What's Your Problem?... with Mark Steadman: Recent Episodes
Mark Steadman of Podcode
I'm taking a break to work on new topics and ideas over the summer. If you have questions about your podcast process, I'm not leaving you to fend for yourself!
- Here is my guide to launching a helpful podcast
- Here's my guide for crafting a helpful podcast
- And my guide for growing a helpful podcast
And if you haven't already, do check out our free community.
Thank you for your interest over the last few months. I look forward to coming back in September with lots more ways to help you build trust and create rewarding relationships with your listeners.
Have a wonderful summer.
join the Bramble waiting list, and help me build a new home for generous communicators like you.
The only people immune to imposter syndrome are those that feel like life owes them a favour. Being generous and vulnerable means confronting imposter syndrome, so instead of denying it, why not call its bluff?
Links
- The Chimp Paradox: The Acclaimed Mind Management Programme to Help You Achieve Success, Confidence and Happiness, by Steve Peters
- Join the Helpful Podcasters community
join the Bramble waiting list, and help me build a new home for generous communicators like you.
We make podcasts so that we can share what we love and bring people closer to us. We've talked about sharing more of your knowledge and expertise. But what about the squishy human parts that make up you? How much of that should we share and how can we avoid sharing too much?
Links
- Join the Helpful Podcasters community
Remove the guesswork from your podcast's growth
Get a podcast audit
LinkedIn is awash with people inviting you to check out their latest podcast episode. With so many shows created by smart people in your network, how can it be possible to stand out? No, this isn’t about marketing your podcast; it’s about respecting your listener’s time and giving them the best of what you and your guest have to offer… without spending hours slaving over an edit.
Links
- Join the Helpful Podcasters community
- Descript
- Auphonic
Remove the guesswork from your podcast's growth
Get a podcast audit
There’s nothing worse than getting an episode back from your podcast editor – or editing it yourself – only to find the guest sounds great but Zoom had recorded your laptop mic instead of the one in front of your face. It happens all the time. Whether you’ve already experienced it or you’ve been lucky so far, the next few minutes will save you a lot of heartache in the future.
Links
- Join the Helpful Podcasters community
- The Checklist Manifesto: How To Get Things Right, by Atul Gawande
- Duplicate my preflight checklist
Remove the guesswork from your podcast's growth
Get a podcast audit
Dynamic ad insertion (DAI) lets you define points in your audio where timely messages can be placed. If you have a podcast to support your business or cause, there’s never been a better time to investigate DAI.
Links
- Join the Helpful Podcasters community
- Captivate
- Transistor
- Buzzsprout
- RedCircle
Remove the guesswork from your podcast's growth
Get a podcast audit
When you’re looking around for new listeners, how much time do you spend thinking about the people who are already in contact with you? Today we’re going to look at how we can grow your podcast audience via your mailing list, what to do if you don’t have a big list, and how to use email to deepen the relationship with the listener once they’re following the show.
Links
- MailerLite
- Hemingway app
Remove the guesswork from your podcast's growth
Get a podcast audit
Podcasts often fizzle out, or fail to get started entirely, because the process of putting out regular episodes just feels too hard. Here are 9 ways to bring ease into your podcasting workflow.
1. What would happen if you edited with a with less precision?
Do you really need to remove every umm and uh? We all want to sound our smartest, but if you’re looking for ways to make the process easier, that level of detail could be the first to go.
2. Is there a part of the process you can drop?
Do your show notes need to be quite so detailed and meticulous? Do you need to spend an hour making the artwork unique, when a simpler template could do? Is a hand-corrected transcript necessary at this stage, or could an AI-powered one get us close enough?
3. What can you delegate?
Editing, writing show notes, writing promo copy, producing artwork, scheduling guests… everything can be delegated apart from yourself.
4. What can you automate?
Did you know you can run tasks like posting to Twitter, LinkedIn ,or Facebook – even Instagram – when your episode is published, regardless of who your podcast is hosted with? It’s all done using your RSS feed, and it could save you some time.
