How much bad advice is out there?

How many people are creating valuable content in podcasts?

We tend to think there is huge competition in the podcast space but the reality seems to be that there is very little valuable and quality content out there. Here is the opportunity.

Neal Veglio is a podcast coach, editor and educator with a long history in podcasting and also in the broadcasting world. He’s known for speaking his mind and being unafraid to speak out on the more negative aspects of the podcasting world.

If you’ve ever wondered who to trust for podcast and promotion advice or you are trying to spray content all over the internet and wondering why it doesn’t work, this is your episode.

Should you listen to Gary Vaynerchuck’s advice? 

How you can easily game the Apple Podcasts charts (if you want to)? 

Why a top UK podcast isn’t really a top UK podcast.

Find Neal on LinkedIn and at Podknows Podcasting

Enjoying the content? Join me for the Podfluence Weekly newsletter. CLICK HERE to get articles and show updates every week(ish).

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If you've ever wondered who to trust for podcast and promotion advice,

or you would try to spray content all over the internet and wondering why it

doesn't work, this episode is for you.

This is Podfluence, the show that helps you to grow your

influence and income with podcasts.

My name is John Ball and my mission is to help you, the self-employed

business coach, to grow your influence and income so that you can have a

continuously thriving coaching business.

That said, if you are a service-based solopreneur, this

content can certainly help you too.

We tend to think that there is huge competition in the podcasting space,

but the reality seems to be that there is far less valuable and quality

content out there than we might think.

Whilst this episode pulls back the curtain on some of the not so good

aspects of the podcast world, It also highlights opportunities in

podcasting, especially for business.

In this episode, I'm joined by Neil Valio, who is a podcasting coach,

an editor and educator who has a long history in the podcasting world

and also in the broadcasting world.

I'm Neal Veglio, the founder of Podknows Podcasting.

we do full service podcast marketing.

if a brand or an individual wants to surface their brand in the podcast

apps Then I can help them do that.

He's known for speaking his mind and being unafraid to speak out

on the more negative aspects of the podcasting world, and he's one of my

favorite people to follow on LinkedIn and Twitter for exactly those reasons.

We discussed things like, should you even be listening to and taking advice

from people like Gary Vaynerchuk, how you can easily game the Apple

Podcast charts if you wanted to and why one of the top UK podcasts

isn't really a top UK podcast.

We cover that and so much more stuff.

I had to split this episode into two parts because we don't wanna blow your brains.

So do stay tuned for part two, which will be out very soon.

If you do have your device in your hand right now, do me a solid and click the

plus button on Apple Podcast or Spotify

or whatever you have to press to subscribe on your preferred listing

platform so that you can get weekly updates from Pod fluence as they drop.

For now, plug in your EarPods and let's get started with part one of

my conversation with Neil Valio.

Neil, thank you so much for coming and joining me on Podfluence.

I've really been looking forward to speaking to you, and I think people

are gonna understand why when we get into the conversation here.

And so we'll just preface by saying, you are one of my favorite

people to follow on online.

Oh.

And I just love the stuff that you post because you just don't care about

that you might piss some people off.

It's just like, I'm just gonna say things exactly as they are.

And I always appreciate that kind of radical honesty is like not horrible about

people just telling it like it really is.

And so I see that's part of your brand, part of your style online.

Has that been very intentional or is that kind of like who

you are generally in life.

You know I'd love to give you the marketing answer,

which is yes, I've sat and I've established my customer avatar.

My customer avatar, love someone who's brash and just gives their opinions.

I, I'll be completely honest with you, it's just what I've always done.

I, I a background in the radio broadcasting industry, and to say that I

had a bit of a reputation for being a bit of a maverick is a massive understatement.

I used to have there was a running joke with my radio.

Where they would say they were having their weekly meeting with the broadcasting

regulator to try and smooth over things after they'd heard my show.

