318 - How To Invite Your Audience To Contribute To Your Content

0:04 Good morning, podcasting Morning Chat. Today is Thursday, June 5th, 2025, and today we're tackling your questions on engagement and metrics, plus breaking down new features from Spotify and Acast and what to know about Spotify for creators upcoming outage. 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 and 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 Ronic and I am struggling with Clubhouse. Let me make sure all my Co hosts are on stage here. Yes, now we've got them and my Co host. Speaking of, we've got Jonathan Howard, Dr. Fey, producer Ashley Feller and Sid Meadows. I'm sure more of the cast and crew will be joining us momentarily. I also see we've got some people in the audience already here on Clubhouse and we are live on YouTube. I will get you that link momentarily unless Ashley, you could grab it for me from my YouTube page and pin it. That would be awesome and good to see some familiar faces in the audience.

2:08 I want to 1st shout out Janae who is here bright and early. Usually he has to join us after he's dealt with the kids and he's here bright and early. I want to say, you know, I called him out yesterday for his interview with Pat Flynn and didn't realize we were talking to a birthday boy while I was chatting about his interview. So yes, we missed his birthday, although I did get to him after the show and yeah, it's his birthday. So happy birthday to you, Janae. A belated 1 publicly. Also, let's see here. I also wanted to call out Drew. Drew in the audience.

2:51 Drew, somebody I've seen and known on Clubhouse for a long time and it's been a minute since I've seen him here. So Drew, welcome. Welcome back. Good to have you here. So today we are going to dig into the mailbag. We do have a couple of news stories to get into as well. And I should tell our podcast audience, we also have Nick Dahlbach and Alex Baelish on stage with us now as well. So I think the way I'd love to start things is with this mailbag question. This comes from Matthew from Sacramento, CA, And he asks, do any of you rely on listener content for your podcast?

3:39 If so, how did you go about getting your listeners to contribute? And I know that we've talked about this here and there, and I figured since this came through the mailbag, let's really dig into it and give some concrete suggestions. I'm going to start, and then I see Alex wants to chime in as well. And then I'm going to ask our team. Start thinking about your answers. Even if you haven't done it, most of you here are very experienced and probably have some good suggestions. I'm going to start with direct requests. This is maybe obvious to some and to others it's one of those things where you hear it and you're kind of like, oh, Oh yeah, that's right, I can do that.

4:23 Direct requests regularly remind your audience that you're looking for input. Explicitly ask during episodes. This is something that I see a lot of podcasters failing to do, and I think often times it's the podcasters that do mainly or strictly interview style podcasts because I think what happens is, is that they get caught up in the interview. They also don't want to sound too pitchy with a guest there with them. They feel like it's awkward. They feel like it might throw things off. And I say no, it's not. It's part of your show.

5:06 This is how you do it. And if you get into a routine of asking, it's going to feel more natural. It's not going to feel as awkward, in my experience. So that's the first one. Explicitly ask for the content. So if you are relying on mailbag questions, you know, like I, I sometimes do, then you got to ask people to do it. So I'm going to say send us your mailbag questions, e-mail me markmarc@ironicmedia.com, IRONICK media.com, or you can go to podpage.com/PMC and use the contact form there and submit your questions. Think actually that's how Matthew did it. He went through the podpage.com/PMC website. Alex, good morning.

5:57 What did you want to share? Good morning, everybody. For the what is from cast, we get a lot of feedback, but you know, one of the things that that we do is we post question peek whether they're shorts or whether they're during the live. We had our guests, the contributors actually come on as a result of all that. I think it's always hard to get engagement, but just about timing and what's moving the needle when it comes to this stuff. It's a little easier for what we do because people want to talk about the the show versus a business or, you know, interview based show, but we get people all the time making different reels and, and stuff like that, that we'll analyze.

6:44 And I think that's how we do it or that's how you know, we did it. And I think that's where it gets kind of fun because you have some of these wacky theories and conspiracy theories when it comes to the show and you're like, you can go down a lot of deep dives with it. I just think, yes, asking, I mean, that's the main thing is asking, but not only just asking, but posing questions during your interviews or during your podcasts that kind of engage it so that people can go back to it. And I think that the other strategy to it is following up with the clips, you know, making sure you have the clips that people want to engage to it as well. Yeah, creating engagement is a great way, creating other ways to connect with your audience. That ends up leading me into what I call grass roots outreach, and I know I've shared this before. This is the idea once you see who your regulars are, it doesn't even have to be your regulars, but I this is how I often do it.

7:40 When you see your regulars commenting on your content, those are people prime for you to reach out to and say, hey, you know, you know this show, I'm looking for more contributions from my audience. Would you be interested in reaching out or interested in sharing so that I can use your share on my show? And I'm going to just give a quick example to now, this isn't exactly podcast related, but this has to do with the Empowered Podcasting conference. We last week, we're only at 1/4 of the applications from speakers that we were last year around the same time.

