From Boring to Brilliant: Podcast Titling Secrets

Monday has a name Saturday andurday and sunday I don't I thought saturday was like by local saturday or something that just never caught on I think that's tuesday okay yeah , because maybe the chat room can let us know , but there is a by local yeah , there's a by local day cyber monday right , black friday , cyber monday , I I think Tuesday is probably local , but

anyways , it's Ask the Podcast Coach Saturday . So you're here . Welcome , we're glad you're here .

You can go to Fiverr and get somebody . But here's the thing Mark is going to sit down with you one-on-one and he's going to listen to what your show is about , might actually listen to your show , because the whole point is , you know those guys on Fiverr , they're going to go like well , what do you want it to look like ?

Well , that's not your job , that's Mark's job to match your brand with your artwork . And so he's got the marketing brain . If you had a marketing brain you wouldn't need a mark . So it's just the best process ever . And you know if he'll probably give .

I know when I've used him , he gave me like two or three different options to choose from , which is great , because then you can get your community involved to vote on the artwork and just pick the best one . So remember see the guy cut me off .

I was so close when they see you before they hear you and there's only one place to go , and that is podcastbrandingco .

Oh , I was going to say what you always need is Dan over there , Dan LeFebvre over there , based on True Story Podcast or based on truestorypodcastcom . I've been mentioning it's the Holidays and if you need something new to listen to , why not check it out today , based on a true story , based on truestorypodcastcom ?

Dan's got some great stuff out there and a big supporter of the show . Dan , thanks for your sponsorship .

If you ever want to jump in live , it's right up there . Askthepodcastcoachcom slash question , and this is from Stephanie Graham from nosyafcom . She says any formulas or quick tips to naming episodes . This is something I really want to improve on . That's a good question . Well , here's a way to think of it and it's hard for this show especially .

But now that's Stephanie's the first question out . That's going to be the name of this episode . But instead of saying maybe how to name episodes , all right , that's what it's about . What's the benefit ? So I've heard a bunch of people say this when it comes to episodes .

So it'd be like get more downloads by improving your episode names , like what's the benefit of your guest ? So if I'm interviewing Jim about robot lawnmowers , I might say something like don't waste your money on junk mowers , or something . It's one of those things it is .

It's kind of tricky because then you also want to throw in what keywords are in there of tricky because then you also want to throw in what keywords are in there . Please , again , for me , you've hit a button .

If you put episode 16 , that drives me bonkers because you want I've found a couple articles on this when your keywords are closer to the beginning of your name , it might actually boost your SEO . And it's Jim , how do you do ? Cause you have guests , and that's true , you know guest names always go first .

Let's not talk about the machine scanning it for a second . Let's talk about humans actually consuming this when they're looking at the title based on the various podcast players and such . You only get , let's just say , 60 characters or so before it starts cutting those off . It's different for everything , but let's just say it's around 60 characters .

So make sure you've got something . The key thing that you're talking about in those in the first part of it . Eliminate as much of the filler stuff as possible . If A's , the's , if you can get those out of there in the first 60 , because you don't , in a lot of cases you don't need them , right , you want to get the .

You want to get those out of there in the first 60 , because you don't , in a lot of cases you don't need them , right , you want to get the . You want to get those key eyeball words up front . I also because my my on home gadget geeks . The episodes have maybe two or three or four different things we talk about . I try to list those in order on it .

Most of my audience , most of my regular audience , they in order on it . Most of my audience , most of my regular audience , they don't care , they want to look at the whole title . They'll click in to see the whole title , to see what we covered . So sometimes my titles run a little long , but that's kind of how I do it , dave .

I'm not even sure what the limit is on how many words you can use before it gets cut off . I think I did that once where I just kept I think I typed numbers so I could count how many characters there are , and then that used to be a big deal . And now some of the apps , when you hit play at least , will scroll the title .

So if it's too long but I always laughed when you know you'll see once like episode 16 of the blah blah blah show with Paul , and it gets cut off . And then you find out later it was Paul McCartney and you're like what ? Why are you ?

Now , that actually makes it easier for me when I go , if I'm going to go find or if I'm going to go search for them in my own , so I can see okay , oh , that this person was on here , this person was on there .

I mean , I keep a spreadsheet of all that , but it's just visually and I think it's it just honors the person to have their name up front , you know that's the tricky part , because you want to honor the person .

What's a Jim Smith ?

I mean you can , and if you want to go ahead , you can do anything you want , but the I wouldn't get too obsessed about it .

However , I would come up with a standard convention that I use on a regular basis and make sure I'm holding tight to that , because your listeners will if , for the ones that do look at the title , they'll start decoding that and to figure out okay , here's what's in the episode . If you're always changing the title around on them , that's super frustrating .

So if you come up with a pattern , stay with the pattern . The only thing I would say and you say this all the time too make sure you get that . If you're going to put the episode number in it , it goes to the very end , just jam that thing Nobody cares about that thing .

And people go well , if I mention another episode , I want to make it really easy for them to find that and I go ooh , great point , here's a novel idea . Make it really easy for them to find that and I go ooh , great point , here's a novel idea . If you mention another episode in the current episode , put a link to it in your show notes .

Like , don't make the audience go find it , just go whoa , episode 16 , it's click right here . I've done the work for you . So and Steph makes a point she's like look , I don't want some sort of AI solution because that is something you know . Obviously , that's something you can do .

What I've done is there are a bunch of them Well , not a bunch , there used to be like five , but there are a few websites that are , you know , designated to help you . They'll like grade your title and all of them now have an AI component .

And so what I've done in some cases again , I don't use AI to make it for me , but I want to brainstorm with it . I've taken my transcript , thrown it in the chat GPT and go what are titles here that make people want to click ? Because , in the end , that's what we want them to do ? I want a title that makes me click on it In true AI fashion .

I can say give me five more , give me five more . And then what I usually do is I take none of them , but it inspires me to like Ooh , I like this and that , and I'll take part of this and part of that one in this and kind of come up with my own .

But that's really if you , if you just go , okay , I'm going to come up with five different titles on my own Great . And then just look at them and go which one would make me want to click Because that's what we want people to do . So that's the benchmark is like which one of these do I want to click more ? That's the one you want to use .

