Let's talk about the three main hurdles faced by podcasters and podcast listeners, and start to consider how Podcasting 2.0 can help us leap effortlessly over them.

Before we get onto the features – or tags – of Podcasting 2.0 – basically the things that you can do – I want to focus on why you need them and how they can help you, without going into the details of what they are – yet.

Features of Podcasting 2.0 can offer solutions to common problems that podcasts experience around:

• Discovery
• Interactivity
• Monetization

Sam Sethi and I look into how these problems affect podcasters and listeners, and touch on how the rest of this course will start to present solutions to these common problems.

Find podcasting resources, links and extra listening at Creativityfound.co.uk/podcasting

Disclaimer

Things change. Technologies improve. What is discussed in this episode is correct as of end 2024.

Support the show

You can financially support Podcasting 2.0 in Practice here. Thank you

With thanks to:

Cover design by The Pink Octopus

Theme music City Vibe from Ketsa

Additional music Nova Search available on Pixabay

Sam Sethi: 00:00:41

How can I get the stuff around the audio to help me get discovered by other people?

Sam Sethi: 00:00:46

And that's what Podcasting 2.0 does.

Sam Sethi: 00:00:49

It provides those extra features that allow you to get discovered by keywords, titles, person tags.

Sam Sethi: 00:00:58

All those things are really important for discovery.

Sam Sethi: 00:01:01

I get comments and I get that interactivity that gives me that affirmation that somebody out there is actually heard what I said, but not only just heard it, but has taken the time, energy, and effort to come back to me with some positively, hopefully, opinion.

Sam Sethi: 00:01:17

And now you as a user can actually give real value back to the podcast that you're listening to.

Sam Sethi: 00:01:24

If you want to listen to this show, learn about podcasting 2.0 and you will understand very clearly how this all works, but also more clearly how you can support your favorite podcaster.

Claire: 00:01:42

Welcome Back to podcasting 2.0.

Claire: 00:01:44

In practice, before we get into the features or tags of podcasting 2.0, basically the things that you can do, I want to focus on why you might want them, how they can help you without going into the details of what they are yet.

Claire: 00:02:02

I'm here with Sam Sethi.

Claire: 00:02:04

Hi, Sam, how are you?

Sam Sethi: 00:02:05

Hey, Claire.

Sam Sethi: 00:02:06

Hello.

Sam Sethi: 00:02:06

I'm very well, thank you.

Sam Sethi: 00:02:08

Yes.

Claire: 00:02:08

Good.

Claire: 00:02:09

Sam has been helping me a lot in devising this show.

Claire: 00:02:14

Before we get into what we're going to talk about today, start by telling me about yourself and your podcasting credentials.

Sam Sethi: 00:02:22

Oh, well, I've been in the podcasting industry probably now half a decade or more.

Sam Sethi: 00:02:28

Not quite a full decade yet.

Sam Sethi: 00:02:30

I started off in radio and then moved into podcasting.

Sam Sethi: 00:02:35

And podcasting was really because I wanted to interview some really interesting people outside of my radio sphere because that's very geographic.

Sam Sethi: 00:02:44

And when I started getting to podcasting, I had the same problems that everyone had.

Sam Sethi: 00:02:48

What mic do I get?

Sam Sethi: 00:02:49

How long should the show be?

Sam Sethi: 00:02:51

What title?

Sam Sethi: 00:02:52

Who's my host?

Sam Sethi: 00:02:53

How do I edit this thing?

Sam Sethi: 00:02:55

Right.

Sam Sethi: 00:02:56

All the same questions that we all have as beginners when we start podcasting.

Sam Sethi: 00:03:01

But slowly and steadily, I got my learning curve up.

Sam Sethi: 00:03:03

And it is easy once you just dive into it.

Sam Sethi: 00:03:07

As I say, go ugly early.

Sam Sethi: 00:03:08

Get in, just do it right now.

Sam Sethi: 00:03:11

Once I'd got going, Covid hit and I thought I'd really like to do an online podcast festival.

Sam Sethi: 00:03:18

And never having done an online podcast festival, I thought, that'll be great.

