Perfecting Your Podcast Show Notes – PCI 321

0:10 Hey, very welcome to Podcast Insider. My name is Todd Cochran. First I'm joined by Micah Hos, Mr. Mike Dell. Mike, how you doing? Pretty good Up here in snowy northern Michigan. We got dumped down. We got snow here too, and I went, had my snow shoes put on my, uh, car today, . So I've got my all weather snow tires on, so I'm ready for weather, whatever Mother Nature throws us. And if you're somewhere warm, well think about us up here because, uh, it looks like winter is, I feel it's like it's coming early. I don't know about you, Mike, but. It just feels, yeah, it seems a little early. And I, uh, I got a new snowblower this year and I thought that would stave off the snow for a while. But. , you know, well, maybe, maybe you jinx us. Hey, we've got some, some news. News is kinda light right now. It's, uh, been that way for the past couple weeks and I think everyone's just got their head down. And maybe, maybe the economy's got a little bit to do with it.

1:02 That's okay. We got a best practice. We got some news from the company. We have a pro tip, and of course, the question of the week, Right off the bat, some shows aka some shows in app or being tagged. And, uh, what they're doing appears is they're doing a, they're creating, we've known Apple's been doing this for a while. They've been creating a, uh, a transcript of the shows. Now we don't get access to that. No one does, but it looks like they're analyzing, and I'm sure someone's gonna say ai, but some computer has been analyzing that and they're starting to tag pod podcast episodes by topics and interesting.

1:45 They're linking back the stuff in Wikipedia, which I don't understand why they're doing that, but. Well, I guess it's as good a place as any . I mean, yeah, it is interesting that it's only some James over at Pod News made some, made a tool where you can see if your show was tagged or not. And, uh. Yeah, every, every, every show I've looked at hasn't. Yeah, I haven't found any either. Haven't found any. So it's probably the top shows they're doing this with. But yeah, it, it does show you that what you say in your podcasts, really going forward is gonna have an effect. And if you think about how you do your content and how you break it up, and if you are not basically kinda stating subject changes within your content, then there is probably the potential that you can help the, the machine learning, right? When this takes effect for your show by saying, okay, we've got some news, talk about news, we've got some best practice like here, we kind of break things up.

2:43 So hopefully the machine learner learning engine will, will be a little bit smarter. And of course they're gonna. It's quite likely that other outfits are doing this as well. I suspect Spotify and, uh, probably Google and, you know, who knows. But, uh, you know, it's just so that they can search within the audio. Yeah. We know that Google's been doing it and Spotify's doing it more for what they term brand safety, but I think it's more for advertised targeting. But anyway, we'll see what Apple develops with this. They haven't said anything publicly bought it, but right there it goes. But Alex Bloomberg has left Spotify slash Gilet Media. Well, you knew that was gonna happen because. Yeah.

3:24 He's done his time over there. You know, it's one of those acquisition deals where you will work for the next couple of years and yeah, he's done his time and he is out Probably's got his money and run. Yeah, well, they, uh, they got paid 230 million for it between him and his investors, so I'm sure he made out pretty well, I would hope. Yeah, I would, I'd hope. So. This is a, a, a tweet from, uh, Ben Mullen who, I don't know who that is, but, uh, it's been reported a little bit, but I haven't found a, a actual story about it. Just, uh, just the tweet there, so. Right. We'll see something about welcome back or something like that, I think it said. Right. Yeah. Very good. Very. Good. Well, one of our partners, one of our podcast partners, headliner, and if you are not familiar, we are integrated with Headliner, um, Ben, for, for a long, long time.

4:11 And you can go to your episode details on dashboard to be able to, uh, to integrate and push stuff over to Headliner for editing, but Headliner now allows people to upload their entire episode YouTube, so that's cool. Yeah. Now this is limited to Pro and enterprise subscribers, but I think anyone that signed up over there is Pro right? Or they have three levels? Uh, well, I think you have to do the paid one for a pro Pro, right? But, uh, yeah, any, uh, you know, the free levels get so much per per month, and then if you pay them a little bit, you get the Pro and a little bit more, you get the enterprise and they have, you know, full automation even, you know, if you want, you can have it automatically post over there, I believe. But, uh, yeah, that's part of their paid service and you know, YouTube is sort of dipping their toes into podcasting more and more, so that may or may not become important. Uh, you know, the, putting a real video over there is probably a better plan even for podcasters.

