Everything is Logistics
A podcast for the thinkers in freight. Everything is Logistics is hosted by Blythe Brumleve and we're telling the stories behind how your favorite stuff (and people!) get from point A to B.
Industry topics include freight, logistics, transportation, maritime, warehousing, intermodal, and trucking along with the intersection of technology and marketing within the industry.
126k downloads and rated as a top 5% podcast out of all industries and growing. Follow along to stay curious and become a better thinker in freight.
Everything is Logistics
Podcast Movement 2023: Key Takeaways for Growing Your Show
This episode recaps the key takeaways from Podcast Movement 2023, one of the world's largest podcasting conferences. The hosts share actionable advice on growing your audience, building relationships, improving audio quality, leveraging video, and more. Listen to gain valuable insights from industry experts on how to improve your podcast, whether you're just starting out or are a seasoned podcaster.
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Welcome into another episode of Everything Is Logistics, a podcast for the thinkers and freight, and I got a special episode for you today. In the month of August myself along with my well, I guess cat's out of the bag, but my now fiance we went over to Podcast Movement, which is an annual conference that is held typically on the West Coast. It's one of the largest podcast conferences in the world. It might be the largest, but it's really filled with a lot of industry veterans, a lot of traditional broadcast companies and then you know the Spotify's and the Apple's and you know even down to the Disney's of the world. Anybody who's everybody, has a friggin podcast now. But this is where some of the bigger players are at and some of the more higher tier concepts are being discussed. So we were able to attend this conference. We also were able to speak on the at this conference for our company, the Jax Podcasters United, which is a community in the North Florida area for audio creators.
Blythe Brumleve:But we took away a lot of well takeaways from this event and put them into a nice little format for our JPU audience and I really thought that, if you know for folks that are in freight or in, you know via adjacent roles and you know podcasting is something of interest to you.
Blythe Brumleve:I think you will really like this episode because it takes the tips from you know, the people that are getting the hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions, of listens per episode, and it really helps to sort of dial it in for the folks who maybe only get like 50 plays on an episode or who want to start off with a podcast and, you know, maybe you didn't see success right away and you want to start one up now, or whatever role of podcaster you're in. If you are in one of those situations where you're not getting, you know, a million downloads on each episode, then this episode is definitely for you, because we are taking those tips from those top tier folks, those top tier businesses, and applying them for the independent podcasters out there. So I've talked long enough about what this episode is going to be. So I hope you enjoy this conversation with myself, along with a Badr Milligan, and also Alex Sanfilippo. He owns a couple of podcasting companies as well. So I think you guys will really enjoy. So have a good one.
Badr Milligan:Well, just want to go to say welcome to the JPU hurricane party edition of the live stream today. Today we'll be recapping some of our biggest takeaways from the largest podcast conference in the world Podcast movement. I'm your host and one of the co-founders, Badr Milligan. I also host the short box podcast. It's a comic book talk show, and joining me is my fellow co-founder, the real beauty and brains of the whole operation, Blythe Brumleve, host of everything is logistics podcast and founder of the digital dispatch company. Blythe, how are you doing, hello?
Blythe Brumleve:I'm doing good. I'm slow to recover the hurricane day is making me a little sleepy but happy that everyone has joined us and happy to really start the recap process and, I think, the processing of all the information that we learned over at Podcast Movement last week.
Badr Milligan:Yes, IE, holy crap. Now I've actually got to do all the takeaways I said I was going to do. I feel like after a conference you kind of allot yourself like a day or two of just being like decompressing. I'm tired of talking to people, I'm tired of the word podcasting. Now that time has left, Now we're in, like okay, what did we learn and what are some actionable items?
Badr Milligan:I wanted to start off by saying, for anyone that might be in after the fact that has no idea what podcast movement is, it is the self-described world's largest podcast conference. I could probably believe that as more than just hyperbole. I just want to list some of the media partners that this conference has listed. They've got partners and sponsors like Pod News I Heart Podcasts, Lipson Podbean, Amazon Music, Paramount was at this particular conference in Denver Focusrite, Mackie Wundery, and the list goes on. If there is any company business out there that dabbles in podcasting, they are at least somewhat involved with podcast movement. I know podcast movement does two events per year. One is their podcast evolutions event, which I've never been. I'm not quite sure what the target demo is on that one, but podcast movement being the larger one that brings out a lot of different sponsors and companies and folks to join that one. It was both our first time attending podcast movement. I was curious to hear from you what was your initial impressions about the conference expectations going in versus the reality of what you got to experience.
Blythe Brumleve:I think it was very clear and evident from a lot of the marketing from podcast movement that this is a serious conference. In my work I go to a lot of conferences and some of them are a little bit smaller. Some of them are a little bit grander and they're at really incredible locations. This was one of those that's a little bit grander. It's at a really good location. You can tell some of those heavy hitters not just you can tell they were all there. The heavy hitters of podcasting were there, the companies that you had mentioned. My only concern and I think we'll get into this a little bit later on is how beneficial something like this is for the independent podcasters. Should you shell out money to go to an event like this? We'll get into that a little bit later on if that makes sense for you or not. If you are a company in this space, I think it makes a ton of sense. We saw a lot of those companies on display there. Even if they weren't on display there, they were at least networking among the crowd and networking among the people, which was really really cool to see. I think there was about 1,500 people there, huge expo floor, lots of talks. They also had what I thought was really cool. It sounds like they maybe need to work on based on podcast movements email that they sent out this morning that they need to work on a little bit of the sound issues.
Blythe Brumleve:I thought it was a creative approach because they have a giant expo floor where all of the vendors and tables are set up for everybody selling their goods and services for the industry. Then they also had stages of the talk. Typically at a conference, you will have breakaway rooms and you'll have to go to another area in order to catch talks and hear different conversations. A lot of the conversations were taking place on the expo floor. It was a really unique opportunity to be able to just be on the floor talking to people and then walking by and seeing a topic that may be of interest to you and stopping by and listening. That typically doesn't happen at regular conferences, where you have to really be strategic on which classes or which sessions you're going to go to and then fit in the expo floor. I thought that it was interesting to be able to tag team both of those at the same time. That's one part that I really liked about the event.
Badr Milligan:I think you described it really well. While we were there I think you had a comment you were like this feels like all the cool kids that are podcasting are here. I definitely got that. There's definitely a certain upper echelon of the podcasting industry and world that's representative there. I want to say in my personal opinion that it met the expectations I had going in. I had a feeling that this was going to be corporate. Very well-funded Networks were present. That level of podcasting was really cool to see because we went to podcast and I feel like that is proudly grassroots caters to your everyday podcaster, from starting out to the mid-range and maybe even above that. This was like corporate we're talking corporate podcasting companies that dabble in podcasting, whether that be creating content, having a network or offering software and different solutions for podcasters. For me it definitely met my expectations and maybe even above that To your point.
Badr Milligan:The conference floor was. It felt small and big at the same time. I think that was maybe the one expectation it had was that it was going to be massive. It felt very like you could handle it pretty well is a phrase that's coming to mind. It felt like someone going there for the first time. I didn't feel too lost. To your point, it was a lot of interactiveness, a lot of talking, a lot of presentations and speeches going on at the same time. That made it a little fun. It definitely kept us busy. I'd say we always had something going on. We got Alex on the. There we go. Alex has joined us. What's up, guys? Here we go. Yeah, alex, welcome, welcome, alex. I'm going to toss this to you, man, because you are a veteran when it comes to these podcast conferences and excursions and things like this. This was not your first time going to a podcast movement, right?
Alex Sanfilippo:Correct. No, this was my, so I've been to Evolutions twice and this was my second podcast movement. Okay, so like we have the two conferences, they do them every each. I kind of divide them up among six months. So, yeah, now I've done both of them twice.
Badr Milligan:Okay, fantastic. And right before I ask you what your overall impressions were, I want to say for anyone here on the live stream or that'll be tuning in later, we've got Alex Sanfilippo, who is kind of I don't know man. Alex, we would go around to a lot of these vendors and we would mention Jacksonville and I think your name was if 99% of the time it'd be you know, alex, oh, podmatch, podmatch.
Alex Sanfilippo:So we were like yeah we do, actually we do know that I like that, that's cool. Thanks for sharing that man.
