Shownotes
In this episode, we have some breaking news that is sure to shake up the podcasting world.
And it's all about what Apple Podcasts are secretly doing to help podcasters with their SEO.
But before we dive into that, let's talk about the key topics we'll be covering.
This episode, which was recorded during a guest appearance on a LinkedIn live hosted by sales expert Tracy Bedwell, covers off a mix of basic level stuff, and some next-level insight.
Although it was recorded on a mostly B2B platform, the advice is relevant for any kind of podcaster.
Topics include:
- The evolution of a podcast, including the fundamental elements of podcasting and how understanding your ideal listener is crucial for creating a successful show.
- The challenges of managing a podcast when your community has turned against you. How do you navigate such a situation?
- Should you ever start a new podcast or always continue with your existing one? We'll explore different strategies to help you make an informed decision.
- The importance of promotion and visibility for your podcast.
If you enjoy the episode, please do leave a review and rating in your favourite podcast app.
Mentioned in this episode:
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Transcripts
I think a lot of people that listen to this podcast, certainly from what I can gather, are people already podcasting that want to get to the next level with their own show. And they look up to me as some sort of subject matter expert in the field of podcasting and they glean some insights from my content. But that said, I also understand that there are probably some that are thinking about starting a podcast and don't have the first idea how to go about it. Well, if that's you, then know this, this episode is for you. I don't often talk about the very beginnings of starting a podcasting journey, certainly not on this show. I mean, it is called the Podmaster, after all. Therefore, there is a certain acceptance that this show is talking more about Pod mastery than Pod beginnings. That said, I think it's important to acknowledge that everybody is at a different stage of their journey and some people might be listening to this podcast out of pure curiosity, thinking, I quite fancy starting a podcast, but I have no idea where to begin.
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [:I spoke to a bunch of these people during a LinkedIn Live, which I recorded the other day, and I thought to myself, you know what? Some of this might be useful to some listeners, to the Podmaster. This could definitely prove to be a good, solid frame of reference for you if you need to sort of go back over some of the old basics. But there is also one golden Nugget that I share in this conversation, which I'm guessing 99% of people listening to this show will not be aware of, that could completely change their game when it comes to their podcast publication. It's Neal the End, and it's the very last thing that I share. So if you're not interested in hearing the other stuff, feel free to skip through the episode to the Golden Nugget, which is right at the end of the conversation. Massive thanks to Tracy Bedwell for initially inviting me onto this LinkedIn Live, which I massively enjoyed, and in fact, it has inspired me to start doing some LinkedIn Live audio training. So if you're not already, follow me on LinkedIn to get that.
Tracy Bedwell [:Hello, everybody, and welcome to our episode for October on LinkedIn Audio Rooms on how to build and grow a successful podcast. Thank you for joining us, where I am super excited to have the Podmaster himself, Neil, here with me today and he's going to tell us how to set up a podcast, how to grow a podcast, how to improve a podcast that you may already have. And this chat today is aimed at a whole variety of people. You could be a solo business owner. You could already have a podcast going but wondering what you're doing wrong or you're thinking about doing it, but you're not too sure. You might work for a larger organization. And your boss has said, we need a podcast. Go and check it out.
Tracy Bedwell [:This is aimed at everybody. So as usual, if you've got a question, you can put your hand up at any time and ask to come on stage and I will let you up. Neil is very kindly recording this for us, so I'll be able to share a recording of it at one point and also then I make some notes. But I'm going to, without further ado, say, hi Neil, over to you. And I'm going to ask you the first question, neil, why do we need a podcast?
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [:Oh, you've gone in with a heavy hit straight away. I'm dealing with piers Morgan here. My word. I mean, to be honest, the really short answer to this is it absolutely is vital that you spread your message in the way that your ideal customers or your ideal tribe are connecting with. You know, everyone goes on about YouTube, they go on about get yourself on LinkedIn, grow an audience of followers on LinkedIn. But what they're forgetting is that there are three different types of modality in the world. We've got people that love video, we got people that love audio, and we got people that love reading. So if you're only ever creating blog content, you're missing out on a third of your potential audience straight away.
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [: , the beauty of podcasting in: Tracy Bedwell [:Wow. Well, I don't have a podcast, so I'm going to be honest with you.
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [:Ridiculous, Tracy.
Tracy Bedwell [:I don't have a podcast. I have a YouTube channel. I make videos. I'm here on LinkedIn all the time. So this was a really good thing for me. And I think you've just hit a really good point there. Now, if you're podcasting, you're also getting a video from it and you're also getting copy from it that could go into a blog or LinkedIn posts or whatever. Okay? So that's why you should have a podcast, because a really good point, you're missing out on people who prefer the audio version of learning and listening.
Tracy Bedwell [:But how do we set one up easily. If I'm a sole trader. Like if I'm a small business person or whomever, if I'm working in a big organization and I'm tasked with setting up a podcast, how hard or easy is it?
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [: d foremost, you absolutely in: Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [:They are selling you to their advertising agencies that are using that platform to advertise their wares on. So you want to make sure that whoever you're hosting with has absolutely covered off the T's and C's that you own the content. You want that RSS feed to be in your name, under your email address and your ownership. Only once you've crossed that bridge, then it really is as simple as getting yourself an external USB microphone and plugging it in. Now, there are two ways to approach this question, Tracy, because of course you've asked me how easy is it? And it is really easy. However, there's a slight caveat to this. Those that go down the easy path are probably going to find straight away they're going to have a bigger challenge because just plugging in your microphone with no strategy, no sort of approach to this, essentially, you've got to approach your podcast almost like you'd approach a business plan for a brand new business. That is really what it comes down to.
