372 - Steve from Blues Clues, Web Traffic Mysteries, & the Branding Blues

0:05 Good morning podcasting Morning Chat. Today is Thursday, September 18th, 2025, and today we're helping you decide if your podcast content is changing. Should your title, logo and feed change to or is a refresh enough? 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 on YouTube or via podcast, please share this episode with a fellow podcaster. And now give me about 30 seconds and we'll get things rolling. Thanks for being here. Good morning again, podcasting, Morning Chat. Thank you for being here, especially to you, Chris Vaglio, for being one of our first in the live audience. And there you go, there's some more people filing in. Good morning to Greg.

1:35 I am your host, Mark Ronick, and on stage with me currently, we have producer Ashley Feller, Sid Meadows, Alex Baelish and Dr. Fay. We'll see who else from the cast and crew is able to join us today. I know Nick is still enjoying a vacation in Florida and I know Jonathan is also on vacation officially as of yesterday, so I don't know what that means with his schedule here on the podcasting morning chat. We'll have to find out. And by the way, it's the eight day countdown. We are on Day 8 before the Empowered Podcasting Conference kicks off and still feeling really excited about it.

2:17 Yes, Dr. what'd you say? Breathe. Breathe. Yes. Breathe. Breathe in. I think, I think we are officially all ready. In other words, I think although actually there's one more thing I have to spend some money on to make this thing happen. It's those journals that we did last year. We handed out to all of our attendees, to everybody there. We handed out these journals that we felt like, but we created them because we this was an idea Sid shared with us last year at a conference. He went to a different conference, not a podcasting conference, and he noticed that they had hand out the people running the event.

3:00 We're handing out these planners or journals, something that you could take notes along the way of your journey at that conference. So we wanted to adopt that. We thought that was a really cool idea and I got, I brought in my buddy Johnny and Johnny runs one of his side companies is called Lifey and they make planners for people in general, not necessarily for podcasting conference. They make plan planners, journals, etcetera to really help you achieve all your goals. And so we wanted to adapt what he does into what we wanted to do here at the Empowered Podcasting Conference. So we're going to have these journals for people to really get the most out of the workshops and presentations. And the most favorite part that we discovered last year about the journal among all of our attendees was the yearbook section.

3:55 We created a yearbook section for people just to leave notes to one another, just like the old days in high school. And it was a huge hit. And so we we incorporated that again. So do you have the app set up like, you know, the Movement podcast Movement has that app and everything. Yeah, we created with AI some some of these new AI apps out there that can create mobile apps for you just by prompting it. We do have one. We are and it seems to be working. It seems like it's solid and we're terrified to actually launch it just cause who knows what happens once a bunch of people are using it.

4:35 So now this app, let's say God forbid one of the speakers has lost his voice or came down sick. Is this how you communicate with everyone that OK, this particular class is cancelled or there's a new speaker for the you have someone come in like at the last second with something. Is this app the way that you communicate that? Yeah, we're going to have that, yeah. Any schedule changes, if any, we will update the app in real time so that people can see those changes as well. Last year we had one or two speakers that last minute couldn't come. One of them had a death in the family. So we had to scramble and we didn't have anything quick on the fly to to let people know of changes and what those changes were.

5:17 So that's an area that we've definitely covered. And at the very least, if the mobile app fails us, we'll make sure the schedule is updated on the website at empoweredpodcasting.com. Thank you for asking. So come join us in Charlotte September 26th through the 28th, the weekend of International Podcast Day. So if you're looking for a way to acknowledge honor that day, I think this would be a wonderful way to do it. All right, so here's how we're going to do things. Today's a mailbag day and we have two questions that are somewhat similar. So I'm going to read them both to you in a moment. And then I've got a bunch of questions around this idea of potentially rebranding or restarting or starting anew. But first, as some of you know who are regular listeners, I've shared that our most popular episode by far, I'm talking 10 times the amount of downloads of our average episodes was the one that we did when we talked about Steve from Blue's Clues and the podcast that he's starting.

6:28 Well, the podcast has launched, I think as of today, if not as of yesterday. And he shared one clip from the podcast on his social media. It captured my attention for multiple reasons and I want to share it with you here. And then I want us to talk about it. I want us to break it down. Meaning what made it get somewhere around or close to half a million views in just a matter of a couple of days? There are some obvious reasons, and I think there are some deeper reasons that we can dig into about the clip itself visually.

7:08 Obviously we're not going to be able to really dig into it because this is an audio first show, but there are lots of elements to it I think that we can listen to, break down and learn from. And by the way, welcome to Chris Baglio on the stage. Let us let me play that clip and then let's talk about it on the other side. Did my dog know that my dad was dying in Hospice? Because it looked like he did. I was going to say yes. Oh wow. OK. I think so. Again, like I think it depends on who you talk to, right? But from my experience. Animals know what's up. Yeah, I walked into the room and. I was like, oh. This looks different. Things look different today. And then the Hospice nurse was like, yeah, yeah, this is happening. And I said, go, what do you think? Like, you know, days, hours, you know, like what do you think she's?

7:56 Like, I don't know. Watch the dog. The dog will know. Apparently just two hours before he passed, my dog woke up as if he had heard something and went over and nuzzled my dad's hand. And my dad hadn't moved in days. And my dad, his hand, woke up and petted my dog. God, this is that story even now. But it seemed like he knew. I like to think he did. I like to think he said goodbye, you know? I've seen so many amazing things with with dogs and cats, with the with the owners where like they'll take off symptoms, they'll protect the the their loved one, they'll sleep under the bed, they'll sleep on the bed continuously.