Badr Milligan:I didn't know that that's cool. So for anyone that doesn't know Alex, alex is the host of Podcasting Made Simple. He's the founder of PodPros, a software company focused on serving podcasters through their various software and offerings like PodMatch, podcastsop, podlottery and you just launched a pod score. Right, correct, yep? I think Tom just said it best. Alex is the Jacksonville ambassador of podcasting. I like it.
Alex Sanfilippo:All right.
Badr Milligan:Alex, what was your impression of the conference?
Alex Sanfilippo:So kind of reinforcing what both of what Blythe just said. Really it's just like it felt heavily industry, which is fine. So, by the way, the podcast movement has two different events. So podcast movement evolutions is supposed to be strictly industry. So I went there and there was, I met like four or five podcasters even though there was like 800 people there. Probably it was all people in the industry. Podcast movement's an extension of that. I think you'll put it really well, it's very professional. So I'd say out of people I met, it was one out of four were actual podcasters and the rest were some sort of service, software, company, network, any of the type of things. Right.
Alex Sanfilippo:And so that was like kind of my first thoughts between the two conferences. They both lay more onto the industry side. If you will, it doesn't mean it's a bad thing. But if you're checking this out and you're like hey, I'm new to podcasting with Indie Podcaster, I don't mean to like take sides or throw shady either way or another, but podfests would be better for you if you're brand new, because you'll find more people that are in the same sphere as you and if you go to podcast movement you might talk to a podcaster who's like, yeah, I've done a thousand episodes and I've had 30 million downloads, like, what about you? And you're like one episode, two downloads my mom and my cousin, right? So just keeping that in mind, however, it does have its place, like it's a great industry, had an absolute blast, learned a lot as well.
Badr Milligan:Well said, yeah, well said. And I think for me in Blythe's case, you know we were going there to, you know, promote the Jacks Podcast at United, see what opportunities were there for us. So I think it was a good fit for us. But I'm right there with you, alex, I think something like a pod fest which is a little more catered to your everyday podcast, it would be probably a little more beneficial.
Blythe Brumleve:Are you in freight sales with a book of business looking for a new home? Or perhaps you're a freight agent in need of a better partnership? These are the kinds of conversations we're exploring in our podcast interview series called the freight agent trenches, sponsored by SPI logistics. Now I can tell you all day that SPI is one of the most successful logistics firms in North America, who helps their agents with back office operations such as admin, finance, it and sales. But I would much rather you hear it directly from SPI's freight agents themselves. And what better way to do that than by listening to the experienced freight agents tell their stories behind the how and the why they joined SPI? Hit the freight agent link in our show notes to listen to these conversations or, if you're ready to make the jump, visit SPI3PLcom.
Badr Milligan:Let's go to shift gears, and I want to hear about any light bulb moments the either either two of you had at the at the event was there where you're sitting in on a presentation, or did you meet someone that kind of gave you a piece of advice, or you heard something that was like, wow, I never really thought about that life. You want to go first?
Blythe Brumleve:I think it was one of the key notes. Angela Yee, who is infamous for being on the breakfast club for forever I think it was like 12 years that she was on the platform and she said that she doesn't want to have gotcha moments with her guests. And she said that with you know, essentially for especially coming from the sports world. That's where I kind of felt like when I was creating my my sports related show, is that I, in order to scale, in order to get bigger, I was going to have to have those viral gotcha moments. I was going to have to be one of those people that, like you know, just extreme one side or the other and I didn't want to be that kind of creator. And it was a big reason of why I wanted to shift to go into something else, to go into, you know, some another area of coverage. So that's the big reason.
Blythe Brumleve:Also, I was working in logistics at the time supply and demand. You know there's not a lot of podcasters in logistics. So I thought, well, maybe I can be more of my true self in logistics and hearing somebody like Angela E, who's at the top of her game, has several different ventures that she's working on. She's somebody from a broadcasting perspective that I really look up to. Her saying that was just a further like affirmation, that like, okay, I'm doing things the right way, I'm doing things in a way that I'm comfortable, that you know, I don't want to make my guests feel like they're they're going to come into a moment where I'm going to try to get them to say something they don't mean. I want my podcast to be a safe space for conversations and I don't want to treat it as sort of like a dissertation. I want to treat it as a conversation. So that was one of my big takeaways.
Blythe Brumleve:I think another light bulb moment for me was one of the panels that they said sending your shows to the press with poll quotes so interesting quotes that you have from your episodes and being able to take like a preview of that episode and send it to your local news or somebody maybe an industry trade publication.
Blythe Brumleve:You know these reporters are constantly looking for stories and so if you're creating those story moments on your show, being able to give reporters like a sneak preview of an episode that's coming out soon, either through poll quotes, having them listen to the episode before it gets officially released, that could be additional exposure for you and your show. So that was one thing that really stood out to me and I think is actionable, no matter if you have a top 10 show or a top 10,000 show. That that was one that I think a lot of our group, especially members of the JPU, can really take advantage of and gain access to that additional discoverability and additional credibility that comes from, you know, some of these legacy news platforms that are shining a light on your show.
Badr Milligan:There's some fantastic tactics right there. Yeah, I had those listed down too as like wow, it's a really interesting marketing and way to grow and get your show in front of a different audience. Alex, what about you? Did anything leave an impression on you?
Alex Sanfilippo:Yeah, the I'll share a couple things. First off, my favorite part about the event, like at the event itself, was what they? They hired a company. It's called Brain Date. I always do air quotes when I say that guys like I can't help, but like because it just sounds weird to say. But the Brain Dates, which basically were you could schedule time as, like a facilitator or someone who wanted to attend, and they had tables that I think set eight to 10 people and they just had a section where it was all these round tables and all these different topics you could sign up to attend or lead one. That's where I found most of the newer Indie podcasters like ourselves, right, I found those people there and so I led a few of them and I also attended some as well, and that's where I got the majority of the value from.
Alex Sanfilippo:The entire event was actually at that specifically, and all the things I learned were very small but, like I, because they were focused, I went with a specific question wanting an answer, if that makes sense. So, on the flight home, because it's I don't know how long it is, but a few hours right Felt like a lifetime when, after these events, the flight home always seems like it takes forever. Anyway, right, anyway, I was able to implement everything. So it was all like really small takeaways, but things I had just been questioning and wasn't sure, cause you know what it is. Sometimes we have questions that we don't know how to ask a search engine right, chances are someone has done a video on it or written about it, but you don't even know how to ask the question. That's what I was running into. So I sat at these tables and was able to finally be like, hey, let me work vomit, for lack of a better term and then you tell me what I'm trying to say and then give me the answer I'm looking for and I got all the answers I was looking for. That type of thing, right there, is extremely valuable. All really small things, nothing even really worth mentioning, but the brain date side of things. Brain date was where I saw the most value for me personally.
Alex Sanfilippo:Beyond that, from like a 20,000 foot level as a service provider in the industry, I wanted to also get a pulse on the companies that are involved and the people in the industry side. I confirmed two things that I've known but maybe didn't want to believe that just aren't my favorite, but the majority of the industry is after the top 1000 podcasters. So if you're 1000, one beyond, they're like okay, go away, call me when you have more downloads, right, like that's where a lot of people go. So a lot of the companies. They're like how many downloads do you get Are you getting? Are you in the top 1000 of all shows? Cause, if not, quit wasting my time. So that's number one. That was like I hate seeing that. And that's not all companies. Thankfully, we're in Jacksonville, florida, with companies like Buzzsprout, who do focus on the Indie Podcaster.
Alex Sanfilippo:By the way, I'm a paying customer, so, and then the other thing I realized is there's not really any new innovations in the industry. There are people doing, like, small tweaks, but there's nothing groundbreaking. That's happened, I'd say, since the rise of AI, if you will. Now everyone is just riding that train of like ooh, we do AI now too. I'm like cool, that's not new anymore, right, like we all do AI. It's funny. Podmatch we started like we have an AI algorithm that does the matching, and we announced that in 2020 and nobody cared Like so much that we just took it out of the branding. And I'm like should we mention we have AI again and just like, go find a technical guy he's like dude who cares, he's like everyone does AI. Now he goes, it doesn't matter. Anyway, I digress on that. But again, just seeing there's not a lot of innovation happening, I do see a lot of competition coming up across the board, so it's forcing everybody to actually, instead of innovate, hone in what they're able to not do super well yet and actually get really good at it. So, overall, I am seeing the industry really perfect the craft of what they do, which makes me think in probably about two years from now, we'll start seeing more innovations happening.
