Podcasting Best Practices or Myths? Let's Find Out!

Today on episode number 1004. Have you ever wondered if the podcasting rules that you follow are actually helping you succeed?Well, in today's episode, we're going to pull back that curtain on podcasting best practices. And some of these conventions are grounded in logic and proven results, and others might just be myths that we're just blindly following.Hit it, ladies. The School of Podcasting with Dave Jackson.Podcasting since 2005, I am your award winning hall of fame podcast coach, Dave Jackson, thanking you so much for tuning in. If you're new to the show, welcome aboard. This is why I help you plan, launch and grow your podcast.My website is schoolofpodcasting.com use the coupon code listnr when you sign up for either a monthly, quarterly, or yearly subscription. And of course, that comes with a money back guarantee. Now, what kind of guarantee? We're talking 30 days, not seven, not 14. 30. Check it out.Schoolofpodcasting.com so I was at a conference and I totally get the point that you should always be yourself because being someone else is a lot of work and no one else is better at being you than you. But there was, there was a hint that maybe some of the ways that people are doing it is a little old. And there, there was just a hint.A hint that some of the.And I'm going to use giant air quotes here because it's, you know, best practices, like, oh, you know, those OGs and their best practices, that kind of vibe. Not a strong one. Just a hint. And when I hear, I'll let you know, this kind of when people go, oh, man, that's just an OG thing.As an og, you've just got my attention. Because a lot of times what comes out of someone's mouth then is, in my opinion. What's the word for it again? Oh, that's right, Nonsense.And so I thought today I would very professionally and confidently explain some of these. Now, let me give you an example of what I feel is a best practice. Don't put your hand on a hot stove. Now, why do we call that a best practice?Because it's been practiced. And it turns out the best way to not get burned is to not put your hand on that.Now, when I was five years old, I stood next to the stove, There was a cast iron skillet on it, and my sister was frying bacon, and she accidentally hit the handle to where it came off the stove. And I can tell you that hot bacon grease on your leg is not a fun time. I've never Seen my. I still don't understand to this day.My dad somehow jumped out of bed, much like Superman, just had a cape on. He was in his robe, ran down the hallway, picked me up by my neck, and stuck me in the bathtub. It was really interesting.But that's why I say, you know, best practices. There's actually a podcast named this. Don't Cook Bacon Naked. Yeah, that's a best practice. So let's talk about some podcasting best practices.Number one, here's one that I recommend all the time, and yet most people don't do it. But here's it. Why is recording a test episode before you launch a podcast best practice? Well, number one, authors, they have rough drafts.When I wrote my book Profit from youm Podcast, it went through five different edits. And there was a point when I was like, what are we looking for here, kids? Like, didn't we get it in the last four?But authors have rough drafts, and athletes have preseasons. Actors have dress rehearsals.In a previous life, I was a musician, and we never came out of the basement shorter than maybe four months because you had to learn 40 songs. So when you publish the very first thing you record, and I get it, you're like, look at that. It took me 17 hours to make this MP3 file.I get it that you're like, I just want this thing out. I'm here to tell you I get it. I'm just saying you are essentially publishing a rough draft.I mean, anytime you do anything for the first time, the first time you tied your shoes, probably awful at it. First time you shot a basket, probably not very good at it. First time you rode a bike. Yeah, I still got skinned knees.Yeah, the first time you do something, it's not as good as the second. Now, hold on. This doesn't mean you record your first episode, like, 37 times, but you will learn things.And often when you know that you're not going to publish it, it kind of takes some of the pressure off. So keep that in mind. That's why it's a best practice.Because, you know, other people, actors, athletes, musicians, people that are in the entertainment business. And whether you like it or not, when you're a podcaster, you're in the entertainment business. That's why I say that.Number two, why is defining a clear topic or niche a podcast best practice? Now, I often call this know who your audience is, but there's actually many reasons for this. Number one, podcasting is kind of hard.It's simple, right? Find out what your audience wants and give it to them.But the way it's delivered, there are all sorts of things like this that make it a little challenging. And so when you know who your audience is and you have a niche, it makes it easier to create content.So let's take this out of the podcasting space, which is what I love to do. A lot of times, things make more sense when you get it away from podcasting.So if I'm making dinner for a bunch of people coming over and I find out, oh, by the way, they're all vegans, I know what I can make and what I