styles. I was, you know, happy playing pop, happy playing 80s, happy playing 90. So, yeah, that kind of helped. When

Matt Cundill  5:52  
did you identify that podcast was a thing? And by a thing in air quotes, I'm gonna say that you could make money from

Neil Veglio  6:00  
it. Oh, make money from it. That wasn't until much more recently. Actually, it's always been something I treated very much as a hobby or a marketing tool for my radio career. Honestly, I've been dabbling with audio in the sort of what we would now call the podcasting space, since 2000 I mean, that's the history. Really, really quickly, how I discovered podcasting as we now know it. I used to have a radio show online guy called Bruno Brooks, who was our version of, I guess you guys get Rick D's, where you are, or got Rick D's. He was the UK version of that. So top 40 Sunday afternoons, four till seven, canned out the hits, and he ended up becoming my boss because he heard me on a radio show and took me on for this pioneering digital station, as it was at the time, and it was just on on the internet, and also on local DAB radio, as we have it over here. And I got a bit greedy with my audience, because I was doing the two till six show, and I realized actually there's a huge contingent of potential audience that aren't hearing me. You know, people on the west coast that are probably driving into work they can't hear the end of my you know, my show ended like 10am West Coast time, Pacific Time, to use this correct. So I was like, What can I do to get those people listening? I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to take my show, rip out all the ads, keep the music in at the time, because we didn't know big no no now, but I thought, you know that may, if I get like, 20 people listening, then that's that's great. And literally crashed the servers. And that's when I thought, okay, there are hundreds of 1000s of people trying to download this, getting all the IP numbers coming in. It's like there's, there's something to this. And that was when I thought, well, I can use this for my radio career. You know, if people can't hear me because they're in Scotland or Ireland or Australia, America, this is an opportunity for me to put this audio online where they can, at the time right click, Save As the mp three file, and then, of course, we were blessed with podcast hosting and RSS, and the rest is history. But yeah, certainly used it as a kind of like a bolt on marketing platform, until around 2016 when things like Patreon suddenly became on my horizon and dabbled with that. I

Matt Cundill  8:22  
love the term, and it comes from your part of the world called catch up radio.

Neil Veglio  8:28  
Yes, our mutual friend James Cridland can be credited with pretty much inventing that. Actually, yeah, because

Matt Cundill  8:35  
I've been listening to catch up radio for years, and I love it. In fact, I think it's I saw some data at some point that said it was really eating up most of the evening listening. And overnight listening was more durable for radio than evening listening, because we can put ourselves to sleep with any podcast, any catch up radio, any book, anything really,

Neil Veglio  8:57  
absolutely and the interesting thing, actually is, from your point of view, how I'm aware of people like yourself. And of course, you know people like yourself are legends to me, because I've been listening to you since the early 2000s thanks to catch up radio and Neil Rogers, who was a guy out of Florida Fort Lauderdale, Florida talk show host, afternoons, very angry man used to just rip on his station bosses, and that's what made him brilliant. And I was listening to him online since 1997 like web 1.0 back when people were making websites out of, you know, geo cities and things like that, you know, like free comes in a box kind of website, and that guy was streaming his daily show, and that's how I used to listen to him. And so, yeah, absolutely catch up radio is something that you guys have had in the bag for decades. But yeah, like I say James Cridland kind of made virgin radio at the time start getting into it, and that's how it became. I'm kind of mainstream in the UK a little bit later on.

Matt Cundill  10:02  
I do have a story from about 2008 when I had a morning show as a program director. And what a program directors say the most. They always say, Oh, can we shorten that down? Can we cut that down? And I remember inside the catch up radio I said, Maybe we should take out some of this other stuff. And I shortened it so much that people were actually downloading the show, but they knew where in the show they could find the parts they liked. This is well before chapter markers, of course, but when I shortened it, I got complaints. And I was like, Oh, that was a bad idea. And so the next day, we put it back to the way it was supposed to be, where people could find because they liked the feature at 815 or they like the feature at nine o'clock and whatever it was. So it's not good to mess with the listeners cheese, Who Moved My Cheese as the book was titled,

Neil Veglio  10:50  
absolutely and that's something that we, you know, we have leaned into, isn't it, as podcast people, where that whole thing of like, oh, I can just plug my microphone in and just talk for 20 minutes and then upload that, and it's no you know, you need to give the listeners something to lean into. They need to, you know, they set their their routines by it. You know, even podcasts, you'll get people that go, oh, it's Tuesday morning, therefore the Social Media Marketing Podcast is out today. I'll click that, and then if it's not the show they're expecting, maybe it's a bonus or a guest, or something like that, they freak out. And so, yeah, absolutely, there's a lot of learnings from from that experience.

Matt Cundill  11:28  
So I knew Neil Rogers, by the way, because I would spend time in Florida. It was W, Q, a, m5, 60, with the blah, blah. But for whatever reason, he was able to just, I mean, what is Florida full of? Especially near Miami, it's all full of old, Cranky people. And yeah, that's, that's what the show was. And I used to see on the message boards, they would talk about him all the time.

Neil Veglio  11:50  
He was a legend. I mean, I still, now to this day, I know we'll probably touch on this a little bit later on. You're probably going to curse me for saying this. But YouTube, the really useful thing about YouTube is that people can archive their old podcasts, obviously, on there. And so I'll be spending regularly. I'll be spending a good hour or two just boring my wife by watching, you know, old, what say, watching listening to with pictures old Neil Rogers prank calls and, you know, parody ads and all that sort of stuff. It's just, yeah, anybody that hasn't listened to Neil Rogers. You do not know what you're missing out on. God rest his soul.