Alex Sanfilippo:Again, just my thoughts. There are people who were there who would like literally take me outside and stone me for saying that, who believed that, like every day, something's changing and growing, but I haven't seen anything a long time. That's made me go wow, that's impressive, let's put it that way. It's probably been almost a year since I said that and there was nothing there that made me say that. Again, not to be negative, because it's good that there's competition. Everyone's getting forced to fill in the cracks they have and to improve across the board, but don't go to these type of events thinking like I'm gonna find the next big thing that's gonna like just shatter the entire universe, right? So those are my thoughts. Again, getting in the smaller circles is really where the value is added. A big event like this and that goes for PodFest, that goes for podcast and it goes for any of them when you can get into a small group of people having the same thing they want to accomplish, you can go really far that way.
Badr Milligan:That is some really good insight, alex, and it reminds me of what Pablo Gonzalez, who wasn't able to join today, we were gonna have on, but me and Blythe spent a lot of time with him at podcast movement. For anyone that doesn't know, pablo is part of the JPU, he's a founder of Be the Stage, he's a host of a B2B community builder show and I had asked him on the first day we were grabbing like breakfast and I was like hey, pablo, what is your goal? Because Pablo is all about community building, community networking with face to face. And he had an interesting response. He was like well, he had nothing lined up in terms of presentations or stopping by booths or the expo floor. He had told me hey, I'm hanging out in this room here where podcasters can just hang out and from the expo floor and I'm gonna sit at the table I can and meet as many people as I can. And I thought that was an interesting strategy to like navigating the expo floor and meeting folks. It's like why not go hang out where everyone's just kind of like trying to take a break and just chill? So hearing you say that having those one-on-one interactions, the brain dates, were really helpful, I think it got me thinking of Pablo.
Badr Milligan:I'd say I had two kind of major light bulb moments and one of them wasn't like brand new. But I think, alex, to your point, sometimes you've got questions that you don't know how to answer. Other times, like, you know the answer but you just need to reinforce, you need to like hear it from someone else or in a different way, and you're like, yeah, that's a good point. And one of the main ones was I think we were at a grown podcast audience what actually works and what doesn't. There was a name of the presentation there and I forgot who said this, but they advised, like hey, consistency obviously being very important to growing your show, but also studying what other shows are in your space, like what are other people, what are people listening to in your category? What makes those shows good? Like what are the top podcasts in your categories? And like seeing what you could lift and make your own and that's not brand new. But the way they ended it by saying people listen to other podcasts, like people have multiple podcasts they listen to and it doesn't. It could be multiple. Whatever I run, a comic book podcast there could be. I'm gonna be listening to several comic book podcasts and it doesn't mean that I have to view them as competition. If anything, we should be friends, we should be sharing like information and seeing what type of things we could do together, and I thought that was a cool way of putting it. Is that like there isn't necessarily, there doesn't need to be competition in this podcast space, cause there's options for people, like the listening habits for someone will change depending on who you ask. I thought that was really cool to hear that.
Badr Milligan:And one other one that just like kind of blew me away cause I had never heard of this but paid feed drops. I had not heard this phrase before or this marketing tactic, but it's essentially either paying or organizing or coming to a negotiation with another podcast to drop your little episode in their feed, you know, and that kind of ties back to like what other podcasts are in your space that you are performing at your same level or you're trying to get in front of. So in my case, like you know, I could find another comic book podcast and offer to hey, I can either pay you guys or we'll just do a swap. You drop one of my episodes in your feed and vice versa. And like you know it should you know push the same listener base to one another show If you know they want to check it out. I thought that was a really interesting like marketing. You know strategy. Have either one of you heard of like paid feed drops, or was that just new to me?
Blythe Brumleve:I had heard of the promo swaps and so I think that that's very similar to what you're talking about. So there's one side of it, for what you're referring to is you just trade. You just give someone your audio file that's a similar podcast and you kind of intro it with hey guys I just wanted to share. It's almost like what Wondery does anytime that they have a new show drop, they have a trailer which is typically like a few minutes long, and they drop it in all of the Wondery podcast. So it drives attention and awareness to the new show.
Blythe Brumleve:I kind of think that's a little annoying at times because I never.
Blythe Brumleve:I think it's cool from like a marketing perspective, because I imagine the amount of people that are listening to that that would see it.
Blythe Brumleve:You know it helps with discoverability, which is a constant problem in podcasting, so I could see where that would make sense.
Blythe Brumleve:But I almost like it better as a full episode that you preview. Hey, these are my friends over at such and such podcast. I would love for you to check out their show too, because they talk about a lot of the same things. So you intro it as your friends and then you drop the audio file that they send you, or doing the promo swap, where you build in those sponsorship, those ad moments within your own show and then you use those moments to promo swap for other people's shows. I think that that is a no brainer for a lot of podcasters in order to help with that discoverability. So very similar to what you're referring to, but maybe as a smaller ad unit within your own show or just previewing it and letting your audience know hey, I think you guys will find this show interesting and here is the audio file and just play the audio file as if it were their show linked to it and the show notes, all that good stuff.
Badr Milligan:Yeah, I definitely think there's a lot of value for like networks to kind of do that, because it makes sense if they're all affiliated at that high level. But I'm gonna go and shift gears here and I wanna hear from the both of you and maybe, alex, you can kick us off. I wanna hear maybe what's some of your best pieces, actionable advice for aspiring or new podcasters. Like what can the folks that are here on the live chat or that'll be watching this video later, assuming that their day to day podcasters, weekly podcasters putting out shows, what are some actionable pieces of advice that they could benefit from hearing?
Alex Sanfilippo:Yeah, I've got some. I have a lot of thoughts here, so I'm gonna keep it brief as I can. The most important thing I'd say and anytime anyone's ever heard me speak, I've said this, I said it from stage at podcast movement as well start with why. And I don't mean like go read Simon Sinek's book, I actually mean start with why. And that to me means sit down and remember why you're doing it. The best way to do that is get rid of this right your phone and grab pen and paper and write it down with this right and write down why you're doing. What you do.
Alex Sanfilippo:Immediately connected to that and directly connected to that, I should say, is your avatar. So think about the why you're doing your podcast in the first place and then think about who it serves and tie those two things together and get really specific with it. So when I say that, like build out an avatar, build out an ideal listener, is what that means. So I don't mean like a little blue person, right, like I actually mean build out some sort of fictitious character that you say this is who I'm serving and I put that person right here. So on my computer they're just right here. My person's name is Adam. I can tell you how old Adam is, where Adam's at in their podcasting journey. My podcast happens to be about podcasting, which is great for this group, but beyond, this is weird, right, but Adam is a podcast who also has a full-time job and he's somebody who eventually wants to become a full-time creator. Right, I have all these details. I'm talking about his family and stuff. I do that directly connected to the why that I'm supporting, to reinforce it and to remember it. And then I ask myself, with everything I do, would this actually support and add value to Adam? If yes, proceed. If no, backtrack, go a different way. Right, and I find that this is really helpful to do because of the high failure rate in podcasting Right now, to make it to the one-year marker of your show I can't think of the staff time ahead, but here's a better one To make it to eight episodes, you only have a 47% chance of making it right now.
Alex Sanfilippo:I know that data because I literally just looked at it before this. So you only have 47% chance of making it to even eight episodes. When things get tough, when you feel demotivated, what keeps you going is remembering that person, that avatar that you're serving, because it's directly connected to the reason you got into this in the first place. When you can tie those things together really well, it can keep you moving forward. Now I know that's kind of high level. There are some tactical things as well, but hopefully someone else will get into that. But those are my thoughts on staying with it as a podcaster.
Badr Milligan:Well said. And you know what, alex, I'm gonna piggyback off of what you just set up, because that was one of my items I have here for Action Advice. It seemed like a common theme that I was kind of absorbing is the idea of font die hard fans, like your die hard community. It felt like the best piece of advice that I got was, instead of focusing on large download numbers, it's like really honing in on who your audience is, who is, like you said, who is your listener Like? How old are they? What do they like? Like you know, trying to hone in on like that core audience and those die hards. Like serving like maybe a smaller group versus trying to capture every fish in the sea. Like honing in on that die hard group that'll be advocates for you.
