311 - Cracking the Code on Podcast Charts & Discoverability

0:05 Good morning, podcasting Morning Chat. Today is Tuesday, May 27th, 2025, and today we're cracking the code behind podcast charts. From Spotify to YouTube. We'll unpack how rankings really work and what that means for your shows, bills, visibility and growth. So if you're listening live on Clubhouse, hit the share button, bottom left hand side of the screen and share it. However, Clubhouse lets you. And if you're listening via podcast, please share this episode with a fellow podcaster. And now give us about 30 seconds. We'll get things rolling. Thanks for being here.

1:21 Good morning again, podcasting, Morning chat. Thank you for being here. I am your host, Mark Ronick, and here on stage with me. We have a full house. We have producer Ashley Feller, Alex. Welcome back, Ashley. Alex Baelish, Nick Naalbach, Dr. Faye, that was the person screaming, and Sid Meadows. Oh, and also Amanda Sharp is on stage with us as well. Really, when I say full house, it's a full house. And thanks to those of you who are here in the audience bright and early this morning. I should let you know I forgot to grab the link, so I'll do that. I am also streaming live again on YouTube.

2:01 It's been a few weeks because, well, I've been away and then last week I was in Maryland all week visiting family didn't really have the equipment to go live here on YouTube. So here we are back in my home studio really happy to be back. It's really yesterday was my first full day sitting at my desk and and I know it was a holiday yesterday, but being that I've been away for so long and even last week was a bit of a distraction really wasn't a full work week for me. Yeah, today is that first day back in the chair, as they say, and it is really good to be back. So couple things first, I'll share a little bit more about what I want to get into today, but I just I don't know why I just figured I'd share with you on I think it was Friday.

2:50 I posted a short a video on social media and I'm sharing this because for whatever reason I seem to be attracting haters on. Social media I repurposed. This short that I made probably a couple of years ago, the topic was on Three Minutes to Hook a podcast listener. It's one of my favorites, just one of the ones that I put out that I'm really proud of and I even use. And the reason why I repurposed it is because part of the video, what I like about it, is I use the Mission Impossible theme music and it really adds that fast-paced tempo, that fast-paced feel to the video. And it's done great for me in the past. And I figured, well, with the new Mission Impossible movie out, I figured why not, let's put it out there again and see what happens.

3:41 And I wouldn't say it's had the same success that it has in the past. I think I've maybe repurposed this twice or one other time, this being my second, but this was the first time I got hate from it. And admittedly it does still kind of rubbed me the wrong way when I see some hate messages, but I certainly don't lose sleep over it either. In these cases it more or less just baffled me. Like why do people take the time just to hate? I saw on TikTok and I left this one up there. There was one on YouTube that I just removed because it was mean spirited and I didn't need it on there. The TikTok one said you couldn't even keep me from bouncing off this video in four seconds.

4:30 Keep in mind the opening hook is something along the lines of you've only got 3 minutes to hook your podcast listeners. Here's how to keep them from bouncing, meaning bouncing off your podcast. So that person says you couldn't even keep me from bouncing off of this video in four seconds. My reply to that person was, well, it's a good thing I don't try to teach TikTok strategies then, right? So he was commenting how? Well, you couldn't even keep me on this video. Of course, he did stay more than 4 seconds because he had to comment on it, but irrelevant, right? OK, so you didn't like the video on TikTok. Well, that's not what I'm here for. I'm not here to teach you TikTok. So I felt good about that reply and I felt like, you know what, keep it up there because as we've shared before, engagement can tend to help yours content be more seen. And on YouTube, it was something similar. It was something like I bounced and blocked you. That one I just deleted because I don't know, just didn't feel like there was anything I could respond to it where I don't know, I just felt like I just felt like getting rid of it. DRI see your hand is up.

5:40 What did you want to say? You said that you repurposed this, right? This was a repurpose? Yep. OK. So the first time that you or the last time that you posted it was there the same kind of reaction? Not at all. Well, now that's weird. Yeah, yeah. It's really weird. I don't know, maybe I was thinking maybe because I did use the hashtag Mission Impossible, and maybe these are just Mission Impossible fans that could care less about or couldn't care less about podcasting. So who knows? And Jonathan, I saw your emoji looked like maybe fingernail painting, and I'm curious why you chose that one.

6:22 Because people are just going to say what they're going to say and you just need to go on with your life and do what you need to do. I wouldn't worry about checking out hashtags or anything. I would just chalk it up to, hey, it's engagement and that's perfect what you needed. Yeah, that's kind of what I'm thinking too. And it's still annoying to get those. And it's one of those things that I have told myself I got to get used to it. Like I've shared with you before, I want to go, I don't want to say go viral, but I do want, I do want to grow. I do want to reach as many people as possible. And I do feel like I was telling Nick this maybe over the weekend or maybe on Friday.