8:24 And that made me a little nervous our deadlines coming up June 13th. So what I did was reached out to people that I know have enjoyed this show, enjoy what I do. If you know a fan of the work that I'm doing. And I reached out and and asked, hey, would you be interested in being a speaker? And I'll tell you within a week, we went from around 25 ish applications. We're over 60 applications now. And that I'm telling you, yes, some of it had to do with me posting in a Facebook group asking, so there's another idea for you.

9:07 And it had to do with me reaching out to individuals. So don't be shy about what you might think is a, a slow way of doing it because it can make a very big impact very quickly. If you need content, if you're doing something say like what I do with the mailbag, reaching out and getting, reaching out to two people and getting their contributions because you reached out, that might take you through a whole episode. It often does for us. Thank you, Alex. I'm going to check in with Nick. And by the way, good morning to Amanda Sharp, who's joined us on stage and so is Janae actually. Nick, good morning to you. Did you want to add a suggestion if for somebody who relies on listener content for their podcast? Hey, good morning.

9:52 Immediately when you asked this, I kind of put myself in the shoes of like, OK, starting a podcast that is somewhat newer, I might not have as many listeners. Engagement is hard to come by early on. And I don't know what this person's situation is specifically. That's kind of the the ones I'm looking at it from because it can be kind of, I don't know, it defeats you a little bit, especially when you like ask the question and you get crickets. So I think one thing, and I mean you do this here on this show as well, like when we go to mailbag questions, sometimes they're questions that come directly to the podcast in morning chat, like you were saying that the contact form, sometimes you're finding interesting questions in other Facebook groups or conversations that are being had that are still questions relevant to the the show.

10:45 And the discussions we have here might not be directed at us, but it's still a conversational piece. So I I would suggest if you are newer or struggling to kind of get that listener content is look beyond just people asking you directly. Look into other Facebook groups if it is relevant, if there are Facebook groups on your topic, Google search like I'm thinking people also ask. Or hell, you could even go into ChatGPT and say, hey, pose as a listener for my show and ask a question that you think listeners would want to know about. That one I'd probably used as more of a last resort.

11:26 But if you go into Google and do like people also ask for Facebook groups, like these are questions and things people are asking that are totally relevant to your show. They're questions other people are having. And it might encourage, like as listeners start picking up on that and I say, oh, hey, he's answering questions about XY and Z, like I'm going to ask my question now. I guess it'll just encourage the behavior as they see it coming versus maybe sitting back and maybe not doing that segment because you didn't get a question that week or whatever. I'd say look outside to other communities and outlets as well for those questions being asked. Yeah, Thank you, Nick. I like both of those. Yeah, go search for what are people asking for in online forums, whether it's Facebook, Reddit, etcetera. There are a plethora of questions in most niches out there.

12:20 In all niches, I'll be bold and say I think pretty much we can find people talking about specific niches and categories on the Internet. No problem. And yeah, good point. Just go into AI and ask it to give you some of that quote UN quote audience content and it'll do a great job. I've done it before, I admit it. Dr. did you have something? I saw your hand come up a couple times. You know, every niche, whether you are a female entrepreneur, a plumber, a caregiver, I mean you name it, every single niche has a conference, a meet up, a something, even virtual. So take advantage of those times that you are in that situation at those conferences and ask people there because they're in your niche.

13:11 They might not be a listener then at the time that you're asking them, but there's a good chance that they would be after you ask them that question. I love that one. And Sid, did you want to comment? I did. Good morning everybody and have something to add to. So I'm going to a conference next week. It's our annual furniture conference. They'll be 4050 thousand people in this building and you know, I have a whole plan and a map of what I'm doing and plan to ask very similar questions to get content ideas and further look at ways to make my show better for the next season. So that's a great point. I would also say emailing. If you have an e-mail list, just e-mail them and say, hey, I'm looking for I'm looking to do some episodes that will help you directly.

13:58 Please reply if you have a question or what, however you want to phrase it in your way, Right. So emailing them and I'm in the middle of doing this right now. I think all of you know that I'm surveying my audience and I put a dynamic ad at the front of my show saying, hey, I'd love to hear from you. As we starting to plan. I've done a quite a bit of direct outreach to people that I know to listen to Mark, to your point earlier, I'm actually keeping a list of people that engage with my content that I can see their name like on LinkedIn, other places, and I'm directly reaching out to them. I've had great success with that. Everybody that I've reached out to has said yes, and I've had all those calls up to this point. I'm struggling to get people to click the link in the show notes to schedule time with me or to complete the form. So I'm going to change up my strategy on that a little bit. But I think e-mail is a really great way to just ask people to share what's going on with them.

14:52 What problems are you facing today that you can then take that and address it as content in your podcast? Yeah. Thank you, Sid. Love that. I'll be curious to see how you change up your strategy there if that wasn't working as well for you. Forms can be tricky because when people hear forms, they're either really excited to go do it or they feel like, oh, I don't have time to do that for them. You have to. I like to try to make them as short and sweet as possible. That tends to get more engagement when it's direct and straightforward. But keep us posted how you're doing that. And I see Dave Campbell in the chat said, I use speak pipe. Speak pipe. Yep, we've talked about that one before too.

