Podcasting Made Simple
Podcasting Made Simple is the premier podcast about podcasting! We’re here to help podcast guests and podcast hosts reach more listeners and grow their income so they can change more lives! Join Alex Sanfilippo and other podcasting industry experts as they share how you can level up on either side of the mic! (Show notes and resources: https://PodMatch.com/episodes)
Podcasting Made Simple
Podcasting's Future | Courtney Elmer, Joe Casabona, Vinnie Potestivo
Although podcasts have been around since 2003, in many ways, the podcasting industry is still in its infancy, and we're yet to understand what's coming next. Thankfully, there are signs of what's to come! In this episode, 3 leading experts in the podcasting industry, Courtney Elmer, Joe Casabona, and Vinnie Potestivo, explain their predictions for podcasting's future. Get ready to understand how to position yourself to maximize your impact in podcasting as a guest or host!
MORE FROM THIS EPISODE: HTTPS://PODMATCH.COM/EP/316
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to the State of Podcasting
02:15 Current Trends and Challenges in Podcasting
04:37 Strategies for Organic Discovery
08:22 Enhancing Recognition and Visibility
19:06 Building Systems and Automations for Success
24:20 Rapid Fire Insights for Podcasters
29:48 The Future of Podcasting
Takeaways
Podcasting is growing, but many podcasters quit early.
SEO is crucial for organic discovery of podcasts.
Consistency builds listener habits, not necessarily growth.
IMDB can enhance discoverability for podcasters.
Creating systems can save time and reduce stress.
Focus on the problems your podcast solves for listeners.
Engagement requires clear calls to action.
The future of podcasting will involve AI-generated content.
Authenticity and relatability will set podcasts apart.
Building a community is more important than just growing an audience.
MORE FROM THIS EPISODE: HTTPS://PODMATCH.COM/EP/316
You're listening to Podcasting Made Simple. Hey everyone, Alex Sanfilippo here with Podcasting Made Simple. I'm super excited to bring you the state of podcasting with three people today that are people that are in my corner, people that I love. They're all members of PodMatch Elite Mastermind. I have learned so much from these individuals and I'll have them introduce themselves in a moment, but I just want to mention when I was thinking about this state of podcasting we wanted to do, I was thinking like, what can we talk about that might be a unique perspective? And I thought of these three people specifically and together because they all have some similarities, but also very unique perspectives on podcasting and expertise. So I'm excited to bring everyone in here. I'm going to have them introduce themselves real quick here. So we've got Courtney, Vinny and Joe. I'm going go ahead and have them introduce themselves in that order. So Courtney, go ahead and introduce yourself real briefly here and we'll go to Vinny and Joe. Yes. Hello. Hello. I am Courtney Elmer. I am the CEO and founder of PodLaunch and we help business owners launch binge-worthy top podcasts. that actually drive real business growth and convert their listeners to clients. Hi, y'all doing on Vinny Pada Stievel, a multimedia advisor. I got my start in media in the late 90s and television magazines, podcasting in the early white two case and help businesses and brands break out. I specifically help leaders who run companies and those companies are thriving and actually looking to make change and excited to be here. Thanks for having us, Alex. My name is Joe Casabona. I am a podcast and automations coach that helps. busy solo pre-nur parents save 12 hours per week producing their podcast. Love it. You all got your intros dialed in. know, real quick, I want to say something. I was thinking about this. We've got San Filippo, Casabona, Podostivo and Elmer with us today. It was almost a full Italian takeover, Courtney's the glue that's holding us all together. So close. So close. That's right. Almost made it cut. Happy to be here, Ali. Thank you. no, it's great. Joe is right. You're the glue that's holding us all together today. So that way it doesn't get too out of hand here. So yeah, right. We're going to use analogies from our grandparents for the next 30 minutes. My mother's meatballs. My grandmother would die if she ever found out that I. So Courtney, when that happens, your job is to bring us back together today. All right. All right. So I'm going to have the three of you focus on the future of podcasting, kind of what you all are seeing in the industry. But real quick, I'm going give a little bit of background and kind of like the current state today where podcasting is at. Industry buzz is at an all time high from just it being mentioned in other mediums, other places. Listenership is climbing at a very rapid rate. Podcaster health though, interestingly enough, is very low just because there's still a very high churn rate in podcasting, simply meaning guests and hosts, they both seem to leave. some of them as soon as they get started, right? But to me, there's an opportunity there. That means if you're someone who's willing to stick with podcasting and do things the right way, there's a lot of opportunity. I'd say more than there has ever been. And again, because some people leave podcasting, like, it's kind of getting saturated. There's a lot of them, but really there's still less than 400,000 active shows. And when you think about the amount of people that are coming in and listening to podcasting, there is a huge gap there. And I don't want to go too deep into all the data today, but if you go to podmatch.com forward slash report, You can see the actual data