67: Outlier Podcast Festival Takeaways
"There is a difference in bad audio, decent audio, and amazing audio. And, I’m not telling you you need to have amazing audio. Decent audio is good enough for your show."
Last weekend I traveling to Salt Lake City, Utah where I was on a panel about Women in Podcasting at the Outlier Podcast Festival.
The Outlier festival happens a few times a year in various cities around the country and this was my second time attending. It’s an intimate event with a laid-back vibe that makes it really fun to learn new podcasting insights and tips.
It those insights that I talk about in this episode. So, tune in to hear the cool new app that lets you take notes (and organize them) while you’re listening to podcast episodes, why you need to do an audit of your podcast at least once every year, the easy hack for getting a long-winded guest to stop talking, why engagement is as important as the content itself, and the awesome new offering I’m launching TODAY that is practically free!
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Transcript
Welcome to podcasting for coaches. I'm Britany Felix and I'm a podcast launch consultant who specializes in helping coaches and consultants utilize the power of podcasting as a way to build brand awareness and generate new leads for their business. I realize not every new coach or consultant can afford to hire someone to help launch their show. So I created this podcast as a way to guide you through the process of launching and utilizing your very own podcast to help you grow your business and reach a new audience of adoring followers and potential clients. If you're ready to get your voice and podcast out into the world, head over to podcasting for coaches.com to learn more. Welcome to Episode 67 of podcasting for coaches. I am so excited to be back after an unexpected extended holiday break it went on for about a month longer than I anticipated. Thank you so much for being patient. And now for an update that will be completely irrelevant for anyone listening to this in the future. If you're listening to this the day it goes live, you may notice that today is Friday and I usually released on Thursdays well, as part of the New Year new podcast thing I have going on. I am going to be switching the release days to Fridays to coincide with the release day for my other podcast gruesome gossip, it was a little bit difficult to keep track of the dates. So I'm going to make it easy on myself and just release them both on Fridays. So in this episode, I want to talk about the outlier podcast festival. I was fortunate enough to be able to be on a panel about women in podcasting at the festival in Salt Lake City this past weekend. I will of course have a link to everything that I mentioned in this episode, including the outlier podcast festival because it does travel around to multiple locations throughout the year in the show notes on my website, and you can find those by going to podcasting for coaches. com click on the podcast tab in the main menu, and go to episode number 67. So first off, one of the first few presentations that I caught at this event was from Rachel with x IQ. That's e x dash IQ. And she mentioned a really cool new platform called note cast where you can actually listen to the podcast episode. But then take notes live while it's happening within the app. So you can actually type the notes out, you can do voice control, you can add labels and annotations and really keep all of your notes organized. And then it can even email you your notes either daily or weekly. I don't personally take a lot of notes when I listen to podcast episodes. And if I do, I just open up the Notes app on my phone because I'm usually in the middle of doing a bunch of other things. And to be perfectly honest, most of the podcasts I listened to are purely for entertainment because I listened to so much audio from my clients that podcast for me are a way to kind of ease my mind and shut things down a little bit and just have some fun. But if you are an avid note taker, during podcast episodes, this could be a really, really cool new tool for you. Or if your audience are likely avid note takers, this may be a resource you want to pass on to them as well. So again, that is called note cast. Next, Rachel actually gave a different presentation on branding and marketing your show. And she brought up a really important point, very beginning of your presentation that you need to revisit your why. And I completely agree with this. So often we get really excited with our podcast, and we dive right in and we'd go to it. And then we find ourselves a year down the road, two years, three years. And we haven't really checked back in on the decisions that we made all the way back at the very beginning. As a coach or consultant, I am sure you have realized at this point, that if you do anything for long enough in your business, it evolves and changes and grows, and your podcast shouldn't be any different. So once a year, I want you to check back in on your show. Do you still enjoy it? Is it still serving your audience? Is your audience even still the same? Are you promoting the right products and services? Are you still happy with your intro? And outro? Do you need to update those? Are you sick of the music? Is your audience probably sick of the music? Do you still have the same objectives you did when you started out? Do you still like the branding? Do you like the name event? Do you like the release day? Do you want to switch from solo to interview or vice versa or start mixing it up when you never have before? All of these things I want you to check back in and essentially do a self audit of your show. Now this is the perfect time for me to talk about if you don't want to do this yourself. I actually do offer this service so you can hire me to come in and do an audit of your show with fresh eyes. And I can maybe point out some things that you haven't noticed needs some updating or some work just because you haven't had to think about it in a year or two. So if you want to get some more information on those auditing services, of course just check out the show notes for this episode or Reach out to me directly via Instagram or Facebook at podcasting for coaches or email me Britany, BRITA ny at podcasting for coaches.com. Now one of the other things Rachel had on her presentation, and it was a quote that I absolutely love. And I'm so upset that I didn't write down who it is attributed to. But the quote is, content is king. But engagement is queen. And the lady rules the house. So yes, this content needs to be incredible and amazing. But if you're not doing anything with it, if you're not actively engaging your audience, in the conversation, you are doing yourself a huge, huge disservice. So find a way to get your audience engaged. even beyond that, engage them