Navigating the Convergence of Video and Audio in Podcasting's Future - Ep 4

0:00 Welcome to Spoken Life. This is Rob Greenley. Thank you for joining me again in this episode. I'm going to re air a presentation that I made down in New Jersey back in late February at an event that was titled Podcasting and Video the Convergence and what the Future Holds. This was an in person presentation as well as a group zoom call. So what you're going to hear is an interactive discussion and presentation from me on this hot topic of video and audio converging in the podcast and online media space. So stay with me, and I'm also joined in this by Stacy Sherman, who actually is the host of the Doing It c X Write podcast, and so this was an exciting and interactive experience, so enjoy.

0:59 Thank you the. Inspiration I've spoken word tech and connection spoken like Spoken. My name is Rob Greenley and I'm here to talk podcasting tonight. So he's so much bigger than that tall but. You over Who are you Rob Greenley? I am, Like I said, I'm primarily a podcaster, but I've been involved in podcasting since two thousand and four, so I've had had many shows over the years. I've worked in the industry I'm in the podcast Hall of Fame. I'm doing a lot of live video now for platforms like a stream Yard, and I've got like four of my own shows now that I'm doing on YouTube and also as podcasts. So I used to work for Lipsyn, I used to work for Microsoft. I were in the Zoom podcasting platform for Microsoft starting and that was like two thousand and seven for about seven years, and then that got rolled into Xbox. And So I used to live in Seattle and I moved out here to Connecticut about four and a half years ago, So I'm a transplant out to the East, so new experience. I'm excited about being here and talking about this convergence with audio and video that we're seeing happen in the market and as being primarily driven by audiences and what they want.

2:11 So anyway, I've been really i think focused on creating content really over many years. I didn't start out doing this necessarily about podcasting about podcasting, but I've really done most of my podcasting over the last twenty years, and stuff has been podcasts about podcasting. So it's one of those things. I've been living in this meta world for a long time, and I'm following the trends in the industry and trying to keep up with where the industry is going. And I think the big thing, the big takeaway, and I think Stacy really tapped into this, and that's building community and building and treating your community and thinking about their experiences with whatever you're doing it can I think podcasting is analogous increasingly to starting a business. It has a lot of the same characteristics. And what we're seeing right now is so much convergence. And that's why I use this term because this is one aspect of the convergence that we're actively seeing today unfold in front of us, and there's a lot of resistance on both sides of audio and video about whether or not this is a good thing. Audio has been primarily seen over the last especially the last eight years or so, as the dominant kind of media format for podcasting. But if you go back to the early days of podcasting I'm talking about the two thousand and six two thousand and seven timeframe, video was about forty percent of the podcasting market.

3:38 A lot of people don't realize that, but podcasting actually has been a video medium since pretty much the beginning, which is a little hard to accept given how much bandwidth was available to everybody back in the early days of podcasting. It's not like it is now where we just take it for granted that we all have fast internet connections on our phones and our homes and our workplace. Video really took off because of the ability to be patient and a download, and it's the same thing with audio. So now we're like completely different now because the speed is so fast now that we can get delivered this content, whether it's audio or video, almost instantaneously. But that doesn't take away from what we've seen with YouTube in the early days was the place that video podcasters went because they didn't want to pay for the bandwidth to deliver video to their listeners or their viewers back in those days, because in those days the cost of bandwidth was very high.

4:33 So now it's come down so increasingly we're seeing this interest and this also converges with demographics and the availability of technology. The younger generation is definitely all about video now, whether it be short video. We're increasingly seeing pressure into long form video, which you're seeing really unfold on YouTube today. But yet we all see the popularity of shorts and vertical videos and things like that. My presentation really is about how we need to look at this medium as an inclusive medium from the standpoint of a lot of different things going on, a lot of different moving parts, and it's very difficult to navigate it today. But I hope to highlight some of the important elements of this.

5:18 But just to give you a little bit of background on me and what I'm doing, because I try and do podcasting so I can learn about podcasting, so I don't know it all, and I learn from everybody that I speak to, and I watch a lot of podcasts and I listen to a lot of podcasts trying to learn from people. But I do a spectrum of shows right now. I do one show called The New Media Show, which I've been doing for about fourteen years. It's a live online as well as on demand video and audio podcast, and I've been doing that show for a long time, and that show has really changed a lot over the years too, because my video experience on that show was in the early days was not a priority, so it was more like we just did it because it was cool to do video online. But it was primarily an audio show. But that's changed now and then now I'm doing a show for stream Yard Now, which is a big kind of live streaming platform, and I do that every Thursday night at seven pm Eastern, and that is a show called podcast Tips with Me, and I bring on expert guests to talk about the podcasting medium. But the real purpose of that show is to demonstrate the convergence of live, recorded audio and video podcasting, so it's really taking all the elements and the stream Yard team helps me out with that too by creating a bunch of shorts and vertical videos of that show as well.