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [:But anybody that hasn't done one yet, you can certainly start really small scale. Plug a microphone in, get a hosting account, and just start creating content.
Tracy Bedwell [:Okay, so I've got two questions, and I'm sure other people in the audience might have questions. If you do, you can ask to come on stage. You say, don't go to a free podcasting host company. If I'm not going to a free podcasting host company, what's the average price as a starter that I'm going to pay to go to a host company?
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [:Just roughly, it varies between around $15 per month, up to as high as $80 per month, depending on what you're doing. There are certain plug. Every podcast hosting platform pretty much does the same thing. That is, they put your content in an RSS feed that then gets delivered to all the podcast apps. That's Apple podcasts spotify. Soon to be YouTube podcasts only. But Google podcasts at the moment as well, until that gets sunset early next year in February. That is really what they're doing.
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [:Then it's about the features. So do you want to have memberships built into your podcast hosting, in which case you're going to be looking at Captivate because that's what they now do. That's their selling point, their USP. Do you want 100% reliability and uptime? Well, then you're going to be looking at Libsyn because they've got the best retention rates of downtime. They've only been down offline for about five minutes in the past ten years. So, you know, you've got reliability there. Do you want to be able to do the podcasting 2.0 stuff, which is the value for value kind of thing, where you're getting cryptocurrency involved and people getting paid for their podcasts and that sort of thing. So they all do largely the same thing.
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [:But then you're looking at how much these extra features are worth to you and whether or not you're willing to invest that extra little bit of cash per month for them.
Tracy Bedwell [:Actually, that's a lot cheaper than I thought when you said $15 to $80 a month, and I'm assuming $80 is the end where you've got all those extras in it. That is a lot cheaper than I thought it was going to be. And is that for as many podcasts as you want in the month?
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [:With Captivate? It is, yeah. So with Captivate in particular, I mean, you can have as this is the beauty of Captivate. I'm a big fan of Captivate, have been for the last couple of years with the way that they've been innovating, they now allow you. Previously, this was an enterprise level thing. So, for example, my business Podknows, is built on the Libsyn Enterprise Pro plans. In other words, I can run as many podcast feeds for clients as I want, and I pay a monthly fee that builds as I get more audiences and that sort of thing. Whereas with Captivate, you can go and you can say, right, we want one main podcast, but then we want maybe a private podcast. We also want a spin off podcast that's maybe the CEO's own podcast.
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [:So you can go as in depth with it as you like and you'll still only pay a certain amount per month. And yeah, it goes up to about 80 pounds for those enterprise level. But the beauty of these companies is, because obviously it's a bit of a wild west, you can have conversations with them and they'll say to you, well, okay, we don't offer what you're looking for, so let's look at doing that for you. And we'll quote you a custom price. So that's the beauty of podcasting is because it's such a wild west, you can pretty much get it's like going into a car showroom and just asking for some extras and doing a bit.
Tracy Bedwell [:Okay. Okay, perfect. Abdul, I know you want to ask a question. I'm going to come to you in a minute, but I just want to so you said go to a hosting company and not try and do it yourself. And we've got an idea. What does the hosting company actually do for you? Do I sort of record it on my own computer with that external microphone and send it to them? Do they make it look pretty or anything? Or do they just literally put it on there as it is for you?
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [:Depends on the hosting provider in terms of what extra bells and whistles you get, but essentially you're just getting an RSS feed. So once you have an agreement with a hosting company, yes, you send your MP3 s or your MP4 files to this podcasting platform. It's like when you're posting a new blog post on WordPress. It's the same idea now. They'll give you different types of players that you can then embed in your main website, but essentially what you're paying for is the fact that anybody around the world can click a button and they can hear your content at any point.
Tracy Bedwell [:Perfect. Abdul, do you have a question?
Caller [:Yeah. Greetings to each and every person on this forum and thank you, Tracy, for allowing me to speak. I have this question for Mr. Neal. How can we take the leverage of podcasting and learning and development within an organization? Can you please enlighten me about it?
Tracy Bedwell [:That's a really good question. How can we use podcasting within learning and development within a large organization? I like that question.
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [:So there you're looking at something like private podcasting, which is something which is becoming increasingly popular, certainly, as obviously podcasting is now in the zeitgeist. Everyone's talking about it. I mean, LinkedIn five years ago, nobody even knew what a podcast was. And now it seems that every single b to B company on the planet has a podcast, or they're planning a podcast, or they're doing what they think is a podcast. I e. They're posting video clips, but that's kind of like the public facing side of things. But there are a lot of companies I mean, one of my clients that I spoke to last year on a consultancy basis, at Hutachi, they were starting to sort out for their HR sort of point of view. They were having people sort of tuning in, listening to the podcast instead of having to send them emails or getting them on the intranet.
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [:So what Abdul's talking about there? Yeah, that would be perfect for some sort of private podcast, which could be either behind a membership wall on a website or it could be on a feed that people can access through their normal apps, but is only available for those people that have signed up for it and been granted access to it. But yeah, that would be a brilliant use case.