15:33 Great one for people to call in quote UN quote, right? They go to a website, they press a button, your speak pipe button, and they can leave you a voicemail. And then you can play that on the show if you want, or you can just paraphrase it and share what that message was with your audience. But it's a, it's a great way to do it. It's a great additional content as well. And I see Janae in the chat said other ways to get more questions. Answer the public. Yeah. So I mentioned Reddit as an example or Facebook groups. Answer the public is a great one as well to get content what your audience might be asking. Let's see here we have.

16:13 Who else wanted to share? I know several people did. I don't want to hog all the answers. Janae, welcome again to the stage and happy belated birthday again. What did you want to add? Good morning everyone. Thank you so much. This is fun. So today it didn't have my son's off tomorrow's aid, so no school in the morning and I was like, well, I can hang out in the room today. Yeah, and I hear you're doing it through your mic too. Yes, sounds very. Smooth. I'm using the Club Deck app on my desktop so I don't have to use a phone. It's pretty cool. Which one is that by the way that you're using Club Deck? Is that the? One club deck dot AB Yep, it's not affiliated with what do you call that club at all?

16:54 They keep updating it as soon as clubhouse updates their stuff and it has all of the same features that clubhouse has pretty cool. So lots of different ways and I love the way, you know, I don't have a podcast that people are asking me questions. Oh my God, this is happening. So is this true? Like being somebody who has an interview based podcast where I'm interviewing other guests, I don't get a lot of questions from people, even though I have a little thing set up on my website like hey, ask a question here or e-mail and you know you've been asking, but I don't really get those questions. So I do like these answers where hey, I can go to chat TBT or I can go to answer the public and read it. But I like the idea where you shared hey, direct asking. So I might do that a little bit.

17:45 Awesome. Thank you, Janae. Good. I'm glad that inspired you a little bit and I'll give another one. And then if you're on stage, show of hands, if you want to add more, I'll kill some time and share another example. I think that let's see, let me look at my list that I have written down that I share with my clients offering incentives, right. So I said a moment ago when I was mentioning to Sid, sometimes those forms are challenging to get people to fill out. So you could incentivize it and it doesn't necessarily. Certainly one way to do it is some kind of small giveaway. It could be a random drawing. So once you get a certain amount of submissions or by a certain date, you have a certain amount of submissions, you could randomly draw and offer some kind of giveaway.

18:34 You could, but you can also make it pretty simple and offer recognition, shout outs, calling out people by name. That has a lot of value to a lot of people. So that would be another one I would suggest to you and I'm looking to see if my Co hosts will have anything else. OK. And sharing up. Wait, I'll stop. I'll bite my tongue. Dr. Did you want to add something else? Yeah, A. Lot of breaths as I tried to get. Well, I'll I'll share 1. You catch your breath. I'll share one more. Another one. You catch it. I don't want to hear you struggling. I feel bad. Let's see, highlighting examples of listener generated content that in itself can inspire others and demonstrate that you know of the thing kind of things that you are looking for, right? So me reading that question can often times spark another question from another listener and it gives them permission. It shows them, oh, he actually does take the time to read these questions and share them on the air and look at how extensive of an answer I get when I answer that question. So that would be another one I would suggest as well. I mean, that one comes kind of easy. And again, even if you're not getting the content, if you want to generate the content yourself, you could then you could then spark some inspiration from others when they hear that you're actually taking the time to share what your audience is sharing with you. Go ahead, Dr. So along with the

20:08 shout out, hey Jane Smith, she, you know, asked about blah blah blah. How about Jane Smith from the Jane Smith podcast or Jane Smith from, you know, it would, it wouldn't be, it would be a little bit more than a shout out, but it wouldn't be a plug. I don't, I don't even know what you would call it like an ultra shout out, a powerful shout out. I don't know. But say where they're from, what they're, what they do, something like that, you know, give them a little. Yeah, it's, it's part of those incentives I think that I talked about. You could actually, you could encourage and say, hey, if you share, you know, if you whatever it is like if you need mailbag questions, if you share your mailbag question and include your business or include your podcast, I'll be happy to mention that and give you that that quick plug too.

20:58 It is basically a plug in and that's OK. If that's part of the incentives, then so be it. And I think that can easily get people to share for sure. Sid, what do you got? So I would say, I'll call this phone a friend, right? So if you want to get and you're struggling to get listener engagement, phone a friend and ask a friend to pose a question to you. Maybe ask them to you speak pipe or type out their question. And so get somebody to help you because kind of to your point earlier, Mark, when you start highlighting, oh, today Mark reached out and the mail by questions from Mark at blah, blah, blah, that might encourage other people to do it. And you can say, Hey, I'd love to answer your question to head over to the website, click this link and submit your question.

21:42 So, you know, phone a friend to help you to get started with it. That might encourage other people to react that same way. I love that. I've done that before. I've had on my old show, I've had people leave voice messages, but they were really people I knew because I was having a hard time getting the audience to engage at some point. And that actually did help once I started playing the the voice messages from the people that I knew, I wouldn't say posing as listeners because they were genuinely listening. But once I started playing that, it did start to open the floodgates. I started hearing from more of my audience. I think we've got plenty of suggestions there for Matthew from Sacramento.

