284. Growing our podcasts

Having worked with thousands of business owners to create a podcast for their business, I’ve created The Recurring Results Roadmap for Podcasters™.

It’s a step-by-step guide to growing your business to 7+ figures using your podcast.

Importantly, it removes the guesswork so you know exactly what to focus on at all times to generate that recurring revenue.

The best part? It’s personalised, free and it lets you get started straight away.

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If this is your first time here, this is Should I Start A Podcast. I’m Ronsley Vaz. Each week you’ll hear me, and a star-studded guest lineup, dig deep into the podcasting process. We’ll bring you tactics, tips and tricks to use in your own podcasting journey. We’ll teach you how to build an audience. And we’ll show you how to keep them coming back, show after show.

So if you want to start a podcast, or expand your current audience, this is the show for you.

Coming up in this Should I Start A Podcast episode …

• How do we get attention to our podcast show? And how do we grow that?
• Clubhouse for engagement
• What is engagement? How do we create engagement for our businesses & brands?
• Building consistency, content, & value
• The value of being an influencer inside a niche
• The call to action, yell, tell and sell
• The psychology of podcasting

Here is the transcript of the entire episode for those who like to read …

Ronsley Vaz 1:54
Last month, I’ve been having these conversations at the same time basically around growing our podcast growing audience. And what comes up the most is it an engaging show is probably the first thing that is kind of obvious. But it is one of those things that irrespective of who I asked come back with something similar in terms of Is it a Good show, and it’s it’s obvious that sometimes you put a lot of money behind big budget movies, and they don’t make it because of different reasons, because it might not be a good show in the at the end of it or a good movie. But what I’d love to talk about is that engagement piece, quick conversation around the engagement, and how to first look at our shows from an engagement perspective in terms of Okay, the show’s got to be good. So we can have a quick conversation around that. And then how do we get attention to that show? And how do we grow that so that you can start with about engagement? And then we can Matthew in origin can jump in when when you feel like

Holly Shannon 2:46
I think I’ve been toying with clubhouse for engagement to see how that shifts. My following and people who subscribe and I actually have seen the biggest transition, being on clubhouse because I’m able to record my podcast live and have a little more interaction and people are able to come up to the stage and ask questions, and then push my content out as the Evergreen podcast that it typically is. So that’ll probably be my contribution at the moment.

Ronsley Vaz 3:16
Yeah, thanks, Molly. Matt, Lauren, let’s talk engagement. Before we go into some attention strategies, well, I

Matt 3:23
think like you said in the beginning, the first thing is always to put out good content. And when I’m talking to new clients, like Holly, many of mine are businesses using this podcast for various reasons to help grow their business, raise awareness, grow their brand, and raise their profile. And, and so the two kind of main ways that we look at that is one, it’s not just putting out content that it’s engaging, engaging, but it’s thinking about the people’s time, the audience’s time to listen, right, most podcasts are out there for free and how Apple’s obviously gonna change a little bit. There’s other platforms already that allow you to pay for podcasting. But for the most part, 95% of podcasts are free, but people have to invest their time to listen. And so when I’m talking to a new client, the question is always, how are you going to express to the audience that this is worthy of their time? What value are you going to provide to them. And with businesses, it’s usually in the form of education or knowledge or learning or new skills or whatever, but I think you can consider value also for modern business podcasts, right? If your comedic podcast the value is, I’m going to entertain you for 30 to 60 minutes and as long as you can hold people’s attention and keep them entertained or distracted, or whatever that looks like i think that’s that’s the same, you know, end goal even though it looks different. The other way that a lot of my clients use podcasts is less about the audience and more about how they present themselves. And that also happens in one of two ways. Either one, you know, you have a podcast on your site where your podcast is not going to go out and get you new business necessarily, right. It’s not going to grow to the 50,000 downloads and attract all sorts of new people into your sales funnel. But it’s more like people show up to my website. And while they’re looking around deciding whether or not they’re going to do business with me whether or not they’re going to give me money and invest in me, they’re going to see what I’m all about. And sometimes that podcast helps them see who I am tells my story shows that we’re a high quality, firm or institution and that, Oh, well, if this place is good enough to put out a high quality podcast that’s useful and sounds good. And it was consistent, then, you know, they’ll probably do well by me in terms of my money. And for some of them the other way they do that is not by who’s listening to the show, but who they engage with, as the guest on their show. And so for so many of them, they don’t even care how many people listen to the show, because they’re using that podcast as a way to open doors to new clients, new relationships, new customers, by inviting those people to be on the podcast and, you know, forming a bond that way versus a cold call or cold email, which will probably go nowhere, right? Yes, somebody, Hey, can I do it about you for an hour and invite you on my podcast? More people often say, yes. And then once you’ve had an hour long conversation, that person’s more receptive to future conversations and future relationships and introducing you to other people that, you know, might be good for your podcast. So it’s, you know, engagement is not always just about how many people listen to the show, and how do I get them to follow me on Twitter or subscribe to my email newsletter? engagement could be a variety of different things, I just think I think it’s important just to know exactly why you want a podcast, and what it is that you and or the end user is going to get out of it, and then focus your strategy around that.

