002 Podcasting Rituals, Podcasting 100% from an iPhone and Leveraging what you already have to grow your audience

Jul 26, 2013

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Quick Episode Summary:

Details about submitting your podcast promos and Rockin' Libsyn Podcast feature requests.
Featured podcasting articles and media plus what's new on the Libsyn Blog.
Our social media conversation is all about podcasting rituals.
Rob Walch shares how you can podcast 100% from an iOS device showcasing some little known Libsyn features.
How to leverage what you have to grow your audience!

Featured Podcast Promos

Eric from The Flicksation Podcast
David Dear from The Minister of Myself Podcast
Steve Steward from The Money Plan SOS Podcast

Podcasting articles and media about podcasting

Links mentioned in the episode

Should YOU Be Podcasting
Voice Techniques For Podcasters
Podcasting With Adobe Audition
Radio Presenters Should Start Podcasting
Elsie interview on Lady Business Radio

Newest Articles on the Libsyn Blog

Libsyn social media community conversations

Do you have a #podcasting ritual before you record your #podcast? You know something you do every single time you do your thing?

— libsyn (@libsyn) July 19, 2013

You can find a deeper conversation over here on Facebook. Let us know what YOUR ritual is if you haven't had a chance :)

In summation: Podcasters like to drink (preferably something that in some way alters the nervous system) and eat as a way to prepare for podcasting :)

Rob Walch Shares How To Podcast 100% from An iOS Device

Via Rob Walch:

One of the biggest trends we have seen in the past couple of years at Libsyn is the consumption of podcast episodes directly to mobile devices.

In April 2012 i 43% of all downloads were to mobile devices. In June it was almost 54% of all downloads. That trend line is not slowing down any time soon.

For many people their iOS device has become their main computing device. Not just where they consume content but where they also want to create it.

You can create an audio podcast in MP3 format on an iOS device and upload it to your Libsyn account - even having it go live instantly on your Libsyn feed.

Part of what makes it so easy is one Libsyn feature many Libsyn users may not know about - but has been there since the early days. It is called our quickcast feature.

The quickcast feature allows you to take an MP3 file and upload it via FTP to your Libsyn account into your folder called quickcast. Once the file is placed in that folder our system will pull the Name and Description from the ID3 tags and use them for the name and description in the post - and automatically make it live on your feed and your other destinations - like your smartphone apps, or your libsyn blog page or Wordpress or Blogger pages if you have them set up.

Of course to do this you need an App that supports a few key features - Exporting as an MP3 file via FTP and where you can edit the ID3 tags before exporting. And luckily for libsyn users there is such an app - it is called Bossjock - it is $9.99 and it was created by one of the original founders of Libsyn.

It is also the only App in the App store that supports these features.

There is also a good mic for iOS devices call the iRig MIC Cast mic - this plugs right into the headphone port on your iOS device. This mic gives very good quality and only cost $39.

Brief overview of the work flow for creating a podcast episode with the Bossjock app.

Open the boss jock app and tap the lock symbol to turn on the mic and tap the record button to start recording.
Once done recording - swipe the bar at the bottom to pause and then tap finish.
Add a name for the file - no spaces and tap save.
Go to recording then tap on your episode and add the title you want for your post title - spaces are ok. And add a description of the episode. Then tap Export
Select MP3, mono, and move the slider so it shows 64 kbps for the bit rate and then tap FTP.
Enter your FTP server info which is ftp://ftp.libsyn.com/YOURSLUG/quickcast - Then enter your email and password for your libsyn account and tap upload.

Leveraging what you already have to grow your audience

Via Elsie:

One of the biggest concerns that I've seen out there in podcaster land, and something that is mentioned right along monetizing your podcast all the time, is growing your audience aka getting more listeners.

One way that I'd love to address this is by being totally transparent about the growth of this podcast as well as sharing what we have been doing in order to get the word out about it. Just because we happen to be a company doesn't instantly make our podcast famous at all :)

Here's how I'm gonna do it. I'll disclose download numbers + tactics and also include events that might influence download numbers as well as strategy.

There was an article by jay fleischman that I shared and quoted from in the last episode of The Feed which said "searching in iTunes is akin to looking for a lost pair of floaties in the Atlantic Ocean". He also drove home the point that in order to get more listeners you have to leverage what you already got.

This is super important.

And it also helps you to keep your podcast growth in perspective.

I believe this is a key competent that is often overlooked by podcasters, especially now days, as there is a ton of hype coming from the internet marketing and internet business folks that have newly (and by newly I mean in the past couple of years) discovered podcasting and are currently focusing very vocally on iTunes as THE way to get all the amazing benefits that come with podcasting, you know…expanding your reach, establishing yourself as an expert, creating super duper relationships with your audience, etc.

I will address iTunes SEO in another episode, which is certainly important.

I will share what I know, what I personally have experienced in these past 6 years as well as what I have researched, but it is NOT, and I am now capitalizing NOT the be all and end all of YOUR audience, nor the only reason that your podcast succeeds.

I am incredibly partial to podcasting as a medium both for personal expression and a business strategy. I believe that there is an x factor to the success of a podcast that makes it super challenging to measure by standard measurement guidelines, particularly those that have to do with download numbers. and other types of analytics.

I can't even begin to count how many times I have told a podcaster that is searching for concrete measurement standards of success that I've said "It depends."

Sharing the journey of The Feed, I'll let you in on some concrete numbers but also those things that are not quite measurable that are unique to us.

So let's get started by going back addressing that point that is often forgotten - What have we already got?

Or how did we or are we leveraging what we have to grow The Feed.

Leverage point number 1: Our company hosts media for podcasts, our clients are content creators, a large part which are exclusively podcasters SO in launching The Feed we didn't have to deal with one of the most challenging aspects of launching a podcast which was explaining what a podcast was

Just to be safe, I'll say that 99.9% of our optimal audience already knows what a podcast is and how to go about subscribing, listening, etc.

Remember, I'm talking about leveraging what we have not what we could have, which means reaching out potential content creators and budding podcasters.

So putting the fact that we are a podcasting company with Leverage point number 2, that we had an existing and consistent social media presence made it easy for us to reach out to our community, which is our target audience and THE reason that we are creating this podcast, and at least make them aware of our podcast.

In terms of our social media presence. We currently have 2183 twitter followers and 1347 FB likes. At any given time, in my guestimation when we post anything we'll be seen by about 10% of our connections.

I've also been slowly building little connections and relationships for over 3 years through our social media properties as well as our blog.

We don't have huge numbers in social media but we do have a core group that do engage with us at at minimum actively listen.

Leverage point number 3: Our reputation and superstars

Libsyn has been in the podcasting industry since November 2004. Our name inevitably comes up in podcasting conversation and for the most part we are mentioned in a positive light.

Our VP of Podcaster Relations, the guy that is in the trenches with podcasters and continues to be a podcast advocate Rob Walch has been podcasting since December 2004. His Podcast411 was the first podcast about podcasting.

So Libsyn's reputation as well as Rob's name also has a level of effect on whether people take an initial step into our podcast.

Notice that in those 3 Leverage points I did not mention iTunes.

Even with those leverage points that are pretty good wouldn't you think? It's not enough to tweet out once or even put up a FB post one time and expect a wave of subscribers.

I did my best to reach out to our audience via our social media channels in a way that offered value to those that chose to listen.

I made sure to capitalize on the topics that we were covering, tagged people that were mentioned, showcased people whose knowledge we shared by creating specific images that we could share via all our social media channels including new platforms such as Instagram.

I created a promo videos about our episode to support folks stumbling on our podcast, and we shared the episode in a variety of ways:

We linked directly to our MP3 file using our OnPublish feature for both Twitter + FB.

We linked to the libsyn podcast page, which is at thefeed.libsyn.com/podcast

We also linked straight to the episode show notes post

AND to our page in iTunes.

All of this has been done consistently and sporadically during the past 6 weeks.

And where has it got us?

The Feed stats as of July 25, 2013

We have had 447 downloads of episode 1.

We have had in 925 all time downloads of both of our episodes (as there is an episode 0) and get this, this is SUPER cool because this in no way is supported by iTunes OR even those that are subscribed to our podcast.

Out of those 925 download 99 of them are for the promos post that I did for our blog!

I quickly edited together the three promos that we had last episode into a small little file which I did not publish to The Feed's feed, but only to the libsyn blog page.

That's super cool! LOVE that. That means that almost 100 people have listened to those promos! sweet!

Adding podcaster clients to the mix, we did have the cool factor of being New and Noteworthy in iTunes as well as being featured on Stitcher. Which we are super thankful for and happy about :)

I'll continue to share the growth of the podcast, our tactics, plus how we are leveraging what we already have to continue to serve our community!