Under the Doona, with Claire Pales

What business benefits can a podcast bring? How to approach and screen guests, what’s the best promotional platform and ways to announce your new episodes. Podcasting best-practice explored in the first of this series of Podcaster Profiles, with host of The Security Collective, Claire Pales.

Claire candidly chats through her motivations and approaches to getting the best strategic results from the podcast. We also discuss loads of classic podcast problems – to script or share questions in advance? To give guests approval of final edits ? What promo content to produce and where to put it.

Links

The Security Collective on Apple Podcasts
The Security Collective
Claire Pales on LinkedIn

Transcript

MetaPod: climbing inside the machine, climbing inside.

Martin Franklin 0:18
Hello, welcome back to Metapod, podcasting and beyond. You know, the more I think about what I do with my business, the more I think about the definition of this podcast and what the goal of it is, and every time I come to do a new episode seems to have changed. So, podcasting and beyond, I’ll be using my expertise as a Podcast Producer, to bring you a series of podcasts or profiles. This will be a series of interviews where I talk to successful long running podcasters about how they do what they do. I’ll be asking them questions like how they integrate their podcast with their business, how they develop their audiences, and how they’ve developed their own style and unique voice. The first podcast that I’ll be talking to is Claire pails. Claire runs the security collective podcast, focusing on attacking it audience. She’s been running the show for seven seasons now. Claire has got a great attitude about serving the audience and being useful. She’s also got some great tips on promotion, and recording techniques. So let’s get into this interview, we’re going under the dooner. with Claire pails. Everyone’s got different motivations about why they do what they do. And I thought your case is distinctive in as much as it you know, it’s it seems to connect very closely to your business.

Claire Pales 1:48
The other thing too, is that there are not a lot of security podcasts out there that focus on anything other than kind of the technical nature of security, or the kind of hacks and incidents that are happening around the world. And, you know, that’s not what keeps people busy every day, what keeps people busy every day is having enough capability in their teams to service the business as usual of an organization. The incidents might happen to you a big one might happen to you once a year. And yes, then it’s all hands on deck. But I wanted a podcast that talks about day to day life of a security team, not just Well, you know, we’ve had a huge data breach. So what do we do?

Martin Franklin 2:30
So you talked about the book being sort of quite a strategic tool for you with the you know, being a sort of Uber business card. Do you feel what what sort of space? Do you feel like the podcast fills in in that respect? Or how close How does it connect with your business strategy?

Claire Pales 2:51
Yeah, I, I guess I don’t really have a business strategy. I mean, I do I do have a business strategy. Don’t get me wrong, I am. I have a business strategy to the extent that I have goals and targets of things that I want to achieve. But I don’t look at the podcast as a necessarily as a cash generating activity. I look at the podcast as an opportunity to raise my profile. And it’s a really good opener for me to connect with people on LinkedIn. When I see CIOs, I can say how I’ve got this podcast, if you’d ever be interested in in being a guest or having a conversation, then you know, it’d be great to connect. And so it’s a good thing like that to sort of warm up cold connections. And I’ve only ever known of one engagement that has come from my podcast, which is quite a recent one, where the CIO, I dealt with said, I got told about your podcast, I listened to you on the podcast, and that’s why we’re talking now. And that’s how I made a bunch of money from him. So the podcast has more than paid for itself just through that one engagement with that company. But I don’t put it in my cash generating activity box. It’s something I really love doing. And I try to serve the audience. based on the feedback I get, like, they love the short nature of it. I never want it to become sort of an hour long. I try to keep it to 20 minutes, but people talk to him. You know, I try to keep it really swimming in that line of teams leadership, getting the right people in to the right seats, that sort of thing.

Martin Franklin 4:31
So how do you go about sourcing your, your guests for the show?

Claire Pales 4:36
guests for the show? A couple of ways. Some people that I already know. So I’ve had previous clients on before, I’ve had friends on before peers in the security industry that I’ve worked with. I have gone out to LinkedIn, completely cold one season, I forgot to go on Upwork for $50 to find me every CIO in Victoria. And there was about 100 of them, I think, and I did reach out to 100 people and said, Hey, I run a podcast. If you’ve got a security team, would you be interested to be a guest? And I would say, one, season three, maybe with people like that. I’ve only ever had one person say no to me to not be on the podcast. I also find people have other podcasts. So I listened to Graham Cowan on someone else’s podcast. And I was like, I’ve got to have this guy on my podcast. So I just emailed him called and said, I heard you on. I think it might have been purple playground, which is an HR podcast. I heard you on this podcast, you sound brilliant. This is what I would like to get from a conversation with you for my audience. Would you be on my podcast? And he said, Yes. So I haven’t really wanted for guests. so far. I’ve had Yeah, had pretty good success just reaching out to people I know or, or on LinkedIn.

