E365: I’ve made this podcast every single day, without missing a day, for the past full year.
I learned a ton.
Here’s what I wish I did sooner, what I did well, and what I wish I didn’t do.
If you’re thinking about making a podcast, doing marketing for a podcast, or looking at how to make a podcast, this will be helpful.
00:00 Celebrating One Year of The Edward Show 01:09 Covering Trending Topics 04:10 Thumbnails and Using Video 06:53 Editing and Improving Podcast Quality 10:02 Podcast Marketing and Consistency 12:27 Final Thoughts and Recap
#podcastmarketing #podcastcreation #contentmarketing #digitalmarketing
The Edward Show. Your daily digital marketing podcast: https://edwardsturm.com/the-edward-show/
I have done this daily digital marketing podcast for the last 365 consecutive days. I started this podcast one year ago, and since I started it, I have not missed a day of making this podcast. This is the one year anniversary of the Edward Show. So on this episode, episode 365, I'm going to share things that I think I did well, and things that I wish I did sooner. I'm making this episode as much for myself as for the people listening. I think a lot of people want to have a podcast these days. So I'm going to share some things that I learned, and really things that I wish I had started doing them one year ago when I started. But you know, when you start, you don't know anything, you just got to start, and then you're going to figure it out. The longer you go, the more likely you are to realize what works and what does not work. And that's certainly happened for me because I am doing a lot of things different now than I was doing when I started a year ago. And this is nice for me too, because I get to recap and think over the things that I have done, the things that got me here. The number one driver, the most important thing that I wish I had done sooner was being the first or one of the first to cover big things in my niche. Big things in digital marketing, big things in search engine optimization, and SEOing descriptions and titles so that people would find my podcast for these trending topics. Right now, Google Search Console is recovering from a huge delay, and it's what all of the SEOs are talking about. If you go and look at Google Search Console, you will see a tremendous dip in your clicks and your rankings and your impressions and everything. And that's because Google Search Console data has been delayed, was super delayed. But it's all normal, the clicks are there, the data was just delayed, and it's what a lot of people are talking about. And if this wasn't my anniversary episode, this podcast would be on that because it's trending, and then I would put Google Search Console delay in the title and the description for this episode. People would search it, they would search it on Google, they would search it on YouTube, they would find my podcast, they would hear me talking about it, and then they would hear me shill this podcast and myself, and a few of them might convert to listeners. The reason I say this is so important is because when the Google League happened, I think this was at the end of May that the Google League happened, I was the second person to make a video on it. And the person who made a video on it before me was only an hour or so before me. I was the second person to do a long video on it. I made a 34 minute video on it of just me reading updates from the leak, how the leak happened, the big leak document from Rand Fishkin who popularized the leak. And this episode ended up getting around 30,000 views. And a lot of these listeners listened to other episodes of the show and then a bunch turned into regular listeners. So thank you to everyone who turned into regular listeners, but this was a big thing that I learned. I knew covering trending topics was important. And I was certainly doing that with my short form mobile videos, but I was neglecting to do that with this podcast. And that is the thing that I wish I started doing sooner. It is the number one driver, something that I need to do more. So that was a huge lesson. What happened with the Google League also, a related lesson is like I said, the longer you go, the more likely you are to expand your surface area for luck and figure it out. This episode, which was my most popular episode by far, about the Google League. I had been doing the show for, I think, I guess like 10 months up to then. If I had given up sooner, I wouldn't have gotten there. I say on a lot of episodes, I think people are too quick to give up, people give up way too soon. And the thing about rewards with growing a brand and sticking to a niche, it's quite often that those rewards come after a lot more work and time than you expected. And then when they come, they come in tremendous numbers. They come fast to an exponential degree. But anyway, number one lesson, it's really easy to get views, to get listens. If you cover trending topics and put the keywords for these topics in the