about all this, like kind of the numbers and show you a lot of this stuff. What I want to get into today with these three is this idea of success leaves clues. And I'm telling you, these three have done so well in podcasting and they really are people that are becoming icons in this space. I want to find out what we can learn from them, right? What is it that we can take away? So I encourage everybody who's checking this out, please take notes, make sure that you're really thinking about what can I learn from this? So with that said, that's kind of where we're at with podcasting. It's growing, it's doing well. people aren't really sticking with it, which again, means there's opportunity if you're someone saying, I'm gonna commit to this thing and I'm hoping today we'll be able to help you with that. And so I wanna get straight into my first question here today and this is for Courtney. Courtney, with some people getting into podcasting, I think the first reason they leave is they have an expectation that doesn't get met, which is typically around the fact that someone's going to find my podcast, right? I'm gonna launch it, I'm gonna put it out there and then it's going to be discovered. Now, some people are like, I want a million people to listen to it in the first week and it's like, okay. Not much you can do for that unless you've already got some celebrity around your name. But for someone who's like, man, I just wanted somebody to listen and it's just not happening. What can people do to get their podcast organically discovered? Keeping in mind, Courtney, you know this and everyone here knows this, that the number one way people find podcasts is through search. They're looking for it, right? And then keeping in mind, we're talking to guests and host Courtney is a long question, I'm sorry. We want to make sure we keep guests in mind. Like how can they benefit from this as well? What should they be looking for? So. Again, people getting into podcasting, how can they really position themselves for organic discovery? I got it. I'm trying to make a name for myself with all the Italians here in the room. But this is such a good question, Alex, because I feel like so many of us have had that experience of putting all of our expertise, all of our content into episodes that we're so excited to share with the world. And then we're like refreshing our analytics dashboard, looking at the numbers and feeling really depressed, feeling really hard on ourselves, really down on ourselves and feeling like, this podcast worth continuing? Should I throw in the towel? Is this? going to be an uphill battle for the life of my podcast. And that can be a really discouraging place to be. But I want to encourage you that it is easier to get found than maybe you know. So a lot of the industry standard through the years has been, well, you got to be consistent. You got to put out content every week. Don't quit. Keep going. And I think a lot of what has happened is that we begin to believe that consistency actually equals growth. Consistency does not equal growth. Because if that were true, then everyone who's been really releasing an episode for a year or more would be in the top 100. We'd all have top podcasts and we all know that's not the case. What consistency does is it builds a listener habit. What that does is it allows listeners to get in the habit of listening to you, to keep coming back. And that is how we can begin to grow an audience. What a lot of people don't understand is that there's a difference between traffic and audience. Traffic are the people out there in the ether that we need to get our show in front of to bring them into our world, to convert them to loyal listeners and then to keep them. So I like to separate this idea of like, okay, let's be consistent with our podcasts from let's actually get discovered. And what does that look like? So to your question, Alex, you know, one of the easiest things is to make sure that you're optimizing your show for SEO. Now, I know I say that in a lot of people's eyes roll, because they're like, that sounds techie, that sounds complicated. I don't know how to do that. But it's very simple. What keywords do you think your listener would be searching for to find a show like yours? Go type those keywords into Apple. Go type them into Spotify. Go look at your competitors in the space and ask chat GPT, take their description, put it in the chat GPT and say, chat GPT, what keywords can you pull from this description? Pull 10 high, high ranking, high relevant keywords from this just to kind of give you an idea of some of those hot button words or phrases that listeners like yours might be looking for. and then begin to build a keyword strategy for your podcast. There's a lot of detail we can go into with that, but quite simply, we need to get you found. We need to get you in the feeds of more and more listeners who need to hear a show like yours. So be thinking about that. What are they naturally searching for? And make sure you are plugging that into your podcast description, your podcast name, if possible, definitely your episode titles and your episode descriptions as well. Because this way, even when you're not ranking on the charts, even when people might not be talking about you yet because your brand new podcast and that word of mouth is not spreading yet. Well, at least the people who are looking for a show like yours, you increase the chance of them finding you. That's great, Courtney. Thank you. So good. Hey, for anyone who's like, man, I like this idea. I know I need to do this. Courtney had a previous episode of podcasting made simple. If you go to podmatch.com forward slash EP forward slash two five eight