Badr Milligan:And on the last day I had walked by this speaker, he was like really energetic and yelling, so I was like man, this guy's really hype. But he said something I really liked. He kept repeating it. He said your brand. He was talking about branding your podcast and thinking for you. He said your brand isn't something in terms of podcasting. Your podcast brand isn't. Your brand isn't something that people should identify. It should be people like I completely slaughtered it. I'm going to come back to it when I get there. It was really good. I don't want to mess it up, but it was essentially like people shouldn't just be able to identify your show, they should resonate with it. That should be your goal Having a show where you've got die hards that aren't just like oh yeah, I've heard of you know Potter in the Short Box. It should be, oh man, I love this show. Let me tell you about it. Let me, like you should check this episode out Like you want, even like what was it? Again evangelicals.
Blythe Brumleve:No evangelists Two different types of fans.
Badr Milligan:That's the level of fans that you want is, like you know, and I think it goes back to what you were saying, alex if you can identify who is your ideal listener and you cater your show, then, yeah, like you know you're going to that'll be, that'll be helpful to market your show. You know, right, like you're kind of feeding it's just kind of like the snake that feeds its own tail and I got one more piece of actionable advice and then I'll toss it to you, blythe. But especially for, like, starting out podcasters I forgot which track or presentation we were at, but one of the speakers said that he has new podcasters right down on a sheet of paper, like you said, the name of their first 10 episodes. And there's something about being able to list out the names of the first 10 episodes and what they might be about, even if you don't have hard details. But, like, just seeing the names of what your episodes or topics will be about, it helps you a long way to either to one, keep you committed to help you out with the planning.
Badr Milligan:And three, I think it feeds back into that, like, once you understand what you're talking about, then you can figure out all right. Well, who am I going to be talking about this with? So I like that idea a lot for, like, new podcasters I mean even for myself, right, like 400 episodes in. You know, I'm at this point now where I probably plan out one to two episodes in advance, but I was going to start practicing like figuring out look, let me see if I can content plan for 10 episodes and really fine tune it. What about you? You got any actionable advice for our, our?
Alex Sanfilippo:blinds, you mind if I jump in real quick.
Badr Milligan:Oh, sure, yeah.
Alex Sanfilippo:All right, potter, you said one thing that I think is really important. Identifying those fans is so important. But I think a lot of people are like, okay, how do I do that If you're using Buzzsprout I can't speak beyond Buzzsprout again, I'm a customer of theirs but you can look at your downloads within the first seven days and that will help you determine who your fans are. And the reason I say that is if you're a weekly podcaster. If not, this would be different.
Alex Sanfilippo:But if you're a weekly podcaster, the people that come back every week to listen, those are your fans, not the person who drops in every month or every quarter, right? And so I think that Tom, who I think is with us here somewhere in the audience, has done a really good job identifying that as a key metric to see who's actually a fan of your podcast. And if you're seeing that you have like a substantial number there, you can call them out on an episode and they'll be like, hey, if you're one of these people I see that's listening every week, send me a DM here or send me an email here, right, and obviously not all of them want to talk to you as much as we love that, but a percentage will, and that's how you can really start engaging those fans. So, potter, I love that you brought that up, because I think that is just that's a key point I'm now going to reference moving forward. So thank you for that and, bly, sorry to cut you off, go ahead.
Blythe Brumleve:No, no, no worries at all, because I'm actually going to piggyback off of both of y'all, because there was a couple of different quotes that I wanted to read out, and one of them actually comes from Pablo, who we mentioned a ton in this episode already, but he said in his speech that podcasting is the new golf, and so building those relationships on that sort of like one by one basis has such a long term growth effect for you. Because and we said this in our speech, potter that podcasting is not just conversations, it's creating relationships at scale, and so, thinking of you know, whether or not that you know you have five people that are coming back each week, those five people really love your show and they're probably going to tell all of their friends about it if they listen to podcasts as well. So it said that being okay with slow growth, because slow growth is still growth, and so I think that that was one really important takeaway. I love the line podcasting is the new golf. A couple of other actionable takeaways is the unexpected connections between episodes and how can we create those connections for our audience. So going back and looking at what your top shows in those first week are and seeing if you can go back into your show notes and add a link to those episodes If they're relevant to that specific episode. These are small things that you could be doing in your own show notes to create that additional listenership that, hey, I really liked this episode. I wonder if they have more. Make it easy for them. Put that link in your show notes even if the show is already published. Go back in, edit it and add those relevant shows in your show notes so you can keep that person engaged and you can keep them listening. So that was a couple of them.
Blythe Brumleve:And oh, youtube. Youtube was such a big discussion. Video was such a big discussion. At Podcast Movement as well, we sat in on the YouTube talk. I'm blanking on the person's name, but it was somebody that actually worked at Google, so we had firsthand knowledge of what they're doing with podcasting.
Blythe Brumleve:You can add your RSS feed to YouTube. You can't pull it in directly yet as far as like an auto publishing type feature, but if you add your RSS feed and you add a podcast playlist, then what happens is, after you upload your show to YouTube, so, say, you take the audio version, you create a thumbnail in Canva. You know, super easy, something everybody could do and then you upload that video to your YouTube channel. You have to tell YouTube by adding it to the podcast playlist. You have to tell them that that's your podcast file. They can't tell the difference between an audio only show and a video first show, so you have to help them by telling them the difference.
Blythe Brumleve:So when you upload your show to YouTube, just make sure that you're doing that little extra step of adding it to the podcast playlist, and that should be in your upload options anytime you go to upload the show, provided that you've actually went through the process of adding your show as a podcast to YouTube. It's a lot of steps, but if you do those first couple things and then continue to add your show to that podcast playlist, that will help YouTube understand that hey, this is a podcast, they're uploading it regularly and if somebody is listening to your show on YouTube, then they'll be automatically recommended other shows within that playlist as well.
Alex Sanfilippo:Well, so. I was shocked how easy it was. By the way, I created like a playlist for my podcast. I was I thought it was me like a lot more involved and I did it and I'm like it was less than five minutes. I was like, okay, so what's the next step? And I'm like, oh, now it just says wait 24 hours or so, whatever.
Blythe Brumleve:Right.
Alex Sanfilippo:And sure enough, it was there. So, literally the steps that you're talking about. Neither like that's all you have to do. So, yeah, I have a podcast on YouTube right now.
Badr Milligan:So yeah, well said. And to go back to Blythe's point about video being such a heavy topic, it felt like every other presentation or a panel was about video and I think we could eat. I think I could easily sum it up to just do video if you can. You know, like there is no harm. And if you have the capabilities to record your podcast with video, do so because it you don't have. If you don't want to use the video, you don't have to. If you don't want to go into learning video editing and things like that, you don't have to. But then you can still rip the audio. Right. If you want to be one of those podcasts as strictly audio only, you know you've got that option.
Badr Milligan:But why not record video and have? You know, start out small. You know, just cut social clips Maybe you don't want to edit an hour show Just focus on editing 30 seconds of that video and finding the best parts and use that for social and eventually maybe level up to where you're dropping a whole episode. I know for me personally, I'll use the recorded, like you know. I know for us we'll just throw this file up on YouTube. But for me I do the same thing on my show, but I advertise as hey, here's the uncut version if you want. You know the time stamps and you know everything else. Check out the audio version. So I felt like you know, video was definitely a big talking point at the conference but it all kind of landed at. You know, if you can do video, do it. But you know you could still grow your podcast as audio.
Badr Milligan:Only, I got a few just like quick strike pieces of advice and one of them kind of goes back to our focusing on, like your core listeners, and you can do so or you can get a better idea of what that number might look like. I know, you know, unfortunately you can't really hone in on like a name and who that person is, unless you know they're sending emails and whatnot. But there was one of these panels brought up the topic of completion rate. You know, and instead of focusing on downloads, you know, yeah, you might have a thousand, two thousand downloads, but how many of those are seeing the episode all the way through? You know, if you drop an hour and you know a majority of your listeners are dropping off at that 10 minute mark, I think that is an indication of content quality.
Badr Milligan:So, yeah, you might be getting 2000 downloads but everyone's dropping off at 10 minutes. You know what is that really? What is that? What does that download number really mean to the quality and growing your show in a meaningful way? So I know with the Apple dashboard you can actually view your completion rate and I think that information might go along, might go a long way in actually helping you devise strategies and make changes to your show to improve it. You know, like I think shifting your focus from just download numbers to can I get someone to complete a whole show, like what can I do to like make it lean or even better, and focusing on that completion rate I thought was a cool shift in these new talk and downloads.
