Becky Mollenkamp (00:00)
Now and like you two have slides, or are you just gonna okay?

Arielle Nissenblatt (00:04)
We sure do.

Becky Mollenkamp (00:05)
Well, let me spotlight. Hold on, both of you. Add a spotlight. Okay, I'm gonna spotlight the two of you. great. I have a feeling your slides will probably cover who you are. So I'm not gonna go into a great deal of introduction other than to say you're both awesome. Some of you may have found your way here through Ariel's recent challenge that you did, the 30-day challenge you did. I don't I guess it's been maybe two months now since it's actually been over or a month.

but that was such a great offer that you had. And still the Slack space has people communicating. If you're not a part of it, maybe Ariel can show share the links for that too. and then Lauren was actually introduced to me a while back by Anna Deshaun, who spoke yesterday and runs Tink Media. And I'm sure you'll also share some stuff because there's great resources on both of your websites for specifically around marketing. So I'm gonna turn it over to y'all and

How do you want to handle questions? Do you want to monitor chat? Do you want me to? Do you want to do them as they come up or at the end?

Arielle Nissenblatt (01:02)
I think because it's two of us, we can probably have them as as they come. And then if something is really, really poignant for that moment, we'll interrupt each other and answer it. But also we'll interrupt each other in general. Go ahead.

Lauren Passell (01:17)
These are excited.

Arielle Nissenblatt (01:19)
Yeah. One time we got yelled at because we interrupted each other on a client call, like somebody hired us to

Do a podcast audit. Do you remember this? It was really traumatic for a while and then we turned it around and made it a positive.

Lauren Passell (01:33)
And now we're overcompensating by telling everyone, We're not fighting, we love each other.

Becky Mollenkamp (01:38)
Well, I don't think any of us thought you were gonna be like, I feel like we know. We know. all right, well I'm gonna hand it over to you, whoever's in charge, you guys you take off now. Thank you.

Arielle Nissenblatt (01:47)
Can everybody see the screen?

Lauren Passell (01:49)
There you go. You're already doing it.

Arielle Nissenblatt (01:51)
She's doing it. Okay, awesome. Well, we're here today to talk about how to be heard in this noisy world. And we're gonna do it through the lens of our favorite podcast marketing tips. Lauren, can you imagine if we were presenting this vibe for the first time? Thank God we've been talking about this for a really long time. Lauren, what is your background?

Lauren Passell (02:14)
I founded a company called Tync Media, which is, if you forget, it's named after Tinkerbell. It's a podcast growth company that does PR marketing. And then I also, before even that, I started writing podcast newsletter, which is a podcast recommendation newsletter. And I should also say, for all of you, we have a newsletter called Podcast Marketing Magic, which is all about growth. And I don't write it all the time anymore. My team writes it a lot of the times. And so I get it like any normal person on a Friday morning. I open it up and I'm like, dang, this is good, you guys. Like,

We just don't gatekeep anything. We share everything we're doing at tank with and are fully transparent about it. So I think it's a really good resource that I'm not just saying that it

Arielle Nissenblatt (02:54)
I would have said it if you didn't say it. my name's Arielle. I am a podcast person. I'm really trying to figure out how to say this, but each time I stumble and then I say that, a version of that. What that means is I listen to a lot of podcasts. Lauren and I both listen to a lot of podcasts, which is why together we write a newsletter called Podcasts We Text About, because we also talk stuff text about the podcast that we listen to.

I also write a newsletter called Earbuds, which is a podcast recommendation newsletter that many of you are subscribed to and have submitted your shows to. So thank you for doing that. And I run a lot of learning and networking events for podcasters and people that make things on the internet, digital creator types. And I also do marketing and business development at a company called IntroCast. That is the gist of who we are. We will get into some more specifics as we go.

And here's the agenda. Lauren, would you like to tell us the agenda?

Lauren Passell (03:54)
Yeah. I mean, we have come up with a lot of tips in our lives. There's a lot of different things we could talk about. We've made a list of more than 100 at this point, but we went through our list and picked our favorites. And since we don't have five hours, Becky did not give us five hours. We requested five hours. But we picked our favorites and we're gonna kind of go back and forth and yes and each other or debate each other on our favorite tips.

Arielle Nissenblatt (04:21)
And then at the end, we will make it practical by giving you some takeaways because we're gonna tell you a whole bunch of things. They some of the things might be right for you at the stage you're at right now, some might not be right for you at the stage you're at right now. We will try to ground you and and give you a sense of what's worth testing now and and what might be worthwhile down the line again, depending on where you're at, which is why it's helpful for you to in the chat let us know the stage you're at right now, what your goals are.

What brings you here today? What are you hoping to learn? I imagine a lot of the pain points are I want to grow my podcast. I want to grow my podcast. I want to grow my podcast. I want to monetize my podcast, maybe. Throw those things into the chat, let us know. it looks like somebody is having trouble seeing the screen. I just want to make sure that it is visible for everybody. And we will move on.

I think it might be you gotta click the tab situation.

Becky Mollenkamp (05:20)
Okay. Yeah, okay.

Arielle Nissenblatt (05:21)
Everybody's got it. Ready, Lauren?

Lauren Passell (05:23)
Yes. And to quickly answer Stephanie's question, you can definitely pitch our newsletters, just check them out. Check them out and you can see how.

Arielle Nissenblatt (05:30)
Tip number one, Lauren, do you gonna cover this one? You start, I'll go to the next one kinda thing.

Lauren Passell (05:35)
Yeah, sounds good. Wait, no, I can't screen. No.

Arielle Nissenblatt (05:40)
The first one says be a podcast consumer.

Becky Mollenkamp (05:42)
Yeah,

we're not seeing these slides, huh?

Arielle Nissenblatt (05:45)
What slides are you seeing?

Lauren Passell (05:49)
I guess I assume that would change.

Arielle Nissenblatt (05:51)
That's

the wrong thing.

Becky Mollenkamp (05:52)
I guess that so that is what we were seeing, just not the slides. Okay.

Arielle Nissenblatt (05:55)
Okay, interesting.

Lauren Passell (06:01)
There we

Arielle Nissenblatt (06:03)
Yes,

Becky Mollenkamp (06:04)
But it's

Arielle Nissenblatt (06:04)
it is.

Here is what I want to show you that you missed. A really cute present slide presentered situation. Then this was our names. And then here's the agenda. And then here's where we're at right now. Lauren, would you like to kick us off?

Lauren Passell (06:19)
I would love that. tip number one, video podcast consumer. I can't tell you how many times we talk to people that don't listen to podcasts. And Ariel and I got into this industry because we were consumers first. And I think you have to really be able to listen to understand how to pitch yourself to other podcasts, how a producer thinks, how a how what what what trends are happening, what sounds good, what you like. You know, so there's a lot of people.

That we work with that say I don't have time or I don't listen because I'm listening to stuff for work all the time, but we think it's hugely important.

