Tales from the Podcast Crypt: Navigating Nightmares in Podcasting – PCI 420

Welcome to the special episode of Podcast Insider. I'm Mike Dell, the VP of Podcaster Relations here at Blueberry Podcasting. And I'm Dave Clements. I'm a support and sales agent here at Blueberry. And today, again, we're gonna do a special Halloween episode. We're gonna we're we're calling this what are we gonna call this? Podcasting nightmares or podcasting horror stories? I guess we'll figure it out when we're we're done here. But You'll you'll know before we know. Exactly. You'll

know before we know. Anyway, happy Halloween. 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.

This is actually one of my favorite times of the year. Lots of horror movies being watched. Family is deciding which, you know, cute spooky movies they wanna watch. And I just like the it's my fur favorite, like, weather of the year. If it could stay like this, I'd be more than happy. Yeah. I love it. In the fall, it although today, when we're recording this, which is a little bit before Halloween, It's it's unseasonably warm here in Michigan, which is really, really

odd. I had to shut off my air conditioner for this recording. That's just not normal, but the weather will change by the end of the week, I'm told. Oh, I'm sure. So let's get on to our podcasting horror stories.

And, you know, Dave, you you've come up you brought up a few stories there, which I'll let you get to. User more, in the production end, and then I have a lot of customer support stuff. And I'm sure you can weigh in on this stuff as well. So Oh, yeah. Yeah. For sure. I I was trying to figure out, you know, what what should I talk about? And I figured you'd probably lean into the the customer support stuff, and I can definitely chime in. So Sure. For sure. We'll we've got a

balance here. Yep. Yep. Dave Dave Dave and I are the ones that answer the phones here for support. So you're gonna either talk to him or me most of the time. So, anyway, I guess I'll let you get started with your production woes. We start with one of them, and then we'll just kinda bounce back and forth. Yeah. Yeah. Sure. So the first one on my list was so I've been podcasting for the last 12 years, since 2012. And I remember when I had more time to dedicate to actually

producing podcasts and things like that. This is my very first show, Geek This. It's still kind of around. It's, like, always on the the verge of pod fading, but I always rescue it just in time. Yeah. I'm the king of pod fade anyway. Yeah. This is it's pretty early, probably within the first three years of podcasting. And, luckily, we had, like, a really good community that we had built up with some local, like, comic book shop because that's the kind of podcast we were doing.

And there was a filmmaker. He was making a documentary about inspired by Batman. And I was like, oh, this is perfect for this specific show. And I crossed my fingers, and I shot an email to him after backing his Kickstarter. And I was like, hey. I would love to help you promote this on my podcast. You know, he listened to a few episodes. He was like, yeah. Definitely. Sure. So we we got this all set up.

And this is, you know, back in the day when you had to figure out the mix minus, you didn't have cool stuff like we're using today where you you can remote record easily. So I thought I had everything set up. We talked for probably 2 hours straight, and I failed to record any bit of that conversation. Oh, you always hit record.

Yeah. And it was, like, it was between not hitting record and essentially, you know, not having that one part of my mix minus set up correctly. So yeah. Yeah. Really embarrassing, and I had to, like, do the walk of shame and, like, email him and, hey. I'm so sorry. I messed this up. I'm sure you never wanna talk to me again. So that was that was rough, and that was in the the early stages. So that

that hurt quite a bit. Oh, yeah. Did you did were you able to get him to talk to you some more to get a interview? No. It just didn't work out. I I he he said, you know, he'd be happy to talk to me any other time, but he was going out to campaign for this new documentary and Kickstarter and all that. So he's like, I don't really have time. So Yeah. It was a real bummer. Yeah. Those are those are definitely a bummer. I you know, something similar that I did in just recently, as a matter of fact.

And just before we were recording, I was complaining about the new macOS. Well Right. Right. One of the features I put in big air quotes of the macOS is it can use your iPhone as a microphone. Well, who wants that? When I've got this, you know, beautiful setup here for podcasting, I don't want my iPhone involved in my computer. You know? In fact, I I'm I'm really close to just getting rid of the iPhone altogether.

But, anyway, I recorded a whole episode damn near an hour of of my show that barely is above pod fade, like Dell's World. And I recorded the whole thing, and, you know, I thought, oh, man. That's great. And then I listened back to the recording, and somehow my Mac picked up my iPhone microphone, which was setting across the desk from me and, of course, sounded as such. Now no. Like, oh, man. And then I'll go through all that. So the episode ended up being a half hour when I rerecorded it.