yourself, while you're talking. You'll notice on the show, I rarely say you guys or you listeners, I say you because I'm talking directly to you. Yes, the person listening to this in your car right now washing your dishes, walking your dog on the treadmill at the gym, I am speaking directly to you. By doing that I am engaging you in this conversation. I'm giving you a chance to speak back to me, even though I can't hear it. But you can. And you can feel like you're still an active listener and an active participant in this discussion. You want to make sure you're doing that for your listeners as well. So think about that, as you record your content. When you have these interviews especially, do you just have a conversation with the guests and never even acknowledged that there is a third participant in that conversation, never even acknowledged that the listener is visible and sitting right directly across from you while you're speaking to your guest. And then of course, you can get them actively engaged and involved by asking them questions. Do an AMA like I do on this show, I did one last year for my birthday in April, I'm going to do one this year for my birthday, where I solicit questions from my community, and then I answer them on the show. That is another way to get your audience engaged with you. So that they don't feel like they're eavesdropping on the conversation, but they literally are a part of it. Now another thing, Rachael mentioned that I find really interesting, and I'm going to look more into this, but I don't know for sure that this is an awesome resource. I trust her. She was very knowledgeable. And I was able to speak with her for a little while afterwards. And she was great. But I have not personally done my own due diligence on this. So I just want to put that disclaimer out there. But she actually mentioned that when it comes to paid advertising for your show, obviously Avoid Facebook, we should all know that at this point. But she said overcast ads. So if you're familiar with overcast, that is a podcast listening app. And she said that the ads on there actually performed really, really well. So she said you can specifically target a genre. And it will show how many subscribers you got directly from that ad because it's all within their own platform. So it's their data that they're comfortable with releasing to you, as the person paying to run that ad. And she said actually, ads run over the holidays are way cheaper. So what she does is she runs her ads over these holiday seasons to test out what works really well. And then she uses those ads throughout the rest of the year. So if you're interested in doing some paid marketing for your show, maybe Avoid Facebook, avoid Instagram, and think about advertising within these actual podcast apps where podcast listeners are already spending their time. And if you want to do that, it seems like overcast ads might be a good idea. So next I want to share a quote from Spencer right with the pod mill which is actually where this conference was held in Salt Lake City. It was a beautiful venue. So if you live in Salt Lake City, you want to connect with people maybe record a podcast episode go check out the pod mill. But he said in his presentation about podcasts and networks, that bad audio is like a fine grade sandpaper that Where's your audience down and I loved that so much. So much like I literally got giddy when he said that because it resonated with me like to my core. There is a difference in bad audio, decent audio, and amazing audio and I am not telling you that you need to have amazing audio. Decent audio is good enough for your show. You don't need to go out there and spend 1000s upon 1000s upon 1000s of dollars on a home studio so they You sound like your show belongs on NPR. But you need to at least have it not be sandpaper that quickly Where's your audience and makes them so irritated that they just cannot listen to another second. So please, please, please get your audio to at least acceptable decent quality. This means don't record into your phone. Don't record using your Apple earbud headphones, it's fine for your guests, you as the host should hold yourself to a higher standard. Don't use programs like zoom to record your interviews. There are other options and I've talked about these in previous podcast episodes with equipment and recording programs. So make sure that you go check those out but Please, please, please have at least decent audio. So next I went to a presentation by Jim in Brazil. And hopefully I'm saying that name correctly, I'm probably not because I am literally the worst at that. But he had a brilliant idea for getting your guests to just shut the hell up whenever they won't stop talking. Now, I know that sounds a bit harsh, but if you podcast for long enough, you will experience this and it is frustrating and annoying. So if you have a guest that is just going on and on and on to the point where they clearly don't even remember what the question was in the first place. Here's his brilliant way for getting that to stop for shutting that down. When a guest won't stop talking, interrupt whenever they give you the slightest opening whenever they take a breath and ask them a yes or no question. Preferably, one that you're reasonably certain has a no answer. Because they might end up saying, Well, yes, bah, bah, bah, blah, or Well, no, because blah, blah, blah. But for the most part, if you ask them on a direct, yes, no question they answer with a yes, no answer. And in the time that they say, Oh, no, then that gives you just enough room to squeeze in there. And take back control of the conversation. So maybe the next time you have a guest who will not stop talking, try utilizing this little tip. And another thing that I really enjoyed from his presentation was starting the interviews off with a human interest, story or question. So something that is actually completely unrelated to the topic of the show. But just something that is a unique and different, it doesn't start off, like every single podcast episode, I am guilty of this. But be it humanizes your guest very, very quickly, and get some people in your audience to be able to relate to them right away. And preferably don't make this a Hey, tell me about a childhood trauma that's impacted you for the rest of your life. But something short and sweet. One of the things my clients loves to do, she starts off her question with what did you want to be when you were growing up. And more often than not, it's so interesting, because a, the guest just lights up about this, they love talking about it. And B, she actually ties it back in because for the most part, what they wanted to be when they were growing up, kind of relates in some way to what they're doing. Now there's some similar aspects. And so she's able to tie that in. And it's just a fun way to start