The Transcript

No. 082 How to Stop Listening to Podcasts and Start Your Own Show

Voiceover: Rainmaker.FM.

Jerod Morris: This is Rainmaker FM, the digital marketing podcast network. It’s built on the Rainmaker Platform, which empowers you to build your own digital marketing and sales platform. Start your free 14-day trial at RainmakerPlatform.com.

Welcome to The Showrunner, where we have one goal: teach you how to develop, launch, and run a remarkable show. Ready?

Welcome back to The Showrunner, the podcast for people dedicated to creating remarkable audio experiences for their audience. This is episode No. 82. I am your host, Jerod Morris, VP of marketing for Rainmaker Digital, and I will be joined momentarily, as I always am, by my jingle-belling co-host, Jonny Nastor, the host of Hack the Entrepreneur.

This episode of The Showrunner is brought to you by Audible. More on them later, but if you love audio books or have always wanted to give them a try, you can check out over 180,000 titles right now at AudibleTrial.com/Rainmaker.

Well, Jonny, it is truly the most wonderful time of the year. It is the final week of 2016. We are now into the final episode of our three-part series to end 2016. I have a very important question for you. What is your favorite Christmas song?

Jonny Nastor: That’s a good question. “Little Drummer Boy”?

Jerod Morris: Oh. That’s a good one. “Little Drummer Boy” is a good one, an underrated good song.

Jonny Nastor: That’s a tough question. It changes, but that’s probably a default.

Jerod Morris: It does. It changes kind of depending on the environment.

Jonny Nastor: Exactly.

Jerod Morris: If I’m in the house by myself and I just want to pretend I’m a singer, I like belting out “Silent Night.” But it’s kind of a slow song. I wouldn’t really want to sing that in front of anybody else, but I kind of get into when I’m by myself. “It’s The Most Wonderful Time of the Year,” that’s also a great one.

I’m very interested in what your, and by ‘your’ I’m talking to the listener now, not Jonny … I’m interested in what your favorite Christmas song is? Tweet us, @JerodMorris, @JonNastor. Let us know what your favorite Christmas song is. If you send us a video of yourself singing that Christmas song, that’d be awesome. We might play the audio on a 2017 episode of The Showrunner.

Jonny Nastor: Wow.

Jerod Morris: That’d be great, right? We’re at the end of our three part series. Two weeks ago, we talked about ways that showrunners can systematize their shows better, maybe some things you can put in place right now with the time that you have left in 2016 to be ready for 2017 from a system perspective.

Last week, we talked about professional podcasting tips for pristine production, and hosting hacks. This was Jonny’s episode where he really put his enunciation on display. It was impeccable, I will say, and he gave you the four Ds of pristine production. Make sure that you check that.

In both of those episodes, we issue calls to our audience — to you, the dear listener — to Tweet us what you wanted us to talk about in this final episode of 2016. We got a couple of great responses, so we are basically going to split this episode in half. We’re going to address one of these Tweets in one half, one of the Tweets in the other half. It’ll be fun.

Bonus: Showrunning Tips on How to Make It Through the Winter

Jerod Morris: Jonny, I also, kind of going along with the episode from last week, professional podcasting tips for pristine production, I want to peel back the curtain here real quick and let folks know if my voice at all sounds different, it’s because I have a bit of a cold.

What’s the worst thing that can happen, Jonny, as a podcaster when you have a cold. When we’re talking about production value for the audience, what’s the worst thing that you can do when you have a cold that could really impact the experience that your audience has?

Jonny Nastor: This is just going right off the cuff, but the worst thing you could do is not podcast, give into it.

Jerod Morris: Okay, yes. That would definitely be the worst thing, but the second worst thing would be to just be so flippant with your sniffles and with your coughs and not make good use of the mute button. That can really impact I think the listening experience that folks have. It’s not always easy, but that’s where, especially if you’re using something like Skype, if you’re not feeling well, if you know that you have to cough, use that mute button when the other person’s talking and get your sniffles out there. Get your coughs out there. It’s really important to be mindful of them.

I was thinking about that because I did a webinar earlier today, and that was the first thing I checked when I went to go to webinar, “Where’s the mute button?” so I can make sure, when I have to cough, when I have to sniffle … let me try and do this privately as much as I can. It’s just less of a distraction.