Sam Sethi: 00:03:23

And instead of inviting a few people that I knew that would be nice and safe and easy to do, no, I went and invited Kara Swisher and James Cridland and George the poet and Dan Snow, and I didn't expect any one of them to say, yes, I'll do that.

Sam Sethi: 00:03:38

And everyone said, love to Sam.

Sam Sethi: 00:03:40

And I went, oh my God, I've now what have I created?

Sam Sethi: 00:03:44

So the podcast festival was born.

Sam Sethi: 00:03:46

And from that festival I fundamentally learned a lot more about how you could do live podcasting and how podcasting works.

Sam Sethi: 00:03:54

And we had an audience and it was great and it was good.

Sam Sethi: 00:03:56

And we did two of those.

Sam Sethi: 00:03:58

And on the back of that, I pinged James Cridland back and I said, james, hey, I know you do a three minute daily how about a half hour podcast with me and you.

Sam Sethi: 00:04:06

And I again, didn't expect him to say yes, but he did.

Sam Sethi: 00:04:09

And so what was born was Pod News Weekly.

Sam Sethi: 00:04:12

And James and I have been working for probably the last three years doing a weekly show about all things podcasting and podcasting 2.0.

Claire: 00:04:22

Brilliant.

Claire: 00:04:23

Yeah.

Claire: 00:04:23

And it's one of the shows that introduced me to the phrase podcasting 2.0 and had me like thinking, I'll do a little bit more exploration of that.

Claire: 00:04:33

So it's interesting that you started knowing nothing, as I did myself, and I had a good content idea and just wanted to get it out there.

Claire: 00:04:43

And you and I have spoken in the past about the kind of problems that any podcaster starting out experiences, and we've also talked about the features of podcasting 2.0 that might help those.

Claire: 00:04:59

But for now, what do you conceive those main problems for podcasters to be?

Sam Sethi: 00:05:07

Well, apart from the ones I said earlier, which is what, Mike?

Sam Sethi: 00:05:10

What editing tool?

Sam Sethi: 00:05:11

And those are things that you learn quickly.

Sam Sethi: 00:05:13

But once you've got your podcast edited and recorded and published, you then go, well, how does anyone find my podcast?

Sam Sethi: 00:05:22

Big problem, right?

Sam Sethi: 00:05:23

There's 4 million podcasts in the index.

Sam Sethi: 00:05:25

Pick or choose a couple of hundred thousand, depending on whether you're Apple, Spotify or Podcast Index.

Sam Sethi: 00:05:31

So you're just one of many.

Claire: 00:05:34

Hi listeners, it's future Claire here.

Claire: 00:05:37

Sam mentioned the Podcast Index.

Claire: 00:05:40

casts that was established in: 2020

Claire: 00:05:52

If you're a podcaster, your distribution host will probably have given you the option to distribute your show to the Podcast Index.

Claire: 00:06:00

And there are other podcast apps that use the Podcast Index to find their content.

Claire: 00:06:05

We will be talking about this in more detail in a future episode.

Claire: 00:06:10

So you can either retain that information, park it, or just forget about it altogether until further along in the course.

Claire: 00:06:19

Back to Sam.

Sam Sethi: 00:06:21

Well, of course you're going to tell every one of your friends, you're going to tell anyone else you can get in your social media link and you're going to hope that they listen to it and spread the word.

Sam Sethi: 00:06:30

Word of mouth is still one of the most effective methods of getting your podcast discovered.

Sam Sethi: 00:06:35

But if that's the only way of discovery and you don't have a multimillion pound marketing budget, then you're probably only going to end up with half a dozen people listening to your podcast.

Sam Sethi: 00:06:46

And the big problem is people get what I call the Joe Rogan effect.

Sam Sethi: 00:06:50

Oh, my God, I'm going to start my podcast and everyone's going to listen and a million people are going to be listening to me, and then I'm going to get advertisers, and then I'm going to make millions of money and retire to my beach.

Sam Sethi: 00:07:00

And sadly, that is not the way it works.

Sam Sethi: 00:07:03

So for the majority of us, you know, we do get half a dozen friends.