Martin Franklin 5:50
And what’s what’s the process? When, when you get someone who’s positive about coming on? How do you kind of start that conversation about what what topics we covered? And that sort of reassurance of the areas? It’s

Claire Pales 6:05
a bit of a tough one? Because I, I think you and I’ve had partly had this conversation before, what if I know the person, I don’t generally have a screening conversation? Because, for instance, Anna, libel and I are very close friends. I’ve known her for 15 years. And I don’t have to have a screening conversation with her. I know, I can write a bunch of questions, and she’ll answer them. And it’ll be a comfortable conversation because we know each other, whereas and Graham Cowan was the same, we didn’t have a screening conversation, because I’d heard him previously speak. And I’d researched his website to see kind of what his elements were of passion. And so I just wrote a bunch of questions we’d never spoken before the day. And so I mean, he’s a seasoned speaker, as well. So it’s a little bit different. But then someone like Laura staples, who I just interviewed last week, we had a screening call, because I’ve never met her. And I didn’t really know what her point of difference was. But somebody said to me, she’s amazing, you should have her on the podcast. So I listened to her on another podcast didn’t get enough from that. So I screened her, where I just asked them a whole bunch of questions about themselves, and about what drives them. And you know about what they’re doing at the moment. And that helps me craft the questions for the podcast, right? The flip side of that is that often that initial conversation is really, really good content. Yes. And that maybe I should just record that. And then there’s people like Jackie listo, who I’ve also known for a long time, but I knew she was going to be nervous. And so that podcast, you know, I mean, that the outcome of that was really based on your quality as a producer, because, you know, that really needed carving up to to make Jackie sound the way I know she can be, but she was just yet paralyzed by nerves. And so she talked a lot. So I guess I have multiple different processes. Is that short and long answer to a short question. I don’t, I don’t have a standard practice.

Martin Franklin 8:07
Okay. But then once you’ve arrived at, you’ve, you’ve identified that, you know, they can talk to a particular point, and, you know, you feel the fit, then do you share the questions with them prior to the interview?

Claire Pales 8:24
Yes, so I would always share the questions prior, because I have some guests who need to get their PR teams to approve the questions. So it’s not always as simple as just writing the questions. And the guest says, yes, sometimes they need approval to be on the podcast, approve the questions, and then obviously approve the episode two, which is really approving their answers. Yeah. So I share that with them. And then I also ask them, they fill in a Google form that basically says their name, their title, their organization, their bio, they give us a photo, and there’s a lot an option in there for them to put in anything that I haven’t put in the questions that they really want me to ask them about. So one of the guys from the season, he loved the questions I’d given him. But on later reflection, he said, actually, could we just chuck in a little bit more about the benefits to whoever the receiving party was? So I altered one of my questions so that we included that. So I make sure that the guest gets a say in something that they’re particularly passionate about. I want to ask them a question, because that always makes people shine. So yeah, that’s pretty much the process.

Martin Franklin 9:33
Do you find that the guests are supportive in sort of sharing your posts about their episode afterwards?

Claire Pales 9:40
Yeah, they are. So most of them wait for my posts to come out and then they’ll on share my post on LinkedIn. I’m not a big Twitter person. I do post on Twitter, but it’s more. It’s literally just that the episode has come out. There’s no I’m not really active on there. But my guests usually right Share, often it’s the audio gram that will pick that up and push that. And the next day when the episode goes live, I do the little, quote trial. And often that will get shared. But I mean, I get 100 likes, usually on my audio grams. So you know, if that’s all people get out of it, then I try to pick the my sort of pithy thing to put into those.

Martin Franklin 10:25
Do you got two, two secondary pieces of content that you spin out as promotional items for each episode, the audiogram, and then a,

Claire Pales 10:35
quote graphic? Yep. So the audio Graham’s usually about 90 seconds. And it’s, I try to pick kind of the most important thing that the person said in the 20 minutes, I try and get into that 90 seconds. So it’s usually my question and then their response. Or if, if their response goes for too long, then I’ll cut my question off and just let them speak. And then the quote, title is usually something that lends itself to the title of the podcast episode. So the title might be podcast pro tips, and then your quota would be, you know, I honestly believe that, blah, blah, blah, whatever you biggest pro tip, is it kind of a hook to get people to come and listen?

Martin Franklin 11:17
Yeah, I think you probably answered this question. I was just kind of curious about that, like pre promoting the listening audience. So do you find that LinkedIn is your most effective platform?

Claire Pales 11:29
Definitely, definitely. I don’t use Instagram. I don’t use Facebook, because I don’t, I’ve never really tried them as kind of a marketplace for my my services. And because all my clients are really on LinkedIn, I didn’t really make much sense to me to go elsewhere. Twitter to an extent, but Twitter’s really, for me about reaching an international audience. I find on LinkedIn, I, I probably only reaching mostly Australians, whereas only whereas on Twitter, a lot of my followers are outside of Australia. Which is interesting. But yeah, LinkedIn, definitely on my newsletter as well. So I have a monthly newsletter that, okay, I always include sort of what’s happening on the podcast. Yeah. So that goes out to my newsletter list,

Martin Franklin 12:19
I would imagine you get quite a good good response from newsletter, readers to the podcast,

Claire Pales 12:25
I tend to have this group of like 100 people who are on my newsletter list. Most of my podcasts within, like Claire’s, for example, on Thursday, I think by lunchtime, she’d already had 50 downloads, and most of my peak out at about 200 downloads. So the fact that 25% of the downloads are happening as soon as the episode comes out, is is good. Yeah, almost every one of my episodes from from day one across every season, gets listened to each month.