Lauren 6:34
I have a different take from Matthews. And it’s not that mine is correct, or Matthews is wrong, or vice versa. My viewpoint on engagement is that we’ve come to a time where many are out there explaining this is what you have to do with your podcast. And oftentimes, it’s only a subjective statement. So for me, for instance, for me, I very rarely have guests on because I’m not a fan of the I’m going to have every single guest on and it’s going to be interesting, but it isn’t necessarily interesting. And I don’t go on a lot of podcasts anymore. Because I see these podcasts, I look them up, I look them over and it’s not about their listenership or their subscription, it’s going if they’re having everybody and their mother, it gives off a perception that all they’re trying to do is grab my audience or just try to build I’m in agreement with. I’m in agreement with Matthew, that when we when we stand fundamentally true to our story, what we want to put out in our way, and when an audience is placed in the feeling of I’m not just being asked to subscribe. I’m not just being asked to follow I’m not just being forced into a funnel. We’re coming into a time like I said, 2 million podcasts out there, a lot of people are getting the sense of the Tony Robbins, Gary Vander Chuck john Maxwell Grant cardones, road to Bill, Bill bill. I believe personally, any experiences I’m seeing and the evidence I have that when we create this thing in honor, in authenticity in transparency, we can grow something a lot greater that can convert a lot better.

Ronsley Vaz 8:03
I love those points you making and that’s why I love clubhouse and I love these panels primarily because we can have this conversation and you know, normally you know in a podcast interview it is it is the one person the one person perspective. And you’re right Lauren, there’s a lot of there’s a lot of fact there because I personally have done over 13 1400 interviews in the last seven years. And I To be honest, there’s only so far you can go with one person and Lanza becoming about their story or, you know, you can go you can talk about that. But there’s there’s only so much that content you can you can consume, I suppose. So let’s talk about what you just said, because you spoke about authentic message. And I think a lot of us get caught up in that word. Or those words of authentic message, the authentic hood, my authentic self out there. But we don’t really know how to translate that into making stuff. How would you advise us,

Lauren 8:53
the author as funny, it’s authentic, and authenticity has become such a key word. And a couple months ago, I put out a quote, kind of as a joke, saying mostly authentic is impossible. You’re either authentic, or you’re not, I believe the concept of our message and our story as long as it bears the weight of truth, not a truth, your truth, my truth, but the truth. We can do so much better. I’m not going to conceal and I’ll be fully transparent. I started in the music business, I was on 700 albums, I went into television, I had a lot of high profile positions. That’s why when people say, Oh man, you opened up your podcast and came out of the gate. I had a audience in a sense that allowed that to be Now the difference inside that authenticity. I was honest about that. We have many people that are falsifying their numbers or falsifying their best sellers, or you can buy a best seller on Amazon. And they’re using more hype tone. I believe the root of authenticity comes in our transparency and our humility. And in that as we put that out, people are beginning to say wait a minute, and I believe this to be a truth that people are beginning to recognize the scripts and the hype and the I mean I’ve seen I’ve spoken at every pod fest. podcasts, I mean all these different things and it’s so many so many speakers on stage, you must you have to, you’ve got to do this, you need to do that 2 million plus people are doing that, or they’re buying those fake cards so that they have questions. It might be in a different direction. I close with saying, I think certain people, if you can’t find the tone, or your own story, maybe the podcast venue is not best for you. Or on the other side, if you do feel strong about podcasting, be inspired by the information that you hear from different sources, but bring it in to create your blueprint and not be somebody else.