Matt Cundill  12:24  
You touched on marketing earlier. I did a show to market myself, but still, to this day, so many people want to rush in and do a podcast and say, I want to monetize. I want to make money. And I'm like, Well, how do you know you're not by doing the show, it's a form of marketing. What if you just took the money from your marketing budget and pay for the podcast, and look at it that way, instead of some sort of direct revenue generator in terms of money, I still think that's the greatest power that podcasting has, oh,

Neil Veglio  12:52  
100% and I mean, you know, when I get clients that come to me and say, you know, Neil, I want to do a podcast, but How do I get sponsorship and advertising that, for me, is a red flag straight away, because it's not that we can't help them to do that, but it's definitely not the the way that we'd recommend it, because let's think about it when, when you're starting a podcast from scratch, you haven't earned the right to sell to them yet. It's like the analogy I use is imagine you go to a networking event and nobody knows who you are, and you start yelling marketing messages at all these people that you don't even know yet, versus if you've been going there for six months and they know who you are, if someone then suddenly presents a problem to you, and you say, oh, I can solve this problem. Suddenly it's less icky. And so I always say to people, look, you know, you can monetize it in other ways. You just need the attribution. You just need to know that what you're doing is in some way contributing to your bottom line. But of course, people don't think that way. They don't think, well, actually, if I just share this specific version of my podcast link in this particular way, I can then see exactly who's coming from that that method, rather than my newsletter or my website or whatever. But I find people aren't really that excited by the notion of having something that they're creating that doesn't actually give them that vanity metric of revenue straight off the bat. And they definitely want that first and foremost. But yeah, it can be frustrating, but we certainly, as you know, podcast agency, we do say we're only really gonna focus on using what you're putting out there as a marketing platform for selling you, not treating the podcast itself as a product. Yeah? And

Matt Cundill  14:37  
you also monetize an audience and not a podcast, and you haven't started the podcast and you have no audience, absolutely,

Neil Veglio  14:43  
and you won't get an audience if the first thing that you're doing is selling to them. That's the thing. One of the most off putting things. If ever I hear a new podcast, and I love the idea of the content, but the first thing I've got to deal with is 90 seconds of pre. Role. I'm out. I'm just, you know, to me, it's like, number one, it's boring, especially if I can't skip it because I'm doing something else at the time. Number two, it just really tells me what your show's about. You're not looking to necessarily add value this to you is a means to an end of fluffing up your bottom line. And so here's a real life story for you. I literally became a Patreon subscriber to pod news today, having listened to it for five years, or however long it's been going. Because it's just like, course, I want to subscribe to this because James does a great job, you know. And the same with POD news weekly review doing the buzz sprout subscription and all the other shows that I listen to, but it's not an immediate thing that I'll do on day one, and so building that relationship is really important. I'll tolerate as many ads as you want to throw at me, providing I'm already sold on what you're selling me.

Matt Cundill  15:55  
I think there's a lot of things that happen in podcasting because Joe Rogan does it, or other popular people do it because you said the first thing all the ads upfront, that's what Joe Rogan does. And everyone copies that. They put episode numbers in the title, because Joe Rogan does it right. And somebody asked me yesterday in a forum and said, Should we have episode artwork? I'm like, I guess, yeah. Why wouldn't you? Why are you asking this question is people are actually looking for data on this stuff. But then somebody ran numbers and said, Well, you know, the top of the top 20, only a few have episode artwork. So this copying from above seems to be a recipe for disaster.

Neil Veglio  16:33  
And not only that, without wishing to be who am I trying to kid? I always want to be controversial, and I will be happily controversial right now for you, what you also have to bear in mind is that those at the top are not necessarily getting real reflections of their organic audience. Anyway, many of them are paying to be there, whether that's through, you know, dodgy bot downloads or in engagement pods. Podcasting obviously has its own version of engagement pods, whether it's, you know, a marketing agency that's spending so much money behind the scenes on inflating their traffic, you know, to get them in the charts, or whatever it is that they're doing, just because a show is in the top 10 on what Apple are calling a chart doesn't necessarily mean that they are really following best practices. The best practices that you want to be looking at are those shows that maybe are a little bit more mid range, because the chances are they're more authentic. They're probably doing it the right way. They're probably a true reflection of you know, there's nothing wrong with paying for audience. I mean, it's one of the services that we provide. We provide that service to our clients. Of you know, if you want a guaranteed minimum, we'll get you that guaranteed minimum, and we'll do it legitimately and authentically so that you can use it for sponsorship, advertising, lead generation, whatever you want to do. But most shows at the top are not doing it for legitimate reasons. They're doing it because they want attention. They want to be able to go to conferences and sell that. So, yeah, for me, it's like, engage your brain and do a little bit of deeper thinking on this. You know, why are these shows at the top of the charts? And if those shows at the top of the charts don't necessarily pay attention to what they're doing, pay attention to what your competitors, other people in your space, you're you know, if you've got a show about finance, look at other finance shows and see, when are they releasing? What are they doing with their artwork? What are they doing with their titles? Because the chances are what they're doing is working. So that's probably a better practice to follow than what Joe Rogan, who's guaranteed a million listeners every week anyway, no matter what he does, are doing

Matt Cundill  18:43  
there's so many different ways to count in this space. And you sort of reminded me of the time I think this podcast went to number one in Nigeria. Release the episode on a Sunday. You know, the show's about radio, and who has iPhones and Apple podcasts in Nigeria, predominantly radio people who are going to listen to the episode. There's not very many of them. And so, yeah, I'm probably, for one day, going to beat them off. And I did in Nigeria. And, you know, I thought, because I really need to look at that and think, how's this sort of added up, and how do they count this anyway? Well,

Neil Veglio  19:17  
also the different countries waited, aren't they? So, you know, for example, it's much easier. And I've got a good example of this, actually a show that we made called Life in Barbados. It was a travel agent, and she spent a year living in Barbados. That was a premise that we had this travel agent who wanted to it was during COVID era, so she had nothing to lose. She took on one of these special passports that they were giving away at the time, where you live in Barbados for a year, and they would give you a grant to move there, etc. So she did it, and she made a podcast around it, and we got to number one in the Barbados chart for, I would say, about three months. In fact, it's still in search ranking, still the number one podcast that shows up above 50. Tourist Board show as well. But if we were to do a show about life in the UK or life in the US or life in New York, life in Los Angeles, life in Quebec, life in Vancouver, the chances are we wouldn't get even close to the top 50 with that, because the charts are weighted according to how popular the shows in that country are, the fewer shows you've got being pushed into categories, the fewer competition you've got, and therefore it's much easier to chart. So Nigeria, certainly, I think Mexico as well, are probably two of the shows where, if you really want the vanity metrics of charting you'll probably spend a couple of 100 pounds on promoting an episode in those countries. You'll probably get there quite quickly.

