Podcasting Truth & Myths Learned Over 500 Episodes

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  0:02  
The sound off podcast, the show about podcast and broadcast starts now.

Matt Cundill  0:13  
This is the 500th episode of the sound off podcast. We've been doing this for almost 10 years, and this is what happens when you don't plan an ending. I've been thinking about this milestone for a while and what it means, and it means I qualify for some sort of company perk, or perhaps a gold star that I can go collect at the Polo Park shopping center in Winnipeg. The sound op podcast. It's a crazy body of work. For instance, if you want to listen to all the episodes from beginning to end, it would take you 14 days and 14 hours. If you paid someone full time to listen to the show for eight hours a day, that would take 44 days. But they wind up really, really smart. And if you drove for 12 hours a day and listened to the show, you could drive from New York to Los Angeles seven times, start again on an eighth trip and wind up in North Platte Nebraska. Now I wouldn't wish that upon anyone, so we're going to keep doing episodes. A few years ago at Podcast Movement, there was an interview with iber glass, and he was asked about his body of work and what it meant to have a legacy, and what it meant for people who listened in the future, and he was having none of it. He says, If you're going to be making audio, you make it for the people who are going to listen today. So no look back. You can always go back and listen to the 499, episodes before this. We're going to have no streamers and no balloons. Yes, it's a birthday, but you get the gifts, and today, that gift is going to be for those who want to do a better job making their show. So here we go with 10 reasons why your podcast is underperforming.

Avery Cundill  1:48  
Reason one, believing that podcasting has a discovery problem.

Matt Cundill  1:53  
So podcasting doesn't have a discovery problem, but your show might have one. It's on Apple and YouTube and Spotify to deliver your show to the listener, not to promote your show to the listener. That's your job. I think of the people at Tink media who often remind podcasters that for every hour you dedicate to creating your show, you should be doing about the same to promote your show. I always throw up just a little bit inside when somebody starts to mention about podcasting's discovery problem. And I say, why are they doing that? I think it's because people just find it easier to blame something amorphous than coming to grips with the reality that this is hard.

Avery Cundill  2:32  
Reason two, no trailer.

Matt Cundill  2:35  
Doing a trailer is a good idea. It gives you a chance to invite listeners to subscribe or follow your show, but it also does something else before you start your show, and that's Think about who the show is for and what it's about. If you can't tell me in eight seconds what the show is about, you should probably quit or go find a better idea. But it's that long form trailer of creating something big and magical that makes you think, what if this were a movie trailer and it was going to be unleashed to the masses, and I wanted the world to know about it? What would you write? What would you say, and how would you present it? If you can't emotionally sway your targeted audience with your words to listen the show you're just about to launch might need a rethink.

Avery Cundill  3:19  
Reason three. Shit audio.

Matt Cundill  3:22  
So I'm going to use an example I heard last week. There's this influencer turned podcaster, and they were interviewing the head of their podcast production company. I got three minutes into it before I had to stop because of plosives, popping peas, having bad audio is a killer. There's nothing worse than getting on an airplane and finding out that the levels are super low, and then you crank up the volume and you still can't hear it. Listen. I did my first 90 episodes. They were too loud. I fixed it going forward. It's a learning curve. It's a learning process. Apple and Spotify have specifics on what the level should be, and I'm going to put those in the show notes, and you can adjust accordingly. But I will say one of the best ways to get rid of shit audio is to listen back to your show the way your listener would. So when you're on an airplane, check it out. Is it working for you? Can you listen in the car? Does it sound good in the car. Listen to the show the way your listeners are consuming it. Then make your best judgments and be honest with yourself. And if you're not sure how to fix it,

Avery Cundill  4:30  
ask reason four, crappy editing.

