Benefits of Blubrry’s Free Podcast Website for Growing Your Show – PCI 442

Hey, everyone. I'm Mike Dell, VP of customer relations here at Blueberry. And I'm Todd Cochran, CEO of Blueberry, and welcome to Podcast Insider.

Yeah. Today, we're talking about how Blueberry's free podcast website site can help new podcasters grow their audience and build a solid online presence right from the start. You're listening to Podcast Insider hosted by Mike Dell, Todd Cochran, and Mackenzie Bennett from the Blueberry team, bringing you weekly insights, advice, and insider tips and tricks to help you start, grow, and thrive through podcasting with all the support of your team here

at Blueberry Podcasting. Welcome. Let's dive in. Of course, you know, it's an easy, no cost way to get discovered, promote your show, and, of course, make a great first impression even if you don't have your own website yet. You know, I think, Mike, this is something that, maybe we're not really well known for, but we know that it's an option a lot of our podcasters use and that they get a, a great looking podcast website included with, Blueberry hosting.

Yeah. It's, you know, our free WordPress sites. They are, you know, as powerful as any WordPress site, and the nice thing about it is it's managed for you. So, you know, you don't have to worry about security updates, plug in updates, all of that stuff, and you still get the benefits of using WordPress to publish your show. And, of course, it's ideal for new podcasters who do not yet have a dedicated site or tech skills.

You can start with one of our free sites, and then later as you decide you might want, you know, a little more elaborate website or whatever, everything can be moved very easily to a self hosted WordPress. So it it's a good starter point. And, of course, each of the, episodes has its own dedicated page with a title description. And, of course, you can show the transcript if that's, in your feed. It'll display in the Bluberry player.

And, of course, these pages help you get your show indexed, by Google, increasing the chance of organic discovery, through search.

And I think that's really one of the huge, huge ideas here behind this is that, you know, you're gonna get the point of origin for all of your content, and someone searching for tips for new parents might land on your parenting podcast episode page. You know, and the other cool thing is, you know, when you have your own website and a dedicated page or post for that episode, you've got something that you can directly link to in social and sharing, you know, any

which way. They go to this page, and this is this episode. Now it has your show notes, has a player. It's, you know, instead of sending them to platforms, you know, you you send somebody to Apple and say they're on an Android phone. They don't have Apple or they can do it, but it's a lot harder than in a native app. And, of course, you're not limited again to just Apple or Spotify. You keep the traffic on your site if

you so desire. Of course, they can also, you know, you can also have other destinations, outlined so that people can go to really the their destination of choice. Now some folks are gonna say, well, Todd, you know, I don't really want a WordPress website. I don't wanna deal with manage it and or anything. But as, you know, as Mike, as you may have mentioned earlier, we take care of the backups. You have to do very, very little work

to get your site ready. All you really need to do is add your show artwork, pick some colors, and a logo. We have a a couple of templates that you can choose from. But the most important thing with a having a site as your custom branding is that your latest episodes really always appear front and center automatically updated, obviously, when you publish. And, again, you do originating it from that website. So it's going to be on that website, you know, from the get go.

And listeners are more likely to subscribe if they can learn about you and explore your content in one place. So it's not just about writing the podcast post. You can write an about page. You can create a place for people to get merch. Really, there's all this interactivity you can do on the website, and you have a lot of control of the presentation of data. And it's, again, it's not complicated at all. Very simple to get started. And, of course,

our support team's here. If you ever need, Mike and Dave and Sean, be happy to talk to you and and walk you through any issues you have. But, you know, the best part about it is you got this built in podcast player. You know, every episode includes our responsive, embeddable player that people can actually share other places.

Yeah. There's you can turn on an embed link and somebody could put it on a different website. Or if you have another website you wanna do it on, you can just throw that player right on there. And the nice thing about the player is it has all the stuff built in. It's you know, you can speed it up, slow it down. You know, a lot of people are gonna use the web to listen to your podcast. A lot of people don't think about that, but, there are a subset of listeners that will

just do it right on the website. Yeah. And it depends on the age group of your podcast too. When people are a little bit older, they tend to the web. When they're younger, they tend to the apps. But still on average, we see six or 7% regularly coming to the website and consuming the content. And, again, I think what's really important here is you can link out to content and topics that you've talked about, maybe to a guest.

You can add buttons that we provide you to be able to put, again, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon, all those destinations. You've got the ability, again, if you got a PayPal, you want or in Patreon, you can put those all in the sidebar and make it easy for people to follow your show and, again, to be able to get access to, content that you wanna highlight.