7:02 I do feel like I've earned those stripes and it's about time. And if I'm, if that's going to happen, if I were to all of a sudden blow up on social media, I'm going to see a lot of, I'm going to get a lot of hate. It's just inevitable. And I got to develop that thick skin. I'm actually OK with that hate. I know I said I deleted that one just because. And it just felt so irrelevant and unnecessary. So I deleted it. I got to get used to keeping them up no matter what because like I said, if I'm going to manifest some big success on social media, that's the kind of stuff that comes with that. So to be continued, I'll let you know if I get any more hate.

7:46 And today we're going to get into something I know that a lot of us wrestle with. And it's not hate, it's discovery. Specifically, how podcast charts work and what they mean for us as indie creators trying to grow a show in a space that's always shifting, always changing. So we'll look at the charts, how they're calculated across the platforms like Spotify and Apple, YouTube, even Good Pods. I think Good Pods is worth discussing as an indie podcaster platform, but more importantly, how that affects how we create and promote our content. But I want to be super clear upfront. I believe, and you've heard me say it, if we truly know what our audience wants or what entertains them, everything else tends to fall into place.

8:41 Discovery, rankings, growth. It all starts with understanding the people we're making this for. So while today is going, we're going to explore platform algorithms and strategies to climb the charts. Maybe at the end of the day, it's about connecting with your audience. That's the foundation so. Let's acknowledge that and. Put that to the side because it's going to be easy for a lot of us to say, well, I'm just making content for my audience and that's all that matters. I agree with you, but charts exist, algorithms exist, and I think it's important for us to at least understand how these things work if we're going to. Continue to try to build up our discoverability, to continue to try to grow what we're creating.

9:36 So we're going to kick things off with an icebreaker question and then we'll move into all the things I said, how the charts actually work, what impact they have on us, what we can realistically do to improve discoverability. So let's start with what's one way that you hope people would find your show, But maybe it hasn't quite worked out that way yet. Maybe you feel like you've had this way that's going to help people find your show and you've been pushing that way, but you don't feel like it's being received and it's not really paying off. Does anyone want to start? That's here on stage.

10:17 And if you're listening in the audience, come on up. By the way, good to see you, Paula, joining us here in the chat. It's been a minute. So thank you for joining us. And also hello to Jeff, Greg, Michael, Michelle, Brian, Yvonne, thank you for being here. Come on up and join us if you are interested. But yeah, what's what's the discovery method? What's a way that you're trying to get people to find your show and maybe it's working for you. Maybe it's not anyone want to share or you want me to share first? OK, hello Co hosts. How are you? So today one way that I've been working to get more eyes and ears on the podcast is through meta ads. And I would say it has gotten more ears and eyes on my content.

11:08 I've seen it, but I don't think it's been moving the needle enough for me yet. And I'm working with our friend Tyler, who's been on the show before working with Tyler to to tweak that to see how we can get it to work more in my favor. And I think one of the biggest ways for me that we're going to do that is to really pinpoint who I'm targeting. I think we for the first month or two, we were keeping it pretty broad on purpose just to see what it attracted. And now I want to, I've been keeping a list of who are the types of people, the types of industries that would benefit from a morning discussion on podcasting.

11:54 Because I've been specific to trying to get people to come to the podcasting morning chat, not necessarily to come to my business website, just specific to the podcasting morning chat. So I'm working on, OK, who am I going to target specifically? Now? Maybe that's going to be coaches, maybe it's authors, nutritionists, Realtors. These are the types of people that I think could really benefit from having a podcast that may not have made the time to create a podcast and could use some help. DRI saw your hand up. Go for it. I have a platform of course. I purchased it on Epsomo a little while ago and it's called press Ranger and what they do is press releases and I've had it for a while.

12:42 I have not cracked it open yet, but I have ish new client have ish they, they have yet to return the, you know, signed contract, but we talked and this is the first time that I'll be embarking on that, that press release platform. I'm kind of excited because they have all the big names. They guarantee to get a press release to, you know, all that the CBS News, ABCNBC, Entrepreneur magazine, Fox Money Watch, I mean you name it, they guarantee to get the press releases to those places and we'll see how it works out.

13:24 I'll be interested to see how it works out. I love that. Thank you for sharing that, Dr. and I would love for you to, if you're open to it, to document your process as you go and share with us how that's working. Yeah, I don't think enough of us take advantage of PR and I know we've had in the past a while back, probably a room about how to utilize PR. But I think having something one of us actually going through it and using something guided like what you're talking about, I think that would be really helpful for us as a community to learn from. So would love to follow that journey with you. We've got Yvonne on stage. Yvonne, did you want to share a way that you've tried to help discoverability with your show, help grow your show? Maybe it's worked really well for you. Maybe it hasn't worked well at all for you. What?

14:16 What say you? Well, a couple of years ago I hosted A symposium or a summit, an online summit, and I did paid ad for that summit. I don't usually do paid ads on Facebook and Instagram and all that, but I did end up with 300 people signing up to come to the summit, which I was very pleased with and they ended up on my e-mail list, etcetera. The thing though that I learned from that is not all of them are podcast listeners. And so that was an interesting, like, I don't know that they necessarily all of them translated into ongoing listeners of the podcast and I don't even know how to measure that.