Now, if a sniffle comes in, if a cough comes in, it’s not like your audience is just going to leave and hate you forever. But it’s just one of those things when you’re thinking ahead, delivering the best value to your audience. Those little things can go a long way. Just make sure you know where the mute button is because sometimes you need it.

Jonny Nastor: And because we’re totally heading into that season, and because I’m like you, Jerod, like have to be consistently podcasting throughout anyways — I haven’t been hit by a cold, but I know I will — I always have a good stockpile of really strong cough candies with lots of menthol in them. It kind of cleans out.

Then I’ve talked about it on this show numerous times, and I’ll say it again, is the neti pot and the nasal irrigation. It cleans you out, and if you do it in the morning, it’ll help me throughout the day to do the shows. I’ll still sound a bit plugged up, but not nearly as terrible as it would normally. It allows me to just keep going, but really strong menthol lozenges or cough candies help a lot to keep the voice from getting sore as you’re trying to talk through it.

Jerod Morris: Yeah. So bonus showrunning tips of how to make it through the winter. All right. You ready to hop into the main topic and address some of these Twitter comments?

Jonny Nastor: I wish I had jingle bells to ring right now, but yes, I am ready.

Jerod Morris: Jingle bells. Get us some bells, Toby, if you have them.

Marketing Tips for Podcasters Heading into Their Third Year of Showrunning

Jerod Morris: All right. Let’s address the first question first, which makes sense. This comes to us from @TheOneWith podcast. The quote is, “Third episode on marketing. Loving the series and pondering showrunning. Maybe tips for shows past year three.” There are really two suggestions there, doing a third episode on marketing and then tips for shows past year three.

I’m going to actually, in my answer to this, Jonny, I’m going to combine the two and give a tip on marketing that is also a tip for shows past year three. That is, as you enter or you’re done with your third year, you’re looking to enter your fourth year, I think one of the biggest things that can happen is you start to get a little bit stale, and things stay the same. Maybe you go through the motions a little bit.

Now, if you already have a lot of great enthusiasm and you’re ready to roll, maybe this tip won’t work for you, but I know with Assembly Call, when we got past year three, as I try and think back now, I think after season three was probably the off season when I thought the most about quitting that show and not doing it anymore.

We had seen some success, but now it’s like, “Hey, this has been three years. Where’s this thing going?” I think what really helped us was introducing video to our postgame show and then starting to really get into email and building an audience with email.

The reason why that worked is, number one, it was new. We hadn’t done it. It was this fresh, new thing that livened things up for all of us. It was a new challenge, a new way to interact with the audience. So it really freshened things up from that perspective, but because it was different, it really helped us market our show in a new way, which helped the audience grow.

Now, instead of just having people subscribe to us on YouTube or just subscribe to the podcast, it was like, “Hey, we’re going to start doing these really in-depth email analysis. No one else who’s out here talking about this content really does anything with email. So subscribe to us via email, and the day after games, you’re going to get this really in-depth analysis right to your inbox.” Our audience and subscriptions just went through the roof, as did our enthusiasm for the show.

That’s what I would say to combine those. Look, that’s just a general term for marketing when you talk about positioning yourself and what is your unique show positioning. Really understand what the other shows out there are doing and do something different. Position yourself differently. Not only will that help you market the show, but it can also help you keep things from getting stale, add a new challenge, and give you new enthusiasm.

Jonny, what would you say for either marketing, or tips for shows past year three, or possibly fusing them together?

Jonny Nastor: Yeah. Let’s fuse them together. Even year two, year three, at that point, you have a solid foundation of individual episodes, SEO for everything, and content for your listener. After that, the biggest thing that changed the game for Hack the Entrepreneur was when I started harnessing, I guess, or utilizing other people’s audiences. I started going on other podcasts a lot, and I started writing for other people’s websites. Those two things exponentially grew my audience.

I had honed into who my audience was and had created a lot of good content for them. It was still organically growing through iTunes and stuff, but because I knew my audience so well, I knew where other people had the same or similar audiences. Once I started reaching out to those people, I could bring people back in larger quantities and just with a better velocity of people and growth that happened with them.

To me, I don’t want people focusing on that stuff in year one. You really have to sort of build the foundations and the main pillars of your content that your show’s going to be based off, that your site’s going to be based off. Once you do that, I think you really should start reaching out to other pools of audience.