5. What can you repurpose?
The Calmer Content Marketing approach starts with the voice, and helps you build your whole week’s worth of content from the conversation you’ve had in your podcast. By making notes as you chat with your guest, you can end up with a blog post, a transcript, a number of tweets or LinkedIn posts – none of which are simply “Hey, listen to the latest episode!” – and more.
6. What can you do or plan in bulk?
Check out the blog post How to plan a whole year of podcast content in a day for the definitive guide on this.
7. What can you do in context?
While you’re feeling in Record mode, you could get a whole month’s episodes recorded in a single day – if you’re a solo podcaster – or schedule a month’s worth of interviews over a week.
When you’re feeling like you want to do some process work rather than work from a blank page, you can sit down and get all your outstanding episodes edited.
in a writing mood, or sat on the sofa paging through Netflix? Maybe that’s a time to knock out a month’s worth of podcast show notes.
8. Do you need to promote on social media?
What would happen if you took a month off promoting episodes on social, then tracked how it affected your downloads?
9. How might constraints create ease?
Try limiting your solo episodes to 15 minutes, and not a second longer. Or try the Ignite technique, and make up a PowerPoint presentation where the slides auto-advance after 15 seconds. That time constraint, or that enforced pace, may help you make shorter, pithier episodes, which reduces the amount of editing you have to do. And by creating a few notes beforehand, you already have the bones of your show notes.
Get clarity on your podcast's positioning and growth potential.
Book a podcast audit
Wrangling guests for a weekly podcast can be a bureaucratic nightmare. Tools like Calendly, Zapier, and Notion can help keep track of multiple guests, but among all the automation it’s crucial to remember the humans reading the emails.
Tips and techniques
- Create a booking page on your website, with a link to your Calendly profile. Here’s the booking page for this podcast.
- Calendly adds the recording date to your calendar, and to your guest’s if they choose, and keeps you from being double-booked.
- You can also ask questions of your guests through the Calendly booking form.
- Use Zapier to email guests with pre-flight instructions. Here’s what Mark sends to guests.
- Use Trello to keep track of past and future episodes, and where they are in the production pipeline.
- Create a column for each stage in the guest-booking process.
- Use Zapier to move a guest’s Trello card along from “Reached out” to “Scheduled”.
- Alternatively, manage the whole podcast process in Notion:
- Create a database of episodes.
- Create a kanban view, so you can see your upcoming guest bookings just like a Trello board.
- Use Zapier to add to or update the database when guests reach out or book a recording slot.
- Tag and categorise episodes within Notion, so you can look through your back catalogue to see which topics you’ve covered.
- Write show notes and share episode assets – like embedded player code, audiograms, sample tweets, etc – with guests.
Links
- The Milk Making Minutes – Lo’s podcast
- Calendly
- Zapier
- Notion
Check out Mark's new workshop, available to download now:
Organise your podcast workflow with Notion
What separates podcasts that get 20,000 downloads per episode from the ones that get 20 downloads per episode? Well, it can’t be the goal, because if it was, we’d all be in Apple’s top 100. What if, instead, it was just about putting one episode in front of the other?
Progress isn’t linear
Change can take years before it happens all at once. We achieve change by setting an intention, then building a system around it.
We can’t fatten a chicken by constantly weighing it. So, try not to focus on goals and outcomes, and instead focus on outputs.
Identity beats consistency
Think about replacing “I need to put out a episode every week” with “I have a weekly podcast”. Once you begin to identify your podcast as having a weekly (or fortnightly) cadence, missing an episode becomes harder. This isn’t about piling pressure on ourselves, but changing our mindset from one where we’re trying to do something, to one where we already identify as doing that thing.
Goals don’t create success
The successful podcaster with 20k downloads per episode has the same goal as the podcaster who’s scrabbling for every download. If that’s true, the goal cannot be what denotes success. Instead it’s the systems we put in place – it’s doing the work: putting out each episode and asking ourselves “how much have we served our audience with this one?” And then “Can we do that 1% better next time?”
Links
- Atomic Habits, by James Clear
- PACTs vs SMART goals
- The Practice, by Seth Godein
- Ear Brain Heart
Get clarity on your podcast's positioning and growth potential.
Book a podcast audit
After Facebook abandoned its attempt, Twitter is the latest to try integrating podcasts into their app. But they’re making some crucial mistakes that prove that really, social media wants nothing to do with podcasting. So if that’s the case, what can we do about it?