Sam Sethi: 00:07:07

I say to people, if I stuck you in a room with 12 people or 20 people just listening to you, you'd be very happy on a weekly basis.

Sam Sethi: 00:07:15

So don't dismiss the numbers that you as, oh, there's only a couple of people listening.

Sam Sethi: 00:07:21

Well, they're interested, and if they're repeat listening, they really are interested.

Sam Sethi: 00:07:25

So that's good.

Sam Sethi: 00:07:27

That's the step one.

Sam Sethi: 00:07:28

You are not going to be Joe Rogan, so don't try.

Sam Sethi: 00:07:32

But step two, Discovery is about how can I, for want of a better word, podcast SEO?

Sam Sethi: 00:07:40

How can I get my titles right?

Sam Sethi: 00:07:41

How can I get the things that go into describing my podcast?

Sam Sethi: 00:07:46

The show notes, the descriptions, maybe as we talk about later, in the future, things about chapters and transcripts, but how can I get the stuff around the audio to help me get discovered by other people?

Sam Sethi: 00:07:59

So that's step one, and that's what podcasting 2.0 does.

Sam Sethi: 00:08:03

It provides those extra features which we call tags, that allow you to get discovered by keywords, titles, person tags, who's the host, who's the guest.

Sam Sethi: 00:08:15

So all those things are really important for Discovery.

Claire: 00:08:18

Yes, discovery.

Claire: 00:08:19

Of course it is.

Claire: 00:08:21

Half of the work is actually making the show, and the rest of the half of the work is trying to find people who want to listen to the show and tell people, look, my show is brilliant.

Claire: 00:08:30

Come and listen to it.

Claire: 00:08:32

Another thing we've talked about is, and I have heard this from other podcasters that I know is the interactivity.

Claire: 00:08:41

Like, it's difficult to actually get a relationship with your listener.

Claire: 00:08:46

Now, hopefully the listener has a relationship with you as the Host.

Claire: 00:08:48

But as the host, how do you know who it is that's listening and what they like and don't like about the show?

Claire: 00:08:55

Can that be helped along the way with any of the podcasting 2.0 features?

Sam Sethi: 00:09:01

We've all listened to radio, and as I said, I started off in radio, and one of the things with radio was you're talking into the abyss.

Sam Sethi: 00:09:08

You're in a studio with a mic and you're just broadcasting out, and you have no idea who listens.

Sam Sethi: 00:09:14

And then one day, suddenly, someone phones into your show or they write in just as excited as the person is.

Sam Sethi: 00:09:22

Did they just mention me on the radio?

Sam Sethi: 00:09:23

Oh, my God, that's brilliant.

Sam Sethi: 00:09:25

The host, actually, I promise you, gets just as excited when they hear that someone's actually listening to their radio show.

Sam Sethi: 00:09:32

And that is the same feeling that podcasters have.

Sam Sethi: 00:09:34

We go into whatever room that we have our podcast set up and we record and we go.

Sam Sethi: 00:09:40

I don't know if anyone's listening to this, but here we go.

Sam Sethi: 00:09:42

And then suddenly, now you're beginning to get feedback loops, which means that I get comments or I get.

Sam Sethi: 00:09:51

Which we will learn later are called boosts, but I get comments and I get that interactivity that gives me that affirmation that somebody out there has actually heard what I said, but not only just heard it, but has taken the time, energy, and effort to come back to me with some positively, hopefully, opinion.

Sam Sethi: 00:10:09

Now, we all have the Apple and Spotify ratings and reviews.

Sam Sethi: 00:10:13

They're great as well.

Sam Sethi: 00:10:14

That's another form of interactivity.

Sam Sethi: 00:10:16

But comments is a great way to also give that feedback loop to you as a host.

Sam Sethi: 00:10:23

And again, that's part of podcasting 2.0.

Claire: 00:10:25

Yeah, brilliant.

Claire: 00:10:27

And the other thing, and I'm not going to go into a great detail of this, but monetization is something that you've already mentioned.

Claire: 00:10:35

Don't expect to retire to the seaside.

Claire: 00:10:38

A challenge, or perhaps something that people expect to achieve when they start a show through things like, I'm assuming, sponsorships and adverts and stuff, which is all very valid.