So, you know, I've always been, I mean, I, I got in trouble in 1998 because

I called the local BBC radio station, and I was making jokes about the

fact that half of their audience were probably on the deathbed and could we

borrow some sugar, which didn't go down well with the local managing editor.

And my boss, my managing director, bless him, Jerry, at the time I

was off to Ibiza for two weeks.

I didn't care.

I was on.

But my , my managing direct had to have a meeting with the local BBC

managing editor to get them not to go to what was then the radio

authority and make a formal complaint.

And, you know, thank God for him.

He was a great negotiator, a real diplomat, and he smoothed all that over.

But yeah, I was a naughty boy and I think what I realized very early on

in my career and have continued to realize is, Indifference doesn't win.

Okay.

You know, you can be really, really nice and really safe and that might work.

Or you can be really in your face honest and tell people what they

don't necessarily want to hear.

But is the truth, and you can win in that regard as well.

But what you won't win is by doing something in the middle

where you're trying to be nice, but also get the point across.

And what I've always thought and understood rightly or wrongly, is

that I would rather die on my sword for something I believe in that might

resonate with 10% of my potential audience than just be bland cake, you know,

like a vanilla sponge with no icing.

For 99% of my potential audience, and I think it obviously works because I do

get a lot of feedback from people saying, in this world of the podcast influencer,

ugh, where you've got thousands of people essentially saying exactly the same

thing, day in, day out on social media.

It's the same old tricks.

Consistency is key.

Release three episodes on launch day.

Release your episodes on a Thursday.

Make sure that you do feed drops.

Just all this middle of the road advice that is one size fits all,

and we all know, you'll know John.

One size does not fit all in podcasting.

It's a very specific niche, medium, and you need to be really hot on the

kind of individuals that you are.

You are approaching with your content and so, I've found the feedback has

been that it's been well received and people like the honesty.

It's not intentional anymore than I'm just being me, but I realize that,

when I go online and I try and be, middle of the road and safe and try

and be professional and treat LinkedIn like this is a professional network.

It doesn't resonate as well anyway, so I'm quite happy with the way

that things are, the things are going intentional or otherwise.

I think we, we always need people to stir the pot.

And I think I first became aware of you through, I'm gonna forget the guy's

last name, but a guy called Tanner.

Who was on Twitter, Tanner

Campbell Campbell, the American Me

Big word.

Yeah.

Who he sadly has left Twitter, and and I feel like Twitter

is the worst for it, but but yeah, I, you and he did some conversations

together and even, I think even a little project together at one point.

Yeah.

It's that,

He stole it from me.

But, you know, we, we won't go into detail on that.

It's fine.

A Whole drama.

But one of the things I would like is like, because you do know, as we

were saying, the uk you know your onions, you know what you're talking about.

And and so we need people who do, because I think.

I've worked in the personal development for industry for a long time and you

know, I see a lot of parallels between what's going on in podcast coaching and

what's been going on in coaching and personal development forever of like,

there's loads of people who are just talking tons and tons of bs but are

doing, doing some good marketing and getting business and money through it.

And yet there's probably a much narrower band of people who are teaching quality

content and information who really know what they're talking about.

But people at large generally aren't able to distinguish between those two things.

And so it, it is one of those things always have an issue with, they're

like, how do we help people who are telling good stuff, showing good stuff,

good content, good information, get their stuff out there more become,

I guess, louder voices or more

noticed voices in the world than the people who are just talking

BS all the time, or sharing knowledge that isn't even theirs.

I think it's a really, a really good point, and I think it's really

important that people understand this.

And I think the, the quickest, I mean, I obviously, I overcome this with my own

objections that I get in my own marketing.

It's one of those things that I address and it's taken me

a long time to work this out.

You can build a business around BS quite easily because we have something called

the internet now, which makes things a lot easier to do that, you can, especially

with the rise of the chat G PT that everyone's going on about now, you can

essentially find out whatever you want.