8:37 They'll. Howl when someone dies like it's? Just intense. It's just intense that I just feel like. Dogs. I love dogs. There is Steve Burns from his new podcast Alive with Steve Burns. The name of that show is really a playoff of there was a rumor a while back that he had passed away and so he had come back to social media at some point. No, I'm still here. I'm alive. So that's become a thing for him. And the show has, as he's explained it, as we've explained it in past episodes, his show is really geared toward his old audience from when he was a children television show host.

9:23 It's now for those young adults and really talking about the things that they're going to be curious about, interested in talking about today, things like death, things like depression, things like sex. He wants to reconnect with that audience. And clearly from that clip, I would say that's, you know, he's on point with what he's at least attempting to do here. And I wanted to first point out before we evaluate the clip, I wanted to point out, first of all, the guest, I believe was a, is a Hospice care person. And I wanted to point out that her audio was kind of crappy, right? Clearly she didn't have a microphone or at least a, a studio microphone.

10:11 Dr. Did you want to respond to that? Yeah, and I thought the music behind it was too loud. The music that was too loud and heard. Yeah. And that kind of pisses me off because that is easily fixable. That's so easily fixable. Even with AI tools that are available like a phonic and Adobe podcasts. Exactly, exactly. So to have them not run that through something that has become like an everyday cool for us, it's a little bit infuriating and distracting. Distracting for me because I know it could be better. The music was a little too loud for me. It got in the way of me listening. OK, so I didn't connect with that with the music. Like I definitely noticed the music, don't get me wrong. And as long I think for me, as long as I can really hear the people talking clearly, it doesn't. It's not a distraction, but I could see how that could distract other people.

11:10 And this is the big thing for me. As far as what you were just pointing out, Dr. And you said something, I'll paraphrase it because I don't remember it by word by word. But this whole idea that, you know, it could be better. And as a podcaster and as a podcast producer, editor, yeah, of course. But the real question is, does the audience really care? Because yes, we know that there are studies that say if you have bad audio, it's a top reason why people might stop listening to your show. I don't know if I consider that or if a general audience considers that bad audio, especially these days where so many of us are doing video conferencing, where not everybody has a studio mic.

11:57 They're just using the mic from their computer. So I think sometimes it's just my opinion and sometimes I think that we as podcasters, as podcast professionals, we're quick to judge the audio quality like the one we just heard and we don't stop and think, but does this affect the audience? Will they care? I see several people want to chime in. Sid, good morning to you and great catching up with you. Yesterday afternoon it was was long overdue and great. I think we talked for like 90 minutes and we just, as they say, shot the S. It was great catching up Sid and I want to do that more with a lot of you here on the podcasting morning chat.

12:39 It reminded me after the show it it's good to catch up with everybody. So, Sid, anyway, what did you want to add to this part of the conversation about quote UN quote bad audio? Good morning everybody. And yes, Mark, I agree, it was great to catch up with you too. And you can do it more often as I send a message to you. Just from my perspective, I, I was just listening to the trailer that you played or the clip that you played. And I listen to it as a listener, not a podcast professional, not a producer. And I didn't pick up any of those things that Dr. said. Not that it's right or wrong, but I heard the music. I thought the music was nice. I did notice her sound was a little different than his. But again, I mean, as an active consumerist my that listens to probably 3 to 5 podcasts a day, I just didn't notice anything that would make me, from an audio perspective, make me want to tune away from it at all. I was more paying attention to the actual content itself and talking about the dog and the actions of the dog and those kinds of things.

13:37 So I mean, I thought it was a beautiful clip and I didn't, as a listener, I didn't notice any of those things. Thank you, Sid. Yeah. And I think yeah, to that's to my point, right. I think that sometimes we can be really sensitive to it, but I think if the content is strong, I also believe that if the host has great audio, which in this clip he does, he's using assure microphone. I think he's using an MV7. I'm looking at it here. It might be it may actually be an SM7B, but he's got the good microphone. He sounds good and I that's something that I tell my clients sometimes, right? Like if they have a guest they really want on the show and that guest only has their computer microphone, they know this in advance and they'll come to me and say, Mark, what do I do? Do I tell the the guest no go.

14:26 And I say to them it, well, first of all, as long as we've got your good audio, I'm happy. And secondly, can they be heard clearly? If it's if it's just a matter of there's a, there's some echo because of the room environment, we can live with it. Would I prefer them to have a studio mic? 100%. I would much rather them have clean, crisp audio. But if you can conduct a conversation, if the guests can be heard clearly and the content is strong, I think you're fine. And I know Sid is wanting one example of that, and I believe that there are others. Dr. What did you want to add to this? Real quick, before I go to the kitchen, I'm going to give a show that you produce a plug and I also edit it. So if you listen back-to-back to a show called Dementia Discussions and then this show and you strictly rate it on the sound it, there's just kind of a subliminal feeling of it's more intimate.

