What, Why and How to Podcast: The Live Q&A

How long does it take to plan a podcast ? What is better, fun or educational topics ? Should I add my podcast to YouTube ? Top 3 things a successful podcast should have ?

These questions, and more followed my talk for Hub Australia on 31 August 2022. Connecting from co-working locations in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide the attendees watched a 45 minute lunch-and-learn presentation that I called “Podcasting – What, Why and How”.

This was intended to be an overview which covered some basic technical points, case studies of how some podcasters use their show in their marketing mix, plus practical pointers on how to start podcasting.

The Q&A, led by Hub Australia Brisbane’s Customer Experience lead, Val Dubishkina followed the presentation. We uncovered some really informed, useful questions from the audience and these are the sections that I decided to capture for this podcast.

• Download the “Podcasting – What, Why and How” Slide Deck

Transcript

Speakers: Val Dubishkina (Hub Australia), Martin Franklin (East Coast Studio)

0:15
VAL: All right, let’s start. First of all, I would like to say that Hub Australia acknowledges the traditional custodians of the land in which we live and work. We recognise the continued connection to land, water and community and pay respects to elder’s past, present and emerging. I’d like to introduce you to our wonderful presenter today, Martin Franklin, who launched his first podcast in 2006, eventually bring in his own show to become a weekly broadcast on radio. His business is CO studio and produces top 10 podcasts and support podcasters to launch from a simple idea to successful seasons. First of all, I would also like to remind you that if you would like to speak, you can raise your hand. Also, please make sure that you make use of our q&a box and utilise the chat function. So Martin can answer all of your questions. And just the friendly reminders about that today’s session will be recorded. So if you miss something, you’ll be able to go back and watch it again. And it’s all over to you, Martin.

1:18
Thanks, Val. Thanks, everybody for joining today. You can ask me some difficult questions, if you’d like to now over to hit me with some questions.

VAL: Hey, Martin, we already have one question and keep an eye box if he wants to open it up, but I’ll read it out loud. What are the average and good podcast targets to set per episode?

Yeah, the super popular question. I read something while I was researching for this talk, which was a blog article by a podcast hosting platform that basically said, if you’re getting 50 listens to a podcast episode, you’re already in the top 50% of podcasts that they carry on their platform. I think we hear a lot about big, big numbers. And people quote, quoting 10s and hundreds of 1000s of listens. But those people are a super tiny minority. And actually, when we evaluate whether our 50 listens, is adequate or not, if you were to think about those as real people in a room, and you know, I’m talking to 20 your view now.

But you know, you’re 20 real people, and you’d be you’d be a room full if you were in my house. And I’d be really happy about that. So if I had 20 listens to my podcast episode, that’s 20. That’s 20 people. So that’s what I gotta say about listens.

VAL: And we have another question in the chat box: producers, what are the standard rates when it comes to costings

What kind of rates? Yeah, we’re kind of in a space where there’s not really a standard rate as such, I think you could probably make a parallel with, say, graphic designers or, you know, individuals who, who price their services, depending on what, what they want, how much money they want to make. But you know, the quality that they feel they they offer. So it’s very hard to, to answer that. But I price projects by the project or by the season. So I don’t charge myself out on an hourly basis.

But I think a good way to think about it is what do you earn per hour. Add a little bit extra on top of that, because you’re probably working with a sole trader. And that that could be the sort of price, you might multiply that hour by three hours to produce an episode. And that would give you a kind of incremental costs that you could expand out through a through a season. Yeah, tricky to say.

VAL: Awesome. Two more questions: the first one is “What’s your preferred hosting space to distribute online?”

People seem to get very enthusiastic about podcast hosting, but it’s a very, it’s a very technical requirement, really. And it’s fundamentally simple. You’re just putting files on a server, and the server just has to stay switched on, and do you know and give you some kind of nice interface and access to analytics. So there’s not a lot to distinguish podcast hosts and I think this is an issue which podcast host businesses are finding now. How do they differentiate?