6:35 It does take a lot of work to do all these things. It's not easy. And I do also a show called Trust Factor and a show called Spoken Life, which is my company, and each one of those kind of has a special place in my interests and my journey in this and was inducted into the Podcast Hall of Fame back in twenty seventeen. We just held the Podcast Hall of Fame down at Podfast for the twenty twenty four induction. That's an exciting thing happening as well. So what I wanted to talk about a little bit, and I've done that a little bit here at the beginning, because I know during the beginning of this many that are watching this have an interest in starting a podcast. Right my presentation wasn't specifically focused on the things you need to think about the startup podcasts, but some of the concepts coming out of this will be very helpful and you actually doing that from a convergence strategy point of view. So fast forwarding to where we are today and increasingly and where things are going less than taking a position I only want to do video or I only want to do audio, which is where we are right now. So this really at the core, it's the decision that you have as a content creator. I'm not advocating one way or the other here because each one of you have your own skills, your own preferences, your own desires, and there's no one model here that works for everybody. Creating content now is complicated. You have to be dedicated to it and you also have to be focused on what you want to do. And I've been a podcaster that's been focused on what I want a podcast,

8:08 not so much thinking about what the audience wants. So it's a passion for me, and the audience will self filter itself to get the kind of content that I have versus trying to contrive my content around trying to create a topic that focuses on a targeted audience. Now, granted, branded podcast is a different story here. But if you're doing a personality driven podcast, you're doing a podcast about a certain skill that you have that you want to share with the world. That's where it takes it into that area. Rob One thing I wanted to add a lot of times people say to me, I don't know what my passion is. I know I want to show, but I don't know what my passion is. And I often say what do people come to you for?

8:51 And they're like, oh, yeah, that's a good point. That's true. So if you don't know what your passion is, to have a voice around that question. What do your friends call you about? What does your family call you about? Is it the best cookie recipe? Right? Is it the skill that you know how to do? So just give thoughts as a common question. Yeah. And also you need to have energy around whatever your topic it is and passion for it yourself. Also, you will wind up doing what they call pot fading, which means that you'll start and you'll stop after about seven to ten episodes because you either run out of something to talk about, or you've lost energy in it, or something else came up that pulled your interest away.

9:32 So that's also another element of this too. But podcasting, and that's what I say on the video podcasting side, the personal connection and the intimacy is powerful with video, and I think we all know that seeing people's faces, being able to see them present themselves, there's body language that's involved here. The facial connection is extremely powerful. And as we're seeing more people consume YouTube and video on their big screen televisions that are coming off of the Internet. Now, mainstream media is, as far as my view is dead, So people are transitioning over to getting alternative sources of information now more and more. And that's just the trend that is going on here. So doing a combination strategy of audio and video can really expand your reach, right, And that's the key thing here is that there's so much noise. The actual noise level in the market right now around content is very high and it's only getting higher.

10:28 So being in all those places, especially like Stacy said, you need to identify where you think your audience is going to be consuming. But being in a lot of different lifestyle type of places. Right, So when I say lifestyle, I'm talking about where people are consuming your content, what is the environment, and being everywhere is my approach, right, I want to be on all the platforms. I want to be on all of it, and it's not easy to do that. Don't take that as a say you've got to be on every platform, because you may not have time to be on every platform. So that that's what you have to walk into and you may have to grow into that, but you have to start somewhere and trying to find where you feel comfortable starting and then build on that, and if you have to eventually hire a team to help you get everywhere, then that's what a lot of people do nowadays because people there are people out there that prefer video and there's people out there the prefer audio. So that does still exist, but there's increasing research that's coming out telling us in the industry now that increasingly, especially younger people like to consume video and audio, and they like to have the option of video, but they may primarily consume on audio.

11:37 So being in both places, it doesn't have to be the exact same content, but it can be and I think that's the key takeaway. So it's all about repurposing. Making this content available in as many different ways and as many different platforms as you can is really key to growing Now. And I don't know if all of you knew this, but YouTube is on the cusp oflating all of the content on their platform into all languages on the planet. So that's an opportunity and a little bit of a curse because that means that content that's produced in China can be available in the US because it'll be translated into English or India or any of that.

12:17 But that also means that if you're speaking in English, that'll be translated automatically into all like two hundred languages on the planet, so your audience potential could go way up. And then here are all the apps that currently support true authentic video podcast. Now, when I say true authentic video podcast, that's different than YouTube. What I'm talking about here is RSS based distribution of video. When podcasting started, that's what we were talking about in the early days, is that instead of an MP three file linked to from an RSS feed, which is what we see with audio today, it's an MP four file that's linked from an RSS feed and these are all that apps that currently support playback of video in a podcast app, and Apple is by far the biggest one and they are the biggest period but a lot of people don't know that the video is available in your Apple podcast app today.