Yeah. But, you know, of course, I did have an episode. But,

yeah, it's just recording stuff like a hit record. Sometimes do 2 recordings if possible. Right now, we're flying a little blind. I I I I'm only got one recording going for this, so, hopefully, it works out. Yeah. Hopefully, this doesn't turn into a podcast nightmare. Exactly. We don't want that. But, anyway, so, let's see. You you got another one there. Yeah. So I've I've talked at length in the in the past on Podcast Insider about playing games with strangers.

It's a show that I've helped produce, and I was a voice actor and things. And a couple of years ago, we got the opportunity to invite a a more prominent voice actor, somebody who actually does it as a as a living. Her name is Katie Lee. And she was I'm trying to trying to think of some of the characters she's played. She was one of the Muppets on Muppet Babies. She played Sunny Gummy on Gummy Bears, which is a old Disney cartoon from the eighties. She also played Sheila the thief on the

Dungeons and Dragons cartoon. So if you're familiar with any of that, you've probably most definitely heard her voice. You just may or may not know that it's her. So thanks to a connection of one of the other members of the playing games with strangers team, we got Katie on. And the reason we brought her on was because that show we play Dungeons and Dragons. She was a Dungeons and Dragons voice actor. So it was like it was just it we had to do it. Of course. And we we brought her on.

And, you know, our our dungeon master, he he had given her, like, a full rundown of, like, hey. I've made this character for you. Here's some points in the story that you might wanna familiarize yourself with. And somehow, she did not get any of that information. So she literally jumped into this session playing a character she knew nothing about. And we we made it work, but it's it's that I think we ended up splitting it into 2 episodes because we recorded for, like, 2, 3 hours.

And she had a blast with us, but she knew absolutely nothing about how to play or who her character was supposed to be or anything. And she was kinda hesitant to promote it on her end, if I remember correctly. But we ended up talking to her a little bit, and she's like, oh, no. I had a good time. It was just it was just so embarrassing for all of us after it was over. Like, I think I edited those 2 episodes, and

there is just so much. She didn't understand what we were talking about, and we didn't understand what she thought she was doing. Very complicated. Just very yeah. And I think embarrassing is is the best way to put it. She was a great fit for the kind of show we were doing. But if we had to do it all over again, we probably would have had, like, a a pre meeting with her and everybody to go, here's what's going on. Does that make sense?

Good deal. And then it would have turned out even better. Yeah. It reminds me of you know, one of the takeaways is if you're gonna have a guest on there, you know, make sure that the the guest is the right fit for your show. Yeah. You know? And and this this is a little bit different what you were talking about, but, you know, so many times somebody, you know, books to be a guest on a show. And and about halfway through the interview, either they're kinda dead fish. You know what I mean?

It's like Yeah. You know, you ask them a big, long, involved question, they go, yep. Yeah. It's just you know? Yeah. Yeah. No more context. And, I mean, even with this one, like, she was a great I don't know. She she was a team player. And that's the great thing about doing a show like that is it turns into improvising things. So it was like, okay. We threw the the actual D and D rules out the window, and we just we had fun with it, but it was like listening back from a production standpoint.

It was a little rough. It was it was kinda choppy, and thank god I have the skills to edit well enough so that nobody knew. So that's just like a personal Yeah. But that Yeah. As as you said, that can be kind of a a a nightmare. Oh, yeah. You know, editing is my nightmare anyway. Oh, I love it. Yeah. So each to their own for sure. Let's get into some of these customer stories. Yeah. Yeah. I I had a customer, and this, I think, might be before you got here, Dave.

But I had a customer that contacted me, and he says, yeah. I I got a little problem with my blueberry feed. And so I worked with him and worked with him and worked with him, and then he said, well and and also I've got my Lipson feed. I've got my Podbean feed. I've got my 2 or 3 others. I'm like, what? Why? Oh, wow. And he was publishing his show to at least 5 different hosting companies. You know? So he had he had, you

know, 5 different feeds. He had, you know, like, his lips and feed was submitted to 1 or 2 destinations, and his blueberry feed was 1 or 2 dis destinations. He said, well, I wanna make sure I'm everywhere. Well, I can't get on the Lipson directory. Well, there's no such thing as a Lipson directory, really. I mean, you know, I guess they kinda sorta do, but, you know, not all podcast hosts have directories. Yeah. We happen to, but, you know, that's that's an oddity rather than the rule.