shouldn't. So when you know who your audience is, it's easier to make content for them. This also, then there's a double bonus here.It makes it easy to market, because now instead of marketing to vegans and carnivores and anyone who's glucose intolerant and all that other stuff, you know, diabetics. No, I only have to focus on the vegans, so it's easier to market. Saves you time. There you go.Now, what sometimes appears as a downside is you end up with a smaller audience, because instead of having the vegans and the carnivores and the glucose and the diabetics and the. Whatever. Those people that like pineapple on their pizza. Right. Instead of having you, you have one group. And to.Again, let's take this out of podcasting. I like American football, but I don't follow college football at all. But that's football. So. Okay, let's niche down.Let's just talk about the NFL, which, between you and me, I kind of feel is a little evil. But anyway, let's talk about the NFL.Well, now you've got, I think, four different divisions, and so we could talk about the NFL, but do I really care about the Seattle Seahawks? No. Because I live nowhere near Seattle. You know, so maybe let's go down to my division, which I should know, but I don't because my team is awful.It's the Cleveland Browns. We've had 41 quarterbacks. Yeah. Since they came back. They left and now they've come. They're awful. You suck.And so I might care more about, you know, the Pittsburgh team and Cleveland and Cincinnati and whoever else is in my division. Yeah.Now it's a smaller audience, but I would care about what's going on with those people, because those are the people that I'm trying to beat to get to the Super Bowl. But do I really care about the Pittsburgh Steelers? Not really. Sorry, Vinnie. I know you're a huge fan and.But if I did a show that was just about the Cleveland Browns, boy, would it be sad. That would be the name of it. We call our stadium the Factory of Sadness.And you know, so now when I talk about just the Cleveland Browns, okay, a much smaller audience, but the people we are known in Cleveland. I actually live in Akron, Ohio, but the Cleveland fans are known for their enthusiasm. They are very, very fanatic about their team.So I've niched down, or niche, take your pick. To one team. Much smaller audience, but much more fanatic. Much more likely to buy gear and swag and bark at people.So that's the advantage of having a niche. It's easier to make content because you know who you're talking to.It's easier to market because you only need to go where those people are, not where everyone is. And you end up with a more loyal, more fanatic fan base. And there is no right or wrong answer here. How often or how far you niche down?As always with podcasting, it depends. 3. Why is getting to the topic as soon as possible a podcast best practice? To which I ask you a simple question. Do you have a ton of free time?I don't, but maybe you do. But let's look at Netflix when you're binging something.Right now I've been binging Franklin and Bash, and when I'm watching it and an episode is over, I can click a button and skip the credits to which it goes to a new episode where I can, you guessed it, skip the intro. So with this in mind, that leads me to believe that getting to the actual content is something that's popular.Now, if you disagree with that, again, it's your show. We'll talk about chit chat a little later. But for me, the best practice is introduce the show so people know what the show's about.Introduce the the content, whatever the episode is about, and then get to that content as soon as possible. Number four, when I worked as a customer service representative, this is like a lifetime ago.The worst thing you can do to now for me, it was a customer, but it could be an audience, is to ask them their opinion and then ignore them. Wow, that's bad. And so this one is why is engaging with audience, and probably even better, creating a community a best practice?And this is kind of like we go back to know your audience, right? You know, get to know your audience, make a niche all that well. How do you get to know them? Oh, there's a novel idea.Maybe reply to every email Maybe reply to every comment and every comment on YouTube, and if you're on WordPress and wherever it is, always do that. And when somebody says, hey, Dave, let's say that I really like that show, Such and such and such. Hey, thanks so much for listening.I might even ask them, like, why did you like it? And then I always end with, is there something else you'd like to hear me talk about on the show?Because this is how you get to know your audience, by actually talking to them. So again, this could be on social. It could be email. Any way that you can interact with your audience, you should do it.Because I know that you know that I know that you know that I know. But when they email you, they're emailing the host of the show. Show, show. Right.And when you email them back, they're like, oh, my gosh, the host of the show. Show, show, show emailed me. Meme. I can't believe it. Believe it. Believe it. Right? It's. They're freaking out.Which is weird, because you know that I know that you know that I know that I'm just in a spare bedroom talking into a microphone.But that's an easy way to build that relationship and have a better understanding of