13:15 And you can get in there by working with a few hosting platforms like Lipsun, Blueberry and Podbean support video podcasting, so it means that you could upload a video file and put it out into all these listening apps currently today, the content repurposing expanding your reach and I had mentioned here about RSS based distribution as well as non RSS based distribution which is YouTube and Spotify, and the increasing use of transcriptions is ever expanding as well. Apple just announced that they're going to be adding the Podcasting two point zero spec for transcription capability, which means that you can generate your transcription through your own process. Right stream Yard offers the ability to create a transcription of your content and then you basically link that from your RSS feed as like a text file and attach that and Apple will get that and they'll be able to display like close captioning experiences around your content to reach people of disabilities.

14:20 Will on stream yard or on Apple, can you take that file and repurpose it into an AI where you can get. Yeah, you can just export that transcription as a text file and just cut and paste it into your AI tool and it'll summarize it. And then I admit mentioned about the social media clips and shorts and creating other types of visual experiences too that you can do from your content and create audiograms which is basically just audio with a visual element, newsletters and ebooks, and most of you guys know about all that. I'm a huge fan of live and that's really or the aspect of doing engagement with your audience and connecting with your audience in a real time sense. Now you don't have to do this.

15:07 This is something that I would recommend that you probably start as a pre recorded show and try and work your way up to doing this. But ultimately, this, I believe is where you ultimately want to be. But it's not for everybody. I can't say that everyone is going to be comfortable being live, and that's okay, there's nothing wrong with that. Most of the audience is going to come from the on demand side anyway, You're not going to be missing a huge munch but it depends on what kind of show you want to make. This is really a show format question because taking questions, like through a stream yard or whatever, changes the dynamic of a show. It's not the same thing as a pre recorded show because you're taking questions, you're looking for engagement, and that takes you down different paths.

15:50 We'll say, as I do live, and if you're a guest is not used to live, or your podcast partner is not used to live, it can become a disaster really quick. You can. First time we went live, my podcast partner got so frustrated because it's quick. You have to It's great, but it's you're not ready. You better hold on. Yeah, it's great, but you. Have to On page Like what Stacy said, you. Have a question about how do you build an audience for life because they have to tune in when you're on. So they well, it's it's an opportunity as well, because you can create an event, right, you can promote an event like you did with this thing and this is I guess there's this to be a live event. So it's not unlike that. You just have to have your marketing materials that say when you're live, and get it out to your community as much as possible. And that's what I do with stream Yard now. Granted the stream Yard has one hundred and four thousand people following their channel, which definitely is a big advantage.

16:49 The same rules apply it like with podcasts. Consistency. Yeah, that's the key right there. It's the same time every week at the same. Also, stream yard does it eat job. You can actually put it on your YouTube and make it an event so people know so anybody it's just associates and Facebook, so you can actually create the event so your community will know about it. Yeah, and that's what makes it makes you have so much easier. So how many listeners do you have on your life? I usually have a handful, but we get we'll probably get five hundred downloads or five hundred watches view. Yeah, because people are late Aladdin man. People are coming in and out of the live stream, so your numbers could be a lot higher. People will watch as long as they have time for and then they'll drop out, and then new people will join you.

17:35 So it's a different A thirty minute interview, seven thousand downloads. We don't know how to hagly happened because it was the worst interview ever. Everyone loves this character and it went from zero to seven thousand and within a year. Rhyme or recently, Yeah, it's hard to know. Yeah, sorry, sorry. Anything You're all sharing and I'm just curious. I come from the broadcasting world. I'm a news anchor, former reporter, everything, and so the podcasting area was like the one medium I hadn't touched until about three and a half years ago when I was told why are you? But my question is I do video for my podcast. I do the full episode and I do put it on YouTube.

18:19 In fact, for a while, a Lipson's been. Doing the RSS feed over to the segment image longer than YouTube just announced the very. Yeah, it was a social sharing mechanism. Well, I think if you just mentioned something that I'm not aware of it, I'm a lipsy in girl. Are you saying that you can upload your entire video. To li that with lipsyn specifically, that takes a special plan, so you have to basically establish a separate RSS feed for that, and it does take up more storage because it's a video file, right, so you wind up paying a little bit more for that. So you can you still do get the forward over to your YouTube where most people aren't even watching. Yeah, exactly, it's not a requirement to do the RSS bas video stuff by any stretch imagination. You just upload the YouTube or Spotify or whatever, and you're getting video out that way, or a lot of people are just uploading it to like X, or they're uploading it to LinkedIn or whatever these platforms. You don't have to pay for the bandwidth. You don't have to create an RSS feed.