The things that you might look out for the podcast hosts would provide are transcription, some of them have a kind of inbuilt transcription service, which might be a kind of white labelled otter or sort of AI based transcription service,

5:12
They might have access to an application called headliner, which is something that lets you produce those little, quote, videos yourself quite quite easily. And then it’s kind of all down to that like bandwidth, how much download Are you allowed per month. So a lot of similar stuff that you’d encounter with a with a web host.

5:37
I host all my podcasts through Omny Studio. So clients who work with me, are hosted in a kind of enterprise space that I’ve got on Omny Studio. And I’m really pleased with what Omny Studio offer particularly in the area of analytics, because I definitely advocate for podcast creators to become really aware of their analytics. And one thing which has been missing for a long time in podcasting is an audience retention measure.

So you’ve always been able to see download numbers and those kinds of big, big sort of headlines. But we’ve never been able to answer the question of how much of my podcast is listened to by the audience, you know, there’s still that little niggling doubt that people may have, you know, subscribed at some point. And it’s their, it’s their app, which is downloading in the background, but they haven’t never listened to it, or, you know, it’s too long, and they never get time to finish it. So, I’ve definitely seen some analytics on a show that I produce where the host is very keen on the kind of long listen approach like 45 minute to an hour show, which I always felt a bit sceptical about. But now I’ve been able to look in the analytics and see 50% of the show is is not listened to, or is listened to, it’s going to be half full about it. So then, it’d be much better for in that particular case for the Creator to do two half hour shows, or 220 minute shows same effort, and it would fit better with their listenership, because it’s all about fitting into the pockets of time that people have available. So we have to, we have to work with the audience and getting that analytic data on how audiences consumed the shows is valuable. So good analytics, and if they’ve got this audience retention measure, that’s awesome.

7:44
VAL: All right, awesome. Another question we have for five more to go hopefully, we have enough time for that. “Hi, Martin, I have a strong desire to do one season about fatherhood, to start with six episodes over six months, and reassess after is it worth, in your opinion, six episodes?”

So like a monthly show for six months? Yeah, definitely. Because, you know, the, the idea of a pilot is, you know, is pretty well known in the world of television, you need to do something in order to get that feedback from your, your listeners. And I’m always absolutely convinced that there’s an enormous amount of learning that happens in those first seasons for for the creators of the show. Because fundamentally, you’re developing all of those kind of professional broadcast skills of interviewing people, how are you going to do your interviews? And there’s a world of detail in there. Do you script it? Do you have bullet points for the questions? Do you give your questions in advance to the guests? What if you’ve got guests who won’t stop talking? How do you you know, how do you deal with that, there’s a whole lot of learning that that needs to happen before you are able to perhaps, arrive at the show that you’ve got in mind.

So I definitely think there’s a value in in doing a six month pilot of a show, because then you’ve got like real world. It’s not just in your mind anymore. You’ve got real world data to then move move forward on and and you’ll you’ll improve and learn heaps in the process.

VAL: So thank you, Martin. “What are the top three things a successful podcast should have?”

9:35
Yes, somebody asked me this just the other day there was they called it the soup of success. What ingredients would we have in the soup of podcast success? I would say.I mean, it’s the thing is, it’s all about your relationship with your audience. So it’s very, very hard to kind of have a blanket like just do this.

You know, I could sell that as a sort of premium service, if I could answer it effectively, so it’s it’s that meeting point between what do you want to talk about and what your audience wants to hear.

So I think consistency is something that I would say there’s all the questions around frequency of podcasting. And should you do weekly? Is fortnightly, okay? Is monthly, okay?

10:23
So I think, whichever publishing format you choose, you’ve got to be consistent with it. And you’ve got to develop some sort of messaging around that. And there is actually some data coming out. Now that says, show I almost don’t want to say this, because it’s quite a thing to have to take on. But there is some evidence that sort of saying weekly shows get a higher percentage of each show is listened to, and are able to sustain growth over a longer period.

But producing a weekly show is a real hustle to do, it’s probably better to do in, in batches. So you, you kind of blitz it over a few weekends and record like a season’s worth. And then all you got to do as they start to come out is the promotion. And the posting about them. Doing week to week, if it’s a weekly show is, it’s all it’s just so absorbing, it’s hard to do anything else around that. So consistency is good.