title and the description. The next thing I wish I started doing sooner, my podcast was coming out on YouTube from day one. I wish I had started making thumbnails for the podcast right away and better titles. But the titles I was doing my best from the beginning, but thumbnails, I was not using any thumbnails for the podcast at the beginning. I wasn't using video and I wasn't using thumbnails. I just kind of had an album cover and that was a thumbnail for each episode of the podcast at the beginning. I have noticed that thumbnails make such a huge difference in performance for the show. My podcast comes out everywhere. It comes out on YouTube, Spotify, Apple podcasts, Audible, a bunch of other places that I'm forgetting. I hosted on Libsyn and Libsyn pushes it out to all these places and then I manually upload it to YouTube. And the thing about YouTube is it pushes out the show to people who haven't listened, who might become listeners. And YouTube is better at doing that than Spotify and Apple podcasts and the rest of them. And so because YouTube is way better at doing that, it's so important to have thumbnails. So people click and listen. So I wish I had started doing thumbnails sooner. But like I said, I just wanted to start the show a year ago. I said, I'll figure it out as I go. And that's what's happening. On that note, another quick thing I wish actually hadn't done is for the first half of this podcast, maybe longer than that, I was putting the number of the episode at the end of the title. This was a bad move because it made people feel like each episode was part of a series. And if they were jumping in, they wouldn't understand it because they missed out on the rest of the series. When each episode is a standalone episode, you don't have to listen to episode one to be able to understand episode 365. But by putting the number of the episodes in the title, some people thought that they did. I was less likely to get clicks and people who did click, some of them were less likely to listen through. That was something that I wish I started doing sooner, not putting the number of the episode in the title. Another thing using video, a lot of people listen on Spotify, Apple podcasts, the rest of them, they don't need video. I appreciate that. But a lot of people listen and watch on YouTube. I wish I had done video sooner. And honestly, video makes it more fun for me. I go to lots of crazy places and record right now, I'm just recording at home in Brooklyn. But I've gone to boats on a river in Poland, crowded cafes with tons of people behind me, six AM monuments, which are completely empty, but make for cool backgrounds, rooftops in New York City with the skyline of Manhattan behind me. And it makes it fun for me. I wish I had done video sooner. I also think video makes it more engaging. Something else I wish I started doing at the beginning 'cause I listened to my early shows and I did not do this. I wish I removed the gaps between words to the extent that I do. So what I have now is my podcast is edited with Descript. Descript, I think it's $20 a month, so it's very inexpensive. And any gap between words that is more than one fourth of a second, Descript trims that automatically so that the maximum gap between words is a fourth of a second. If I take five seconds to think of what I'm gonna say next, those five seconds get reduced to a fourth of a second. The gap is just cut. When I started, I think my first few episodes, I would just leave the gap in. Then after that, I made the gap 0.75 seconds or maybe it was even one second, but I found that 0.25 seconds is the sweet spot. Gives it a nice flow. And on the topic of flow, I also wish that I was removing the arms, the arms, the ends, the me repeating myself to think of what I'm gonna say next. Descript allows me to edit the transcript of my podcast and I wish I had cut the fat sooner because my early episodes, they don't sound that much like these episodes now. These episodes now flow a lot better. They're faster, they're quicker, more concise, and I believe they're way better as a result. The reason that I didn't do this sooner and something that took me a while to learn is I started this podcast as a Twitter space. I wanted to do a daily Twitter space and then the idea was I would take that Twitter space audio, put it into Descript, apply studio sound so it sounds nice. Studio sound uses AI to just make your voice sound nice and crisp, I'm using it right now. Then upload to my podcast host and to YouTube. That was my original strategy. Turns out, putting the podcast on Twitter and X wasn't very useful in terms of listener acquisition and actually drove away a lot of people from following me because Twitter promotes video in its feed but people just got tired of it. Twitter isn't YouTube and people wanted to follow me for my quick thoughts and instead they were just seeing my podcasts everywhere. So I shouldn't have started by making the podcast a daily Twitter space. I should have just gone right for it, use video, recorded as I'm recording, had a nice edit, use thumbnails, the simple best practices but I just wanted to start figured I would get it as I went and that's what's happened. Something else I wish I had started doing sooner, a lot of my episodes on YouTube have a transcript. The problem with that is when Descript transcribes my raw file, the transcript is pretty rough actually. There's a bunch of areas that are not transcribed correctly or not transcribed at all. And this requires a lot of editing. It made making the show a huge pain, especially when I was recording late. Sometimes I record 11 or midnight then the show has to be edited and it takes so much more time to edit because the transcript has to be corrected. It was making the show less fun. The most important thing, more so than cover trending topics, is be consistent. And having something get stale, not be fun, is a great way to reduce consistency because when you enjoy something, it's easy to do it. When you don't, it's hard. And by keeping the parts of this show that are fun, it makes it very easy to be consistent. And that's something I expect to get better at in the future, I expect to get better at automating a lot of parts of the show. But having to correct the transcript, that made it difficult. So I wish I was not using a transcript in videos sooner. I wish I had cut that sooner than I did. Something else I wish I started doing sooner, using timestamps. In the descriptions for the show, I have timestamps. Descript is amazing. Descript has a feature called show notes. It uses AI to look at your transcript. And even though the transcript isn't 100% correct, it's good enough. And the AI is able to give timestamps for different sections of the transcript, of the video, of the podcast. It uses GPT to do this. And if the timestamps are incorrect, it's very easy for me to correct them. And like I said, even if the transcript isn't 100% correct, I do so much speaking that GPT is able to figure out what each section is about. I also believe that using timestamps has increased the performance for the show. So I wish I started using timestamps sooner. Two things left. And these are quick ones. I wish I started sharing episodes of the podcast on LinkedIn, Instagram, and TikTok sooner, especially when I covered hot topics. That has been good for acquisition and awareness. And then the last thing, this is something that I did well and something that I should do more often. After a few dozen episodes of the show, I made a page for the show on my website. And then I bought a domain which 301 redirects to that page, the domain is edwardspod.com. So if you go to edwardspod.com, it takes you to edwardstrim.com/the-edward-show. And I can't say the long URL on TikToks or Instagram Reels or short form video. I can't do that. People aren't gonna go to it, the URL is too long. So I bought edwardspod.com that 301 redirects to the longer URL for the show. And then I'm able to tease people with videos and say if you wanna hear the rest, if you wanna learn the rest, go to edwardspod.com. That was something that I did well, but I haven't done that in a while. So that's something that I'm gonna do more. And that's everything. Those are the things that I think I did well. I think a lot of things that I wish I did sooner. The quick recap, number one, cover trending topics. If you give a podcast, it's so easy to get listeners when you cover trending topics. Cover trending topics, put the topic in the title and the description so people can find the show, the video, the episode, whatever it is. Use video, use thumbnails. Oh my gosh, use thumbnails. Please use thumbnails. I actually follow a bunch of people on X who post their well-performing thumbnails. So I'm able to learn from them. You can just search thumbnail designer on X and find a lot of people who do this. But yeah, cover trending topics, use thumbnails. Those were the biggest ones, promoting the show on LinkedIn, IG, TikTok, using timestamps, not using Twitter spaces, not posting every episode of the show to X. Again, when I post the show to LinkedIn, IG, and TikTok, I only do it occasionally just with episodes that cover hot topics that people are interested in. Removing gaps between words, editing the podcast for clarity seems like a no-brainer, but I wasn't doing this at the beginning. I didn't realize just how easy DScript makes it and then not having a transcript in every episode that people read. So time doesn't have to be spent correcting the transcript, which is so tedious. And those are all the things that I did well and that I wish I did sooner from 365 days, making my digital marketing podcast, the Edward Show. Thank you so much to everybody who has been listening and watching seriously from the bottom of my heart. Thank you. I love doing this thing. I love all of you so much for listening. And tomorrow will be one year and one day of doing the show and I will talk to you again tomorrow.