19:18 But that's also complicating things, right because it's if you publish to separate, that's all you're going to be doing, and that's the real challenge here. Andy's questions question, Yeah, go ahead, So you had mentioned I think this gentleman helped answer the question. But the purpose of the live was it like questions and. Answers, that's part of it? Yes, right, Well, would it be. An interview that you're doing live and people in the chat or maybe yeah, if you. Have an expert there. Yeah, it's exactly what's happening here. That what we're doing here is a microcosm for what I do with my show for Streamyard every week. Is it just happens to happen online. It's not an in person thing, but I actually prefer this hybrid of in person and live, so it's actually even better.

20:03 Do you want to take this question online? Mary? Yeah? If we want to take an house, fine. Figure it out. Can we. Chat versus chat? Go up? Up? There, you go, there, you go? Oh yeah, ask questions. How long can you upload a pre recorded on stream yard? Is it an hour of pre recorded live? I believe so. Yeah. So Also on the video side, it's really powerful to visual elements because you can align any kind of personal brand, you have, any business brand whatever with video, right, So you can do that with your audio podcast with some degree, with your cover art and your website and things like that. But there's just a dynamic that's different here. Multi cameras you can create these different kind of experiences. I'm starting to experiment with multi cameras even for my own show, but those are advanced concepts here, So I think you got to take these things in their steps, right. You can't do everything at once. I wouldn't expect anybody to be able to do all this stuff optimally to get started, just build up to it and just realize that the more professional your show looks, the more well done. It's put together and whatever, it's going to help grow your show of the box, well, that is the first happ First I would just say to extend on that the microphone doesn't belong in a box. Just as soon as you get it home, take it out of the box.

21:28 Let's dive into this topic. I think as a lot of people have been thinking about podcasting, especially over the last two years. It really ramped up a lot when the economy started to go downhill. It started with COVID. People lost their jobs and people were thinking about how can I make side money. So we saw this huge spike in new podcasters right about twenty twenty twenty twenty one, where we were picking up about one hundred thousand new shows a month. Prior to that, it was growing like maybe ten thousand a month. So you can see what happened. A lot of people were at home right they had a lot of extra time, they didn't have to commute, so start a podcast, build a side hustle business, whatever, and so these topics started to really bubble up in the industry and they still are hot topics right now because as the more people get laid off from their jobs, they think, how can I make money. So these are part of your options that there are more than this, but these are the primary ways, and it's very complicated.

22:27 I can't say this enough that these are not always easy to do, so these are things that some of them have to build up to. Dynamic advertising is a complicated subject because usually only big shows really use the dynamic advertising. But now we have what's called programmatic advertising, which is basically automated advertising. So a lot of the platforms like spreaker and lipsyn and a few others out there are ruling this out where it's automated advertising. So you set insertion points in your content and you tell your hosts that they can sell advertising and put it into your show. You you're not involved in that process, so it's almost like automatic advertising. That's where we get into this whole other side. You have a limited ability to control the type of ads that go into your show, and you participate in this. You can select a genre of advertise, like you can check a box, say I want political ads, or uncheck that box. I don't want political ads, right, alcohol ads? You can uncheck or check that or a bunch of different categories of ads. So that's what a lot of people are gravitating towards now because it's hard to sell advertising into your show. It's hard to get sponsors, it's not easy. And if you have a big show, then you can have somebody else do that for you, but that's not always, especially when you're starting out, that's not an option. So a lot of people when they start out, they basically move towards what I call kind of sponsored sales of advertising. If

23:59 you want to get into everyvertising, that's just one piece of the puzzle. But you can go to let's say you have a relationship with a company or a brand that aligns with your content of your show. You can just approach them and say, how would you like to buy a spot in my show for two hundred bucks per episode, I'd be happy to give you your product a try, do a demo on air or during this talk about it on the show. From an authentic standpoint, I think that's really key to that. And those are typically what they call host reads, which means that the host actually vocalizes an endorsement for whatever product or service that is that you feel good about. And that's where podcasting started. That's the advertising that built podcasting is this, we've been moving into dynamic advertising because a lot of big companies, big media companies, have gotten into podcasting. The true authentic advertising that builds that built this medium our host reads, and that's oftentimes baked in content, baked in ads.

24:56 So then there's also a product placement and shoppable video, which are really another form of host endorsement. Endorsement content right that drives transactions and sales, So that's also a piece of this too. Then there's affiliate advertising, which is more performance based advertising where you go like Amazon, and you talk about a product that you can pick up on Amazon, and you share how to get that product, and you get a commission off the sale of that. There's a website you can go to called CJ dot com that basically has thousands of affiliate companies and brands that you can align with your podcast and you just talk about whatever brand or a company you want to talk about, and then offer a path for that listener to be able to transact on that product and you get a commission on that.