Matt Cundill  20:52  
There are podcasters listening going well, what are the metrics I need to pay attention to? Then

Neil Veglio  20:57  
listening time really, isn't it? I mean, you know, Dan Meisner is, you know, one of our peers. And I'm a big fan of what Dan comes up with. He's a very smart guy. He's been, you know, in this industry a long time as well, and he's nailed it. I don't think he's particularly popular with a lot of podcast hosting companies right now, because he's essentially calling it how it is that, you know, your your download numbers. They're nice. They give you a kind of idea of where you are in general, in terms of how the show's performing. They're a nice 90 day metric. You know, this is what I was doing 90 days ago. This is what I'm doing now. I can now plan based on that trajectory, what I might be doing 90 days from now. Here's what I need to do to achieve that. But they're only ever going to tell you how many people have literally downloaded the episode, whether it's automatically or physically, doesn't tell you how long they've listened, so doesn't tell you whether they've listened. So for me, I think that's certainly where I've been staring is, you know, when I've got clients that get excited because they've got 1000 downloads on their episode, I'm like, great, but let's have a look at your apple podcast retention data. Let's have a look at your Spotify data. And just, you know, it's that whole thing when you look at YouTube, isn't it? Oh, 900 views, yeah, 790 of them stopped watching after a minute. And that, for me, is kind of, it's indicative of where this is all going. It's going to very soon separate the podcast agencies that are selling downloads with fake bots versus those that go, You know what? Like yourself, you know, we got to sit down. We got to strategize this. We got to know that what the audience is looking for is getting catered for, and that we're engaging them. We're keeping them on the hook for the whole of the episode duration. That's what really matters.

Matt Cundill  22:41  
Tell me why someone should not buy from a podcast promoter. Explain to them, because I know there's people, maybe I should do this now, talk them off the ledge.

Neil Veglio  22:53  
Don't do it. Come back. It's not worth it. Okay, now I'll go into a bit more detail, so it's risk. You're literally risking everything. You're risking reputation. We know. Let's not beat around the bush here. If you have paid to get your show that no one has ever heard of to be mixing it with the likes of Stephen Bartlett in the UK and Joe Rogan in the US, we know how you've done it. It's certainly not because overnight, you became a huge household name and everyone wanted to download what you're talking about. It just it's simply not the case. So reputationally, not just people inside the industry like ourselves, but pretty much everybody, but also the apps themselves, the platforms themselves. You know, I had it under good authority an ex member of staff at Apple podcasts in the UK. I won't name her, because I wouldn't want to throw under the bus, but she did confirm to me that they do have a special database where all it takes is click a button in their spreadsheet, untick it, and suddenly your show does not show up in search anymore. And the reason they're doing it, it's brand protection. Apple podcasts are not there to serve you. They're there to serve their audience, and so the audience is the most important thing for them and what the audience sees now, if the audience is seeing a bunch of shows that are taking up space in the top 10s of all the categories that a have clunky artwork doesn't look good. B sounds terrible, and C is clearly not worthy of being there. That's harming Apple podcasts brand image, they are not going to take that risk. They would rather upset you and risk you boycotting them as a platform, in which case, great, we didn't want you anyway, because you're the sort of cheat that tries to game our algorithms. It's just not and also, you're not going to get any results from it, because if you're getting 1000 downloads, they're coming from. Complete bots that don't exist. Number one, it signals to the platforms. Well, this show is getting a lot of downloads, but no one's listening to anything. It must be really bad, and therefore you you destroy your growth anyway. So that short spike of adrenaline and dopamine that you'll get from seeing your show in a chart for three days, because that's how long it will last, no matter how much you throw at it in terms of marketing budget, if that's what you want, go for it, but your show is never going to succeed after it. Believe me, on that,

Matt Cundill  25:32  
I'm surprised a lot of people don't equate the fraud, because a lot of people will screenshot that, then they're going to go sell ads with it, and they're essentially that's fraud right there, and it's the only check they're gonna get, because their cash register is not gonna ring at the other end. And the thing that really bothers me is that that's what that business or that industry thinks of podcast advertising going forward, when we know it's not true, makes me crazy.

Neil Veglio  26:00  
I agree 100% and I had this conversation with somebody actually that, why is it not that? I mean, they can tell when this is being done within the platforms. So why they don't put some quite clear language on the website, on the app, wherever they need to, certainly on podcast Connect. There's plenty of opportunity to put something on Apple. Podcast Connect. If you do this, this is what will happen to your show. I don't understand why they don't do that, but then I kind of do because actually, while people are talking about gaming the algorithms and the charts. It's getting people obsessed with something that they want to gamify. Same with LinkedIn. LinkedIn is the same LinkedIn constantly being criticized for not doing anything about engagement pods. There's something like 150,000 different accounts on LinkedIn that are gaming the algorithm. They're joining these engagement pods, and people say, Well, why don't LinkedIn just ban them? Because it's good for LinkedIn. It gets people talking about LinkedIn. It gets people using LinkedIn. So why would they cut the nose to you know? Why would they bite the hand that pays their bills? And I think that's what it comes down to. I

Matt Cundill  27:18  
think with Apple, they started booting some podcasts in 2018 for a number of reasons. Keyword stuffing was one, and for you know, alleged promoters being another, and I think it probably clogged up the help email. I mean, it's a waste of time for them. So I think the solution is, as you mentioned earlier, just uncheck the box, and now you're now nobody can find you so much easier. I

Neil Veglio  27:41  
mean, it is really silly. The, you know, the amount of shows where they do this. And then there was a time when I used to take note of these shows, because I thought, well, that's interesting. This guy clearly doesn't deserve to be here. He's obviously a business coach that's trying to gain the platform for, you know, self serving reasons. And so I would take a note of them. And I, at one point, I was keeping a spreadsheet of all these shows, because I wanted to see why. Wanted to see what happened to them. And honestly, I actually about three months after I started this, I got round to finally checking on some of them. I think one of the, something like 20 shows that I'd noted were still on the platform. So that gives you an indication of just how hot on this apple podcasts are now that only one show, so 19 shows got booted for spending three days in the top 50.