22:28 Appreciate that question, Matthew. I hope that helps and you and I hope it helps others. We'll get back to the mailbag in a few. We want to make sure to cover some of the headlines that we didn't get to yesterday when we covered when we did our news and comments segments. So first a cast, the podcasting, the podcast hosting provider. They have unveiled an AI powered smart recommendations to what they say revolutionize podcast advertising and it is intriguing. It is interesting. It's an AI driven tool designed to streamline the podcast advertising process by matching advertisers with ideal podcast audiences through natural language prompting. So what does this mean?

23:20 It means that, well, obviously advertisers can describe their target audience in plain language using the tool, and it will generate A curated list of suitable podcasts. It utilizes AI to understand the intent behind the queries, offering nuanced and contextually relevant podcast suggestions. And I'm going to stop. I didn't talk about this yesterday, right? Somebody stop me if I did. Comprehensive show insights. So it provides detailed analysis of podcast content, audience demographics, engagement levels, tone and style to inform recommendations. And each suggested podcast comes with explanations, aiding advertisers in making informed decisions. I find this really cool.

24:11 Now, The thing is, is if you're already on a cast, you're automatically part of the Smart Recommendations program. You have no extra steps you have to do. You're already in it. And you just got to make sure that all your show info, your episode details are current. So that improves your chances of being matched with the right advertisers. If you're not on a cast, you're going to need to join their network, join their platform to be included. So if this is something where you are actively looking for advertisers, sponsors, it's something you might want to consider. If you're not on a cast, it is, I recognize it is a big jump to switch platforms. So it this has to be something that you really believe is going to help monetize your show.

24:59 And I guess I'm saying that to you because sponsorship isn't always the best answer to monetize your show. It can be challenging and a lot of advertisers are still hung up on old school ways and expecting 10s of thousands of listeners, audience members in order to engage with you and your podcast. So I think you have to really be in the right position if you're going to actually switch. If you're already on a cast, awesome, you're, you're in good shape here. Early testing indicates of of this particular thing in early testing indicates a reduction in campaign planning time by up to 92%, allowing for quicker deployment of advertising strategies.

25:44 Approximately 80% of ad buyers uncovered previously unconsidered podcasts expanding their advertising reach. That to me is really attractive to know that a tool like this is helping smaller podcasts or unknown podcasts become more discoverable by these sponsors that are participating. And podcasts with under 50,000 weekly listens experienced a 14% increase in median purchases purchase rates and a 35% rise in median visit rates, according to Pod Scribe. Very cool. And we also wanted to get into some Spotify stuff. I'll cleanse the palate with the news Music Dr. Do you want to take this next one about the scheduled outage coming from Spotify?

26:39 I sure it's 10A. On the on the list. I got it. Thank you. Sorry. OK, OK. Spotify's subtly announces a scheduled outage, so it reads, Hi there. Spotify for Creators is conducting a scheduled technical upgrade on Monday, June 9th at 8:00 AM Eastern Time. We expect this to take around an hour to complete. During this scheduled downtime, all Spotify and Spotify for Creators features, including the ability to publish new episodes and make changes to your account, will be unavailable for use.

27:24 Please keep this in mind as you plan out your show. Rest assured, audiences will still be able to enjoy your show without disruption. We know this might be an inconvenience, but we're working hard to ensure all goes smoothly. Thanks for your understanding the the Spotify for Creators team. There you go. You know, look, some people may be annoyed by this. I appreciate it because whatever it is, they've got something to do behind the scenes and they're trying to. They're probably picking a time that's not as popular as far as their podcast, Spotify for Creators, clients, customers, whatever you want to call us.

28:05 They're. Yeah, I think they're probably picking a time that we're not using it as much. Of course, this show uses it between the 9:00 AM and 10:00 AM hour. So Ashley and I are a little hesitant, a little concerned, you know, will we be able to publish it on time as we normally do? But if we can't do it the normal time, we're OK with that. We'll wait until it's ready. Not a big deal for us. Sid, I saw your hand was up. Did you want to ask something? It did, but it's not related to the news. But it is news, but it's not related to the news. Is that OK? Sure. So I would like to see if Amanda could give us an update. I believe her artist came to visit her yesterday and drove in to talk her to her. So I would love to see if she's got an update for. Us.

28:48 Thank you, Sid. Yes. So yesterday we had Amanda share a little bit about a gentleman, older gentleman, I think he's 90, came in, actually it was 2 days ago maybe. Anyway, he came into her store with these handmade coat racks that he made with his own hands. And Amanda was really enamored by him and his coat racks and offered to sell them in her store, talked about it on TikTok. And that video went berserk. She got 10s of thousands of views, lots of comments and potential clients, customers coming from different areas of the country to buy those coat racks.