the conversation in a way that's different from every other show. So maybe start thinking about what you can do to start up your show, to spice up the beginning of the interview a little bit. He also had another resource for doing a a podcast survey of your listeners. So that way, you can get some feedback from them. And I'm gonna have a link to that survey, he he gave the link to the template for free. I'm gonna have a link to that in the show notes as well on his website, but just in case, it's happy m r.com forward slash podcast dash survey. And again, that link will be in the show notes. So another presentation I attended was actually with someone at pod bean. So pod bean, if you're unfamiliar with it is kind of like Lipson or blueberry. They're another hosting service. And they have some really cool bells and whistles and they're branching out into other services. I actually really enjoy pod bean, they're my second favorite after Lipson. And this presentation was really about live streaming. So live streaming your episodes if you want to, but just kind of in general, the advice was pretty good. And they were talking about a new service called pod bean live. So yes, you can use something like stream yard for your show. And that might be great, but doesn't actually provide you with quality audio at the end of it. So that maybe you can take this live stream audio and turn it into a podcast episode and still have that decent audio I mentioned earlier. No, I have not tested this, I it is one of the things on my list because you do not have to be a pod bean subscriber or member or client or whatever they want to call it. You don't have to have about beat a paid hosting account in order to use pod bean live. So it is something I will probably test in the future I just haven't had a chance to yet. But if it's coming from pod bean, who is a podcast hosting service, I'm guessing they're at least providing you with a semi decent audio file at the end. Now the only thing is it is an mp3 file instead of a WAV. But honestly, that's not a deal breaker, especially for the benefits of getting the live features. One thing I do want to notice that I did realize was a drawback to this, though, is that you cannot access the replays later on. So once you record a new export, that's it. So it's not like something you can have people constantly going back to. So this can really be more of an incentive to get your audience to pay attention in real time and keep them engaged with you. And maybe take advantage of an impulse buying tendency because it is right there and they're going to lose access to it as soon as you're done. So those were the takeaways that I got from the presentations. The other takeaways that I had were that I am typically an introvert in social situations. I used to not be like that when I was a child I was extremely extroverted. But when I attend these conferences, I tend to just kind of like hang out in the back by myself. I'll play around on my phone or at least pretend like I am so that people don't try and duck to me, which is the exact opposite of what I should be doing at these things. And I did force myself to get out of my comfort zone at this event. And I'm at a podcasting conference, everyone loves talking about their podcast. So I would literally just talk to the person next to me and just started the conversation with Hi, I'm Brittany, they would say their name, oh, what's your podcast about? And then that launches into a whole conversation. So if you're nervous, because you're an introvert, and you're not sure that you can handle being in a podcasting live events situation? I do want to tell you that, of course, yes, obviously, respect your own boundaries and find ways to recharge and have your safe space at the event. But also, it's really not that hard to go up and start talking to someone because everyone loves talking about their freaking podcast. So just go up to someone, introduce yourself and ask them, what's your podcast? Or what do you podcast about? or How long have you been podcasting, and then they'll take the conversation over from there. So please do not be afraid to attend these events. They are amazing. I ended up spending several, several hours after the event with a lot of really cool people who are fairly big names in the space. So you never know what's going to happen. And I really encourage you to take advantage of these incredible opportunities. Now, if you're not able to attend live podcasting events like this and get this information, and if you don't really care to read a bunch of blog articles, or listen to a bunch of podcasts on podcasting, but you still want to get information like this, you still want to get these kinds of updates. And you still want to know what's going on in the industry. And you want to have all these really cool hacks and strategies. I want you to take a look at my podcasting insiders club that is launching two day. So the podcasting insiders club is a monthly newsletter and will go out once a month on the last day of the month. And it will include all of the industry updates that I feel are relevant for you as a coach or consultant who's podcasting as part of your business. That way, you don't have to filter through all the fluff, listen to hours of podcast episodes, attend these conferences if you don't want to, and spend so much time on research and end up having to sift through 10 different articles only to find one that might actually be kind of relevant to you. For just $5 per month, you get this curated newsletter with industry updates specific just to you. And then you also get access to the password protected catalog of every issue that goes out. So for as long as you are an active paying subscriber, you have an access to the back catalogue, so you don't have to sift and dig through your emails to find that one update you need about one time. So if you want to become a member of the podcasting insiders club, of course, just go to the show notes for this episode, and the link will be there or or there's actually a link directly to the landing page in the main menu of my website, just click on podcasting insiders club, it could not be any easier. Thank you so much for being here with me this week. And I want to invite you to come back next week, where we're going to have an interview with yet another successful podcaster thanks so much. And that wraps up another episode of podcasting for coaches. If you'd like to connect with me further, you can do so on Instagram at podcasting for coaches. If you know it's time to finally get serious about starting your podcast, go to podcasting for coaches calm and click on the work with me tab in the main menu to learn more about my one on one launch consultation packages or my self paced online course. And I look forward to seeing the podcasts that you create and put out into the world.