Caller [:Abdul, actually, thank you very much for your guidance. And again, in case of micro learning this podcast will be very helpful, I guess.
Tracy Bedwell [:I actually think it would be super helpful. Obviously I'm from an L D background. I've done myself because I run a training company and I used to be head of L D. And for me this is a great part of a blended learning option within an organization whereby you can record short podcast where people can just access them, as Neil has said, internally, maybe even on an app. And I wouldn't say they replace the normal learning, but they're certainly as a good addition in terms of micro learning for people to listen to on the go. And I would say that if I was in an organization right now as head of LND like I used to be, podcasting would be something that I would be looking at having within the intranet. 100% correct.
Caller [:Exactly. So is it going to be challenging for an LND specialist to involve more into podcasting since he just may not have the relevant expertise in this particular podcasting? So how can I be an LND specialist? I can enable myself, enhance myself?
Tracy Bedwell [:Well, I don't know Neil. I'll have to jump in on this. But I think Neil's probably already covered that. You obviously need two things. You need to record certain podcasts yourself and you'd have to get different guests on and talk about different subjects and then you need the ability to actually feed them out to the public to be able to listen to. And I think that is something internally. I don't know Neil. Is it easy for a large corporate organization to do?
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [:Really? The number one mistake that I see people making within any sort of organization is that they think that because they've got marketing people, therefore they're now covered when it comes to a podcast. But they are very I mean, I would say that that's the sales piece, isn't it? You need a professional podcast person to help you with your podcast. But it is true there is a massive difference between a marketing consultant and a podcasting consultant in terms of how the different cogs work together. What I would say to anybody like Abdul that's looking at sort of integrating podcasting into learning and development or any kind of educational piece, it's simply get somebody in to help you. You don't have to pay someone a retainer. Someone like me can come in and talk you through. We can literally sit with you as you set up all the platforms and get you sorted. You don't need us there handholding you.
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [:All you need to know is how do we get this stuff out there? How do we control it and manage it and make sure that the content is getting where it needs to be on a regular basis and what kind of content do we need to be putting out there? Everything else. I mean, once you've got that blueprint in place, then it's much like your other marketing channels. It's your style guide and it's all your sort of brand pillars that you would put in any other sort of marketing piece.
Tracy Bedwell [:Perfect. Thank you, Neil and Abdul, I hope that really helps you on that.
Caller [:Thank you very much, Tracy and Neela, for that wonderful answers and it helped me. Yes.
Tracy Bedwell [:Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Ben, I know you're there. I'm going to come to you in a minute. I want to ask Neil another question first. So we've looked at how podcasting works. Yes, you can get help to set up a podcasting within an organization, or you can go to an organization and have them help set it. Actually, and this is a question for me, really, how do you actually do the best podcast, Neal? So I know that I can get help to get it on a platform and get it out there so people can listen to it.
Tracy Bedwell [:But how do we actually deliver a good podcast for that platform?
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [:The million dollar question that so many people around the world, something like 3.9 million people whose podcast just sort of gather dust on the podcast index. We'd love the answer to that as well. It's really quite simple. You need to be creating content that your ideal listener wants to listen to. And I'm going to say that again because this bears repeating. It's so important because what do we do when we're thinking about starting a podcast? What's the first thing we do? Oh, what would I enjoy creating? Oh, I'd really love to do a podcast about this. And the problem is, it's like any sort of new product that you launch in business. If there's no customer for that product, your business is not going to succeed.
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [:It's exactly the same with a podcast. You need to absolutely fundamentally understand your ideal listener like the back of your hand. How you go about finding that out is entirely up to you. Whether you've got your typical listener, your customer avatar that you're then going to transpose to a listener and then have them as the top of the funnel approach, or whether you've done some specific market research, whatever that might be. It could be a Google survey that you just pop on your website. It doesn't matter how you do it, but you need to understand whether or not there is going to be an audience for that content you're putting out. Once you understand that there is that audience for it, then you have to approach it in the kind of ways that they would want to be engaging with it. So, for example, if it's a podcast that's going to be really popular with time poor CEOs, the last thing you want to do is have two people having banter for ten minutes at the beginning of the episodes talking about what they did at the weekend, which is what most of these podcast, sadly, are doing.
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [:You want to make sure that your podcast is first of all, and I talk my clients through this straight away. It's the first thing we talk about. Tell the listener what they're going to get. First off, 7 seconds. You got to do this because most listeners are going to make a decision within 7 seconds. Is this going to be for me or do I want to go to another podcast? That's really how quick it is. And depending on what data you go by, that's shrinking and shrinking and shrinking in the TikTok generation as well. The second thing you've got to do is put across as quickly as you possibly can the main story.
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [:What problem are you solving? What education are you bringing? What are you going to sell? If that's indeed what you're doing, what are you going to entertain with? Get to the point as quickly as possible. And then the third piece is you've got to reeducate. So what has the listener already listened to? And reframe it in as many ways as you can, as quickly as possible so they can take that understanding and learning and make next steps with it, whether that be working with you one to one, booking a call with you, or finding out more on your website, whatever that looks like. You need to be making sure that you're holding their hands all the way through your content so that they can start to trust that you know what you're talking about and that you're a genuine help for them. If you're not doing any of that, then your podcast is going to fail. It's as simple as that.