25:43 In your opinion, how many is too many? Because you can when you hear some of these podcasts, it's like the first x amount of minutes look at this, look at that, look at that, and now when your opinions that you've been doing. Yeah, that's a I could talk for an hour just on that topic alone, But I have a personal preference. I like, if you're going to run advertising, it's probably in an hour long program, maybe three to four spots max. Once you get beyond that, you're getting into the realm of kind of oversaturation. Is that dynamic or sponsored in your own. It doesn't matter, It doesn't matter. Many podcast hosts will encourage you to do two pre rolls and four mid rolls and two post roles, which is like eight spots, and those could be run through dynamic advertising. But I think that's too much for what most people are willing to accept with their show, So you could be doing damage to your audience.

26:36 One thing, rob that a sponsor asked me to do is besides the read in the show, they asked me to put their logo in the image that was on my website and social media. Yeah, you can do all those things. So there's other creative things to give them exposure that they pay for. Yeah. I think that's really key, is that if you're going to share, like especially an affiliate program. You're going to need to have pathways to share links to things, right, whether it's on your website or in your social media or but also in your show notes, especially on YouTube, put a link to things in there that you want to transact with to support your sponsors. So I think it's all about trying to offer pathways for your audience to engage in whatever call to action that you're asking them to do. And then exclusive sponsored content. This is where you produce and this is what I'm doing for stream Yard too, is that it's basically they're sponsoring me to create content for them. And this is oftentimes done for branded podcasts too, so that this is a little bit of an area that if you have an expertise and a reputation, you can parlay that into a relationship with a brand. And then premium content, which I think everybody knows what that is. It's basically pay for watch, pay for listen type of content that you can create a transaction around that, maybe in addition to your free content.

27:57 So that whole freemium model is a big part two. And then there's obviously merchandise and super chats, which is a way for people that offer comments can also offer like a donation to your show while you're doing it live. Yeah, so that's my I went through that really fast. And there's a lot of concepts in there that need about an hour or each one of them. But that's who I am. Thank you, And I'm open to questions if we have time. Yeah, I don't be open to chat and see, I have a question. So what if I have an idea for a podcast, right, and I know what I want to my niches and what I want to do, and I want to interview, and I have an online store, and I've been on your show thanks to God a few times.

28:43 But what if I'm not good at like all this other stuff? Right? What if I'm not good at you have to just start somewhere. If you don't know how to start, we come here. If you don't know anything about. This stuff, I would say that there's lots of resources that are out there that are free. The thing that to think about, unfortunately with that, is that sometimes they're not really all that great of advice. I would probably go to let's say, a hosting platform like a buzz brout or a lipsyn and watch some of their how to start a podcast videos that they do because those people really know what they're talking about. So that would be the easiest way that I can think of. Or send me an email, I'll give you some advice to offer.

29:34 Is such a good Oh yeah. And Rob Walsh, Yeah, I used to work for Whipson. They know their stuff. Yeah, exactly. It's called The Themes podcast. And Rob Walsh great and great. Yeah, I was there for four years, so I was with them for four years. Just so helpful. Else I think could help to is if you go on somebody else's podcast if you've never been online, because I think see how they do it. Yeah, I think I agree. Being a guest is a great way to learn about podcasting because you're getting used to how to use a mic, you're used to, you get used to being interviewed, which is a great experience base to then get into hosting a podcast because then you know what it's like, especially if it's an interview program, so you know what it's like to be a guest.

30:29 But then you have to learn how to be a host, and that's a whole other schedule. It's hard. Yeah, that's not easy. Yeah, but it's suable, right, Yeah. There any many other questions it can I help us. There anything that we haven't talked about. I'm sure for your podcast, which is best for your podcast or brand? I'm not sure. The question on that, which ad is. Best phasically targets in this fonsors in terms of how it relates to what you're talking about, me a podcast. The question stuck here. Sean, Yeah, you can tie explain. So what I was asking was, as he was talking about the CJ right dot com right, and so all those the CJ dot com is all is a part of ads, the part of right about how to monetize that type of thing.

31:20 Yeah, it's one way. It's more of a performance based way of getting AD revenue. But what I was asking about that is how do you know which one is best for your brand? I think it's your gut right. It's also it's very important for you to be comfortable with the product or the service yourself. Do you trust it? Because you're putting your reputation on the line with that, because if you recommend it and somebody goes and uses it and they don't like it, then that can reflect on you. So whatever that is, you need to be passionate about it and feel good about it. Same thing with a guest. The other question that I had was earlier and you were. Talking about yeah.