Blythe Brumleve:And real quick. Just to piggyback off of that one, because there was another talk that mentioned you should be opening up each show with what the listener is going to learn from this episode so that you can help your completion rates. You can help those listeners as soon as they click on the episode. It was because, from a listener standpoint, you're looking at the title, you're maybe looking at the description, but you're clicking on that title, you're hitting play and you want to know that that episode is going to match up with what the title says. And so if they're falling off after 30 seconds or even a minute, or if it's taking you a while to get to the meat of the show, try an intro that specifically, is sort of like a high level overview of what that listener is going to learn from the episode and then get into the meat of the actual show. So that was one thing that I learned from another talk that may help with that completion rate.
Badr Milligan:Well said, yeah, I've got a note here Go to Alex.
Alex Sanfilippo:I don't know if it was my talk or referencing or if somebody else did it, but that was one of the main points that we covered in our talk. If I can, would you all be okay with me doing a screen share real quick? I'll just show you how to get this real quick on Apple and Spotify Presents Screen share. Give me a second here. I like reading what I'm thinking out loud. Sorry, everybody.
Blythe Brumleve:No worries, we're all learning on the go here with this platform.
Alex Sanfilippo:Right.
Badr Milligan:While you're doing that, I'm going to piggyback off what Blythe mentioned, because, blythe, I think your piece of advice about stating what the folks are going to hear in your episode was during the artist storytelling panel and yeah, it was like at the beginning here's what you're going to get, here's what you'll learn in this episode and then, doubling down, here's what she got out of it. So, in recap, here's what we're leaving with. So that way, you're kind of once again spotlighting the value, the lesson learned, your whole goal of that episode once at the beginning and reinforcing it at the end. So there's no doubt in the listener's mind like, oh, this is what, like kind of building that subconscious value. Alex, I talked to you. Looks like we got the screen share going.
Alex Sanfilippo:Cool. So this is just where you can get this data of seeing who's actually completing your episode Hosting provider dashboard. It's a bust route for me. I go to see which of the pod like which my top player app is. For me, it happens to be Apple, so I wouldn't log into Spotify. Log into Apple, because you're going to be about the same data, right, you can navigate to the analytics page on both of them and you're either going to look for average consumption or completion rate. They both call it something different at Kimber, which is which right now, this is the percentage that will tell you how far along people are making it in your podcast episode. Super, I think. It's to me this, along with who's listening the first seven days, those are the two most important things to actually be, to actually be looking at.
Blythe Brumleve:Well said, and then what stuff like that that helps you know, as a podcaster, what is resonating with your audience, so do more of it. Find a thousand ways to say the same thing is what they. You know a lot of marketers will say so. If you're looking at that data and your listeners are telling you with their attention and with their ears of what they like and what they don't like, listen to them and do more of what they like.
Badr Milligan:And a little tip and trick from my point of view when it comes to trying to, because, like I said, you can't really identify who is that die hard listener unless they're engaging with your show, whether it be, you know, leaving comments or leaving voice messages, whatever it may be.
Badr Milligan:What I like to do is leave towards the end of my show, towards the second half. That's when I'll do the giveaways, if we do any giveaways, or if I'm, like you know, asking for a call and response, I'll leave that towards the end. So I can you know. So that way I, who is listening, like who's submitting that information based at prompt, you know that's who you want to kind of focus on, whether that be shouting them out by name on the show or, you know, making a post, whatever it may be. I think that kind of ties in here to the whole completion rate, having people stay until the end and helping you identify like that core, that core community. I've got I got one or I got two more little quick strike, actionable pieces of advice. This one was kind of like a light bulb moment for me, but like we were in that sales track conference and the, the, the presenter, who I can't recall his name at the moment but hold on Donald C Kelly.
Badr Milligan:Donald C Kelly who's?
Blythe Brumleve:also a friend.
Alex Sanfilippo:He's awesome, I like that a lot.
Blythe Brumleve:Yeah, he was great.
Badr Milligan:Oh, he was stupendous, I won't lie, life had kind of dragged me to that one. I was like what are we doing here in a salesman? But man, the dude was like his presentation was exactly what I wanted, like someone that was going to get into nitty gritty and he was showing us like emails, like the physical emails he was sending to potential guests and showing you like the success and failure of people like you know, kind of like you know, just not responding or brushing them off. But he showed his tactics of like you know, I reached out to this guy he didn't want to do a show at the moment but that initial like email, like getting his email in a response, you know that tactic of like being whitelisted by his email. Now he's kind of like he could circle back later, but the big takeaway I got was that after that initial you know those, those first, that first email of saying hey, I'm a big fan of your work.
Badr Milligan:I think in this case, like an author, I'm a big fan of your work, I would love to have you on the podcast. He gets a response either yes or no, but regardless he follows up with a video like he records a quick little 30 seconds, 60 second video that he puts into the email to let them know that, hey, I'm not a robot, I'm a real guy. Like I'm talking, you know what I'm saying and you get a little bit of your character and your person. It's a personal touch to asking someone for a, for an interview that maybe might be outside of your range or they're just busy. I thought that was a really interesting way to engage someone and show them your personality ahead of time. You know, rather, because we're so used to getting so many emails and how easy is it to just close out an email or ignore it, but I think having a video and letting someone get to see your personality in a digital way is I thought that was a really cool tactic that I might use myself.
Blythe Brumleve:And I will say too he mentioned something else about. So you're more talking about trying to get like the good guess on the flip side. He also mentioned Donald. T Kelly mentioned that if someone reaches out and says that they like your show, ask them why or for their favorite episode, and then give them a shout out on the new episode and send it to them, that creates those evangelists that that we kind of, you know, hinted at earlier. So that was two really good points that that came from Donald during that talk.
Badr Milligan:Yeah, well said. And last but not least I've got here is I sat in on a talk title how to edit a show together, using formats and segues to make your podcast better, and it was run by a what I would consider like a master level kind of editor. He's editing multiple shows. He knows that his software inside and out. But he made a point to say that ads are disruptions, regardless of their host, read, ad or dynamic. They're disruptions to the main show because it's not the main show, it's not what listeners are going there for. But that's not to say that you can't make an ad interesting or worthy of sitting through and you know avoiding having your listeners, you know either stop the show all the way through or skipping it. And the two main takeaways I got from this was one an ad doesn't always have to be for another company, another service, whatever it may be. You could be using an ad strategically for yourself. If you have a network, if you have another podcast, if you have a product, you know you can make an ad for yourself to. You know, promote yourself. And in my case, you know I have a Patreon, so you know, and our main podcast feed is free, so why not create a little 3045 second ad promoting our Patreon, which fits into the main theme, right? Like, it's still the same show. We're just asking you to come, you know, support the show or get extra bonus stuff. So that was a cool. I thought that was a good reinforcement of like, how to use an ad to your benefit to promote what you got going on.
Badr Milligan:And then for all of our you know editors out there, folks that are editing your own show, he had showed an example of an ad that he put into a show and the setup was awesome. It wasn't just a, you know, insertion, it was, you know. A host read hey, you know, get three months of a bus route for free. You know, blah, blah, blah. They set it up. This ad set it up. It had a nice little music bed and the host had asked a trivia question. He was like hey, everyone, really quick, here's our trivia question for the month of, for the month of August what's the largest attended college in the US? We'll be right back with that answer right after this. And then it was the a quick little ad read. And then, right at the end of it, all right, and we're back in. That trivia question was et cetera, et cetera. So it gives your listeners an incentive to stay throughout the whole ad because they're not really sure how long that ad read was. You know what I'm saying? It's like a fun way of creating an ad and making you know your listeners kind of stick through it.
Badr Milligan:I thought it was a really good piece of advice for anyone that edits their own show or is trying to. You know, include ads and, you know, spruce that up from a production standpoint. All right, let's go ahead and turn turn the corner here, and I want to hear specifically what questions or new topics did you leave with wanting to explore more? Was there anything that you were introduced to at the conference that that was new to you, or an introduction to you in some capacity that you're like okay, I'm going to explore that more. I don't have enough information. Let me go and do my own research. Are there any topics that come to mind? Alex?
Alex Sanfilippo:Um, let me think here. Okay, I could look, if you're okay with me looking. I write everything down because it doesn't always sit up here. Claim to have a steel trap.