And I think being being willing to look at the data and change from it, I definitely find myself in a position sometimes of having to show people the data of how their podcast is working, but sort of telling them things they don’t want to hear. So you have to be willing to change and respond to the audience and try different things, look and see what other people are doing and sort of adjust your format a little bit. The marketing piece around podcasting, like any marketing, you can never do enough. So having a bit of a strategy about where are you going to promote the show, it’s kind of that thing of, you know, people, I think we’re probably a little over it now. But people who over the years have kind of gone “Oh, I’m not gonna go on Twitter. It’s just like self promotion”, or “I’m not going to connect with people on LinkedIn, because you know what use is that?”

12:33
And when you want to reach an audience, it’s too late that because nobody’s there. Whereas if you have adopted that approach, and you’ve got circles, and you’ve got networks, then that’s the framework of your audience that you’re going to put your show into. So make sure you’re not shouting into the void. I guess it’s the but on the other hand, if you want to, then, you know, if there’s something you’re passionate about, and you want to do, do it. Don’t worry if no one’s listening, just do it.

That’s what I do. Well, yeah, I’ve done.

13:08
VAL: Next question, what tends to do better, more fun, or funny, or more specific educational podcasts?

Yeah, that’s, that’s a really good question. I think you. So I’ve got a number of shows which are about, let’s say, industry updates, and the currency. So it’s either, you know, updates in in legal matters, or updates in property matters. And you’ve in that case, you have kind of societies or you have membership bodies, so you know, that people are, they’re going to be interested in staying current and staying up to date with that information. Whereas I think, probably entertainment based shows are probably more tricky to get it right. Because it’s about there’s a lot, there’s a lot more chemistry in there. So if you want to be entertaining, it’s like, are you entertaining? You know, not everybody can do a stand up comedy set or be entertaining on the microphone. So I think it’s harder, you know, you can work at it, and you probably could, you know, develop a framework that supports you to be entertaining, but I I think it’s harder and evaluating the need in the audience is probably harder to do so. Some people some people do it. So I guess it’s it’s just establishing, you know, what, what particular area of entertainment can you fit into obviously the, one of the the biggest difference, or one of the biggest, certainly, categories in podcasting is True Crime. So entertainment if you like, but in a sort of radio drama format,

15:06
Huge, huge listenership for that stuff. But it’s very, very time consuming and quite costly to produce that that type of stuff because it’s such detailed work, and you need so many, so many talents in order to pull it off.

So information seems like a safer bet. Entertainment is exciting, but harder to do

15:34
VAL: well it’s already 1:30 Martin. Do you have enough time to answer three last questions? Or would you like for everyone to just flick you an email with a question?

15:44
Well, yeah, I do. I do. I mean, I’d love people to email me, you know, with offers of work, and large sums of money.

VAL: Let’s answer the last three questions. But who everyone who wants to jump off when they have to run off for lunch, just a heads up that will be sending out post eventemail to us so you can rewatch this recording? And so you can also reach out to Martin, if you have any questions for him.

Yeah, and Martin, one of the last three questions: “In your experience, how long does it usually take to plan to start a podcast setting goals, audience content, tools, etc?”

But that’s a great question. I think the planning stage can be done quite quickly. Because you probably already have an intuition on you know, what you what do you want to do? If you just asked yourself that question of why am I doing this? And you know, arrive at that answer, and then work out? What’s your sign of success from that? You can you know, that, that’s just, I think something you could do, quite quickly, what I hear quite a lot, which is a time consuming part, part of it, that is easy to underestimate is, is curating the guests, if it’s an interview based show, wrangling diaries, and getting the dates in place, when people are available to talk and creating all of that, that content before you actually get to the recording, that can be quite time consuming. But, you know, once you once you’ve arrived at that thought, you know, and I think I’d also say,

17:41
I see a lot of people who perhaps come from a more commercial way of viewing things, where they’re kind of taking a research led approach to saying, Well, you know, look on Google Trends and find what search terms are, you know, are peaking and find an or find a niche, which is not being served, and, you know, target them…

18:06
I just, I just don’t buy that stuff. I think you have to be authentic to succeed in, in podcasting, you can’t just decide, oh, there’s, you know, there’s these people who aren’t being talked to a lot, I will just become an instant expert, and start talking to them, and they will love me.