your audience, which goes back to that dinner party we were talking about. Okay, now we know we're talking to vegans, but what do the vegans want? So that's why that is a best practice.Number five, why is prioritizing sound quality a best practice in podcasting? Well, I don't know. What if I sounded like this? There you go. That's not horrible at all.I want to listen to this for three hours or just think about it. If I do this. Oh, that's handy. Great. And then there's this one. Okay, wonderful. Yeah, that's not gonna work. It. Okay, so when you want it to be easy.I can't do that. That's ridiculous. You want it to be easy to consume your content. You don't want your audience to strain to consume your content. So reverb.I probably got some of that lying around here somewhere. One of these is reverb. Nope. This one. This one. There we go.When your show sounds like this and then you're listening on the highway and you've got the sound of, you know, tires on. Yeah, that's ridiculous. It becomes a serious issue.That's the thing I noticed when I was driving, driving to different conferences, I was like, man, if your volume is all over the place and things like that, here's another Way again, let's take it out of podcasting. Do you wear glasses? I wear glasses.And just the next time you go to watch your favorite TV show, take your glasses and smear them with Vaseline and try to watch something you know you can do it, right? I can watch, you know, whatever Seinfeld reruns through my Vaseline dripping glasses.It's going to take a little extra effort, and we want it to be easy. I mean, even in videos, if you're doing YouTube, the key ingredient, it's not lighting, it's audio.Because if I can't hear what you're saying, what's the point of if you're in the dark or not? It's ridiculous. So keep that in mind. And also, you don't have to spend thousands of dollars on equipment.I recommend you start off with audio first, and then later, once you get the hang of making content, then jump into video and you can get started off a link in the show notes with something like a Samsung Q2U. Right now, I'm using a Rode PodMic USB. The Q2U is under 100 bucks. The Rode PodMic USB is around 200.If you want to do video again, you could get the Rode Wireless micro microphones. These are okay. Like, any lavalier is going to be okay. But then you can start with your phone instead of spending thousands of dollars on a camera.But yes, a best practice is make your podcast sound as great as you can for your budget. And again, you don't have to spend thousands of dollars. Number six.All right, this, I'm going to admit this is a bit of a rerun of get to the topic as soon as possible.But I'm here to tell you I hear people do this, sadly, on a fairly regular basis, and that is they press record before they know what they're going to say. And I've heard shows where they're like, well, are we going to talk about the thing in the Times or the Post or I don't know, what do you want to do?And this is the beginning. This is your first impression. So I would recommend knowing what you're going to say before you press record.Now, this does not mean writing a script, unless you want to write a script, but at least knowing when you hit record. Today, I'm going to talk about blank, right?And for me, again, introduce the show, introduce the topic, and then get to the topic instead of going, I don't know, what do you want to do? Did you want to. I thought we were talking about something. Hey, thanks for letting me know. You're really unorganized.Number seven, having a clear call to action. Why is this important? Because there's a reason you're podcasting. You have your own reason.It might be to be seen as an expert or to reach a goal, but whatever it is. But if you don't get your why, you're going to burn out. From my chair.People that don't get their why are like, I don't even know why I'm doing this anymore. Well, what's your why? Oh, I wanted blah, blah blah. Okay, well, are you getting blah blah blah? And they go, no, not a.Not a single blah, blah, blah has come my way. And I'm like, well, that's why you want to quit. So by having a clear call to action, it helps your audience know what to do.Now, I've actually, I remember once I had a client that said, we're not getting any kind of engagement with our calls to action. And they had eight, count them, not seven, not nine, eight calls to action. And I'm here to tell you, if you give.And I am guilty of this as well, it's hard to do one call to action at a time. Notice what I added there at a time. So what I mean by that is in the middle, if you want to say, maybe use it as a transition.You're listening to the Blah Blah show with blah blah. Subscribe to our newsletter at blah blah blah.com newsletter and then you go into another subject. That's one call to action.Easy to remember versus like me on Twitter, Facebook, face on the book, chat of the thing and the thread and the blah blah and the thing. Nobody's going to remember that. So. And say them clearly have links to them in the show notes. That's not even what I have written down. That will.You will get a sternly written letter from me if you have a guest on. You talk about their book and I go to the show notes and there is no link. You will get a sternly written email from me, but have a clear. So that's.That's a bonus