Evo Terra:
You can't judge a book by its cover. But our
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podcasts are judged by a single episode -our most recent. It'd
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be better if we were judged by a collection of our best episodes.
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But how would we do that?
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Evo Terra:
Hello, and welcome to another Podcast Pontifications with me,
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Evo Terra.
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If you wanted to figure out your most popular episodes, how would
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you go about doing that? Now, you might be wondering why this
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is important? And, well, it's important for a for a number of
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reasons, I think. First is putting your best foot forward
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for brand new listeners. Podcasting's reliance on reverse
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chronological order listing of our episodes means that the
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newest episode is the episode that is heard most often by
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brand new people. And that may not be your best episode. Heck,
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it might not even be an episode that is indicative of what a
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good episode is for your podcast. It might not even be an
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episode of your podcast at all.
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If you knew which episodes were most popular for your listeners,
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you'd have a nice Start Here collection for brand new
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listeners. That'd be cool. Another idea would be assembling
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a collection to submit to awards competitions. Doing it with a
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single episode isn't great. Even if you are creating a
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customized, curated single episode that samples from other
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episodes of your show, it's not a good way to tell whether your
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podcast is good, bad, or indifferent. It's just not the
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right feel.
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However, if you had a collection of episodes - I don't know, say,
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three episodes, five episodes, ten episodes, whatever - that
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you could then submit to the awards committee, they, in turn,
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could make a much more informed decision on whether your
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podcast, the whole podcast, is worthy of an award or not.
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That also might encourage some innovation with the podcast
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listening apps out there. Just think how popular Best Of or
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Greatest Hits collections are for music. We could do the same
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thing for podcasts. We could go through, figure out which are
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the best episodes, and then give them to a brand new listener.
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That new listener then listens to your Best Of collection.
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Here's the cool part, when they get to the end of the Best Of
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collection, if they get all the way to the end, then their
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subscription automatically switches over to the main show
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feed. And they start picking up new episodes right away because
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now they're in. They went all the way through, they're
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invested. That'd be kind of cool.
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But back to my question, how would you go about doing that?
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Would you base it on downloads? Well, I suppose that's a start.
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I think we put way too much emphasis on downloads, and a
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goodly number of those downloads are automated. So I'm skeptical,
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but still, it's a start. In fact, earlier this week, I heard
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that some of the more forward-thinking podcast hosting
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companies are in early discussions to collect this
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information with, obviously, the podcaster's permission, clearly.
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But then somehow take that information of what the best of
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this feed is and then mark that episode inside of the RSS feed,
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which would, in turn, allow aggregators - think directories
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or apps - actually to do something with those marked
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episodes. Put them further up, highlight them in some way.
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Now, speaking of apps, they actually have better data than
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your podcast hosting company. They actually have play data,
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backup data, rewind and skip data, all of that stuff. So,
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perhaps, forward-thinking apps could use their own internal
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data and blend it with this information that these hosting
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companies are thinking of providing.
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But also, what about external factors for popularity of a
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podcast episode? Maybe, like quantity of shares across social
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media? That's doable, but it's rather processor intensive. So
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this might be a service that an existing social monitoring
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service could offer to podcasters. Though, it's going
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to be a challenge to associate the various links that get
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shared - the link to your page, the link to the media file for
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that episode. Is it a player created link? Is it a deep link
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to a directory that someone is actually sharing? Those would
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need to be normalized and rolled up together.
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I wonder what I missed? I know I missed a few ways we might
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figure out what is good and popular for a podcast. If you
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have ideas on that, please shoot me an email, I'm
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evo@simpler.media, and let me know. If you're a podcast
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service provider, I'd love to know what you would do with this
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data - how you could contribute to it or what you would do with
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it. If you knew what was most popular out of the podcast, what
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would you do with that information that would make your
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service better?
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No Boostagram Corner today, but you can change that for tomorrow
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and going forward by going to podcastpontifications.com/valueforvalue
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and choosing from any of the many options I have listed on
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that page. Probably too many options. Maybe there's a
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business opportunity there. Maybe someone could build a
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better Ways You Can Support the Podcaster plugin page, something
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along that line for podcasters to utilize.
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Anyhow, in the meantime, at that page I do have, which is way too
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busy - podcastpontifications.com/valueforvalue
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- you can use Venmo, BuyMeACoffee.com, and many other
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ways to provide some value back to me for the value of the
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content you receive from me.
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That's it. I shall be back tomorrow with yet another
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Podcast Pontifications.
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Cheers!
Sheila Unwin:
Podcast Pontifications is written and
Sheila Unwin:
narrated by Evo Terra. He's on a mission to make podcasting
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better. Links to everything mentioned in today's episode are
Sheila Unwin:
in the notes section of your podcast listening app. A
Sheila Unwin:
written-to-be-read article based on today's episode is available
Sheila Unwin:
at podcastpontifications.com where you'll also find a video
Sheila Unwin:
version and a corrected transcript, both created by
Sheila Unwin:
Allie Press. Podcast Pontifications is a production
Sheila Unwin:
of Simpler Media. Find out more at Simpler.Media.