18:24
You know, I think given that you’d be playing on your strengths, you just got to decide, why am I doing this, and it doesn’t have to be that you want a big result at the end, you know, it can be it can be research, it can be that, oh, you know, I want to produce some content that I can then write blog articles about and sort of increase my visibility just through, you know, having more content available. I don’t know how long it will take. I can’t give you a short, a short answer. It might take an afternoon for you to go through the mental sort of process of working out your measurement and, you know, some kind of strategy to disseminate the podcast.

19:06
And then let’s say you, you spend spent for a fortnight let’s say you spent two weeks arranging a calendar of of guest interviews, you blitz it over a couple of weekends, and then you’ve got your first season’s content. So let’s say within a month, you’re ready to launch.

19:26
And then the hard work begins off promotion

VAL: Awesome. Another question, “What are your thoughts on recording and uploading the podcast on YouTube? Do you find that brings it more clients putting a podcast on YouTube?”

19:43
I definitely would would say that’s a great idea. And my thought about it is because of that, that mechanism that we talked about earlier on whether the audio podcast has a particular app and the way it’s delivered, it goes straight to the listener without them having to, you know, even be in a browser. Whereas there’s an enormous audience, on YouTube for people who are on YouTube. So there’s no reason why you shouldn’t put your podcasts up there. Even if it’s not video, I’ve got a client who we did that. And we just did like a simple audio sort of waveform animation. But it was fundamentally audio. And every single one of his episodes gets an additional 200 views or listens on on from people on YouTube. And one of the things that YouTube has the edge on over all of the podcasting applications is search. It’s super discoverable.

20:51
And because it’s kind of it’s built on, you know, Google’s thinking, the idea of the presence and visibility of search on YouTube is much higher. And that’s what people are more inclined to do. So you’re much more discoverable, I think, on YouTube.

21:13
And the absolute sort of latest news is YouTube themselves, obviously not unaware of this trend. So they are now kind of beta testing is probably more than beta testing. But there won’t be a podcast section in YouTube. There is if you’re in the USA now. I guess they’ll keep an eye on that, and then potentially roll it out through interfaces everywhere. So that bodes quite well, I think for visibility of podcasts on YouTube. So yeah, it’s easy to do. So a lot, a lot to be gained.

VAL: Awesome. One last question. “Do Spotify and Apple podcasts have backend analytics built in? Or do you use a third party data tracking platform?”

22:03
Oh getting technical! They do both have built in analytics, that obviously talk about what’s happened on their platform. So what what I think is probably, and they are really good. One of the fantastic things you can get from Spotify, which you can’t necessarily get in other places is demographic information. Because Spotify is inherently account based, you have to sign up and you know, deliver some of your information, your gender, and your age bracket and this type of thing.

22:39
So you get a better sense of your audience from YouTube, because you can see demographic information. Plus, you can also hear what music your listeners like. So, so from looking at Spotify, data on the REIQ podcast, I can give you some pretty good insights into what your real estate agent likes to listen to. So yes, they’re very useful. Individually, Apple stats are also great. And they they have their own, they call it engagement metric in in Apple site gives you a percentage of how much your your show has been listened to on Apple. So there are, those are the two big ones.

23:32
But having a third party host or third party stats, tracking will perhaps give you more kind of cumulative view because there’s a load of smaller podcast directories that all together are worth, you know, worth getting us a sense of. And it’s kind of easy to to arrive at that at that data. But yeah, there’s superstars from Apple and, and Spotify, but your host will give you kind of more holistic presentation of the data. What some thank you so much.

24:07
VAL: Thank you. Wonderful webinar. I think all our members and visitors today have learned so much. And I hope you all enjoy the rest of your day. And thank you. Thank you so much. There we go.

I hope that was a bit of a whirlwind of interest and you are now the office podcast expert for this afternoon. Bye. Thanks, everyone. Bye.