It's gonna be within maybe a 90 percentile kind of difference between

truth and what's, what it's telling you, but you can use common sense

and figure out what it's telling you.

That's true and accurate.

And I think that's what a lot of people are doing now, is they're actually

they're, they're getting that next bridge.

It used to be you'd go to YouTube and watch YouTube videos.

You'd read a blog post, oh, suddenly I'm a podcast expert because I've

read some wisdom for an hour of a week, and you know that now is

in my head and I can relay this, regurgitate this garbage, which cuz it.

Pre predominantly it's garbage.

It's one person's opinion on YouTube of how they think you do things.

It's like these podcast gurus that have one show and then they start doing a

blueprint and they sell that for $3,000, and you know that's quite a common thing.

I mean, it's certainly during lockdown.

That's how people were pivoting towards doing that.

I think the trick here is you have to understand that a lot of

people can find out what sounds.

Quite easily and monetize that.

What you need to look out for in terms of whether or not you put your

trust in these people and you invest your, you know, your actual brand

into following these guidelines is.

Can they give you actual case studies?

Can they show you what they've done, how they've helped other people?

Do they have proof of their concepts?

Because really big giveaway is if you've got an online course and there's

no support email, no way of following up with the person that's doing the

course, you can bet your bottom dollars

it's cuz they don't have a clue what they're talking

about and they've regurgitate.

They're just good at marketing.

They've regurgitated content.

Put videos up behind a Kajabi.

How about it?

There you go.

Pay me $99 and never need to speak to you ever again, and they don't care about you.

That's the whole point.

That is the transaction.

You've paid them a little bit of money, not enough as far as

they're concerned to treat you with respect of having the follow up.

If you are working with someone that's decent and knows what they're talking

about, they will be able to provide you at least one case study where they can show

you how they've helped a client or a, an organization that they've worked with.

And I would say it's probably 1% of all podcasts, marketing gurus out

there that can actually do that.

So that would be the first place that I would advise anybody watching

or listening to this to, to go and, investigate, do your due diligence.

Because it's more important now in the age of the internet

than it ever has been before.

Yeah.

And.

I think this is a particularly important part and I certainly want

to get into some of the, like where podcasting is at right now and sort

of state of podcasting with you.

before we do that, think really to carry on with where, where we're at.

I know that one of the things you talk about a lot is the fake gurus.

The phony people out there.

And don't, I'm not gonna ask you to name them, I think.

No, we probably know a few of the same people.

Oh, go on.

Ask me.

Go on . I could do with a court case.

. John Ball: It would maybe be it.

Maybe be, un.

This is one of the things I was like maybe a little bit unfair to, to do that.

And certainly I don't

create material that I can't actually publish . But but in terms of doing that

you speak very strongly about it and you just said there exact Exactly why,

what do you feel are the worst bits of advice that are going around that people

are just blindly following and are being regurgitated again and again and again?

I know you've already alluded to a few things, but what do you

think are the sort of the most.

Bad . The worst bad advice out there.

I'll give you the current number one.

It's been at the top of the charts for last three weeks, and I think it's gonna

stay there for quite a while this year.

Get your podcast on YouTube.

Oh my.

God.

I mean, it's almost like podcast gurus.

Certainly the new ones have only just discovered that video

is an element of podcasting.

It's let's just, let's just put this right to bed right now.

Video podcasting is nothing new.

Okay?

It's being marketed as something new because

youTube have suddenly shown up on the scene and they've been bubbling

away in the background and doing all the video stuff for a long time.

And Apple Podcasts have been allowing people to put video podcasts

up on their platform for, well, since the early two thousands.

Let's face it.

Since the beginning of podcasting, you've always been able to put your video up

there and a lot of ki, a lot of shows.

Did ¡ Leo LaPorte?

One of them had a video podcast.

You know, it used to be the case that you'd have to download the

thing overnight because back then the broadband speed just weren't there.

And videos obviously a lot more bandwidth than audio.