So the titles for her like for this episode that I made for her just yesterday was with updates and a busy 2024 . I don't have to get gimmicky in the title . They're going to be drawn .

My audience and they've told me this , they just want to hear more from her , like let her talk , she's great and so so for me I don't have to come up with a clickbait title or you know the , just the fact that we're giving her updates and we're talking about her last year . That's what the audience is looking for .

So I guess , knowing your audience in that case and if you're so , stephanie , if you're looking for a form , formulaic way of doing this , think through . This is what I do . Mine is guest name with and somebody said on , and that's even two letters less . I don't use on enough .

I probably should but and then I list out the three or four things we talked about . If I can and I use I try to use product names because that's the way our podcast is right . We talk about certain products Meshtastic or Hondas or robot lawnmowers , like you like to .

All of a sudden , dave , everything I talk about now from you is a defaulted robot lawnmower . I love it . I love it . I love it , but I try to get those in the title right . That's my method , stephanie .

I would kind of think through okay , if I was going to do this , I'm going to start with this and then I'm going to use this formula to fill out the rest of the title" . Figure out what that is , because all of a sudden , that actually makes your titling a lot easier when you have a formula based to it .

Stick to it for a while , and this is where the AI can help . Right , you can plug some things in . You can actually tell the AI hey , based on this formula , create some show titles for me . So you'll have to mess around with the language on that , but it will do it in a format for you . So that may be just think through your formula for you .

You just may need to get something standard and then start messing around with it .

Because when people go , what's the best , what do I need to know about 401ks ? Or , you know , should I put my money in a CD or whatever the question is . He's like I'm just going to use that as the title because you know that's the answer you're going to get .

And then for SEO , people are probably typing in that question and that's where you can go to YouTube and type in maybe a topic and then go down past the 8 million lists of ads and they have other questions that people ask and maybe that's the question you use because you know people are typing it in for the title . It is a bit of a .

It's one of the things this is one of the things I love about podcasting is it's creative , and so this is one of those where there's 50 different ways to make an episode title . You know you could use the title of the question that you're doing . You could use benefits and then the person's name . You could use the title of the question that you're doing .

You could use benefits and then the person's name . You could put the person's name and then the benefit and then please light the episode number on fire . Your ego will live , trust me on that . So it's one of those things where and here's the beauty of it I always say your podcast is a recipe , it's not a statue .

If you want to go back later and change the title , I remember I did an episode talking about how my great nieces this is about five years ago got Polaroid cameras and they screamed like they got free Taylor Swift tickets . They completely freaked out and I looked at my brother and I go , is that a Polaroid camera ?

And he goes , yeah , and I go , like Polaroid , like shake it , like a like . He's like , yeah , and I go , and they're losing their minds . And he's like , yeah , it's the new thing . And I go , but that's like last year . So I think the title was something like it was very specific to my nieces and it made sense to me .

And I went back about six months later and I'm looking at my titles and I'm like that makes no sense unless you were in the living room with me . It was very inside baseball kind of thing . So I changed the title to something that was more specific to podcasting . So sometimes you know you can always go back and change them , is my point .

So if you go back and you see where you've named your episodes you know episode 46 , like that's not a great way to do that . So another question that's coming up we have one from Ralph and then the question I see a lot and is does anybody read show notes ?

And when I think about it , I've listened to probably 10 podcasts over the last two days and I've not looked at the show notes once , not at all . Now , if they mention something that I want information about , I'm going to the show notes and there better be a link .

And if there's no link , bad words are going to come out of my mouth , because you said all sorts of like .

If you know we're talking , and Jim is like , oh , there's this great Black Friday deal , it's on till the end of the year and I got it and it's amazing or whatever Like I want to , I link to that , because if I'm listening to that , I'm like , oh , that sounds like a great deal .

And then you go through the show notes and you've got all this AI BS and you're like where is the link to the ? You know whatever robot lawnmower we need ? See , I'm thinking of getting a robot vacuum cleaner . That's the one that I've almost pulled the trigger on that multiple times until I go . You know , 200 bucks for a robot vacuum cleaner .

No , you should you should Like I can still push a sweeper . It's really not that hard .

I do from time to time , yeah , for the reasons you're saying as well , dave , which is like , hey , I mentioned this , I'm going to go here , oh , I want to go back and get it . It's a much easier way of getting to the material than going back and listening to it again and trying to figure it out yourself . So , yeah , I'm a big fan of I try .

Now I try really hard to make sure I've got all the links and I use two summaries in my show notes . So I have chapter . I put the chapter headings in there if they want to just search by chapter . Or the Otter puts an extended outline in there that has timestamps and extended notes in there , and I found a few people say , hey , thanks for doing that .

That was really helpful for me to get to where I wanted to be . So , yeah , not every time and not a lot , but I think show notes are more .

This is going to sound weird , but I'm going to say it Show notes are more for the podcaster than they are for the those listening for you to go back through and listen to and document and find ways to say here's what's in this podcast than just editing and throwing it out to the wind . So I would hope you're spending a little bit .

I spend quite a few hours , you know , both in the evening putting the audio together and then the next morning making the show notes for it . And I , like Dave , where my show notes have gone , ai has helped me .

I don't , you know I do copy and paste a lot , but show notes has helped , or I mean AI has helped me just do better show notes and I feel better about it . So I would say I think show notes are more for us as podcasters than they are for the audience . But it is . It's a good . It's a good discipline and a good habit to get into . I think .

And that's where that opening paragraph really comes in handy . And then Chris from Podcastic Audio says what gets read first show notes or show ratings and reviews . I never as in capital N , underscore bold never look at ratings and reviews . I'll give you an example Seth Ressler from , I'm going to guess , sethresslercom .

He is the Pied Piper that led half of radio into podcasting . Really nice guy . And he had a thing on Twitter . He said hey , I'm watching this movie on Netflix called Join or Die and if you are a person that's in the communities , it's a must watch .

And based because I know Seth , I'm like well , seth said it's good and he was very I think there were exclamation points and I went over and watched and now it starts slow . But it's based up about the guy that did the book Bowling Alone and he noticed a trend that , like in the 50s , everybody smoked and bowled and bowling was great .