5:13 But. Yeah. You know, everyone says you need to be on YouTube, but here's the key. You know, we've looked at like the top 200 shows in every category, and there's very few shows. There are some mm-hmm. , there are very, very shoes, very few shows that have big audiences on YouTube that are complete trans transfer, right. So, while I don't deny, you probably should have something on YouTube mm-hmm. . Um, I've never listened to a podcast I couldn't watch on YouTube. What's, what's the use really? And some people say it's more about the search engine traffic. Well. Yeah, that's part of it. , I've been on YouTube for 10 plus years and see very, very little, very, very little uptake even on my video podcast. So, but I, you know, I, it's, it's really a podcast and it's, it's, it's, but it's got a video component. So again, um, I think your mileage is gonna vary. It's not gonna hurt for sure, but, uh, if you wanna try it out with Headliner, they can, they can push it over there.

6:13 Hey, apple Podcast, and a matter of fact this is going on today is hosting numerous webinars. Yep. November 17th and 18th. You, the field list sedates in webinar topics, and they got topics such as setting up subscriptions. I think that's important because we're just about the finish line with Apple delegated delivery, and we've actually got a number of podcasts that have said, yes, we're opted in, we want to opt in for the, for the beta test. Mm-hmm. . So if you, if you've thought about doing a premium podcast, this is a great, uh, event to be able to sign up for now, you may miss it because it's today and tomorrow, but, uh, we're gonna be having some instructional stuff on the website on how you can set up.

6:57 Another bunch of 'em December 1st and second. Oh, okay. So I think this is gonna be an ongoing series. Yeah. They have it again on the eighth and 9th of December. So, okay. Yeah. So there's some dates there where they can get in down the road, but, you know, something to think about on this Apple delegated delivery or Apple premium for, for those, if you've been on the Apple Podcast app, is you have the ability to either sell or put an episode out early for your paying audience and then have it released publicly. Or you can have a version of the show that goes up maybe with no ads or promotions in it, and then you can have a public side that does, or you can just publish a single episode that's a premium that only the premium customers get. Um, and they go through how to set up those subscriptions.

7:44 And again, we'll have that in our documentation when we have the, when we launch with the delegated delivery, but we're very, very close on that. Matter of fact, it's, it's essentially finished. We're, we're testing it now. Yeah. We're just, uh, poking around and seeing if we can break it yet, and Apples poking around making sure they can't break it. So. I have to last laugh out this next one, Mike. Spotify releases video podcasting in 180 countries. Well, video podcasting has been available on all platforms since the beginning of time and podcasting go back to 2004 now, no one was doing it those early, early days. Yeah. And a lot of that, but a lot of, uh, apps now, don't, don't do video, but, you know, video podcasting has been around as long as audio podcasting.

8:28 So there are number of apps, including Apple Podcasts, that you can have a true video podcast where you have your video in an RSS feed in its own separate listing on Apple Podcasts, overcast PocketCasts, I don't know, all the opposite support video. Right. Some. Of them, a number of them do and not all of them do. Yeah. A lot, lot of the podcast 2.0 apps, the new podcast apps do, but what they're calling video podcasting is really a video show on Spotify because it, it doesn't go anywhere else. No, it's not a, it's not a tie to an RSS feed. It can't be distributed. Again, it is, it's a video show on Spotify, and of course it's only through their, their hosting platform. But again, why do that when you can have broad distribution everywhere mm-hmm. , uh, by doing a video pod, a true video podcast, and I, and you know, there is value in doing that. And here's the main value. Sure.