You know, nowadays you put your, your Apple podcasts on, oh, the podcast

is there, bang play straight away.

Almost, you know, the, the recent Spotify show on Netflix, the

playlist, it shows you in a dramatic way how Daniel Eck sat down his,

sat his team down and went, right.

I want this to.

Instantaneous when you hit the play button.

I don't want this like the Pirate Bay where you gotta download the Torrent

for two hours, be, to be able to hear the latest Depeche Mode album.

I want this instantaneous.

And they got the technology there to within a fraction of a second.

Now, it was the opposite of that with the early advent of video podcasting.

You'd had to download it overnight, and then in the morning you had to

hope it had downloaded and then you could watch it, but it would take

another 10 seconds for it to start playing because of the buffering.

We're not there now because we got.

A YouTube offers this instantaneous streaming that doesn't require

any initial downloading.

It might do if you're in a, you know, in a dodgy area with no signal point

is, podcast gurus seem to have it in their head now that that's going to be

the be all and end all of of podcasting.

It's not.

We've already had video podcasting.

I'll tell you who will do.

With a video podcast will be a YouTuber.

They're already doing it.

To think that you and your, whether it's a B2B podcast or a

hobby podcast, it doesn't matter.

To think that you suddenly recording your content to camera is going to

massively grow your potential audience

just because these people that, hello, they're audio in modality and they like

listening to podcasts because they're audio and their suit, their modality

to think they're suddenly gonna want your content in video format because

it's a video, is ludicrous to me.

Number one, they're two very different mediums.

We've already established that you've got auditory people

and you've got visual people.

The visual people are never gonna listen to an audio podcast.

The audio people are never gonna watch a video podcast or a YouTube video.

As you know, we more commonly call them.

So to me, the idea that people are encouraging brands and individuals

to spend even more of their precious time when it's already a tough

commodity to get hold of as it it is,

to spend even more of their time sitting there editing it to a point that someone's

gonna want to watch it and engage with it.

On top of that, it costs twice as much in not only your time, but your

resources, because video editing tools tend to be quite expensive if you're

gonna get the good ones as well.

And if you outsource it, oh wow.

Again, three times more than it would cost you to hire an audio editor.

And the audiences are gonna be about a.

I dunno about you, John, whether or not you've seen many of these video

podcasts, but you look at the numbers, the views, and they're not the same as

the view, as the listens that you get in your podcast, even in your podcast

app stats, which are not as accurate as

the dashboards in Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

So I would say to you that this is one that I think is very agenda driven.

I think this is, YouTube has done a really great PR machine exercise here of we

need to get everyone talking about how YouTube is the place to have your podcast.

We're gonna ignore the fact that we don't have podcasts.

Anyway, there's all this talk about RSS feeds eventually

becoming native in YouTube.

Again, another really interesting point here.

It's not YouTube, it's YouTube music.

It's a complete, I noticed that different.

Absolutely.

So not only are they encouraging you, these podcast gurus get your, your

podcast on YouTube, you're not actually getting your podcast on YouTube, you're

getting your podcast on a sister app.

It's like saying, it's like saying that Google buys out TikTok

and you can get your podcast on the number one page of Google.

No, it's actually on TikTok, which is a very different algorithm.

So I think you've gotta be very careful about following this stock

advice that I, you know, I used to be a journalist as well, so I know

the press releases that go out.

And the kind of messaging that YouTube will have been using to these influencers

that they will have targeted, that have got lots of followers, probably a blue

verified tick on their Twitter account.

Talk a lot about podcasting.

Know they've got a lot of sway, and said to them, If you look

after us, we'll look after you

You know what I mean?

We might make your podcast outta this eye in YouTube because you are

advocating for YouTube, and this is quite common in the space, unfortunately.

Do, do you think that YouTube then particularly have muddied the

waters about what is or isn't a podcast?

Oh, 100%.

I mean, that's obvious.