15:29 It's two people talking at a table when there's a bunch of, you know, a bunch of stuff going on in the restaurant, but two people are like, so into this conversation and they're talking to each other. And you go to this clip with Steve Burns. It's a different feeling. It doesn't feel as intimate, especially something that is heavy as a topic as this. So I just think it's a subliminal thing. I'm with you there. I think that it does create a better environment for your audience, a better atmosphere for your audience. If everybody's got the professional studio sound, I am totally with you. Also, Lynn, let's assume that that music that's playing in the clip is specifically for the clip. I know you didn't necessarily say differently, but I just wanted to call that out.

16:21 Like, I think that music, it's just for the clip itself, not I don't think he's playing it throughout the whole show. I'll have to go back and listen. Anything about this clip to you that makes it stand out? What makes this clip so compelling? Obviously, visually, I think the hook is for people who follow Steve or know who Steve Burns is. Just seeing him on the screen as the first thing that they see might make them stop, right? And what was that first line? Let's hear that first line again of what he said because I think that this in itself is also a strong hook. Let's play it. Did my dog know that my dad was dying in Hospice?

17:04 So there you go. That to me, very strong, very strong opening line that's going to stop a lot of people. And even the way that he's talking, he he uses a slower pace, which I can appreciate because I know that I speak a little bit slower than say, maybe the average podcaster. And I think that in his case, it's really effective the way that he pauses, you know, did my dog No. And then there was just this quick little pause that really set the stage for me that my dad was dying. That is powerful. That's going to make a lot of people stop the scroll. Anything else?

17:50 I'm just curious because I think that this can be a really big learning moment for a lot of us when we're putting together podcast clips. Did anything else stand out to you or what might make people share this clip? Ashley's giving me texts because I think her voice is still a little shot from being under the weather. She says reason one, Strip the strong hook. Yep. Like I was saying, 2, Dog content in general. Yeah, I think when you're talking about dogs that will absolutely attract an audience. 3, The visual aspect. 4, The guest has a lot of followers on TikTok, and so does he, for that matter.

18:32 Ashley. Yeah. And I want to pile on to the dog content, which I know this isn't something that necessarily we can adopt, but the dude is known for dogs. Blue was a dog. So when he starts a clip as Steve saying, does my did my dog know that's also going to attract his audience? So I think the lesson there is think about your audience and what connects them to you. Playoff of that. I was just going to say real quick, all of Ashley's points, but it's it's very relatable, right? Like anybody who hears that can at some point have a very similar experience. And that's The thing is like it's telling a story that a lot of people can you don't have that like kindred relationship to in the sense of like, Oh, I've been through that or I know somebody who's gone through that. And so it's like a shared human experience, you know? And so those kinds of pieces of content always do really well because it's very relatable, you know? And so that's the thing that when you go, wow, why did this perform really well or why was this? Because a lot of times it's just that shared experience that a lot of people have had in a similar situation usually is the reason why something kind of takes off like that. And that little clip there, like for me, you know, I'm a dog person and, you know, instantly I'm like gravitated towards that.

19:51 But like the story itself, like it's just very relatable. You know, you've you've heard those stories before And and for some people, they have experienced that. So yeah, that's just another thing that I think is why a clip like that works really well. Yeah. That relatability is so such a great point, Chris. Thank you. Because look, we I identified for you at the beginning of when we played this clip that his audience, he knows his audience, right? But this clip is so relatable, it can connect with a much broader audience than his right? Because like you said, if you're a dog lover, it's going to probably make you stop. And then if you listen to just a little bit longer, it's like, wow, did this dog actually know that Steve's dad was passing away? That's going to capture a a larger audience and I think that's also something we as podcasters can think about when we're choosing clips from our long form content. Can this be relatable?

20:52 Can this be of interest to a wider audience? Because if so, you're increasing your chances of virality, if you will, or at the very least, you're just extending your reach or increasing chances of extending your reach. Rez is on stage. Good morning again, Rez. Welcome back. What did you want to add to this? Good morning, Mark. It's similar to like DJ ING. Like if you're DJ ING for an audience that are not DJ's, they're not going to necessarily always pick up on those technical things. I think the mic, for example, is not that much of an issue for the average listener. Yeah, I'm with you there, Rez.

21:33 I know that some people might disagree, but yeah, I I'm with you there. Alex. Did you want to add something? I want to kind of go off of what Rez said. This goes back to knowing how to be a good guest. It's acceptable to have the computer thing going on. And you see it on CNN. You see people with their headset and everything. But it's not a big deal in terms of the content itself. Yeah, it's a lot of boxes. And he also is an actor, so he knows that he knows how to bring an audience in. Yeah. He just had a commotion. Yeah, for me, I'm not a dog lover, so I just have my own problem with with Steve's. It's not for me. Like the point is, is like what we always say, you know, there's somebody for everybody and not everyone's going to resonate with everyone. Yeah.

22:18 The thing that kind of bothers me in general about these type of clips is, you know, people take the time to do this and maybe I'm being a podcast snob when I say it, but have a good mic. I mean, I don't have a bad mic, you know what I mean? And if you're going to be on a show that you know is going to have a big following, try to put your best foot forward. That's all I'm saying. It is what it is. Well, this guest was a this guest is a is a Hospice caregiver. I know I'm I'm over criticizing. No, you're not like Dr. was on the same page as you. To some people, it's a hotspot. And again, I think that as podcasters, it's been so drilled in our heads that we have to have high quality, good microphones, etcetera. I think that sometimes I'm not saying him on a high quality expensive mic because Amanda put in the chat. You don't need to expect a guest to have expensive mic if you're going to be on a podcast.

23:11 It's like anything else. If you're going to do this for more than one time, you can get a very inexpensive mic $2030 mic. For. Cheap and it sounds great. No one's beating you up about it. I know that of some podcasters with good budgets that actually send microphones to their guests. If they don't have one, they'll find out ahead of time and they actually spend the money on sending them a mic. Some of them even have it set up to such an art form, such a science that they even get the guests to send back the mics when they're done with them. But by the way, I also wanted to point out something about this clip. This is an example of the host sharing their own story and not always putting the guest in the spotlight. This is something that we've talked about very recently, you know, whether or not the host should button up and just, you know, put their their guest in the spotlight the whole time or should it be balanced conversation, etcetera. Well, this is an example of making that kind of thing work. Making it work where you inject yourself, your stories into the conversation and still not necessarily hog the conversation.

24:28 Your audience, I believes, wants to hear you and your insights. By the way, I feel very special now when I noticed that on stage, we have both Chris and Amanda together on stage now that we know they are no longer doing song swap showdown together. Chris still running it now with his wife. And of course, we know that they're still the best of friends here. But it's cold still nonetheless to have you both on stage. And I'm just going to stop for a second and say good morning to you. Amanda Sharp, how are you? Good morning. And it's equally as special to me when we're on the stage together as well. But make no mistake, Chris and I still behind the scenes talk a ton cuz I love him so. Much and Amanda you now we've shared one of the last times you joined us you are stepping away from podcasting specifically but not creating content because you are all in on TikTok and I know you've this is somewhat of a good segue but I know you've you know with this pivot you're you're shifting a little bit of the content that you make not entirely but I know your big focus now is really using your TikTok content to help promote your town your store in your town etcetera. So how is that whole thing going you? Know really fabulous I believed in this years ago and I just feel like I'm finally to the point where my hard work is paying off Sid and I actually had a conversation this past week about it and it's just if

26:00 you don't have the endurance to wait out how long it takes to actually kind of see some intentional growth like things that I did two years ago I feel like are just on autopilot now and it feels really good if I'm being honest like I don't have to work so hard I'm putting in the work but my brain doesn't have to work so hard if that makes sense. Yeah, I think it sounds like it's becoming more like a reflex than a thought process because you're you've kind of figured out how you're approaching your content. I don't know how to explain it. I guess the work that I've put in now is showing up, you know where customers are coming in because they might not need me right away or they might not be able to go to the event right away, but the next time around they are. So I feel like I'm officially on the map, not just me as a creator, but my little town, and we all are reaping the benefits and that feels amazing.

26:53 I love it and I love there. That's such a key point is really understanding your purpose for why you're creating content, because if it's just to make money, just to get follows and views, that's going to be, it's going to start feeling like that grind, right. But but if you have some other goals in mind, what you want to get out of this. And in your case, yeah, I think that it's a great example of having focus and and intention. Absolutely. And if this would have been 20 years ago, this wouldn't have been an option. And to think of what I would have had 20 years ago to get the Ida on the map, this tiny little town, it would have been nearly impossible. But in this very connected world, there's people all over the world that now know of this little town called Ida.

27:39 And I just, that's so special. So special congratulations Amanda, and we will put a link to Amanda's TikTok in the show notes if you want to follow her journey. If you're not already, let's open up the mailbag with Sid, who as I had shared with you all, Sid had. Sid and I had a call yesterday just to catch up. And when we started the call, we were talking a little bit about his website. So Sid, would you share, share a little bit with everybody what we were talking about so we can set this up properly? On Monday of this week, I decided to go and look at my analytics in Kajabi, which is a platform that I use for my website. And I have not looked at them and I don't know, probably a couple of years, not really sure why I chose to go look at them, but I did and I was blown away. And so then I went to Google Analytics and look at Google Analytics and to some degree it mimicked what Kajabi had to say. I went and asked Kajabi's Facebook groups and Kajabi Heroes in the Facebook group about the download, about the downloads, excuse me, about the views, page views and stuff like that, just to get a little bit of clarity on it. But basically if I kind of do the math, my head website is getting about 10,000 people a month to visit it. Nice.

29:00 And I was like, what the heck, 10,000 people come into my website, like what do they want? But the thing I noticed through the analytics is they're bouncing really quickly. And so the average time is 11 seconds. And so I thought, OK, I was talking to a marketing friend of mine like, OK, what do I, what do I need to do here? Like they're coming to the website. They are bouncing faster than I want them to. Maybe it's time to update the website. Maybe it's time to, you know, look at putting products on the website that you can buy because there's nothing that you can buy on the website. So why are these people coming? And then I dove a little deeper and I looked at my last podcast episode, which was 164, and I noticed that that page had 896 views. Then I went to Bus Sprout and it has 100 listens and I was like, OK, this is interesting. 896 people landed on that page, but I don't have 896 plays of that podcast, right? So there's something here that we've got to figure out to do to get people to encourage people to click the play buttons. So I was sharing with Mark kind of the exploratory journey that I'm on of trying to understand this and you know where I'm going with it and what I want to do next. So, Mark, I'll leave it to you to ask me whatever follow up you want to ask me.

30:23 Yeah, well, what I'm going to do is 1st, I'm going to share a link to the previous episode, to the one you mentioned, episode 163. And I'm sharing this so that you can all see what the web page looked like prior to some changes Sid made. OK, so and this was. Last night, like after I had the phone with Mark, I called my podcast editor, was talking to her about some of the things that Mark noticed on the page and I'm taking notes on and giving me some insights. And so I called her and she and I workshopped literally live. I'm making changes in Kajabi to see what we could do. So go ahead, Mark. Yeah, so if you take a look at Syd's page here for episode 163, you'll see he's got the big logo, the trend report logo on one side of the page, and then immediately next to it, the episode cover image as well. You can see the graphic.

31:20 And the the first thing that I thought about, you know, looking at the page, 'cause I wanted to investigate and figure out. OK, yeah, good point. Sid, you've got almost 900 people that landed on that page. Why only 100 listens? Why didn't they even press play to hear the first minute? And what I feel like and what this is an experiment, we'll have to see. But I feel like what's happening here is that the graphics at the top of the page are so big, it pushes the player down the page. So I think when somebody lands on it, they may not go below, as they say, below the fold, the old newspaper term, right? So I wanted to see, let's see what happens if we take the player and move it up up to the top or make it much more visible at the top of the page so that the user has no issue or doesn't doesn't have to scroll to go find more. Because let's face it, if an average podcast listener, somebody who may be casually listens to podcasts, I should say, they may not interact enough with it. They may just see the graphics and just think, OK, that's, that's the episode, right?

32:31 So I want to just spoon feed the content to an audience. So if you go now to sidmeadows.com/episode 164, you can see that he's made a change. He's got the title big at the top, but the player doesn't get pushed down the page. It's the first thing you see right after you see the main title of the episode. Billy has come up on stage now. This could go really well where Billy could be really giving it to Sid. Let's find out. Good morning, Billy. Sid, you Boomer, what are you doing now? Well, one thing and this will do from a broadcast consumer standpoint, is when I go to someone's website, I never listen to the player for a couple of reasons. One, I typically have to have that web page open, especially if I'm using my phone, which I'm typically always AM. I will have to like keep that page open for the player to work on some people's platforms.

33:34 So what I'm looking for is like, what do you have an Apple little play button there? Do you have Spotify? Like do you have the platform that I want to use on your website? And if you don't, I'm probably not going to listen to it just because it's inconvenient for me to have to keep that. And that might not be. True for your. Player, but that's I've seen that with a lot of other players on websites like it doesn't work unless I'm on that tab or on that that the app open or whatever. So that's why I typically bounce just for, you know, consumer inside there. So Billy, that point really well taken. There is not a link to Apple or Spotify.

34:16 It doesn't even tell you on that particular landing page where you can go listen to it. However, when I look at my bus brought analytics, Apple is my number one place people listen. And my second and third place people listen are the embedded #2 is the embedded web player says people going to the website and clicking play. And then the other is is what Brusberg calls web viewer. So they're viewing it through a web browser somewhere and also clicking whether that web browser is there either clicking the player or they're listening through a web browser like on Apple or some other listening platform where they listen through a web player.

34:58 Semi analytics say Apple embedded player and then website are my top three locations people listen. Does it show you what device says? Like if are those people listening on desktop or they listening on mobile or? Mobile, yes, but the two don't. The two don't. The two don't correlate, right? It doesn't correlate. That says I could go look at them again, but it does give me the devices, but it doesn't correlate that that that device is listening this percentage on the web player, right? It just says the device type. That makes sense to me. And Billy, I think even said it in his first response to all this. It it might be different for different people. And I think that that's the whole point here is Sid, I think did the smart thing by first looking at all the different analytics and trying to piece the puzzle together.

35:48 And in this case, yeah, his website, the Buzz Sprout embedded player, these things are getting a lot of people to press play. These are the places people are going to listen to his podcast. And I think a lot of that has to do with we have a very active e-mail list or I must say engaged e-mail list. We have about 450 people on our e-mail list. A couple of years ago, I scrubbed the e-mail list and it had like 2000 people and then I scrubbed it down to only people that were engaged with us or open something. If they hadn't opened or clicked on anything in like 3 months, I took them off the e-mail list, which is not what a lot of people tell you to do, but I did it. And but now I get between, I get around a 50% open rate and between a three and 6% click rate and clicking the link and I send an e-mail every other week on Tuesday at 9:15 in the morning.

36:39 It's about the podcast. It has a link to the landing page, and every Tuesday we see a bump in downloads and I think that group that's on our e-mail list is actually who's clicking the link and listening to the player. So I think there's some correlation there to having an engaged group in our e-mail list that is clicking that linked. Also interesting and applaud you, Sid, for really digging into all the different areas to try to get to the bottom of this. And I think this is a good first move. I obviously it came from me, so I'm giving, I guess I'm giving myself a pat on the back, but I think adjusting the web page is really about a valuable thing for you to do and then experiment with, right?

37:23 Like we got to see, does this really move the needle? Does this make a difference? And we shall see. To be continued. But we have Renee on stage, so let's check in with her. Good morning to you, Renee. What did you want to add to all this? Good morning. I have three thoughts on this and I come to this truly as a marketer or not as a podcaster. So the first thing I would do is I would want to see what's happening on mobile compared to desktop. And that's going to determine also, you know, where the placement of things are, what are they seeing on a mobile compared to a desktop and who's coming over, who's leaving. So that's going to be a determinant #2 the next thing that I want to do immediately is I want to go look at the metadata. I want to look at the meta title and the meta description, because that is what's bringing people over from search, right? So if I go look at that, is there a disconnect and I am being brought over to episode 163? When I look at the meta title on both of them, just say the Trend Report podcast episode 163 or 164. But when I go to the description, I see the words office furniture industry.

38:26 When I land on the page, I'm not seeing that above the folder anywhere. I've got to go down somewhere. I'm assuming I saw it in 164. I saw furniture sales at the top. So it could be people are coming in on a furniture industry search. They land on this and at the top they're going to see thought leadership age. I don't know who this person is. I think this is a disconnect. I just sent me to the wrong place. So if you're bringing them in on a search, you got to make sure that those keywords are showing up at the top. So the person says I've landed at the right place. That could be it. So how do we find out how they're coming? You go to your Google Search Console data and you're going to see what searches are happening to that page and you're going to see what keywords they're they're coming in AT.

39:14 And if they're coming in with a lot of furniture things and you're not having furniture there, that would be a connect. But without more data, I can't really, you know, do any more surgery. But those are the things that I look for when I'm trying to find why did I get either all these impressions, all these people that actually hit my page and why didn't they convert in in any type of action. So those are just the beginning things I would start looking for. So, Renee, those are brilliant points. And I hadn't even thought about metadata. I mean, this is not my area of expertise, let's be clear. But it's a great point to go and investigate that and to look at it, see where they're coming from. We I did go look at where the sources were. I don't remember exactly what it said, but I mean, this is all on Mondays.

39:56 This is all very fresh, but it's timely for me as I look at what I'm going to do for Season 7 of the podcast over the next few months as I. Get ready to reinvent it, which may include a name change, a rebranding of the podcast for something that you just directly said, which is that, excuse me, the name of my show has nothing to do with the office furniture industry and which is the long story behind it. But there's some, I'm having some conversations with people in my circle about what I can do to uplift the podcast, to keep it growing, to do things that makes it all tied together and tied in better to the industry that I support.

40:38 So all these points are well taken, so thank you very much. Thank you, Sid. And yes, I echo what you said. These were awesome points, Renee. Thank you. I think that these are important areas to think about. And to Sid's point, a lot of us as podcasters, this isn't our area of expertise. We didn't go into podcasting to understand metadata, keywords, SEOAI, etcetera, right? We, we got into it because we wanted to ultimately share a message, grow a business, grow a following, whatever your reasons are. But usually it's not that it's not to learn SEO and metadata. So that's why we talk about it here, Sid, this change.

41:20 So it's basically you're thinking about changing the podcast but not the target audience. Is that fair to say? Correct. I'm not changing the audience. I'm not leaving the community that I'm so well known in and that, you know, people come to me for. And so no, I'm not changing that. I'm just looking at potentially rebranding that might help the reach of the show. I'm thinking about, you know, different formats to redo the show and adding segments to it. I'm thinking about guests. I mean, I've been surveying to my listeners. I put a call out to my listeners to, you know, give me feedback. I had a survey form as well as a link to schedule a call with me. I probably had 25 calls with listeners and I have a series of five questions that Alex and Filippo shared in a webinar that I was in to ask my listener. So I've been over the last several months, like knowing I wanted to make some changes that would have hopefully really big positive impacts in 2026.

42:16 So I've been diving in and talking to the people that listen on a regular basis and really trying to figure out what to do when we launched our first episode of the season 7, which will be the first Monday of February. So we take we take December and January off and then that's when I'm recording and things of that nature. So between now and December, I'll figure out exactly the direction I want to go and what I want to do differently to make the show more engaging and, you know, better guess better topics, things of that nature, maybe the rebrand and that kind of stuff. So that hopefully we get ourselves set up for a really great season 7, which would include, I've not had sponsors for a couple years, so which would include going back to sponsors.

42:57 I've got a list of people I want to reach out to about sponsoring and I'm thinking about how to incorporate them into the show. So I'm I'm really rethinking the whole thing in order to help fuel the growth for next year. Interesting. So this is a good segue then to get to at least one mailbag question that we had intent. That was our intention to do for today. So let's dig into it. This comes from the host of a podcast called Bring Joy Podcast, and it says I'm planning on changing the format of my podcast and trying to decide if I need to start an entirely new one or do I just change my intro and logo and keep the same podcast name? Any suggestions?

43:42 I don't want to lose my existing episodes or audience or necessarily pay for another podcast. What do you think? So I want to talk a little bit about when we are rebranding or restarting, right, Starting from fresh. So how can podcasters decide whether a new idea fits under the current brand? Similarly to Sid, although he said he's also playing around with formats. But how can a podcaster decide whether the new idea fits under the current brand or it deserves its own show? I mean, I am not changing. The overall content of my show is not changing, right.

44:22 I am potentially looking at the structure of the show and things of that nature, the branding of the show. I'm not changing the content. We're still going to have real conversation with real people and talk all things office furniture. That's not changing, right? So I'm not going to be talking about, you know, chickens, for example. Sorry Amanda sourcing thing in my mind, I'm not going to be talking about chickens on my show. So you know that that's not changing. So for me, abandoning the RSS feed is really bad idea because of the people that are following the RSS feed. I wanted to keep that. So if I do rebrand and change it to a new name, I would stay there. I would just do the rebranding. And I even yesterday made some notes about what are ways that we could trickle out some excitement around new things coming and maybe show little aspects on social media of the new branding. Maybe a little clip of something here there to tease the new, the new structure, the new brand coming out, if that's what we decide to do.

45:17 So for me, I am not going to abandon the the RSS feed in the followers that I already have there because I think that's like really starting from scratch. If I start a new show about chickens, then I would have a total new RSS feed, a total new landing page and everything. I would not act the two together. And now I'm curious if there is a podcast about chickens, which there's got to be, right? And the reason why I Sid is using that as an example and apologized to Amanda is because Amanda's been sharing her journey with her flock of chickens. What's the right way? What do you call a group of chickens? Amanda A. Flat or my babies? Or your babies. Yes, that is true. I see that all the time. On your content.

45:58 Yes. Amanda's babies, yes. So go yeah. Again, go check out Amanda's content if you're curious. And OK, so I, I respect that Sid. And in this case with this mailbag question, this person is thinking about a potentially complete overhaul. And I'm going to, I want to go to Chris for a second. Chris, if you are free and available because you are a marketing guy, you help people with their marketing and branding. So what does a podcaster have to consider or how do they consider whether they can shift to this new idea under their current brand, or maybe move into a completely new brand?

46:40 That is a really good question. I mean, I think that once again, you have to look at your actual audience, right? I mean, that's the ultimate algorithm, right? The community, the audience. And if it's something that you feel like the back current audience is going to like, then I don't see why you wouldn't keep it under that brand. But I mean if you wanted to be a completely. New thing all together and you could go after the same audience. But you know, I think it really that's how I would weigh it at first is like, what is the is it? Is it something that that community that I currently have is actually going to like? And it's not to say too that you couldn't spin it off into its own thing after a little bit, right. So maybe you could do it under the current brand, but then eventually say, hey, you know what?

47:20 And let the audience know that this is something that's going to be becoming its own separate thing over here, you know, as you go on. But if you're going to go after a completely new audience all together and then, yeah, I think then doing a new podcast under a different brand would probably make sense from that standpoint if it's you as the person. I mean, Chris Baglio has like 3 different podcasts I do, right? But like, I'm not changing. I change the name of the show because it's a slightly different audience for each thing, but I'm not changing my actual like, you know, name my company or anything like that, you know? Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate that and I like something that you're saying there as far as, you know, thinking about your audience, for one, I think that's that could be argued as the number one thing to consider if you're going to change a name, change the format, etcetera.

48:12 And I like the idea of phasing in the new format to your existing content. So how do you do that? I would suggest maybe you once a month. If you do say a weekly show, once a month, you bring in that new format if you feel like it's aligned or aligned enough with your audience. Phase it in every so often and once a month. Like I said, once twice a month. See how your audience responds to it and ask them for the feedback. Hey everybody, I'm breaking format today and I'm curious what you think. Please give it a listen, enjoy the show and send me your feedback that you could learn a lot from that before making that giant leap. And that I think can help you make that decision whether it can stay part of the show that you've been doing even if you make a name change, but you're going to keep your RSS feed, etcetera.

49:04 I think I think it's a good way to test. I'm going to go to Renee. And then I do have A1 clip to leave you with on this topic that I think is very relevant. So stay with us. And Renee, what did you want to add? Three quick little things and this is going to be a show my age. How did we do that in the days of television sitcoms? We would have Laverne and Shirley show up on Happy Days and find out that, you know, that made it spikes. So only my older friends in this group know what I'm talking about. Hey, I'm going to cut you off real quick. I just commented on a TikTok. It was something like tell me you're from the child of the 80s without saying it and or you know, some whatever those terms go. And I said Mork from Ork made his first his debut on Happy Days.

49:52 Right now I'm showing my age with you. Yes, exactly. So that was my one thought. My other thought was don't forget to go to Google Trends to see what conversations are happening out there. And also go to Reddit, do all the things and use chat to help you figure out is this a trending topic. So if you don't go to Google Trends, I know you've talked about it before in this group trends.google.com. Go put in conversations, different keywords and see see what's happening out there. And then my final thought was if you were taking, I'm sure you've talked about this before, but if you are taking a podcast and you're rebranding it, you can do that on the same platform, on the same website.

50:33 You just have to do redirects. And that's where a website expert comes in and an SEO expert, specifically website person that knows how to do successfully mutate one URL into another URL without losing traffic or significant traffic. You may get a little bit of a dip, but there is a way to do that setting up like a third website. This is not my department. This is my business partners department. But I hear him talk about it all the time and it can be done. So rebranding can happen on the same podcast if you do all the other things that have been discussed here right now. Thank you, Renee. I think Renee gets the Gold Star of the morning offering some really valuable stuff. Not that the others haven't, but thank you, Renee. I really appreciate what you're digging into here. And I want to the the one thing that I heard just recently on one of my favorite podcasts and one of my favorite content creators, Heather parody on her show unconventional leaders. She had the big YouTube Jenny Hoyos on and talking about you and your character as a podcast host. Listen to this.

51:45 And then I want to get somebody, somebody's reaction to it. I'm curious what you think. Something that's not talked about enough is our character. We want to basically have an exaggerated verse version of who we are. Like if you were to stereotype yourself and like you know how caricatures are drawings with you, but they exaggerate your features. Yes, that's what you want to do to your personality. You, you probably have so many different things you're interested in, but like if someone were to mock you, what would they do? And that's what you want to play up. And that's why my mom and I have a character that stays consistent. And the reason I think character is so important is because I used to start in a niche because that's what grows the fastest. Start in a niche. But if you want to branch out, you're going to lose your viewers because maybe they were only watching for the finance, but if you make them invested in you as a character, everything can change. But if your character stays the same, they're still going to keep watching.

52:36 I see a lot of the emoji reactions on stage and in the audience. It seems like everybody agrees with that statement. And I think it's at the very least somebody needs to hear it today for so many different reasons, right? It's proof that authenticity is key and that we don't have to put on a podcaster face per SE to make it a successful podcast and to really grow a following, grow an audience, grow super fans. It's injecting ourselves into our podcast. It's, I want to say I, this doesn't feel right to say it this way, but I can't think of a better way. It's why I share with you things like my ADHD journey and the fact that I had to get off the meds and I've shared over time the struggles and the victories, right?

53:27 Like got off it and my blood pressure's better. I've shared all these things with you. Has nothing to do with podcasting, but injecting who we are into our podcast creates longevity for whatever we do. If we want to change our podcast, I believe at the very least you're going to bring a big chunk of that audience over with you if you're sharing your personality with them, if you're sharing your interests, your likes, etcetera, with them. Now, if they stay, that's another story, right? Because maybe the content just isn't their cup of tea, but you're going to bring them with you if you're sharing more about who you are and what makes you tick.

54:13 Does anyone else want to add anything to that? I have to go back on the replay and listen to that clip again because I took it completely different. The guest was talking about not showing her real self. The guest was talking about showing a caricature. Of herself. And the first thing I thought of when she said that was, oh, going against the grain. When everyone says authenticity, going against the grain. That's interesting. So I think I need to go back and listen to that clip because I did not get what you're talking. About that's a fairpoint and it sounds like basically it because the rest of what she said didn't quite align with the idea of caricature, right? So she, she used that to set up what she was going to say. But really the way I interpreted it, listening to the rest of what she shared, I interpreted it as really bring out the certain things about yourself.

55:07 Share if you've got like, another example is I'll share from time to time my love for Star Wars, right? So I'll share little things about it or I might quote something from it, etcetera. Like I think that's what she means by caricature because you're you're becoming bigger than just the podcast. When she mentioned it, when someone writes a caricature of you, that was really interesting to me, because if someone were to write a caricature of you, Mark, they might, they, they might put you, you know, with the lightsaber in your, in your hand, you know, so all of that still applies your interests that people don't know about you, that would still apply. But that whole exaggerated caricature statement was interesting to me.

55:54 Yeah, that's fair. OK. I'm going to go to Amanda and then I'm going to go down the line. We'll try to do this as quickly as we can before we wrap up. Go ahead, Amanda. I just thought it was interesting that they chose to use the word like caricature because I feel like my, my whole like online presence is me being that, you know, I'm genuinely who I am, but I'm like, I, I could be wrapped up as that everything. Am I laying in my backyard talking to my chickens? Yes. Am I skipping down Lewis Ave. 100% yes. It's funny. Like, that's a great way to kind of describe how I show up on my social media. Yeah. And really fascinating just how we all interpret that differently, right?

56:36 Dr. had her interpretation, I had mine and Amanda, you had yours. And I'm really connecting with yours more than myself, More than what? Dr. said. I'm just connecting with Yeah, we, we can really exaggerate sometimes who we are and the things that we love. Or maybe that's just who we are. And either way, I think it works. The idea is, is to sometimes we have to be a little bigger than life to really get that personality across to an audience, in my opinion. Rez, you wanted to add something. Go ahead. That message from the speaker, Heather, her name was, I don't get the message that she's trying to say, like being an authentic. I think that.

57:19 Embracing your uniqueness, your own uniqueness is always, you know, the the most attractive thing you can do. And I think that's the message for me that I got. Yeah. I think that's what she's trying to say. Yes. It's it's find your uniqueness. And I'll, I'll, I'll use my words and exploit it. Right. Put it out there, share it, embrace it with your audience. Billy, did you want to add something? I think it was creating media. It's like we're talking about energy. If I just report a video of just me in my everyday life, even though I think I'm very entertaining and exciting and all this in my mind, when I watch that video back I go, oh, I'm that's not really that fun. So I have to in my personality, just exaggerate those things and sober expose those things that I think are funny or punch lines or if I'm trying to bring, you know, I'm not a medium by any means who I think I am. And so I try to bring, you know, that stuff in there and I have to like consciously do that because in my mind it's real loud and you know, it's elaborate and it's all this, but it might just everyday personality. It's really not.

58:27 And but I understand like part of creating content is entertainment no matter what level you're doing it at like when the entertainment business essentially so. You got to have. That to attract and keep people engaged. Yeah, Thank you, Billy. Thank you all for diving into that and for a really fun show. I mean, I feel like we had the the technical side, we had the emotional side, we got into the the IT side. But I feel like this was a well balanced show and I appreciate everybody digging in with me this morning. We're back tomorrow at 7:00 AM Eastern talking all things podcasting. And of course, because it's Friday, we also like to wrap up our Fridays with sharing our wins from the past week. So come bring yours tomorrow and any questions you may have around podcasting and content creation. So until tomorrow, make it a great day everybody take care.