Tracy Bedwell [:They're brilliant tips. What about doing it on your own, just talking on your own as opposed to having a guest?
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [:In a lot of ways that's actually better. Here's why. So what happens, we all go, let's do a podcast, we get guests in and guest experts and that's all we want to do. I mean, we're doing this, right. You've obviously this isn't a podcast per se, although some people might say it is. But Tracy, you've said, okay, this guy knows about podcasting. I think John recommended John, aspirian recommended me to you because John's obviously known about me from LinkedIn content and from chatting. John.
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [:Hello, John. Nice to see you. So obviously that's exactly what you've done is you've brought in an expert that can offer your followers, your listeners, some insight that you're not necessarily particularly well versed in. Now, that will work to a certain extent on a podcast, but here's what a lot of people make the mistake with here is they'll get the guest on and then they make it all about the guest. It isn't about the guest. The guest is a partner. They're a collaborator in what they should be doing, which is serving the listener, as in your ideal listener. If the guest suddenly starts making it all about them and their journey and what's the first thing people say, tell us about yourself, tell us about your company.
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [:Nobody cares. We don't care at this point. We don't know you, we have no interest in what you do or who you are. What we want to know is, how can you help my life? Then? Once that piece has been presented and we've got the education at that point, then you can offer to your listeners, if you'd like, to take next steps with this person. Find out a bit more about know john aspirin Tell us where we can find you. Well, you know, I'm in the espresso community, as he would say, and that's exactly what this should be. It should be about you serving super, serving your listener to make sure that every piece of content you post is absolutely transformative.
Tracy Bedwell [:Perfect. OK, and Ben, I'm coming to you in 1 second. I've got one more very quick question which I think Neil can answer like that. How long should the ideal podcast be?
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [:No answer. And if anyone gives you an answer to that, walk away. They're clueless, they don't know what they're talking about. A podcast episode can be anything from five minutes if it's a daily bulletin, up to 2 hours if it's something that requires, like if you're talking about near death experiences, you ain't going to get that covered in ten minutes, are you? That's going to be a long, deep dive. And I've consulted with a podcast in the past that was talking about near death experiences. I think their shortest episode was 50 minutes and I was obviously very skeptical when I saw the duration time. I was like, wow, this is incredible, it's fascinating. I could listen to another hour of that.
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [:Whereas if you're talking about your company returns and doing that as a daily bulletin, well, I'm sorry, you can get that covered in 30 seconds. And I want to go and move on to another podcast. It just depends on the content you're putting out there.
Tracy Bedwell [:Absolutely perfect. Ben, thank you for being patient. What is your question?
Caller [:Yeah, sure. Thanks a lot. Firstly, thank you to Andy for pointing out that you were having this session, which is incredibly helpful. Just very briefly, Neil, because you're clearly very expert. I set up a podcast for a particular community and then unfortunately got cancel cultured by the community, which was very bizarre, but it did happen. And so, essentially, any podcasts or any media that we put out into that community is just simply being ignored, boycotted, put on the shelf, put on hold, put on standby, whatever you want to call it. We've still managed to pursue it further by having very prominent guests from amongst that community, which is a football club, and we've kept going with it and have done pretty well, and there's a good spread across platforms. But the question is basically how to manage, once you've been canceled within a community, to still continue creating content for that community or whether one should at all.
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [:Well, my first immediate response to that would be, what do you mean by you've been canceled? Because I don't know how that's possible in podcasting. It's an open medium. It's literally an RSS feed. So you have freedom to post unless you're talking about the platforms have canceled you. Is that what you mean?
Caller [:No. Basically, we set up a community for certain football clubs fans and all the social media pages for that. Football club's fans? Not all of them, but there was a very organized and concerted effort by certain individuals to boycott and remove not remove, but just boycott and generally damage, bully, whatever, push out our content. And so at one point, after a couple of years of this, we just got fed up with posting stuff in their communities and have continued doing it because we feel we want to continue talking about that football club. But we have just found that we don't want to post on their social media platforms anymore because you just get negative, aggressive comments. So, as I said, it's an organized cancel culture campaign within the fan community. Fan communities at worst can be thuggish and at best they can be joyous. But as you know, anyone who sports a football club, when you're in, you're in for life.
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [:Absolutely. I mean, that sounds ludicrous to me, but I'm not here to get into the politics of whether or not your content should be freely heard or canceled. All I would say is that if the platforms that you're sharing your content with aren't supporting your content, well, it's simple. You've got an RSS feed, you've got a podcast, take it where it's appreciated. And if that means you've got to build your own community and that's actually the beauty of a podcast, is that you can build your own community around it. You don't need to. I could count on one hand how many platforms I rely on for my podcast and my clients podcast to be discovered. You're not going to get discovered on social media.
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [:That's kind of the .1%, if not less, of your ideal audience is going to listen to you through social media. Total different modality. So my suggestion would be start building your community from scratch and own the platform. If that means you've got to go through your own website and start doing some marketing for that, or whether that means you've got to go and do something like a patron or go on Reddit, whatever it is, maybe reddit's one of those that's been canceling you, I'm not sure. But the point is, you don't have to beholden to platforms, social media platforms specifically. There are people around the world that don't ever post their content on Spotify because they don't believe in the politics of Spotify. Now, you've got that right. You absolutely have that right.