You know, YouTube.

So I come from the old school of podcasting where if it doesn't have an

r s s feed, then it's not a podcast.

I'm relaxing on that because at the end of the day, content is content anyway,

and whether you want to listen to a podcast or watch a YouTube video or

read a blog post, it doesn't matter.

If you're after the content, then it's content.

It's valid, but it's not a podcast if it doesn't have an RSS feed.

And so, yeah, it, it's, it's really interesting.

Obviously.

What's the biggest demographic on YouTube?

It's the millennials, gen Z.

They're the ones that are watching this stuff, and they're the ones that

are easy to convince with these new narratives that, oh, you know, a podcast

doesn't have to have an RSS feed.

It could be anything.

And you mentioned them yourself tanner.

Tanner Campbell is one of these people who is advocating for us old farts, dropping

that whole r s s feed or not, or die you know, Argument, but the point remains.

This is the, this is exactly the kind of people that they're really trying to

brainwash into assuming and accepting that it doesn't have to be a podcast

in order for it to be a podcast.

It can be a LinkedIn Live, it could be a YouTube video, it could be a YouTube live.

It could be a webinar for Cry.

I've seen webinars being presented as podcast episodes.

Are you joking?

They're webinars.

They're not meant to be there for you to, download in your

car and listen on Apple podcast.

These are things that you invite people to because you're trying to upsell them.

That's the whole point of a webinar.

And anybody who says they're an educational tool,

they're joke, they're lying.

So, you know, for me it, it's about understanding the, just because you

call a fork, a spade it doesn't make.

I, I think one of the problems that people who are especially looking to

do podcasting to grow their business end up being challenged with is this ideal.

I think it's out there really, that you're supposed to be doing all of that, all of

that, and then some cause all of that, and then all your social media promotions

and everything else on top of that.

And then like, you're a media machine now.

And and I certainly felt that in my podcasting journey I can

remember doing videos, spending hours, editing YouTube videos.

I honestly hate editing videos.

And and it was such a relief to me when someone says, you don't actually

need to put this stuff out on video.

No, you're right.

I don't, why am I doing this for?

I'm just doing it because I thought you were supposed to do it.

And so I just switched around.

I'm just gonna focus on audio and and it's life has been a lot easier,

a lot gentler since I did that.

But also, somebody told me, oh, you need to be doing LinkedIn lives

every day or live video every day.

The shoulds, the you shoulds the you should I,

I did it for, I can't even think, I think it was up to maybe

six months are you're gonna have such a big audience to like barely

move the needle . I was like, okay.

That was a heck of a lot of work for very little results.

And I think that's, Always the danger with this, like podcasting in general

is a slow burn anyway for most people.

It's not a overnight success kind of thing for anybody really.

So, I mean, there may be exceptions to that, but that, that said,

there are things that are gonna slow that journey down even more.

I, if you're trying to do too much and too much of the wrong things.

So for those who are really looking to have some success who want to

do the audience growth bit and they recognize that it's not gonna happen

in a week, what are the things that you would say, you should definitely

be focusing on this rather than that.

It's interesting that you sort of touched on the whole Jack

of all trades, master of none thing with the, you know, being everywhere.

You know, being everywhere is, is a Gary Vaynerchuck thing and he's not

wrong, but he is wrong at the same time.

And what, what?

I'm gonna, I'm not here to say that I know more than Gary Vaynerchuck

about marketing and business.

I absolutely don't, you know, I know what my space is.

My space is podcasting.

That's it.

I've done this for 20 odd years now.

I kind of think I know a thing or two about how it works.

Gary Vaynerchuck's been in podcasting seven minutes.

You know, comparatively, so he knows what works for him.

He knows about, you know, these small, digestible chunks going on

every single social media platform.

The problem is, he is a jack of all trades and a master of none,

because all he's doing is selling the brand of Gary Vaynerchuck.

