The Jag Show: Podcast Tips, Tricks, and Best Practices

I really don't want this to be a podcast where I talk about radio, an industry I left in 2017 after almost 20 years.  But for the second straight week, we've got a radio company who's trying to break podcasting. Last week it was iHeartRadio, and their sketchy practice of buying podcast downloads as ads in video games.  How sketchy was that? Well depends on who you ask.   This week, it's Audacy, fo...

Is iHeart scamming the podcasting industry?  That's the implication of an article this week that was widely discussed in the podcasting world. The story is from Bloomberg and written by Ashley Carman, one of the most respected reporters in our industry. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-27/inside-podcasters-explosive-audience-growth Advertising buys in podcasting are based on audienc...

Yesterday, I went to the North American International Auto Show, known to locals here as the Detroit Auto Show, or just the Auto Show.  And it reminded me of a common question I get from podcasters - when should I release my new episodes? Now, whether you release, weekly, biweekly, monthly, whatever, the key to growing your show is consistency .  As your show grows, your listeners will learn when...

Did you see 16 year old Shane Hawkins pay tribute to his dad at the recent Foo Fighters tribute to Taylor Hawkins?  Well, turns out how you heard about it and how you watched and reacted to it - can teach us a lot about podcasting. How did you hear about it?  For me, it was a combination of social media post after social media post, and hearing friends talk about it.    Was it the same for you?  D...

Welcome to Season 4 of the Jag Show. We're going to start with what I learned this year at Podcast Movement, and how you can improve your show. The first thing you should know about is video.   Your show needs to be on YouTube.  According to Edison Research, 48% of the podcast audience has consumed a show on YouTube.   So even if your show is audio only, put a graphic, or an audiogram with a movin...

You may have noticed that it's been awhile since I've come out with a new episode of this podcast.  And for that, I apologize.  I've often talked about "PodFade" in this show - it's when after a certain number of episodes, a podcast falls down your priority list.   Well, it happened to me.  Today, I'm going to tell you how it happened, and what I'm doing about it. My wife and I are doing a lot of...

In our May 2022 livestream, the 5 "Podcast Superfriends" assembled to talk about how Matt Cundill pushed through the usual podcast obstacles to get to the 300th episode of The Sound Off Podcast. We cover lessons learned, and how they can apply to our clients.   What's changed since the show started?   Should you "batch record" or do one episode at a time?  What about live vs recorded? The five pod...

For over a year now, three co-hosts and I have been working on a podcast for the Royal Oak Michigan Chamber of Commerce.  We interview various members of the Chamber about themselves and their businesses.  Once a quarter, we turn the tables on one of our co-hosts.   This week, it's yours truly in the hot seat. Show Notes: Today, we turn the tables on our co-host, Jon Gay of JAG in Detroit Podcasts...

To watch this podcast as a video, you can do so here: https://youtu.be/hp4JmAZhTPE Elon Musk is buying Twitter for $44 billion.  And while much has been discussed about the political and free speech ramifications of this move, the podcasting piece has largely been overlooked.  Earlier this week, I asked, via Twitter of course, what this move would mean for podcasting.   My good friend, colleague,...

I joined Brenda Meller of Meller Marketing on Tuesday for a presentation on how to repurpose LinkedIn Live videos as podcasts.  While Brenda works mostly with LinkedIn, the tips here are applicable to video webinars of all kinds. After a brief intro on how important podcasts have become and the power of audio, we broke the presentation down into three key areas: Before You Present During Your Pres...

iHeart has launched a podcasting network for NFT's.  More on that later. Here are this week's podcasting headlines: Wanna know which advertisers are investing in the top 5,000 podcasts?  Podchaser has a new tool to track that. https://features.podchaser.com/api/? There's a new service to rate podcasts for kids - it's from Common Sense media and will let you rate shows for audiences 17 and under: h...

Some hand wringing over Infinite Dial 2022 - a slight dropoff in podcasting.   Monthly listeners went from 41% of the population to 38%.   My take: it's nothing to worry about.  The pandemic turbo-charged podcasting growth, and people are settling back in to routines.  109 million Americans still listen to shows every month, and that's more than pre-pandemic.  Further, podcasting awareness continu...

I've decided to try being a music radio DJ again - except in the podcast world. I read about Amazon's new "Amp" project that lets you create audio shows with music from Amazon's library.  But when I tried it, I couldn't play music until I had live viewers/listeners.  Not an easy ask for a program that's still in beta. Then I remembered that Anchor allows you to create shows using Spotify's music l...

One of the biggest frustrations for podcasters has always been NOT knowing how many people follow, or subscribe to, their show. Finally, that's about to change... James Cridland broke this in PodNews this morning. Next month, Apple will begin to add follower counts to your Apple Podcasts Connect Dashboard.  (Remember, podcasting switched from "subscribers" to "followers" because susbscriptions oft...

Being good at your craft is better than being a big name celebrity.  This was confirmed to us by no less than Beata Murphy, Program Director of KIIS Los Angeles.  She keynoted our WJPZ Syracuse Alumni Banquet earlier this month and offered fantastic insight. A programming note: a student at the conference told me TikTok is allowing you to upload videos longer than 3 minutes. So this podcast may ge...

Jag: Can I find your podcast? First off happy Mardi Gras to everybody in Louisiana, I may be a native of Massachusetts and an adopted Michigander. But I really do miss y'all around this time of year. Laissez le bon temps rouler!  Okay. Back to my main point of today's podcast. Can your podcast be found? Now what the word podcast is, can be different things to different people. For the OG crowd tha...

Do I need a QR Code for my podcast?  Yes, it's a great idea to promote your show. For example, did you see the "bouncing QR code" commercial during the Super Bowl?  It was for Coinbase, the Cryptocurrency exchange.   The ad was a huge success - in fact, the website crashed when I tried to sign up. The pandemic has resurrected QR codes, which were dead before 2019.  Now it's how you read a restaura...

Can you use commercial music in your podcast?  Or movie clips?  Or other snippets that are commercially licensed? No.  You can't, and you shouldn't. This is a question I'm  frequently asked by clients and potential clients.  And I've heard every excuse in the book.  Oh, it's only a few seconds, so it falls under "fair use."   Oh come on, are Guns N Roses really gonna sue me?  Well, remember when M...

Spotify has been all over the news in the last week because of Joe Rogan, but Rogan is a symptom of a much bigger problem. If you haven't heard, the Joe Rogan Experience, one of the biggest podcasts in the world, has come under heavy scrutiny for promoting COVID misinformation.  Several artists, led by Neil Young, have pulled, or are in the process of trying to pull, their music off of Spotify.  ...

On Thursday, January 13th, I was thrilled to present a podcasting "Professional Edge Workshop" to the Birmingham Bloomfield (Michigan) Chamber of Commerce.  It was supposed to be an in-person workshop, but you know, Omicron. The good news is, we recorded it, and I'm presenting the audio here.  If you'd like to watch the video of the presentation or download my PowerPoint slides as a PDF, you can d...

As I ate healthy breakfast and got on my exercise bike today, I thought about resolutions. You may have a 2022 New Year's Resolution to start - or even restart- a podcast.  Today I'll tell you how to start your podcast for under $100. The first thing you need to do is plan.  Plan out a limited number of episodes.  If you don't have a goal in mind, you'll do a bunch, then fall off - same as going t...

For years, I've railed against the Blue Yeti microphone.  As a radio mentor once taught me, "the worst thing for a bad product is good marketing." When I consult a podcast from the jump, I always recommend solo podcasters get the Samson Q2U or ATR 2100x microphones - they're actually about the same cost as the Yeti. But occasionally I consult clients who have already bought the Yeti, and they may...

Link to this episode: https://jagindetroit.com/ratingsandreviews It seems almost every podcast you listen to - the host asks you at the beginning - or end - or both - to rate and review the show.  But do ratings and reviews actually matter? Before COVID, my wife and I really got into cruising.  Rather than pay extra for excursions through the cruise line, she'd find the local businesses on trip ad...

Earlier this month, Edison Research and National Public Radio released their annual survey of spoken word audio consumption.  The numbers were eye popping. Bear with me as I'm going to hit you with a lot of numbers today, but I'll try to keep this moving with some context and key points. For the purpose of the survey, "spoken word audio" is everything from news to sports to talk to audiobooks.  An...

Audio is an incredible powerful medium to tell a story. Typically I use this show to give you industry trends and podcast tips.  But I want to share with you a project that I was honored to be part of, and really shows the power of audio and podcasting. Recently, I teamed up with my colleagues at Tanner Friedman Strategic Communications, to create a podcast for their client, CARE House of Oakland...