Shownotes
Chapters
01:02 Obviously I checked the name 02:42 I was the villain in this story 03:36 Your brand has two names 04:31 How people actually hear about podcasts 05:23 The listener you'll never know you lost 07:26 What do you do about it? 08:17 Why a trademark won't save you from this 08:57 Podmastery Community Member trailerThe bloke I accused of nothing:
Podnose, an independent UK entertainment podcast network founded in 2013 by George Grimwood. A couple of the shows are genuinely good but the majority of them seem to no longer be publishing. podnose.comPodmastery goodies you can grab:
- Treat yourself to a PodmasteryPodcast Audit
- Founding member doors for thePodmasteryPodcast Communityopen soon
- Everything else:podmastery.co
Transcripts
I typed my own brand, Podknows Podcasting, into Google, spelled wrong completely on
Speaker:purpose because transcription services keep hearing Podknows and delivering
Speaker:Podnose, as in the thing on your face.
Speaker:So I thought, right, let's go and see what's living at that address.
Speaker:And yeah, sure enough, something is living at that address.
Speaker:A whole podcast network, 14 or so odd shows, says it's been
Speaker:going since 2013, and my first thought was, well, no you haven't.
Speaker:This is Podmastery: Podcasting Insights.
Speaker:I'm Neal Veglio, 25 years in radio and audio, and about a decade now
Speaker:helping independent podcasters like you to figure out why the thing
Speaker:that they're building may not be reaching the people it's building for.
Speaker:All right, so some more context here.
Speaker:When I started Podknows Podcasting, I came up with the idea by
Speaker:a swimming pool in Mexico.
Speaker:I checked the name was available.
Speaker:Obviously, I checked the name was available because you
Speaker:check a name's available.
Speaker:I searched it.
Speaker:I looked for anyone trading as anything close to it.
Speaker:I made sure I wasn't about to spend the next several years
Speaker:accidentally being someone else's tribute act, and there was nothing.
Speaker:It was completely clear.
Speaker:So off I went. When I'm now later sat there looking at a network claiming
Speaker:a 2013 heritage and I've never heard of them, and I definitely checked,
Speaker:you can see where my head went.
Speaker:Somebody's noticed the transcript error.
Speaker:Somebody's now parked on that transcript error.
Speaker:Somebody's backdating their own founding to look established thanks to finding an
Speaker:opportunity based on that transcript error.
Speaker:And believe me, I was already in the mood for writing the
Speaker:LinkedIn post ranting about this.
Speaker:I even had the first line written down, and then I did the thing I
Speaker:keep telling other people to do, which is check before you hit.
Speaker:They're real.
Speaker:They're properly real.
Speaker:There's a show on there that's been running since about 2015, hosted by a
Speaker:writer called Tim Worthington, where he gets guests on to talk about things they
Speaker:remember that nobody else remembers.
Speaker:There's a film show called Cinema Limbo that's been going for years as well,
Speaker:and there's one with 270-odd episodes.
Speaker:There's a network that runs on donations, an actual fundraiser
Speaker:to keep those shows free.
Speaker:That is not the behaviour of a man cashing in on my brand equity.
Speaker:That's a bloke who's liked podcasts and in 2013 called his thing Podnose because pod
Speaker:and nose is, I guess, quite funny, and he spent 12 years just getting on with it.
Speaker:He's probably never even heard of me.
Speaker:He probably has no idea that I exist.
Speaker:And for a good few minutes back there, I was the villain in this story.
Speaker:Yeah, I said it, and that's the really useful part in all of this.
Speaker:Here's what I got wrong, and it isn't the accusation.
Speaker:The accusation was just ego pain resulting from a search.
Speaker:What I got wrong was much earlier and frankly a bit more boring, and
Speaker:I suspect a lot of people within the sound of my voice have made exactly the
Speaker:same mistake without ever finding out.
Speaker:I checked my name.
Speaker:I did not check my sound. Because your brand actually has two names.
Speaker:There's the one you spell, the one that's on the artwork, on the website,
Speaker:on any correspondence you send, and then there's the one the machines hear.
Speaker:Descript hears it.
Speaker:Riverside hears it.
Speaker:Castmagic hears it.
Speaker:YouTube's auto captions hears it.
Speaker:Apple's built-in transcription hears it.
Speaker:Siri hears it.
Speaker:Your listener's Alexa when they shout your show's name at it
Speaker:from across the kitchen hears it,
Speaker:and that second name is a real address.
Speaker:Somebody may already be there.
Speaker:Now, if it's just a transcription wobble in your own show description, well, fine.
Speaker:Who cares?
Speaker:But follow it a bit further because this is where it stops being trivial.
Speaker:Think about how people actually get told about podcasts, not how we imagine
Speaker:that, not somebody carefully clicking a tracked link from a beautifully designed
Speaker:Instagram carousel or a LinkedIn post.
Speaker:Think about how it really happens.
Speaker:Somebody's in the car.
Speaker:Their mate says, "You'd like this show. It's called…"
Speaker:And then they say your name, your podcast's show title out loud once at
Speaker:sixty miles an hour with the fan on.