Arielle Nissenblatt (06:54)
I will yes and that and just say if you need a specific to-do on this, go to your podcast category on Apple and Spotify. Choose a show that's trending and then choose a show that is absolutely not trending, something more towards the end of the list, or or search your keywords and try to find a show that is maybe playing in your arena but is slightly different and just try to get a sense of what they're doing, check in on them semi-regularly, and you know, build build

your own identity based on those shows or based away from those shows.

Tip number two, subscribe to podcast industry and recommendation newsletters. I know a lot of you in this group are already subscribed to a lot of these newsletters. We also just told you to subscribe to our newsletters. We're talking about those, sure, but we're also talking in this situation about podcast industry newsletters like Pod News and Sounds Profitable, and even regularly checking in on websites like podcastingtoday.co.uk.

and podcast rec and podcast review and a whole bunch of other ones. And actually Lauren and I put together a big list of all of the podcast related newsletters that we could find in our newsletter. So if we can, we'll grab that link. Why do we recommend reading and subscribing to these, Lauren?

Lauren Passell (08:16)
well, pitching is important. There's not a lot of people that other than me, Ariel, that write about podcasts so much. There's I don't think there's enough places. And not only are you just becoming a wise person in the space and a good community member by reading and subscribing to these and supporting people that do, you're figuring out how to pitch yourself because you really have to read them first to understand how to pitch them. You have to read them.

See, I always say this. If you read my newsletter enough, you know that I'm absolutely going to write about something that talks about cruises or Disney World or the historical Jesus or the Donner Party. Absolutely. If you have an episode about that, you know you should pitch it to me. I get those emails all the time. And so no understanding, like there's a newsletter called Pod the North that's about Canadian podcasts. You shouldn't pitch that person. You should still read it. It's good to know what's out there and what you could cross-promote with.

But you shouldn't pet yourself if it's you're not a Canadian podcaster.

Arielle Nissenblatt (09:20)
And I I'm always surprised at I I'm not paid to say this, but James Cridlin's newsletter is essential reading, podnews.net. I read it every morning. Even if I don't read it, I skim it. I just try to make sure that I'm up to date on sure the podcasts that are launching, but also the news. The you know, it'll they'll report on this company merged with this company, and here's why that matters for your podcast. All of that is very important. It'll give you a sense of

what's out there and if eventually you want to become a podcast producer and work with with clients or if you want to get a job in the podcast industry, being able to refer to the news that's out there will be hugely important and it'll just keep you informed.

Lauren Passell (10:06)
I just dropped the newsletter issue up with newsletters in it.

Arielle Nissenblatt (10:11)
Thank you. That is our huge list of as many podcast related publications as we could find. Of course, Becky's is in there. Lauren, number three, I know you love this one.

Lauren Passell (10:20)
For giving me this one, know your hook. I think you know, one thing that's nice about YouTube is that you can like make your page look how you want it to look and you can curate lists and stuff like that. If you send someone to your show for the first time, they're just gonna listen maybe to the lat most recent episode that might not be your best, that might not be representative. I would on hand have one or a few episodes where you're like, This is the best, this is the best I've done. This is the best example of the best I could do. And

Put it in your description, put it on your website, put it in your socials. I don't think I cannot believe people do this. Have it off the top of your head when you meet people. Start here. Even have a web page in your

Arielle Nissenblatt (10:59)
Yeah, Tim.

Lauren Passell (11:01)
okay. Yeah.

Arielle Nissenblatt (11:02)
Later on we'll get into a a specific on this. Yeah. She's like, I'm quiet now. I'm silent. Sorry.

Lauren Passell (11:10)
but know your know how to hook people in.

Arielle Nissenblatt (11:12)
Know how to hook people. what's your hook issue of podcast the newsletter? Do you have one?

Lauren Passell (11:18)
my gosh. No, because

Arielle Nissenblatt (11:20)
Sometimes

we don't take our own advice. I don't know mine either for my newsletter.

Lauren Passell (11:24)
I think no, because it's different every week. Really, my newsletter isn't very good. It's a reflection of your work, me. Like you're the podcasters. It's really up to you and your fellow podcasters so that I can do a good job. They're all pop out. I'll work.

Arielle Nissenblatt (11:37)
That's good. Can

I say I think I have a hook newsletter of Lauren's newsletter? You wrote an issue a few months ago about like frequently asked questions about your newsletter. That was the best thing ever. I mean, I love reading your recommendations too, but that was a really illuminating way to figure out what you like to cover, why you like to cover it and what you've learned over the years. So I recommend that piece.

Tip number four, before you even think about paid marketing, set aside some money to track your spending efforts. We're gonna go through some of these faster than others. This one, let us know in the chat what stage you're at if you have thought about paid marketing. so we'll know whether or not we should go in depth on this. But the most important piece to take away from this one is do not spend money without knowing what it's laddering up to. Really try to figure out how to treat your podcast like a business if you're gonna start spending money and know what.

one subscriber is worth? How much should you be paying in order to uplift your subscribership by, let's say 500 subscribers? How much should that cost? And how much will you make back if you are able to keep those subscribers for X amount of time? What's the lifetime value of those subscribers? There are some services out there that help you keep track, that help you track your spending efforts. There are some services out there that help you track different campaigns that you that you might embark on.

But for the most part, I think it's very important to realize if you are going to treat your business your podcast like a business, where are the dollars coming in from? Where are they going out to?

Lauren Passell (13:14)
Ariel, what is like a good amount of money, like a low low end? Like can you give a range and also how would you spend five thousand dollars?

Arielle Nissenblatt (13:23)
And also, how would you spend people who are in my Slack channel will know what I'm gonna say, which is it depends, but I will say for this case, let's say you have a podcast, let's say I have a podcast, I'll speak from from me about podcast trailers, and I do have a podcast about podcast trailers, and I was looking to grow it. I might spend a couple hundred dollars on a feed drop, getting a really great episode of my trailer park, the podcast, trailer, podcast.

show onto another podcast that might have bigger listenership related to media and creativity. I might spend a couple hundred dollars on that. I if I had five thousand dollars, I would probably spend some of it with a a service like IntroCast or like yeah feed drops, feed swaps, promo swaps, things like that, things that are a little bit

Harder to track at the beginning, but that will yield stickier subscribers in the long run. These are spending efforts that you definitely want to have tracking mechanisms in place. Do you wanna add anything to that?

Lauren Passell (14:31)
No, I don't want to spend too much time on it just to give people a sense of what that looks like, the cost effect, even if it's a hundred dollars or something. Anyway, but yeah.

Arielle Nissenblatt (14:40)
I I can break it down further. If you want to buy an ad in a newsletter, it might be cheaper. and it'll depend on which newsletter it is and how specific it is to your your category. I actually did write about this in my newsletter podcast plunge. I wrote how I would spend five thousand and ten thousand dollars. So I can grab that a little bit later on to answer your question more fully. Lauren, this one is

Has you written all over it? What do we mean by this?