Blythe Brumleve:I am not one of my notes was on fire the entire week, so I'm basically talking mind Apple notes into a doc, and that's what I'm going off of cool, I did not have that in front of me.
Alex Sanfilippo:I'm like thinking, I'm like, oh, I know, no, I don't have to look it up. I'm here.
Blythe Brumleve:I can what Alex, you're looking that up. I'll go ahead and and take this one. I would say what questions I had. So there were a lot.
Blythe Brumleve:This is a bigger conference for bigger podcast, and so for a lot of companies that were there, they were focused on programmatic ads, and for me, I I just I'm a smaller show and I'm okay with being a smaller show because I know I have a niche audience that I can monetize in a different way versus programmatic ads. So there's traditional ads that you can read yourself and edit them into your show, and then there's programmatic ads that do it automatically. Buzz sprout has a feature that that is very similar to just, you know, picking the ads that that best fit your show and adding them in. So that's a version of like programmatic ads. And so the big question that I had is when does it make sense for an independent sort of smaller podcaster to start using these programmatic ads? Because sometimes I think it could also be a deterrent that you're doing all of this work. And then you think, great, I'm gonna be able to add advertisements to my show now and make money off of this. But realistically, your listenership is too low to take advantage of what you know a top 100 show is going to be able to. That's really gonna benefit the top 100 show having these programmatic ads.
Blythe Brumleve:But for a smaller podcast I was trying to think of when it was going to make sense for them to join. I just don't think the tech is there yet from the big main stage I, and I also don't think the advertisers are the some of the smaller, maybe local establishments that would make more sense. So I would almost like Challenge some of the the smaller independent creators to think outside the box and find those, find advertisers that are advertising on shows that are similar to yours and then seeing if you can develop a relationship with them, connect with them on social media. You know, try to maybe. I mean, if they're already spending money on other shows, chances are you know they're willing to spend money on, you know, more shows as well and so, keeping that in mind of having almost like a hit list of who you want to target, that would make sense for your audience, your content and that particular advertiser. That's where the game kind of changed for me is thinking of who is my audience and then the kind of content I create, in sort of that Venn diagram of what sponsors would make sense To reach that same audience in the content style that I have. So what companies kind of fit that mold?
Blythe Brumleve:I think is questions that I was leaving with, because a lot of these bigger shows they're having those problems solved automatically through these different AI and programmatic integrations.
Blythe Brumleve:But I think smaller shows would benefit more from developing Relationships not only with their guests and with their audience but with potential sponsors down the line.
Blythe Brumleve:They may not advertise with you right away, but if you have that audience that they're trying to reach, there's a higher likelihood that they will advertise with you and sponsor you in the future.
Blythe Brumleve:So you could have an opportunity to make Few hundred bucks a month off of a sponsorship and then you get a few of those sponsorships and you're looking pretty good.
Blythe Brumleve:And so I think having that mindset versus the small amount of revenue You're going to make with programmatic which is, you know, it's kind of sense on the dollar or small dollar amounts, think about it from the lens of who can I create a relationship with guest wise, listenership wise and also sponsor wise, I think was one of the bigger takeaways, especially from that Donald C Kelly talk, because he was giving real examples of Not just from the guest perspective, of getting those good guests, but also from a sponsorship perspective of developing the relationships in the same exact way. He says I think it's quote and I'm paraphrasing it a little bit he says you don't wing it with when it comes to your shows, so don't wing it when it comes to your sales and Sponsorship for that show as well. You want to make sure that you're planning these things and thinking about it in advance, of what makes the most sense for you and your audience in your show.
Badr Milligan:Yeah, I believe he said don't practice your pitch with your clients. You know, in the moment, I think you know building those, building those Relationships first, and you know practicing. You know that behind the scenes don't approach your client and, like you know, that's your practice pitch. I think what is what he was getting at. And, and to blives point, I felt that a my gray area that I felt that I came with like, okay, I really kind of need to learn this a little more, was I felt there was a lot of vendors there that dabbled and add insertion, which is called program, programmatic ads. Even at that, that it was like the state of podcast advertisement. A lot of the phrases they were using, the charts they were showing, went way over my head.
Badr Milligan:And so I leave this conference, or I left this conference Thinking that, okay, I need to get a little stronger and a little more knowledgeable on how ads are being done at this corporate level. You know, like what? What are these phrases exactly mean? How are they done? I think by one point, I think after the second day we were like who? I've never heard of some of these companies, but they clearly dabbling AI and ads. That seems to be like a big draw for these for that conference in particular. Alex, I'll take it to you, man Were there any gray areas? Did you leave any questions, or you know Topics that you want to research more?
Alex Sanfilippo:Yeah, there was something that. So I do dive into this in pod score For anyone who's here, pod scoreio it's just a personality quiz for podcast or sessions. I just it does a lot more than that, but that's where it kind of starts you off. But I do dive into this on that specifically. But one of the speakers said something that really stuck out to me, said if no one's sharing your show, is it a good show? I was like I was like interesting, and there might be some like outliers where it wouldn't be a show that you necessarily Want to share, like if it's something about trauma or anything like that. Right, thanks for that. Appreciate whoever. I don't know what you shared that, but thank you, um anyway. So I was like man, that's an interesting point and I was realizing, like I started thinking of the way that we share shows and so I wanted like I think this would be really valuable for everybody.
Alex Sanfilippo:If you use Spotify, you share a Spotify link. If you use Apple, you share an Apple link. The problem with that is if you're sending that to somebody who doesn't have either those apps or one of the other ones, they don't have anywhere to go like. I tested with a friend, if I click an Apple Podcast link on an Android device, it literally goes nowhere and you can't see any information. On an older device, you don't even actually know what was sent, it's just blank. So it's like man, that's not an efficient way to share. And there were some companies that were saying, use this and you can Just share our link, because people should be listening on our playing app, right, and I started thinking, like, from what the speaker said to all those other things, are we actually focusing on shareability? Like is there an easy way to share it in a way that the masses can actually Find it accessible? And so for me, like that's something I know I want to dive into even more, because I want anyone who gets the length and I'd be like, oh sorry, I can't click that link, and then they're just gone, right, I want anyone who clicks it be like yep, this is what I'm looking for. I started using pod kite to do that. Paying customer, once again, not affiliated, but pod kite. I think it's calm, um, and they give you like a pod link where you it can automatically when it remembers If somebody's clicked one of those links before, what their player app of choice is, but also it gives you all the options. So it's like you're sending it to somebody and and it's not just going strictly to Apple or strictly to Spotify or Amazon or any of those things, it's going anywhere. And I think that we need to make our shows more shareable, and something I actually did after that as well.
Alex Sanfilippo:On my blog post, I added a qr code, because people are going to find the blog on a computer, but they're probably not going to listen to the podcast on the computer. So I had a qr code that you can literally scan with your phone. It'll pull up my kite link where you can then pick your player of choice and find it really quick, because I can't tell you how many times I've wanted to listen to a podcast when I work out. So I'm like reading, I'm like reading off a screen, I'm like, okay, this, this, and like looking it up. If they had a qr code, it'd be like scan, done them out, right. So, um, that was something I took away. That I thought was that I want to dive into even more, because I think there's really something there. Can we get our content shared more and make it easy?
Blythe Brumleve:I I have a quick plug for the jpu directory in in that regard, because if you have your podcast listed in the jpu directory, it plays on a mobile, any mobile device. So you have a custom link directly to your episode and you can hit play on a desktop, which my audience logistics audience, so they sit at a desktop all day. So, surprisingly, web browser is my number two, uh podcast listening a source, so it's apple and then it's the web browser, and then Spotify and then google Android devices. But if you share your link from your show on that particular episode, somebody can hit play on a mobile browser and, kind of, you know, put their phone in their pocket, do a quick workout and they'll be able to listen to it in the background. Um, so that's another little, just a perk of being part of the jpu free directory.
Alex Sanfilippo:Uh, so I dropped the links in the chat.
Blythe Brumleve:Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned that beautiful, there we go, thank you.
Badr Milligan:Um, alex, you know, man, you mentioning a pod kite, I think that was kind of my overall big kind of takeaway was the Personally, my lack of knowledge of these different tools, and I think it comes from being, you know, a 10 year plus podcaster.