15:03 So that is the thing. The other thing that I've done is try to build a presence on mostly Instagram is where I put a lot of my energy and that I've had some success in, in building up some numbers over an Instagram and sharing my message there. And again, I don't know that it translates into podcast listeners, but it is another way for me to talk about my topic and meet people where they are. So I figure it's not, you know, it's it's worthwhile. Yeah, yeah. I love these. Thank you. And I'm curious if we could, if anyone has ideas or thoughts for Yvonne, maybe this time it's too late. But for future, for anybody else listening who's thinking about doing an online event or building up their podcast presence through social media, how do we measure the success of something like that, something like an online event? Does anyone have any suggestions? And I do, but I'm trying to get everybody else to participate here and not hog the mic the whole time. Does anyone have any thoughts or ideas for Yvonne or anybody, anybody else?

16:17 How do we track that conversion from, say, an online event to a podcast listener? Wow. I mean, simple custom QR codes that you have at the online event that may direct them to the podcast and obviously you know where they're coming from. So you can just track the scans on that QR code. But really other ways to track and on an in person event to online is going to be I had something come into my head and it's calm down. No problem, No problem. Yeah, I think that's a great way using QR codes. And still you don't know at the end of the day. And that's one of the problems of podcasting, I think, is that it is hard to track how people are finding you. And are they sticking around once they do, right? Yeah, you might be able to track. OK.

17:09 Somebody used this QR code 100 times. Awesome. That sent them to my podcast. But did they press play? And if they press play, are they coming back? Are they pressing play in the future? That can be challenging and frustrating as a podcaster. Yes. Ashley, good morning. And as Dr. said, welcome back. Oh, thank you. I was just thinking maybe some sort of a host event survey, Like maybe if you have the emails of the folks who attended the event, just send them a questionnaire saying how did you find us and through what channels? Yeah, absolutely. That's another great way to do it. And I think even putting out a survey for your podcast audience, you know, when you're asking them to say, follow you, maybe instead you asked them to go to a link on your website and fill out the survey so that you can better get to know them better. Jonathan, you had it popped back in your head. It popped back in my head.

18:06 So two things. Eventbrite is a great tool for events whenever you can use it because it does keep track of who's coming. You get a list. It really is makes it easy. You can e-mail directly from that platform. The other thing is getting instead of actually relying on the QR codes, get their emails from, you know, when they walk in the door, get their emails and send out an e-mail like Ashley said, like hey, fill out the survey or listen to this episode of my podcast if you haven't already or followed the podcast. Something simple in the e-mail that's easy for them to do. Yeah, I love that. Thank you. Appreciate that great suggestion. OK. And anyone else or shall I continue on? All right, I will continue on.

18:52 Do you? Find. Well, maybe I should ask it like this. Is there any frustration that you have when it comes to podcast discoverability? Is there anything? Yeah. Ashley. All right, I'll stop right there since you raised your hand. Thank you. Go for it. I think it's that so much of it feels, I don't know if it actually is, but it feels that way, that it's dependent on YouTube because I've heard it thousands of times. You know, you get the most discoverability out of YouTube. And that puts a lot of pressure on folks to create video, which we all know is a whole other, you know, can of worms in terms of time, expenses, personal investment.

19:35 I think that's it. Yeah. Just being a little more aware that YouTube is a is a huge factor in discoverability. I can get on board with that and I don't think it means that has to be video. Right. Nowadays with podcasting being at the forefront of YouTube, at least it it's part of their big plans to continue to become or stay the number one platform in podcasting. And you can do that with audio only content. People are doing that with audio only content. I do think that the video tends to make people stop their scrolls more quickly. But yeah, you could, absolutely. Take advantage of YouTube.

20:18 And it's interesting how these different platforms differ between how they are ranking your podcast. And ultimately, let's be real, the rankings all feed into that same algorithm. So, you know, if you're looking to get more views, more listening time, more watch time, etcetera, it all plays into the same thing. You're going to move up those rankings if you're doing all the things that the algorithm wants to see you doing. So I think then maybe I'll just dive into what some of these tools actually do, how they do it, right. So, starting with Apple. Pulling up my notes here.

20:59 Starting with Apple. Here's how Apple, and this comes from an article from Pod News and some additional research to make sure we were on the same page as Pod News. Let's start with Apple, According to Pod News, factors include. New follows so people who hit that plus button on your podcast located on Apple podcast playback activity. So those people who are hitting play and completion rate, that's how long they're actually listening to your podcast that particular episode or episodes. How long is it 20 minutes of your 60 minute episode?