Now, if you asked me what does Gary Vaynerchuck do, I might be

able to say, oh, he does wine.

I think he does, like a business guru advice.

Other than that, I don't know specifically how does Gary

Vaynerchuck make most of his money?

I couldn't tell you.

As far as I'm concerned, he's this bloke that turns up on YouTube now and

again, someone will share his LinkedIn post and he's talking absolute garbage.

He's just being angry and aggressive and getting your attention.

That's literally what Gary Vaynerchuck does.

But in terms of business, which is what I imagine a chunk of people

watching, listening, engaging with this content in some way will be trying

to do, is to get something back from their time invested in creating this.

Right.

Well, you're not gonna do that by having an Instagram account posting

20 videos a day, a LinkedIn account posting content you, because people

are just gonna get sick of you.

Yeah, that's the truth.

They are going, Gary Vaynerchuck is famous.

He doesn't care.

He's got a team of staff that are literally paid to put the button, push

the button every half an hour so something goes out because he's team Vaynerchuck.

So the people.

He's done the work, he's built the relationship with them.

They will accept him being in their timeline because they've subscribed

to it, they've asked for it.

You, they haven't.

You're still building that relationship, which is why I said earlier, you

know, one size does not fit all.

You are building a relationship with these people, these relative strangers

who know nothing about you yet, you want them to buy something from you

or invest in your community or do something that fills your cup and

makes you feel like it's worthwhile sitting down in one, in front of one

of these things or one of these things, and communicating with your audience,

you're only gonna do that by reaching them on their level in their terms.

And that doesn't mean being on every single channel posting,

just spraying content at them.

You need to be much more deliberate.

Now, to answer your question directly, it's really simple.

I'll give you in very, very simple terms, you need to treat this like a business.

If you want to grow your podcast, whether it be a hobby podcast, a

business podcast, it doesn't matter.

And I don't wanna hear the argument of, well, I'm not making any money

from it, so I don't wanna invest in it.

Then don't do it because this is a thankless business.

It really is.

It takes everything from you and gives you nothing back in the short term.

But if you are willing to do the reps, the podcasting six

pack doesn't come overnight.

It comes after three years of doing this, probably longer.

Okay.

There is a way of fast tracking and it's very simple.

Like any business, what does a business do when it wants customers, it buys them.

Okay.

It buys its customers to start with until the reputation's there, until

the growth is naturally occurring, until the trajectory starts doing that.

When a business is starting out, it has to buy its customers, whether it's through

marketing, through ads, through freebie content, through platforms, through

doing talking events, whatever it is.

All those things that we do in podcasting are part of that, but if you're only

doing the freebie, But you want an overnight audience, it's not gonna happen.

You know, like a business will do, it will spend 5,000 pounds

on Facebook ads for a month.

It will go and do the Google Ads campaign, and it invests its time and

its knowledge into making sure that content that it's using on Google Ads

resonates with this ideal customer.

And that's what you have to do.

It's no good just churning out content, hoping for the best, and going, oh

my God, I've only got 30 downloads.

Again, this.

It doesn't work like that.

If you want the 3000 downloads a week, you best be investing the

3000 downloads a week of time, money and driven content that targets

specifically to your ideal audience.

Yeah.

So if you want a business from this treat it like a business.

Yeah.

And, and if Gary Vaynerchuck does want to come on the show

and explain what he does, To us.

He's very welcome.

Reach out Gary.

We'd love to know what it is you actually do.

I quite like Gary, myself.

I like his I enjoy some of his appearances on other podcasts and

stuff, but but yeah, when you were saying like, oh, what's he do?

Oh yeah.

I was like, yeah, something to do with wine.

And that's about all

I have.

. I know it more.

Can I have a freebie bottle if you're coming on Gary?

I'm sure, I'm sure he's dying to come on Podfluence and have

a chat with me, but but there we go.

In, interesting I think one of the things I, I want to get to you.