Tara Sands  28:27  
Transcription of the sound off podcast is powered by the podcast Super Friends, five podcast producers who get together to discuss podcasting. Sharpen your podcast marketing and creation skills by following the show on the sound off podcast, YouTube or Facebook page, the sound off podcast, you

Matt Cundill  28:49  
mentioned we can track consumption on Apple and Spotify. What is the number you're looking for, where you're happy or you think, yeah, this is, this is working really well. It

Neil Veglio  28:59  
depends on the show. I mean, if it's if it's a show where there's a specific business reason attached to it, then I would always say, Well, you probably want to be aiming for about 80% retention minimum, because you got call to actions in there. People aren't hearing your call to actions. You know? What's the most popular call to action. It's your mid roll, you know. So if your mid roll is showing up somewhere around halfway, or maybe, you know, 20 minutes into a 30 minute episode, then you know, people need to hear that to make it worth your while doing the show. But if it's just a brand awareness thing or a vanity thing, or, you know, for credibility, which most people, you know, the most hilarious reason I get given, Matt, honestly, the altruistic Oh, well, I just want to give value. Okay, then it doesn't matter if people don't listen for more than two minutes. Then, right? Oh no, no. I want people listening to the whole episode, right? So you're not interested in giving value. What you're actually interested in is getting ROI. Making the readies, but you don't want to be honest about it. Well, that's fair enough. You know, it doesn't matter what your reason is. But, yeah, if you're doing it for vanity metrics, it doesn't really matter. You know, just putting something out there already makes, you know, puts you in a top 5% of the population, because 95% of the population are not doing a contrary to, probably, oh, there's 4.5 million podcasts. Yeah, right, yeah, right, you know what I mean. So you're already ahead of most of the planet in terms of doing it, so even 90 seconds of content being consumed is better than most of your competitors. But you know, if you really want results from it, then you look to be shooting about 80% minimum, and if you're getting 50% or lower, quick tip for you shorten your episodes. Pretty easy, quick fix.

Matt Cundill  30:47  
Just by releasing an episode, you can be a top 5% podcaster according to listen notes, because you've immediately defeated all the dead podcasts out there.

Neil Veglio  30:58  
I don't know. I think listen notes actually still counsel on a dead podcast. It's not very difficult to make it to top 1% podcast, according to them.

Matt Cundill  31:07  
So let's go from one sort of like small piece of fraud to an even bigger one, and that's YouTube. We'll talk about the promotion side in just a sec. But you know, a lot of people do wrestle with and I did find that at the podcast show in London, there were a lot of people talking about video, got to have video. And I'm like, Oh God, do I really have to have video? I mean, who's going to find you and me talking to each other with big microphones and headphones? Interesting like, who's going to watch this? Because I put this up all the time. A few people watch it. They watch it for a few secs. I think they actually go and run to listen to the better audio experience, which is a little more edited and shaped for ears and sound design. So do you think the rush to video is over hyped? Is there something you can tell incoming creators and bring them down to earth? There's two separate

Neil Veglio  31:53  
questions here, isn't it? I mean, if you're asking the question, is video over hyped, then the answer to that is categorically Yes, it is massively and there's always going to be a reason for that, like anything else, like SEO, like being on any social media platform, doing Tiktok back in the day, it was doing clubhouse. There's always a reason that these people say you must do this, and it's usually because they're benefiting from your decision to do that in some way, whether that be they're running a video marketing agency, or they do YouTube courses, or whatever the reason is YouTube themselves, obviously you're saying, Yes, we're number one for podcast discovery, but according to whose data what, what are you talking about? You are not number one for podcast discovery, number one, if I put any search into YouTube, then I'm gonna get the top videos in that category showing up every time, because that's how your algorithm works. Is no better than Apple podcasts or Spotify, even though they say, oh, much better search discovery. No, it's not. It's just that the people that are looking for podcasts, they're not finding them because the people putting the podcasts out don't know how to properly title their podcasts and their episodes and their metadata. They just don't know how to but that's one question aside there. Yeah, it is massively overhyped that said, I have relaxed my stance on on this quite recently, in that I don't think that you need to be on YouTube if you have a podcast. I think it's equally valid to have a video version of your podcast as it is to decide not to have a video and just go audio. Only 100% equally valid. That said, it is another opportunity for you to reach people in a destination that they're hanging out in. My take on it is that there are a whole there's a whole section of the population of a certain age that don't know how to find Apple podcasts, Spotify, castbox, Pocket Casts, and other of the 500 apps that are out there, but they know where YouTube is on their TV.

Matt Cundill  34:01  
I'm sorry, are we talking about my kids or my parents? Both,

Neil Veglio  34:07  
funnily enough, we're the awkward middle and that's the really interesting part here, is that kids and the elderly know what YouTube is, but they don't necessarily know. I mean, kids, yes, they probably know what Apple podcasts is, because their friends have probably told them about it. Chances are they'll know Spotify better, because only weird middle aged people use Apple podcasts these days and people that are gaming systems. So for me, it's a case of, my mum is in her mid 70s. She's never gonna listen to me on Apple podcasts. She wouldn't even know how to get it on a phone, especially now she's she's gone back to Android again. So that's try getting someone with an Android phone downloading a podcast app. It's next to impossible, certainly since we've lost Google podcasts and Stitcher. So I get your take on the whole Well, I'm putting this out there, and my podcast, my audio book. Podcast might be getting, I don't know, 100 to 500 to 1000 downloads, if I'm lucky, you know, and you go into the Connect dashboard and you see the retention is like 80% great, brilliant, winning video, not so much. But the point is, I think, like I just touched on with podcasters, where we don't necessarily automatic know how to optimize our content for search. It's the same with YouTube, and I've recently learned that the difference between getting 10 views on your video and 1000 views on your video is literally taking the time to properly metadata, you know, and sticking the right things in there. A common mistake that a lot of podcasters make that mean that their show doesn't work is they will take the same title that they've put up for their podcast in whatever the podcast hosting platform is, they'll put the same title in YouTube. And that will never work just because the different ways that people engage with content on YouTube is vastly different from the ways that people are used to seeing their content fed up to them in podcast apps. So that's the first thing, and also in a lot of cases, it'll usually be episode 101, talking about marketing.mp. Four, that ain't getting found. And sadly, YouTube does look at the original file name as well as what you put in the title field.