Claire: 00:10:51

But I believe that there are some elements of podcasting 2.0 that can give you a different aspect of a kind of monetization model.

Sam Sethi: 00:11:02

Yeah, let's.

Sam Sethi: 00:11:03

Let's break this down.

Sam Sethi: 00:11:05

So monetization in today's podcasting, as you said, Claire, is sponsor driven.

Sam Sethi: 00:11:11

Host read.

Sam Sethi: 00:11:12

Advertising driven.

Sam Sethi: 00:11:14

Right.

Sam Sethi: 00:11:14

And if you.

Sam Sethi: 00:11:15

If you are lucky enough to get a sponsor, well done, you.

Sam Sethi: 00:11:19

Right.

Sam Sethi: 00:11:19

Congratulations.

Sam Sethi: 00:11:20

Because that's still hard to do.

Sam Sethi: 00:11:23

Host red ads are effective because they are based On a trust model, the listener trusts the host.

Sam Sethi: 00:11:30

That's generally why they're listening to their podcast.

Sam Sethi: 00:11:33

So the host then reading out an advert, hopefully, is not just endorsing something that they, you know, just do for money.

Sam Sethi: 00:11:40

But there is some authenticity to reading out that ad.

Sam Sethi: 00:11:44

Now, given all of that, again, the chances of you getting a host read ad given to you is very low as well, because most people want big numbers.

Sam Sethi: 00:11:52

They want thousands of people listening to your podcast.

Sam Sethi: 00:11:55

And that's the trouble with most podcasting monetization.

Sam Sethi: 00:11:59

Now, it's a numbers game.

Sam Sethi: 00:12:01

And unless you've got thousands or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands, even most advertisers aren't coming to you either.

Sam Sethi: 00:12:09

How do you make Money?

Sam Sethi: 00:12:11

So podcasting 2.0 has come up with pay what you want or pay as you go.

Sam Sethi: 00:12:16

And that model really is for fans, let's say, to begin with, now, today, and maybe in the future it'll change.

Sam Sethi: 00:12:23

But today it's really for your hardcore fans who, who want to support you to stop you pod fading.

Sam Sethi: 00:12:30

You've done episode five, you're excited still, episode 10's come out and now you're going, I wonder if anyone's listening.

Sam Sethi: 00:12:37

I wonder if this is worth me spending an hour a day recording or whatever time, and then an hour editing, and you're suddenly going, I give up, I just give up.

Sam Sethi: 00:12:46

And actually, you have got an audience, but they haven't got a way to give you any monetization.

Sam Sethi: 00:12:52

Now, if we step back very quickly.

Sam Sethi: 00:12:56

When I first started in technology, I worked for a company called Microsoft and then Netscape.

Sam Sethi: 00:13:01

But at Netscape, the original browser company, we didn't create a monetization for the web.

Sam Sethi: 00:13:08

So you have PayPal, you have credit cards, but there was no web system for making money.

Sam Sethi: 00:13:15

And so in the absence of that, Facebook, Twitter, and the Web 2.0, companies created hearts likes, thumbs up, which are great.

Sam Sethi: 00:13:25

They're an affirmation of feedback from your listener.

Sam Sethi: 00:13:29

In the case, it was more blogs and posts.

Sam Sethi: 00:13:32

But again, the same idea is there.

Sam Sethi: 00:13:36

I really like what Claire wrote.

Sam Sethi: 00:13:38

I really love what Sam said there.

Sam Sethi: 00:13:40

Thumbs up.

Sam Sethi: 00:13:41

Well, that's lovely, but take that to the bank and see what your bank manager says.

Sam Sethi: 00:13:45

Right?

Sam Sethi: 00:13:45

I've got a million thumbs up.

Sam Sethi: 00:13:47

Well, visit the door fast.

Sam Sethi: 00:13:50

So the reality was, if you then wanted to get a credit card out and pay 50p or a pound or some micro payment, the credit card company or the PayPal Gateway company would take 30% or some percentage.

Sam Sethi: 00:14:09

So suddenly that 50p is 20p.

Sam Sethi: 00:14:11

That 20p is 10p.