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [:The same with Apple podcast. If you don't believe in YouTube, you don't. Have to put your content on YouTube. So all I can say to you, Ben, is, yeah, build your own community, do what you believe in, and the right people will follow you. Simple as that.
Caller [:Okay, I'm just going to retool for 10 seconds if I'm allowed to. None of the platforms whatsoever at any point have boycotted. It was specifically targeting activists who've gone round posting negative comments in an organized way for more than a year in order to discourage us from participating in that.
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [:Ignore them, Ben. Ignore them. This kind of silliness, this is playground behavior. It's online bullying. All I can say to you. I know it's not easy to hear, but I would just say, no, just ignore it. Just move on. Take your community and build it somewhere else.
Caller [:Okay, thank you.
Tracy Bedwell [:And it is hard, isn't it? Thanks, Ben. By the way, it is hard when you're online and you're putting yourself out there, not just in podcasting, but anything. The more your followers, the more your community goes. You will get trolls, you will get nasty people.
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [:Well, I mean, look at Joe Rogan. I mean, Joe Rogan is a perfect example of this. You can cut it. You could slice it down with a knife. 50% of the world loves Joe Rogan. 50% of the world hates Joe Rogan. Now, the people that love Joe Rogan, they cannot say enough about him. He's brilliant, he's a genius.
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [:And then there's the other 50%. They go, Joe Rogan's an absolute lunatic. He's dangerous and he should be canceled. And it's exactly the same thing I would say to Ben, this is one really positive spin. This is the way I would frame it. If he was my client. I would say, look at what you're achieving. People care.
Tracy Bedwell [:I totally agree. Although I don't know who this Joe Rogan is. Believe it or not, I've never heard of them. I will look that up later, Neil.
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [:Don't waste too much time on it.
Tracy Bedwell [:Explain that. I will look it up. I know I've got two more people asking to speak, but I just want to ask you another question before I let them on. If we're thinking of starting up a podcast from scratch right now, we might be feeling bit late to the market. Is it possible a new podcast can be successful when there's already millions out there?
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [:I can answer that very quickly. Yes, it's possible. If you do it right. If you take the right approach. Okay, so again, this is another education piece here. People sort of see these headlines. The Verge are really keen to put out these clickbaity articles. Podcasting is dead, podcasting is over, it's finished.
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [:And they don't know what they're talking about. If they actually asked professional podcasters for their journalistic pieces they're doing, rather than the typical digital marketing gurus that flood Twitter and LinkedIn with their nonsense, they would get a very different answer. And that is yes, there are 4.5 million podcast in the podcast index. I'm not interested in listen notes. I'm not interested in any other of these third party platforms in the podcast index. That is the official index of all podcast ever published. There are 4.5 million shows in there. Do you want to know how many of those are actually active? Fewer than 300,000.
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [:Okay, so your competition is three. When I say active, I mean have published a fresh episode within the past 30 days. Okay? We don't care about a podcast. That was around three years ago when somebody just decided to stick their phone on anchor and record some stuff from their bedroom during lockdown. That's no longer relevant. And here's why. Those podcasts are no longer being served up and indexed by the platforms. And you want to be worrying about what Apple Podcast is doing.
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [:That is still 70% of all podcast listening. As long as Apple podcasts is indexing and serving your podcast for relevant searches and we can get into this in a minute, this is a bit of a deeper dive. As long as that's happening, then you don't need to care about the other three and a half million podcast. They're completely irrelevant to you how you need to do this. And it's like any other business, any other sort of like a shop or a restaurant or whatever else you want to promote, you have to promote it. You have to tell people about it. So if you're just going to sit and put out content through your lipsyn or your captivate platform and post it, spray and pray to the platforms, absolutely you're going to struggle because nobody knows about it and you're not doing enough to promote it. However, if you're smart about this and you approach it correctly, and you adopt the SEO and you adopt marketing and you do some paid traffic and you start buying in your new listeners because that's what you have to do here, you have to buy your new listeners like you have to buy your new customers.
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [:Whether that's a Facebook campaign or a LinkedIn campaign or an in app podcast app campaign, that's what you need to do. So I don't buy the Saturation thing. I also don't buy the there's a problem with Discovery, which a lot of the podcast gurus try and sell articles based on. It's all a fallacy. It doesn't exist. Podcasts are exactly the same as your blog posts and you have the same challenges of getting people to engage with them, basically.
Tracy Bedwell [:Okay, perfect. I know we've got a lot of people waiting to listen. I'm hoping I'm going to pronounce this right. Ozzyoma? Ozzyoma, would you like to ask the question?
Caller [:Yes, thank you so much. Am I audible enough? Hello? Can you hear me?
Tracy Bedwell [:Yes, we can hear you.
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [:Yes, we right.
Caller [:Thank you.
Tracy Bedwell [:Thank you.
Caller [:OK, so I have a question for Neil. I've been podcasting now for two years.
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [:Well done.
Caller [:But I've been podcasting for about two years now, so I have a couple of ideas that I wanted to put out that are not quite different from what I am currently podcasting on. So I wanted to ask you if it's wise to start off a new podcast or just continue with what I'm doing, if that is a wise decision. For instance, I started an edition where I was interviewing podcasters and kind of having them share their experience as podcasters and that is getting traction. So I wanted to convert that. I'm doing that on Twitter by the way, so I wanted to convert that into a podcast, but then that is quite different from what I am currently podcasting on. So I wanted your expert opinion on if I should just continue on Twitter or should I convert that into a podcast and just do both of them together.