32:01 Now, now, was there other platforms other than stream Yard that you would recommend that would do the same type of you can clip a little bit faster or anything that work a little bit clicker Yeah, okay, stream Yard, I know it could be glitchy at sometimes, but at the same time, there's also OBS. Yeah, correct, the other other platforms you recommend. There are a few others. There's one called Riverside, and then there's another one called Squadcast, which is now part of Descript, So if you're a Descript user, you get a free subscription to Squadcasts, which is a very similar type of video production platform. But there's I would just do a search for live video. There's also a restream.

32:44 There's another one. There's a few others that are popping up too, But I would say the stream Yard is probably the biggest right now. But a lot of people do use the OBS platform, especially it's free, so there's no charge for it, but it also requires some technical ability on your part and it's got a little bit of learning curve to it. All. Right, when don't we move around and thank you for everyone being online and thank you. It's allably great questions. Speaking of geek stuff, I've been using a new technology out of Norway that basically is an audio recording platform called no Mono and there's eight microphones around this little recorder unit and it attaches to a wavelier type of a microphone. So this whole presentation is being recorded through this platform that they will take the audio uploaded to the cloud and do a bunch of audio optimization on it and it will make it sound like I did this in the studio.

33:41 Yeah. Yeah, Plus it also has an app that you can has has four microphones, so you can see. It's about right. It's about two thousand dollars for the unit. Yeah, I do have a question about the different platforms. Stream Yard does a vertical, You've got YouTube that does. There's Zoom too, which is another option. It's the biggest problem is when you're trying to repurpose content, right, you get it off a stream yard and this isn't a stream yard problem. This is just a recording problem. Yeah, it's it's horizontal and then you. Put it into opus clubs, you put it into a whole bunch of different programs to make it so it goes into the other content. Is there anything with stream Yard or any of the other platforms that you've seen where it's going to change in any way where you can make that content easier to repurpose?

34:37 You know what I'm saying. It's just I have a great piece of content and I've got something like right. Across, and oh, it's going to get easier. There's no question AI is transforming all this stuff actively right now. The other big thing you're going to see with AI is that what we've seen happen is a bunch of standalone companies right that have started up with AI technologies. What we're going to see is the big platforms are going to integrate all this stuff. And so it's that's the transition that we're going to see play out over the next two years, is all these big platforms are going to integrate all this stuff, and all these startups are going to go out of business. It's just so frustrating as a content creator. You have something on YouTube and they want you to push it on YouTube chorts, but to put it on YouTube shorts, I don't even care about the time rewirement making sure it looks right and totally.

35:29 It's just that it's it makes you. Have to have a team that I don't have exactly. Have you tried to yeah, because I like the way Camber resize. It's not so much. It's not so much. Yes, I have these candidate that doesn't work for what you do. It's a long process, it is, and I'm sorry I have to actually make money for right. My dicy is just really upset and I don't think I got one more. Yeah, yeah, go ahead. The lady that was on before I was, I wanted to know about her QR code. I thought that was pretty neat because oh yeah, hi, okay, So yeah, QR codes is such a great way to engage.

36:15 I see some headnots to engage with people. So the QR code. I use a couple of them. It's really easy. So basically you could use taka Dot is one. I can send these to you if you email me. But basically they have different functions and you can have a dot Dot is like a QR code and has all my contact information my social media. So it's one code gives you and it goes right into your phone. So it's very helpful. There's Canva, I believe. Do you know Canva? Have you used Gamba? Okay, good, it's good anybody in this room. So Canva does one hundred things, create more creative people. But it also has a QR capability, so you can create a QR code, give it to anybody and it will get you to your website, your show, your anything. So those are just some tools to help.

37:10 Can I have question after you're finished for that question? Sure? Hello, yes, yeah, okay. I worked on a podcast where my boss was in Germany and she asked people to sign a legal disclaimer before guests would go on the show. So I was wondering do you use legal disclaimers? And also, because we are in the. Space industry, which can be niche, do you have any advice on finding a niche audience since the social media space can be crowded. Yeah, about the guests waiver clearance document. There there are a lot of podcast attorneys in the space that will recommend that every show do that. One of the reasons that sometimes guests will will want their show taken down or polled or edited, or all sorts of requirements and demands can be imposed even when the guests maybe says something in their podcast that they said that they should be responsible for, but ultimately they maybe get in trouble with their employer or whatever. So there are things that can happen that you might want to have a legal document to protect you from. So that is an advice that is commonly given out there about guests scenarios, right, because there can be legal problems with just about everything you do in this world, unfortunately.