Lauren Passell (15:10)
Thank you. I mean, I people hire me to do their marketing, but honestly, in a lot of ways, you might be the best person to do it. You so maybe think of it as a positive thing that it you're the one doing it. You know the stuff the best. And also I think I have found in a lot of pitching, it means a lot more coming from the the producer or the host or whatever like that. When I get those notes, it really means a lot. those.

Sometimes things can seem really like robotic coming from. We try to make them not like that at Tink. I'm just saying, you know what you have, you have the passion, you know the space better than anyone else, and you can write those heartfelt pitch letters that really lay up.

Anything to add to that, Ariel? No. Just

Arielle Nissenblatt (16:01)
Just

that I agree. Tip number six, podcast SEO is big. It has been big, but I feel this year more and more people have been talking about it. There are a lot of interesting tools that you can test out for checking in on your your podcast search engine optimization, where it's being featured, if it's being if if when people are searching for your keywords, if you're popping up, there are some tools that will help you with that.

Podwar is from OSHA, A-U-S-H-A.co. If you just search PodWars, you will find it. Pod SEO is really great too. I've used that one a lot. And I have I have a discount code if people are interested. I did not come here to say that and I don't get a kickback from it. But if you're interested in checking out Pod SEO, let me know. and then SEMrush is interesting because it's a little bit broader. It goes beyond podcast-specific search engine optimization.

But it will still help you and the principles still apply. The point here is when people are searching for your topic area, is your podcast coming up? Is your podcast named something that people search for? And if it's not, are you okay with that? What is the balance for you between your art and the the algorithm?

Lauren Passell (17:18)
I would just add, why are all companies so violent sounding?

Arielle Nissenblatt (17:24)
Pod wars. Pod spike. Lauren and I always make fun of this. There's like so any new company just adds pod or cast and then some violent word on either end of it.

Lauren Passell (17:35)
But it calm down.

Arielle Nissenblatt (17:39)
Tip number seven.

Lauren Passell (17:42)
Link your episodes together out loud, say on the show. If this resonated, go listen to episode X. This is kind of connected to my hook, which is what Ariel was saying. because once again, you cannot curate on the page, but you can curate on the show. And you can, you know, in the show notes and stuff like that. Say lead people to others so that they continue to go down the rabbit hole. And if if you have a website, you could do like website, website.

dot com slash start here. And then you could even create bundles and say, like if you had a, you know, a work podcast, you could say, or or like I'm thinking these podcasts, you could do different fandoms or different genres on your start here page. And then all you have to do is say on the show, if you don't know where to start, go to slash start here. And I have thought that out for you and I'll point you into the right direction. So you can get people down those rabbit holes so that they don't just listen to one episode, they listen again and again and again.

Shoot them further down the rabbit hole.

Arielle Nissenblatt (18:42)
Keep them coming. The piece that I want to add to this is I think it's very tempting to have a formula for your show. Your cold open, your intro, your interview, your recap, and then your outro. But I think if you have flexibility in place where some episodes you start with a cold open, sometimes you don't, sometimes you have no cold open at all. Sometimes you

you know, you have your call to action up top, sometimes you have it at the end. It can change around. And that also gives you the flexibility here to say, actually, this episode pairs really well with one that we featured a few weeks ago. We're gonna link to it in the show notes, but I wanna tell you a bit about it now and how it applies to this episode. And I think if you can outline your episodes, but not script for yourself fully, you'll have the ability to play around a little bit more with extra fun pieces like this.

Lauren Passell (19:38)
I mean, I because also that sticks out in people's heads too. If they are, you know, if there is a formula, it's reliable. I mean, like I'm raising a toddler right now. They like routines and so do listeners. And but it will stick out if you hear something a little new. But also I feel like most podcasters could there was one podcast that I used to listen to that would say at the beginning of every episode, Hey, I hope you caught the last episode with blah, blah, blah. I really enjoyed it.

It was hearkening back to just the previous one. And I almost I d I wasn't an always listener, but listening to that what I almost always listened to the last one because she talked up the last episode. So bring people in if they and also think of someone that's listening for the first time.

Arielle Nissenblatt (20:24)
This is a bit of a tangent, but Lauren and I listen to a a few podcasts together. one of them is called the Daily Zeitgeist. It's every day, twice a day, they put out an episode. It's comedy news. And they have been doing the negative version of this for a long time in the at the end of the episode in their trending episode, which is their afternoon episode. Lauren and I have been making fun of this for years because during the pandemic.

I want to say in 2020, they started saying at the end of it, do you know what I'm gonna say? At the end of the episode, I'm not gonna get it exactly right, but it's like, get your vaccines, get your get your flu shots, don't do nothing about white supremacy, and we'll talk to you tomorrow. Actually, I did get it exactly right because I've been hearing it like that. A lot of what they're saying is just wrote memorized at this point, and it almost like washes over you. And also don't do nothing about white supremacy. I think at the time was

like an inside joke and the double negative made sense with the inside joke. But now if you're hearing it for the first time, if you're a new listener, you're like, what does that mean?

Lauren Passell (21:30)
Yeah, it's like they committed to the bit a little too hard.

Arielle Nissenblatt (21:33)
Exactly. So it's like these things should be flexible. You should be moving them around a little bit. And it's just a little bit of a reminder to go through your outline every so often and be like, Do we need to say this anymore? 'Cause I think they should

Lauren Passell (21:46)
Survey you're well there's a slide about this, but surveys are good. Anyway. Surveys are good.

Arielle Nissenblatt (21:51)
Yeah, they never survey us, the daily zeitgeist. I would love to know. I would love to tell them some stuff. All right. Next up, revisit and optimize your existing episodes regularly. This is an SEO piece. If there is a topic out there that's trending related to your show, you can update your episode titles. You can episode the descriptions. Sorry, you can update the descriptions of the episodes and you can match how people are searching.

We wanna generally speaking, when we're searching, we're using natural language. When we're on Google, when we're on when we're on anywhere that we can type in a query, we're usually saying best restaurants in Brooklyn, not restaurants, Brooklyn, eat tonight. We're we're typing essentially a sentence or a fragment of a sentence. So same goes for if there is something that's trending, let's say with like a a reality TV franchise.

Maybe your podcast is about pop culture and maybe you've talked about that franchise in the past. Maybe retitling an episode or or a description might help people find it pop up a little bit more easy easily.

I think Jab.

Lauren Passell (23:00)
I agree.

Becky Mollenkamp (23:01)
Sorry, I rose my hand. I it raised my hand, but I didn't mean to. But I just want to say thank you for that. Like that tip. My I literally had a duh moment. Like amazing. Sorry, go on.

Arielle Nissenblatt (23:10)
Love that. Number nine, Lauren.

Lauren Passell (23:13)
Yes, prior to his vibe matches over genre matches. as I mentioned, Becky did not give us five hours, but if she only gave us one second, I would say to grow a podcast, borrow borrowing audience works. Period. Period. And it's funny because someone just asked me how podcast marketing and growth has changed over the seven years that I've been doing it. And like, I'm actually like, not as much as you would think. Borrowing audience has always worked. The tech has changed, the tools have changed.