29:28 So yeah, Amanda, he came in your store yesterday. Do you have an update? Do so I'm trying to update my photo, my profile picture, but I don't know I got a red message. So he did come in and he's I don't want to say he's shy, but he was a little overwhelmed. So I don't have a recording that unfortunately. But and even when I was home and I was like in the paper wants to do a story on you. He's like, oh, I just don't know about all this publicity. It was just so precious, but he was blown away and you know what's so fun is I could kind of see like a little spark in his eye just kind of ignite again. He's like, man, I don't really have any of my equipment anymore.

30:12 I sold it years ago. He goes, it kind of makes me want to just like create again. Now he, this gentleman, can't he, he's beyond being able to create. But to see that there was this light in his eye and just for him to know that his time here on earth isn't over. So he is going to bring me some more items that he has. And I don't know when I'm going to get him because I mean, he he's got a lot of responsibilities at home with his wife. She has dementia. So he's been busy taking care of her. So this again is just one of those sweet things that I think exactly what he needed did during this time and he he was blown away by the power of what the Internet can actually do.

30:54 I'm sure he was. I'm sure he's not a TikTok guy. No, not at all. That's so cool. That is really cool and it's such a great thing that you're doing Amanda, just helping somebody like that who who wants to be able to put these out there in the world. Didn't really know how and it's so cool that he found you because sure, you have a store and can do that locally, but where you've been so busy and doing so much on TikTok, it was just such a natural fit and it's cool to see it. All come to. Fruition. Absolutely. It's again just an on to be part of his story. Yeah, absolutely. Well, keep us posted, Sid. Thank you for that reminder for the update. Appreciate that.

31:36 And OK, so we've talked about this outage again, that's happening Monday, June 9th, 8:00 AM Eastern Time. Spotify for creators will be down. They say it will take around an hour. So fingers crossed for this show that it does in fact only take an hour and we will be unaffected. Dr. There's another story that you have here, 10B on the on the list and. Yeah, yeah, I would go to 10 V but there's a tiny little story that I, I don't want to miss out on. So tiny. OK, so there is an app, a, a podcast playing app called True Fans. Not only fans, but True Fans.

32:22 Admittedly, I thought that that was only fans when I saw that written down. I know you did. I think they could have probably named their platform a little better, but podcast platform True Fans has announced support for hosting video and audio via Get a Load of This HLS. Oh, that's what we were talking about yesterday. Right, a streaming technology. It's part of a wider piece of industry work for video support in Open RSS. So I just wanted to put that out there that if you are a listener on True Fans, it still makes me laugh.

33:04 It my Beavis and butt head is cutting off. There you go. So yeah, I just wanted to make sure that that was known. Yeah, that's very cool. Thank you. And Janae, do you have a question? Yeah, how do you spell true fans? Is it with AZ or is it with a S? It would be TRUEFANS and on on my sheet it's all one word, there's no space. Isit.fm.com that I don't. Know. Oh, oh, you know what? Hold on. Let's see. Yeah, I don't know what it is actually. Let's see. I have true. No, it's not truefans.com, that's for sure. It just took me to a godad. True Fans FM.

33:45 There it is, sweet. True fans dot FM. And knowing Janae, Janae will be on there by tomorrow. Yeah, I don't like moving my podcast from Spotify, even though they're turning it off. Yeah, right. That's so you use Spotify as well? Oh, yes. OK, cool, cool. I. Mean we're using YouTube because it's free video provider had the biggest distribution. Why pay for podcast hosting? Yeah, I'm with you. I mean, well, I'll tell you one way to why you might pay for it is, is you may get better analytics. That might be one reason why, because I don't particularly find Spotify's analytics that impressive.

34:28 Not to say that it's poor. It's just I think there are other platforms out there that do a better job with those analytics. And actually, if we have time, we're going to talk a little bit about that from the mailbag. So stick around for that. And Amanda, what do you got? I just wanted to say if you want to see Mr. Spinelli pull and refresh on my profile picture shows that sweet man Awesome and you guys are seeing it here first. No one else has seen that photo. Oh, very cool, very cool. Sorry, podcast listeners, we'll figure out a way that you can see it too. Maybe if, if and when you do share it publicly, let us know. Maybe you could share it in the Facebook group too, and then we can direct people over there. Give us an update over there. Thank you, Amanda.

35:09 All right, Dr. So now there's more Spotify news, some some more of their features or that they're releasing. I think that are worth talking about. Yeah, so last week I talked about my podcast app Pocket Casts and how they were going to implement recommendations by the creators. Well, looks like Spotify is shopping on is hopping on the same kind of boat. So they are going to be implementing that soon. And but also in addition to that, and I'm not sure if we talked about this the week before or not, but key highlights will include enhanced home feed, new following feed in this episode feature. That's like a quote quote in this episode quote feature in interactive elements.

35:58 So the enhanced home feed users will now see personalized podcast and video podcast recommendations directly on their home feed, accompanied by contextual notes explaining the suggestions. That's textual notes. That's kind of cool. And I, I've noticed it just the other day when I opened up my Spotify app, I was looking at the home page, the, the main feed and I saw video and it turned out to be a podcast and it turned out to be somebody we were praising yesterday, Jefferson Fisher. It was his podcast and it was his video podcast and it was just quietly, it was muted, but you could see the video was actually playing on the feed when I was scrolling through it.