Martin Franklin 12:57
So right, so you get quite a long tail of, you know, repeat lessons when people are presumably discovering the latest one, and then going back.

Claire Pales 13:06
Yeah, so we just shipped over 8100 downloads, which, at first I didn’t think was very much, but given it’s such a niche topic, and I’ve only done 45 episodes, but I’m pretty happy with that. Well,

Martin Franklin 13:22
I think it’s it’s that sort of scalable goal, really, of what, you know, what do you want it to do? So, you know, I definitely have have that people whose podcast, I think, is doing really well. It’s in, you know, numerous charts on Apple, and they’re kind of going, Oh, you know, I’ve only had whatever, you know, 200 listens. This week, I’m like, you know, you’re you’re number five in the Apple Apple chart for whatever your topic is. But I think it’s then that difficulty of tracking what happens next, which you know, on, say other types of media, you can track, click throughs? And did people buy? Or did people visit a page or sign up to your, you know, sign up to your newsletter, which is, which is harder to, you know, ascertain when it’s, it’s an audio file, but I think that’s a that’s a healthy sign. If you’re finding that the older episodes are growing, listens, you know, the more you go on, because it shows that there’s still value there for for a new audience.

Claire Pales 14:26
I’ve tried to keep it really evergreen. It’s probably been the last few episodes that I’ve started to talk about things like remote working in COVID. Because it feel safe to feel like that’s going to be the way of the world for a while. So I need to acknowledge that that’s going on. And

Martin Franklin 14:43
yeah, it’s new challenges to people face, isn’t it? So,

Claire Pales 14:46
but otherwise, I mean, all the other episodes are really quite evergreen because people are at different always at different stages of their security, team development, evolution. So it’s always going to be of interest to people who are at different points in their evolution to listen to one company who’s talking about how they started in another company who’s talking about how they reinvented or something like that. So I don’t want to talk about topics that are pertinent to right now. Because there are other podcasts people can go to, to listen to the latest breach or the latest tools or techniques. What I want to talk about is things that people would be able to get benefit out of at any time,

Martin Franklin 15:28
I know that you’ve got a particular production technique that you use when you’re recording your shows. Could you share that?

Claire Pales 15:37
So? So part of the reason that I started sitting in my walking robe with a donor over my head is because I was not having very good acoustics in my office for starters. Secondly, when we have a tin roof and I’m I’m upstairs so the minute it rains, yeah. You don’t need not only get the rain, but then you get the dripping afterwards. And what I found was when I recorded clear Picard, the second time, I recorded it like that in the walk in robe with the dinner of my head. And it was the first time ever that you had said to me, Well, this sounds amazing. And I was like, oh, god no, Dickey doing.

Martin Franklin 16:19
Let’s say you found the solution to making me happy.

Claire Pales 16:23
I want to work out the best way to record where I don’t have to sit in the walk in robe under the donor because then I can’t say the guest as well. Because I love that on squad cast, how I can say the guests. But once I’m in there under the donor, it’s pitch black, so I can’t there’s no point having my video on.

Martin Franklin 16:41
Okay, I can understand that. Now. It’s a super common problem here, having very kind of lively rooms, because mostly rooms are designed for cool, you know, when it’s when it’s hot. So we got tiled floors, and yeah, and our rooms where the wind will will move through them, which does, you know, mean, there’s a lot of hard surfaces. So I’ve got some software tools that are made to reduce that kind of room ambience, and take, you know, hums and that sort of stuff out. And I use those. Yeah, all the time.

Claire Pales 17:18
Yeah, I think it’s cool. Because I also think that people shouldn’t be scared of podcasting, but often think that they need lots of really expensive equipment. And yeah, I mean, when we first started out, I also think to that the value of the lessons that I’ve learned, like the guy that I used to get to produce it was, it was a side hustle for him. He was in America, so I had to wait overnight, often, to get any response from him. Everything he did was very straightforward. And I knew what I was kind of getting. When I got into the relationship with him, like it was literally just, you know, make sure the sound is okay. He wasn’t a sound engineer. He was literally just a podcast, producer, I suppose. intro and outro and then loaded up on libsyn. And that was all I was getting. And then of course, when I had that troublesome season where I contacted Beverly and said, Oh my god, the whole seasons got this clicking noise through it, then you know, and then I met you and I was like, wow, like the difference between working with Anthony and now working with you is incredibly different. But I never would have discovered that if I hadn’t have had that problem to solve. I probably would have just kept using him. And I wasn’t overly happy but I didn’t know that there was something better. So yeah, it’s good to learn those lessons as well.