Sam Sethi: 00:14:12

It's just a waste of time.

Sam Sethi: 00:14:13

Let's not bother.

Sam Sethi: 00:14:14

So fast forward to today and the podcasting 2.0 community have come up with a mechanism for you to get a wallet, get some funny money tokens, and we'll talk about them probably in later episodes.

Sam Sethi: 00:14:28

They call SATs.

Sam Sethi: 00:14:29

But Claire, you can explain them later.

Sam Sethi: 00:14:31

And I can make micro payments so I can leave a comment with a small micro payment so I can leave a comment saying, claire, love your podcast.

Sam Sethi: 00:14:41

Here's Tempe.

Sam Sethi: 00:14:43

Claire, loved what you did there.

Sam Sethi: 00:14:46

Here's another Tempe.

Sam Sethi: 00:14:47

Or I'm going to listen to your podcast and stream payments to you as I listen.

Sam Sethi: 00:14:52

So pay as you listen and I'm going to pay you.

Sam Sethi: 00:14:55

I don't know, the equivalent of a penny a minute.

Sam Sethi: 00:14:58

Right.

Sam Sethi: 00:14:58

And that micro payment capability is what podcasting 2.0 has done.

Sam Sethi: 00:15:05

And now you as a user can actually give real value back to the podcast that you're listening to if you want to.

Sam Sethi: 00:15:13

It's not a.

Sam Sethi: 00:15:14

I have to do this to listen.

Sam Sethi: 00:15:16

Now.

Sam Sethi: 00:15:17

There's a lot of hurdles in there.

Sam Sethi: 00:15:19

Terminology is the biggest, biggest hurdle.

Sam Sethi: 00:15:22

I talked about Netscape.

Sam Sethi: 00:15:24

Now cast your mind back to when you first came to the web.

Sam Sethi: 00:15:27

You had to learn what an HTTP was.

Sam Sethi: 00:15:29

You had to learn what a URL was.

Sam Sethi: 00:15:31

Why did it start www.

Sam Sethi: 00:15:34

What is a browser?

Sam Sethi: 00:15:35

Right.

Sam Sethi: 00:15:36

All of those things were terminology that you overcame.

Sam Sethi: 00:15:40

And once you overcame those hurdles, the web's pretty basic to everybody now.

Sam Sethi: 00:15:46

Then fast forward to today and when I tell you it's called a wallet and they're micro payments called sats, and you do peer to peer payments.

Sam Sethi: 00:15:55

You're looking at me.

Sam Sethi: 00:15:57

What are you talking about?

Sam Sethi: 00:15:58

But I promise, you listen to this show, learn about Podcasting 2.0, and you will understand very clearly how this all works, but also more clearly how you can support your favorite podcaster.

Claire: 00:16:14

Well, that's the perfect ending sound bite.

Claire: 00:16:16

Support your favorite podcaster.

Claire: 00:16:18

I have planned this course for that very reason, like I'm partly learning it.

Claire: 00:16:24

I have been in the position of knowing nothing about it.

Claire: 00:16:28

So we are going to take those elements, those things that we've talked about there, and we're going to explain things, things very slowly.

Claire: 00:16:35

So we're going to back up what we've talked about here.

Claire: 00:16:37

I'm going to relate that to what we talk about in the future.

Claire: 00:16:40

So listener, you're going to understand it and we're going to take it really slowly and step by step.

Claire: 00:16:45

Thank you so much, Sam, for explaining that and giving us a really good introduction as to why podcasters and listeners should continue listening to this show and be aware of what this modern technology can do.

Claire: 00:17:00

So thank you so much, Sam.

Sam Sethi: 00:17:02

Pleasure, Claire.

Sam Sethi: 00:17:03

I look forward to the rest of the episodes.

Claire: 00:17:05

Thank you.

Claire: 00:17:07

Visit creativityfound.co.uk podcasting to find out more about my guests and access lots of useful podcast resources.

Claire: 00:17:17

If you'd like to get in touch, you can send a boost, but if you haven't got to that lesson yet, feel free to reach out to me on my Instagram accountcasting 2.0.

Claire: 00:17:27

In practice.