We've gotten better at doing it and people are more open to doing it. So although sometimes it's growth can seem frustrating, it's like there's all these creative things you can do for cross promotion. And when I say cross promotion, I mean promo swaps, feed swaps, basically finding an audience match, which I call a podcast friend and saying what can I? So I have a client, I'm putting them on a podcast play date with their podcast friend, which means crossover audience. But crossover audience does not just mean a genre match.

It means a vibe match. That's equally important. If I pretended a politics podcast, I couldn't just go out to politics podcasts and say, do you want to do a promo swap with me? They're going to have different ethos and values and and sound. It is much more important. And also someone might already have enough politics podcasts. I think it's much more important to think about your avatar, who is your listener. They are gonna listen to cooking podcasts and a politics podcast and maybe a arts and crafts podcast, maybe a book podcast or something like that.

So that's more important.

Arielle Nissenblatt (24:44)
thinking about this a lot with I just helped a client launch a podcast called In the Zone Understanding Big Feelings for Kids. It's a toddler focused show that takes takes kids through different emotions and then how to regulate those emotions. And I reached out to a show that I listened to that I know has a lot of new mom listeners. And I said, Do you want to set up a promo swap? It's not immediately obvious. I had to do a little bit of

I had to explain a lot in my initial email of why I think this is a good match, but that's the kind of thing that converts well because there are people within that audience that are looking for something like this. It's not gonna be absolutely everyone, but there's going to be a portion of the people in there who are interested in all sorts of things and you might be able to offer them that thing.

Lauren Passell (25:32)
I would have a mixture of vibe matches and genre matches and see what works.

Arielle Nissenblatt (25:36)
Totally, totally. And yeah, over time you'll you'll be able to figure out what your special sauce is that tends to convert for you. You love this one. Go ahead.

Lauren Passell (25:47)
Thank you. okay, so when I get a show that I have to grow and it's season one, there's nothing on the feed yet. That's exciting. Apps are gonna want to feature it. I'm gonna want to write about it, whatever. There's like woohoo, like a celebration moment. It's a heavy PR campaign for me. there's editorial tons of editorial. Maybe I could pitch the client to the host or whatever to be on other podcasts. It feels like a big exciting moment.

But and that's great, but but there's no inventory on the feed. There's nothing to work with for cross promotion. So as exciting as it is to market a show that is just coming out the gate, it's so exciting. It limits what I can do with marketing. Because unless they have an enormous newsletter or enormous social media presence, I need for promo for cross promotion and for a borrowing audience and for marketing, you need to give something back to the person that is boosting you up.

There's nothing there yet, generally. So I've called season two. And this is the other thing I've been screaming my head off about. The find your hook. And season two is a new season one. Season two, season one, don't worry so much. find your footing, find your audience, get to know things, get get confident. Season two. Now you can.

Say season two, I'm here, I'm here. By the way, it's good to have go to seasons so that you can announce that you're here, you're back. It's exciting, exciting. But you also have inventory. So you can not only do the PR part, which is I'm back, I'm back. This is so exciting. I have a new cover art. This is the what it's about. This is how we've changed. And you can say, by the way, I can start doing cross promotion more.

Arielle Nissenblatt (27:27)
Love it.

Lauren Passell (27:28)
Can I make it happen? Okay, thank you.

Arielle Nissenblatt (27:31)
We did get a question that I wanna touch on now. How do you, Lauren, at your company, track Vive Match promo swaps or even trailer swaps or any sort of any sort of swaps that you do? How are you guys tracking?

Lauren Passell (27:44)
Well, it used to be a lot easier to track, but you know, we've lost some of the tools that we used to be able to have. But sometimes there are you can use tracking tools. but also sometimes it's just you can tell from the numbers what what's working. That's why it's good to also like if you want to test something, make sure you're not doing a zillion things at once so you can really track and see what what actually went to the growth. but I would

Rely on tracking codes or keeping in touch with the hosts of the other teams and scene if they notice anything, comments or anything like that.

Arielle Nissenblatt (28:23)
Yeah, some tools will if you're using a a service like IntroCast or Audience Lift or even Mopod, they will have tracking pixels in place that will help you attribute growth to one campaign or another. If you're working with other shows, some of them that have sophisticated backend systems might have those pixels as well and might be able to help you track. But for the most part, a lot of this is done by saying, Hey, it's been a month since the promo swap. Do you mind sharing how many downloads that episode got that

that we did our promo on and we'll do the same and we'll try to figure out if there was a a a migration from one to the other.

I love this one. Go for it. Be consistent with publishing, sure. But don't just publish because you think you have to feed the content machine. This comes back to me, and this is something that I disagreed with. if you asked me five years ago, I would say, be consistent, be consistent, be consistent. Now I say, okay, if you can be consistent, that's great. I I think it's I think if you have all the bandwidth and the time and the resources to be consistent, whatever that means for you, awesome.

But sometimes people are putting out shitty stuff just to put out stuff week after week. And I think it is better to put out good stuff when you have good stuff. This to me, a small micro example of this is I I mentioned this before. Some people have a formula for their episode. They think that they need to start each episode with a cold open, then go to this, then go to this. What if sometimes you don't have something that's cold open worthy? And yet you're putting something in the cold open because you feel like you have to. That is not a good cold open. And sometimes

There's just not something that is called open worthy. So leave yourself the flexibility to have some fun with with at least the intro there. And then in terms of consistency with with with scheduling, there are ways that you can be consistent without having to throw everything at the wall all the time.

Lauren Passell (30:19)
Yes. I'm sure if you read Reddit like I do, I love podcast Reddit. It's how I learn about a lot of what people are liking and not liking. you can see people will be like, the show's getting weak. And it's like crap. You can see the hamster wheel happening for people just start putting out weak things because they think they have to. Also, I was just talking to a Hilary Frank of the longest shortest time, and she said something very funny. She said, she said, you know, because they call them always on now. you're an always on show. And she's like,

And she didn't say like this, but she was like, that's assault. That's too much. That's that's I don't like that word always on. That feels like an attack that I have to be on this hamster always on. Even just the wording, it's like very stressful for some people. And so don't feed into that if you don't do.

Arielle Nissenblatt (31:05)
Yeah. And I wrote about this in my 30-day challenge that Becky referred to. There are ways for you to come up with a lower lift episode that is still as valuable, that is not just a cop out to put something out, but there's ways to figure out what what a stripped down shorter episode for your content might be. Lauren and I used to work with a show called How to Do the Pot, which is a podcast about cannabis for women. and

What what the host would do is two episodes out of the month were interviews, you know, they were well thought out, they were narrated episodes, like her full production. And then the other two episodes throughout the month were shorter two to five-minute episodes where people would call in and tell a story about the first time they bought Legal Weed. And these episodes got just as many downloads, they were interesting to people because they were additive, they were complementary.

to the show. They they kept building the world that that people understood Ellen the host was was the at the helm of. And it also allowed Ellen the host to reach out to people that she wanted to have on the show, but she didn't necessarily feel like she could have them on a full episode, but she could say, Hey, I'd love to have you send in a first time story and then then I could feature you on the show. So what is what is your lower lift value

What is your lower lift episode option? and obviously this is gonna be different for each person, but maybe brainstorming in the chat and we can make some comments on those as we go.