36:43 So I, I found that feature really cool. And you know, who knows, maybe one day if I can start putting up more video, I'll see us on there. You know, when, I guess I'm not really relating to this story because when I do pull up Spotify, it's through my laptop, it's through my computer. And so I don't pull it up on my mobile too often. And I just went back and it just it says specifically mobile on this story. So and in addition to that, a new following feed is dedicated. Following Feed consolidated the latest episodes from all followed podcasts into one accessible location on the home page, addressing previous challenges in tracking new episodes. In this episode, feature creators can now link the content discussed in their episodes, such as songs, audiobooks, and other podcasts.

37:37 That's kind of sounds like show notes, but directly onto the episode page, facilitating deeper listener engagement and in the interactive elements it says. And as we mentioned last week, Spotify recently introduced threaded replies and emojis reactions in podcast comments, allowing for more dynamic interactions between listeners and creators. There you go. Yeah. And actually, I just replied to a comment on our Spotify page. Thank you to Dave, who's in the audience right now. Dave suggested that at the Empowered Podcasting conference, we should do some improv for some of the workshops that we're going to offer.

38:23 And I really love that idea, Dave, thank you. I think we will try to incorporate that and actually one of my good friends who I met at Pod Fest, I've shared this a million times, met him at Pod Fest. He was part of that seven creator house that we all rented in Texas together after only meeting once. We all rented a house and lived with each other for a week helping each other with wherever we were in our particular content creator journeys. And he, one of the things he brought that week was improv and he led a workshop, if you will, for the seven of us. And so I'm thinking if I can't get one of my instructors to come, maybe I'll have him cuz he's planning on coming. I'll have he and I lead something like that at the conference.

39:09 So that's, that's great suggestion, Dave. And there you go. That's a great reason why you maybe want to encourage people to comment on your episodes over on Spotify, because it does create engagement. It does create new ideas. And that's what this is all about. So yeah, thank you, Dr. I'm trying to Oh, and you know, here's one other thing I want to say. This isn't a new feature as in recently, but it is a newer feature from Spotify for creators. And by the way, you don't have to use them as a host to take advantage of a lot of their features that they offer. You can still. I'm glad you said that because that that was my question.

39:52 Yeah. Now I don't know if it's every feature, I haven't tested it as a non user, but I do know that you can go claim your podcast through Spotify for Creators and then take advantage of a lot of these features anyway, even if you are on Buzz Sprout, on Libsyn or wherever you have your podcast hosted. But what I wanted to share was Spotify for Creators recently published something about the clips, and I see Jeff Dwoskin in the audience he had seen a while back when those clips were introduced. I had talked about them, I think on social media as well as here, and he really appreciated that he started using it and noticed it was helpful. So I wanted to tell you because this is really cool. I like this idea.

40:41 They are Spotify shared. How are other what are their clips exactly and how are others using them meaning other content creators and it's they they've got some of the big name creators sharing those answers. So Spotify clips, just like your clips that you put out on Instagram, Tiktok, etcetera. You can now add them and attach them to your episodes. So they are, you get up to 90 seconds per video and you can only add 1, I believe at this time, one clip per episode. It appears on the home feed. It helps get you featured on browse. It stands out more on show pages. So if you're on say, the podcasting morning chat page here on Spotify, you'll see something my episodes listed and you'll see an an icon, if you will, that shows it's a very small thumbnail of it almost looks like a GIF where of the actual clip that you've uploaded to that episode so far. Am I making sense?

41:53 I just want to make sure I'm not confusing anybody so far. Give me a thumbs up, thumbs down. If you're not following or if you are OK, I'll continue on. And here are some ways that some creators are using it. First, we have from the School of Greatness, which is hosted by Louis Howe. Howe's sorry that says that they're looking to put up clips that have emotional, viral or cliffhanger moments, and they focus on trailers that tease the best of your episodes. So those are two different ways that school of greatness uses it.

42:33 And here's a quote from Lewis Howes. I'm sitting in on every interview as it's as it's recording so pretty far ahead of time. I have moments marked that I can kind of hear might be viral moments that I liked, right? So good advice. If you're in the moment recording an episode and you noticed this would be a good highlight, write down the time when that happened so you can easily go back and find it later. That's actually not from Louis Howe's directly. That's from one of his team members sharing how they use clips. Also this comes from Matt Brown. He's the brand strategist of Hearts Starts, heart starts Pounding.

43:21 They create purpose built promo clips, even if using audio, they talk directly to camera when they're using video about the episode and hook and it says here hook new listeners visually. So I just started doing this and I'm going to explain it a little bit better. So talk directly to camera about the episode. Ever since I started going live on YouTube, I like to start about a minute before Showtime here on Clubhouse and to not just sit there with a minute of dead air and me just looking around the room doing my last minute prep. I take that minute to prep the YouTube audience what's in store for them. I usually try.

