I'm Mckenzie Bennett, Marketing specialist at Blueberry podcasting. And I might tell a Vp of customer relations here. At Blueberry today, we're gonna talk about... 7 things your podcast might be missing. You're listening to podcast insider, a weekly podcast bringing insights, advice and insider tips and tricks to help you start, grow and thrive through podcasting. With the support of your team here at, we very podcasting. Welcome. Let's dive in. Start Of course, this being episode 04:04 the
geek. And, you, the geek in me thought, hey, let's talk about something missing because of the 04:04 air, if you go to someplace that doesn't exist on the web, you get a 04:04. So here's some stuff that might be missing from your show. Someplace And 1 of the first things is marketing promotion, You know, it used to be when way back when we started, you know, I'm talking like an old guy now. You know, you put a podcast up in
everybody that listened to podcast. Oh, what's this, You know, because there wasn't have any of us. That's not that way anymore. It's not... You know, you build it and they will come. You have to have some sort of strategy for doing social media, Seo, collaborating with other podcast, utilizing newsletters, any of that kind of stuff to promote the fact that you're Podcast exists. It... Not to put this in a bad light, but just in a way to emphasize
the importance. Of marketing and promotion, like, a new podcast is kind of a drop in the bucket of how many shows that there are nowadays of not all of them are quality, we all know that, but it yours is if you're really passionate about this in yours is, you have to market and promote your show, so that people are actually gonna find it. Yeah. We have a lot of tools for that kind of thing. You know, we've got
a clip creator coming soon. We've got all that stuff, so you can effectively do it on Youtube and whatever other social media, clip you're you're on. And and it all depends on your audience too, You know, I wouldn't expect If you're doing a show that appeals to retirees that Instagram is probably not the place to promote your show, maybe Facebook, but, you know, that kind of thing. So think about where your audience is, and that's where you wanna be,
Yeah. Again, you know, it's like forums of the old style forums or Facebook groups about whatever your subject areas is is a good place. And you don't wanna come in there blasting and say, hey. I got a podcast, check it out, But no. Get in there and be helpful. The people will get to know you, and then you could, hey, I just did an episode about Act. Hey so check it out, that kind of thing. And and when answering somebody else's comment to a question. But there's a lot
to marketing. I mean, you're mackenzie you're the marketing specialist here and and, you know, it's not just social. There's other ways of doing it. No. The Internet is wildly complicated sometimes, we're getting your content out there. Where you want it to be, you know, to be found. So using the proper keywords and Seo practices will really help you in that sense, and that it doesn't necessarily seem, like, promotion that is more so
you know, just... Proper marketing of being able to reach the people that you actually wanna reach because you are connecting with them in those ways, there's a lot of different ways that you can do marketing in promotion as well as the audience engagement. So moving on from that, I think is Mike, some of your stuff. Specifically, the technical aspects. Yeah. The the tech aspects of podcasting, you know, that
we talked about it last week. Right Make sure your audio is good, you know, if you're editing your own audio, you know, take some tips to learn how to do editing better or how to do your remote recording, like we're doing here. Of course, you can always upgrade your podcast equipment now who a 500 dollar microphone is not gonna make you sound 400 dollars better than the hundred dollar microphone. So it kinda keep that in mind crazy.
But, you know, a good quality microphone and a good place to record, you know, try to keep things quiet, all that stuff, you know, just up your game in the quality part of it. You know, as far as, you know, technical issues. There's always gonna be technical issues. You know, we're we're working with a bunch of computers all over the world. And it happens. So, you know, don't don't let that throw you off, but make sure that the tech part of it stays up
to snuff. You know, if the tech part of it is missing from your whole stack of stuff, you know, up your game a little, that never hurts. Kind of in a different sense. The technical is we have a production team who added these shows for us, which both Mike and I are very thankful. Today for because we have messed up so many times recording these 2 episodes. I'm hoping Kate gives us an out take real for this 1. Yeah. I don't know
what's wrong. It's just a random Wednesday, but it just has not been going great. So she's gonna fix it for us. So that's 1 of those things that, you know, as you go on, maybe if editing is not your jam, then you can have someone do it for you. Yep. Exactly. Yeah know, this next 1, I think is pretty important. Oh, yeah. Just just a tad. So next 1, we wanna talk about it. Is it's just content creation in general from kinda start to finish. Brainstorming
unique episode ideas? How are you gonna structure set episodes for maximum impact? What type of storytelling techniques do you wanna use for your podcast? Do you want to go the journalist route and interview people on the show. Do you want... Do to just completely script it out and do, like, a fiction episode, incorporating multimedia elements. Do you wanna do video? Maybe you wanna I do a live episode. You know, Life can actually make you a better podcast. In my case, probably not, but till...
Trying to do something live, you know, the people that are watching you live, and it might only be 10 or 12 people, but they're gonna see it as it is. And then, you know, depending on how much you edit, the the finished product might be different. You know, in a lot of cases, you know, Todd famously doesn't edit. I've edit very little. That's why we have Kate here. And all that, you know, in scripting is totally not something I can do. I cannot read and make it sound like I'm not reading.
So finding the right balance of what you wanna do. Like, we have our show notes that we're looking at right now of what we wanna talk about, but we're not necessarily, like, reading off of the document either. Just bull Just... Yeah. Just bullet points of things that we wanna make sure that we're getting out there. That's all. And then and otherwise, we just wing it. With sometimes gets this in trouble, but that's alright. 1 of the 1 of the other ones that might be missing from your podcast is
monetization. Now not everybody wants to monetize, we talked about this last week. But, you know, there are different models for monetization, ads, sponsorships, merchandise, Patreon, value for value. Donations, any of that kind of stuff, you know, if that's missing and you want that, consider adding that, you know, your results may vary, of course, You know, some audiences are way more susceptible to donating to you or buying merch or whatever, So... Oh, yeah.
And that, you know, of course, you can approach potential sponsors, You know, you're doing a a show about a particular top. Back I'm sure there's companies in that genre that may be interested in a sponsorship. You know, and of course, you gotta negotiate the deal. You know, that's always fun. Back But, you know, if that's missing from your show and that's what you want to do, go for it. You know, there's other
ways of doing that as well. You, like, doing an Apple subscription or we wear a premium, you know, for exclusive content for paying subscribers. That kind of becoming a lot more popular. Yeah. Yeah. We're we were hoping that the premium would take off here. So hopefully, and you guys wanna do a paid show. We got a thing. You know, I'm... I'm almost certain. I read last night that New York Times is gonna place all of their episodes behind a pay.
So if they are doing that, that will be I will I would be interested to see how that affects their. Their audiences. I find it hard to get people to listen to a free podcast. So I I don't know. Yeah. I I don't know. Maybe there's a perceived value there that that it'll be popular. So, you know, each to their own. Yep. But... We wanna talk about analytics and growth, especially because that can be helpful with your monetization. So. First things first,
understand your podcast analytics and metrics. Just, you know, we have spent considerable time and effort in the past couple years. Making updates to our own stat system to just really clear up what this information means saying, you know, like, you can tell the differences between this episode and this episode by looking at this data. Here is just the total here is how it our... It, like, how it breaks down.
It's it's really great information for deciding, like, if you wanna continue on the path that you are on content wise. So you can track. The listener retention rate and then improve from there. It gives you just ideas of how to grow your listener base overall. And then it allows you to analyze the competition sometimes, if you are able to use our new stats data, that compares your show against others in the same category that are blueberry
shows. So that one's really cool And then, of course, just using feedback, and this... All of this data overall to improve your content. The number 7 thing that might be. Missing and or incorrect is legal and ethical considerations, you know, legal makes sense. You know, There's in copyright, fair use and all that stuff, You know, you can't play Ac in your podcast and most likely. Saying unless you just pick up a really expensive deal with them. But, you know, it's just not something you should
do. You know, there is such thing as fair use, and that is different than copyright. So and I'm gonna have Barry on later this month to talk over some legal stuff. So Look forward to that. You know, agreements and contracts with the guests or c host or something like that to more network people, either whether you're running a network or you're part of a network. Just make sure you have all those ducks in in a row, ethical interviewing and content creation practices. I'm reading
that. And like that 1, though. Yeah. And what I and what that's about is Okay. You you say you wanna interview somebody, and it's a Gotcha interview. So you're halfway through and then you start throwing them hard ball questions and you know, accusing them of stuff and and all that. That's just... That would be an example of ethical interviewing, I would think. You know, might be interesting, but not cool. Not cool.
You know, and same thing with content creation, you know, you can you can fake a lot of stuff. And 1 thing about podcasting that I've always said, you know, the podcast podcasts I like the most are the most most authentic. You know, I I wanna hear somebody breathing once in a while. I wanna hear an Oo and awesome in there. I want it to to to be authentic. And, you know, and, you know, a lot of times lately Youtube videos. So is where I see this the most is they're using
an Ai voice. It sounds really good, but you can tell that it... That's not a human doing that. And, you know, they might erode it. But maybe not. Maybe they just let the Ai do the whole thing, and it's, you know, acceptable content, but, you know, in my humble opinion, I I don't like it. It's definitely changing, especially with all the Ai stuff that is evolving, but it does lead into the next 1, which is just personal development. So for your show... We lied you at the beginning. Sorry. Sorry
to interrupt. So we lie about? We said 7. And this is it. Oh, okay. Well, we're on 8. See. There's personal development. We're not lying to you anymore. We just... Listed stood at the beginning of the f. You're gonna. The time management and the productivity listed for your show. We have really dialed in on some of that type of stuff in our podcast hosting platform of just, like, how do we make this as simple as possible and take the least amount of time?
What last episode was about all this kind of stuff as well. So, you know. Go back 1, and, you know, you wanna hear more about that for sure. Yeah. The less time you have to spend working on, like, the system. The better, so that you can maintain your creativity and avoid burnout so that you can continue your podcast education, stay up to date with the industry...
Trends, network, you know, we were saying, like, find your community, that type of stuff and just coming back to the first 1, setting and achieving your own podcast goals. So I'm sure you guys could come up with more things to check and make sure you're including your podcast podcasts. Flow, but you know we thought we'd give you a few things to think about here and that phone call is back. Oh, we'll just let it
go. Thanks for listening. At You can always find us at podcast insider dot com and of course of blueberry dot com. Happy podcast. Thanks for joining us. Come back next week and in the meantime, head to podcast insider dot com for more information. To subscribe. Share and read show notes. To check out the latest suite of services and learn how blueberry can help you leverage your podcast. Visit blueberry dot com. That's blueberry without the ease, because we can't afford them