You know, Podbean has their own app. I guess I understand that, but you don't have to be on Podbean be on the Podbean app. Right. So, anyway, we finally got him all consolidated down, and and he he run everything off of the WordPress site with Blueberry hosting. And, you know, he's he's been a a good customer since. It's just it took us a while to sort out, well, okay, which feed does Apple pull? Okay. Which one does this other one pull? Which you know?

Yeah. And it Yeah. You know, it was just, you know, like, you're paying all this money and uploading 5 times, and and and all this is like, why are you doing this? Mhmm. Yeah. I've I've had similar. I've never had anybody use, you know, a bunch of different hosting services. But I have had people that have submitted their PowerPress feed to Apple and their, you know, Blueberry publisher feed to Spotify. And then they publish in 1 or the other. And then they're like, hey. My episode's

not out and Yeah. Or it's delayed or something like that. And I'm like, well, this is why. Yeah. You know, a podcast should only have one RSS feed. Yep. And, you know, the reason for that is that's the center of your universe. You know? It's like like a radio station with a transmitter. Oh, 90.5 FM or whatever. And, you know, that's where people know to listen to that radio station. Yep. I I've always described it to customers.

I did this last week as well. I was on the phone with someone explaining this. And I was like, you know, your RSS feed is it's your home address for your podcast. If somebody wants to find it, you know, if they wanna write you a letter, let's look at it that way, they're gonna write to your address. You know? An analogy isn't perfect. But I was like, that is the core of, you know, if you wanna get mail, let's say, Apple, Spotify, give them that address.

Right. Right. And if you change said RSS feed, you have to put in a redirect, which is like sending a little card into the post office saying that you moved. Exactly. You know, you have to have to do that, and people will move and not say anything and then wonder why things don't work. My next one here is that, you know, we run into this a lot. You and I both, people will be using PowerPress, which is our plugin for WordPress that generates your RSS feed.

Mhmm. You don't have to use it, but if you use it, you need to use it. And they'll say, well, I had a web designer redesign my site, and it's now on Wix or Squarespace or some other platform. And how do I publish my podcast now? Well, you don't on the website more because your feed was on WordPress. Now that's it's not all lost if they, you know, have their their domain mapped to the new site. There's usually a way to do the redirect even with Wix or Squarespace. It's it's harder.

But, you know, if you're if you're listening to this and you're using WordPress and PowerPress and you wanted to you you wanna change your web platform, please contact us first. Yeah. Yeah. Avoid this horror story Yeah. Extinction event. Yeah. It is it's a lot more common than I think a lot of people would would think. You know? It's it's not hard to do, but get with us to make sure that you do it right, and there's no headache.

Yeah. And, you know, the there's no problem in moving feeds around if you do if you do the the, I guess, homework before the move. Yeah. You know, we can help you whichever which way you wanna go. It's just you know, don't cut off your feed. You know, it's it's like okay. Go back to the radio station analogy. If you decide you wanna tear down your transmitter tower Okay. Okay, your radio station isn't gonna work anymore because your tower fell over or got torn

down. Yeah. Okay? So you have to move it first. Yes. Anyhoo, you got another one here. I guess this isn't production

so much. Anyway No. Oh, I'm I'm not gonna name drop. I could name drop. But as I mentioned, like, when I had more time before I was doing my job here at Blueberry where I'm helping podcasters, I was really trying to, like, make Geek This a show that this is what I did full time. That was the that was the dream. And so I there was a a bigger podcaster. I'll just say that. A a well known podcaster. You can you can name drop if you want. Well, okay. I'll do it.

So Dave Jackson, who you may or may not be familiar with I know Mike is. He has or had a little podcast he would do called podcast rodeo where the idea was he would go to a random podcast generally and listen for as long as he could before he had to just shut it off and be done with it. And you could pay, like, I don't remember, like, 5, $10, and he could he would review your podcast. Well, doggone it, I was ready to get my show going. That's what I wanted to do. A little publicity?

Yeah. I was like, I've got a good show, and I still think it's a good show. And I I paid the money. And it just so happened that the time he was going to review an episode of course, he didn't ask what episode you prefer that he listened to. He just listened to the latest one. And we actually had just released a Halloween episode, so it's timely in that in that manner.

And as one of those things where I had to go to my co host's house, and he didn't have all of the equipment and stuff that I did. So I brought everything, and we were just in this room that was pretty empty. There's nothing to bounce audio off the you know, to what am I what am I trying to say, Mike? Nothing to keep it from bouncing around the room. Yes. Yes. That's what I wanted to say. And it was the worst audio I have ever recorded. It would have been better if I was

literally standing next to the water heater. It was so bad because I had done a prerecorded intro and then connected that to this audio. It was so bad, and Dave was honest. I I don't fault him. Yeah. But, boy, he hurt my feelings so bad after I I listened to that, and I downloaded that episode, and I listened to it in the car. And I was like, I never want a podcast again. This is terrible. How could I screw up so bad? And I guess the moral of the story is always double check your audio.

You know, back to you know, when I did my iPhone recording there Yes. Like, I'm glad I checked it before I published it. Yeah. As soon as we would've published that, and everybody was, what the hell happened to his microphone? Jeez. Yeah. Hey. Acknowledge it at the top of the episode and go, hey. This audio is not our norm, but we had a pretty good episode. And

that's what he he said. He was like, it sounds like it would have been a good episode, but I don't wanna listen to these guys talk because the audio is just so bad. Yeah. We we've done that here on this show before. We've had technical glitches, and the audio is garbage, but sometimes the content is what still worth it. Yeah. Yeah. So we appreciate it when we we do that. But we shouldn't be doing that too much now that I've got all new equipment here, and and we're using

a different recording platform. So if the audio sucks, it's not my fault. It's probably my fault. Yeah. Yeah. For sure.

Along that same lines, kind of, instead of getting your podcast reviewed, this particular very large podcaster who I'm not gonna name drop because, actually, I don't remember his name, to be honest with you. But, at the time, he had a pretty big show. He's still going as far as I know. And he interviewed an NBA basketball star. I forget who it was, but one of the one of the more famous ones. And he well, here, let's let's go back a little bit.

He had consulted with me, I I'm gonna guess, sometime in October or November, so around this time of year. And we did a little tweak here and there, and I'd noticed he had been stuffing keywords in his author tag for Apple. And I said, you're really gonna wanna take all this extra stuff out of your author tag because you're keyword stuffing it, and Apple will eventually find that and remove your show from Apple. Yep. He didn't believe me. Oh, no. I've been doing it for years. Blah blah blah

blah. I said, well, they've been lately and, you know, at that time, they were really, really watching that. Yeah. I remember that. Yeah. And so he didn't take my advice. He interviewed this basketball star, gave the basketball star the Apple listing address for his show or the Apple listing for that episode as the link to promote, which is also a bad idea. Mhmm. Because what if Apple takes you out? Well, guess what? Apple took him out right around Thanksgiving.

Oh, no. And it was right then when his episode went live with this NBA basketball star who was promoting and, you know, a lot of the sports magazines. I mean, it was a huge, huge, huge amount of amount of publicity going to a dead link because Apple took him out. Apple tends to take the month of December off. Yep. Apple Podcasts. So nothing really happens at Apple Podcasts for the month of December for the holidays. And it was probably the first or probably the third or 4th January

before his show got back on it. Wow. So he lost out on at least a half a $1,000,000 worth of free publicity for his show. Yikes. He says he didn't take the advice that that you know? And I'm not saying I'm gonna be all end all of podcast advice, but I knew that was gonna cause him trouble, and he didn't believe me. Mhmm. Now he believes me when I talk to him. But I'm sure he does. Yeah. You know? And that that I think that's the worst horror story I've heard in podcasting is, like,

he's just panicking. He was calling. He was emailing. So if you heard from Apple, yeah, have you ever heard from Apple? I just I knew a few people at Apple. I said, well, they're not answering. I keep getting the message back throughout for the holidays. Sorry. Don't do so. I didn't say that, but I should've. Moral of the story is, dang it, listen to us. Yeah. You know, not that we're not perfect, but we do know certain things, and that was one of the certain things

I knew at the time. Now I don't think Apple's as picky about that as they once were. But, you know, he had listened to some other podcast guru who I will also not name and not Dave Jackson. Right. That said, yeah. You wanna stuff your keywords in every place you can. Oof. You know? Nope. Yikes. Sorry. You know, SEO experts are not podcast experts. That's very true. Same with web designers. Yeah. And, of course, both of us get this one a lot. The biggest horror story we get in support

Yeah. Is when the phone call starts with my client dot dot dot. Yeah. There are so many, quote, unquote, podcast consultants out there that have no business consulting for podcasting. And I I had one, and and I've never used this, but I want to. Someday, I'm going to. But they kept asking, oh, what should we do? What should my client do? What should we do? What you know, and I and and I really wanted to say your client should hire a different consultant.

Yeah. That's that's the hard truth. I mean Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I I've we've talked about this outside of, you know, recording just in meetings and things like that. But, yeah, if consultants aren't bad, but I would highly recommend that just, you know, do some research on that consultant. Don't just take them at their word. Like, let's look at their portfolio. What are they actually doing for

you? Because in my opinion, I don't wanna pay a consultant that just goes to Blueberry support, finds the answers, and they still make all the money. You know? That's that that feels weird to me because I'm like, no. I'm paying you for your knowledge. And if you don't actually know that, then And and not all consultants, you know, know anything about Blueberry. That's understandable.

Sure. You know? But if they're gonna be consulting with you, you know, just be aware that they may not know the platform that you're on. You know? And

we we may have a cure for that coming up next year, hopefully. But, you know, that and web designers. Oh my gosh. Talk about horror stories. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You know? Again, if you're using WordPress and you're using our PowerPress plugin to power your podcast, be really careful with web designers. Mhmm. They make it look pretty, but sometimes they make it not work so good. So make sure you get us involved with that if they're doing a complete revamp of

your site or something. We're more than happy to jump on a Zoom call and and say, hey. No. Don't do that. Do this instead. You know? Because when you're using a WordPress site for your podcast feed, your WordPress site is doing multiple duty. Yeah. It's a WordPress site first. 2nd, it's your podcast feed. Yeah. And it has to do both.

Yep. A popular one that we see and I remember it used to be, like, the thing that I was terrified to answer any calls or tickets that would come in is when people would start using custom post types on their site. We redid the site. I have a podcast custom post type on my WordPress site, and now my feed's broken. It used to terrify me because I was like, I don't understand how any of that

works. I've learned a lot since then. Oh. But that is a very popular thing because these designers are like, oh, well, you know, you wanna have your posts and your podcasts and your, you know, all your little special kinds of posts. And yeah, if if they bring that up, go hold on. We need to talk to Blueberry first. Yep. Yeah. Definitely. If if they mention post types, that that's something you need to talk to us about. And, you know, we've got some documentation

about how to do that properly. It's not hard to do. Nope. It's just something that you have to do. And and and this is okay. We're gonna get geeky for a second. Post types are okay. So there right now, you know, when you first install WordPress on a server, you have 2 post types. You have pages, and you have posts. That's the stock install for WordPress. You can add another post type. You can call it whatever you want to. You know, podcast episodes or whatever.

Okay? But that doesn't go into posts or pages. It's its own thing. It's a post type. And that that's what it is. It separates out the blog post from the from the podcast episode posts or whatever. Or, you know, if you have say you have a site that you you talk about 3 different topics, you could have 3 different post types. You have, you know, topic a, topic b, topic c. Has nothing to do with podcasting. It's

just a WordPress function. Right. But there's just a couple little settings that have to be done to make one of those work as a podcast feed. Yeah. Absolutely. Not hard. Just give us a call. Yep. So, well, I think that about covers some of the some of the things we've run into. Can you think anything else? I I don't think so. I mean, we I feel like we covered quite a bit

there. Yeah. Yeah. Like I said, the there are all kinds of little horror stories, but the the the nice thing about it is, you know, with us at Blueberry, Dave and I and Sean and even Todd sometimes, we're all pretty good at unscrewing up things that got screwed up. Heck yeah. You know? So, you know, if if if you run into some sort of nightmare and you're hosting with us, give us a call. We'll we'll help you sort it out.

So, anyway, catch you guys next week. I think it's just gonna be me and Mackenzie next week. Not sure. I haven't I haven't really planned planned it out yet. So, anyway, happy Halloween, and and thanks for joining me, Dave. Yeah. Thanks for having me. Thanks for joining us. Come back next week. And in the meantime, head to podcast insider.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.