Badr Milligan:Who, who has built a process and I'm kind of a curmudgeon when it comes to changing it, you know, or incorporating anything new, the, and I and I say, like you know, we were at this conference like, who are these people? Not as a gloating, but more of an indication of like, my lack of like knowledge and the fact that being there exposed me to Okay, these are the players in in this space, these are folks making software built for this. So I'll say this to anyone that is an old crusty podcaster that the, that the industry and the uh, the tools available. Like you know, you mentioned I've never heard a pod kite, but that sounds awesome and it's, you know, something that I could probably leverage. So what I would probably say is, if you're old crusty podcaster, you know, do your homework, see what's out there, especially when it comes to software, that might make your process and workflow a lot easier.
Alex Sanfilippo:Man guy. First off, old crusty podcaster is great. That really caught me off guard. I laughed. I wasn't muted, I wasn't expecting that.
Alex Sanfilippo:Um, I want to say this I'm not an early adopter, nor do I really tell anyone they should be. I think that is for like, if you have a tech podcast, and yes, you need to be an early adopter. For me, just basic rule of thumb. I have a list of things that I would like to see improved in my podcasting process and if I can find a software that does that, I will be a quote-unquote early adopter for it because I'm looking for that. If I'm not looking for it, I don't want to try it. And a basic rule of thumb with social media, I I always say this with social media. People always get maddened for saying this, but I won't try any new form of social media for two years. If it's still around in two years, I'll use it, because chances are it's not gonna be there. I don't know if threads will be here in two years, but it's already lost, like the mass majority of its, of its 80%, 80%, okay.
Alex Sanfilippo:And the first week came out. I had people emailing me telling me it's a shame I'm not on there and they thought I was a better creator than that. I just didn't want to waste my time and so like, yeah, if you're an old, crusty podcast where everything's working and you have no list of things that you want to improve, maybe don't. But hey, if you're not using a tool like let's just, let's just say like using modern hosting, like if you're still on something like SoundCloud instead of Buzzsprout, like, trust me, your life is going to be changed and made better. But don't just be the guy who's gonna go try every tool and I Know that's not what you were saying there, but I just think it's important to say don't just go test all of them, because you're gonna waste all of your time.
Blythe Brumleve:And it's very overwhelming yeah, very overwhelming to try all of these, especially with AI. Over the last eight months, I have really been overwhelmed with trying out all of these new tools, figuring out where they fit in my process, and I maybe have one or two tools that I've added to the mix, and that's it. I've tried dozens of these AI tools and it was, honestly, it was just more stress on myself and it was very overwhelming at times to be able to figure out how this is going to work, figure out your processes first and then figure out where software plays a role. So it's so great point, alex.
Badr Milligan:Yeah, alex, that was a good caveat. You're right, it's. You know, focus. You know have a reason for trying out some new software Because the blitz point, time-consuming and it could be expensive too. A lot of these will give you know, like a free week trial, and next thing you know you're paying it, like for the annual. You're like whoa whoa buddy, whoa, whoa whoa.
Badr Milligan:But you know, alex, you mentioned that this social media, so I think that you said reminds me of maybe one of the best takeaways I got for one of your, your pod pros of virtual events, and I think you had said it where you, I think you were saying something Effective like I don't like using TikTok, so I'm not on it, so I don't burn my time trying to learn. You know, a new platform. I'm sticking to what I know best and you know, if something catches my and I like your rule of like, if here in two years I'll give it a shot. But I think as a Podcaster, you're thinking of, like ways to get in front of your show and you think of social media and I think that is you can easily fall into that trap of like. I've got it. You know be on every single platform I've got to share my show across everywhere and you will get burnt out really quick. You either get burnt out or you'll get, you know, discouraged really quick because you know it might not hit on this platform and you're trying to figure out why. Is it doing really well on Instagram but terrible on TikTok, you know, and I think, having a plan of like, I'm going to focus.
Badr Milligan:Matter of fact, it brings me to one of the notes I've got here, which is I Forgot who said this, but someone advised at the conference a three month test and try. Try a new platform or format or or content type for three months and see if like, see the results, you know. Test out posting your video podcast natively directly to Facebook or YouTube and see how that does. You know, give it three months, a fair shot and then move forward so you can at least say I tried it. Here's a work I can move on to. You know I could shift that over to something else that might work, so good stuff. Okay, we are at what an hour, and I think we're getting close to it's a wrap-up time, so I'm going to give everyone the both of you an opportunity to share any parting words, major takeaways, lessons learned that we haven't covered already. Any last remarks concerning podcast moving, anything you learned or you want the the listeners to to take away life. You want to take that.
Blythe Brumleve:Uh, real quick. I just wanted to share I guess this is kind of this kind of counts as like a takeaway but all of the Jacksonville podcasters that made it out to Denver, I thought that this was it. We're actually missing two Jacksonville people that were also at the conference that were not in this photo. So you have about a dozen podcasters from Jackson, from Duval, that made it all the way out to Denver and I I, anecdotally, I, you know I didn't really, I guess you know get a get a pulse of the crowd, but there were, I want to say, the Jacksonville really represented, and we might have had the most podcasters there Out of any other city in the entire country. So really like kudos to all of the JPU members, the people who are part of the Jacksonville podcasting community.
Blythe Brumleve:Thank you for showing out and you could kind of see I don't know if we'll have time to Play Pablo's takeaways and clips, but maybe we can put it at the end of this episode. It's about four minutes long, so, butter you, let me know if you want me to play that, but I just thought that that was just such a cool thing and it was almost like we had to go to Denver to realize how strong the podcasting community is in Jacksonville, and I thought that it was such a beautiful thing. So we were able to get you know this group shot with everybody from you know, obviously, bus sprout. We got the biz bros in there. Obviously, we had the pod match crew in there Pablo myself, rita with Vivian Bobbitt Business podcast, and then Potter, of course too, so I thought that that was a really, really cool thing For all of us to experience thing you took the words right up my mouth.
Badr Milligan:Yeah.
Alex Sanfilippo:I don't have that picture.
Badr Milligan:I need that one I got yeah, we, at my point, we went to podcast movement looking for outside, you know, help or whoever it may be to take this to the next level. And then it was just a reminder of, like man, we've got so much talent. So you know, like so much talent that wasn't even there, but the folks that you know are on this picture. It's like man, everyone's doing great things. We got software represented. We've got, you know, folks that are doing this full time and that that are offering services.
Badr Milligan:It was, yeah, I can get teary-eyed talking about how proud I was of like the jacks representation there, but I think in the larger scheme of things, it really comes down like my big takeaway Was just building on the community that I already have, you know, here in town. You know, whether it be the jacks podcast or my listeners, like those die-hard listeners that are on you know better on Patreon, like how can I really continue to give them value, make them my show? You know, like, give them value so that way the show grows word of mouth through their relationships and you know them being, you know, the loudest, you know, supporters. So I think, at the end of the day, like community, just whether it be your own backyard. There's your friends. I think we're just enough that you know Jacksonville has got some pretty bad ass, yeah. Podcast representation be proud.
Badr Milligan:Oh yeah, right, you, alex, in your part in words, in the last remarks.
Alex Sanfilippo:Yeah, it's just gonna reinforce what both of you are saying, though I'll use a quote with unity comes victory. Here's the thing about these big conferences no one who leaves their stops, their podcast the next day, like it just doesn't happen. If they don't go, that might they can have any point, but they're probably going to stick with it now. They feel like they're part of something, they're unified with other podcasters and I think that happened great in Denver, but it happens even better in Jacksonville. So my encouragement is, if you're checking this out, you've not been to one of the JPU meetups or you need to get involved more to just keep that motivation going. Remember when, with unity comes victory, get there, be there, meet us. The three of us are there to hang out and chat with you. I personally love to have a conversation with you. That's what I would suggest and that was kind of like the big overarching thing, if you will.
Badr Milligan:Well said, beautiful, beautiful, and I'll go in. We've already did one shameless plug. Might as well do one other one. We're kind of bearing the lead an hour. You know what I'm saying. This is like we'll see who shows up, or here's this part of it. You know what is our completion rate? We'll know from this we are doing. We are bringing back the in-person meetups. We've got one plan for September 21st. That is a Thursday. We'll do it in the evening. We've got a really badass venue set up. If you've ever been to, 1937 is 37, 32 1937 1937 in San Marco Beautiful restaurant bar they are.