tip. Always have links to things you talk about. I just heard a show. They were talking to some SEO guy and he said, oh, the tool I use.And I forget what it was. Why? Because they didn't have it in the show notes. And I'm like, wait, if the SEO guy's using it, I at least want to check it out.No link in the show notes. So but getting back to my original one and that is have a Clear call to action. Say it slowly. Specifically. Specifically.Yeah, specifically and confidently. We're leaving that in. Have your call to action and then have the call to action in your show. Notes. Remember, we want to make it easy.Number eight, pick a schedule and stick to it. Be consistent. Because what this does is you become part of someone's routine. I listen to The show podcasting 2.0 every Friday night when it's there.And this is also consistent with your schedule, but you become part of people's routine. I start off my day by listening to James Kridlin. I listen to the newsworthy. Those are two things I listen to.Typically in the shower, you become part of someone's routine and that is huge. And we don't just want to be a good podcast. Jay Akunzo is a great professional speaker coach. He does a whole bunch of stuff. He's a content creator.He says you want to be someone's favorite. And when you are someone's favorite, to where they're like, ooh, I listen to this show when I mow the lawn, or whatever it is.So the other thing, when you're consistent in schedule, you're seen as reliable. So if you're podcasting for your business, this is part of your brand, you are seen as reliable.But keep in mind, as it is important to be consistent in your schedule, I feel that it's more important to be consistent in delivering value. I'd rather have a late show that was remarkable than an on time show that was meh. Number nine, Come up with a brand and keep consistent.I'm reading the book right now. The Visual Marketer, the Marketer's crash course for Creating Memorable and Effective Visuals.I'm actually interviewing the author for the Podpage Monthly meetup. I'll put a link to that that's open to the public. But it's all about branding. And when your brand is a trusted resource, people are drawn to it.So already said you can be a trusted resource because you're consistent. And now when you see that logo, people are like, oh, I know that. And so let me give you an example. I love Mountain Dew.Actually, I love Mountain Dew a little too much, but I kind of get worried because right now, Pepsi, they could come out with a flavor of like new orange pineapple, you know, whatever. Mountain Dew. And I'm like, no, no, because I'm, I am an OG when it comes to Mountain Dew. It's the green stuff in a can.Don't give me that weird plastic tasting stuff. It's gotta be in a can. But rather than spend the money on coming out with new Sparky Pineapple, I don't know what's up with Pineapple.Today's new Sparky Pineapple drink from Pepsi. They're just like, well, it's easier if we just put the word Mountain Dew on it, and then maybe people will at least try it.And we'll talk about that a little later.We have something coming up about celebrities, and when you put Mountain Dew on it, there are people like, oh, I love Mountain Dew, even though, you know, the new pineapple, whatever, Prune Mountain Dew is not gonna work. So. And then a logo comes in handy when you want to sell things like swag, you know, T shirts and coasters and all that stuff.But when people see that logo, they go, oh, like, for me, if you look at some famous rock bands like Kiss, the Rolling Stones, Van Halen, they all had logos. And when you saw that logo, you got a little jazz. So it's a best practice. Now, is this something you need to do?In fact, all of these are like, oh, you don't need to. It's your show again. But the more I study branding, the more I'm like, yeah, this is important.And I also know, look, I'm the head of podcasting over at PodPage, and there are people that take this brilliant tool and make websites that burn my corneas. And I'm like, how does that even tie in to your artwork?I do a segment for PodPage called the website of the Week, and one of the things I'm looking for is, hey, do you have a consistent brand? Does the color in the artwork match the color on the website? It's just. It's less shocking, it's less startling, you know, have a consistent brand.And people go, oh, yeah, that's Dave. It's that weird kind of bluish greenish thing in the yellow and occasionally gray. So keep that in mind. Have a consistent brand.It's a best practice number 10. I am in the process of. I have.The school of podcasting has been on WordPress for, like, you know, whatever, 20 years, and I'm right now going to be pointing people to PodPage, where I have the school of Podcasting episodes, because, A, they look a whole lot better, and B, I can. And I could probably do this on WordPress, but I'm just not a fan anymore of WordPress.But the best practice is put your best episodes out front and you go, what do you mean, my best episodes? Well, this is easy. Go into whoever your media host Is and go into your stats and sort by the number of downloads.And the one with the most downloads, more than likely is the one that resonated the most. That's why it has the most downloads. Now, in some cases, like my show from 2005, your podcast, your first podcast usually