9:25 You can put a video over on YouTube. Sure. You can put a video over on Spotify. That's fine. Facebook. We're doing here. Yeah. All right. But if you have a video podcast that's available as a podcast, it's yours still. You control it, you get the stats, you get all the data where you're not gonna get that data on Spotify, and you're gonna get the type of stats YouTube allows, which are, you know, pretty decent. But it is, it's different. It really, really is. But anyway, so I just kind of giggle about some of this stuff sometimes, and a lot of times content creators forget that podcasting is really audio video and actually, um, the enclosure types are much more broad than even that.

10:07 We don't need to even to go into it, but Sure. Yeah, you can, you can, you can even distribute eBooks and stuff, so That's. Right. , apple holiday schedules beginning on November 19th, prepare for full delays until January of 23. Right. So are they just, they're off, they're basically kind of short this next week, and then they're on for a couple weeks and then they're off for Christmas, right? Yep. That's what, uh, they've been saying now. I don't know, I think they're, uh, process for ingesting new shows is somewhat automated now, so that may not slow down. Well, you can show, you can be submitted now Yeah. And be available. You just won't show up in search until you've been approved. Right. Right.

10:48 So you can have your podcast up, you can have people subscribe to it, they can listen. They just, you may not show up in search. Right. Which is another reason. That's why it's very important to have your own website. That's why we give every one of our customers a free WordPress site that you can build your brand on and you can send people back to or out from to subscribe to your show. There is a, an article by the Verge saying, one in five Americans listen to podcast Daily. Where'd they get that from? I believe from, uh, Edison. Wow. I saw that as a headline with, uh, Edison as well. So I I'm pretty. Sure in five In five, listen, that's, that leaves a lot of improvement. Let's. Let's, yeah. But 20 20%, you know, that's pretty good considering, you know, how, how it was going on, you know, going back, that's an increase according to Edison.

11:37 Yeah. So let's, let's continue to promote podcasting and get that number to two and five. We want, we want folks to listen. Da, that's daily. That's the big difference here. Yeah. Well, there's a lot of awesome Daily news podcasts that you can listen to that. But you don't have to listen, listen to a daily news. No. You can fill your inventory with shows that are not daily. Yeah. My, my phone is full of there, so Yeah, for sure. So lots of stuff going on there, but anyway, very, very cool. One in five. All right. Best practice time. I'm gonna read this off and then we can go into, write your podcast and show notes for the genre you're producing nonfiction writing lessons from the Planet Money Podcast.

12:19 This is an article about writing your show notes. Then. Yeah, it's, uh, you know, they go into how they go about writing the show notes and, and, you know, doing the, the research, but writing nonfiction in a way that covers the subject well and works for seo. And, you know, they just give a lot of tips on what they should, you know, what you should do on yours. You know, they're, they're just talking about what they do Right. Uh, in there. So they, you know, they have a whole bunch of bullet points in here. And, uh, it was a pretty decent article, but the whole, whole idea, you know, regardless of what the article says, the whole idea is make your blog post for a, for search results, but b, also useful for your human audience. , you know, don't just stuff it with a bunch of keywords and all that, but, you know, keep that in mind. Of course.

13:10 I, you know, I've always said that you record Peron, you're right for Google. Yeah. And that means good, good. Show note. Good, good program title, and then a good backup first paragraph to make, meet that title or promote that title. And it's not necessarily, you don't have to be keyword stopping when you're writing for Google. Google prefers you writing naturally. What kinda leads into blueberry news. See, we've got a blog post by Merrill who talks as well about podcast show notes. So it must be a theme right now. Yeah. Show notes day. . Yep. And show notes are really, really important.

13:50 You look at the show notes for this podcast and you'll see that we've got an extensive show notes. And why do we do that? Well, we want, you know, we want this to be indexed and to be picked up. So, uh, definitely check out the art, the blog post as well. And I, I find it handy for me sometimes doing research on a topic. I'll go search at Podcast Insider, cuz I know we covered something and I wanted to see that article again. And, uh, you know, that could help your listeners do the same in your genre. That's true. Well, the blueberry team will be out Thursday and Friday of next week for Thanksgiving and, and Black Friday. And, uh, please be patient as we catch up on Monday. Always seem to find that people are in maintenance mode over the, the, the Thanksgiving they get done having, uh, here in the United States, at least they get done having their Turkey and they go do their, uh, their nap after, after lunch, and then they say, oh, what do I have to do today? I'm not going shopping. I'm hanging out.