Matt Cundill  36:21  
Okay, do you have an episode on this that I missed? Not

Neil Veglio  36:25  
yet, because, okay, so there's a bit of imposter syndrome you've touched up on here, Matt, because I do not present myself as a YouTube podcasting expert at all. Certainly not, however, for my own purposes and for my clients, I have been doing a lot of research into this recently. So all this kind of stuff is, like, hot on my learning list. I call it a learning list, you know, I go through phases where I want to really nail down, you know, one minute it's Google ads, the next minute it's meta ads, next minute it's in app advertise all that stuff. Right now, I'm all about YouTube, so I'm, I'm learning a lot, but honestly, there's actually, if I, if I may, promote another podcast. Dave Jackson the school of podcasting, his latest episode as we're recording this is with a guy who is literally, he's a novelist. He's literally interviewed this guy about how to use YouTube, and he does. He doesn't touch on what I've just talked about, but he touches on a lot of the other stuff around, probably planning your thumbnails and probably planning for the YouTube audience. So that is a recommended lesson, because I think the guy's onto something there.

Matt Cundill  37:28  
Yeah, you'll find it in the show notes of this episode. That's fascinating. And you mentioned about the title not matching necessarily what you put out on audio. And immediately, now my heart sinks a little bit, because that makes trying to track data for how episode performance goes harder. I'm like, How are we going to link it together so we can count the people

Neil Veglio  37:49  
explain that to me differently? Well, if

Matt Cundill  37:53  
I title this one way on my RSS feed and another way in YouTube, and I've built a tool, perhaps, to count the listeners or aggregate the number of people. How am I going to join that together?

Neil Veglio  38:08  
I'm with you. So which works best? Basically, how do you track which is the most effective? That's the difficulty here, and that's that's really why, you know, it takes the effort, and that's what separates the people that want to do this seriously from the people that just want a passive income structure in place. And for me, the best practices around YouTube, I think what I've learned is that you really if you want to do YouTube, then you have to think about it as two separate products. You have to think about the audio podcast version is using the same source material. Of course, you know, I'm not suggesting you re record the whole thing again just for audio, or re record the whole thing again just for video, but you have to bear in mind that they are two at their core, two different products. And it might be that you have to record a special intro and outro for the audio version that doesn't get included in the video version. But certainly it's, it's almost a case of, what artwork do I use for the audio version, what artwork do I use for the video version? And I certainly have leaned in recently to this idea of having two very different versions of the artwork, and a B testing them, because that's a thing. You know, you can certainly do that. And you know, after a while, I think you get a you get an idea for what works in general. But of course, you know, like Dave's guest says, you know, in podcast, the difference between podcasting and YouTubing is that podcasting is a long, slow game. You need a lot of consistency and a lot of episodes till you finally start to build that direction and get that regular audience video is is the opposite. You can have 100 videos that do nothing, then suddenly one cracks and goes viral, and that is your show taken care of for the rest of its life.

Matt Cundill  39:53  
So let me just dovetail a little bit over to the fraud side of YouTube, because I think it's a little more rampant over there. And. And you can buy 1000 subscribers, which can enter you into monetization. It feels a little bit dicey. I mean, I listen, I've seen some shows, and they're saying that I've got 1500 subscribers, and the first thing I'm like, well, who'd you pay to get that? Because this is about basket weaving.

Neil Veglio  40:15  
Speak for yourself. I love shows about basket weaving, very relaxing,

Matt Cundill  40:19  
but is it? I mean, it's a different game over there, isn't it? I mean, what are we even counting? Because it's we don't even know what the plays are or what constitutes a view.

Neil Veglio  40:28  
I personally think it's the same game. Honestly, I think what we're looking at here is, so, yeah, you can get 1000 subscribers. I believe that half opens you up to monetization. I think you still need 4000 hours of watch time, so your 1000 subscribers are going to do nothing for you if nobody's watching. But on top of that, what you have to remember, like with gaming, Apple podcasts and Spotify, it doesn't matter how many subscribers you've got, if no one's watching, you're not making any money. YouTube are not going to pay you for three views, even if you've got 10,000 subscribers. So and they know, they absolutely know if you've bought bots to follow you, they know they can just tell by the activity you know you put a video out seven hours later, nine people have watched it. Hang on a minute. This guy's got 50,000 subscribers. How's that happened? Oh, because they're not real, therefore we demonetize, we de platform them. I think the bottom line is, you're talking about fraud. Fraud nearly sent me around the bend last year, like it's a very British slang term, but it nearly sent me into burnout last year because I spent so long fretting about all these people that were gaming algorithms and gaming the system. And you know, why should Stephen Bartlett be famous when we all know he was gaming the apple podcast charts back in 2019 after spending three years talking to himself with nine listeners. But the thing is, these people only thrive on the surface level. There's no competition for you if you're doing it the right way. The only thing you should ever care about is what your bank balance tells you, and if your bank balance is telling you, yes, I can afford to live this week. Yes, I can afford to take a nice holiday. Yes, I can afford to do all the things that I really want to do. But you've got 20 downloads in your episode showing that's great. It's a fantastic conversion rate. You should be proud of yourself. That's the unsexy part of this. You know, I did this talk at the podcast show where I talked about how my own show only has about 50 downloads per episode on average. I mean, I get some that do really. Last couple weeks have been viral, you know, 2000 downloads. But it's what I'm selling from those shows that make me live the life I want to live. And so if I'm looking at my podcast stats and going 30 downloads this week. Oh, woe is me. But then I look at my Calendly and I see how many people have booked podcast audits with me that are going to help me to eat next month. That's all I care about. Yeah,

Matt Cundill  42:52  
it doesn't make your cash register ring. Absolutely. What do you make of Spotify? Move to video, and I'll rephrase it as a client this time and say, you know, Neil, I'd really like to start uploading my video to Spotify good idea or bad idea. Terrible idea. Okay, good meeting. Thanks.