38:27 And just to add to that something to really streamline your process. Rather than send somebody the form after and have to chase it, what I do is I put it in my calendar invite, and so when they're filling out information about their to come on my show, it's your name, your information, and then there's a checkbox with the information that they're acknowledging right then and there, So I don't have to go chase them. It's just a way to streamline that. Yeah, and they should know as. Soon as they go on the podcast it's getting recorded. That's the biggest thing you're going to get. Recorded, right, So be careful what you say exactly. Like, I've found so many forms that look like like agreement litigious file pages and like now it's a podcast sharing my extrue expertise.

39:15 But it's the same thing. Like, all you really need is that one box that says I release all rights all materials. It doesn't happen because you can scare guests that way too. Yeah, just letting them know I'm doing you so and you're doing me. You're sharing your expectation. But with the intellectual property. Lawyer in the Yeah, as an attorney, I would definitely recommend it you get some sort of release. I agree that there's a balance between protecting your rights and also chasing away perspective guests. I think five pages is a lot plenty of that ones that are single pane and right, and there are a lot of things that can go wrong. If somebody uses makes LIBELSS statements or slanderous statements, you could be respon for that too. So you want something that would protect you as much as possible under the circumstances.

40:07 And as they ask for a lot of edits on passage to profit. If somebody says something that they later regret, we always try to accommodate them. We don't want to put something out there that they don't are uncomfortable with. But if somebody. We did have somebody once who wanted to cancel the show after we had we did a full show, We had a production. He had religious issues with one of the guests, and so that turned out to be a little bit of a To go through a whole production and just cancel it because somebody didn't like it is also a burden on you, the host. Right, there's a lot of different sides, and I'm happy to help anybody who is looking for a release. We can find one that's appropriate for your podcast. Again, as comfortable for you and one that you feel like you're your guests will feel comfortable signing and stuff.

41:02 So scary. Yeah. The other thing we do is we do talk to each guest before we have them on the show, and we would recommend that to anybody that has guests on their show. Talk to them ahead of time, so you know you're on the same wavelength. If somebody comes on and they say I hate this politician, I'm going to cuss them out every chance I get on your show. We're a non political show, We're gonna say, sorry, you're just not a good fit. And we had to tell somebody they weren't a good fit because that stuff like that. Another thing on that point, which I love that you're mentioning that is just say to your guests and look, I deal with trauma. I'm a trauma podcast. Is there anything that's off topic? So anything you do want to talk about that's like just to be transparent. Yeah, that's really good suggestion. Yeah, just create a safe space for them.

41:45 To your point, I had an issue with we had a celebrity guest on and I say that now every single time because it was it was an issue where she wanted to take something out which we had no problem thinking out. But you know what, she's a guest for life now, all right because we did the right there. And that's what you have to do. I mean, is there anything off limits? Because early trying to promote something, so we get them a chase to promote it. But easier reinload in RSS. And well so one more thing with my old corporate hat on when I was a guest on fifty shows, I also had to tell the post that corporate had to approve it. So there's that angle too. So think about when you have a guest in there in corporate there's a slow delay time in that we just don't do that. You look on the other side now, it's just it's too scary, it's but that is fact. Yeah.

42:42 Do we want to talk about the top two items there? Really quick? Okay, what's the first? Someone talked about how do you track listeners? Yeah? Online and then podcasts relevantly. I think that was also about discovery, right, being able to be found and build an audience. That's a challenge in podcasting right now because there is and a lot of people don't realize this, but there is about between four and five million podcasts that are out there right now, of which only about three or four hundred thousand of them are actually actively being updated. So your pool of competition is not as big as you think now. Granted, a lot of these catalogs, like even Apple and Spotify or whatever they have, there's just a lot of clutter in there. There's a lot of archive shows that are intermingled with active shows, and these platforms haven't done a very good job of separating the two. Right, if you're an archive show, it should be not promoted, it should be pushed down, right. The active show should be in the pool for discovery. But the platforms haven't done a good job of that. The same thing with indexing descriptions, things like that most of the platforms just index your title.

43:58 Currently Apple is doing a little bit better job, but not much better. So there's a long way to go on the podcasting side, worse so far behind how YouTube surfaces content that is getting ridiculous. Actually, I hope that the industry can work on that go ahead. One thing I've also noticed since I started doing this, and I wish I did this a long time ago, mainly for eighty eight reasons as well from incusubity, yeah, is that when we transcribe, we're also transcribing for communities that might not be listening or whatnot. But also that gets seo it does. You can use that in all sorts of different. Ways from all the entire transcript being. Yeah, I think the transcripts are like the universal conversion of your content into all sorts of new forms as you look to the future. Right, you can generate AI generated outlines, you can use it to better target advertising in your show. There's just so many uses for transcriptions.