14:47 And they get on the computer and start messing with their show. Yeah. And we start, start getting support tickets. So just be war. We, we may not respond until, you know, Sean might pick us up, up over the weekend. Yeah. And I, I, and I usually poke my head in the door at least once or twice during long weekends. And make sure things are good. But again, we'll be out Thursday and Friday. We do make Friday a holiday here at, uh, blueberry podcasting because no one's really working anyway on Friday. Yeah. So, anyway. Cool. All right. We've got a pro tip from Toby and, uh, let's go ahead. It's about competence to podcasts. Let's go ahead and hit that off.

15:28 Hi, it's Toby Goodman here today, the Confidence to Podcast. I've come to learn that there are a few recurring themes podcasters say, hold them back from continuing or even starting a podcast today. Confidence you wouldn't be the first person to suffer from imposter syndrome. Questioning your credibility and authority to host a podcast. If the voice in your head is asking, who do you think you are, you have what's called the human condition. So when it comes to your podcast, keep this in mind. Your podcast isn't for everyone. It can't be nothing anyone ever really loved, was loved by everyone.

16:09 I don't enjoy hot climates and beach vacations, but the millions of beachfront hotels around the world don't seem to care. It's okay if people don't get your podcast. So I encourage you not to think of your podcast listeners as people, but think of them as your kind of people. When you do, it's way easier to make content because you can see how these listeners and future listeners are on your side. Look, I'm never gonna listen to a podcast about being a vegan in Texas, but if that's your thing, don't let a carnivorous Brit like me stop you. The thing is, the more specific you can be, the more magnetic your podcast will be. If you are a vegan in Texas, I imagine you're a pretty starved for content for people like you.

16:57 But let's take that negative thought all the way down the road. Someone takes the time to let you know they don't like your show. Think about it. Someone took the time, they will never get back to let you know what they think. I'm not saying you need to respond or engage with these kinds of people, but I am saying that alone is proof that you are onto something. So keep the following phrase to hand just in case someone tells you they don't like what you're doing with your podcast. Thanks for your feedback and taking the time to listen, but I don't make this podcast with you in mind. And my podcast exists because I'm interested in being a vegan, not because I consider myself the authority on all elements of it. The thing is, we all have opinions, but when it comes to it, how many of them really matter?

17:47 When people take the time to express an opinion in you, I'd argue it is because in some way you matter to them. So don't let what others think or say stop you from starting a podcast. I'm not gonna tell you podcasting is easy, but once you've started in the right way, it will only get easier and you will build confidence for a non-judgmental helping hand. We've got everything you need to help you get your podcast on the right track. Come and say hi over@blueberrypro.com. Hey Toby, thanks for the pro tip and your confidence to podcast.

18:27 All right, we got a question of the week. I need to get a good microphone, but want to go with a USB to start with. Is it best to get something like the M V seven USB XR just in case I want to add a mixer in the future, or can I just use a USB mic? What other mic should I look at? Well. There's a, a lot of mics out there that have both and that I would suggest that because you never know, you might want to add a roader or a Zoom, uh, mixer or a Mackey mixer or, you know, any kinda XLR device. And it gives you that flexibility in the future to, to grow with. And, you know, MV seven s Awesome. Mike, you know, we're using the, uh, the, the, uh, professional version of that microphone, both Todd and I here now, but, uh, the, uh, MV seven is awesome. McKenzie just got one of those, that podcast Ments used it on a few episodes here recently and it's an awesome Mike. Uh, you know, it's a little pricey. A couple hundred bucks, a little cheaper would be the, uh, audio Technica ATR 2100 X, which is their current model.