stinks.That's the name of my first episode. May have more downloads because it's been around for 20 years. So, you know, use your own discretion.But I think on your website, you should put your best episodes first. The ones that your target audience. Remember those people that you met at the dinner party and you gave them all the food that they really liked?Put those first. Why? Because they might tell their friends. And when their friends come to your website, they're like, ooh, look at that.That's exactly what I'm looking for. They click on it, they hear it, it's your best episode, it resonates, and then they follow the show, and now we're off to the races.So that is something I am doing because it's just so easy to do on PodPage to make featured episodes and feature them on your front page. I think that is a podcasting best practice.This way, instead of hearing that episode that you just put out and you kind of had to hurry about it because there was that wedding you had to get to. And it's like, it's not bad, but it's not like, yeah, why make that your first impression?Purposely put out the best stuff for those new people coming to your website. Number 11. Have a website. And by that I don't mean Linktree. Linktree has zero. And by that I mean none, zip, nada. Huh.And if you want to use PodPage, great. I don't want to make this a giant PodPage commercial. WordPress, whatever. The thing about WordPress and Wix and Squarespace, those all.None of them typically, let's go with wix and Squarespace. Have an actual podcast theme. And so you end up trying to squeeze your podcast into, like, a yoga studio theme, but have a website. Why, Dave?Why do I need a website? Well, let's go with the whole video thing. People are like, oh, you need to be on YouTube. We'll be talking about that in a bit.Because, you know, it's YouTube. It's the number two search engine. Okay, great. What's the number one search engine? Google. At least for now. Great. What is it?Searching a website, and I'm not getting any traffic to my podcast. Oh, do you have a website? No. I wonder why you're not getting any traffic.So it's a best practice to have a website and you don't have to be a giant nerd anymore. There are many tools that make this super easy and it will help you get found. So have a website for Your podcast number 12.Why does having keywords in your podcast in the show title, why is that a best practice? Well, your audience needs to find you before they consume your content and I've seen this happen. There was someone that did a show about baseball.I believe, if I remember, the show was called the Dugout and when you typed in baseball, it didn't show up. Why? Because the name of the show was the Dugout and you know that.I know that the baseball players sit in a dugout when they play the game, but nobody was searching for the dugout. So this is where either a put the word baseball in your title or add a tag. So it could be the dugout tag.You know, a fan based baseball, MLB baseball show for such and such. Right. And when you're like, where do I get keywords? There are tons of these.Whether it's ManGools, Ubersuggest, Keywords Everywhere is another product ser ranking. You can go into the Google search tool and maybe that's another episode. We'll do a whole thing on the Google search console.But there are easy ways to do that. Or just use the go in and look at your reviews maybe and see what people are calling your show or what's in your community.But you want to have those words that are common in your community and just reverse engineer, what are people typing in to find my show? And then make sure those words are in the title of your show and when possible in the title of the episode.I could go on with a ton of these, but when we come back, I'm going to talk about some things that seem like best practices, but it may be the case that they've just been repeated so much that it's actually a myth that we've all bought into. Yeah, yeah, yeah, the school of podcasting.Alright, so now let's talk about some things that I kind of contest and I'll explain why the first one is you need to launch with three episodes. To which I go, well, if you only launched with one, if it was really good, would I not then follow the show so that when that second one comes out.Now I get it.The idea is that if you launch with three episodes and the first one's good, they can listen to the second one and the third one and that's Going to show more consumption and it might help you get up the podcast charts in Apple. And I get that. That's all true. By the way, that we'll talk about this in a second.What I haven't proven yet though is does being on the Apple charts actually grow your show? Because I don't know anybody. When I go, how do you discover podcasts that they go, oh, I go right to the charts.They might go in there and search hence keywords. But I don't know anybody go, oh, every Monday I go to the charts and see what's hot. No. Now that's great.By the way, I'm not poo pooing being on the charts. At one point I was a top 20 podcast, so I could put that out there. Now it's not for this show. I think this show was in the top 50 at one point.But you know, it's, it's that whole marketing thing. But this is, we'll just roll this into this one which is please rate and review me. It helps me get found. And I will quote from Apple