Like you, you had the, you have a favorite podcast at the moment, or at least a

favorite podcast to to gripe about, I should say, , which is one that has been

very much pushed by Apple Podcasts but isn't maybe as, as you said in some of

your articles that I've been noticing online recently, a and on your show as

well, that isn't maybe doing as well as it looks like it's doing in terms

of the downloads and audience followed.

You wanna tell us a little bit about that?

I, I thought you were being genuine there, and I

thought you were gonna talk about one of my client's podcasts.

But you're, I think I know what you're talking about.

You're talking about that, that very, very famous business guru,

that nine year old fetus that has been on our TV now and rammed down

our throats, Steven Bartlett Mr.

Sycophantic.

Yeah, he.

I, I'm gonna be honest.

I'm gonna, I'm always transparent.

Okay.

So there might be certain biases here.

I don't like him.

I'm being completely transparent as a, as a person, I don't like him.

He rubs me up the wrong way.

But it doesn't change in any way, shape, or form the v validity of the fact that,

yeah, his podcast is a perfect example of one where, you, you don't need to

necessarily be successful for some of the platforms to join in with spreading

a perception that you are more successful than you, than you actually are.

I don't know why fully apple I genuinely don't fully understand why Apple Podcasts.

Pushes some of the podcasts that it does so much.

I could only imagine that certain relationships have been built.

They would never, ever admit to this publicly, I'm sure, but I, as someone

that's done a little bit myself in the past, I do know that you can have

certain conversations with certain people at some of these platforms and apps.

And you.

A little bit of insight that maybe you shouldn't be privy to.

The algorithm of Apple podcasts is shrouded in secrecy to the point that

they put it on their homepage now, so you can actually see it for yourself,

but it's still shrouded in secrecy.

They can never explain how it works.

, it's simple.

Here is the a by the way, if you're interested in the algorithm of Apple

podcast, how you can get your podcast surfaced into the chart, the fake charts

as I call them, it's really simple.

It's literally how many new followers you've had in 24 hours.

And that's based on as well a compound effect.

So for example, if your podcast already.

Say a hundred followers, then you need three times the the percentile of that.

So it's normally, it's about 10% of your current following.

Right?

And that gets compounded.

So if you've got five followers on your podcast, it's much easier to

grow and be, getting the charts.

Hence why pretty much every new podcast.

Does that excited braggy social media post about, oh, I'm delighted

to have, we got, my podcast into the top 30 for cake decorating.

Obviously it's not category that really exists, but I'm trying to be kind

here and not shame anybody personally.

And and the podcast gurus will do the same.

They'll see, oh, delighted we got our client into the charts.

Yeah.

The reason you got your client into the charts was because a

week ago they had no followers.

Now they've got 3, 4, 7, 10, 20 followers and however many followers they.

On launch day will have impact on the level of, the height that they go

into the charts on the week of launch.

But when you've got followers, that becomes harder.

So that's where they use something that I call scam marketing techniques.

I'm not gonna sugarcoat it here.

And Steven Bartlett is known for this, even at used to admit it publicly before

he became famous, that he was going on Fiverr and buying podcast listeners.

You know, he was buying the reviews, he was doing all that.

He was selling marketing.

That's what the social chain was, and he was using it as a shop window for, yeah,

I've managed to get this podcast into the charts, so he was bragging about it.

Now, obviously he hopes that you've forgotten about all that.

Well, you don't know about it, but this is literally what he's

doing and this is his strategy.

With Apple Podcasts algorithm, as long as you're getting new followers

and you're getting more new followers than you had before, you can surface

your podcast into the chance, and it's not based historically

so you could do this in spurts.

So you could say, January campaign, go aggressive in marketing, get

the podcast into the charts, then let it naturally drop out.

February new campaign, spend more money on marketing, on black hat,

on Bot follows, on bot listens, and get the podcast in the charts again.

As long as you are getting more followers all the time, then your

podcast will go in the charts.