Jerod Morris: Yeah. I love that, and I love the idea of not trying to go too fast with it. When you’re first starting out, you really just want to focus on creating good audio and not over-complicating things. If we tried to do a postgame show with video too, it just would have been way too much. We were only ready to actually do video, add that in there, and be able to do it naturally once we had a couple of years of doing the show via audio. Doing the video before would have just over complicated it.

I think really getting good at what you’re doing, but when you get to that year-three point — when you get at the end of year two, the end of year three — I think you’re ready for some new challenges.

You’ve got to keep growing to keep attracting new audience members and I think to keep your existing audience, to keep their enthusiasm up, too. You never want to take them for granted and just assume they’ll stay with you forever if you’re not growing, moving forward, and doing new things as well. I think this question is great. It’s the right timing for it, which is good.

Anything else? Any other marketing tips, general marketing tips, that we could give as we end 2016?

Finding a Way to Be Unique in Other Channels

Jonny Nastor: I don’t know. I think the idea of reaching out, finding more people, and then yours with going deeper with people through email, to me, if you could just merge those two things because, again, when you’re starting out and you want to be just focused on getting your audio good, I think even at year two or three you really still only want to focus on one or two channels really well for outreach. Then you still have to do something with them.

You can’t just keep producing audio content. You do have to do, like Jerod did, and now find a way to be unique within the other channels, which is email or something to go deeper with your audience and really draw them deeper into your brand, into you.

I would almost want you just to focus on those two, outreach, and then once you have them, doing more with them — rather than just spraying, doing six different things for outreach, and then muddling five different things once you have them.

Between those two, I know it’s been proven that the outreach that I did worked for me. It’s worked for hundreds of others of people, and email marketing, especially the way Jerod explained it, it works. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel in these things. You have to bring it into your niche, put your spin on it, but it works.

There’s almost no need to tell you to do other things. I know for a fact that if we get back here and you’re entering year four at this time next year, and you’ve done the outreach, and then you’ve nailed email marketing, you will be exponentially further than you are today. Your audience will be not only better, they’ll be more responsive, and they’ll have a better, deeper relationship to you and your brand.

Jerod Morris: Absolutely. The other Tweet that we got is from someone who’s on the other end of the spectrum, who’s just getting started and needs a little kick to get going. We’re going to give you that kick here in just a minute.

But first, I do want to let you know, as I mentioned earlier, this episode of The Showrunner is brought to you by Audible, offering over 180,000 audio book titles to choose from. Audible seamlessly delivers the worlds of both fiction and non-fiction to your iPhone, Android, Kindle, or computer.

For Showrunner listeners, Audible is offering a free audible book download with a free 30-day trial to give you the opportunity to check them out. To get started right now, visit AudibleTrial.com/Rainmaker. And if you want a recommendation Jonny, give me a key word. I’m going to type the keyword into Audible search, and we’re going to tell people what the first audio book is that comes up. What do you got?

Jonny Nastor: Christmas.

Jerod Morris: Christmas.

Jonny Nastor: I already did this.

Jerod Morris: Oh you did?

Jonny Nastor: I found a really good one.

Jerod Morris: It is A Christmas Carole, a signature performance by Tim Curry. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, of course. How the Grinch Stole Christmas is right there.

Jonny Nastor: See, I went down a little bit on the page, and I found something really, really awesome that I think everybody listening should use their Audible trial to get, Pretty Paper by Willie Nelson. There are two narrators, but Willie Nelson was the author. It’s, “Willie Nelson, country music’s quintessential musician, displays all the wit and warmth of his homespun style of storytelling in an inspiring holiday novel based on his classic Christmas song, Pretty Paper.”

Jerod Morris: Wow. I want to listen to that right now.

Jonny Nastor: I know. So do I.

Jerod Morris: There you go.

Jonny Nastor: So Pretty Paper by Willie Nelson. You can get that at AudibleTrial.com/Rainmaker for free.

Jerod Morris: Yeah. Again, AudibleTrial.com/Rainmaker. There you go, Pretty Paper. All right.

The Name We Give to People Who Spend More Time Learning to Podcast, but Not Recording Their Own Shows

Jerod Morris: So the Tweet that we got,...