Neil Veglio  43:18  
I would refuse to work with you. Matt, no chance at all. No, I'm kidding. Ethics aside, like you, I'm very protective of you know, my birthright, the RSS feed. It's something I fell in love with in the early days, even back to the days when I had to code the damn things myself using a very outdated article where someone taught me how to code them. Might have even been James Cridland, I can't remember, to be honest, but there was definitely a really helpful web helpful website I used to use to code RSS feeds. Then, of course, the podcast hosts like Libsyn came along and made that easy for you, in exchange for a few nice little pieces of candy every month. But the protection of RSS aside, which Spotify is definitely not trying to do, it's trying to do the opposite. It's not going to help you get audience, because everything Spotify does, and it's the same with any platform, it's the same thing LinkedIn does. It's the same thing YouTube does, to a certain extent. It's the same thing Apple podcast does. Everything that Spotify in particular does, though, is geared towards the nine or 10 people that can really benefit from these tools. Everyone else is literally volume of well, it's commodity. It's a commodity for shareholders. If we can get everyone trying to put their videos on Spotify, great, we can report to our shareholders. Wow. Video hosting has taken off. We've had a million people upload their video and give us free content that we don't need to pay for. Isn't that fantastic? Plus, they can't monetize that because we literally rip the video and rehost it. That's why you really want to think about whether the decisions you take with your podcast are in your. Your own interests or in the interests of the platform, nothing free is really free. We know this.

Matt Cundill  45:07  
If they send you an email and say, check out this new thing we're offering, probably not about you. It's about them.

Neil Veglio  45:15  
Ask some questions. And you know what a really great tip for this is, if you ever get an email from a platform or a provider of any sort, and you think, Hmm, is this really as altruistic as they're making out? Are they really giving me a great deal here? Stick it in chat GPT and ask it to assess the terms and conditions of the platform, to let you know what the black flags are, it will very quickly tell you I'm

Matt Cundill  45:38  
writing that one down. That's a good one. Spotify, by the way, for those who are listening, the difference between us uploading a video and just, you know, sticking with the RSS feed and listening the way you normally do would be the ads. You're not gonna hear the ads or the promotion from the people who support us. You'll get a blank mid roll, and you won't even get a mid roll. You'll just get this video that just goes on and on, and it will be a video experience with audio in your ears. And am I daft to think that all of a sudden, one day, Spotify users are gonna go, Well, I'm gonna watch. I'm not gonna listen to this anymore. I can't wait to watch because I didn't have to mow the lawn or walk the dog or do the laundry. I'm just gonna watch these two guys with their big headphones on and their giant microphones? Yeah, that's where it's at, baby.

Neil Veglio  46:26  
I'm starting to get the impression, Matt, that you don't think that looking at us is particularly engaging thing to do. I think we're beautiful men, honestly, for our ages. Well, the

Matt Cundill  46:35  
numbers don't reflect that. If you look down below here,

Neil Veglio  46:40  
sorry, I'm gonna buy you a bunch of bot views. You'll be you'll be laughing.

Matt Cundill  46:43  
Listen, I have had people say, I asked somebody once, I said, Do you listen to podcasts? And I said, Yeah, I watched Dax Shepard on YouTube. And I go, why? You can just listen? And they don't know any differently, or that's just the way they do it. I had one guest here on the show say, Yeah, I love watching the show. And I go, Why listen? You want to listen to the show? I spend all this time, you know, sound design and making it boom, bang, exciting. Great microphones. I didn't even bother to shave or get dressed for this. You know,

Neil Veglio  47:18  
appreciate the effort. What

Matt Cundill  47:21  
were your big takeaways, by the way, from the podcast show in London, like, when you're traveling back, you know, you probably took the train. I did

Neil Veglio  47:29  
indeed, yeah, overpriced and standing room only, but I did take it honestly, aside, of course, from meeting you, which was a definite highlight, having this voice come up behind me while I was waiting in the queue for the pod news, weekly review, recording, hearing Hi Neil, and then not recognizing you straight away, because you're much more handsome in real life, of course, yes, but meeting you and your lovely wife, of course, that was a real highlight. And yeah, that for me, I think the biggest takeaway is that actually is that it is a small industry. It's a cottage industry. Still, you know, I don't know how I mean the speculation of around five to 6000 people across the weekend, if you take it like James Cridland said, you know, if you divide that by two for all the people that went to both days, you know, even two and a half 1000, 3000 people, that's how many people you know are in this industry, essentially, by other industry standards, that's tiny, but I worked in radio. You worked in radio. I'm gonna ask you a question now, Matt, I'm gonna put you on the spot. When you worked in radio, when you were in broadcasting, did you ever feel lifted by the enthusiasm and energy and collaborative opportunities of your competition?

Matt Cundill  48:43  
No, I spent most of my day trying to piss them off

Neil Veglio  48:47  
exactly. Yeah,

Matt Cundill  48:49  
I looked for passive, aggressive ways to upset their day. Often, I would write letters to them and tell them that the show was fantastic, knowing full well that the show wasn't fantastic, I just wanted them to keep it on the air for another few months, so that we would have somebody to beat up on. Often, the wrong caller would call the radio station and say, Did I win? And they they were listening the wrong station. I said, Yes, you did. You won $1,000 come down and pick up your prize.