Lauren Passell (32:39)
I also really liked how in that case the question, tell me about the first time you bought legal weed, came to embody a lot of the she could ask it on social media. She could ask it in her ratings and reviews. Like because sometimes people don't know what to say in a review. So it's like, tell them, like, tell me something to write and I'll write it. So anyway, that question coming up with the question that is core to what you're trying to do, because you it was also fulfilling a need for Ellen, which was getting people of not afraid to buy weed because it used to be illegal, you know. So like

It did all this. So think of what your version of that question is. Another example, we on along these lines, I can't remember if we were working together on this one, Ariel, but a college, university, I was thinking of Stanford actually had a podcast and the post was going on a very long maternity leave. And she said, Is it bad if we're off the air? And we were like, No, but there's something you can do. And we, I don't know if anyone else has called it this, but we invented the feed warmer campaign.

Which was I basically made a little mini season for them. I went out to shows that had vibe matches. And I said, I have studied your show. I know that our listeners would like this episode of yours. Can I have the file? I'll drive people back to your show. I have also found an episode of our show that your listeners will like. I did all the work. Well, you put it on your feed. And so basically the listeners knew that they were getting a mini season of.

curated episodes that were not the show's episodes, but that we really liked and supported. So they went away. They were still getting downloads and they were getting marketing done at the same time because those other shows were featuring our show.

Arielle Nissenblatt (34:27)
Ooh, big one. We've we've talked about this a bit, but let's just hammer it home really explicitly. You should not worry about losing audience by partnering with a competitor. Lauren and I might be naive, but we don't believe in competitors.

Lauren Passell (34:42)
I mean, I think what somebody asked me why I should I do a promo swap and send someone else to another podcast at Podcast Move at one time. And I was like, sir, I think you're in the wrong industry because that's what this is all about. That is what has worked for everything. And I think if you're worried about that, you need to worry about how good your show is. Just worry about making a good show and doing smart things and don't worry about it.

Arielle Nissenblatt (35:05)
I think if you have a podcast about dental offices in southwestern Indiana and somebody else does too, maybe that's a different story. But for the most part, if your podcast is about dentistry and somebody else's is about, I don't know, oral hygiene, you're okay. You know, you you can you can borrow audience.

Lauren Passell (35:25)
my god, Nicole just said like people don't listen to more than one podcast. I listen like twenty plus. What do we used to say, Riel? I'm gonna mess it up. People who listen to podcasts will We

Arielle Nissenblatt (35:34)
Tend to listen to more than one podcast.

Lauren Passell (35:36)
need a what do you call yeah, I can't remember the letters. We had a way

to

Arielle Nissenblatt (35:40)
People

listen to many podcasts. If anybody knows SpongeBob, there's poop. People order our patties. That was the idea behind that. Okay, cool. Moving on. Yeah,

Lauren Passell (35:49)
Wow, I didn't know that.

Arielle Nissenblatt (35:51)
I think that's what that's from. Okay, survey your listeners. Talk about this a little bit, Lauren, while I turn on my air conditioner. I'm hot.

Lauren Passell (35:59)
yeah, I think not enough people survey their listeners ask them. There's a couple of questions that we really like to ask in a survey. I mean, there's always questions I want to know, like what other podcasts do you listen to? What newsletters do you subscribe to? Like marketing, but also there's really good things like ask how your listeners would describe the show to a friend. Do you have to be really specific or people won't answer them with any creativity? Don't just ask, is the show too long? People be like, no, it's fine.

Be like, is it too long or is it too short? If this show went away tomorrow, what would you miss about it? Be really, really specific. And even if only five people fill out your survey, that's five really invested people. Listen to them. This kind of go alongs along with a new thing I'm getting excited about, avatars. I went I just talked to a podcaster that said he spent five hours thinking about his avatar. And I don't know a lot of podcasters that do that. So he went into his marketing knowing exactly who these people are. So

Survey your listeners, find out. Also, another thing you can do. if you ever want to try to get advertisers or a brand sponsor or a sponsor for a mini-series, you can ask your listeners, who do you? I'm looking for a sponsor. Who do you like? Who would you like to sponsor the show? And then go to them and be show, share, share the screenshots with the company and say, they're asking for for me to advert, they're asking for you. Like, do you want to give me some money? They're already a fan, they already want you to sponsor me.

This is your vibes. They're telling you this right now. So there's a lot of things you can do with the survey. I think maybe once a year, if you haven't done one before, do it now. If you've been going for a year, do it now. And also, I used to say a $50 gift card to Amazon goes a long way with getting responses. I used to say that. I don't believe you should pay people to fill it out anymore because I think people, your best listeners will do it for free. And you don't want people doing it just because they might get a gift card. But Ariel, do you agree with that? We have never talked about.

Arielle Nissenblatt (37:53)
Yeah, I mean, my thought on that is if you can come up with some incentive that genuinely gets people interested, great. But the the real quality value responses are going to be the ones that people are raising their hands to respond to. And Becky asked, How do you get people to actually do your survey? Is this something you're saying on the episode and directing to a link or sending via email to listeners who have signed up? All of the above, but

What Lauren said before is really important, where you don't just want to say the same thing episode after episode or say, you know, take the survey. The link is in the in the thing. That's not going to do anything for me. I need to understand why you want me to take the survey. What is it going to do? What are you going to do with the information that that I'm giving you? How is it going to benefit me ultimately? And if you can get people in on this, if you can bring them along for the journey, they're going to be that much more.

Excited by the idea of contributing to it. And at the end, if you can report on what the changes were, thanks to the people that that helped give me this information, that's really helpful. I I did a survey last year. My podcast recommendation newsletter turned nine years old. And I thought, okay, this is an opportunity for me to find out what people like about the newsletter, what I should change. So I put together a survey. I asked a friend who professionally works in survey writing. So

She helped me figure out how to reduce the bias as much as possible. And at the end of it, I had 63 respondents, which was not a lot. I have thousands and thousands of subscribers. But you know what? I was okay with 63 responses because Lauren and I say the the following: those are the people that are the most engaged. And maybe they're not representative, but what I'm gonna do is tell the people, tell the rest of the people that did not respond.

This is what the people that did respond, this is what they said. And if you disagree with it, the survey is still open. I still want to hear from you. And that can help get more people interested. ultimately you're you're writing about it on you're putting in your show notes, you're talking about it on the podcast, you're putting it in your newsletter. You may not get a lot of people to respond. There that's okay. Ultimately, we're looking for little pieces of feedback.

It's really hard to get statistically s statistically significant data nowadays. The response rates are just not gonna be that high unless you really, really reach out individually to your audience and let them know, which is also a possibility.