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [:So the key point that you mentioned there, Ozzyoma, the key point is it's different and that's going to feed the answer that I give you. If your content that you were thinking about doing for your new podcast was very similar or exactly the same, I would say absolutely just continue with the feed because you've got the keywords now, you've got the density, you've got Apple podcasts and Spotify are starting to index you in search for those content pieces because it's different. I would say your best bet is to either think about growing a new podcast or maybe consider a different platform for the content depending know because a lot of people assume that it's going to be a podcast but it might be that your content you're thinking of doing might be more applicable to, I don't know, YouTube. Or it might be more applicable to a membership program. So that's something you'll have to figure out for yourself. But when you said different, absolutely it needs to be continue the one you've been doing for two years because that's brilliant and you are already in something like the top 10% of all podcasters straight off the bat because there aren't many people still going two years later. You can believe me on that. So well done, congratulations.
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [:Keep going, start a new one.
Tracy Bedwell [:Thank you Neal, thank you so much.
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [:Pleasure.
Tracy Bedwell [:I know I've got other people who are wanting to ask a question. I will come to sermon in a minute. But Neil, I've got another question for you because I want to get to all the questions people wanted to know. How do you make money from a podcast? Question somebody asked me to ask.
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [:There you go. Okay, so there are different podcast gurus that will tell you different things. Here's my take on it, okay. And it's only mine and it's the only one that I have seen in 20 something years of doing this that actually bears fruit financially, okay? Forget sponsorship, forget advertising, you ain't making any money doing that, my friend. I can tell you because the CPM rates are pathetic. $25 CPM. So you're going to need at least 10,000 listeners per episode per month to even start to see your hosting bills getting paid. What you need to do in order to make money from your podcast.
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [:It's really simple. Treat it as your own marketing platform, sell you, and think about ways that you can sell using the podcast as the platform. So it's like they say in sales and in marketing in general, isn't it? Once someone's bought from you once, then they're more likely to buy from you again. So it might be something as simple as a $99 PDF. That's really not the sort of stuff you see on Blooming Instagram. Oh, here's my hack of how you can use AI to create carousels on it. Nobody needs that. We've been past that now for a while.
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [:But if you've got something that can offer a genuine transformation, something that you can't necessarily get in a book, even something that can absolutely change lives, if you want to put that together as an offering, by all means stick that on and sell it. Otherwise, you're looking at high tickets. So, for example, Tracy, you're transforming your sales team and empowering your leaders brilliant. There's a course there or there's some consultancy, one to one stuff. In fact, Wendy, who's on stage, she's one of my clients. This is exactly what she's doing. She's going into teams and she's teaching them about how to improve their outbound sales course. And she's blooming brilliant at what she does.
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [:And she's been going for three years with a podcast, and she's obviously using it for that purpose as well. You want to be thinking about ways that you can offer that top of the funnel content that builds the relationship with your listener and turns them into a loyal customer. That is the best way. Yes, you can do a membership. You can charge people $9 a month for your content. Absolutely, you can do that. But you're going to struggle, believe me, to make any kind of meaningful amount of money where you can quit your job and do this as a job. If you're doing it that way, you want to be selling your services as an expert and offering real transformation to your ideal clients.
Tracy Bedwell [:It's just another lead magnet into your pipeline, basically. Yeah.
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [: omebody that's going to spend: Tracy Bedwell [:Years ago, because it shows that you're an expert. It gives you the platform, I guess, to show you're an expert in your field. And it gives people the confidence to maybe have that conversation with you about bringing you in and doing some work with them.
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [:It's bringing your charisma, it's bringing your personality. Look at LinkedIn. We're on LinkedIn right now doing this. Some of the biggest names on LinkedIn, they're basically selling based on their personalities. You got Dan Kelsel, who just makes everybody laugh once a month. He doesn't post apart from once a month, and when he does, it's blooming hilarious. And I can't imagine how many people have booked calls with him to talk about doing their marketing for them, because he's just a genius. And it's that sort of thing.
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [:If you're putting that podcast content out there and you're making your Neal listeners laugh or cry or whatever you're doing, whatever sort of your industry that you're in, making that human connection with your ideal listener is going to get you over the line and being front of their brain when they're looking for the thing that you offer. They're not going to go to the random on LinkedIn who just set up an account three weeks ago. They're going to go to you because you've built that relationship with them.
Tracy Bedwell [:Perfect. Fernand, what's your question?
Caller [:Oh, man. I just want to say well, first of all, Tracy, thanks for having me up here. And Neil, I want to slap this, like, button, like, a million times.
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [:You're biased. We've met.
Caller [:Also, Neil, I've never seen you in one of these. If you're not doing these regularly, I think you definitely should. You offer way too much to not be doing it in audio.
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [:Thank you.
Caller [:All right, so my question is changing audiences. So when I first started my podcast, I'm almost at 40 episodes. I started my podcast aiming for people who are looking for SharePoint, but it's not really to teach other SharePoint people how to be better at SharePoint. The only people that as of right now that can possibly find my podcast are people who know what SharePoint is, and they go searching because I do very little promotion about it outside of LinkedIn. Well, I don't do any promotion outside of LinkedIn. I barely talk about it on LinkedIn. So I was banking on whoever knew about SharePoint, they could come find me. But as I've been publishing content, I've come to realize and I've on purpose, intentionally changed my audience on LinkedIn because that's where I do all of my content.