Neil Veglio  49:18  
Love it. They'd go

Matt Cundill  49:20  
to the wrong radio station, and nobody could figure out what was going on. Yeah, just, just these arsehole things that you think up to do stuff, but yeah to that. And like every conference, for instance, is not like it was where we're all gonna come together. It was one company goes one way, another company goes another way. And everyone talks about all the secrets in the business. They go, What secrets are you talking about? You? They're in a 62nd promo, and they're being broadcast over the air. So yeah, it's a it's a nutty industry, but I understand the competition when it comes to radio, because you're up against what is happening now. And in podcasting, it's not like that. It's on demand, right? And so when people think, well, what is on demand? I said, well. What is the biggest competition for Netflix? And it's not Amazon, and it's not anything like that. It's sleep, right? And when you're doing a podcast, it's up against all this shit you got to do in the day. And you know, the baby crying and the car and the kids and the go here, go there, work and boss, that's what you're up against in the on demand world. So, yeah, I mean, the rising tide lifts all boats in this business and in radio, if they had and still have time to do this, they will fix a lot of their problems. I

Neil Veglio  50:32  
100% agree. And you know, for me, what was really telling was, whenever we went to award shows in the radio industry, certainly in the UK, we had, you know, the archivers, the Saudis, before that, the Radio Academy Awards. I mean, James Cridland will tell you all about these. You know, the amount of people, where you would see their little radio stations around their little round tables of nine people, and they'd keep themselves themselves, and next to that, you'd have the rival radio station, and they would be shooting bad looks at each other. And it's like guys, the champagnes flowing. There's a live music act on stage. Just let it go for like an hour, please. But, you know, there was absolutely an intensity about the you know, you'd go visit a radio station, and eyes would be following you as you went up the corridor through the sales office, like, Who is this person? Can they take my job, you know? And I love that podcasting does not have that, you know, even I think I probably met about 30 competitors, which what we would call competitors, if we were going to go down that road at the podcast show, and the fact that we were able to have conversations where, oh, how did you achieve that? Oh, I tell exactly how I achieved it. How did you achieve that? Oh, yeah, and let me tell you about that. It's just fabulous. And I think that, and the fact that one of the things that I learned during the advice lab sessions that I tabled, most podcasters do not know how to name their shows, like we joked about it right at the beginning of this, like my first show, the Neil valio show, then chaos. And theory, you know, I had another show that I did a little bit later on, which, what was that? Called the unbeatable show, because I was on a radio station called the beat at the time, and so we had the unbeatable show. So terrible names, but people are doing that all the time. You know, not just individuals, but brands. I spoke to a Christian Broadcast Network based out of London. They had ex BBC people that knew radio like the back of their hand, but they didn't know what this podcasting stuff was, and when they told me the name of their show, well, first of all, the name of their show, which I forget now, and I wouldn't want to shame them, but it didn't sound anything like you would search for in any podcast app. And also, the show artwork was just two random blobs it told, you know? So I think it's really easy for us to think, Oh, well, everyone knows best practices. Now, what can we offer? What can we really do to help people? We absolutely can do things to help people. And you know, the likes of Mark Maron, who's just announced that, you know WTF is coming off in the fall. Well, there are going to be 20,000 new WTF style shows that are now going to emerge and try and fill that void. And what they're going to call it WTF, biggest mistake.

Matt Cundill  53:19  
And that sort of dovetails a little bit into something else that's important, and a lot of people don't have websites. So if you're gonna call a show something, at least give it a fighting chance to have something that's gonna have an address on the internet, you can put a little SEO to tell people what your poorly named podcast is all about. Like, get the website. Like, I would just tell people you gotta get the website. Before you think about getting into video, I

Neil Veglio  53:42  
would 100% agree with that. And you know people saying, Oh, well, you know, videos are no longer a luxury. They're a must have. I would say, actually, no, the website is the must have. 1,000% because, number one, it eradicates that awkward thing that every podcast did get my show wherever you find your podcasts. No, no, do not no. Send them to the sound off podcast. You've you've got your website, absolutely, that's what you need to do, for that reason alone, that will help your podcast infinitesimally, if that's a word. But more than that, absolutely, you know, certainly now with the rise of geo, for anybody that doesn't know what that is, that's generative engine optimization, which is your chat bots, essentially the amount of people I'm now hearing where podcasts are being recommended by chat, GPT and Claude, it's insane, and the only way they can do that is, if you have a website, they're using YouTube, to a certain extent, as a backup. So you'll certainly if you're on YouTube again. Another reason why, you know, rewinding, I don't if you want to branch this into the early bit where we're talking about YouTube, but you know, another good reason to use YouTube for podcasts is. Obviously, the Geo, the chat, GPT, Claude and all the chat bots are now indexing YouTube videos. But aside from that, back to the other bit, aside from, you know the benefits of having, you know that ability to get YouTube indexed in your chat bot, it's also the website is going to be where you're going to host those videos that are getting indexed by chat GPT. So what better way to have more collective data together that it can easily find and recommend other episodes as well as the person searching? So you know, so many benefits going forward to future proof your podcast, aside from the traditional ones, like SEO, ease of you know, directing traffic where you want it to go, to your newsletter or wherever, or to your Patreon. It's a no brainer. You need a website 100% especially as most podcast hosts, they'll give you one for free.

Matt Cundill  55:55  
So this podcast is called the sound off podcast, and I was listening to your recent episode, which talks about titling your show, and I've tinkered a little bit with how to rename it, and there's nothing really I can really go to because it's just been so entrenched with an audience. I thought, do we call this a sound off Show? We could change it a different way, but I've already got other things that I've branded off that, including sounding off newsletter, sound off dot network. I'm far too deep into this now to be changing the title. And I think there's enough data out there in the search world that people can find me. Thankfully,

Neil Veglio  56:27  
you don't need to change it, but I would argue you might want to adapt it.

Matt Cundill  56:31  
If I say, How do I have to pay?

Neil Veglio  56:34  
No, not at all. I'll give you this absolutely for free. It's what I tell everybody. So you know, the way I tell people to look at this is treat your title almost like a cinema like a movie title. So you get Mission Impossible. Colon, dead reckoning. You get Star Wars. Colon, Attack of the Clones, Jack Reacher, colon, episode about whatever. It's the same idea. So you've got your brand, is the sound off podcast, but then colon, who are we for

Matt Cundill  57:07  
the show, about podcast and broadcast? Yeah. I

Neil Veglio  57:11  
mean, ordinarily I'd say never use the word podcast in your title, because then what you're automatically doing is benching yourself against I think it's something at this point, like 50,000 other titles that have all got podcast in there, but certainly when it's a qualification thing. Yeah, absolutely. You know a show about marketing with audio, a show about podcast marketing, a show about radio and podcasting. You know any of those things you don't even have to say a show about, because, in my view, that's probably wasted mileage. I would probably say podcasting and radio, unfiltered,

Matt Cundill  57:45  
real talk.