44:56 So I learned a tip at podfast Hey that I was doing around transcripts. If you have a show and you have a website. You put the show on your website, the show notes, all that. But the part I didn't know is you take the transcript, the time stamp transcript, and you put that on another page on your website. Right, So I don't advertise that, but I link it from the landing page of my guests, right, that has the show and that has the show notes in the bio, and it's a link that goes to that the time stamped summary. Because there's so much SEO, so most people are not going to that, you have a link to it.

45:40 So when I market the show, I bring them to the landing page, not the transcript page. One thing that is SEO value for that you said. Too, if they're really only indexing the titles, then you need your keywords in your title. Yeah, how you do? Yeah? Yes you can't. Like YouTube, you can put your keywords in the description, but for podcasts you have to put them in the Yeah. And it's a delicate line to walk because you can't overstuff your titles because they get truncated so you're not even going to see them anyway. But you have to really use titles that attract people to want to watch your episode. Right, what's your. Favorite tool for identifying the good SEO title? AI is not a SEO tool.

46:21 It's this one for now right. There are some like se Russian others that do you have a favorite? No, I don't because I actually do it off the top of my head. I don't use a tool. I don't know the heart. But it's a little old school. You, but it basically gives me I come up with my titles. You can use chat gipizza titles, and then I put it in the tool for ranking. So answer to the public is pretty good? Answer public pretty good. That gives you an SEO ranking. Yeah, it gives you a lot of information. It's mostly for keyword people who are like selling keywords, and I answer the public is good And it's going to be a free trial on it because it's worth it. But you can see, for a given topic, what are the most popular searches. What is the syntax that people are using, whether it's how do I start a business? Or can I start a business? Or should I start a business?

47:16 You can see which ones are the most popular. You can see how many searches per month each one of those phrases is getting. The podcast people did say the first word of your podcast. The second podcast is extremely important. So someone had the something coach. So then like we're thinking about, oh, okay, is it the midlife coach or whatever it might be to change it around. And the second thing I wanted to add is I was in digital media in nineteen ninety eight. This is like digital media all over again, and I worked for Discovery where we had twelve different TV shows and eleven different websites. When you want to generate revenue, you don't want to go on a car you talk to this, you don't want to. Go on a cost for a thousand.

47:57 What you want to do is you want to a niche. You want you maybe even. Partner with other podcasts that are out there, and you want to go after brands that all align okay, and maybe use that brand and then sponsorship dollar and brand deals they can sponsor. Don't think bit you can go after you can sponsor my entire podcast for two months or three months or for a year. They said you can put your logo on there. So when you're presenting a proposal, you go big, and then you can go. A little bit smaller than that. And if you really believe that there's another letter. It's Mazda, or there's another kind of brand out there that's really good, or do search on Google. Go after that, because all these companies are looking for a niche audience, and you can show your audience and the demographics and the cycho graphics that they reach the thirty minutes at a time or one hour at a time. Where else are they going to go and get that? There is no more TV, there's only streaming video. Podcast becoming video is the U cable. So think of your brand and your podcast as a TV show. I mean, you think that lay just to the generating rudens.

49:04 There's a lot of people that I know that I've had conversations with that have smaller podcasts. Maybe they're doing like one hundred and fifty downloads, still one hundred big downs. It's still one hundred and fifty people, and. They think that they can't get advertising and flouncers, and like, you have no idea how people would like that the CPMs of just twenty five bucks an episode or just making a couple of dollars back and cover your quick yeah, and then you build the brand one. But I think there's a lot of intimidation with those with the smaller downloads that they think they can get a front us. Right, an old guy you had four episodes in you go to major spots or he was a fishing pope. Yeah, that's like niche he got it because he also.

49:45 But there's a problem in universally about more and more. Right, social media like on my LinkedIn has the biggest. Fine, my Instagram maybe two thousand, Twitter two three thousand, Right, that's nothing. Yes, my place is LinkedIn, but it's such an engaged group that matters. The problem is that everybody's about fake famous great HBO movie, by the way, big famous, where numbers seem to be like, oh, they're big, So we've got to change the story and educate. The more is not more, it's the audience. They're more than your numbers.

50:25 People are return on investments, right. They spend only a little bit on advertising, but they get a few leads out of it. It's worth it. Right. I'm sorry this is the inn of this conversation. But I see Chris has his code. Chris is coming next month. That doesn't mean you guys have. To leave it. Yeah, no, I'm just texting my wife. Feeling Yeah, Chris and Stacey and I and Mike Hamon has the Jersey Jersey three. Days from the Garden State. Thank You, Greetings for the Garden State. Inspiration, Spoken Word, Tech and Connection. Spoken spoken, spoken Light, Spoken Light, Spoken Light with Rob Greenley with Rob Greenley, with Rock Green m HM