And then all of a sudden , we just like , people are now bowling alone , like people are now bowling alone , and it's this whole thing on . Like , where communities thrive , so does and this sounds stupid , but like , so does the city . But if your city doesn't have a lot of places where people network , if you think about it , they made up a great point .

Like in the early seventies you would say like , welcome to you , know , poughkeepsie , and they have this big sign . And then it had a sign for the Qantas brothers or whatever it is , and this and the Shriners and all these groups that you could be a part of , and you just don't see those anymore . So word of mouth is what .

I didn't even read the description of the movie . I just I went into Netflix , I typed in join or die and hit play , and so I'm that same way . I don't know that I ever look at ratings and reviews , because half the time , if I ever did , I've looked at them when I've seen people on Facebook and they're like hey , everybody , let's do a review swap .

Then you go over and look at their show and it's like great show , love the host , great show . Love the host . Great love the host , great show . And they're all Friday at 1237 . And I'm like gosh . That's odd that everyone was inspired to so . Do you ever read reviews ? I read my own when they come in .

I was getting a lot of those and I was actually hearing some of those through this show , right , as folks in the chat or you would say , hey , have you listened to this ? Or hey , have you listened to that ? Oh , there's a helpful part here . That's just I mean , that's their opinion on oh , you should listen to this .

Now , it kind of depends on who and when and how enthusiastic they are about it . You can actually over-review something for me where , if you're a little too excited about it , I'm going to be like I probably am not going to listen to that . I don't want to get sucked into that ecosystem .

So , being said , yeah , I think I trust people when they come , like in this setting , if I'm not looking for a review and somebody in the chat says , hey , you ought to check out such and such , I'm more likely to go try that than I would . If I read the reviews online , I Listen . I think online reviews are broken .

And I'm like , all right , are they ? Because there are people that will review every single AppSumo thing . And I'm like , yeah , but and the one guy actually did a good job because he was like here's what I like about it , but and he actually shows him using the product .

That's when I'm like , okay , now I'll listen to that guy versus somebody who it's an AI generated voice and the video in quotation marks is just still images that they're slowly zooming in on . I'm like , yeah , you never use this product .

So Chris from castaheadnet , awesome supporter , says feed your podcast transcript into ChatGPT and prompt it to get all the links to products and services that are mentioned in the episode and replace them with your affiliate links when possible . Yeah , what's great Monday's episode on the School of Podcasting is how do I choose a media host ?

And it's not who's the best media host , because in some cases . What's good for me , like this show has chaptersivate , and they do that . They pull out the links you mentioned and the companies you mentioned which are , I mean , that's a huge time saver . And so , yeah , it's ChatGPT is like I say , I'm hanging out with Craig from AI Goes to College .

I'm noticing more and more things Like it's podcast season . So from now through about February , I'm going to get swarmed with new people , which I love . I wish it was that way all year round , but I never had done this in ChatGPT and I gave it a link to a YouTube video because it was like seven tips on writing a great opening .

And I was like , all right , I've kind of got my material on this , but let's make sure I didn't miss anything . And I said summarize this video link . And it was like , okay , here's the seven tips . And I'm like , yep , I got all of those . Okay , that's good . And so that's when I was like , man , that's a huge time saver .

Now I have to trust that the robot is actually and I'm sure , well , all it's doing is looking at the transcript . It's not like it's watching the movie . But I was like , oh , that's kind of cool , so yeah . The other thing I would like to point out with ratings and reviews per Apple , they do not help the algorithm .

So when somebody says and look , they're not lying , they're saying what they've heard four million times and that is you know , write us , please , rate and review us . It helps us get found . And Apple has come out and said it does not help you get found , it is social proof and then that's why you should have people rate and review it .

But I've never Googled . If I was looking for a golf podcast and there are like 8 million of them , I don't go well , I'm going with the top rated one . I might do that if I was doing Jim . Are there such things as robot mops ? Stephanie Graham is all over . Are there seriously robot ?

We were doing some podcast review stuff at work and my manager's manager was watching one of the YouTube videos that we made and he goes well , there's no comments , like you have . And it's like well , we don't actually fish for comments , Like you know . A lot of . You see a lot of YouTubers who are like , yeah , they put , they throw a question out .

If you don't like this , leave your , leave what you like in your comments , right , and there's just a lot of content that leads its way towards comments or lends itself to reviews . The stuff we do , we never ask for it . I said well , I don't . That's not why we do what we do . We're not looking for them to engage in that kind of way .

But that is a really good point . Beyond social proof , there may be money proof .

As always , it's your podcast , do whatever you want , but the thing I always say about this when you take a break so let's say it's you know , friday night and I'm because this is how I party I'm going to go to Walmart and buy groceries , because that's what I do on my Fridays . You know , rock and roll and podcasting 2.0 doesn't put out an episode .

Well , it's not like .

Well , I guess I'll just sit here in silence as I drive to Walmart because my favorite show no , I go find another show to listen in the car , and so what you have to then and I'm not here I don't want to be a news station and put fear into you , but If that show is better than the show I normally listen to because they are part of my routine , that

is the like . That's the thing you want as a podcaster . I want to be part of your routine . And when you give that up and another show comes in , if it's maybe this much better than the show I was listening to .

Now , when the show I normally listen to comes back , it's like my grandpa was a bread salesman and he said it was all about fighting for shelf space . He goes it was a nonstop fight of shelf space and you did not give up an inch of your shelf space .

And so when you take a break , you're just like , okay , here's an empty shelf , anybody want to put something on that , and so that's the only thing I worry about . And people go . Well , who's even going to listen to podcasts ? It's the holidays .

I don't know about you , but I've got to go in a quiet room , lock the door because I got a wrap presence , all right .

Well , maybe there's a TV in there , maybe there isn't , but you know what could be with you Earbuds , and over and river and through the woods where everybody has their own set of earbuds in , because I don't want to listen to dad on the radio , you know . So I to me . I don't think it's a great idea .

Except there's just like we talked about a second ago there is an exception , and that's when , because you've decked the halls and you've made the cookies and you've bought the presents and you're just tired and you're frazzled and you're losing it and you're like I need a break . Then take a break . But normally I am , you know .

This is where I'm just the weird guy . I don't like all my top top shows . I don't take breaks . But , jim , you take breaks . Have you seen it ? Have any like major ? Like you know , your people are still there , right ?

I couldn't get them all in . I maybe got two episodes in November . So I always say , like , go with what you have available . Like , if the holiday is busy for you , take some time off . If it's not , for some people they're just sitting at home . Make more episodes .

Like , don't worry so much about the break , no-transcript , more weight on their own podcasts than their listeners do , and you're always gonna have one or two of those fanatics who are like , where is it ? They don't represent the whole for the most part . Just relax , you'll be fine . Take a week off if you need it . If you can make two , just do it .

Go with what the universe gives you during the holiday season . You know , don't sweat about it , don't worry about it , yeah .

What you don't want your people doing is going , and this is where , if it's like one week assuming you're doing a weekly show and you come back the next week , it's really not that big a deal .

It's when you miss two or three weeks , like Uncle Marv says , he doesn't do any shows between Christmas and New Year's , so as long as his audience knows that , you're golden . It's when you miss a couple weeks and they don't know where you went , they're like , well , I hope he's okay , I hope she's not hurt , or I hope you know , did she quit ?

Are there no more ? You know , so it's . I always say , use the more specific , because when you call to get back in the day , when people get cable installed , you know , and they're like , okay , well , the guy will be there somewhere between nine and four . I always say , I'd rather have bad , accurate news .

So if they tell me , hey , he's going to be there about three Now , I would rather have that than between nine and four . I'd rather it be nine than not three , but at least , if you give me honest bad feedback , I can do something else now between nine and three . So just keep your audience involved .

And Chris says use holiday season to create a holiday theme , maybe , and keep it fresh . Yeah , uncle Marv does a best of . I think Ralph said something he does . That's the other thing to do . If you're going to take a break , here's how you take a break without not taking a break . You ready ?

It goes something like this hey , it's the week of Christmas and , as you might imagine , I'm taking this week off to spend time with my fam and friendly and my fan and friendly yes , all of my fan and friendly , my family and friends , and you should too .

But if you need something to listen to , go to askthepodcastcoachcom , slash follow , because while there's no new show today , there are probably shows there , episodes that maybe you missed . There's no new show today . There are probably shows there , episodes that maybe you missed . So it's not new , but it's new to you . That's right .

Go to askthepodcastcoachcom slash follow . And of course , when you go there , because PodPage made it for you , there's a link for them to follow the show , and isn't that when they follow your show ? Now you're one more step closer to being part of that routine .

So put out a quote new show that says hey , go look at the old stuff Because , like Jim said , there may be times when your audience is like I can't keep up with Jim . He puts out too much content . But there's always going to be that person that's like what ? No stuff .

And then if they've only been listening to your show for two years and Jim's been doing his for 10 , well , there's eight years of stuff there that they missed unless they went back and listened to all the back catalogs . So that's another way to put out a quote new episode . That's not really new , but it's a way to maybe give them something to listen to .

And I'm like and you're choosing what I want to listen to . Your example , if I want to go listen to one of the old shows , let me pick the old show . I can go back and go listen to that based on the title or whatever you said you wouldn't follow .

But for me , personally , I'm like nah , you're not picking what I want to listen to , unless it's really well produced or the content fits nicely into that category , especially if I'm a super engaged listener . I've already heard it all and I'm actually not that interested in hearing it again , especially in a show that's very time-sensitive .

Yeah , yeah , highlight from January of last year . Hmm , it's probably already . It's . That's old news , right ? So don't for me personally . Again , this is me . I'm not going to waste my time putting together a best of episode at the end of the year just to fill a gap . I do not Now .

If your show is , if it works for you and you do that and you get great numbers awesome , do it for you and you do that and you get great numbers awesome , do it . If I'm listening and I get a best of show , I'm skipping it . That's just me . That's just me personally .

So again , that's a good , know your audience , right , know your audience and just a show of stuff to fill a gap . I don't know , maybe it's okay , maybe it's not . I'd question it .

I redid it last night but I started to put it out and it dawned on me I'd missed a bunch of stuff . I was like , oh , wait a minute . I didn't talk about adding teams to your media host . I didn't talk about this . And I'm oh , I didn't realize that this company had a different business model than I thought .

And it's like 10 o'clock and I have this stupid self-imposed deadline , like it needs to be out by midnight . And so , luckily , I had cut a bunch of stuff from that episode . So I uncut it and cut all the stuff about a media host . And I was like , cause you know , it's gotta be out at midnight . And I was like , doesn't , does it really like it ?

Like it could go out at one o'clock or two o'clock . But I was like you know , and then I really had to sit there and think I'm like , okay , so we're going with this other content , like , let's go back . Who's my audience ? Are they going to find this valuable ?

Like , because I don't want to put out stuff just because I don't want to miss my streak , you know so . But I think it's just one of those things where I didn't start off like I'm going to do this , I'm never going to miss a Monday . I just all of a sudden I looked up and it had been five years . I never missed a Monday .

And I was like , oh , and then it was six years , and so now it's just this weird . It's just a weird thing that I do at this point and I will admit it's just weird , like Dave .

More important to be consistent than it is interesting because consistency people will depend on . Even if you're consistently bad , if people like it , they will keep coming back to it . I mean , why do ? Why do people watch these reality tv shows ?

you could get over here , I'm the guy that will stop whatever I'm doing , because I want to be that guy that you count on , and so that's probably part of it too .

There we go , and now I can in theory , assign him as guest two , and we have the one and only Uncle Marv .

I mentioned that I do a year-end holiday show . That has , you know , basically become something that people look forward to because we do podcast awards . Listeners vote on their best episode and best guest for the year , and so the guests all want to pay attention to see if they win , because they get a mug .

There you go and I custom do this mug for them , and so they get a copy of their mug for the year . I have one guest that got upset because he didn't win it one year after winning the previous year , so he is hell bent on didn't win it one year after winning the previous year , so he is hell-bent on trying to win again this year .

I'm like dude , it's a mug , yeah , bragging rights , yeah , but you're uncle marv . Your year-end show is an award show , not a review show right you're not going back in you know we've done a couple of things where I ask people , hey , what you know , what have you liked over the year ?

And they may recall a specific you know episode or you know something that somebody said . But no , it is not a full review . I am not going back and cutting and pasting you know clips from shows and stuff now I may like one year I did do bloopers where people were making fun of me .

Every time I would start a show off wrong because I don't edit , remember .

And after about probably three weeks I just forgot about it and then it was like oh , there's that . Oh , I was supposed to be making clips . Because if you try to do this at the end of the year , when you got all the holidays up to your neck and you're like now I'm going to do a best of show , good luck with that .

Because , as Jim has said , it takes a lot of work , because now you have to either A have to transcribe everything . That would be the way to do it Transcribe it and have some sort of AI tool pick the best clips . Big giant question mark , you know , because otherwise forget about it . It's a huge amount of work yeah .

I make mugs for , you know , family reunions , I make mugs for friends , yeah .

What do you think that would Now just know that you're going to have people contacting you after this for custom mugs . So give me a good price . One , would you do it ? And two , is there a price ?

People it's not like a standard , you know buy an IT business mug , you know , all the time .

But go over , use the coupon code COACH when you sign up and that , of course , that includes unlimited coaching . And we use PodPage for Ask the Podcast Coach , which now has PodRoll . So if you're using Buzzsprout or , I think , transistor for your media host , we will suck in that PodRoll and you can put that on your website if you want it .

If you don't want it , then you don't . So check it out at tripodpagecom . And we use Ecamm Live to stream live . So if you want to check that out , it's at askthepodcastcoachcom . Slash Ecamm and Ecamm has two Ms . And if you need more Jim Cullison and hey , who doesn't need more Jim Cullison then go over Now .

Isn't that supposed to make confetti fly or something , when you ?

We'll spin it around and see who it lands on these awesome supporters and it looks like , yes , it is Jodi Kringle . Yay , from the Audio Marketing Podcast .

I'll put a link to that in the show notes and , of course , you probably just heard me mention her , because one of the things I do is , whoever is the awesome supporter of the week , I mention them and I make it a pre-roll . I'm like today's show is brought to you by Jodi Kringle and then there'll be a link to her show . So Jodi is awesome .

Thank you so much for being an awesome supporter . And if you want to be an awesome supporter because you go , you know what .

This show saves me time , it saves me money , it saves me headaches and it makes me think , maybe keeps you educated Well then you can go over to askthepodcastcoachcom , slash awesome and be an awesome supporter today , and you don't have to spend 20 bucks . There's five and $10 people as well . And so let me go over here , because where did it go ?

Ralph asked how do you effective ? That's the hard word . That's what makes this Question hard . How do you effectively grow and engage with your podcast audience between episodes to maintain momentum and build a loyal community ?

That's where heartbeat , facebook , reddit , subgroups whatever you want to use to have a community , something to talk to them in , between newsletters , social media , and that's where you go effective . And I'm like well , some people are really effective on social media because they're not using social media for promotion .

Where it's episode 16 is out , it's they're talking with , they're being social on social media . They're those people . Facebook groups are sound easy and they can be great , but getting people to interact in there it's kind of a tough thing . Jim , you have 8 million people in your Facebook group .

Probably not . I don't think I'm that . I don't think I'm that interesting . You know , listen , there's a number of every year . There's a number I was going to look this up but you called me in a little too early . There is a every year .

There's a number of small businesses that start and fail and they're good ideas and they have a lot of passion behind them . They just fail for a variety of reasons . You know , in in the podcasting , I've said this a thousand times . But in the podcasting world it's like starting a small business and working hard does not necessarily guarantee success .

You're going to need a little bit of luck , you're going to need a little bit of exposure and you're going to have to work your tail off . Now , every once in a while , there's somebody who strikes it rich , just easy and it just happens . But that's such a small percentage .

I think everybody who's been successful doing what they're doing at the end of the day goes , man , I'm exhausted . It's a lot of work . And so you may think , ralph , this isn't directed to you , this is just generally . You may think you're working hard . You're probably not working as hard as you think you are , like , and there'll be exceptions there to that .

But folks the successful ones , almost always are like exhausted , like literally exhausted . They're just like , yeah , I'm doing everything I can every second of the day . Listen , they also sacrifice a lot . This is one of those areas I don't think we take into enough account .

Lots of times , very successful things , whatever they are , they've sacrificed something or some things to get where they want to be . Be careful about . You know , like , is your podcast worth your family , or is your podcast worth your children , or is your podcast worth your health ? But is it so ? I'm a little , I'm a little cautious on like .

I think , for those you know , continue to work hard , continue to find those areas of things that make you successful , continue to work those things . Just be very careful in the process and decide who will you serve .

You know , we know you can only serve one master , so just be careful on this , that it doesn't become , you know that doesn't hurt you , I guess , is what I'm saying .

Especially when every I don't know three years everybody goes well , I'm not over there anymore . I'm now on Mega Schmegel and then three years from that , we're like no , now I'm on Blinky , it's the new social thing , we're all on Blinky . And then two years later , they're like well , I don't like the owner of Blinky .

So I'm going to go over to Schmortimer and you're like what ? And so it's hard to figure out where everybody is to then get them together . It's a bummer . He says as you know , I'm doing a live show each Tuesday night . I have decided that I'm going to bring on someone and give them free financial coaching as part of the show .

If anyone is interested , go over to AskRalphPodcastcom . That is a fun way . I tried that and my audience . I'm going to probably try it again , but I did one . One of them was Stephanie and another one was , I forget the other . Tina did one and I did a kind of NPR style of replaying their review and my audience did not respond .

Well , they're like wait , this isn't just Dave . And I was like it got really bad scores and I was like they did not like that format or they just don't like that idea . Ralph says I do a daily show for Christmas and I'm going to take a few episodes and do a look back at the best of 2024 .

You can do whatever you want .

I've never understood why that's a holiday . I know some people have great memories of New Year's Eve . I do not , because I think I'll have a very small audience . That is true . You're competing against Ryan Seacrest and Megan Thee Stallion and all sorts of other bands I've never heard of but have not decided completely at this point . Any thoughts .

Again , it's a holiday For me . My knee-jerk reaction is like A you're not going to get any flack from anybody when you know like if your show is normally Thursday night and you didn't do it because it was Thanksgiving , I don't see your audience going . Well , I'm not listening to Ralph anymore . He didn't show up on Thanksgiving . Wimp , I was here , what's it ?

I'm like no . So you know , I would not do that unless you really want to Like for me . When he said that , I was like maybe I , cause I've seen people do this They'll just go online and they'll make a super easy link to pull people in . And it's not even a podcast .

They just want to hang out with people and they'll just do a live stream and it's just like hey , come , hang out and talk , and sometimes you get three or four people in there , but unless there's nothing else going on , you're going to . There's a lot of competition that time . I don't know . What do you think , jim ? Anything , same thing .

Also , I think you script segments if you need to , if you're going to do regular segments on a live show . If you've got that thing scripted and memorized , or scripted and well-read , it just makes a more comfortable transition between things . So I think there's appropriate areas for scripts .

We on live shows we have found great success in outlining them , but we almost never follow the outline word for word . But it's there Like over-prepare and then under-use . You're better off that way . If you get in there and then you're not prepared , that thing will fly all over the place , right ? So just make sure it's going to .

Even with a solid outline it's going to fly all over the place . So make sure you're doing that , and then don't . We do this sometimes here on this show . Don't bow too much to the live audience . Like you can let them distract you , you can let them take you off the rails , you can let them move the show in a direction .

It wasn't intended to go so , but we get great value out of the live audience . We get questions from you , we get comments . I think we've , dave , you and I , figured out how to use that to the best of our ability and to the to the best of the .

You know we don't get a lot of complaints from those who don't come here live , that they we bend too much to the live . But I would say yes to all those things . Make sure you have some things scripted out . Make sure you have a plan of where you're going to go , make sure you understand how to manage the chat room live . Not everybody's good at that .

We've gotten better at that . Post-pandemic Zoom taught us all how to do chat and talk at the same time . That was amazingly not a talent that existed before the pandemic for most people . So , yeah , yes to all those things , dave , that's what I would say .

Like as Jim was talking , I was listening to him , but I also going through the chat and if there's no gym to talk so I can go look at the chat , then you just have to do a time .

And I saw a guy on radio this week the morning guy here and he had some sort of chat thing going and he was like all right , let's see what's going on in the chat and for like I don't know 10 seconds he was like yeah , all right . And I'm like wow , this is radio . And I was like okay , so he's very comfortable with dead air .

And for me , the other thing I would do is I would be in the middle of a topic and somebody would say something cool in the chat and I would squirrel off like nobody's business . I'd be like and that's how I made a hundred dollars . Oh wait , this guy wants to know what microphone is .

And I'm like wait , I didn't even finish my thought , so you have to be . If you're going to do live , you almost have to go . All right , I'm talking to the audience and I'm just going to take a second and look at the chat , because that's the hard part , because you want to , you kind of want to don't ignore the people that are there with you live .

But on the other hand , it's you are multitasking . And speaking of that , dan says Dave Crenshaw's book the Myth of Multitasking is a great read for anyone who thinks they can get it all done at once .

I think a lot of folks are like turn on the microphones and let's just go live . And then I hear them , you hear them get in there and stumble around and be all . They're awkward with it . And then you feel their awkwardness and you're like oh , I'm out . Like I can't handle that secondhand embarrassment . I'm just like I'm out of here .

So just live is not interesting . I hate to break that . Yeah , yeah , yeah , just yeah , we'll just turn our microphones on and it'll be great . No , actually it won't be . It could be , but it probably won't . Like it takes some effort to take some time . It takes some practice . Get good at it .

If you're going to do it , don't just do it once , like you really need to spend some time in the space .

If you're watching this after 12 o'clock on saturday , it's not live , but we're here every saturday 10 30 to noon . Go , go ahead .

And then for if , for 20 seconds or 30 seconds , there's just this weird dead air where you and I are trying to figure some things out that my friends especially if it's a problem , that is awkward . So I'm sure that's not what Eric meant in that . There's a style of leaving space right , I'm sure that's what he meant in it , but awkward dead air .

Either you need to edit that out or make sure it doesn't happen .

That's my out , that is my outro , that's how we know we're done and I'm going to say I need you to sit at the camera and stare at it and smile . It's going to feel like a thousand years . It's five seconds , but I need you for because we're going to fade it out and I need you not to . I just look at the camera and smile .

Those are the moments where it feels like it's forever , you know , and so it it it is . There are moments in your podcast and in yeah , if you're going listen , if you're doing it live , and you have a moment , you need to cough or you need to get away from the mic or you need to . You know , yeah , just do it .

Just make sure you cut that out when you and I know you know this just make sure you cut that out when you go make that part of the podcast right , make sure you have a good system to do that , because just remembering it isn't going to work unless you listen to the whole thing over again .

You know , if you're doing it , that's fine , that's your system , but if you don't have some kind of system to mark those moments , you'll miss and forget . I've heard those where , like I've heard , people are like edit this point . You know they'll be talking on the podcast and they'll go , oh , edit this .

And they obviously missed their own edit point in the podcast . Right , you got to have a good system .

They're like all right , jane from Poughkeepsie , you're on with Biff and the Bushwacker or whatever , and so they do have these little breaks to kind of catch themselves . And when you're actually live and you are in an army of one , that's what makes it really tough .

A live solo show is not something that I have tried a couple times and I'm like , as you do it , you get better . So , as Jim said , if you do it once and go oh , that's ridiculously , you learn from each one .

Like for me , I would have to just every now , and then just like , okay , let's see what the chat room has to say about this , and then just be happy if there wasn't anything in the chat .

The thing I've done , probably once or twice a quarter , is I will start to read a chat message that I haven't read all the way through and halfway through realize , oh , I shouldn't be reading this live , but that's just the joy of live .

And you're just like , ok , and then you just you finish it or you stop mid thing and go oh that's really not for me , never mind , and you move on . But it's live is a different beast , it really is . And if you're doing things like us where we have people jumping in live with no screener , you know , I realize I've opened myself up for that .

But when Uncle Marv jumped in on , you'll hear while I'll mute it , but I now have it make a noise , because I went back and looked one time and somebody was waiting for us to let them in . I didn't know they were there . And so you learn from every experience .

And that's when I listen to my old ones , where I'm just bouncing back and forth all over the place . I'm like , okay , that's horrible to listen to . So you just got to learn with every experience and do what you can . Ralph says . But you do see , here's one . I didn't read all the way through , but I think it's fine .

You do need to cut it out of the audio . I have found my listeners just assume there'll be those edit points and expect them . Yeah , so meanwhile Chris and Randy are arguing about blue sky in the chat room . So be nice people . No , no they're .

But when you have a and this is where working together really matters when you have an unpredictable co-host and you say you need to read the chat room , you throw me a question and I go , yeah , that's dead air . You just engage with the reading and as much as you say you're listening . You can't really multitask way or co-hosts .

If you're going to have multiple people do it . I think is really important .

Yeah , that's no fun when you well , number one , try not to ask yes or no questions , but we all do that . But if you , I forget who it was .

There was somebody on back on the day it's a YouTube video and somebody , I think , decided to just be the world's worst guest and it was Johnny Carson and he's like so you know , have you ever done the blah , blah , blah ? And they're like , yeah , and he's just so , was it fun , did you have a good time ? And she's like mm-hmm .

And you could just tell he was like okay , what's ? You know , this is a talk show and you're not talking , so that's always tricky .

I have probably once or twice in the middle of an interview just not like scolded the guest , but just said hey , I'm going to turn this conversation more towards this now because I want to really get into the meat and potatoes of this .

But they kept going on tangents and I was like , all right , we're kind of here to talk about this kind of thing , so it's always kind of fun . All right , we're kind of here to talk about this kind of thing , so it's always kind of fun .

But to go back to I think it was Todd the Gator that said something about scripts or things like that when we started the show today . I went to my NoteJoy account and I saw I'm like okay , we've got like seven or eight questions that I've gotten from Reddit and things like that .

And I looked at them and they weren't phenomenally great questions , they weren't bad that . And I looked at them and they weren't phenomenally great questions , they weren't bad . I was like all right , if nothing else is happening , we can go to NoteJoy and it's 1143 .

And now is the first time I'm like all right , do we need to go to NoteJoy at this point and see what's going on ? Because I said at the beginning of this I go , jim , this might be one of those where it's like I hope the chat room has something .

And I was so happy that like the minute we started this up and the chat room shows up on my side of things , you guys had already been having your own conversation out there and I was like holy cow , so it's .

I've always planned the show that nobody is going to show up and , if nothing else , jim and I can just talk about a bunch of questions that I've pulled from Redditdit and facebook and things like that . Uh , just because you never know , but it's never that case I always have extra questions hanging around or whatever and things of that nature .

It's actually it's just this year that I'm figuring out the emotional detachment that I have with this . In years past I would get'd get super angry on this weekend and I would just be like I'd just be stressed and I didn't know why .

I think this year I'm kind of figuring out just the overwhelming , sheer amount of options that you have and the just the sheer capitalism that happens . I'm not against it , just but the sheer capitalism that happens during this holiday , I don't like it . It's too many deals to follow . It's too much . And listen , I love shopping a deal .

There is nobody loves shopping a deal better than this guy and I am super cheap and I love it when I get a deal . I won't buy things unless it's a deal . Sometimes I'll find a deal and I still won't buy it , right . That's how bad I am . But the Black Friday mania that happens just is .

So I shut everything off , I delete all the emails I don't want to know . It's just too much for me . So maybe if you're in that situation you don't know it , you're frustrated with things you didn't know why .

There , at least for me , it is a struggle , and so I am so glad when Black Friday and Cyber Monday are over and we get back to some normalness and I can kind of track deals on a slow burn instead of this .

The other thing I've thought of , dave , and I don't know if you've thought of this , but I'd love to just save all my purchases for the year for this one day , to just save all my purchases for the year for this one day . I mean , you kind of think everything's on sale this day .

I just can't operate that way , like I wish I could , I wish I could save all my money and on this Friday you just buy everything . But that life doesn't work that way . And so I'm just super overwhelmed by it and I'm this year . I'm discovering I can't . It's okay to just ignore everything and let the weekend . I did nothing . Yesterday I literally didn't .

I bought nothing , I did nothing . It was awesome .

And at this point you're kind of approaching fear of missing out that if I don't look at every email or something , I'm going to miss the one big deal that everybody else got and I missed it . And then the next step is kind of where you're at , where you're like I can't keep up . I know I am where you are .

Yesterday I just was like I scanned for three seconds and was like , oh my gosh , I don't even know what these are and blah , blah , and I just deleted them all and it was for me it was like a really annoying kid poking at your leg , right Going Danny , and you're like what you know ?

And I would go in and delete literally like 60 , 70 emails and then for the next 10 minutes A I could have muted that tab , but I just kept hearing ding , which means I have mail , and just like nonstop just ding , and like another 30 seconds ding and you'd go over and it'd be more of them going .

Daddy , you know you're like ugh , so I'd delete , and it was just like this , never ending , just for you know , the whole day it was like holy cow . So by the end of the day I was like I don't care anymore and I think that's kind of where you're at , like you know what let me know when they're gone and I will come back out of my hole .

It's crazy .

I deleted all my emails before the show , so I was zero inbox before the show and I was like I bet I have 25 . And Amazon is already like saying Cyber Monday deals are here . You're like man , let the paint dry on Black Friday , for God's sake , like so . It's just . It's to me , it's just insanity Now , okay .

That being said , if you can , certainly the best prices of the year , especially on a lot of services , on a lot of subscriptions , is right now . Just know , the more you buy and somebody mentioned this in chat you're going to have a November glut of things expiring that you know you have to make a decision on .

And if you set automatic , many of them just subscribe automatically , right , I mean ?

Cancel it in October . They sent me a 75% discount . Hey , come back and we'll give you 75% off . You say yes to that every time , right ? So you got to put some things in place to make sure that you're not you know , you're not screwing yourself by . In this case , I think there was one what Peacock or Paramount ? One of those is doing a $20 for a year .

You know that's going to renew at $80 next year , so just be careful . Set some boundaries .

Because if you look , I haven't logged in and that doesn't mean , look , if I have Netflix , I don't watch any movies , I can't go . Hey , can I get a refund ? I didn't watch anything and , to their credit , they were very nice , they canceled my subscription and they refunded it .

But if they'd said , nope , you can use it all year and it won't renew next year , but we don't do that too bad , you know . And they did say they sent a thing saying you're going to get charged and I'm like , no , I'm not that , or it went to spam .

Well , if you go to this show askthepodcastcoachcom slash survey you can fill in a survey about this show and I'm doing another survey for the School of Podcasting . So I'm going to be really hitting that hard in December telling people please go to schoolofpodcastingcom slash survey and fill that out , and then from there I will make decisions based on user feedback .

And that's the thing you have to kind of ask yourself are you willing to change your show ? Like I do a weekly show and if they go we love the school of podcasting , we wish it was daily I'm like , great , I'll go clone myself . That's not happening . I can't do that . So you know . But if they said it's too long , am I open enough to go ?

Yeah , maybe we don't need to hear the where am I going segment every week , things like that . So you have to be .

The worst thing you can do is ask your audience for feedback and then ignore every ounce of it , unless they're really telling you to do a completely different show , because have fun getting feedback in the future if you don't do anything with it . So that's what's kind of tricky about it . But yeah , resolutions . To me , new Year's Eve is not a holiday .

I've never understood it . So that's what's kind of tricky about it . But yeah , resolutions . To me , new Year's Eve is not a holiday . I've never understood it . I was tortured with Guy Lombardo growing up and I forget who else was on . All the kids would run and hide and find Dick Clark's Rockin' Eve or whatever .

But at this point , those shows are not for me , right ? Those are for 20-year-old kids who are standing , you know , staying up . They're not trying to . You know , what are the middle-aged 50-year-old guys looking for ? I'm like come on , bring me some Lita Ford , you know .

doing and see if I can either A not do them anymore or like this show is now edited by Descript . I do not do the select all filler words and remove them , but I do have them removed , which is kind of dumb . We talked about this last week . It's a live show , you know , but I do .

I let it do the editing , I let it do the chapters , where before I went through and did all the chapters and it used to take me like four to five hours just to edit the show , and now it takes me about an hour and a half . So I got a big chunk of my Saturday back and I've yet to have a single person go .

Hey , dave , it sounds like that's an automated edit , like nobody's complained , and I'm like okay , so I'm going to keep doing that . So anything that can save me time while still delivering value . I will do that . And then the hard part is , you know like I'm doing something tomorrow with my brother , that Sunday . Well , everybody knows Sunday is podcast day .

Don't bug Dave , on Sunday it's podcast day . So I got to go help him do some stuff . So I am doing a bunch of things today because , again , family comes first and so that just means I'm kind of sacrificing my saturday . So that's the other thing to always keep an eye on .

As much as we love to focus on our audience and our podcast , always have your eye on your family , because you only got one of those and and that's much more valuable than you know the 30 people listening to your show . That's it's . We get kind of a it's a dopamine thing probably when we see our numbers go up . I would imagine .

You kind of I would much prefer a set of rolling goals that you review at the end of every month . That's what you're going to do . I'm constantly thinking about you know . Okay , where are we headed with this ? What are we doing with that ?

And get in a constant mode of it instead of and I , most people listening here know this instead of , one time a year , sitting down like where do we want to go the next year ? One ? I don't think the end of the year as an arbitrary reset is smart . There's just not . There's .

Yes , there's some unique things that happen , like paying taxes that we do once a year . Maybe some of those kinds of things are smart to look at the end of the year , but I would I'd slow roll it every month at a minimum and just kind of say , hey , I've got these things .

I should be looking at this at least on a monthly basis , if not at the end of the week . I had a really strong discipline for budgeting every Saturday for a lot of years and that just really worked in my favor . Now I kind of budget maybe every other week . You know I've got a rolling budget that I work on .

So , yeah , hey , if it works for you and you can do goals at the end of the year and that's a smart way to do it for you , go for it . I just don't find it as effective for me . I need to be constantly thinking , at least once a month at the end of the month hey , where are we at ? Where are things Cause ? Things change ?

What's going on ? You know , and that's always a good , you good . If you can't do weekly , then do monthly . But it's like you said , you don't want to find out . Oh wow , I just spent 12 months doing the wrong thing . You kind of want to take your pulse every now and then to see what's going on and make sure you're doing the right things .

Right now I've played with a thing called Motion , which is an AI scheduling tool . It was a little expensive and it's a little more robust project management .

So if you have a project and it has multiple stages and then I just found Reclaim , which is a little cheaper and the same thing you put in your habits and you put in your tasks and then it looks at your calendar and goes , oh look , you have an hour here , let's put that exercise habit here , and so it's interesting .

The thing I don't like is if I decide to do something a little longer and I had that hour for exercise , it shows that I exercised for an hour and I'm like , nope , I didn't . I kind of needed to . Like ask me , hey , did you exercise ?

And I go yes , because then it makes reports based on what was in your calendar and I'm like , yeah , I didn't really do that thing , I was , I got stuck doing something else , or my coaching call went long or something like this . But there are some AI tools . But in theory I get the point and it's kind of neato that Ooh , it moved this onto my calendar .

But I'm like , yeah , but kind of don't you know what you need to do . So it's kind of interesting . But hey , whatever works for you , just stay productive and don't forget to leave time to chill out and , you know , don't burn yourself out doing all that stuff . So , jim , what is coming up on ? Home Gadget Geeks .

So she talks about all those processes of going through getting a new job and using AI for resume writing and the new car and researching and buying a new car in 2024 . Those kinds of things available right now . Home gadget geekscom .

And I looked up and I was like at the 55-minute mark and I still had more stuff and I was like , hey , I need to talk about this and I've seen this before . Where I don't lose people , if it's still relevant , valuable content , I don't think people care . If it was three hours , that'd be a different story .

But being an extra 20 minutes , I'll be interested to see what the completion rates are on this . But that's coming up on Monday . So if you're a new podcaster or if you're an old podcaster and you want to know what some of the new features are that are happening in the world of podcast hosts , that's coming out on Monday . We will be here next Saturday .

I don't know , we're not even close to Christmas Eve yet , I don't know what those dates are , but we're here every Saturday , 1030 am , eastern , all the way to noon . It's free podcast coach what is that stuff called Consulting here every Saturday . So , thanks to the chat room we . So , thanks to the chat room , we'll see you next week .