Neil Veglio  57:50  
You got me, I'm sold some

Matt Cundill  57:52  
of the most overused podcast titles that are out there. Let's just dive right into that pool.

Neil Veglio  57:58  
Unleashed.

Matt Cundill  58:01  
Yeah, which actually reminds me, who do you say no to when somebody comes to you with an idea for a show, who do you say no to

Neil Veglio  58:12  
egos, people that are not doing the show for any good reason other than bragging rights? I have a podcast. Look, here's my podcast. It's in the charts. It's funny the amount of business coaches that I've actually had to turn down because it's really obvious to me that they've got no interest at all in the medium, and they're just looking to flatter their own egos. I got no problem with people doing a show for, you know, vanity metrics, or, you know, for their own to their own end, no problem, but do it in your own time. You know, I'm not here to help those people. The people I'm here to help are those that, frankly, have a gift. This is gonna sound really holier than now, but it's true, people that have got a gift or can move others forward in some way whereby they're willing to exchange that information and that content in return for either more profile or money. It's really as simple as that. If you're going to come to me and you're going to say, Neil, I want a top 5% podcast. I want to be in the top of the apple podcast charts every single week. Let me recommend three other people to you that will work with you. And it's happened more than a few times. I can tell you that

Matt Cundill  59:33  
when somebody wants to get a podcast audit with you, what does it entail? What can we expect back from your findings? Good Lord,

Neil Veglio  59:44  
I need to pay you marketing budget here, don't I? You're selling my services better than I can

Matt Cundill  59:51  
well, I think even if somebody doesn't go to make the purchase here, at least they're going to have an idea of what an audit is all about. You.

Neil Veglio  59:59  
Let me give you the blueprint. It's really simple. Anybody can do their own audit honestly. I mean, you certainly, you know, I'm sure you do yourself, and I do my own audits now and again, as well, with cobbler shoes, all that stuff.

Matt Cundill  1:00:11  
Valerie Geller calls it the self check, absolutely, and

Neil Veglio  1:00:15  
that's essentially what you know my audit is doing that for you, really. It's like when you go to any marketing agency, what they're going to do is they're going to go about, right? Well, what car do they drive? You know, what golf clubs do they go to, and all that sort of stuff that does nothing in terms of your growth. It will give you, yeah, a nice little avatar that you can put a picture on the wall and talk to them during your sales conversations. It's not going to put money in the bank. What's going to put money in your put money in your bank is getting results from the podcast by improving it, by making sure that the thing you're putting out into the world is packaged correctly. And the way that we do that is, first of all, gotta have a listen with critical ear. The biggest recommendation I ever give to anybody that does their own podcast and doesn't work with a producer. Is this right? The best favor you can do yourself, if you're DIY Agnes, go back to an older episode that's at least two months old. Okay, listen to it and take notes. What do you love? What do you dislike? What would you do differently? What other ideas have surfaced for you that you would have added in if you'd been given the chance to hear it in the past. You know, time travel that's going to give you an idea of exactly where your show is now. Potentially, the reason we do it like this is because when you're publishing episodes that are quite recent, you're still in creator mode. Your brain is listening to it. For all the things that don't make that much of a difference, really, in terms they make a difference for me, because as someone that wants to produce quality content, I want to make sure that it sounds good. The breaths are reduced, there's no clipped edits, there's no mistakes, the music doesn't drown out, the audio, all that stuff. That's the technical stuff that we all do when we're in creator mode. What we're not necessarily listening to is what's being said, the conversations, the way the dialog is happening, the chemistry between the host and the guest, the questions and the topics that are emerging, whether or not the correct follow ups were happening, a good indication of whether someone's actively listened or not is whether they've picked up on something that the guest has said and then gone a down different path, versus reading what's next on their script. Those things you will pick up on when you're listening to an older episode, because you're you've forgotten it, you've forgotten the process of creating it. So that's what we're doing. First of all, we're listening to the audio and how it sounds. Then we're looking at the packaging. So what does the artwork look like? What are the episodes called? How are the descriptions written? What are some of the things that you're discussing in the episodes themselves? In terms of pillar content, can the search engines easily find this stuff if they're looking for this stuff? And contrary to popular belief, and certain people at certain podcast hosting companies say that no descriptions get indexed. Well, I can say categorically they do, but your show has to be at a certain level before that starts happening. Sorry. Rob Walch libs in I have said something that's really going to annoy him, but that is true, and I've done tests on this to prove that as well. So it's really about making sure that all your SEO is nailed, your audio is nailed, your opportunity to be found is nailed. But also, what are you doing versus your competition? Do you have a closely competing podcast that sounds better than you? Does it sound worse than you? Great you can tick where you can cross either way. It's just things like that, and also how it's showing up in Google, how it's showing up in the podcast apps. When I search for not your show name, which everyone gets excited when they search for their name, and it shows up number one or two, but the keywords, so for example, podcasting and radio, does Matt, the sound of podcast, show up in a search for that. I'm pretty much guessing it's probably going to be quite low down, because you don't have those words in the title. And so those are sort of tweaks that you can make that will then start surfacing your show for those specific search terms. It's just things like that. And the way that I do my audits is I say to people, look, I do a traffic light system, red, amber, green, red and Amber never mean bad. They just mean more opportunity to improve. That's the way I put it. There's no such thing as a good or a bad podcast in terms of how you're putting it out there. Yes, some sound better than others, but there's only such a thing as how we can improve this and make it even better.

Matt Cundill  1:04:39  
Neil, thanks so much for doing this. Let us know exactly where we can get one of these audits.

Neil Veglio  1:04:44  
So you can go to podnos.co.uk, and then if you click on the Services tab, you'll be able to see in there.

Matt Cundill  1:04:51  
All right, Neil, thanks so much for doing this, and it's great to finally meet you for the first time just a couple weeks ago, and great to have you on the show. It's

Neil Veglio  1:04:58  
been a pleasure, and I'm. Must return the favor someday, and have you. When I start getting guests on the pod mastery show, I'll get you on that. Thank you.

Tara Sands  1:05:06  
The sound off podcast is written and hosted by Matt Cundill, produced by Taylor McLean, social media by Aiden glassy, another great creation from the sound off media company. There's always more at sound off podcast.com you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai