388 - AI Slop, Adobe’s Big Win, Why Hosts Matter Most, & More Podcast Headlines

0:04 Good morning podcasting Morning Chat. Today is Thursday, October 16th, 2025, and today we're diving back into podcasting headlines, including fresh research on listener habits, YouTube's unexpected move on banned creators, and why one IAI expert says most creators are missing the point. 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 catching us via podcaster YouTube, 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. Good morning again, podcasting, Morning Chat. Thanks so much for being here.

1:24 I am your host Mark Ronik and currently on stage with me. We have Nick Naul back, producer Ashley Feller, Sid Meadows and Dr. Faye, and I'm sure we will see more of the cast and crew momentarily. I don't. I just swallowed that word momentarily. And today, since we had so many headlines that we didn't get to yesterday, we felt let's dive into more of them today. I think we're going to have some interesting discussions here. First, a shout out. Although he's not here live, I should just text him to let him know. Let me do that. I'm texting our good friend, regular community member Jeanade Ahmed.

2:06 He is speaking today at Podcasting Made Simple Live. That's Alex Sanfilippo of Pod Match. That's his event that he does quarterly. It's part of his package where he also has a podcast called Podcasting Made Simple. He does this live event quarterly, like I said, and it's it consists of lots of different podcasters and content creators in the space speaking on their areas of expertise. I know that Dave Campbell, who's here in the audience, I know he did that the last event Podcasting Made Simple Live. So shout out to him as well. But yeah, Janae is going to be speaking there on how to create a guest setup that builds credibility on sight and sound.

2:56 He did something similar at Empowered Podcasting, our live event almost, well I guess about 2-3 weeks ago now, and killed it. So if you missed that and want to see it before we release the Empowered Podcasting video, you can go check that out, Podcasting Made Simple. Let's see if you want the best way to probably do this is go to podmatch.com/event and you'll get all the details there. OK, so with that, I think let me see if, yeah, let me just hit the music here since it is Newsday and let's get into some more news, shall we? By the way, that event starts at 10:30 AM Eastern Time today, October 16th, and it goes all day. So even if you're hearing this a little late, you can still go check out all the fun at some point when available, when you're available.

3:53 So let's get into it. Some news. The Signal Awards have unveiled their winners, celebrating excellence across audio and the media space, and we're thrilled to spotlight that Kenda Lawson took home the bronze award for Best Host. As many in our community know, Kenda is part of our circle. She's the wife of Dominic Lawson, one of our community leaders and familiar Co host on the podcasting morning chat. Congrats to Kenda and her show, The B Word and all of the 2025 Signal Award winners. I'm looking just to see if maybe we have any other winners here so far this morning. I don't think so, but if you were a winner, please let me know if we missed it.

4:41 Also, podcasts are everywhere, duh. And Adobe wants them to all sound like they were recorded in a $5000 podcast studio. The company as we know their AI powered enhanced speech tool. We know that tool wealth talked about it many times. It just scored a spot on times Best Inventions of 2025 list thanks to its ability to erase noise echo distortion in a matter of seconds. I would argue it's more like a matter of minutes, but I'll still take that any day. Originally launched in late 2024 as part of Adobe Podcast, the web-based suite has already cleaned up more than 100 million audio files.

5:28 As Adobe's head of AI audio Jay LaBeouf puts it, you can have the most brilliant story to tell, but if it's muffled by background noise or echo, people tune out. It's a fairpoint, though. With this level of audio sorcery, turning, tuning out might finally get harder. So kudos to Adobe. I'm actually Nick. What? What's with the emoji of Batman rubbing his chin? I'm curious what you're thinking. You've used this before, and I feel like it's a product that you've endorsed in some way, shape or form. So yeah, what's with the emoji? Yeah, a decent amount. I don't have to get like a whole spotlight and win an award over all of the other tools that exist out there. I feel like it's kind of like it's decent but it's not like mind boggling.

6:23 Yeah. So, Nick, go ahead Dr. So, Nick, how would you weigh Adobe Voice Enhancer against Offonic? Do you use? She's laughing because we had a little discussion about this prior to the show's starting. Nick, are you an Offonic user? Very minimal, like I definitely use the Adobe more than Offonic but with the little bit that I have used aphonic and knowing how much has been improved on the aphonic side like I feel like I would learn more towards aphonic over Adobe. It just seems to do a better job. Believe you guys still run this entire podcast. Yep, we sure do.

7:09 Darn. Good job. Yeah, and that's a preference because I find that aphonic. I like it better. I think it's more flexible, has more options, and personally, I think it does a better job. Do we want to? Let's hear from Billy. Billy just joined us up here. Go ahead, Billy. Good morning. Good morning. No, I was just going to say since Nick's audio sounds like he's on the freeway, maybe we can maybe we can do a little side by side edit request and maybe have a little comparison that is. A great point. You can certainly, if you're a live listener, you can go back and listen to really any episode where Nick is involved in the conversation and you can compare what you've heard live versus what it spits out. And I think it does a good job.