21:41 Is it all 60 minutes and the more time spent listening the better? Ratings and reviews are not considered when it comes to Apple Podcasts and I'm curious, does that change anything for anybody? If you know now, maybe you didn't before that ratings and reviews aren't a factor in Apple Podcasts. Does that change how you? Would promote at the end of your show, Would you would you continue to say please rate and review the podcast? Does that matter to you anymore? Yeah, Dr. Great review. I think it's under appreciated. Everyone says it doesn't mean anything, doesn't mean anything. I think it gives you a tremendous amount of St. cred and you you just never know who's reading through, you know, 05 stars, OK, I might give that a listen.

22:32 Or, you know, two stars that's low on my totem pole. I might listen to it, but it's I'm not going to rush to it. So I think indirectly, I think it can help despite what people say, because I hear all the time it doesn't help. It doesn't make any difference. I hear that all the time, but I think indirectly it may help. And then the cherry on top is the, you know, the, the street cred, St. cred is not the right word, but social proof is what I was looking for. Yes, the social proof that it gives you. Yeah, I'm with you. I'm with you there. And I see Nick, Jonathan and Sid want to chime in.

23:14 Let's go to Nick. We haven't heard from Nick yet this morning. Good morning, Nick. Yeah. So what say you on this topic of ratings and reviews with Apple? Hey, good morning everybody. I think it's important this whenever we have conversations talking about algorithms or the the systems that are ranking our stuff behind the scenes, we always have to keep in mind that we're still creating the shows, the content for people. And yeah, the ratings and reviews might not do anything for your show algorithmically. Sounds like a good one. Sounds legit. It still has an impact on the people like someone is going to a physical person is going to look at those reviews and that could be a deciding background of whether or not they listen to your show or not.

24:04 So it might not help you rank higher in the charts, but it still might help you get listeners because at the end of the day, the listeners are people. They're not the AI, they're not the robots, they're not the algorithms that are listening to your show. So I think they are still relevant, just not necessarily to the algorithm conversation specifically. Yeah, I feel that. I'm. I'm with you there. I'm curious. Everybody in this room, even if you're listening live in the audience with a show of emoji hands, thumbs up, or you can do a little wave hand, How many of you make that decision on a podcast based on the rankings? If we had two shows exactly talking about the exact same stuff, but one had five star reviews and one had say one or two on average.

24:59 So most people in this room are saying the ratings. Oh my God, I'm the only one that which I'm selling stuff. There's Jonathan's got it too, Jonathan. OK and Nick's, yeah. And I didn't put my hand up and I, as much as I like to say that's it doesn't play a role, it does for me. I definitely am going to. If all things were equal except for one show had more five star reviews than the other, I'm probably going to that one first. All right. Let's go to Sid and then Jonathan. Go ahead, Sid. Good. Morning everybody. I'm still going to ask for ratings and reviews because their content, I take them and repurpose them and put them on my website.

25:43 You can use them on social media, right? I post them in my stories on Instagram. I have not used them on LinkedIn, which is my preferred platform. I need to start doing that, but their content too. So whether or not they're helping the algorithm, they will help your lurkers that are following your content but not commenting and maybe not listening to your show. So just remember that they are content as well. Thank you, Sid. And a follow up question for you. So if you're going to start doing this on LinkedIn, how will you use those reviews and ratings on LinkedIn specifically? I'll just post it as content and I'll take the grad week because we have a system that when we get an e-mail from whatever odd thing it is that we get the notification that we've got a rating and review.

26:29 We take it and we have a graphic and then we put that on the website. We cycle the new ones at the top. Haven't done it. We've gotten 3 new ones. We haven't done it recently, but but then we take the old ones to put them on the second page. So we put the news on the 1st place. I'll just take that graphic and post it and you know, give a shout out if I know the person, give a shout out to the person and say thanks for the rating and review. We really appreciate you being part of the community and thanks for letting us know how much you enjoyed the show. Something very simple. I like that. I like that because it feels really personal. It's not just you as the podcaster posting, hey, we got this great review, take a look. It's actually thanking that person. It's taking it a little bit of a step further and taking a moment to say, hey, thanks, Joe Blow, appreciate this review. And then sharing it.

27:17 There's just it, it adds a layer that I think is important. It personalizes it that much more. Yeah, so I I would still ask for ratings and reviews and another way besides using them as social proof posts on Instagram or something like that. I love the idea of thinking people said. The other thing that I think that they come in handy for and where I do look at reviews is if I'm researching somebody who might be a potential guest, I might go over and peek if they've got a podcast and see how their podcast seems to be doing and look at that as as a factor. It's certainly never a deciding factor because story is king and in my world of having a guest on. But that said, if I want to go be a guest elsewhere or build a career as a speaker, which I'm hoping to do in the future, it is, as Dr. would say, St. cred or social proof that says, hey, I have a podcast, it's got all these five star reviews, blah, blah, blah.

28:25 So it's good for marketing. Yeah, great for marketing, absolutely. And Mike Short here in the chat says rating and reviews help SEO, and I'd like to love to hear more about that, at least from your perspective, Michael. And in the meantime, if you want to come up, please do now. It's a good opportunity. And Nick, I saw your hand go back up. What do you got to say? Yeah, I actually had a question for the whole group and everyone listening here. OK, when you're finding a show, how often are you going to the charts? Because for me personally, I don't remember the last time, aside from you guys doing the the roundup during Wednesday's weekly news, I can't remember the last time I've actually looked at the charts to find the podcast.