I shudder to think how much he's spending in Black hat marketing to keep

that podcast constantly in the charts.

But that has been his main marketing vehicle.

You and I, we might do Facebook advertising, we might do you know,

LinkedIn premium accounts, that sort of thing, because we think a little

boost from the algorithm will help us.

This is his modus operandi.

He's literally using his position in podcasting, having the UK's number

one podcast to lift his brand.

But here's the truth.

His podcast gets 12,000 downloads per episode.

So he is not even in the top 2% of all podcasts globally.

Isn't that something?

And yet Apple Podcasts would suggest through their chart,

he is listened to by millions.

There are podcasts with about 20 times the size of the audience than

his that are languishing around 1722.

30 in the, in the main, and this is the main chart as well, not the category

chart, the main Apple Podcast's top 50.

And

this is why they're pretty much bullshit.

And I think this is pretty much what you, you and what you and

Tanner had been playing around with in terms of gaming that system to

show exactly why it was possible.

Possible to do that.

And you, I remember you both explaining pretty much how you gamed

it as well for anyone who wanted to go and replicate those results

for themselves.

Anybody doing it?

Absolutely.

Yeah.

It's in those kinds of charts matters to you.

Facebook ads.

That's it.

It, we literally, so, so Tanner put the cash out because he wanted to go all in

on it, but, you know, we, we literally had a conversation where I'd shown him

behind the scenes.

I won't say which podcast it is cuz you know, I don't want people going into

it and going, you and reporting it.

But I set up a fake podcast and I literally did this.

I had nonsense content on it and I got it into the top 50 of the Apple

Podcast chart about three years ago, and I did it again a year ago.

So, despite the fact that Apple were publicly claiming that

they'd sorted all this out, I managed to do it again a year ago.

And I told him the secret formula and he went, yeah, let's do it.

Let's do the, and next thing I.

This is the kind of character Tanner was the next thing.

I'm looking in the morning.

He's already started to campaign.

I was like, oh, okay, cool.

Yeah.

But you know, the point is he had the spreadsheet and he proved, you know,

on his blog post that Yeah, he took this, I think he did on his philosophy

podcast that he's now gone all in on.

But essentially he managed to take practical Stoicism, and

that's the name of the podcast.

He managed to take it.

A handful of followers to thousands of followers in the space of a

month, and he showed how it had had an impact on his chart ranking.

I kind of hope Tanner comes back to Twitter cuz I'm

not going on fucking Mastadon.

What he was said.

Oh no.

He's a podcasting star now.

You can kiss goodbye to any any podcast guru from Tanner.

Now he's been the smart guy that's got out of this guru side and he's gone

into the actual moneymaking side of it.

Oh, well, fair play to him.

I enjoy his his content anyway.

Thanks for tuning in.

Well, here's a little taster of what you'll be getting in part

two of my conversation with Neal.

Podcasting is literally appointment to listen to content.

Content, not presenters.

Okay.

Let me make this clear, because this is where the waters can get muddied.

I'm not suggesting that people are sitting there.

Making an appointment to listen to your podcast.

They are making an appointment to listen to the content that

your podcast might cover, right?

If you can get them over the line to become someone that makes an

appointment to listen to your podcast, that covers the content

that they want to hear, you've won.

But that's the point you have to understand here is that

it's not about the guests.

It's not about you necessarily at this point.

It's about your content and the content.

We have to remember this.

It's not about us, it's about the listener.

We are having to super serve the listener, get them the content

they want in these massive things they've got on the sides of their.

That they then feel they're getting ear candy from, to then feel that

they've had a valuable experience.

I hope you've enjoyed the show so far, and if you have,

do make sure you are subscribed.

And if you want more Podfluence, do come and join me for the Podfluence weekly

newsletter, which you can subscribe to through the link in the show notes.

Do come and join us for part two of that conversation.

And for now, wherever you're going, whatever you're doing,

have an amazing rest of your day.