Lauren Passell (40:24)
Transparency is good, even if you're trying to get people to sign up for your Patreon. What are you going to do with that money exactly? The more transparent, the better.

Arielle Nissenblatt (40:36)
We'll we'll just touch this one quickly. We have a bunch that we need to get through. There's a difference between show notes and a transcript. Your transcript is what you said on the podcast word for word. Your show notes are helpful links, other resources, all that good stuff. You can and you should publish both.

Go ahead.

Lauren Passell (40:57)
submit your show to Apple Podcasts. there's a link that you can do. Humans are reading those links and deciding, but there's a few things that there's a form you fill out. So we can share that form. there's a few fields on that form I just want to point out. Well, first of all, you just need to your pitch. If this is a pitch and you need to explain to them why you why now is are you a spooky podcast and it's Halloween? Whatever. That's a bland example, but like.

make there needs to be some sort of hook they want to look like they're like a news page basically with all the hot stuff at the top stuff that's gonna be trending obviously there's also a field that asks like where you are podcasting from now but i think if you can you can submit to other countries because maybe there's other countries that want to hear your show and you can be featured in a country that is not the United States or Canada.

and then there's also a field that this is like all of the forums that kind of ask, like, how will you co-market or tell me about your marketing plan? They don't really care about your marketing plan. They're what they're saying is like, we're Apple Podcasts, we're gonna be doing Assad. What are you gonna do for us in return? And that's where you say, I'm going to, you know, I have this many newsletters, subscribers, I'm gonna be tagging Apple or, you know, using the Apple Podcast link. And I'm gonna be saying on the show, listen to Apple Podcasts. I have the Apple Podcast button on my website.

Give numbers. Say this is how many social media followers I have. And I'm going to be linking here and here and here. Make a really solid case that you're going to be driving people to their app because that's what they want.

Arielle Nissenblatt (42:36)
Do you have a big episode archive? Consider grouping episodes together. Lauren was talking about this a little bit before, and I cut her off. I'm sorry about that. We really like the idea of a start here page on your website where you can direct people who are finding you for the first time or people who are interested in a specific topic that you tend to talk about a lot of. A great example there is a show called The Jordan Harbinger Show. If you go to Jordan the Jordan Harbinger Show.com, he has a start here page.

Where he's got bundles of episodes that you can that you can check out. So if you love foreign policy, here's a list of all the episodes he's done on foreign foreign policy. If you love mind games and and psychology, you can do that as well. So what does that look like for your show? It could be that this is these are all of my interview episodes. These are all of my episodes that are solo episodes. You can break it up however you want, just make it easy for people to consume.

I believe Lauren has to be off camera for a few minutes and she'll be back in a few, so I'll hold down the fort until then. Do you have money to spend? This is what Lauren was talking about before. If you have money to spend, we recommend testing out a feed drop or a promo swap on a harder to reach show. Make a list of a bunch of podcasts that you would like to collaborate with in some way.

Some of those shows are going to be just around your size, some are going to be smaller than you, some of them are going to be much larger than you. And if you got them to say yes to a swap, that would be amazing. Sure, on your end, you would have to do a lot in order to reach parity for your for your impressions. But you can reach out to them and you can say, I would love to set up a promo swap. Also, any idea what are I would love to set up a promo swap, but also do you have a rate card?

Do you what is the cost for if I wanted to buy if I wanted to buy a a feed drop on your feed? And they might be interested in in sending their rate card, but they also might just say, let's set up a promo swap instead, just for the sheer fact that you're willing to pay, or maybe they might be willing to work with you on that. So think about that and what that looks like for your show.

Lauren Passell (44:49)
I was gonna also say, sorry, I'm being rude because I can't see, but the I was just talking to a client today and it's like stage one is always find the audience first. That's the most important thing. That I that's research phase. Find the audience first, see who you can get in front of for free first. If it doesn't, if you find the right audience, I would say do anything you can to get in front of that audience. And if you have tried getting like there's no guessing opportunities, or you've tried they won't let you guessed or

Whatever, you can't do a promo stop, then consider paying after you've tried everything else first.

Thank you. Offset

Arielle Nissenblatt (45:30)
Yeah.

Lauren Passell (45:30)
thanks.

Arielle Nissenblatt (45:32)
Tip eighteen, if you're starting a podcast subscription, try a social ad for the wait list. We don't tend to recommend buying ads on Facebook or Instagram, but it might be an interesting thing to play around with, to just gauge, to get a sense of are people clicking on this? Is there actual interest from my listener base or from look-alike audiences to figure out, you know, whatever my subscription offering is, are am I getting clicks? And if I'm getting those clicks, how can I redirect them?

We have about ten more. Yes, yes.

Lauren Passell (46:04)
Sorry, can I go back to that one?

Are starting like a Patreon or whatever. yeah, like you could also just put make an ad and make a wait list for it. So you can even see if there's interest, if you can see if anybody would sign up for it. So creating the wait list also lets you kind of put things on hold and test things out. So an ads are a wait list for a subscription service.

Becky Mollenkamp (46:25)
I'll just quickly say if you guys need to go a little long, don't worry because everyone will get the replay. So if you have to exit and you can't stay for it and you guys end up going slightly long, everything will work out. Although I also want to honor every your time as well, Ariel and and Lauren.

Arielle Nissenblatt (46:39)
Perfect. Thank you. We we'll try to come in just at the in 10 minutes. We'll go through these a little bit quickly so that we can spend some time on questions. 19. Pitch yourself now as a guest for shows that take holiday breaks. If you want to be a guest on a show and it might be a show that would otherwise be really tough to get in front of, acknowledge that they are humans and that they might be taking a break over the holiday. And maybe you could be a guest host for that show. Maybe they

Otherwise we'll be planning to take a few weeks off. But guess what? You're a fan of this show and you might be a really great guest host and here's what you would bring to the role. Or maybe it's also another opportunity for you to set up that that feed warmer campaign. If you know another show is going to take a break around the holidays, you can pitch your show to potentially be dropped on that feed. Again, this this all just goes back to the idea that you're not just emailing somebody with a hey, I want to be featured on your

your podcast or your newsletter or will you do this for me, will you do that for me? I'm saying I understand that the holiday is coming up. I know last year you took a break. I'm wondering this year if you might be interested in this. I am real I'm recognizing that you're a human and and you recognize that I'm a human. Go ahead, Laura.

Lauren Passell (47:55)
Also, another idea. okay, so I had a client who had a show where she was interviewing other people. And it's hard to get someone who's just like a journalist who interviews other people on other podcasts. But I went to Danny Shapiro, who has a podcast called Family Secrets. That podcast is about family secrets, and it was started because of Danny Shapiro's own family secret that she had. I said, Danny.

Has anyone ever interviewed you about your own show? And she said, no. So I booked my client on that show to interview Danny about her own show. You can do this to a lot of people. A lot of people have podcasts because they have certain I'm thinking, what's the pot area? What's the comfort watching? God, I can't believe I can't remember the

Arielle Nissenblatt (48:41)
Consider this for comfort.