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [:Good. Excellent.
Caller [:Yeah. I need to talk to project managers. If you follow me on LinkedIn, then you know I produce content specifically for project managers. But project managers don't know anything about SharePoint. There's a high chance the majority of project managers, they don't know about SharePoint. So my question is, do I need to do a rebrand here with my podcast to pull in the right audience, which is project managers, or do I need a different podcast? What do I do here? How do I pivot to make my.
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [:Podcast.
Caller [:Speak to project managers.
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [:Now, the difference between your question and I think her name was Azama earlier on, she was talking about doing something completely different. What you're talking about is you're doing the same sort of thing, but you're speaking to a slightly different audience within that content realm. So what you're doing, you got options. You can either do a new feed that sits alongside the one that you're doing, but it sounds to me like you're not getting the results you want from it. In fact, I know you're not, because you've spoken to me privately about this. But what I would say to you is you got a choice of either starting a new podcast or you could do that oh, God forsaken thing I hate people doing. But in your case, it might work. You could do a season.
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [:So you could break into your podcast main feed and do a season that's just for project managers on educating them about SharePoint, and then you still get to keep your main SharePoint podcast that's for the general public and just have one season that speaks directly to them. It's not my ideal way of doing it. It is the easiest way of doing it, I would say probably what you'd be looking at is doing another podcast feed.
Caller [:Okay. All right. Yeah. Because I don't think this is going to be a seasonal thing. This is going to be like a very long term thing. I will be speaking to project managers.
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [:Definitely. New podcast, then 100%. If it's long term. If it's not, say, 20 episodes, then it's going to be a new podcast feed, I would say, because that way then you can absolutely pat Flynn said it 15 years ago. I don't agree with everything Pat. In fact, I don't agree with much of what Pat Flynn says, but the thing I do agree with him on is the riches are in the niches. It's simple, and it absolutely does translate to podcasts as well.
Caller [:All right. Got you. Too easy. I appreciate that. Neil, thank you so much.
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [:Pleasure.
Tracy Bedwell [:Thanks for your question, Thurman. Wendy, I'm going to let you speak now before we wrap up with the final summary from Neil. Thank you, Tracy. Hello, Mr. Producer.
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [:Hello, Wendy. Wu.
Tracy Bedwell [:I just stumbled on this live and thought I'm going to have a little listen because Neil and I have been working together for three years now, and how to set up and grow podcast comes up in conversation quite often. And I always send people to Neil because he's got his bag of tricks. He knows exactly what to do.
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [:Oh, my God. It's a live testimonial. Brilliant. Don't think you're off the hook that easy, Rimmer.
Tracy Bedwell [:My question today would be, if we had just met and we hadn't got 160 episodes under our belt, what would we be doing differently today?
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [:Oh, I love that question that sets the wheat apart from the chaff kind of question right there. And I'll be completely honest because I always have been with Wendy Wu. She's known me from when I started out with this silly little business that I'm running now that's know, just over three and a half years old. You know, this is a beautiful moment actually, because I get to help you visualize this. In Neal terms, a podcast is something that evolves, okay? And I always say this to people. Now, a podcast is not a baked good, it's a recipe. And like any recipe, you can add things to it, you can take things away, you can do it slightly differently, it doesn't matter because at the end of the day, your podcast is nothing more than a series of ones and zeros that a podcast platform reads on an RSS feed. That's all it is.
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [: d here's how we get your next: Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [:That if you're only going to be using organic traffic to grow your podcast, you're going to reach a certain point where you've got to then think, right, how do I find my new listeners? And so thankfully, I've teamed up. We've got a partnership now with a third party company that allow us to embed our episodes for podcasts that clients have onto niche websites that help them grow with new audiences that didn't know about them before. That's what I'd probably suggest you do Wendy. In fact, let's have a chat about it later.
Tracy Bedwell [:Oh, I can't wait. Thank you Wendy for coming up and asking a question. Thanks Neil for that. I think what we've learned in this chat, before we get Neil to just give us any other tips he wants, is that what I've learned in this chat is anybody can set up a podcast. It doesn't matter whether you're running your own business. It doesn't matter whether you're a one man band or you've got your own small business or whether you're part of a larger corporate business. We had some of them in L D department before, thinking about how they could incorporate it in that. It doesn't matter.
Tracy Bedwell [:I think it's suitable for anybody. And for me, one of the biggest things know if you're already putting content out there, whether it's on LinkedIn, whether it's on your website, whether it's on YouTube, it's just a matter of repurposing that content onto another platform. And you'd be stupid, as Neil said, not to, really. For a very low monthly fee, by the sounds of it. So, Neil, is there anything that you feel that we haven't discussed or any questions we haven't asked that you think somebody should absolutely know if they're now considering starting up or wanting to improve their own existing podcast?
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [:I'm going to go one better than that. I'm going to tell everybody that's listening right now. Please just grab wherever you've got a pen or a piece of paper near you. I'm going to give you a couple of seconds to do that. I want you to write something down for me. So go grab a pen and paper. Hopefully you'll be able to do that in a couple of seconds if you're organized and you've got some writing tools and material on your desk where you're working.
Tracy Bedwell [:Mine at the ready.
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [:Brilliant.