themselves.Okay, this is it. So this is what the charts measure. This is again I'm gonna state it's from Apple. This is not my opinion what the charts measure.Apple podcast charts reflect the most popular shows and episodes available in a given market, meaning the country and are designed to help people discover what to listen to to next. They do not reflect all time listening records and are not a measure of the largest podcast by listenership.So when you're on the top of the charts, you are the top for today during this period in this country.So while the exact algorithm cannot be shared because marketers ruin everything and they would just hack it to protect their integrity, the charts measure a mix of the following listening. So when listeners are engaging with the episode, it's an indicator of the content popularity.So this is where when you get three clicks to listen to that, it's more than one totally get that follows. While listeners follow a show to receive a new episode, it's an indicator of their intent to listen. So it's kind of like a friendship ring.It's like not only do I like your show, I'm following it. And thank you to the I believe the last time I checked, 92% of you are following the show. And if you're not, what's your problem?Schoolofpodcasting.com follow and then this is the big one, the completion rate. So this is when people go, I don't know what my. Why my show isn't growing.The first thing I'm going to ask is, let's go look at your completion rates. And when it's like 22%, they go, is that good? And I go, I'm an old teacher. I go by the 60 is a D, 70 is a C, 80 is a B, 90 is an A, 22 is a not good.So that's what gets you up the charts.And then they say, although ratings and reviews and shares also help to indicate a podcast's newness, popularity, and quality, they are not factored into the algorithm that determines the rankings for top shows and top episodes. So to this I say they are social proof. They're absolutely 100% social proof.And so maybe if somebody types in Waffle podcast because they're hungry and it's breakfast time and they see that this waffle podcast on the left has 16 reviews and. And this waffle podcast on the right has 120, they might be more likely to listen to the one with more reviews.But in terms of helping you get found, not sure. And if you're like me, I subscribe to both waffle podcasts and then vote with my ears. But that's a survey of one.But just so you know, the whole help you get found, nothing to do with the algorithms. So keep that in mind. Another one is Audiograms. Now, here's the thing.We're gonna get into these, and there's nothing against, like, Headliner is a great company. And when Audiograms first came out, we're all like, oh, lookie, on social. Did you say the thing with the little.The little squiggly thing bumps up and down. Oh, gosh. Ooh. Yeah. And that worked when they were new and people would stop and they would click.Now the question was, did they then go to your show and follow it and listen to the whole episode? And now that it's been years later, I've heard no less than 4 kind of SEO, not SEO. Social media gurus say, yeah, those don't really work now. They're.They're marketing. It's keeping your brand in front of people. But if the goal is to grow your show, it's a trickle. If anything, audiograms are okay.In fact, there's a study that came out that they're finding now that when you cut out a whole, let's say, a question out of an interview, that there are times that people will just listen to the shorts because you've kind of said, hey, here's one of the best parts of the show. And then, oh look, there's another one and another one. So I just listened to 12 minutes of, of a 45 minute show.Maybe I don't need to listen to the whole thing because you gave me the best parts. Yeah, that there's. I'll have to find that study.I heard it from James Kridlin over at POD News and I haven't read it, but I was like, that's an interesting twist. Now another. So I would say audiograms at this point, years later, we all kind of go, yeah, not really the cool thing we thought it was going to be.And the other thing that we're going through right now, and I'll try to keep this brief, everybody knows they're going, oh no, he's going to talk about YouTube. Yeah, YouTube. This is being tested right now. Now there are people, mainly YouTube, saying, hey, you need to be on YouTube.And of course they are, and of course they should. But there's a. I've got a link in the show notes to an article called the Truth about video podcast on YouTube by my buddy Colin Gray.And it's, it's really good because some people, yeah, you know, they like this is working out other. But there are a lot of people that are like, not so much.In fact, there is a study that he did and when I looked at the graph, only as we all think, right, you're probably thinking, but everybody else is doing video and I'm not. Guess what? 28% of people are actually doing full on video podcasts on YouTube.And if you're doing the static image on YouTube that is very much like an audiogram, you're not going to get much traction on that. But I would just. Here's my little Bill Maher story. If you're a regular listener, you've heard this.But to make a long story short, Bill launched Club Random. I was working at Libsyn when he did this, and Bill didn't want to do