Speaker:Or they hear you get name-checked on somebody else's episode.
Speaker:Or maybe they catch it in a voice note or from a bloke at a barbecue in
Speaker:Fareham who's had two ciders and is very keen that you know about this podcast.
Speaker:They don't see your name.
Speaker:They hear it.
Speaker:And then at some point later that evening, they type in what they thought they heard.
Speaker:And if what they heard belongs to somebody else, well, that's it.
Speaker:That's the end of that road.
Speaker:They land somewhere quite plausible.
Speaker:It's got podcasts on it.
Speaker:It looks fine.
Speaker:And they think, "Oh, this must be Podknows."
Speaker:And then they just get on with their lives, all the while thinking that
Speaker:other potentially crap podcast is yours.
Speaker:And they're never gonna have the heart to tell you that they listened for three
Speaker:seconds, and they never listened again because they think it was your podcast,
Speaker:and they don't want to offend you.
Speaker:They don't want to upset you.
Speaker:Why would they?
Speaker:Nobody sits there thinking, "Hmm, I wonder if this is a homophone situation."
Speaker:They found a podcast.
Speaker:It looked exactly how they would imagine your podcast to look and sound.
Speaker:Job done.
Speaker:And you will never know that happened.
Speaker:There's no line on your dashboard for the person who tried to find
Speaker:you but ended up somewhere else.
Speaker:Captivate can't measure that.
Speaker:Spotify can't measure that.
Speaker:There's no graph anywhere in podcasting that shows your near misses, the people
Speaker:who heard about you, went looking for you, and arrived somewhere else.
Speaker:That number could be zero.
Speaker:It could be 400.
Speaker:You have precisely no way of finding out, and the only reason I found mine
Speaker:is that I happened to be annoyed about a spellcheck, which means for however
Speaker:long this has been the case, and it may well have been for years, I've been
Speaker:lovingly publishing what I'd like to think is quality content and doing all
Speaker:the sensible things, tightening up the audio, sharpening my titles, and all
Speaker:the while, there's been a perfectly nice comedy podcast network secretly absorbing
Speaker:anybody who, when they heard Podknows, heard Podnose instead of reading it. Not
Speaker:stealing, just being there, existing.
Speaker:Which, do you know what?
Speaker:Is somehow worse because there's nobody to be angry with.
Speaker:Right, so now that we've established that, what do you actually do about it?
Speaker:Well, the first thing, and it's completely free, find out what your sound is.
Speaker:I'll come back to that in a minute because it's the one thing I
Speaker:want you to actually go and do as soon as you finish this episode.
Speaker:Secondly, once you know, say the spelling out loud in your episodes.
Speaker:Not every 10 seconds like a personal branding expert with Tourette's.
Speaker:Once in the outro.
Speaker:So for example, I always say, "That's Podknows, P-O-D-K-N-O-W-S." It takes
Speaker:me two seconds, and it converts every single person who's only ever heard me.
Speaker:Thirdly, if the phonetic version is going spare, the domain, the
Speaker:handle, whatever it is, take it.
Speaker:It's usually about a tenner, and it's the cheapest insurance
Speaker:in this entire industry.
Speaker:And fourth, since it'd be dumb not to mention it, yes, you can trademark.
Speaker:And if your brand is carrying real money right now, maybe clients, a product, a
Speaker:business that would genuinely be hurt if someone parked next to it, then
Speaker:get proper advice and do it properly.
Speaker:But be clear-eyed about what it buys you.
Speaker:It is a few hundred quid.
Speaker:It takes months to come through.
Speaker:And in my case, it would have protected me from a crime that nobody committed.
Speaker:A trademark stops bad actors.
Speaker:It does absolutely nothing about the accidental ones.
Speaker:And the accidental ones are the ones probably costing most of you listeners.
Speaker:After this short break, I'd love to play you a podcast trailer from one
Speaker:of our Podmastery Community Members.
Speaker:We're gonna be opening the doors to the public soon.
Speaker:If you'd like to join the founding members list, go to podmastery.co/waitlist.
Speaker:Well, there you go.
Speaker:That's the sort of show that deserves to be found by the
Speaker:people looking for it, doesn't it?
Speaker:Which brings me neatly to the one thing I want you to go and do right now.
Speaker:Open the voice recorder on your phone or in your notes
Speaker:app with a little microphone, whatever dictates on your phone.
Speaker:Say the name of your show out loud in a normal voice the way you'd
Speaker:say it to a mate, and then look up what it typed and Google that.
Speaker:It'll take you about 90 seconds, and at the end of it, you either find nothing
Speaker:and get on with your day, or you find out you've got a phonetic twin and you've just
Speaker:discovered something about your own show's discoverability that no analytics data
Speaker:on Earth would ever be able to tell you.
Speaker:I'd never have known any of this if I hadn't typed my brand's name
Speaker:in wrong on a Thursday evening.
Speaker:Go and type yours in wrong.
Speaker:See who's there.
Speaker:I'm Neal Veglio.
Speaker:That's Podmastery: Podcasting Insights.
Speaker:Everything's at podmastery.co, and good luck with your continuing
Speaker:journey towards podmastery.