44:07 My hook right now that I start with is you're behind the scenes of the podcasting morning chat. I feel like that helps maybe stop the scroll for people who find this later. And then what I do is I casually tease what we're going to talk about on that particular day. And I've been doing that, like I said, for a little while now. I saw this suggestion from Spotify for Creators and this particular podcast Heart Starts Pounding. And I just started doing that recently. So the last handful of episodes, that's the clips I'm using and it's really short and sweet. It's easy. I'm not doing any heavy editing on it. I might cut out a couple of pauses or gaps here and there just to keep the clip moving a little bit, but ultimately it's very casual and it's me teasing the episode, and I think that's perfect.

44:55 It's a great use for using clips that are attached to your episodes. And here's their quote from Matt Brown of Heart Starts Pounding. Instead of using a clip from the actual podcast, I talk about the thing that the episode's about in a way that feels native to the platform. I found that tends to get people more excited to click and go listen to the episode. And here is some more tips. Choose hooks that convert. Grab attention in the first three to seven seconds. Build curiosity without confusing listeners and align the teaser with the real episode vibe some more. Turn Discovery into streams.

45:38 This is more suggestions. It says here add 20 seconds to your workflow. It adds 20 seconds. So it's saying that this is quick and easy like I was talking about earlier. It provides higher click through. Click throughs to episodes. Sorry, my computer just went bonkers on me. Higher click throughs to episodes reported by creators already posting those clips. So I suggest if you have this ability, if you want to go and check it out and join Spotify for creators. I highly suggest you do this. Even if this means if you're not doing something live like I am on YouTube, even if this means when you hit record to start your episode, just talk to the camera for a minute and and say to your audience, here's what what's coming up on the show today and then isolate that after the fact and upload it to Spotify. It's very easy.

46:35 Go ahead, Dr. Well, this is just piggybacking off in off of the topic that you're talking about now, but it's one of my biggest pet peeves. It grinds my gears because the majority of the people who will be watching your video, it's not the people who are watching it live. It's it's the replays. That's the majority of the people and what I can't stand to seeing that countdown and it starts from like, you know, one minute and it was like 2 days ago that they filmed it. They could have easily taken that out. They could have easily edited that out. It just grinds my gears when I see that. Yeah, I hear you.

47:16 And for whatever reason, that also gave me an idea for those of you that are doing intros for your podcast that are recorded part of the podcast, just isolate that intro and use that as a clip. And I think that's also good. It will help some people with discipline and keeping those intros to 90 seconds or less, because that's, that's the limit that you get for those Spotify clips. And I personally think if you're going past 90 seconds, unless you are extremely engaging or the things that you're saying are extremely engaging, I think that you are potentially losing people or they're just skipping through it and you, you wasted that time. So, yeah, I, I, I think that taking advantage of this is a smart move because if we're taking advantage of these different features that a, a provider like Spotify offers, I, I think they're going to help push out our content. So the more we can take advantage of the features, I think the better it is for us as creators. OK, I'm looking at the time and I know I teased that we have another mailbag question.

48:26 I all right, we'll we'll try to to get to this get through this and if we don't, we can maybe pick it up tomorrow. So this one comes from Jenna CI don't know her if I can say her last name. Hold on while I clear my throat, OK? And she is from Richmond, VA she says. Hi Mark, I've been listening to the podcasting morning chat for a few months now. Thank you and love how you all clearly break down the podcasting world. I recently launched my own podcast and feel a bit overwhelmed trying to understand all these podcast metrics. What should I actually be paying attention to? Downloads, subscribers, completion rates? I'm not sure what's most important or how to use metrics effectively.

49:14 Any guidance or resources you could recommend would be amazing. Thanks for all you do. And Dr. found an article from Asha. It's Asha. AUSH, a.co, this was a blog talking about what they feel are their top ten podcast metrics to measure your success. And they didn't actually rank these. I just want to make it clear. So these are, this is in random order, but this is and, and for the most part, I agree that these are the, the, the most important ones to be looking at at least what, which ones you put the most emphasis on, that's up to you. And we certainly have our opinions that we'll share.

49:57 So Dr. and I will just try to go through some of these One we'll just go back and forth here to help save some time. The first one here is subscribers. This is the number of subscribers indicating indicates that how many people are committed to the podcast and are likely to listen to future episodes. It's the metric they say is crucial for projecting future downloads and is attractive to potential advertisers. Now this languaging is also a little confusing because nowadays Apple, Spotify and some of the others, they don't call it subscribers anymore. More they they kind of jumped onto the social media bandwagon and call it followers.

50:42 So that's you can exchange the two either subscribe, subscriber or follower. I appreciate your new word in the language called languaging. Did anyone miss that languaging? I love that OK #2 is total downloads. This shows the overall reach of your podcast. However, it's important to note that this metric alone doesn't provide insights into listener engagement or episode specific performance. Exactly. So yes, I mean downloads is the number one thing that most people talk about and it is only a piece of the puzzle.