What is the excitement around Twitter’s “Podcasts” tab? What’s the plan, and how does it affect leaders using audio to build trust and strengthen relationships? Also, why do social media and podcasting have such a fraught relationship?
Twitter’s announcement
Starting Thursday, August 25, we’re integrating podcasts into Twitter as a part of our newly redesigned Spaces Tab. We know that some discussions need more than 280 characters, and bringing people closer to the ideas, content, and creators they know and love is core to Twitter no matter where the conversations take place… These new hubs will also feature the most popular and engaging podcasts from around the world.A quote from senior product manager Evan Jones goes on to explain why this means podcasts like ours won’t be found:
What we’re really trying to capture here is as if it’s like another user recommending you something.What Twitter should do instead
If you tweet the link to your podcast episode, we know how to get the actual podcast it came from. We can surface real listener recommendations as playable audio within the app.
Why Twitter’s podcasting implementation is doomed to fail
Twitter was an open platform almost from the beginning. There are two credible and open directories they could access for podcast listings, yet they’re curating their own list of “popular” shows (ie: true crime, straight white male comedy, and sport).
This isn’t about providing a better experience, it’s about user retention, and maximising time in-app.
Audio is a secondary medium
When you listen to a podcast, you’re inviting the host into your life. You’re bringing them along while you do your daily stuff.
Video, on the other hand, demands our full attention. And while we’re attentive, we’re also able to click and tap on ads.
Facebook tried integrating podcasts and it didn’t work
We’re in a different state of mind when we scroll. We’re not ready to put our phone down and listen to something long-form, we want to keep getting quick hits of info.
What makes us share things?
Anger, fear, excitement, and laughter. These four key emotions are what drives social sharing.
Long-form audio might elicit those responses, but finding a context-free clip that can be shared on social media to create that same reaction is difficult.
The pivot to video
We’re being told that in order for us to compete as podcasters, we have to include video.
Those who gain to benefit from the video hype are those that traffic in ads, which are far easier to track in streaming video than they are in downloaded audio.
Podcasting is a slow medium
Podcasts are a counter to social media in lots of ways. They provide a moment of respite, a moment of pause. They give us permission to choose how to engage our eyes and hands.
How can we make social media work for us?
Most of us don’t have a big enough social audience to move the needle, and tactics for converting audiences can only work so much.
Building a real audience takes time. In the meantime:
- Keep having the conversations that need to be had
- Make the show you want to hear
- Seek out answers to the questions you’re asking
- Quietly build your back-catalogue of insight and info
- When people discover it, they’ll have a treasure trove they’ll thank you for
If you’ve been at this for a number of years, ask yourself
- Am I learning stuff?
- Am I having fun?
- Am I building authority in my field?
- Do I have the energy to make it to the next milestone?
If none of those questions elicit a “yes”, let’s have a chat.
Links
- Twitter’s announcement of their Podcasts tab
- The Podcast Host’s write-up
- Trust Me I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator, by Ryan Holiday
- Targeted daily engagement
- Discuss your podcasting needs with Mark
Get clarity on your podcast's positioning and growth potential.
Book a podcast audit
Riverside and SquadCast have been close competitors in the remote recording space. But with SquadCast having shipped a recent apology update, which is the service to use?
Updates to SquadCast
- They’re reintroduced time zones.
- Guests will now know if their camera is being recorded.
- They’ve added a setting for “community events”. Toggle this on and a tab will appear so you can attend events SquadCast are running.
- Beginning Sept 29, Office Hours will run every Friday at 6pm UK time.
- The redesigned dashboard allows toggling of
- Sessions
- Primary recordings
- Cloud recordings
- SquadShots
- Access all recordings from the side navigation.
- New equipment info panel for all participants on the recording page.
- Toggle echo cancellation on/off for each guest.
- Toggle access to beta features on/off.
Why I’m sticking with Riverside
- Too many fussy problems with SquadCast. For example,
- You can’t make it output to your selected audio device, as SquadCast ignores that setting and sticks with the system default.