title, how to utilize podcast titles and descriptions to increase your podcast downloads. I highly, highly encourage you to go check that out as some additional resource there. So Courtney, thank you for that again. Vinny, I want to jump to you now. Thinking about this discoverability, this whole topic here from an organic perspective, I also want to jump into some other ways that we can gain recognition for our podcasting efforts, again, either as a host or a guest, because I think there's opportunity on both ways to really do some things that make you stand out and make people say, wow, they're really doing something. And this is from your background, like you shared the beginning. You've got a media background. You've done some incredible things. You bring a really unique perspective to this. So I'm just going to open it up and kind of. have you just share some ideas here on what we can do to get that recognition that we really want and it can help us feel like, hey, we keep on doing this. We're doing well. Yeah, right. That like not that we're entitled to anything in this life, but that we're capable of grabbing and owning ourself that like with a little bit of self-determination, we can actually control the outcome or or the impact of that outcome. I completely agree with you, Courtney. I'm like love hearing you talk about discoverability. So many people focus on making better episodes, better guests. better this better that and it truly is about discover ability for me it's always been who not how and to by way to build on what Courtney even said even down to SEO because SEO and search and it's all just about that discover ability piece as as a guest one of the things I do and I love doing this on pod match.com is I'll actually recommend so I know I don't get control over final edit of any episode I've ever been on as a guest but I'll recommend a couple of titles. And those titles have strong keywords built into them. I'm trying to avoid things like ex MTV executive, ex television executive, know, former Viacom, Bravo, you know, whatever those sort of past tense titles are. Because to your point, I think that one of the reasons why people come and go is because the impact of what we report lasts a long time. And SEO is one of those ways that we're going to be able to be discovered now and in the future. And it's a little bit of self-determination. You know, like this is one of my favorite hacks, tricks, open access points to the public that anybody with a computer would be able to have access to put their information on IMDB. IMDB is owned by Amazon and Amazon has a relationship with Google. And when Google searches the web and crawls the web, there's a high domain authority for websites owned by Amazon. So it's a data point that Google trusts. So the more I trust this source, I'm going to talk about what I find on this source and on IMDB, which is the place where intellectual property goes, movies, films. know that mostly for like celebrities, actors, directors, they want to see who's in what film coming up. Podcast is a form of intellectual property and IMDB allows us as podcasters, as hosts or as podcast owners to give credit to people in a digital way, in a syntax way, in an explicit way that tells Google, which feeds to Gemini, which tells Bing, which feeds to chat, GPT, explicit information on who's attached to these episodes, as opposed to the implicit, the implied way that I think most of us do it through social media. We hope people remember who our guests are because we made a comment about it in social media. We hope you remember who the total body of guests are. There's an implied guest body there because we're talking about it in the social ether, so we hope that. somehow you remember it and that that memory is implied in the brand building part, but that explicit part, that ability to tell the system who you are, where you are, who you're doing it with, it's phenomenal. And this is something that anyone can do as long as one episode of your podcast has aired. So it's not about talking about the future tense of podcasting and content that's coming because we all know there's a lot more ideas in our head that are soon to be out there, but it's actual content produced. And what an awesome way it is when you win awards to make a data point that Google recognizes as an actual contextual data point that brings people to your brand because of a data point that you provided as opposed to the implied version, which we might do on social media or maybe put out a press release and hope people remember and hope people search and find. It's that self-determination piece that I really think matters. now the state of podcasting now, our industry now, AI around us now, public media around us now, what a powerful opportunity for us to be able to make content, i.e. podcasts, that we can own and publish in America. Because as I said, I do come from television. Usually you sell your soda to the network, they own it, they get final edit, they have an advertising regime, they have their own agenda that they have to book on it. There's no purer way right now to create your own success, literally create your own success. in branding and in reach and in discoverability than through podcasts. And hosts, my SEO tip for hosts, to be honest, I'm not telling you to change the name of your podcast, so don't go changing the name of your podcast in your intros. I do strongly recommend putting your name in the title, the H1 header title of your podcast so that your podcast title and your name are two data points that are aligned. And again, this is because Google amplifies the information that it trusts and it trusts H1 header one, top form information. These are the things that are crawled both by LinkedIn, Google, and it's a great way to be discovered for anybody with any budget, because it doesn't cost a single penny to do that. It's just self-determination, knowing who you are and how you can leverage the space that you create to create data points that come back to you now. It's a little geeky for the world that I come from, because it's a very emotional discovery world that I come from in TV, but this is how we don't get lost. in the field is by claiming our data points and by creating data points that matter. Vinny, I really like the idea of using IMDB as kind of like the hub for this because it is a free way to do it. The first way I discovered IMDB was one of my past podcast guests was on there, added my podcast as something that was like a content that was produced or part of. And I was like, what is this? And it sort of became like the top ranked episode, everything, like right away. It's powerful. And like you said, everything else you go out and do can be reflected there. You mentioned Awards and and real quick a quick call out to that if you go to pod match.com forward slash EP forward slash 316 Vinny has a great list of awards worth winning that they put together So thank you for that Vinny and so anyone who wants that you can go there and grab that I'll have one more episode called out for Joe as well So everyone stay with us. It'd be something else But Vinny one more thing just some other like creative ideas really faster Like you told me to become a LinkedIn top podcasting voice. You showed me how to do that really easily Yeah, you showed me how to get featured news how to apply for different awards that are worth winning, which I just shared that. But doing all these things, does it take too much effort to do or why would somebody really say, okay, I'm gonna go out and try to do all these things or do they need more direction than that? If you can just share a little bit more about this idea of press. I'm gonna actually share a little bit of my own podcast strategy, because this will answer it too. And there's this adage of if the tree falls in the woods and no one's around to hear it, how does it make a sound? not, how big does the tree have to be for someone to hear it? I think that the easiest way to continue to grow, continue to, first and foremost, I think the easiest way to continue to grow is to look in the smaller, the smaller in the detail. People don't go to the movies because they love seeing the movie. They've seen the trailer. They've maybe seen four five different versions of the trailer. There's a much smaller piece to that. And those trailers have syndication. Those trailers have distribution. One of the things I might say to a podcaster who's coming out with a podcaster is to create a 15 or 30 second podcast trailer. You know, podcasters, maybe I bet someone who's listening to this right now knows somebody, if not themselves, who actually owns a podcast, which means that they have final cut approval. They have the ability to drop in an ad. They have the ability to shout out a friend. They have the ability to support a conversation or create a conversation. It's the power is just tremendous in podcasting. There's no other medium that does that. So I look in the devil in the detail. I would look for smaller ways to get my content out there instead of trying to get my. 30 minute or 60 minute show on a major network. I'm having more success getting 60 second and 90 second clips of my podcast content. So I'm not putting my content on YouTube that I create for my podcast because I'm monetizing my podcast in a different way. I am starting to create my own original content for YouTube, which is more social content than repurposed podcast content in the social space. I'm sensitive about, you know, the the putting, know, just re-gift wrapping our podcast episodes and like pretending they're like some amazing piece of social media content when in fact they're really promo material for people to listen to our episodes and the best forms of content that I'm seeing, especially on LinkedIn. And I guess, you know, I would recommend, I recommend it you to get the LinkedIn Top Voice podcast. I pick a platform. I like LinkedIn for the sake of transparency, authenticity. verification. know who I'm talking to and I know who they've actually worked with. There's social accountability. I'm also looking for money in the podcast space. That's a pretty new job position. Chances are that position was posted in the lingo ecosystem and chances are the person who sits in that seat now has a resume or a profile on LinkedIn or someone in their, in their company does. So I know that there's an access point that I have to that company and that person through LinkedIn. And I just look for, I think, To answer the question, ultimately, I look for fascinating ways to make us stand out. I take a list of our values and our goals and who we are, and I look at the public ether, the expectations, what people think we're capable of versus what we can actually create ourselves, what we could do versus what we should do. And I saw that as an awesome opportunity for someone that I look up to as a leader and podcasting to literally claim that that title because I was rooting for you out of the gate on that one again because I'm fascinated by this world that you've created for us. It's people. It's not steps or anything like that. It's people. It's the one thing that's consistent in my 30 plus years of being in media. It's a lot of the same people were working in different mediums and we work on different types of shows and we work on different formats of content and distribute media in a very different way now than we did before, but it's still people. And having those relationships with people as this industry expands is going to bring you into more unique opportunities as those opportunities come up as well. But think small, think smaller. Instead of trying to grow an audience, you know, I try to grow, I say, I say think smaller. Audiences are small. Like communities are giant. I focus on my community at all times so that I can identify my audiences. I don't try to build my audience and then throw them together and build a larger community. So, and I do that by thinking small and there's little pieces that. that. That's great Vinny. Thank you for all that. It's like your perspective is always like helped me so much in podcasting. So I appreciate you sharing all that. This is like a side note here but I can't get out of my head now. Has anyone ever seen SNL? Probably. You all remember What's Up with That? That show they had on it? Like I almost want to skip Joe and be like well we're out of time. Right. But if you didn't get the reference go look up What's Up with That SNL. It's five minutes. It'll make you laugh. But they skipped the last guess like well we're out of time. It's always the same guess on every time they do it. But anyway Joe we're not going to do that today. I actually want to shift gears a little bit here. What Courtney shared helps you get discovered. What Vinny shared helps you, one, stay motivated to find your tribe, to really serve people well and to stand out. It still doesn't seem to always be enough. If we look at the data, again, going back to that report I talked about earlier, only 7 % of people make it to 100 episodes, which episodes don't necessarily mean you're going to succeed, as Courtney said, but there is, you know, it's rare to see like a top rated podcast with four episodes. Typically they have a little bit more than that, right? But people just don't make it that far. And I want you to talk about this idea of building systems and automations that really serve the creator so they can make it a long-term frictionless part of their life. Yeah, absolutely. And first of all, I'm glad you didn't Lindsay Buckingham me because that is the person who is by Bill really knew it. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, first of all, putting systems in place will give you the space to do everything that Courtney and Vinny have talked about. Right. because you won't be in the thick of it all the time going, man, it's Monday. I need to get an episode out Tuesday. I'm just going to throw something together. that the important part of a system is giving you a bird's eye view of everything you're doing for your podcast, everything that you need to do for your podcast and being able to stay on top of it. And inherent in that system is the ability to automate things, to take them off your plate. and to delegate things to take them off your plate. So I have a system in Notion, but really Notion is just kind of like the centerpiece where I can use automation to send stuff to Notion and I can give my VA access to Notion so that she can publish my episode. So that when it's all said and done, all I'm really doing is recording the interview and recording the intro and then someone else or something else. is doing everything else. the quick framework that I would have you, dear listener, walk through is I call it the PER framework and it's perform, evaluate, remove. When you do something for your podcast or to appear on podcasts, look at what you do, write it down. Just make a list of every task involved in performing that action, right? Or every subtask in performing that action. Then evaluate for each of those subtasks, say, do I need to do this? Does it require my specific set of skills? Spoiler alert, most of the time the answer is going to be no. If the answer is no, say, can some other tool do it for me? Can ChatGPT do it for me? Can Zapier do it for me? If you don't think, and the way that you figure that out is, are the inputs always the same? Are the outputs always the same? So, good example, a scheduler, right? You have a scheduling link with Calendly. The inputs are always gonna be the same. Name, email, scheduling time. The outputs are always gonna be the same. A calendar link with important information and then a reminder email. A robot can do that, right? So that's how you figure out if it can be automated. If it can't be automated, ask yourself, can another person do this? And this is where you would delegate because it's not always the same exact inputs. Maybe the outcome might be different depending on the type of task or the type of information coming in. So once you evaluate anything that you personally don't have to do, remove it. And I'm telling you, you can save six, 10, 12 hours per week automating and delegating. And I know that because I do it. Someone asked me, how do you run three podcasts and have three kids? and by the way, have like a business and actually spend time with your family and are the PTA president for your kids' And it's because I have these systems in place that create space in my life. So I'm not always feeling like I'm behind the eight ball with my podcast. Joe, I love this. And to me, I'm like, I'm a passionate like automator or someone who is just trying to find systems for things. And here's, here's a something for everyone to check this out. Like I said, successfully clues. The only thing that the four of us have in common here today is that we all have systems and automations and what we do. If you look at what we do, it's completely different. All of our brands, all of our podcasts, everything we do is a different approach. But the one thing I can say we all have in common is there are systems and automations helping in the background. Success leaves clues and Joe, that's so helpful. For anyone who's like, hey, I want a deeper dive on what Joe just shared. I promised a link earlier, podmatch.com forward slash EP slash two nine five is where you can learn more about that. It's about how to reclaim 12 hours of your time from podcasting. If you're a host, it'll be 12 hours, you're a guest. I don't know if it'll be 12, but it'll still be really substantial. So I encourage you to go check that out. And so for sake of time here, I want to do like a quick, two quick rapid fire questions. The first one is, For anyone who wants to answer it, we can kind of go in the same order if we'd like, or if you just, hey, want to skip and then just indicate that, because we want to go pretty quick on these last two things here. But if you have one thing that you want to tell podcast guests and hosts that will help them reach their podcasting goals faster and more accurately, what would that one quick thing be? SEO. SEO, but even bigger than SEO. I'll back that out a bit. Broaden the lens is getting clear on the problems that you solve with your podcast. or if you're a guest, the problems that you will solve for that host's audience and also the unmet desires that that audience has, which is why they listen to that podcast to begin with. We all have unmet desires. We're human beings. There are things we want to do and achieve that we have not done and achieved yet. And so knowing with clarity what those are, if you're a host, to be able to communicate your content in a way that helps your listeners solve those problems. or as a guest who position your expertise in a way that helps listeners on the podcast that you guessed on solve those problems is gonna help dramatically increase the trust that listeners have in you. And that trust is a prerequisite for conversions. No matter where it is that you're sending podcast listeners, whether you're growing an email list, whether you are a business owner and you're trying to get them into your programs, or whether you are simply trying to grow your audience and entertain sponsors and advertisers for your show, that trust is so key. That's great. Vinny, you got something? mean, of course. mean, thank you for the opportunity. Thank you for giving me permission to even get to give an answer, by the way. And that's one of my first points. I want to call out to get the hosts, to get the guests, to call the listener to action. Get them to do something. Get them to share it. Get them to take action. Get them to continue the conversation. Get them to contradict the conversation. Look. A little bit of negative discourse out in the world creates gigantic opportunity and really great things come from hard conversations. So I want to lean on the power of persuasion here. Two things, one, permission, which you just saw me as an example give here. Like I literally was given permission to get to give an answer. What an awesome way to cue somebody, i.e. me, to take action, to give an answer, to get out there and give a piece of their mind based on education and experience. Permission is a powerful form. of persuasion. I give you permission to go and be the best podcast guest. I give you permission to go and quote me on this. Mandy Moore told me the input dictates the output. I give you permission to write that down right now. I'm giving you permission to take action and hopefully you see how persuasive that feels. The other side of permission is suggestion and I suggest you take action. I suggest you do the things that you can do, not the things that you should do. the things that you're capable of doing. I suggest that you create content for yourself because let's be honest, we are our own audience. We need our voices out there more than to try to understand or predict or tap into somebody who isn't us at a time that we have no control over. Because if we're trying to make content for audiences, time changes, people change, that is just like a recipe for disaster in terms of like the long form benefits. Power of persuasion, permission. and suggestion. suggest you take action. I give you permission to do it. Alex, thank you for giving me both. That was great. Real good. Thanks, Joe. What do you got? You want to follow that up? Not really. No, I feel like Vinny is trying to get me to blush because he knows that Mandy Moore was my I had a huge crush on her growing up. So but my I was going to say something around call to action as well. But now I'm going to challenge you because you need time to think about your good call to action to do your SEO. take one thing off of your plate in the next week. If you are a podcaster, how can you make it easier to send an email to your guest? Or how can you make it easier to do a little research maybe by sending the name of your guest to chat GPT and having it create some questions for you that you need to review, obviously? Or how can you upload something to Dropbox to automatically send it to your editor? Think about that. If you're a guest, Here's what I want you to do. Make a list of all the podcasts that you want to go on, put them in a Google Sheet or a Notion document, and then create a status. I've been on it. I haven't. It's going to be released. It's released. And then think about the call to action to each of those. If it's a podcast, mention your podcast. If it's a PDF, think about creating a custom landing page just for listeners of that podcast. I always do this. If people want to learn more about me, they can go to my website slash the name of the host to get a free resource based on what I talked about. And the only reason I could keep that straight in my head is because I have