51:25 Next one up is downloads per episode. Analyzing downloads on a per episode basis helps you identify which content resonates most with your audience. This informs future content strategies for you. So those episodes that you look at individually and see how many people are listening to it. If you have a lot of people listening to certain episodes, that might be a telltale sign that this is the type of content I need to make more of. This is what my audience is into. Right. And we're still on downloads, but this one is downloads over time. Tracking how downloads accumulate over time can reveal trends in listener behavior and longevity of your episodes appeal. And then there's completion rate. So this is the one we talk about a lot, the Met. This metric shows the percentage of an episode that listeners typically consume, offering insights into content engagement and potential drop off points.

52:22 This, as I've stressed before, I think is really for me the number one metric that I will pay attention to. And admittedly, I do pay attention a lot to downloads, but just as far as what's working and what isn't, paying attention to that completion rate is so important. And is that that's the one that you can only find on Apple, is that right? You can find that on Apple, you can find that on Spotify. But the problem with Spotify is it's, I think only, it only applies to Spotify listeners. So it's only giving you a piece of that puzzle. And then for that matter, same with Apple. If you go directly into Apple, it's going to show you just Apple stuff. But if there are some hosting providers that will share that metric across the board, but it's very few and far between. And I find that weird.

53:16 That's just a weird thing that they would not have that, you know, that's not a given. Exactly. Let's wait. Let's check in real quick with Sid. Did you have a question? Sure. Yeah, I'm with DRI. Find it really weird that people like Buzz Route can't give us consumption rates. Do you know why that is, Mark? Why do we have to go to Apple and Spotify when when, you know, Bus Sprout gives us so much other stuff? What's the reasoning behind that? You know, it's a good question that I'm going to actually investigate. My assumption is that it's not something that say Apple distributes puts out there for companies like Buzzprout to capture and share with their customers. It's just not, you know, they they'll share downloads with these different platforms, but for whatever reason, they're not sharing that consumption rate.

54:04 I think that's the reason why, but I again don't really know and I'm going to reach out to Buzz Sprout 1st and see if they have any insight on that. Sid and I will get back to everybody and let them know. Well, I find the Apple consumption rate chart to be very difficult to to figure out, right? It's complicated. Yeah, it, it, it's not only complicated, but sometimes it just doesn't make sense. Sometimes it might show a completion rating of over 100% and that one always confuses me. What? How is that possible? It I guess maybe it might be tracking if people are listening to it all the way through more than once.

54:47 I don't know. But it that's a confusing stat. Sometimes it doesn't show it at all, yet it shows that you had people listening, people pressing play, but it doesn't show you what that completion rate is. It's really confusing. I agree. Sid Dr. You want to take the next one? So this one is audience by listening platform. Basically, what app do you listen to your shows on? Understanding which platforms your audience uses can guide distribution and marketing efforts. And then I'm going to just wrap us up and share some of the others that Asha shared that I am on the same page with. Reviews, ratings, rankings, etcetera. While those don't directly impact chart positions or perhaps rankings, they serve for you and your audience as social proof and can influence potential audience members, influencing their decisions to engage with your podcast.

55:40 Also, peak times. I was actually looking into this a little bit. Not all platforms offer peak times, but there are some that do. And I actually even wrote this down for you cuz I find it. I find it important in some ways, maybe in other ways not so much. But basically this just means you're identifying when your audience is most active, which can help been scheduling when you release episodes and promotional activities for that matter. What I found here was, you know, think places like Buzz Sprout don't seem to show that. I think places like Libsyn does show that. If you want an extensive list I would recommend just Google it or use AI and ask AII want to keep things moving. Also monitoring outside of the podcasting platforms like your website, find out what kind monitor that traffic find out monitor the traffic to your podcast website that what you can do there is that helps you indicate the effectiveness of your promotional strategies and listener intent in addition in additional content.

56:47 And then of course your social media. Pay attention to that, right. Do you for example, Instagram, among many other of the platforms, you can learn a lot about who's engaging with your content, the age demographic, the all the different areas that might be of important to you. I think that looking at that can be really helpful, especially because we don't get some of those metrics from the podcast hosting platforms. So using social media, for example, empowered podcasting, what we don't even have a podcast to track some of those demographics, but our sponsors want to know more about that. So what do we do? We can pull it from last year's attendees, try to get things like age range and their gender and those types of things.

57:35 But for our ad or for our sponsors, for those decks that we provide them, we're adding the demographics that we find from our social media followings. So there you go. It's a little past 8:00. We got through the list. I hope that helps you. I hope that helps, Jenna. And we are back tomorrow at 7:00 AM Eastern Time talking all things podcasting. And of course, it's a Friday. So we'll share our wins from this past week. Bring your wins, bring any challenges you have as well. And we can talk through those. And maybe you're working on something that's not quite a win yet, but you're working on it. And maybe you want to share that with us and we'll help hold you accountable. I have a challenge to bring tomorrow.

58:16 I have a challenge to bring tomorrow. Awesome. There we go. Thank you Dr. So join us 7:00 AM Eastern, live on YouTube, live on Clubhouse. And if you can't just catch the podcast replay a few hours later. So until tomorrow, make it a great day everybody take care.