Matt 10:35
I think we get a lot of that in not just podcasting, but a lot of digital media creation today. It’s the this is my blueprint, so everybody has to follow it. And I just don’t think there’s one right or wrong way. And probably the best thing about podcasting is that there is no 100% right way to do it. And the people who are doing something different, who are trying something new who are filling, you know, spaces and gaps that are not, you know, being dominated by all these Johnny come lately, these are Jane come late, these are the ones who tend to find a lot of success. And and I would just add to what Lauren said that, I think and Ron I think we’ve talked about this before is, you know, I never want to work with a client, he says I really want to have a podcast, but I don’t know what I want to do and about. Right, that’s that’s not the right reason to start a podcast, you don’t have to have one, what I always look for is somebody with a passion for whatever that is, it could be a passion to share their knowledge, it could be a passion to learn from other people, it can be a passion to make people laugh. But you know, if you wake up every day, just oozing with passion about a certain goal or topic or whatever that looks like, and this is the right medium to express that passion, then you will likely find success. Even if it takes a long time. You know, I think Lauren, you were making the point, there really aren’t any overnight successes, right? People who you they are overnight successes to you. But people have put in the work either building an audience building up their, you know, their reps, their consistency, their content, their value. And just because you’re first finding them now doesn’t mean they haven’t put in a ton of work ahead of time to get to this spot.

Holly Shannon 12:14
I think also, if we’re working with a client, we need to be really actively listening to what they’re saying. I think Ronsley and I have been in multiple rooms where we’ve experienced an individual who is interested in having a podcast, and they present us with two choices wrongly, I’m sure you’ve recalled several that we’ve done like this. And they’ll say, I have been doing, I don’t know x, I’ve been doing marketing my whole life, my whole career has been in marketing, and I can talk, you know, circles around it. And I, you know, everybody thinks I should have a podcast because I present really well. And I’m good at explaining things and, you know, so on and so forth. And but I have this other idea that I want to have a podcast about. I’ll make something up like a midlife, you know what it’s like in midlife as a woman in a career or something like that. And the tone in their voice is completely different when they share the two ideas. And you can tell where the passion is. And sure, you know, it’s not to say that maybe like for this particular example, maybe she would have killed it and doing marketing one. But you can hear where the passion is. And I think as somebody if we’re going to help guide and we’re going to do it with humility, then we need to guide them appropriately to and say, Okay, yeah, you could talk about business all day long. We don’t want you to go into pod fate. And after seven to 10 episodes, you’re so sick of talking all the time about the same thing you talk about at work 50 hours a week, and you know, you should do something on the side, then that is you have that passion about. So I think I might have gone off a little bit on a tangent, but I was just trying to dial into, I think as people guiding, we have to also have a certain amount of humility and understanding that we have to tell them no, maybe you don’t go for the money shot, you go for the passion shot, and maybe that’ll be better in the end.

Mick 14:16
Hey, this is Mick Hawes I’m a business owner podcaster and coach of amazing builders, I’m on the inside of we are podcast members or as we call it the way family. Now if you’re thinking about growing your business using your podcast, in your online presence, come and join us on the inside. I’d love to meet you, James and Ronsley coaches to get recurring results in our business. And if you want that roadmap which we all follow to get those recurring results you can download it at https://roadmap.wearepodcast.com Now back to the show.

Ronsley Vaz 14:55
Let’s assume the four of us here I want to grow my podcast. My podcast is called the psychology Entrepreneurship, it is a show for entrepreneurs, it’s about the psychology of our decisions. How would I go about growing that show? I would love to hear from from every one of you? What are the what suggestions? Would you have to grow that?

Lauren 15:12
I think that there’s an Outward Bound kind of thing. So when you’re when you’re putting a focus on the optics of psychology, where is it at some point that maybe two or three episodes in you focus that as a press release? And you put it to more of the psychological and the medical channels? Looking to the just outside of social media alone? Where is the template in the themes? Do you Did you record something that just may be so trending three months down the road, that it’s hold on to it, and let it go through other sources outside of social, I tend to with specific clients and specific podcast say, this might be something to put a couple $100 behind inside of a press release over social media advertising, and you know if inside of psychology to look at the message and the optics of that of not just what people are searching on for that. But where does that compare to, you know, x player on the on the psychological spectrum to child psychologist to all of these things that again, anchor and route back to the psychology of a podcast, but it’s you organically and authentically reaching in themes that people understand where they may amplify it, where they may bring you to even a speaking zone and not trying to go off the base here. But in close with this, many of my eventual talk titles, were podcast titles, where I was testing the waters and found Wait, I’m getting response on this. So I mean, the psychology of podcasting, even having some fun with some short YouTube videos that are under two and a half minutes, three minutes, your, you know, your short clip of an idea of what psychology means to you. It’s less of the Simon Sinek who, and more of the idea of the authentic how and why this thing is being built.

Holly Shannon 16:58
Yeah, you know, I love that perspective, Lauren, a couple things come to mind for me to grow something around the psychology of entrepreneurship. COVID turned 75% of working people into entrepreneurs, you know, everybody lost their job, they were furloughed, and we’re starting to come out of that. And we’re seeing an uptick in people getting positions, I see it every day on LinkedIn, you know, I’ll go into my notifications. And it’s congratulate, you know, jack, Jane and john on their new new job. But a lot of people launched businesses, and I think on, there’s a whole audience there, I actually had not seen any of your podcasts promoted on there or shown on there, I’ve started to you and I had done one together and I had posted on LinkedIn for that. So I don’t know if that’s interesting to you or not, but you know, people that are starting out and looking for more business, and customers, entrepreneurs that they might be hanging out there. The second thing I would do is there are influencers that are killing it in the new gig economy. That’s you know, resulted from COVID. And I’m, I would probably suggest having some of the the new some of the new generations that are pushing through and have a different voice on social media. You know, for example, I had interviewed Alexandra fosu, who’s now a fiver millionaire. I think there’s just new entrepreneurs coming up. And their stories could be really interesting. And it might be a different way for you to get to grow your podcast and to to get new interest in it. So those would be the things that come to mind.

Matt 18:45
I think the influencer piece is so important. You know, when it comes to growing a podcast, I can tell you, all the things that you read about and hear about and some of the things we’ve talked about are super important, you know, social media marketing, email marketing, right? You know, consistency, high quality, content, value, all those things are very, very important. But I can look at the podcast that I consume on a regular basis and there’s not a lot because I listened to somebody for work, but there’s about four or five of us into for personal pleasure. And I can point to the person in my life, someone who I know love or trust. Who knows me who said, Hey, Matthew, I think you’d really enjoy this. And so I checked it out. I never picked a podcast it was new and noteworthy. I never made a podcast because I you know, scrolled by some random tweet that that caught my eye or the artwork is pretty. Somebody I know like or trusted, told me that this is content I would enjoy. And so one if you can turn your listeners your existing audience to advocate for you. I think that’s super important. And I think it’s okay to simply ask your listeners to tell a friend You know, I hear that on ABC. Start. Hear podcast every day, the host comes on and says, Hey, if you like what you’re hearing, tell a friend about it. And you know what, if only 100 people do great, that’s 100 new potential listeners that he’s got. Or the influence there, right? If you can get on the radar of somebody who talks about podcasts and writes him a podcast, or who is a important figure in your space, to tell their audience, Oh, I love this podcast about x, that’s going to turn a lot of people into thinking about it. So I think the idea of the influencer, whether it’s the ones that Holly was talking about, right, as a as a job, or as a, you know, big name that’s making a lot of money that gets paid to do this, or just turning your regular listeners and friends and network into influencers will tell other people that you put out good content that’s worthy of their time and worthy of checking out.

Lauren 20:52
I think there’s also a beauty though, I mean, trying that, if that’s working for you, but one of the things I found effective for myself and for a series of my clients was, don’t like me, Don’t follow me. Don’t subscribe, don’t share, do whatever you want to do. because like you said, from ABC, to TV shows to Netflix to everywhere in between, follow like, don’t forget to do this. I’ve, I’ve made it for me a personal thing in the last seven months to never ask for that. And in that not asking, it’s, it’s amplified greatly. And I’ve seen a number of people that I’ve talked to have where right now, and it’s not it’s not an objective statement. It’s a feeling but many people are being told, it’s like, Did you like what you heard? Did you like what you heard, as opposed to I hope you’ll come back, it’s Make sure to bring three people or like some of these networking groups, you know, it’ll be better if there are more people, if we take some of that time, or maybe mix that mix the two together as a spice. We’re gonna Rawnsley with the the restaurants we kind of simmer it both ways, it may bring a greater audience engagement and a disarming from the individuals that are out there that are feeling they’re just being experiencing the yell, tell sell of every day, podcasts, videos, and so on,

Holly Shannon 22:00
is that the call to action, yell, tell and sell.

Matt 22:03
I’ve never heard it referred to that way I love that yell tell us up

Ronsley Vaz 22:07
to Lauren’s point, I think we might have to kind of like start to talk about certain ways of not having the same thing being said, which is rate review, subscribe, or download my lead magnet or whatever else. And and I wonder whether because of all the work that goes into creating a podcast, whether we’re getting impatient about putting those calls to actions, because we want to see the return on investment, anyone can please chime in,