29:14 I'm always in the search. That's a great question and I don't think I've ever done that. I mean, maybe, maybe. Once or twice in my lifetime of podcasting, I'm pretty sure I probably have, but ultimately that's not where I'm going to find a new podcast. And that said, again, it goes back to what I said at the beginning. If we are playing the game and trying to chart, I think and and we're and we know how to do that. So in Apple's case, if we know getting new follows lot of playback activity and a high completion rate, if we're creating content around that, even if we don't chart, it's going to still help algorithmic algorithmically.

30:00 Like you said, they kind of go hand in hand, but I don't think people are going to charts often to to find a new podcast for themselves. Yeah, Sid, go ahead. So. I'm just going to say out loud, I am not trying to chart. I am not trying to go viral. I am not trying to become a social media rock star. I'm trying to have impact to the people that follow me and give content that helps them in their life and their business. I can care less about the charts. I can care less about going viral. What I care about is the 125, a hundred people, whoever it is, however many it is on a given day, that consume any of my content, that my content has made a positive impact in their life for their business, and that is what I'm after.

30:52 And I totally respect and appreciate that. And if you are handed over a formula that says here's how to impact more people, do you do you ignore the formula? It's a really great question, mark. And I think that if it was about reaching the right people versus reaching the masses, right, what you're talking about how to do this with Apple, and I'm seeing you're going to get to Spotify too, is about reaching the masses. And my podcast is not for the masses. My podcast is really niche. It's about a specific topic and a specific group of people. And I don't care about reaching the masses. I care about reaching the right people. So if it could, if it was a formula that could help me reach the 10,000 people or whatever it is that work in the office furniture industry, then I'd be all about it. But if it's a formula that says this is how you reach the masses, I'm not interested.

31:44 And I'm not trying to be the naysayer here, but I know what my podcast is about. I know who my podcast is for, and I know who I'm trying to reach. And every day I try to reach and connect with those people. OK. Yeah, I'm with you there. Go ahead, Nick. So I got a question for you because I I like that mission with the show. I think that that's great and I think a lot of people probably resonate and feel that I, but I do have a question on that I think is important to this whole thing is with that being your goal, how are you tracking the success of that? How are you tracking that you are in fact impacting these people? Is there any kind of way that you are keeping track of that? So it's a great question, Nick.

32:31 And I would say that the number one metric, and I've used, I've said this before, the number one metric that I look at is the amount of people that reach out to me through my show or during whatever it is that tell me that my shows had an impact on them. I mentioned this in a win, I think it was on Friday about a guy that wants to meet me in a couple of weeks simply because he wants to shake my hand and say thank you because my content has helped him in his life and his career, right? So that's my number one metric is the people that reach out to me. The second metric is obviously I do look at the vanity metrics just to see if we're getting reached, if our shift to show is at least being consistent with his downloads or if it's increasing.

33:15 And if I see an increase or a spike in downloads, I want to know why. Most of those have to do with the guests. When I see a spike in download just because I had a really good guest that is a well known guest in the industry, right? So I'm looking at some of those basic things. But to me, the number one metric is people reaching out to me. And I do, thankfully, get a lot of people reaching out to me. Makes a lot of sense to me. Nick, does that satisfy your question? I just think it's something because it's one that's not as easily tracked as say, oh, where am I on the charts? OK, I will up here at 100. OK, now I'm showing up at 98. What can I do differently? Like it's, it's a little more elusive as to how to actually track it.

34:01 And I think tracking the success, especially with a goal for your show, is such a crucially important piece of the puzzle that a lot of people miss. So that's I just. Yeah. Yeah, cool, cool. Thank you. And yeah, that just also reminded me, by the way, if you're curious and want a quick way of looking where you may chart on, say Apple as an example, and actually I think this is maybe specific to Apple, you can go to charts.mopodmowpod.com and plug in your podcast and see where you chart. I have plugged in the podcasting morning chat and we come up. As #151 in the how to category in the United States, I saw last week we were number one, I think at one point in Vietnam. Don't know why.

34:59 But we were, and it's a fun way just to kind of get a gauge, see where. You may fall in a specific category. I think how To is the first. You know, you usually get 3 categories you can pick when you're setting up your podcast. I think How To was the primary category I chose, and I think the second category I chose was marketing, which I know is a little more challenging for me to rank at all in that particular category. Where do you get the charts, Kate? I just, I just shared it with youcharts.mopod.com will show you where you fall on the charts and when you're using specific players like Apple, etcetera, you can usually find those pretty easily. I'm pulling up Apple right now just to refresh my memory. If you go to the search, I think that's probably your best way to find the different categories and where and how people are charting within those categories. Mike, thank you for coming up on stage. I called you out a moment ago where you said ratings and reviews help SEO over in the chat. So I'm curious if you could expand on that a little bit. Well, I'm not an SEO expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I believe that most of the algorithms for the search engines consider how things are rated and how many reviews at least something has.