Lauren Passell (48:42)
name. Consider this for comfort. pitching her and saying where she interviews people about their comfort watches for television. pitching her and saying,

Has anyone ever asked you about to answer the own question you're asking all of your other guests? I think that's a really good idea because that applies to a lot of different kinds of shows.

Arielle Nissenblatt (49:05)
This is a big one. This is a big one. Start a newsletter that goes along with your podcast. This is something that I talk about all the time. It's something that is not necessarily easy, but it can be not that hard. The version A of it is at least start an email subscriber capture form on your website, link to it in your show notes, talk about it on your podcast, put it in your email signature. That will be a really helpful way to.

Start owning the people that are interested in being in contact with you. That means that you can be in touch with them even if for some reason they you lose access to your subscribers on Apple Podcasts or your feed somehow gets shut down. You still own the newsletter subscribers and you can write a full newsletter that goes out every week, or you can decide to do something a little bit lower lift where maybe if you're going on tour, you let them know that you're going on tour. If you have merch that just dropped, you can let them know, but you don't.

have that option if you don't start gathering their email addresses.

Lauren Passell (50:08)
Also if you don't have something all the time, it's okay. No one's ever like, where's that newsletter I signed up for? No one's ever like, why didn't it come out?

Arielle Nissenblatt (50:15)
hamster wheel situation. You don't have to post just because

Think like a producer, envision what the episodes will sound or feel like when you're pitching yourself as a guest, Lauren.

Lauren Passell (50:29)
I when I'm pitching writing an email to someone if I want my client to be on their show or or a promo spot, it doesn't matter what I want. It doesn't matter what my client wants. It matters what the producer wants. Put your producer hat on and think what they want. Quick example. There was a podcast called The Only One in the Room. It was a Laura Cathcart Robbins interviewed people about a time when they felt othered. Every single episode was titled Ariel Nissenblad is the only one in the room who like you know grows.

Roses in her bathtub. Lauren Passell is the only one in the room who taught her cat Latin, whatever. So I would make every subject line. My client's name is the only one in the room who blah blah blah. Paint the picture of what the episode will sound like. These people are going through these pictures you know this, you're a podcaster, you probably get terrible pitches. It they show them what it would look like so they don't have to think too hard. They can envision what the episode will look like immediately. The more work you do that, the more it shows that you're a listener.

And the more it shows that this episode is going to make sense for them.

Arielle Nissenblatt (51:30)
I am just gonna acknowledge this question. Dixie asked who was speaking. Lauren is speaking, so just for the people that are watching this later and you're wondering when I'm silent, what's happening? It's Lauren who is off camera, but she's here and she's talking. So thank you for the question. All right. Make your episode call to action specific and a little bit weird. We'll we'll do this one quickly because we talked about it.

At the end of the episode, if you always say, follow us, like us, leave us a comment, whatever, try to make it weird and a little bit different each time. Screenshot this episode and tag us on social media. Text a friend a link to this episode right now. Don't just choose that though. Have a bunch of them that you kind of cycle through.

Anything to add?

Lauren Passell (52:19)
No. There's

Arielle Nissenblatt (52:20)
Lovely.

Lauren Passell (52:21)
no time.

Arielle Nissenblatt (52:22)
Send people your podcast using Podlink, Plink, Podfollow, or even better, your own easy to remember URL. If you send people a link to Spotify and they don't have Spotify on their phone, they're not gonna listen. If you send people a link to Apple and they have an Android, they're not gonna listen. Make it very easy for them to listen to the show. Use what's called a universal link. If you go to pod.link, search for your show, you can grab that link and just use it wherever.

Or better yet, own your own website and have a page on your website, website.com slash listen, website.com slash podcast, whatever it is.

Read your reviews, spend more time thinking about the ones that offer healthy criticism than glowing enthusiasm. Lauren, do you want to touch on this real quick?

Lauren Passell (53:11)
No, I think it's pretty self explanatory.

Arielle Nissenblatt (53:14)
Read read and weep. And then, you know, take that criticism and fly. A different guesting approach. Pitch yourself to be on a show's Patreon only episode. Lauren, you have a client that did this.

Lauren Passell (53:27)
I love this because pay people that have Patreons need content and maybe you can't get an interview on their actual show. Maybe their show doesn't even have interviews, but offer the Patreon something. maybe it's even a guide or some sort of other content or something like that. But people that are looking for content need content and you can be that content.

Also, I'd say even if the Patreon is very small, it's once again the most invested listeners in that show. Yeah, me too.

Arielle Nissenblatt (54:00)
We talked about a feed warmer campaigns, we'll go through this one. Start a mini-series using voice memos from your listeners and other podcasters. We talked about this with our example with how to do the pot. And then that's it. Takeaways. Wow. Okay, just coming in on time. what I'll say for this is throw some some questions, comments into the chat. Hopefully we'll have a minute or two to talk about them. My big thing here is it's very obviously hard for me to say.

What you should do at this time in your process. But think back to what your overall goals are for the show. I always recommend writing down three reasons that you make your show that are not downloads or dollars. Why do you make your show? What is it laddering up to? And how can you take any of these tips and tricks and bring them to that overall goal? If your goal is you want to speak at more conferences, then you probably want to be

on as many guesting you would probably want to guest on as many podcasts as possible. If your goal is to make money alongside your show, think about what other streams of revenue you have that could be related to your show. Or maybe make it your business to take as many classes as you can on how to monetize a podcast. It is not going to come easily. None of this is easy flip the switch and make it happen. It's all

It's all a long game and I think it's a fun game. And Lauren and I always talk about how we actually really love the marketing because it is super creative. You constantly have to be thinking about all the other shows that are out there. You get to listen to other podcasts in order to find vibe matches and swaps and then try to figure out the creative ways that you might be able to get in front of their audience. So for me it all goes back to how can you make your so show sustainable?

so that you're not just making it for downloads and dollars purposes, those those purposes will come. Those those results will come. I

Becky Mollenkamp (55:58)
three questions from the audience but before we do that just because I know we're at the bottom of the hour I just want to say thank you if anyone has to exit out early. I appreciate you all being here. once again you're gonna get the replays by the end of the day and I will be making a little downloadable thing for you based on all the stuff here. So you'll get all these tips and tricks that you can have in a really easy way to hold on to. So you'll get those things for each of the sessions. Also if you're not a member of the podcast collect collective we'd love to have you a lot of you are but a few of you aren't so

I wanted to throw that out. Okay. If you need to exit out, totally understand. You'll also get the replay if you want to hear the answers to these questions that were put out. But earlier questions, one was from Stephanie who had to drive and wanted to know from Lauren if Lauren's able to answer. Because you asked in your intake form about strategies that people have tried and how so her question is: how long should they have tried those strategies before they reach out to you to work with you, Lauren?

Lauren Passell (56:51)
to work with me.

Becky Mollenkamp (56:52)
With tink, yeah. We'll tink.