And, really, I think, you know, the best part of this, it's free. Yeah. It's part it's part of your hosting plan. Even the even the $12, basic hosting comes with that ability to build the website. Now you get a few more features, if you go a little higher in plans, but, it doesn't cost anything more than your regular hosting, whatever plan you're on. Now you do not have to map a domain to it. You can. Matter of fact, if you're on the $12

plan, you can't map a domain. But if you're on a $20 plan, you can pick up a domain name, really anywhere, and you can map a domain to it if you want to. Or if not, it'll be a blueberry.net web site with your essentially with your show name as a landing page. And, again, if you have a domain name, it's real easy to integrate that and add the information.

And, again, the beauty about this is you're not paying that monthly reoccurring hosting bill at a, you know, at a at a Squarespace or a web host or anywhere. And that's many money that you can reinvest into promoting and and improving your show. You know? And and another thing about having a website, if you don't, it gives you a place for growth. You know? You can, you know, as your show expands, you can add a custom domain. You can link to a mailing list, upgrade to, you know, PowerPress

and WordPress on your own site. If you want more control over the site, that comes with some extra work as far as maintaining it. But, you know, with ours, you don't have to maintain it. We we take care of that for you. And as a reminder, if you don't want WordPress at all, we do provide a very simple

landing page for your show. There there's less control. Now we're gonna be changing that in the near future where you'll have more control on that easy page that you don't have to I believe do nothing to. But this WordPress option, you know, we still believe and still see today that having your brand on your.com is really the place to go. And we've got some great, series on YouTube right now that talks about why it's important to own your brand. So make sure you go over and check out

the YouTube channel. We're putting a lot of information over there now as well. But, you know, having your artwork, having your colors, having your logo, be able to link to stuff is really the the ability to to to grow your brand the way you want to. But, again, what are what are some of the advantages, Mike, of having this free website? Well, it goes back to our philosophy, you know, build your own brand on your own space. And and with our free websites, that's a good place to

start for that. But you, you know, get found through Google a little easier. You can share episodes really easy. You know, build credibility with your own, you know, as you call it, moon based alpha Yeah. Your home base for your show, you know, for any of your content. And even if you have a YouTube channel, you can embed your YouTube, on those websites as well.

So there's there's a lot of different things that, you can do with a site that you can't do if you're just doing it on a hosting platform, you you know, some other one. And there's a distinct advantage here that we are giving you with this free website is it allows you, again, to build your brand, not the Blueberry brand.

Even though we provide you the free WordPress website with all the management included, including templates and a number of plugins that are the you know, what we've determined through discussing with podcasters, the the plugins they need to be successful is you are building your

show on your brand on your.com. And I guess, you know, Mike, I've said this for twenty years. You you alluded to it, but there's nothing more valuable. Why would you build your your your new empire, your new show, or your new business, or whatever it may be on on rented land? Now if you're opening up a shop, maybe you have to rent something in a strip mall. But just like in my case, you know, I was paying rent on a regular basis, and that got

jerked out from underneath me. So nothing is sacred unless you really own the underpinnings. And in a podcast, the underpinnings is your own website in your withyourown.com. And I think that, as a new podcaster, we're giving you the ability to have this advanced website right from the get go, whereas on many competitors' websites, you're just you're stuck. The only option that they give you is you're gonna be part of their domain name. You're not gonna build your brand on your.com.

You're gonna have to say, well, go over to such and such host.com forward slash such and such. Well, why would you wanna do that? You're you're you're not trying to build your your, your your hosting provider. Yeah. Not trying to build your hosting provider's Yeah. Brand awareness, trying to build your own.

And matter of fact, there's some changes coming, within the next couple of months that we're taking everything we do to the next step and giving you a lot more control, because we just understand how valuable it is. But I guess that wraps up today's episode. Not, it's not more complicated than what we've indicated here, so kind of a short and sweet one, Mike.

Yep. And if you're a new podcaster without a website, don't overlook the free websites we offer with our hosting. It's built right into your Blueberry account and make sharing and growing your show a whole lot easier. And, of course, be sure to follow, subscribe to Podcast Insider for more podcasting tips, tools, and updates from the Blueberry team. And definitely check out what we're doing on YouTube as well because we've got some fun stuff that we're doing over there. I have a brand

new show. It's available on Apple Podcast. It's called the Podcast News and Myths podcast. So we're I break we're largely breaking down podcast myths and covering some news from time to time, but definitely check that out as well available. We'll have that link up in the show notes for you to check out. Alright. And to find the show notes, where do we go? We go to podcastinsider.com. Very simple. Yep. You can see an example of what we use as our Yeah. We do main podcast site. Yeah. We drink our

own Kool Aid here, ladies and gentlemen. So, again, thanks for listening. We'll see you next time here on Podcast Insider. Thanks for joining us. Come back next week. And in the meantime, head to podcastinsider.com for more information, to subscribe, share, and read our show notes. Check out our latest suite of services and learn how Blueberry can help you leverage your podcast, visit blueberry.com. That's Blueberry without the e's. We couldn't afford the e's.