19:39 That's a really good one for probably under a hundred dollars. And then the Sampson, Q2 U is a good one for I think their 50 or 60. And they all, all three of those microphones have both USB and xlr. So you can use those in the future, especially if, you know, if you go portable with a portable recorder that has XLRs, you can grab the mic and the portable recorder and, and go and not have to worry about bringing a computer if you don't want to. I, I think it's a good all around choice to do both. The only challenge really is, is if you are thinking about adding an in-house co-host mm-hmm. , you're gonna be having someone that's gonna be, you're gonna be recording together from the get go and there's gonna be two of you in the same location, then I would say go with an XLR and go the the roader route.

20:30 Yeah. I'll let you know. And then, and you can use a mic. If you start out with just, you know, with the USB and XLR mic, you can use those mics in that situation as well. Yeah. If you're gonna be a solo show or you know that your cohost is always gonna be remote, then you're, you're gonna be safe with, with the V seven or the ATR or the Samsung q2. Those are all good choices. Mm-hmm. , the ATR and the qt will, I always tell people in the beginning, maybe go the ATR or Q2 U route in the beginning and then after some time after you, you've been podcasting, well maybe think about the upgrade to this year. MV seven. Yeah. Just because if you don't continue then you don't have a big investment and you're not regretting the purchase and having to put it on eBay or something. Right.

21:16 Use it for Zoom calls and other things too. So that's true. So if you got a question you like us to answer on the show, drop an email to mike@blueberry.com. That's blueberry without the ease audio, text or video. And we may use it. You can also post a question on the blueberry podcasting Facebook group. Yeah. And I got today's question from Reddit actually. So, you know, we, we, I go searching for them if I don't get any in. So send some in, we'll use it. Awesome. Uh, best place for support with any blueberry product or services, our ticket system over at blueberry.com/support. Uh, tickets give the whole team access rather than direct emails or calls. And we've been coming to you this week from the new Media production studio in Coldwater, Michigan. And Mike Dell's World Studio in Traverse City, Michigan produce a course by the blueberry Pro production team@blueberrypro.com.

22:07 And we'd really love you to fill out our listener survey over at surveys.blueberry.com/podcast Insider. And if you wanna set up your own survey, you can do that as well in the stat system. So one thing that I've, uh, had a little bit of a slow up on is people that are looking for one-on-ones. So I make those available. I have, uh, a number of slots each week to talk to our customers. So you can always schedule a one-on-one with myself hosting customers only. And again, it's todd@blueberry.com. And I have no shortage of people scheduling tech things with me. So, but, uh, I do have slots available. You can schedule a check tech checkup, uh, for hosting customers only. Uh, you can email me mike@blueberry.com.

22:53 And you can of course send us your, if you have one, a podcast sticker and a self address stamped envelope, and we will send you a blueberry care package or just send us an email to mackenzie@blueberry.com. Let her know that you'd like a care package with the, your mailing address. And, uh, it may take a couple of weeks, but she'll get some stuff out to you. , uh, we've got lots of cool swag in the office that, uh, none of it's aging, but of it's very, very cool and, uh, might as well send stuff out to those of you that want it. If you do wanna send us a sticker, our mailing address is@podcastinsider.com within the show notes of this podcast. Mm-hmm. . Yeah, somebody send me a sticker, uh, Rick over there at, uh, drink with Rick sent me a sticker here at home, so that was cool.

23:38 I've got a sticker board that is almost, actually, I think it's full. I gotta buy another one. You know, if you send a couple of stickers in with your stuff and just designate who you want 'em to go to. Well, Adam, well, I'll add you to my sticker board once I pick up the stickers from the office when I go down to Columbus. But anyway, that's gonna wrap us up for the day. Thank you so much for listening. I, what are we doing for Thanksgiving? Are we, uh, still doing another show next. Week? Uh, I think we may do something early. Uh, we'll see. Uh, if not, we might take our first week off. Oh, all right. Well, awesome. All right folks, thanks for being subscribed and following the show. We'll see you next time here on the podcast inside everyone. Take care.