Badr Milligan:They're hooking us up big time. You won't want to miss it. So if you're a local, or even if you're not a local, that was, I think, the other thing I got away from. It was not just Jacksonville being like a, you know, epicenter of a podcast talent, but really it was like Florida in general. You know A Donald, you know, I think he's in West Palm. I got to meet Steven Robles From Riverside FM. He's in Tampa. You know what I'm saying. It's like Florida. I don't know man, we just love talking. You know we love talking here in Florida. So if you're someone watching and you're here in Jack's or just in the Florida area, you don't mind driving to Jacksonville for this meetup. It'll be a good time. I'm excited to to bring back the in-person meetups. I know a lot of you from the JPU group Are also pre-demi us, it's happening I.
Badr Milligan:Love it, though, because you guys kept us honest, and you know, All right, fantastic, alex man. Thank you so much for hopping on for this little virtual hermitian party. Alex, you got any shameless plugs you I want to toss come on. Well, we're wrapping up towards the end game, was you're?
Alex Sanfilippo:in there. Pod score is really what I'm very focused on right now. I see that being a big, a big help in the industry, and it's not only mine. Sure, I might be the the person who initially created it, but there's technically 39 partners in it, so it belongs to 39 different groups of companies and people that are in this just to serve podcasters. I think that people get a lot out of that. That's my only plug. There's nothing. There's nothing there that you will, will pay for let's put it that way unless, of course, you're going to sign up with a service. Can't help you with that. Really Give. I think there are discounts included, actually, but but yeah, all in all, it's just gonna. I think it really helped podcasters. This is my big thing. This is, like I think, the thing that I'll I'll be able to be part of that will leave a legacy in podcasting. So it's what I'm most excited about love it.
Badr Milligan:Love to hear that awesome life. Any shameless plugs. Last last words.
Blythe Brumleve:Shameless plug. Visit the JPU website. We have added new features to the site, including a new Partners and vendors page. So you, if you offer services similar to Alex, if you offer services within the podcasting sector, we want to show you off. So be sure that you submit your information. There's a contact form right on the site. We can get you added for free. There's also a directory. We kind of spoke about it earlier. There's lots of benefits to the directory. All of those downloads that come from the website count to your feed, count to your Podcasts. So make sure that you are signed up under the directory. It just takes five minutes of work and then you can reap the benefits of that.
Blythe Brumleve:We have a lot more Planned, as far as you know additional shows. We have the new YouTube channel, of course, as well. We're not able to actually live stream on YouTube yet. We have 24 hour waiting period, but that's because we are so new. So we will be putting this show up on YouTube if you want to rewatch it and share it with your friends. But otherwise, just make sure that you're on the the JPU email newsletter so you can stay up to date, because we will. We've been collecting your emails, we just haven't done a very good job of communicating with you guys outside of social media. So all of that will be changing because we are very, very energized, especially after seeing all of the podcasters from Jacksonville over in Denver. So we want to continue to facilitate that community that we've been building over the last five years.
Badr Milligan:JPU 2.0, starting right now is what we're saying. All right, I've got no shame with plugs. Jpu might as well subscribe to the YouTube channel, because this is where all of our virtual events are going to be hosted. Besides that, hopefully you listeners at home got something valuable, maybe an actual piece of advice, out of this conversation. If so, I want to hear you know what are you implementing? All right, what, what new tactic, strategy, etc. That you're going to implement based on what we shared, and hopefully we'll catch you at the next JPU in person event September 21st Thursday. I'm having event bright page here up by the end of this week, but besides that, I hope all of you yeah, especially you folks here in Florida safe, dry and all of that All right virtual hurricane party comes to an end. Thank you guys, so much Peace.
Blythe Brumleve:Hey, this is Blythe here with the JPU and I just wanted to drop in and say that don't go anywhere just yet. We have that video that we talked about during the broadcast of Pablo Gonzalez. We mentioned him several times during the show. He is the co-founder and podcast co-host of category thinkers and also be the stage. We met up with him a lot during podcast movement and chatted with him a ton. He's also from Jacksonville and one of the leaders in podcasting, so we wanted to make sure to include this video that he recorded for us with his takeaways from podcast movement, so we will play this now.
Pablo Gonzalez:What's up? Jpu jacks podcasters unite. My name is public Gonzalez and I was there in Denver, hung hanging out with a batter and Blithe and Alex, san Felipe and the biz bros and Rita and a bunch of other people all buzz prop folks. And you know that's my first observation is we were really really well represented there. There is definitely, I think it was, like six or seven speakers from Jacksonville that spoke at this conference. So you know the I think what what JPU represents is a really really valuable nucleus of an ecosystem inside a growing industry that is really exciting to be a part of.
Pablo Gonzalez:And, furthermore, I Don't really, when I go to conferences, I don't really Go to a lot of like Presentations or content. I'm there for the people, right. So I do what's called like the hallway conference thing. I'm always networking Because I think that when you do that, you know you find out about what were the good presentations and then you can go either connect with that person or see it on YouTube later. It's just more efficient use of my time and you don't get the opportunity to connect with people.
Pablo Gonzalez:But what I saw Reminded me of my early career in the construction industry. I got into the green building space really early and when I first started going to those conferences, there's a lot of like Birkenstocks and alpaca sweaters and five years later it was a bunch of suits right. It got corporatized there. People found the revenue and and Value proposition of what was happening there and that reminds me a lot of what I just saw in Denver right now. Right like the first podcast movement I want to was August 2019, and from then till now, that first one that I want to Felt like a lot of hobbyists. It felt like people that are really, really passionate and it was a really cool vibe. I didn't meet a lot of people in there that were making money off of it or, you know, had businesses built around this thing. This time around I did right whether it was all the different software Providers. I mean that has blown up the amount of software providers that are now Tailoring to the podcaster and the podcast industry based on these growing trends. The big brands that were exhibiting there, like Disney and I heart radio and Spotify and Apple and Google and you know all these different people their presence has very much expanded from then till now and the amount of business owners that were there looking for a use case for podcasts within their business Greatly, greatly increased. I got into like zero of those conversations into 2019. I got into a ton of those conversations this time around and what that tells me is that there's like a real hope for those of us that are already in this space.
Pablo Gonzalez:I had this conversation with batter around this idea that you know he is an og and podcasting and it's about comic books and I think that you know that's gonna do well for him because he's been there for a long time. But even now in his job, at when he works, there's an opportunity to launch a podcast right. The content, to create story out of it, strategize around it, and then the technical aspects the microphone, the audio, the video, a hardware and software stuff is all becoming much more valuable. So, whether your podcast right now is the thing that's gonna grow a massive audience and lead to you know you becoming a full-time creator or not, your skill set as a creator is gonna be much more in demand by these companies, specifically in the podcast space that are gonna need Creators to validate this stuff, the software brands that are doing this stuff they all need content creators and the job of a content creator is gonna be is gonna be expanded, so you may not be able to make a living Talking about the thing that you want to talk about, but doing the thing that you like doing as a podcaster.
Pablo Gonzalez:I believe is is here and it's gonna continue to grow. So Keep getting your reps, keep trying to grow your audience and get those insights and get the things that you know Understand what you're good at in this space. So I think there's gonna be very employable opportunities that may lead to a career that you're gonna enjoy much more. That's my take.
Blythe Brumleve:I Hope you enjoyed this episode of everything is logistics, a podcast for the thinkers in freight, telling the stories behind how your favorite stuff and people get from point A to B. Subscribe to the show, sign up for our newsletter and follow our socials over at everything is logistics calm. And in addition to the podcast, I also wanted to let y'all know about another company I operate and that's digital dispatch, where we help you build a better website. Now, a lot of the times, we hand this task of building a new website or refreshing a current one off to a co-worker's child, a Neighbor down the street or stranger around the world, where you probably spend more time explaining the freight industry. Then it takes to actually build the dang website.
Blythe Brumleve:Well, that doesn't happen at digital dispatch. We've been building online since 2009, but we're also early adopters of AI, automation and other website tactics that help your company to be a central place to pull in all of your social media posts, recruit new employees and give potential customers a glimpse into how you operate your business. Our new website builds start as low as $1500, along with ongoing website management, maintenance and updates starting at $90 a month, plus some bonus, freight marketing and sales content Similar to what you hear on the podcast. You can watch a quick explainer video over on digital dispatch I. Oh, just check out the pricing page once you arrive and you can see how we can build your digital ecosystem on a strong foundation. Until then, I hope you enjoyed this episode. I'll see you all real soon and go Jags.
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