Tracy Bedwell [:Have mine at the ready.
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [:Excellent. Right, here's what I want you to do. Whether you're already doing a podcast or you're thinking about doing a podcast, especially if you're thinking about doing a podcast and haven't started yet, here's what I want you to do. I want you to sit down and I want you to write out 15 words that are related to your business that describe what you do, describe who you are and describe who you help. 15 words. That's all we need to start with. We got a good grounding then. 15 words.
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [:What I want you to now do is keep those 15 words close to you because you're going to need them for your content. Okay? So those 15 words, put them in a Word document or an open office document, whatever it is, and save them because you're going to definitely need them when you set up your podcast. Here's why. What I want you to do with your podcast itself, with the show, the main show that you get your hosting feed for the title of your show, I want you to put your main word that describes your bit. So, for example, let's use Tracy the host as an example here. Transform your sales team and empower your leaders. I would like to see sales team or sales teams or leadership empowerment or something along those lines in the main title. Don't do that thing that they do in Hollywood where the Iheart media start up a new podcast and it's like French cheese, a comedy show.
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [:Nobody's going to find it. What they will be looking for in the search tools on the podcast apps is sales. Sales teams, empowerment, sales growth, those kinds of things, right? So that's what you want for your main show. You also want to think about how you describe yourself. So hopefully you've got in those 15 words how you would describe yourself. So, for example, with Tracy, it might be Tracy Bedwell, sales leader or sales coach or sales empowerment expert. Okay? And that would then go in your publisher feed so that's the show handled. Now, episodes, every single episode that you're putting out, whether it's week to week, fortnite to fortnite, month to month, whatever it's going to be, I want you to put one of those words in the title of your episodes without fail.
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [:I don't want to see your guest's name in there. Nobody cares. I don't want to see any cleverness that you've taken from a random piece, which a lot of people try and do. They try and be clever and they'll take a random piece from the transcript that makes them laugh and they'll put that as the title of their episode. No one cares. It's an in joke. What we want to see is Tracy tells us how to transform our sales team, episode four. Simple as that.
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [:That's what my listeners are going to be looking for and that's how I need to be titling my episodes. And again, the same with the author field of your episodes. Stick in there, Tracy Bedwell, sales expert. That's what I need you to do. But we don't stop there. Okay? This is the thing. No other podcast expert in the world, not just the UK in the world, is going to tell you. Nobody's going to tell you this.
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [:I'm going to tell you because we're all friends. Apple podcasts is now transcribing episodes behind the scenes. This means that you need to get in your keywords of what it is that you do, what you talk about within the first 20 seconds of your podcast episode so that that can then be transcribed very early on in the transcript. The keyword is there. It's high density and you're going to be indexed in search. So when people are searching for those search terms, you're going to rise above the heads of everybody else in the podcast platforms. You are welcome. Mic drop.
Tracy Bedwell [:That is gold, Neal. I've already written mine. I am Tracy Bedwell, sales training expert, and an example might be and then it's going to be how to improve your sales results.
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [:Love it, love it.
Tracy Bedwell [:I'm going to have various topics like how to make outbound calls, how to sell B to B on LinkedIn and so on.
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [:Love it. This is exactly what I'm talking about. Thank you, thank you, thank you as.
Tracy Bedwell [:You were talking, Neil, that is gold. I'm going to wrap up in a minute, but I just want you to first of all, thank you, Neal, for coming on.
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [:Pleasure.
Tracy Bedwell [:It's been wonderful.
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [:I live for this stuff.
Tracy Bedwell [:I honestly, it's been wonderful. I wanted to do it for a selfish reason. I wanted to know more about podcasts, but obviously, when we do our training, when we do our sales training, when we go into LMP departments and help them, I'm always looking for new ideas to sort of say to people, why aren't you doing this? Why haven't you tried this? And this is something I have not really pushed, because I haven't known enough about it. So this has been gold dust for me, Neal. Tell people how they can get hold of you and what you can do to help them.
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [:It's almost like I know what I'm doing here. Tracy and I've set up a specific landing page that people can quickly find out more about the relevant things they want to know. So that would be podknows podcasting dot co dot UK forward slash hello. Podnowspodcasting.co.uk/hello.
And you'll be able to find out everything you need to know from that.
Tracy Bedwell [:Perfect. And of course, if you want to follow myself or Neil here on LinkedIn, give us a follow, send us a connection request. We always like it when people have been on our audio rooms and they take the time to follow myself and follow the guests. That is much appreciated. If you've got any questions about podcasting, if you're thinking of setting one up, if you want to improve your existing one, please go and have a little chat with Neal. He's given an hour of his time for you right now. And thank you, John Esperian on here, for recommending Neal as a guest. It was fantastic.
Tracy Bedwell [:We have another one of these coming up in the middle of November. I think it's the 16 November.
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [:Where.
Tracy Bedwell [:We have a video expert on here helping us use video more effectively on LinkedIn. So, once again, Neal, thank you for your time. Thank you. Pleasure for listening, it's much appreciated. Follow us both, connect to us both, and I hope to see you on the next episode.
Neal Veglio (The Podmaster) [:Well, there you go. I hope you found a bit of inspiration from that recording of that LinkedIn audio live chat. And if you enjoyed this episode of the podcast, please make sure you're following it in your favourite podcast app of choice. You can find all the links at podmastery.co.