audio, he just wanted to do video. We talked him into audio.He then hired a PR firm to only promote the video, not the audio. And when the stats came in, the audio outperformed the video 15 to 1. So this is why I'm saying this is not a tested best practice.It is being practiced now. And we will find out maybe in a year or two if this is really working to grow your podcast now it's growing your brand.If you think about these big outdoor concerts, Lollapalooza and all these other ones, it's like going from the big Stage to another stage and you can pick which one's the big one and the small one. But you are starting in front of a brand new audience. You're not probably. There's a def. Diff. Definitive. I cannot. What's the word for that? Definitive.Defin. It's not a definite answer, but you will probably grow your, your reach by doing video.But I don't think you're going to get many people who love video to go watch your audio. So keep that in mind.When I did the math on this, this is back in March of this year, there were 6.65.3 million creators on YouTube making content for 2.49 trillion with a T viewers. So there's a huge, huge audience over there and there were 358,000 audio creators making content for 202 million listeners.So definitely smaller numbers. But when you do the math. Yeah. What does that boil down to? Yeah, 15 to 1. There are, there's more audio listeners than there are video people.So keep that in mind. Now we need to talk about chit chat and we need to talk about celebrities School of podcasting. We look to celebrities because that's often who.That's why I love celebrities. They bring in new people into the podcasting space and they're like, oh, look at Conan, look at Mel Robbins. Look at the.Of course we have to mention Joe Rogan and all these people, they start their show and then they go into about two minutes of ads. I just listened to the beginning of Conan o'. Brien. He did a minute and a half of ads. And so it was three, three 30 second ads.And so you're like, oh, so I can start with three 30 second ads. Except I don't know, you, you haven't been on TV for 20 years. You, you know, you haven't written best selling books.You haven't been on the Big Bang Theory. What's her name? Mayim Blalik Bilik. Whatever. Great show prep today, Dave.But like her show was beyond annoying because she would be having this great conversation and have to stop for a meundies ad. And I'm like, didn't you get paid like 25 million an episode to do the Big Bang Theory? I'm like, look, okay, and same thing.Conan o' Brien needs a friend. Conan o' Brien needs some cash. Apparently Conan will do a short, a seven minute short on YouTube and a minute and a half of it is an ad.Drives me crazy. But here's the thing. What gives you the right to do ads at the beginning of your show.And the answer is, you've already built a relationship with your audience. They already know who you are. You already have that connection. So they will tolerate a minute and a half of ads because they love you so much.That makes sense. I hate it, but it makes sense. And so when you start and you are nobody and I am nobody, and I start off with two minutes of ads or I do five breaks.This is not made up five breaks in the middle. So there's five divided by five is two and a half minutes. Ads in the middle. For me, it's not the time. It's not the two and a half minutes.But when I hear a break and then another break and you're like, okay, surely they're coming back after. Nope, they're back again. Here's another. Well, surely. I mean, this is three. Are they gonna. Oh, there's another one.Holy cow, are they ever coming back. And then a fifth one, and then by the time they come back, you're kind of mad. At least I am. That's a survey of one.But keep in mind, basing your show on how a celebrity does it when you're not a celebrity, in my opinion. Not a best practice. It's an opinion is not the way to go. Build your audience first, then bring in the ads.Or at least if you bring in the ads, I would not start them at the beginning. This again, not a best practice. It's Dave's opinion. I want the first thing you hear to be my voice. And I don't want to sell you anything.Now, I do mine very close like I do mine in the intro, but they're very short. But if you think about it, and the only reason.If you've ever wondered if I was coaching me, I would say, hey, that whole thing you do with the coupon code, like, you haven't even given any information yet. And I always keep those super short. I do them at the beginning in the event you go, wait, what was that coupon thing? I don't see it anywhere.What was the coupon? It's right there at the beginning of the show. So I can also just put it in the show notes, which I do.But keep that in mind when it comes to celebrities. Now, the other thing is chit chat.And I think my favorite example of this is James Credlin and Sam Sethi do the weekly pod news wrap up something show. It's basically pod news. It's like pod news. What's wrong with my mouth today? It's like, pod.I'm just leaving these in Pod News greatest hits for the week. And then Sam and James talk about it. And so they go through. They have a very. Here's the top stories. They usually have an interview.They use chapters, which is great, by the way. Let's take a tangent, shall we, to. For crying out loud. Here comes another 10 second tangent. 10 seconds indeed. Such absolute rubbish.We talked about brands. Daniel J. Lewis is a brand and he launched Pod Chapters this week.If your media host doesn't do chapters and you want them, you can go over and make them with podchapters.com I was lucky enough because Daniel's a good friend of mine to be in his beta group. And I got to tell you, I do ask the podcast coach and that is a very hard show because we are taking questions from the audience.So we are all over the place. And most AI tools fail miserably at this. And Daniel by far has done the best job of picking up all the different topics that we do.It's over@podchapters.com but speaking of chapters, we're going to go back to James and Sam because they use chapters in the Pod News Weekly review. Ugh. Finally back to the show.And so they have all these topics that they use chapters on and the last thing that they say is, is, Sam, what have you been up to? Oh, I've been doing this and my daughter and I was riding through the countryside and drinking wine. James, what were you doing?Well, I flew all over the world and now I'm sick and I've got animals that are trying to kill me in my backyard because I live in Australia, et cetera, et cetera. And then they do their last calls to action and they're out. And I listen to those. Why? Because I love that show. I'm a fan of that show.It's a great way to catch up with all the news. And in one episode I actually support them with money. But for me, the best place for the chit chat is at the end, where your super fans are.Now, if you're gonna do chit chat at the beginning in that report, I mentioned earlier the podcast study, 33% of people do not want any chit chat. 42% said, but you gotta keep it short.And so for me, I think short chit chat is tolerable if it's relevant to the title that you are using for the episode.So if the title of the episode is Podcasting Best practices, but the opening chit chat is about your cat chewing up the couch and the kid just pooped in the swimming pool. While those are entertaining, we tuned in for whatever is in the title of the episode.And so that's where I say, put the chit chat and look back and listen and go, is it really. Is it a funny story or is it just you ranting about your husband or your wife or whatever?Because I'm here to tell you that's not going to go over well when they hear it. So keep that in mind. That's my suggestion. Again, that's not a best practice.Well, it kind of is a best practice because that report says, Look, 70% of people are not a fan of the chit chat. And the problem with the way they worded that is they did not define what is short. Is that 10 seconds? Is it 30 seconds? Is it two minutes?Kind of scary, but that's where I would put the chitchat. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, again, I totally agree with you should be yourself. I'm being myself today.I'm also operating without bullet points. That's the problem. What's going on? That's why my brain and my mouth aren't working. I have a blog post I wrote about this, but I don't use my.I don't have my yellow sticky note on the monitor with my bullet points. So best practices are things that have been practiced and found to work best. And I want you to be yourself.Your podcast, it's a recipe, it's not a statue. And you can do whatever you want. And keep in mind that even with these best practices, my audience is not your audience.It may be completely different. So feel free to test and report back to me. Hey, Dave, I tried this and it's going gangbusters.I am always open to new input with the data of, hey, here's what happened and here's how it worked. So keep that in mind. My goal is to just answer the question, hey, are those best practices that we've been following forever still, you know, viable?And if you are testing things like YouTube, I would love to hear your input. That might be something. I might just take the page right out of Collins book there. He did a great one where he interviewed a bunch of people.Maybe that's the question of the month. I think we did that one already, but that's one that's being tested and that's one I wanted to look into.And when I looked at his data and I was like, wait, that's only 28% of everybody that's actually doing video. So I'M always open to suggestions. I thank you so much for giving me your time. I hope you got some value out of it.If you did, could you do me a favor and go to your phone and do you know another podcaster or somebody that's maybe complaining about why their podcast isn't growing? You might want to share this with them and go, hey, are you doing these things? I hear these are the podcasting best practices.It's from this guy named Dave Jackson. He helps podcasters. It's kind of what he does. He's been doing it for 20 years. I would deeply appreciate that. And until next week, take care.God bless. Class is dismissed. When I wrote my book podcasting, what the heck is the name of my book? That's hilarious? I don't know what it's called.All right, here we go. I'm still almost laughing. Okay, again, there was this great study called the Podcast Report. Or no, the Podcast Again. Great, great, great. Hold on.We're cutting this one out. What is the name of that survey? Ah, yes, the Podcast study. Hey, this is Doug from King's X, and if you like what you hear, go tell someone.