36:23 And you know, since we're talking about how to be discoverable, I think that that's a, it's probably an undervalued way by some people. Like I don't personally look at ratings or reviews when I'm looking for a podcast. I typically find a podcast one of three ways. Either it's a personal recommendation. I've heard somebody talk about the podcast somewhere else, which not necessarily recommended it, but it had generated some buzz somewhere. But the third way I tend to find podcasts is by just Googling. Hey, I'm looking for a podcast about this topic. And my understanding has always been that that the ratings and, and particularly the number of reviews affect SEO. But again, that's not my area of expertise. So I could be wrong on that.

37:13 But that's one of the things that has been that I have heard said in other communities and platforms and just general talk about SEO, not necessarily specific to podcasting. Yeah. So I think what I think the way I'm hearing this is ratings and reviews, although according to Pod news not considered on Apple Podcasts specifically, it can still be really valuable with SEO on the standard search engines like a Google, I think is that. Fair. That's my understanding, yes. Yeah, I think that makes sense. And Nick, I know you're not an SEO expert either, but I do know that you love SEO. Do you agree with that? Disagree or?

37:56 Maybe not just just not sure. I actually don't know. I do know SEO looks at social aspects and engagement for the website. So if people are sharing the website or posting it on other social media platforms like that is a, a metric that they are keeping track of. So I would imagine ratings and reviews would kind of follow a similar deal because it is a, a form of engagement with your content. I'd be curious where that where that is affected. Like is it affecting your show like an Apple podcast linked to a specific episode showing up on Google? Is it?

38:37 I have questions on that, but it makes sense. Maybe I'll I'll ask our friend Tyler Perry a little bit about that, 'cause I know SEO, even though I've touted him as somebody who knows a lot about meta ads, he actually knows a lot about SEO as. Well, and has been working with my Ironic Media website on that and it's been making a big difference. So I'll have to ask him. But Mike, I saw you came off. Mike, what do you have to say? Yeah, Yeah. Generally, I think when I use Google to find a podcast or look for information, it leads me to a specific episode. But you know, if you follow Gary Vee, he's been talking a lot recently about social media and how the algorithms are changing and how followers and your actual social network are less important, he said.

39:26 We probably recently I heard him say we probably should change the term from social media to interest media because TikTok has changed everything. And what people are finding now is they're searching for things is not necessarily based on follows and that type of thing, but how closely aligned with their interests or their specific question that a topic is. So that's one reason why he's talking about, you know, you should be putting out 10 or 15 pieces of content literally a day. And if you look at his stuff, it's not all highly produced stuff. A lot of it is. Pretty low quality stuff. He shot 15 seconds on his cell phone, but he puts it out there and it's hard to argue with the success that Gary's had. Yeah, it is hard to argue and it, you know, I think the common argument is that most people don't have the team or the time that Gary Vee does.

40:18 Even though yes his some of his content can look pretty low quality, I still think that. A lot of people don't have that. Luxury that he has. But yeah, he, he worked it, he grinded, he did all the things he was, he went through the, the evolution of being a content creator and here he is now. And like you said it. Is hard to disagree with, what with with what he's shown as to be successful, but I just think it can be really challenging for most people to put out 10 to 15 pieces of content every day. Well, you know, might be, but I think sometimes because we want our podcast to be so high quality, we miss a lot of opportunity just to get stuff out there because volume is is a huge thing.

41:04 I mean, if you put out 20 pieces of content a day and one of them hits, that could make your career if it you. Know true. I'm with you. I'm with you, Mike. Not arguing against Gary V and what he's purporting, you know, to, to post as much as you can, but I also just want to say he's built up his following over years. I mean, he, he did it when the Internet was a smaller place, when social media platforms were more prone to organic growth and all that. So I, I just want to call out, you know, the not comparing our results to somebody who's, who's already established and the, the spiders and, and everything are already liking his content.

41:50 You know, I appreciate what you're saying and sometimes I feel that way. I think about successful people out there in social media or in podcasting who are sharing their strategies. Here's or, or or tips right here's how to grow your podcast or here's how to get a lot of engagement on your social media. I feel like it's a little, for lack of a better term, a little skewed because most of those people have found that success already and have an active following already. And So what they're applying, I feel like works great for for an established social media account or an established podcast, but for one that is just getting started or one that's having trouble establishing their community, establishing their audience.

42:38 It's hard. Those some of those tips and tricks just don't apply to you yet because you're still struggling just to get somebody to comment on your post or to leave you that first review. Sometimes I think it's not that the gurus quote, UN quote are giving bad advice because they're sharing what works for them. But I think that sometimes people just take that as the gospel and that's just that's going to work for me if it worked for them. And I don't believe that's always the case. Yeah. And the, the main caution I want to put out there is just, you know, the the comparanoia, I call it. I love that when we're comparing ourselves, especially to somebody who is at a different stage of their business and journey. Michael, did you have something else? Yeah, there's just one quick thing. I hear what you guys are saying, but I think when Gary's talking about that advice, he's talking about for new creators and it's not going to work for everybody and certainly has it. He has a big audience.

43:37 And you know, as big as big a content creator as Pat Flynn is, he was recently interviewed by Gary Vee on what not, which is a new social media selling type of app that Gary's big on. But but when Pat started Deep Pocket Monsters which is a Pokémon themed YouTube channel, yes people that followed him at SPI knew about it. But that's not what happened and he got some incredible number of views in the 1st 300 days. 10s of millions of views with a brand new audience that really didn't know who Pat Flynn was. You typically don't find entrepreneurs that are into Pokémon.

44:22 And I think Deepak and Monsters now is getting more views than his original channel and all of that. And he kind of approached it without using his team other than maybe a videographer somebody to should help him shoot some video. But I think if you really dig into it, is it going to work for everybody? No. Does somebody like Gary Vee or Pat Flynn have an advantage? Sure. But the strategies that those guys are talking about are really designed for the small business owners, entrepreneurs, not just podcasters, could be real estate agents or whatever the case is. And I think don't be too quick to dismiss what they're saying simply by going, oh, they're already big. What they say doesn't apply to me. I don't think that that's the case at all. That's my personal opinion.

45:12 And I certainly, I'm not trying to imply that that's the way it is across the board. And I do think that some strategies that they're sharing, yes, they're designed for the smaller creator and they can work for the the smaller creator. And I believe that the reverse, the opposite, can also be the case. Yvonne. No, I'm not. I'm, I don't want you to misunderstand me, Michael. I'm not saying that their advice is bad or anything. I'm saying we all need to protect our headspace as independent podcasters who are on the smaller side with if we don't get the results that they're saying are possible, that OK, we'll just take it with a grain of salt that you're on your own journey. Absolutely.

45:58 And Jonathan, did you want to add something? I just want to say there are some things that we can take away from the big creators, and I don't want one of them to be post 10 times a day because that leads to burnout. It leads to crap content. It leads to you struggling to show up as yourself in your content. But things like recording yourself doing stuff like Gary Vee does is absolutely a gold like gold nugget that you should be pulling from him. And yeah, the more you post, the quicker you're going to grow, but you also have to balance. You've got a podcast, you've got your job, you've got other things that are more important than creating content.

46:40 You're not a content creator. You are, you know, a business owner. So I just want to caution against going all in on 10 posts and stuff like that. And I get what Michael's saying, but I just want to make sure you know that that you set your own journey and create doable goals. Yeah, and the way that Pat Flynn found his recent success with his Pokémon channel, his strategies in some cases are going to be very different from Gary Vees and vice versa, right? And this is where we get into finding something that resonates with you when you hear about it and trying it and going all in on that. And then assessing how did it work for you and if it worked, well, awesome, double down on it. If it didn't work, look for the next thing that some of these successful creators are sharing and apply it and see if that does any better for you.

47:40 Amanda, good to see you and good to have you here. What did you want to add? Good morning. I love that everything that Michael is saying, and I'm a huge content absorber of Gary Vee and I think doing the 10 pieces of contents, the easy part, what's the hard part is the work after. And I remember, and this would have been years ago, Gary Vee said he would physically spend hours of his time commenting back to these people who are taking the time to comment to him until it became physically like just the amount of time, he just couldn't physically do it anymore. No human being could respond to all the things that he needed to do.

48:21 And when I was on my journey just to grow my just my TikTok, the amount of time that I put in, I'm just trying to hit some milestones. I was so consumed and I did become exhausted. So to Jonathan's point, you do get that contact exhaustion where you just might not want to put out anything for three weeks because you diligently put out 10 things for 30 days. And then what good is that? So I think there's you have to find your middle ground that feels comfortable. So you're doing intentional postings, intentional engaging because I think without either or you're nothing. Yep, thank you, Amanda. And I think that personal experience really resonates.

49:04 It really hits home. It can get exhausting. And again, it's not the only only answer to growing, whether it's social media or podcasting. And like you said, you got to just find your. What works best for you? Did anyone else want to comment on this 'cause I do want to also get into some of the other platforms and how they're ranking. Spotify apparently ranks podcast based on unique daily streams per episode. A single listener streaming multiple times only counts once, so they can keep pressing play on the same episode, but it's only going to count as one stream. And you can call it a stream, you can call it a play.

49:44 The bottom line is it's it's based on somebody hitting that play button and it does not say anything about ratings as far as Spotify goes and how they are ranking podcasts. So I find that that interesting too. But again, to what we were saying earlier, I think social proof is very powerful. And even if it's not going to be to your advantage algorithmically, I think it's to your advantage in other ways. And then YouTube kind of throws everything for a loop here because they calculate rankings using total watch or listen time. We'll call it Watch Time For because that's the proper way to say it for YouTube, I suppose. Longer episodes.

50:30 Can rank higher even with fewer listeners. Because if fewer listeners are on that, but they are listening to the vast majority or in the entire thing, YouTube is going to favor that and move you up the ranks. That really throws us for a loop, right? I mean, it does for me because I really believe that a podcast really can be very successful at 20 to 30 minutes long on average each episode. But there are a lot of podcasts out there that are doing at least an hour and maybe more, and that might be to their advantage on a YouTube platform. So that might throw throw you for a loop. But ultimately, I think the way to reason that in your head is to ask yourself, is my content audio first or is it video first? If you are a video first podcast, then if you're playing the game, maybe consider longer episodes and focus on that niche audience and getting it in front of that that niche audience. Because again, number of actual viewers isn't really what's the factor here.

51:35 It's how long they're actually listening or watching. Yeah, Mike, go ahead. Interestingly, this just popped into my head, but all of those rankings appear to me to be similar to the way broadcast media has done it for years. It doesn't matter how good or crappy ATV Show had it mattered how many viewers it had, because that's what mattered to advertisers. And it seems like all of these kind of our, the rankings are based on the same criteria where I don't know if it's designed for potential advertisers or sponsors, but it seems to fall in line with old media, you know, the Nielsen ratings and that type of thing. Didn't matter how the show was regarded by viewers as a quality show or critics. It just mattered how many people saw it. It is interesting and we talked about how the world of podcasting because even though it's been around for over 20 years, it's still kind of feels like the Wild West. And when it came to be, when it came to fruition, it was adopting a lot of the behaviors from traditional media like TV and radio.

52:43 And I'll just quickly share 'cause I want to actually expand on that with you, Mike. Good Pods being the other platform I wanted to share. They compile their charts based on a combination of user engagement metrics within its pet platform. Podcasts are ranked by factors like listens, ratings, comments, subscriptions and shares all within that specific platform just like the others, right? Apple's only paying attention to activity within their platform. And same with Spotify, same with YouTube. So the question is to your point, Mike, and you can answer or if somebody else wants to, that's fine. How should this work? What's what do we think is the most important things that these platforms should be paying attention to and would that help us smaller creators rank higher?

53:34 What is the most important factor? Mike, do you want to take a stab at it? If you got to decide if you're at let's say Apple and you get to decide all right, how does this algorithm work? How are we going to rank these shows? What are some that you some of the factors you would consider? I think if I were one of those platforms where people downloaded, I would probably do it about the way that they're doing it because when it comes down to it, they're all businesses and they're trying to trying to maximize the value of what they're putting out. And to me it's, it's the hard numbers as opposed to how people, how people view it. And quite frankly, a lot of times the most focal people that are most likely to review or rank, maybe not the most likely, but I would say you have more listeners who like your show but don't comment or or review it, they might subscribe.

54:34 I would say a much lower percentage than people that are unhappy want to vocalize why they're unhappy. So I think they're probably doing it the way I would do it if I were one of those media. That's fair. And yeah, I think it's something like less than 10%. When you're talking radio, less than 10% of the actual audience is actually participating and engaging with that radio show. So if you're talking like a morning show, however many listeners they have, there's a very, there's very few of them that are actually calling in. Even though you feel like maybe on those morning shows, you know, they are going through their phone lines left and right and have so many listeners. Well, that's or so many callers. That's because they have probably a ton of listeners, but there's really a low percentage of them that are actually participating.

55:21 And I do believe that holds true in podcasting, Youtubing, etcetera. Sid, I'm going to give you the final word. Go for it. And to answer the question, I would like to see them track loyalty, meaning not just people that follow your show, but like how many times do I come back and listen to a new episode and are you on my regular playlist kind of thing, right? Like the loyalty of the listener to come back every time you drop an episode. I like that. That's yeah. I wonder if that could actually be possible, if they could do that. I'm sure they could. I think that would be you. May track everything else that you do in the world.

56:03 Yeah, they should. Right, they should. How? Many times I click ABC podcast to play at each week right. Yeah, Yeah, they should. All right. Well, thank you all that was, I appreciate that discussion. And I think at least now we, at the very least, I hope you have a better understanding of how the chart algorithms work. I'm I, I'm wondering if that will influence anyone and how they're putting out their content based on what we've heard so far. I don't think it will. I think that similar to what Sid said, I think what's most important is that we're putting out content that makes an impact on our audience, no matter what the size is. And I think if we're developing content for our for our audience with them in mind and what makes them tick, what interests them, I think that is the recipe for a successful podcast. So we are back tomorrow, 7:00 AM Eastern Time, and we will be covering all the headlines around the world of podcasting. The podcast show in London happened last week. That's the big convention out in Europe. It's the biggest in Europe for podcasting. There are lots that happened there that I know we will be covering tomorrow, along with all the other tools, new tools, new tips, new information in the world of podcasting. We'll cover it tomorrow, 7:00 AM Eastern. So come join us then.

57:24 And until then, make it a great day. Everybody, take care.