Holly Shannon 22:32
he touched a chord. Because I get really frustrated. Because I have to do everything you know, I do, you know, I run my podcast, and I do all the social media. And what I feel is that everybody is actually creating the same recipe. It’s like they all downloaded the same exact recipe from the Food Network. And when you go into like, say Instagram, they’re all creating similarly designed content. And what I mean by that is, let’s just say for example, everybody says you have to do reels and Instagram because you get more traction and more followers and more engagement. If you do that. And then everybody does the thing where they stand there smiling, and they point their finger to the left, and then the right and to the left and to the right. And with each point, a little, you know, saying comes up, like you need to have a podcast because of you know, it’ll grow your business. It’s a lead magnet, it’s a blah, blah, blah. And everybody’s doing the same exact thing. And I think that like you’re saying Rawnsley, when you go to read a blog, you’ve become almost, it’s like a muscle, you’ve learned how to read the blog without reacting to the advertisements, not clicking them, not reading them, not noticing them, you’ve almost they’ve become white noise, right? And I feel like that is happening because everybody is doing the same type of advertising the same kind of reels, the same kind of Facebook group, and then they’re cross pollinating it onto all of their different things. Do you see the same exact thing now happening in LinkedIn, the same thing happening in Facebook. So at some point, you know, there is nothing new being done, we’re all kind of doing the same thing. And nobody wants to do it. Everybody hates doing it. So I don’t know, it’s very interesting. Have we become white noise by saying, you know, subscribe, rate review, and so on and so forth.

Lauren 24:29
If we can look at that, though, I mean, Holly, that’s a beautiful statement of what you shared, because most of the people that I talked to, they push the white noise and they don’t sit in any kind of humility and ask that question. I believe that each individual can create their own template that is, again, inspired from some of the things but like, you know, those little things we have, we have the day Yeah, that woman dancing and it’s do the same dance next to her. I’m doing a children’s book series, and we’re going to animate one of the crocheted animals and it’s going to do that Dance. And it’s a simple $100 in to animate, we’re going to pop that out there, we’re not going to worry about it. But also looking at the long game, to me is something that many people don’t think in their templates coming back to what I said before, to make sure that the content is 400 words, this is a difference. This is objective not subjective. So that as you’re loading this stuff in that many of these podcasts have the weight and can bear the weight in the long run the differentiation of the cover title to allow for certain things where Okay, great, it might not be active or crazy on Instagram, I have a wait what really okay, just Instagram cover page on it. And it’s, you know, two likes, three likes no likes, and yet the conversion rate on that’s been great. The last piece I’ll state with that is whether it’s a video, whether it’s a trending topic, to move away and be transparent enough, this is my belief. And I know it goes against a lot of the some of the pod casting rules, but to be transparent enough to say, this is how I’m marketing to you. I’m not necessarily trying to funnel you unless you want to connect the lack of pressure that I’ve put and I’ve dealt with, with certain businesses that have a podcast from a very small level to a very high level, it is reigniting people’s engagement. And from that the conversion, I mean, my first example was last week, a woman reached out, she said, I looked up this topic and three different searches had me go to a podcast that had went to your website, it went to a video. From there, I listened to a couple more. By the time we got on the phone, it was a 35 minute conversion to a client I’m going to work with for a month and a half. The last piece here, I think that we should think about inside the podcast as opposed to be funnelled to client of this informational piece that whether it’s 20 downloads or 200,000 downloads. It’s another piece of security and stability in what you create, how you create it for people, how you differentiate from others, without saying I’m different. I’m unique, I’m innovative, that never been done before. And it really to me in this change of time where most people it’s it’s funnel with hype on hype on script. When we leave those breadcrumbs to showcase seeds that grow in good soil to create good vines, it branches us out. So that podcast works for us the day that it comes out. And a year later,

Ronsley Vaz 27:12
is a friend of mine that has this great statement that everyone wants to make an impact on the planet, but they want to look good while they’re making this impact. As a result, they want to follow this template or this this idea so that they don’t look like fools when they try to put out their passion. And I think that’s another element that comes into us being self aware about you know, the buttons that can be posted and will be pushed, I suppose by us putting our voices out there. Ladies and gentlemen, I’m landing this plane. Thank you, Holly. Matthew, Lauren, thank you for being here and hang out with us. This has been an absolute pleasure. Thank you, Tim. Thank you. Thank you. Alright, so you still till the end, you found this useful, and you have a business. And, Paul, you have a podcast and a business. And you kind of want to make it work for you and grow your business using this podcast? Well, you know what, that’s something that I have helped 1000s of people do and 1000s of businesses do in different forms, through an agency in a one on one fashion through a conference in a group and obviously in courses and stuff. So please, I want to be able to give you something that you can use to get recording results in your business using a podcast. We call it the recording results roadmap. It is years of putting this in practice. It is the blueprint to get results and recording results using a podcast if you’d like that, send me a message [email protected] I want to hear from you. I want to hear your voice. Or I want to hear from you. If you’ve listened to this and you want that roadmap, please send me an email [email protected] I want to hear from you. Much love. I’ll see you in the next episode.

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