a Notion database. This is the URL. This is the resource I promised. This is when it needs to be done by. Do something like that and you will see your community grow and your audience get better. That's great. Super insightful from all three of you. I appreciate that. All right. Last question here. And this one again will be another really quick one. Just a quick insight into the future of podcasting from each of you have a very unique perspective on podcasting given what you do and how you show up and serve in the space. So just really brief, really fast. Like, where do you see this thing going? Courtney, we'll start with you. Yeah, I think, you know, it's interesting, Alex, we're to see it get more competitive, which might at first sound like, doom and gloom, you know, but no, I think I see it as more opportunity for you to shine. in the work that you do and to really stand out from others who are doing something similar to you, to really challenge yourself, to position your expertise in a way that people understand that's different from others who are in your niche and teaching something similar. You know, about a year ago, there were about five to six, maybe five to seven podcasts on podcasting that were like really good, really strong, really active, each one of us kind of with our own unique voice and unique take on the industry. Now, Literally yesterday I did a search, there are over 25 podcasts on podcasting, most of them very active, growing, some of them brand new, and a lot of them are talking about similar things. So as the space does become more crowded, it gives us as creators the opportunity to continue sharpening our saw, to continue getting better at what we do, and to continue getting better at communicating why someone might need our help over maybe someone else. that you are quote unquote competing with, right? Because ultimately in a perfect world, we'd all be collaborating with each other. But I think it's a lot of opportunity there for us to really rise to the occasion, communicate your expertise and shine as the leader, as the thought leader that you are. Look, I don't mean to be an alarmist. I'm coming from television. I'm coming from music. I'm coming from magazine. I've seen content industries get slashed in half and then quartered and then minced. Podcasting is a really unique form of content. It's a really unique industry as well. There aren't many forms of content that span and are as applicable to as many industries as possible. I come from reality TV. You might think there's a lot of reality TV shows. There's certainly a lot of procedural shows. We see health processes happening. We see houses being bought. see relationships changing. No one's saying there's too many shows out there because They don't own those shows. We own these podcasts space. The thing that makes us more unique than any of those platforms, any of those verticals, any of those content types that I talked about is you. It's literally you. You are what makes this conversation different. And by not being aligned to a publicly traded company that has advertising relationships and political relationships and MO and goals and opportunities to create the world that they see. teams bit and fit best for them based on the advertising model of television. We have something really unique to offer in media right now as indie podcasters who own our own content and can still get that content out in the daylight. Create what you can, not what you should. What you should is support the conversations that are existing. What you can is change the world. Can I predict the future? No, but I can guarantee you that we can make it happen. We didn't talk about this beforehand, but I have a piece of advice in the similar vein. I saw a LinkedIn post from a friend who said he gave a one hour talk, fed, you know, had it transcribed, fed the transcript into Google, LM or whatever. And then it produced a six minute summary podcast episode. And I said, you could have just recorded a six minute episode summarizing your talk. You could have done a shorter talk. Right. And the point is, you know, Courtney is telling us we can stand out and be unique. Vinny is saying create content for us, the content that we can create. I talked a lot about robots doing tasks for us, but the one task we should never outsource is what makes us human. Is creating relatable content where we can connect to our community and our audience. So the future of podcasting will be filled with AI generated conversations and maybe they sound real and maybe it's really good at communicating information, but they will never have all of our stories or our lived experience. They'll never create the connection that we as people can create with other people. And so as we move into this future of podcasting where episodes are going to be commoditized by robots, We can stand out by making sure we keep our episodes human and relatable. Joe, that is a great way for us to end today. So thank you for that. That's amazing. This was, I learned a lot from this conversation. I had a blast. So I just want to say again, Courtney, Vinny, Joe, thank you so, much for the time and for being with us today. For more episodes, please visit podmatch.com forward slash episodes. Thank you so much for listening. Hey, Alex here. I want to give you a gift as a way of saying thank you for staying around until the end of this episode. I put together a list of five things that you can read in less than five minutes that will help you level up as a podcast host, guest, or agency. To see the five things with no email address required, please visit podmatch.com forward slash free. Thanks again for listening. I hope these five things serve you well.