- I’ve seen frequent loss of audio from client projects meaning we have to revert to the backup, which should be something that happens 1% of the time, not 20%.
- Riverside is more competitively priced.
Why I like SquadCast and don’t love Riverside
- SquadCast has a community focus.
- The people who run it are open, public, and nice. That matters!
- They care about building a great product, and making customers happy.
- This is reflected in their customer service.
- Riverside is functional and have skimped on support.
What you should use
- If you value customer service and community, use SquadCast.
- If reliability is what you need, and you can deal with problems yourself, use Riverside.
Get clarity on your podcast's positioning and growth potential.
Book a podcast audit
Captivate rolled out a big update to their dynamic content platform this week. Transistor is still my favourite, but they’ve just lost a bit of ground. If you want to mix timely messaging in with your evergreen content, you have two great services to choose from, but only one of them gets my gold star.
In the wake of Captivate’s recent update, let’s look at what dynamic content, why it's useful, how Captivate are making it easier to manage, along with what host you should pick and why.
- Captivate hosts over 17,000 podcasts.
- v2.0 of their dynamic audio engine brings
- Dynamic slot management
- Multiple ads per slot
- Drag and drop improvements
- Ability to insert slots with timestamps
- Tagging of ad slots
- Easier bulk ad management
- On the horizon is a partnership with DAX, another product owned by their parent company, Global.
Where DAI is useful
- Adding timely messaging on evergreen content
- Multiple service offerings mean adding relevant dynamic content to each episode
Captivate vs Transistor
I’ve long said that Transistor is my favourite place to host. So, what’s changed? Well, not much… it’s still my favourite, but my recommendation to clients is to use Captivate.
- DAI is built-in to all Captivate plans.
- Captivate is IAB certified.
If Transistor did this, I’d switch my recommendation in a heartbeat:
- Put DAI in all their plans, lowering the barrier to entry
- Add tagging of content and slots
Get clarity on your podcast's positioning and growth potential.
Book a podcast audit
Carrie has a lot of podcast episodes to edit, and very little energy to take on the task. She wanted to know how she should go about finding an editor who can help her lighten the load, so she can keep the creation process joyous.
Links
- Podcast Editors Club on Facebook
- The Vocal Fries Pod
- Steve Stewart’s “How to Find a Podcast Editor” guide
- Podcast Editing Plus, from Stephanie Fuccio
- Alice Won’g’s Disability Visibility podcast
Daniel Lynn wants to come out of the traps at a clip, releasing new episodes of his debate podcast three times a week. But with that many episodes needing to be recorded, where can you find a sustainable source of guests?
Links
- We Got This with Mark and Hal
- Ignite Talks
- PechaKucha 20x20
- Why you'll never get ahead with your podcast
- Calendly
- Zapier
Nirish Shakya has conversations with guests about human-centred design, and wanted to talk to me about how we can make our conversations sound natural, but also engaging. And how do we let our guests do most of the talking?
Links
- Design Feeling
- Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, by Oliver Burkeman
Roger and Nina are podcasting under pseudonyms while they wait for their kids to turn 18, so the challenge of growing their show feels even harder since they can’t rely on friends and family.
Links
- Sex is Funny
- Matchmaker.fm
- PodcastGuests
- @fesshole
Michelle records a mix of solo episodes and guest interviews. She finds her solo episodes rewarding to provide to her listeners, but with deadlines comes a looming sense of dread to plan the next one.
Michelle makes multiple passes while editing her episodes, which starts to feel draining, so she and Mark discuss ways to keep that attention to detail without a loss in quality.
Links
- How to plan a whole year of podcast content in a day
Gregory Anne transcribes her audio using Descript, and passes that off to an editor. She's curious whether it's worth publishing transcripts, given that she suspects few people will use them, but it's important for her to make them presentable and accurate.She records her show on Zoom and uploads some of the episodes to YouTube. She's heard conflicting advice about publishing full episodes (with and without video) to YouTube, so is coming to Mark for advice.
Links
- Rebellious Wellness Over 50
- Descript
- Captivate
- How to podcast on YouTube: the 3 biggest mistakes to Avoid
- Podcasting 2.0 with Dave Jones + Video Buzzcast Update