7:55 I think you can tell still that Nick's audio is a little different than say, the majority of the participants in the conversation, but I think you can tell it does a better job with his audio than the natural, the original audio. Nick, doesn't this drive you crazy? Is don't you feel like it's time to get yourself some new, a new headset or something? Yeah, I'm just too lazy to do it. And I'm really pissed off because I had really nice headphones that I really liked and they went out on me. So I'm like, I'm stuck with these and I've gotten caught up in the research of headphones and then got overwhelmed by it. Just end up shutting off the computer. Yeah, we might have to have a telethon for you, Nick. Yes, so yes, we have our we have our fake GoFundMe that that I mentioned everyone once in awhile. Maybe we really need to do it.

8:45 Although that's not going to help Nick with his issue because his issue really isn't that he can't afford it. His issue is is that he can't make a damn decision on what he wants. So congratulations to Adobe and I do agree with Nick. I think it it's feels like a lot to get an award from Time magazine in their best inventions of 2025 list when we know there are more robust options out there that we believe are even better. And it's not a knock on Adobe. I think it's great for the average user who doesn't want to be overwhelmed with all the different bells and whistles. They just want to drop it in, get the audio fixed, and you play with the what is it like two different sliders to make any adjustments you can.

9:32 You can increase the audio adjustments that it makes or decrease it by just sliding a little slider and it gives you what percentage you're sliding it to still. Have to clean up after using Adobe probably. I'm going to say 50% of the time I have to do some cleaning because there's that little gremlin sound that happens and it's a pain in the ass. And I've noticed, I don't know Dr. 'cause you might use it more than I do with Adobe, but I know I used to notice when I used it more sometimes it was giving people a lisp, like it sounded like their s s were THS and it would drive me crazy. Have you not noticed that?

10:14 I have not noticed that I'm listening for the Gremlin sound more than anything else, so that's what I'm in tune to. Yeah, and I saw Nick had flashed the 100%. So yeah, I think, I don't think it's just me noticing that. I think I remember one time I clipped something from this show and it was a conversation with me and Simona Costantini and I shared it with her and she got back to me love to the clip, and then said, wait, do I have a lisp? I don't. How did that happen? She was so confused and thought maybe she hadn't noticed a lisp all her life. And I assured her, no, I think that's just Adobe's enhancement tool. Yeah. So beware. And I'd like DRDR says check your work or check Adobe's work before you put it out there. Go ahead, Nick.

11:02 I've primarily used it within Premiere Pro. Like a lot of the clips, they have their enhanced speech baked into the Premiere Pro software and less is definitely more like it goes to using that. Like I'll I would usually run my videos through it and enhance the speech, but I would set it to like such a low setting where it made a slight improvement to the audio. But I wasn't trying to eliminate like all backgrounds on because then yeah, you get all the the artifact happening. I don't know what makes that gremlin sound. Is it the fact that I'm eliminating all the background noise or is it the percentage?

11:43 The higher you go in the percentage of the what's the other graph that it gives you? You know, like the compression stuff, the higher you go, the more gremlin sounds that there are. Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah. And then Ashley just put in the chat here that she believes it's the amount of compression that's being added that ends up creating some of that nonsense. Yeah, I I'm with Ashley on that one. So pick your poison, I suppose. And again, I think that aphonic is for my personal taste, the best option. So check them out a UPHONIC or of course, go to Adobe podcast. They do have lots of other features besides their audio enhancement. And again, I think if for the average person who doesn't want to be bothered with too many options, I think it's a great, it's a great option for you.

12:35 And by the way, shout out to Ralph in the audience. Ralph I met at the Empowered Podcasting conference for the first time. He's been in the podcast space for a while, but that was our first time really connecting. Good to see you here, Ralph. Thank you for being here and always cool to see some Empowered Podcasting faces here on the Podcasting morning chat. And I know yesterday I was admiring, and I've said this once before, I was admiring all the profile pictures in the crowded room yesterday with the Empowered Podcasting backgrounds and pictures from the conference. It just makes me smile to see all of these, all these familiar faces proudly representing the conference. But yeah, good to see you, Ralph. Thanks for being here and let me keep it moving. I know Dr. is going to have some have to bounce for a minute for cooking time for her husband.

13:31 So enjoy cooking those eggs. Dr. I'm going to skip the line and go to some AI news. I saw this on pod news recently. Probably, yeah, probably over those this last week. And in this piece, podcast tech insider Sam Batacaria, I do think I'm pronouncing his last name right, with an AI research background. He argues that most people misunderstand what AI actually is. And Full disclosure, I shared this article with Nick yesterday 'cause I want to get Nick's take on it too, as one of our go TOS when we talk AI. So like I said, Sam says that most people misunderstand what AI actually is.

14:19 Goes on to say it's mechanics, it's limits, and where it really helps or fails. This is a reality check for creators leaning into AI as a as buzzword. The author Sam, who has a background like I said in AI, says that public discourse treats AI as a monolithic force. But in reality, AI encompasses many kinds of models, systems, and methods. Most people today equate AI with LLMS, large language models, or image generation tools, but those are just a small slice of its broader use cases.

15:01 And yes, I love using it for image and video generation, but I think more so just to play with the exception of making images of our episode cover images, LLMS work by statistical prediction of next words. We've talked about that before, not deep understanding. So they can generate plausible text. But as we've shared before, they also, and I'm sure you've experienced, they've all, they also hallucinate, meaning they produce false or misleading output when it's uncertain. It's interesting that the the verbiage here says it's uncertain, yet prior to that it says it doesn't have a deep understanding.

15:46 I I don't think it can be uncertain if it can't understand deeply. Just my thought, but I think we understand what they're getting out there. Many AI podcasting tools like say Opus or Minvo Auto editors, Riverside are quote rappers built on LLMS or AP is not fully trained systems, which introduces limitations, errors and over promising of performance. So putting that into more layman's terms, they're saying here that let's use Opus as an example since it's pretty well known among content creators. It's really just working in the background with ChatGPT or one of its competitors.

16:31 It's not really fully built for it, its own model. So that's why it's saying that it can introduce those limitations, those errors, etcetera. And the author calls out AI slop, quote UN quote, shallow or inflated marketing of quote, AI is magic and emphasizes the gulf between hype and substance. So the article suggesting that a hype, there's a hybrid future creators using AI as an assist rather than a replacement, which again, I know we talk about that often. That's how we encourage you to use AI, especially as agent based editing tools evolve.

17:13 So before I ask any questions to the whole group, Nick, any thoughts? Any comments on this article? I agree entirely with the article. Like I I think we've talked about it a lot here. We've got conversations at the Empower podcasting conference similar to this. Like a lot of the people that use AI and dislike AI typically do it because they don't understand how to use it correctly. They're expecting it to be this magic pill that you just type in whatever you want and it magically produces everything or anything. And when it doesn't produce or do a good job at doing everything, people either put it to shame or just give up. That's generated with AI.

18:03 Yeah, they give up and. I believe they talked about it in the article as well, but like using AI for very specific use cases is more what it's geared to do. It's not to replace your entire workflow necessarily, which one AI model is not. Now when you get into like the agent type stuff and stringing models together and getting the AI to kind of build off of getting different AI models to build off of previous work that AI has built, that's where you kind of get a little bit more towards that all-encompassing thing. But not many people are willing to put it the time it takes to understand how to do that and really build those systems to create something that's a little bit more all-encompassing. So what then?

18:56 When you say I, it sounds. I'm paraphrasing but sounding like you're saying, you know, using AI for specific tasks, specific things. So what? What are you suggesting specifically? I mean the the AI briefing was a 30,000 foot view of what I'm trying to explain like that. When I was running that show, it was primarily automated using stringing together all of these different AI tools through one system by usedmake.com. To do that, like similar to Sapir, it was basically feeding each step of the podcasting process. I broke it down very granularly from sourcing the content to writing the scripts to generating the audio.

19:39 And I feel like to be more effective if I could have even got more granular with the whole system. But you're basically tasking AI with a very specific thing to do and not just basically trying to say just like do my podcast for me and the the Do my Podcast for me is where most is the camp that most people fall in. When you and you say, meaning you feel like they're hoping to use AI to just do everything for them, right? Is that what you're saying? Yeah. And I know I'm very much generalizing by saying that, but that I feel like is the general consensus. And that leads to people one either disliking AI because it doesn't produce or disliking AI because they think it can produce that kind of thing.

20:28 That's why the AI slapped turn. Like when I see that thrown around, it's like you don't understand how AI is supposed to be used because you're seeing just people playing with it, screwing up with it. Like a It doesn't mean that all AI is trash, it just means that you're seeing the stuff that people are just goofing off of AI on. Yeah, or they're just using it as trash, right? It can be as powerful as you want it to be, but the AI slop really comes from, in my opinion, from the people that are using it. We'll call it for now incorrectly, just because I can't think of a better word.

21:08 Well, look at that. I called out Ralph, and now he's up here to participate in the conversation. Love it. Welcome, Ralph. Good morning. What do you want to add to all this? Yeah, I just want to make sure you can hear me. OK. I'm talking to my iPhone. Very cool. Thank you for letting me join in. You know, I do a Daily Show, and I was really leaning on AI for a long time, hoping it was going to be the, you know, the whole content creator. And I guess it was about a month ago. I really had to take a step back and say, wait a second, this is going in a direction. It's not me anymore. And it was very easy to lean into it. You know, it started off easy enough. Well, give me some topics, You know, doing a Daily Show becomes a topic generation tool for me. The AI was, but it was so easy to just lean into that and say, well, you know, the give AI the, the, the tools to go ahead and create this whole script for me. And then it was funny.

21:57 I was, I was doing a recording one morning and I found myself saying something was like, I don't believe this. And I, I said, you know, I got to pull back from this. And, and I did that about a month ago. And let me tell you right now, it has been so much better leaning into my own belief system. I still use AI to kind of help me with some tweaks and things like that. But man, there's so many content creators I'm here and now and I'm seeing that are just leaning into AI and, and we're losing the personality of who that person is. And I just worry about that. So that I just want to share that because it's a real easy trap to fall into. Thank you, Ralph. Yeah, I'm with you there. And by the way, just because either you're new to Clubhouse or it's just been a while, what we try to do here is hit that mute button when we're done talking just to avoid any feedback or anything like that.

22:44 That's at the bottom right, just FYI. And thank you for that, Ralph, because I think that's that's really important for us to pay attention and listen to the content that we're creating. In other words, if it's not feeling like us anymore, if it's feeling off, I think it's great advice. Or at least, you know, following in what in Ralph's footsteps to stop and take a step back and question, is this me anymore? Does this does, is there something I can do to make a change? And yeah, I think that it's easy to get reliant on AI and what it can do, but if you're anything like me, I use it to help me create blog posts, create LinkedIn posts, etcetera.

23:33 And I don't think I've ever just said produce this copy paste and walk away because I don't feel comfortable doing that because it doesn't really feel like me. I can just feel it right away. I can see it right away. And and when I read it, I'm like, yeah, I just, I can't put that out there because it's not really representing me. So I use it more to guide me. And then I do rewrite a good chunk of it. Do I leave some stuff as it is? Yeah, because it's captured me and my opinion perfectly because it's working from a transcript. It's using my thoughts from the conversations we have here in the morning. But yeah, I think avoiding it, I think just taking a step back when it's not quite feeling right anymore is some great advice, Ralph.

24:24 Thank you for that. Now I'm curious too, Ralph. Saying that. Go ahead. Ralph's saying that like kind of sparks up that I think a lot of my frustration with how people use AI and their opinions on AI is it's very much you're either 100% all in on AI or 100% all against AI. And I don't agree with that at all. And Ralph, what Ralph was saying right there is exactly it like he's not going to or he doesn't want to use AI for 100% of the things that he's doing, but he still uses AI for this and that, like things that he can use to enhance what he's currently doing.

25:07 And I think that to me is what's the most frustrating. It's like either you're you're all in or you're all out. There's only two options. That exist out there. Thank you, Nick, I'm with you there. And it made me think, you know, we sometimes talk about how do we do we have our own built in AI detectors in our own brains, right. And one of the one of the tells, and I'm curious if anyone has any tells they want to share. One of the tells for me are those comparative sentences where they say it's not about this, it's about that, right? That anytime now I see that it's yeah, I'm OK AI.

25:47 Thank you. Even though I'm sure there are instances where it is an actual human writing it. And I see lots of people want to chime in. Let me go to Sid 1st. And then I saw Ashley and Dr. want to chime in. So Sid, do you have a an AI tell? For me it's to format chat. GBT is famous for big bald letters, the title or the subtle action of a blog, and that's a really easy thing to tell when it's like that. Also, a lot of times when people write, I know at least when I write and I write a subtitle right underneath it all right, a paragraph and before I get to my main points. So I have a couple of sentences there about the subtitle and AI will just give them one sentence. And I think the spacing on the bullet points is another thing. That's a really big tale for what AI is. I think it's honestly you're looking online, whether it's LinkedIn or somewhere else, you're reading A blog and it has got these big bold titles and then one sentence and then bullet points that are waste based out. That article was written with AI and not with you, so are in conjunction with you.

26:52 Yeah, Thank you, Sid. Yeah, admittedly, I know what you're talking about, where a lot of times when you're asking it to let's just say, write A blog, it'll often times give you those bullet points and often times use emojis for those bullet points. And quite frankly, I keep that. I like that formatting. And so it's intentional, even though maybe in some cases AI has written it, in other cases I write it because I just find that for me, when I'm reading other posts, having those bullet points separated makes it just easier to read. It makes it feel it doesn't feel as long to read right. Like if it's just written in paragraphs, paragraphs, paragraphs I'm going to probably tune out. But if?

27:37 I agree with you, Mark. Yeah, go ahead. I use the bullet points because I use bullet points in my writing anyway, and I do like the emojis that it gives you. So I do use that. But just as a big tell is I think just a simple formatting. Like friend of mine wrote article the other day and she sent it to me and I said this article isn't you. Like this is not your voice. You wouldn't say these words. I said you let AI write too much of this article for you. It was for our new business and for a blog. And I like this is this article. It doesn't sound like you at all because I know her. And so I don't mind the bullet points. I don't mind the formatting, but you got to do more of this and she sent it back to me a couple days later and so much better.

28:20 I think the message is right along with what Ralph had to say, which is use it as your partner, not as your employee, not as your doer, right, Use it as your partner. Agreed. Thank you, Sid. And I'm going to jump the line for a minute and go to Renee who's joined us from the audience. Good morning, Renee. What do you did You want to add a tell as far as AI is concerned? I wanted to add an SEO edition. When we write our blogs, we want to be writing for Google, right? So Google can read it and find what it likes. And so in your prompt you want to consider adding, please add listicles or bullet points.

29:04 Add listicles and tables where appropriate. And if you add that to your blog writing, that is going to be better for what the format that Google wants. Google loves lists and bullets and Google loves tables because Google knows that readers will spend more time on a blog post or a page even. You know then if it's not, if it doesn't have those, so it knows that people are ingesting tables and they can handle bullets better. So give it what it wants and include those and don't remove bullets ever. And see if you can add a few more tables to your blogs in the future.

29:46 Thank you, Renee. Yeah, I think that's an important point. What does Google want? What does SE what's going to help your SEOI think that's an important point to focus on. I think that we have to start thinking about AI keywords and, and ways that we can start be appearing on different AI tools like ChatGPT, which I think will be a little different than how we strategize for SEO. More to come on that. I, I was just looking, I saw Simona Costantini had recently put a blog out there about that, about really optimizing for AI in addition to SEO and I can't find it. So I will try to find that and put it in the show notes so we can talk more about that.

30:34 In the meantime, Dr. Did you want to share an AI tell? I used to say this word all the time before AI, and now that AI has kind of abused it, I try not to say it in my normal conversation, but deep dive, of course, and all the adjectives, captivating, riveting, all those kind of descriptive, over the top words. And also the new word that it has glommed onto is the word fluff. So whenever I see the word fluff, I think, yeah, AI. Yeah. But my prompt, like for instance, when I want to find a title for an episode, I started out by saying you are an SEO expert as well as a copywriter expert. And I go on to say I have three tasks for you. One, the subject matter of what this transcript is saying, 2 give me a list of 6 of the highly searched keywords for this subject matter, and three, give me a list of eight SEO enhanced titles without using colons or M dashes. And then I ended.

31:56 I always end every prompt by saying if you have any clarifying questions, please ask them one at a time until you are 95% sure of what my goal is. Thank you, Dr. that I love the strategy and yeah, the M dash thing. I know we've talked about it before and I've I always instruct my AI in fact in on chat GBTI have that saved as its permanent rules not to use it, yet it continues to use it. So for example, using the example I was sharing earlier, if I'm having it, say, write a LinkedIn post or at least initiate a LinkedIn post, it will add the M dashes. Then I'll say no, no, remove the M dashes.

32:38 And then it replaces it with proper punctuation, like commas, for example, instead of M dashes. And then if I work with it some more and say, yeah, let's fix this, let's change that. Oh, I don't like that. And then it spits something out and then it goes right back to those damn M dashes. It it is really persistent with those and it's annoying. It is. Yeah, let's see Ashley, do you want to be the the last one to share any AI tells or have we taken them all from you? That was it. I was going to bring up the M dashes even before AII used to write with M dashes, but no human uses like 5 in one paragraph.

33:19 Yeah, I agree. And yeah, that M dash, it's a long dash, right? It's like a double dash and it's used to emphasize a pause, but I think it's just way overused, especially if you look at content online. Yes, it did. You want to add something and then we'll go to Renee. I had a question for Dr. So Dr. when you're working with your customers and you're using chat GMT, I would assume do you have project folders for Yes, each one of your So you know that you can upload folder and it'll remember it. You can upload the keywords that your show uses right And say. You know, rather.

34:03 Than optimize most search you can say these you know and look at the Remember Remember the overview document and the important keywords to this show so it will remember those and access those but that. Would be coming off of the description of the show, of the whole podcast versus the episode. I think that there are. Complementary keywords, right? There's like your main keywords that really represent the series and all the different things that you talk about, right? But then yes, to your point, then you would probably have to do some additional instructing as to making specific SEO specific keywords for SEO for that are related to that episode.

34:49 Does that make sense? Is that what you're getting at? OK, Thank you, Sid and Renee, did you want to add something else? Yeah, just to rewind a little bit, I just. Wanted to honor Ashley that she even knew what keystrokes to do to find an M-ON her keyboard. Agreed. Love that. OK, so let's keep it going. We got tied up on that one story, and rightfully so. But let's get into some other news, shall we? First, forget algorithms. Your personality is the growth strategy. Let me explain. New data from the podcast study is out and here's the headline, although I guess I just gave you one. Your show's success has less to do with algorithms and everything to do with you.

35:43 The research Co produced by Strategic Solutions Research and Point to Point Marketing found that 80% of listeners TuneIn mainly for the host and more than half would bail if that host ever left. Meaning if the host left but they kept the show going, maybe with a new host. So the translation is the magic of podcasting is in the connection. Listeners say that they want that personal bond to extend beyond the episode feed. 82% are more likely to open an e-mail if it comes directly from the host, not the show, not the network's name. So in other words, if I were sending out my newsletter from, say, podcasting morning chat, according to this study, people are going to be less likely to open it up as opposed to if I send it, which I do as me, from me.

36:37 So they're opening up an e-mail from Mark Ronic. And while creators love to obsess over discovery and SEO, as we just discussed, the study warns that loyalty is built by being found. It's built by being a favorite. Most listeners commit to just three podcasts, and that could be arguable, but I think that that's a safe assumption. Some some studies say it could be up to seven podcasts. But I think as far as like a true commitment, a true loyalty, I would agree that it's around 3 and 60% of their listening time goes to 1 show. The study is a giant neon sign for podcasters. Become someone's favorite or your background noise. It's not your fancy gear.

37:23 It's not your editing software or perhaps not even your logo. It's your personality, consistency and engagement that Dr. Loyalty. So let's be clear by the way, this isn't about discoverability. This is about once you're discovered. It's about maintaining a long term relationship with your audience. Some experts are predicting that in 2026, the biggest podcasters won't be the most discoverable. However, they'll be the most human. Expect a renaissance of intimacy, smaller shows, tighter communities, and hosts who treat their inbox like their stage. I am a big believer in this and I know that some, especially some purists out there, will argue this with me, but I do believe we're going to start to see a shift.

38:13 I do believe that there will be a bigger place for smaller shows. We have to be a little patient, but I think that it does come down to how well we connect with our audience and if we are connecting on a deep level, that's where communities are built. Janae is on the stage. Janae, the person we were referencing at the top of the show this morning speaking at Podcasting Made Simple Live Today, October 16th. Janae, what did you want to add to all this morning? This is. Such a lovely topic. Absolutely love this story. And now it's report, you know, they've done studies that it's the people that we are attracted to and we continue to listen to shows and there's countless examples. We talked about this earlier this month about Taylor Swift and the Swifty's because she built those relationship with her fans and they show up wherever she is, right? Anytime Kevin Hart has a new movie, people are going to go watch it because he's built that audience. And Hollywood came running back to Kevin Hart because he built that audience.

39:23 Again, Dane Cook, all of these people, they built their audiences and people are going to continue listening. Like there's die hard fans that still go and listen to Howard Stern because he's built that audience. And that's what people want. That's what corporations want. And the news story that you were sharing yesterday of Netflix going to be bringing Spotify shows, blah, blah, blah. It's exactly this. They want the people that those podcasts has built to come subscribe to the service and then listen to them. They want the people Facebook spent $19 billion to buy WhatsApp because they wanted the people that the Apple has been. Thank you.

40:04 Yeah, thank. You, Janae, and your reference to Taylor Swift and Swifties. Now I'm going to say something that will initially, it might rub some Swifties the wrong way, might be a good thing that Jonathan Howard isn't in here this morning. But I want you to stay with me because I don't mean it the way it sounds. But I think that Taylor Swift, I believe that she built her success, her empire more on connection than talent. Now, again, don't get mad yet because I'm not saying I'm not saying she's not talented because she's extremely talented. And I think that they're they're, she would probably even admit I don't think she's got the best singing voice out there.

40:53 I think that there are just as good, if not better performers. Kanye when you need them. Beyoncé is better. But I'm not. Discrediting her talent. The point is, is that she takes time to connect with her audience. She has learned her audience what they love. She caters to that. Jonathan brings up all of her Easter eggs that she does. She does a lot of different things to make her fan base feel like they know her, that they're connected to her, that they can relate to her. And then being talented on top of that is icing on the cake. And I think you could make an argument in podcasting the same way that I think if we are focused on our connection with our audience and building a community first, and then we're also in the background working on our craft, becoming a better podcaster.

41:46 I think that's that recipe for success in podcasting. Dr. Did you want to add something? Two things. Well, number one, I'm. In Nashville. So I would be amiss if I didn't mention that she happens to write some really great songs with some really great folks. So that's one thing, OK. And the second thing is the story that you read at the very bottom, there was a sentence that kind of summed up my whole gripe. Cause was it earlier this week or was it last week that we talked about like pet peeves or something like that? The sentence was that you read, the biggest podcasters won't be the most discoverable, They'll be the most human. And what I had said last week is that I'm scared that I'm losing focus on, I'm so focused on, you know, SEO and how this can be discovered that I'm hoping that to dedicate as much time to content.

42:50 And I'm trying to balance the two, but I shouldn't have to balance it should be more content. That should be it. But I'm so concerned with am I using the right word here? And what is the you know it's. Blah. I I don't like that feeling, but it's, you know, what do you do? You got to go with the tie. So that's that is the sentence that stuck out to me the most. I think that's very relatable. Dr. And I see that Janae wants to comment on this, so let me just jump right to him. Go ahead. Janae, you absolutely right, Dr. We. Can't be just saying Oh my God this is you got to optimize. But yes optimization has its place. But then also the creating of content. Like Mr. Beast produced 100 videos before he was good, and even then he was struggling.

43:44 So then he brought in the experts to help him optimize. So once you got to do the work and then you can say, OK, you know what, I've done all that I could now to find a coach that can help me get to that next level. And that's why Olympians and amazing athletes, they have coaches because they've done everything that they could without any of the experts. And that's where we come in, I believe, to help people get to that expertise. And, and they are the the way you focus on bringing optimization to people are working with you. They're coming to you exactly for that same reason, because you are focusing on the things that they might not have thought of. And the part about human I've I've been experimenting on my YouTube channel the hacks and hobbies 1 and in the last 40. Days I've.

44:32 Seen 30,000 views because I've been posting every two hours. Wow, so. There's something to. Say about consistency posting and feeding the fire because you kind of see what they keep talking about. How do I get the views? How do I get the discoverability? Well, how often am I telling them about what I'm putting out? That's me. So let me ask you about. Those views? How many views in what, two days? A total of. 40 some days and total of 29,000 views. These are all shorts by the ways. OK, have there been? Any conversions out of the 29,000 conversions have? Been to then go.

45:18 Watch the longer episode, you know, 45 minute long episodes, and that's going to happen after a much longer time. I'm guessing so and it's very recent. Yeah, it's very. Recent, so it's hard to probably gauge. If you're getting conversion right now, you probably need to let it simmer a bit, OK? Exactly. Yeah, and. Sid had something he wanted. To add go go for it Sid. I have a lot of thoughts on this, but. I'll focus in on one thing. So discoverability is important for all of us. In my opinion, if you're trying to scheme the algorithm or work the algorithm in order to get discovered, you're fighting a losing battle because the best discoverability comes from a referral.

46:07 It comes from Mark listening to my show and then in casual conversation saying, hey, have you heard the trend report? And you should go check that out. It's available on all your platforms. That's the best type of discoverability you can get is a referral because then that person's more likely to go hit play for you. And so I have, I am hyper focused. I'm not hyper focused on keywords. I did a whole bunch of keyword research. I know my keywords are, I've been doing all this stuff. And so I know we're from the back end. I feel like the structure is really now for Season 7 going to be set up really strong. But even before this focus on Season 7, every time I discover a listener by name, I connect with them.

46:56 I reach out to them, I send them an e-mail or I send them a message on LinkedIn. I thank them for listening to the show. I thank them for commenting. Then I go as far as to look at the likes that are on when my guest postings, that people I don't know, I go in and thank them for listening because I'm trying to build true connection with people and it works for me. It's a lot of work, don't get me wrong, but it works for me because I'm building my ecosystem. I see it in my follower counts going up and things of that nature. So I definitely think that people, we've talked about this before, people long for connection. Whether you want to admit it or not, because you're behind the mic, people tend to believe that you might be a little sandoffish, you're a celebrity or whatever it might be, and they might be a little bashful, bashful to reach out to you.

47:44 So I reach out to them and I thank them and it's working. And so I don't think that we should, any of us should skip on the opportunity to connect directly with the listener because that listener is going to help find your next listener and it'll be a lot easier than trying to chase or fight or finagle the algorithm. I'd love that. Sid, thank you. I am so with you on that and I, I can't help but to think, could you imagine if we all spent the same amount of time on ways to connect with our audience versus all the time we spend on SEO hacks and strategies and tips, etcetera. I would love to conduct that experiment. You're kind of doing that now and I would love to see how that changes the game for a podcast.

48:36 I'm not, I'm not saying it'll definitely work, but I do feel confident in it. So the success measurement. It's going to be really hard to measure with a lot of this, right? Dr. said something about asking donate about conversions. There was 29,000 views on the shorts, the conversions. Well, how do you measure the conversion? Because you don't know who the people are. The 29,000 people that viewed that, unless they commented or left a like you don't actually know who they are. So understanding the conversion to me, you got to look at what's important. So to me, the conversion might be if I do all these shorts about my podcast, the conversion for me is an increase in downloads and the people actually either watching or listening to my podcast, it's not buying something or something like that. But it's so hard because the 29,000 views, 90% of those people don't engage with your content. That is definitely the.

49:30 Challenge for a lot of podcasters is connecting with the fact that that is true that 90% maybe even more are not are passively listening or consuming your content the and you don't know who they are or how to connect with them. So yeah, that is a challenge. I'm with you there, Janae. Did you want to say something else at some point? Said I love. That you're, you know, the strategy that you've shared and connecting with the people who are actually engaging with the content, engaging with the episode and those personal connections. Because that's what I'm all about, right? I love connecting with people. The experiment that I was doing is to understand what type of content would resonate, right?

50:13 Which videos are getting thousands of views versus which videos are getting 100 views. And that's the date I'm getting back with YouTube. And YouTube analytics are much more deeper than what we have on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. And that's something that I get to leverage because then I can go in and see where did the people drop off at which point and how can I continue growing? And if you've taken any YouTube classes or if you watched any videos on YouTube on how to build engagement, they talk about all of these things. The depths of analytics that we have access to is is amazing because, and that's the data that I was looking for.

50:58 Then the the other thing that also saw is like, OK, based on my podcast name or channel name, what's related to that podcast name and the title and those videos got more views versus the ones that did not relate to the podcast channel. So that was another relate things that I also found. So again, it's an ongoing research, right? We continue to improve, continue to build in all of these things and I love it. Thank you so much. Thank you, Janae. Thanks for. Sharing a little bit more of your process and how you're analyzing all of this data and information you're getting through YouTube. Really important. Thank you. And Jeff has joined us on stage.

51:40 Jeff Dwoskin, good morning. What did you want to add? I wanted to add. That the SEO is extremely important, but so is the engagement part. But I think when you're talking about engagement, the reason so many people are lurkers, like you said, over 90% is that they don't know how to engage or they don't think you want to engage. So you have to kind of spoon feed them or give them a path. They may be embarrassed to comment, they may not know what to comment. So giving them a thing to comment on is important. You know, you put up your short that promotes your podcast. Sure.

52:21 In our head, it's like when you see this, you're going to be hypnotized. And of course, Click to the long form or subscribe to my Apple. Of course, why wouldn't you? What else would you possibly do when you're seeing this amazing content but want more? But they don't think they think that way because you know, they're doom scrolling. They're on to the next thing, you know, you got to give them a reason to comments. You got to give them a reason to engage. And sometimes that's just a prompt to give that, you know, create some form of call to action that gets them to answer a question or anything that you can then engage back with them and start that cycle. I will say that. I will. Say. SEO is important and using all the good keywords is. There's a new show on Netflix right now called Boots. It's really good if you want to check it out, but it's based on a book called The Pink Marine.

53:10 And about a year or so ago I had that author that the show is based on who wrote the book on my podcast. And I noticed in my analytics, Thank you, Janae, is that that that episode, which by the way, is just audio with a single image. So definitely have everything you have on YouTube, but just shot up hundreds of views all of a sudden and started like who were listening and they're like all of a sudden generating revenue again. It's like it was funny. It was just, you know, so you got to have the right words out there. So when people are searching because you never know when they're going to be looking. So all great points, Jeff. Thank. You and I'll bite my tongue because Sid wants to chime in and we're running short on time, so go ahead Sid, you obviously stuck to good fire.

53:54 This morning, Mark, I think there's two aspects of SEO keywords. There's the keyword that you need, that Google needs, and then there's the keywords that go into the podcast player app. Most people today aren't in my opinion, and what I've been paying attention to and learning is they're not going to Google to search for your podcasts. They're not going to Google to type in hobby podcasts. They're going to their favorite podcast player and they're using that as a search engine to type in hobby podcast. And so if your podcast player keywords aren't optimized equally to your Google keywords, you're missing the boat.

54:37 And this is what I learned from Courtney Elmer. I mentioned her last week that took a class and a course on this. And it's really important because I was, it's just, you think about the younger generation, my daughter's moved to London. Everybody knows that. And I was asking her, has she found things to do? And she said, yeah, I went to TikTok and I searched in things to do in Canary Wharf, London, didn't go to Google. She went to one of her favorite apps and all these videos. So though Google is still very important, definitely the powerhouse, I think you have to understand that the consumer behavior is changing. And they're using the native app to search what they want from that app. And if we're not optimizing the keywords for that app and only focusing on Google, I think we're missing a boat. Amen, Sid.

55:23 Wow. You're right. I did seem to spark something today in today's conversation, and I'm glad we did. And by the way, Sid, to your point about podcast SEO, you mentioned last week Courtney Elmer and that you saw her speaking at Podcast Movement about podcast specific SEO. And she and I have been talking since then. And I'm, we're going to have her soon on the show to interview her and learn more about that and really dig into that deeper. And also we'll learn more about her podcast SEO mastery course that she offers as well. So stay tuned for that. That's Courtney Elmer and I'm gonna, yeah, I have, I have some stuff to talk to with some of the my Co hosts because I don't think she's gonna be want to or be able to do 7:00 AM with us. She's told me it's a little too early. So we may do something outside of the 7:00 AM hour with her and you, all my Co hosts.

56:25 And then we'll play it for everybody on the show after the fact. So stay tuned for that. All right, we have run out of time. Even though we still have more stories to cover, maybe we'll get to 1 of them before we share our wins from the week tomorrow, Friday, October 17th, make sure you are collecting all your wins from this past week and bring them tomorrow. We'll talk about them on top of more podcasting topics. Join us then. And until then, make it a great day. Everybody, Take care.