Lauren Passell (56:54)
I mean I don't know. I think I think if anytime there's no whether you're just getting new, maybe there's something that's not hitting that you're not you're not quite getting right right away and think could help you figure out like honey on what would actually work. But in another instance, maybe it has been working and you just need to kind of boost up to the next level. So I hope that helps.

Becky Mollenkamp (57:22)
Yeah, I think she's probably just wondering, like, is that question there because you want people to have tried a certain number of things for a certain amount of time before they reach out? But it sounds like that's just helping inform for you what they've done, what's worked, what hasn't. So I I think yeah.

Arielle Nissenblatt (57:35)
I Lauren and I used to do a lot of consulting, just one off let we'll listen to a bunch of episodes of your show, we'll come and we'll we'll give you an assessment of what's going well, what needs to be tweaked. And the first thing that we ask is, What are you currently doing for marketing? And most people say nothing. So we're just curious. No, that's great. Just out of curiosity, what have you tried?

Becky Mollenkamp (57:57)
Wonderful. And Nicole asked, I think we kind of answered, but I want to hear from you too, Ariel, because you were the one who posted about it, which is if you don't have a big archive yet, Nicole has one season of her show that's maybe, I don't know, let's say twelve episodes, somewhere around there probably. could you do a start here section on of a page with just a couple of topic playlists? Like you don't have a lot of content to work with yet, or do you want to wait until there's more content to create your start here?

Arielle Nissenblatt (58:19)
I think this is a a situation where I don't wanna give you a direct prescription. It sounds like that's n probably not a lot to work off of in terms of grouping things together. but what you could do is create a a Spotify playlist that's like podcast to get to know me. And it can include all of your episodes and then any episodes that you guested on. And you can put all of those in there and you can link to that. And also then you can you get to reach out to

the hosts of those other shows and say, Hey, I'm featuring you on a a playlist and I'm linking to that on my website and all these other places. So just another way to group some episodes.

Becky Mollenkamp (58:56)
Work really well for Nicole because she also did a summer series where during her between seasons she's been featuring where she's been featured in her feed. So the feed warmer. Yep, she's doing great job. Okay, Dixie, any advice on relaunching my podcast after a two year hiatus on repurposing the two hundred and ninety-nine one episode short of three hundred episodes I've put out and which how to monetize workshops you might recommend.

Arielle Nissenblatt (59:20)
Yeah, I would for relaunching, I have a whole list of places that you should pitch a relaunch. First, I would write some sort of press release, figure out what is what is the story of the relaunch beyond just the show is relaunching. So, you know, it's not Dixie, what what is your podcast? You used to be with Pleasure Podcast, is that right? I remember your name. it's not just new new season of Dixie Delator's podcast. It's

The season explores this, right? There's news beyond just the fact that it's news. So what is that? It is the it's the body storytelling. Body storytelling. Yes. very cool. So what what is the new season going to be? So so that would go into this notice. And then there's a bunch of websites that take press releases. So you're going to submit your show to all of those places. There are also a bunch of different submission portals where you can get your podcast featured around the time of your launch.

I have all of these written down somewhere. So if you message me, I will send them to you. but that is how I would ramp up to a launch. And then around the time of your launch is also when you would make a huge list of other podcasts that you want to get in touch with or collaborate with in some way. And that would be podcasts, but it would also be newsletters, it would also be influencers, it would also be anybody that has any entity online or IRL that you think would be a natural fit to get your really great stuff in front of their audience.

And then trying to figure out what those swaps could be. What are the natural ways to get their audience over to you and what can you do for them in exchange? That would all sort of happen around the same time that you're relaunching. What to do with the 299 episodes you've put out already? I would consider going into the catalog and figuring out which of them are evergreen. And if there are a lot of them, then you can make some playlists, first of all. And I would also consider re I would look at the

how you titled them and see if they're optimized and for search engine for search and are people actually searching for those things. You can use pod SEO to figure out how you might be able to optimize those a little bit more. And I would look at Radio Bootcamp for how to monetize, radio bootcamp dot com or might be org. They have a lot of great webs, a lot of great workshops on monetization.

Becky Mollenkamp (1:01:37)
Awesome, thank you. And then Alicia wanted to know if you should thank you, Dick Dixie. Alicia, should you treat every new season like a relaunch? You mentioned like new artwork and things. I love that idea, but what do you think?

Arielle Nissenblatt (1:01:48)
Depends how different your season is going to be from your previous stuff. I think it is an opportunity for you to, if you feel like it wasn't super professional the first time around, you can further professionalize your your cover art, your title, your sound production. And you launching a new season is a really good excuse to say, we're back, season two is here and we're even better, and here's how. So it could make sense to to update the stuff, but also it'll depend on

how often you're launching a new season. You know, I I think there they're can it can be overkill to just keep changing the cover art. you also want to make sure people are understanding the identity of your show. So there's probably a balance there.

Becky Mollenkamp (1:02:32)
Okay, great. And then V mentioned I don't know if you have anywhere that's a place where people might find example press releases or a set of example press releases. I know it's different than a full media kit. Don't know how long short shade they

Arielle Nissenblatt (1:02:46)
If you just go to podnews.net and then click on press releases, you'll see all of the press releases that have been submitted. Same with Sounds Profitable, and then navigate over to their press releases. You'll see them in the way that they're reproduced for the website there. If you want to see like a blank like one that I send out, which is just in a PDF form, I can send that to you as well. But it's really the same, just looks more boring.

Becky Mollenkamp (1:03:09)
Perfect. Thank you, everyone. I know we're late, but hopefully it was worth it because this is so much great content. You know, Dixie was saying, huge fan. Great session. Thank you, Ariel. Thank you, Lauren. I know you're off camera, but we really appreciate your time and help us.

Lauren Passell (1:03:21)
Thank you so much. Yes. Yeah, I'll show you where I am right now. Hello.

Can you see this? Yeah. My daughter riding her bike. So wish me luck. Thanks for everything. I hope that was helpful. And reach out to us at any time. We love connecting with people. Pitch us and feel free to ask more questions.

Becky Mollenkamp (1:03:41)
Yeah. Thank you both so much for being here and doing this. You were you know, help last year Lauren did a session and Ariel, you have done a session. Both of you have done sessions inside of the podcast collective. I really appreciate you both. And thank you everyone for being here. Thank you for everybody being part of this entire thing for the last two days. I hope it was worth your time, worth your investment. And you will be getting again very shortly, I will be sending out the replay information along with the

graphics or the the the little one sheets that I'm gonna make for you that just kind of wrap up everything so you have all the content, the like the the tidbits you want to get to so that you have them and can save them somewhere. Thank you all you guys are so great. and listen to that Ariel and Lauren are both great. My show has literally tripped tripled its listenership in the last six months working with them. Wow what an endorsement that is fantastic thank you V All right thank you all have a wonderful rest of your day and a wonderful rest Thank you bye everyone

Arielle Nissenblatt (1:04:30)
Thank you. Thank you so much, Becky.