Matt Cundill  4:34  
Listen. I know a lot of people love sending the podcast offshore to be edited by someone whose second or third language is English. It's exotic. It makes your show sound worldly. And the price, let's face it, it's incredible, but it's very, very likely that these Upwork and Fiverr people are just running your show through descript, hitting studio sound, removing the ums and ahs with AI, and then uploading it and sending it back to you. Have a listen to what. Brian Ensminger said a few weeks ago on this

Bryan Entzminger  5:02  
show, I am an editor. I truly, truly hate what descript does to recordings. There are a couple of shows that I'm in the process of picking up as a secondary editor for the technical edit, and we're talking like 45 minutes. It's already got a story edit done with all of the de umming by descript, and I probably spend two and a half to three hours just realigning all of the bad cuts from descript. This is no reflection on the people that are they're really good at what they do, but it's the breaths are cut off or the pacing doesn't work, because descript maybe understands the words but doesn't understand the the

Matt Cundill  5:40  
emotion, by the way, the sound off. Media company does not use AI to edit. We do use AI tools. If we get a guest with no microphone or crappy sound, we can bring that up to snuff. There are a lot of excellent tools out there to take the echo out of a podcast and make it sound great. Those are on the episode page and in the show notes. Man, I am giving away all the secrets today.

Avery Cundill  6:03  
Reason five, a shitty interview structure.

Matt Cundill  6:07  
If you have a guest on your podcast, please do not read their LinkedIn bio as a form of an introduction to the audience. Also, your first question should never be, tell me about yourself. The LinkedIn bio is already available online, and the question is going to have the guest lie? Because whenever it's Tell me about yourself, they never completely tell the truth, do they? I am here listening to a podcast, and the podcast guest for something valuable. I'm not hiring this person, and this is not a job interview. I want to know why that guest is here and what they are going to deliver to me. So as a podcast host, what can you say in the next 45 seconds that's going to get me, the listener, to stick around for the next 45 minutes. Also, you can do away with that long show intro. A show intro does not need to be more than 15 seconds long. This show 12 seconds, and I should probably make it shorter. You don't need to describe what the show is about, because that's already been done back in the trailer and has also already been done in the show Description field of your podcast.

Avery Cundill  7:08  
Reason six, shit artwork and or artwork with a mic in it.

Matt Cundill  7:14  
When you think about artwork for your show, think about vinyl album covers, Fleetwood Mac rumors, Boston, self titled debut, Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon. You look at those albums, they don't have too many words on it, and if you think about it, the more words you put on there. I mean, who's going to be able to read it on a phone? Art is art. So make it artistic. And you don't need to put a microphone on the artwork. Steven Spielberg doesn't put a reel of film on Raiders of the Lost Ark, promo posters. You don't need to put another microphone, logo, piece of artwork into the podcast library, because, and this is important, everything in the podcast Library is a podcast. Okay, we know it was recorded with a microphone. You know where I think all this started. It started back when podcasters would go on Fiverr and order a $5 graphic for their hockey podcast, and what they would get back is a hockey stick and a puck with a microphone in their artwork. You know why? Because the people who are those Fiverr creators who charge $5 that's what they think podcasting is. Why don't you hire a graphic designer and make something nice instead, the artwork, if done right, is going to last as long as your podcast, if not longer. Also do not skip out on episode artwork, which leads me to this

Avery Cundill  8:32  
reason seven leaving out metadata.

Matt Cundill  8:36  
Last week, Fred Jacobs presented the Jacobs Media Tech survey, which they've been doing since 2006 now this is a study of p1 radio listeners who are on radio station newsletter subscriptions. So they're really active. They're big fans of radio. And in it, they said metadata on digital displays is important to them. I know this is a giant assumption to think that podcast listeners might think the same way, but I'm going to say they do and if not more so they care about the metadata. So the advice to you is simple, do not ever miss an opportunity to shape your show. So it presents nicely in Apple CarPlay and Android Auto or on a phone. And this includes episode numbers in the Title field. Nobody is searching to hear. Episode 47 no one else, nobody is searching episode 500 for this show either. Metadata on a car dashboard is like Boardwalk and Park Place and monopoly valuable real estate. Don't clutter it with things like episode 47 tell people what the show's about.

Avery Cundill  9:37  
Reason eight, not putting the show everywhere.

Matt Cundill  9:41  
So someone who's been on this show before launched their podcast recently and put it only on YouTube. So that's not a podcast, it's a video show on YouTube. Yes, yes. Now I know people are going to call it a podcast, but the point is this, if you call it a podcast, people are going to expect it to be in places where they get podcasts. Podcasts that includes apple and Spotify and overcast and I heart and whatever they use. So it's super important to make sure that your show is everywhere. If you don't know where to put your show. James Cridland at pod news is always keeping people up to date on where to put their show. There's a link in the show notes.

Avery Cundill  10:19  
Reason nine, paying too much attention to video.

Matt Cundill  10:23  
So often people are paying too much attention to the video side of things, and not enough on the audio side. They realize they're on video and they come off mic a little bit, and they figure, they Oh, now they need a lapel mic and dual cameras. Well, what the fuck for? We have worked with over 100 podcasts for over 10 years at the sound off media company, the number of shows that have clocked higher for video than audio is zero. I also asked my podcast Super Friends if they have any podcasts that are scoring higher in video than audio, and there's only one and they are paying to have that YouTube channel boosted. And by the way, when I'm making my comparisons between video and audio, I'm meaning like one second of video time compared to one minute of audio time, these numbers aren't even close. Audio is king here. Do not jump over a $100 bill to get to a 10 listen to what Dave Jackson had to say. He's from the school of podcasting, and when he was at Lipson, he and the team had to convince Bill Maher that audio is going to get more ears

Dave Jackson  11:25  
than eyeballs. For a while, Bill Maher was on Libsyn, and when Bill was on he he does club random, and he was really into this video thing. He's got this cool little basement in a house next to his house. Rob Walsh was working with him and said, hey, you know you're going to do audio too. And he's like, no, no, we're just going to do video. And he's like, You should probably do audio. So we talked him into audio. He then hired a team to promote just the video, and when it finally came out, and, you know, got off the ground, audio outperformed video about 10 to one. So it's just one of those things where, again, when I hear these people go, I kind of feel like I have to be on video. And I'm like, well, you're you're getting that from presentations from YouTube. Well, of course, YouTube is going to say you should be doing a quote video podcast, right in giant quotation marks on YouTube, because that's more stuff that they can run ads on. So you always want to consider

Matt Cundill  12:17  
your source. Listen, I'm not saying don't do video be on YouTube. It's great for search. It's great for marketing. Put up YouTube shorts. That's what we do. It's great stuff. Have a video strategy, but don't put it ahead of audio. The sound off podcast is very typical of most other podcasts who do both audio and video. 300 people are going to listen to 80% of this show. 20 people might watch 10% of the show. I'm not going to bore you with the data that 48% of YouTube viewers of podcasts are just listening to the show in their pocket or in the background. Listen. Do you want to make the best podcast for your audience or make a terrible TV show?

Avery Cundill  12:54  
Reason 10 thinking you need 10,000 downloads to monetize. So I have

Matt Cundill  13:00  
never had 10,000 downloads. Back to Dave Jackson, who we just heard from, he said it best when he said, You're not monetizing a podcast, you're monetizing an audience. If there are radio podcasts and audio people listening to this show, I expect those people could probably use a product like, say, mega tracks to produce audio or get their radio ratings from and logic, or have their podcast downloads counted by Potter. Those are some of the clients, by the way, who've been on the show in the last year. Because we talk about audience building nearly every week, we use data to get to know our audience, and we build community around the show. Yeah, you're going to need 10,000 downloads if you want to monetize with programmatic advertising and have somebody sell, host, read ads for you. But remember, the next time someone tells you you need 10,000 downloads to monetize, remind yourself that that's not true. They are the ones who need 10,000 downloads to monetize, and they are not your problem. Matt, that's a

Avery Cundill  14:00  
great list, but I think you forgot the obvious one.

Matt Cundill  14:04  
Yeah, you know I did, and that's you need a website for your podcast. There you have it. If you want to start a podcast, you have a lot of options, but you'll never go wrong with a free call to me, this show has 500 episodes chock full of information on how to do your show better. And thank you for being here and listening, whether you started at episode one or 500

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  14:32  
another sound off media company podcast you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai