Episode 200 - October 31, 2024

A Peek Into My Podcast Publishing Process

All Systems Go! Marketing Automation and Systems Building with Chris L. Davis
All Systems Go! Marketing Automation and Systems Building with Chris L. Davis
A Peek Into My Podcast Publishing Process
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In this episode, Chris is joined by Cassy Sorden, who has been responsible for publishing the all the episodes of the All Systems Go! podcast. You get a behind the scenes look at how automation is applied to various parts of the process to increase efficiency, software used, and insight on measuring the impact of the podcast.

What You'll Learn

  • 00:40 – Meet Cassy, the podcast manager who has been supporting entrepreneurs in building impactful podcast platforms for over four years.
  • 03:00 – Discover how Cassy stumbled upon podcasting and how her journey evolved over time.
  • 04:30 – The essential steps in Chris’ podcasting process with a focus on automation and efficiency.
  • 08:59 – Explore the role of a podcast manager
  • 11:18 – Learn how collaboration and automation streamline the process of creating graphics and promoting episodes.
  • 18:00 – Decision-making process behind switching podcast hosting services
  • 29:00 – The value of podcasts for business growth, measuring success metrics, and the impact of a podcast manager.
  • 36:00 – Understand the importance of engagement metrics like listen-through rates and leveraging podcasts for brand visibility and client acquisition.

Today's Guest

Creative heart, tech-savvy mind. For over 4 years, Cassy has been supporting entrepreneurs in building impactful and powerful podcast platforms. Her mission? To help busy business owners like you create a lasting asset that works tirelessly for your brand. Whether you’re launching from scratch or seeking ongoing support, she’ll transform your podcast vision into an influential platform that works for you.

Resources Mentioned

Transcript

[00:00:00] Welcome everyone to another episode of the all systems go podcast. Of course, I’m your host Chris L. Davis. And today I, I get to, I get to show, I get to expose you all to a secret weapon of mine. It is a person that has been working with me for years. So many, many of you understand how hard It is to retain great talent and she is the reason why you all are listening to me now and have been listening to me over the years consistently.
[00:00:40] This is a treat for me. That’s sweet, but I think it’s going to be even sweeter for you all. So, um, I want to introduce you all to Cassy. Cassy Sorden is my podcast manager, by the way, everyone, again, the one that makes it happen. She’s a creative heart tech savvy mind. And for over four years, Cassy has been supporting entrepreneurs and building impactful, powerful podcast platforms.
[00:01:11] What is her mission? You may ask that’s to help busy. Business owners like you create a lasting asset that works tirelessly for your brand, whether you’re launching from scratch or seeking support ongoing for what you may already have in motion. She’ll [00:01:30] transform your podcast vision into an influential platform that works for you.
[00:01:34] She gets my stamp of approval for years, everyone, years. She has been publishing for, for publishing. In fact, Cassy, there’s not a single podcast. I don’t think you haven’t published every single one and she gets better and better. Cassy, welcome to the podcast. How are you doing?
[00:01:57] Hi, I’m very good.
[00:01:59] Great.
[00:02:00] Great. Excited to be here. Yes. Yes. Great to have you. And like I said, everyone, I believe your fingerprints are on every single podcast and the beauty is. When, when I think about just all the moving parts of a podcast, I don’t know, as, as much as I know to do everybody, and as much as I know to automate, I don’t know how I would have achieved what I’ve achieved without you.
[00:02:30] So let me give you an opportunity to just let everybody know. How did you stumble upon podcasting? Was that the thing that you set out to do in the very initial set? Hey, look, I want to be a podcast manager for, for everyone. Or was it more of a natural progression as you honed in your skills?
[00:02:52] It was definitely a natural progression.
[00:02:55] When I very first started trying to figure out how I was going [00:03:00] to work from home and I started getting into virtual assistants, I really was doing more like some random landing page builds and stuff. I’d always kind of tinkered around with website building, but Then, Chris, I actually stumbled upon you as my first client somehow, I was pretty green.
[00:03:18] So I don’t know how I managed that one. I think, I think you just like read, read into my mind in our during our interview, I still remember you asking me crazy questions like, um, Do you like doing puzzles and do you do Sudoku and the most interesting things to figure out the type of personality I had and I started working on your podcast for you.
[00:03:43] And I was like, I love podcasting and it just blossomed from there. Yeah.
[00:03:47] Yeah. And you could tell everyone, um, you could tell when somebody really enjoys what they do. Uh, versus somebody who is doing a good job at something that they have to do, right? It’s just a total different experience. And there are countless times where I will be satisfied.
[00:04:07] I’ll be satisfied with the podcast as is. And I’ll get a Slack message and Cassius say, Hey, there’s this new thing. You want to try it? You want me to enable it? And I’m like, Ooh, wait, wait, what is this? And to be able to have the ability to say yes. Um, and it actually get into play without me having to figure it out.
[00:04:28] It has been a, a, a [00:04:30] really good, uh, relief and a breath of fresh air. Um, Cassy. So, so let me give everybody an overview of my podcasting process and there, cause there’s a handoff and I’ll, and I’ll talk about the part that I’m doing. And then I’m going to hand it off to you to discuss the part that you, that you do.
[00:04:53] So. Usually what happens is when someone wants to start a podcast, if they’re very ambitious, they’ll, they’ll do all the research themselves and start it on their own. I started podcasting before it was like so well known as it is now. And the amount of information that was available to me as a first time podcaster.
[00:05:18] Compared to now, I’m just like, wow. I mean, I had to figure out my software wasn’t evolved as it, as it is. I’ve got a bunch of just horror stories of how I got started and how I got here. However, for, for anybody looking to start a podcast or you already have one and you’re looking to streamline and automate it, this is what you’re going to want to look into.
[00:05:39] You, you need to have at least a means of. people scheduling or submitting to be a guest on your podcast. That’s the entry. That’s the, everybody needs a form that somebody can submit in that form. Then adds them to a process or pipeline. For me, it’s a pipeline [00:06:00] and I use air table. So when someone fills out a form, I’ve got a nice data database interface.
[00:06:05] I should say it has all the information right in front of me that I can review. And say, okay, yep, you can proceed or no, I don’t think you’re a good fit. Now from there, they will get a, uh, email with the link to schedule and they’ll schedule their, their, their time through, uh, Calendly. I use Calendly because it directly integrates with zoom when they schedule.
[00:06:29] And that’s just less I have to do. Um, Or, or if you’re highly qualified and I’ve invited you, you skip the whole email process, everyone. And I’ve got a conditional, uh, conditional, uh, out success page from my form software that sends you directly to the, to the scheduler. So don’t worry about that automation.
[00:06:54] But I just wanted to let you all know, I practice what I preach here. I’ve got different paths for people who are qualified differently. So form. To invitation to schedule to here we are record. There’s one step in between that I do that, uh, Cassy and I, we actually tag team this one, um, where you get a prep doc sent out prior to Cassy, excuse me, used to send this doc.
[00:07:20] It used to be part of her process. And I was like, Hey, I think I can automate the creation of this doc and dynamically place in information and send it [00:07:30] out. Tested it out. And now that that goes out, um, automatically now we’re at the point where you all are listening right now and that’s record. So I can essentially get all the way to record with maybe max 30 to 45 minutes a week.
[00:07:49] And that’s depending on how many submissions I get. So I would say that’s pretty good. You still on the front end before the form, you still have to have some outreach. You still have to have some means of getting people to the form, but once they say, Hey, I want to be on, um, that process is pretty seamless.
[00:08:07] So if you can get to that point. I’m just going to tell you now, it’s not worth you figuring out everything that comes beyond that it is not worth it. Some people will just hire a total agency to handle the whole thing. But I have found that that if, if there is a critical point, a critical handoff is after recording, some people can record, you know, on their phone or, you know, whatever.
[00:08:36] But when you, when it gets to the publishing part. The post recording publishing part. This is where you want to enlist help. And this is where Cassy comes in. So Cassy, you know, a podcast is recorded cause I’ve clicked a button and it’s spun up a task and click up, uh, let everyone else know about your, your process from, from then on.
[00:08:59] [00:09:00] Yes. And I completely agree. That’s the part where you want to hand it off because that’s where you’re going to get drained from having to do. It’s not fun to listen to yourself and edit yourself. You just want somebody else to do that.
[00:09:14] Yeah. Matter of fact. And
[00:09:15] everything.
[00:09:16] Give insight into that, Cassy.
[00:09:18] Cause, cause you do a great job. Do you? Well, let me say this. I’m going to interview you. I’m going to interview you, Cassy. So when, when the podcast is published, you listen to every episode.
[00:09:31] Yeah, I personally, I always put it into Otter AI first and I listened to it there because then I’ve got the transcript to listen along with it and you can kind of skip around, um, you know, I don’t need to listen to your intro anymore.
[00:09:46] I’ve listened to it
[00:09:48] quite a
[00:09:48] few times now that you can skip around pretty easily and see where you’re skipping to. So that is the process I use to start then listening and writing the show notes. Um, and the bullet points and, and all of the good stuff.
[00:10:03] Yeah. And I, and I’ll pause there real quick.
[00:10:05] Everyone. I know, listen, we, we are in a AI enabled company. We do use AI for content creation, copyright and things of that nature. Um, but listen to me, if the person publishing your podcast is not listening to your podcast, there it’s, it’s just, there’s a feel Cassy. Like [00:10:30] when I read your descriptions, I’m like, Oh, I’m glad she pulled that out.
[00:10:34] Like AI, it can do a good summary and it just kind of feels stale at times, even the best, even the best. Um, so listen, everyone, you want somebody that is listening to your podcast. And, and is a lit, I guess you want a listener of your podcast to be published in your podcast. So anyways, continue casting.
[00:10:56] Yes. Yeah. So, and I skipped a step. I do first add your intro. We have your recorded intro and outro that I have to add on to the beginning and the end first. Then I put it into Otter AI and, uh, get the transcript and write the show notes. And because you have a great Form that your guests fill out to schedule.
[00:11:18] I easily have their headshot and their bio and everything, their website, their links, everything I need. It’s very time saving, uh, to have all of the, their updated info and not have to go dig around on the internet, trying to find a decent photo of them to then go make their graphics and, um, put it up on the website.
[00:11:42] You know, and I guess I kind of skipped over that piece, but that was a, uh, intentional effort. Everyone make, make sure you’re collaborating with, with your people and using automation to make their lives easier. I, we have [00:12:00] countless slack messages now, Cassy, where I’ll just ask, Hey, Is this a heavy lift or, Hey, is this a major piece?
[00:12:10] Can we remove it? Or, Hey, do we need to add to it? Um, so the form was not my own creation. It was just me thinking like, okay, I see that this is common information that Cassy is using. Maybe I need to streamline the process of collecting it. So it’s always there and always easily accessible. Yes. So
[00:12:36] from there, then I, uh, Also, because you record video, we use, uh, Opus clips now.
[00:12:43] We just recently started using them. Um, and so that’s an AI software that helps pull out clips. It gives us like 20 options. So it does still take time to go through and find which ones are actually good and edit and tweak. Sometimes I have to add a few seconds or to the beginning or the end to make it have full context and actually make sense.
[00:13:04] But then we can put those on YouTube easily. Um, LinkedIn and I collaborate pretty effortlessly with your VA on that, which I think is a pretty special and unique thing through air table. I create the caption and click a little button that triggers, click up to let her know it’s ready for her to go post to social media.[00:13:30]
[00:13:30] And because I’m the one who already listened to the episode, it makes sense for me to create the captions for it.
[00:13:37] Yes. So, so everyone. Uh, those of you whose ears are attuned to some of the systematic automation we have in place, you’ve, you’ve picked up by now. I love creating buttons for people to click.
[00:13:53] And when they click the buttons, magic happens. And it’s sometimes it’s natively within the app. Sometimes I got to use like make or Zappy or something like that. But you’ll see we have an orchestration of, Hey, this thing is done your turn. Oh, hey, I finished it. Let me click this button, your turn and it works so seamlessly, you kind of forget, you know, like until you say some of the stuff, Cassy, I’m just like, oh yeah, it does kind of cause you, you really do set it and forget it once it’s been proven that it can be trusted.
[00:14:25] Right? Um, one thing I wanted to ask, so I never asked Cassy this everyone. So I’m going to learn something right now. Um, Um, I watch, so I get my clips and they show up in my feed on, on YouTube as a short. And it’s, it’s always a pleasant surprise because I’m like, Hmm, would I watch me? Right. Like is what I’m saying.
[00:14:49] Interesting. And by the time I’ve seen it, I’ve recorded it so long ago. I don’t even remember what I’m saying. So it works really well, but there are some times where, you know, I’ll be [00:15:00] talking and I can see that the clip has been kind of like chopped up to, to make, make it nice and concise. The question that I’ve never asked that I’m curious of now that based on what you said, do you do the chopping or is Opus smart enough to say, Oh, we’re just going to cut these things together and piece it into, into one.
[00:15:20] Okay. This is an interesting question. I used to do the chopping myself. I would take out the little gaps. I used to use, um, CapCut. To do that on my desktop, which is kind of not like the most user friendly platform, but, but in the last year, especially with so much more added AI, so many more software options, um, Opus.
[00:15:47] Clips does have a little tool that says there’s three spots to clean up in this clip and see, click it and it just instantly makes those little gaps disappear. So
[00:15:58] yeah. Yeah, it’s, I mean, it’s really good. Um, when I, some of the videos I look at, I’m just like, wow. And, and, and remember everyone we’re, we’re pro robot, but we’re not.
[00:16:14] All robot. So I think that every robotic output still needs humanized. That’s just me. Maybe I’m old school already, Cassy. Like maybe I’m aging myself, but I don’t trust the robots in that, in, in that [00:16:30] regard, Cassy still picks out the clips. I think Opus spits out a number of clips, right? Cassy, you go through and select the best ones, right?
[00:16:40] Yes. Yeah. It gives you a bunch, 15 to 20 per episode. And I pick out the best three or four. And even if I use like that little cleaning tool. Sure. I’ll clean it up, but then I’m still going to listen to that whole clip from the beginning to the end. Make sure the captions are all matching up. You can utilize it, but don’t trust it a hundred percent.
[00:17:05] You know, what’s funny, even now, um, when I log into chat, GPT, which is kind of rare, I usually go through the API, but when I log into chat, GPT, and actually type something in it, there’s a little prompt at the bottom. I wish I had it up. I don’t want to pull it up now, but, um, that’s like, you know, Chat GPT can be inaccurate.
[00:17:23] Please double check, you know, your resources. And I think that because AI is, is a brain is essentially what it is. And it allows people to create without thinking. I think it’s very, I can see how and why it’s super easy to just kind of let it do all the stuff for you. But yes, everybody with your podcast, you definitely want somebody to have some extra set of eyes on it before, before it goes out.
[00:17:51] Um, now you’ve got the opus clips, you’ve got the recording. Um, yes, take, continue, continue.
[00:17:59] Okay. [00:18:00] So we recently switched to Buzzsprout. You probably have an episode. I don’t know if you have an episode on this or not, honestly, I can’t remember. I don’t think
[00:18:08] so. We could, let’s, let’s talk about it. Let me, let me give my time.
[00:18:12] We got some time. Let’s, let’s, let’s, let’s talk about it. So.
[00:18:15] Okay.
[00:18:16] I was using Castos prior to, and these are no shots at anybody. But there was one thing that I was looking to do and Cassy found that. So actually I’ll, I’ll let you tell the story of our, of our trans transition.
[00:18:32] Yeah, well, you wanted to use dynamic ads.
[00:18:35] You wanted to be able to, when there’s a special freebie lead magnet promotion, something going on that you want your listeners to all hear about. You wanted to be able to automatically place it on every single episode and then be able to take it off when it wasn’t relevant anymore. And. I knew that Buzzsprout had that option for podcasters and Castos had an option that they call dynamic ads, but it’s different than that.
[00:19:07] It was like for third party ads. And so we waited around for a while to see if they would catch up and, and add that on. And we even emailed them and everything.
[00:19:18] I don’t know if I should say that. And listen, we’re, we’re equal here. Equal opportunities here. Um, the, the CEO or the founder, one of them, uh, Craig, he, [00:19:30] he was been on the podcast, everyone.
[00:19:31] So he’s been on the podcast. We’re huge fans of the platform. It just wasn’t serving the need that we had that had arisen.
[00:19:43] We even tried working around it because I think you took a little Break from the podcast for a month or something and you were like, well, maybe for that month You can just remove all of my old intros and you can work on adding new ones And I was like by the time I invest that time I think it actually would be a better move for us to just switch podcast hosts, which you were a little nervous about
[00:20:08] And I was like, don’t be, we got this.
[00:20:11] Yep. Yeah. So, so now I’ll tell them about you. Um, so I don’t change software easily. Everyone. I like to say, I like to do what I say, Mary. I like to marry software where I forgive you. You’ve, you’ve harmed me once. No, no, no, you’ve harmed me again. This is what relationships are all about.
[00:20:33] The, the enduring. Um, but when it gets to the point where you can’t take it and when I, I guess I’m saying harm, sometimes it’s just. Hey, it’s me. Not you. I’m harming you because I keep having requests that you just can’t make. Right. You can’t meet my, my expectations. So that was what this was. It’s not, it’s not you cast those.
[00:20:54] It’s me. I’ve, I’ve, I’ve just outgrown this relationship. Um, so when Cassy [00:21:00] was like, Hey, look, I think we should migrate in my head. It just seems so big, all of the, all of the podcasts and you move it over. Do I lose my, my downloads and my data and are people going to see it? Is it going to disrupt people?
[00:21:16] Are they not going to be able to access it for a time? Are they going to be playing an episode? And then all of a sudden it cuts off like all of these. Case is, uh, use cases and scenarios is just running through my head. And let me tell you all this, this is obvious slack. I think maybe we had one call Cassy, where you had to like walk me through it.
[00:21:34] Cause I was like, okay, just show it to me. Um, but through it all, Cassy just. Slacking me back like, Oh, no, that, well, that, that’s fine. Well, nope, we actually, that, that’ll be taken care of. And it was actually too easy. Cause I was like, Hmm, I think this may be one time where Cassy has overlooked something and maybe she’s not thinking about this as thoroughly as she should.
[00:21:58] And lo and behold, the migration process was so simple. From my perspective, everyone, from my perspective, Cassy, I know you were in there making sure all the details and everything, but again, this is why you have a podcast manager to do things like that. Cassy, I think it took us maybe two weeks. To do maybe less, um, and it was, it was seamless and listeners, if you experienced a hump or a little, [00:22:30] uh, uh, error or whatever in the process, let me know, but I don’t think a single individual like was like, Oh, I can tell you moved you move from castles to, to what are we on now?
[00:22:43] Buzzsprout right?
[00:22:44] Buzzsprout. Yeah.
[00:22:46] Yeah.
[00:22:46] No, because we made sure to keep Castos and Buzzsprout both going for your website purposes at least. So there really shouldn’t have been a chance of anybody having a hiccup.
[00:23:00] Yeah. And I think the WordPress, so everyone a little bit more on the technology. I do publish the episodes to my website, which WordPress, uh, for SEO reasons, of course.
[00:23:13] And, and for people who. Um, you know, go to my frequent, my website, um, they can, they can get stuff and if they search it, uh, categorize all the podcasts with their search and all of that, um, the WordPress plugin that I use, I believe, and this is another thing Cassidy, she did the research to say, Oh, wow. You can use the same plugin, we just swapped the provider.
[00:23:36] Because that was another overwhelming thing. I’m like, what about the syndication? The thing that sends it to every platform? Is that going to change? And it, to me, again, from my perspective, it felt like you flipped a switch. And that was all that was required, you know,
[00:23:54] yeah, because we used to just publish it on your WordPress [00:24:00] website and it sent it out to Apple and Spotify and everywhere for you.
[00:24:04] Yes.
[00:24:05] And that’s no longer the process, but we have a different process, but there’s a lot more benefits that come from. I actually kind of have to do a little bit more work now each week on publishing it, but you have some so many more abilities. Within buzzsprout.
[00:24:23] Absolutely. I, and I can’t remember, I don’t want to turn this into a pro
[00:24:27] buzzspout
[00:24:30] podcast, unless they want to sponsor.
[00:24:32] Um, but there were a few things just out the gate that I was pleasantly surprised with. Um, everybody, if you’re just getting started and you, you just want to get some momentum going, publishing to your website is a nice to have not a must because So what we’re doing is we’re going to be doing a web page for each episode.
[00:24:54] So you can send people to, um, I just, we were already in that motion of publishing on the website. Plus I like to be able to control everything. Um, so it just made sense to continue down that path. So we have, um, we have the recordings now we’re publishing to bus brow. Okay. Yeah. We’ve got, we’ve got the assets.
[00:25:17] Thanks. You’ve clicked your magic buttons that have notified marketing VA to publish to, to, to social media. So, so you guys listen to that. I’m not, [00:25:30] I don’t, I’m not tasking, uh, Cassy with the full publication on social media. I actually have somebody that does that because as you all know, different platforms require different formatting and things of that nature.
[00:25:44] So I just keep Cassy really clean to the production of podcast. Not to say that she can’t everybody. I’m not saying, Oh, because you know, when it gets out of podcasting, she just really loses it. No, no, no. He is actually very skilled at a variety of things in digital marketing. It’s just the setup works well because there’s other things that happen on social media that my VA is aware of.
[00:26:10] Um, speaking of which, do you, but I do, man, I think you publish it to YouTube though, right?
[00:26:18] Um, I used to do the full video for you to YouTube. We’ve paused on that. But, SAMHSA, oh. I can cut that out. Sorry. Your, your VA. I wasn’t sure if I should say her name. Your VA does, um, the, the clips to YouTube though.
[00:26:36] She posts them there.
[00:26:37] Oh yeah. So she’s got the full, she’s got the full, um, um, publication. So yes. Yes, everyone. This is a, A synchronized system, so lots of handoff, um, and none of it manual. And I can’t recall, Hmm, I don’t, I may not be able to recall anytime that [00:27:00] we really dropped it, dropped the ball because as long as those buttons are clicked.
[00:27:06] Yeah. Stuff gets published very, very consistently, actually, very consistently.
[00:27:10] And we really don’t even hardly talk, which is kind of crazy to say, but we really don’t that much. We kind of just are like, Hey, it’s ready. Click the button.
[00:27:20] Yep. Yep. I know. Yep. Yep. Listen, everyone, it really is beautiful. I have to admit, um, I have published podcasts before where I was responsible for pretty much all of it.
[00:27:33] I mean, anybody who’s listened to the active campaign podcast, um, just know I was doing about 90 percent to a hundred percent of the full production of that thing. Uh, and to have resources now that can actually help. and allow me to build systems that they can jump in and, you know, do things. It’s been great.
[00:27:54] It, I, it’s been one of the most enjoyable experiences. And another thing that I will say is that it’s always good to have another mind to strategize with. I don’t have to be, nor do I claim to be the smartest in all things podcast. Um, but Cassy has other clients, she’s in the space researching. So whenever I have an idea, it’s easy to just say, Hey Cassy, have you seen this?
[00:28:26] Or if we were to do this, what do I need to be thinking about that [00:28:30] I’m not thinking about right now? Right? Like that’s a huge benefit of having someone in the space. And, and, and with that being said, Cassy, you can confirm or deny, but I would imagine in what I’ve witnessed is that. It’s a collective sharpening of your skills.
[00:28:49] I benefit from what you’re learning with other clients that you can bring over and say, Hey, this is what I’m seeing, right?
[00:28:56] Yes. 100%. I definitely, between all of my clients, I’m always comparing cross comparing. And I will also say like you and I usually meet in your VA once a quarter or so and have a nice long call.
[00:29:13] And I think that’s extremely beneficial because it keeps. This is me in the loop from more of a holistic point of view of what’s going on in your business. What’s the most important focus, because that does tie into your podcast and how I’m writing show notes for you. And even just small words and things that need to be tweaked based on what you’re changing in your business and what’s going on in that season of your business.
[00:29:40] Yeah. And yeah, go ahead. Keep going. Casey.
[00:29:45] Oh, I kind of have a question for you, actually.
[00:29:48] Yes.
[00:29:49] Can I ask you a question?
[00:29:50] Yes. You can interview me as well.
[00:29:53] Okay. I would love to hear your perspective on like the value of your [00:30:00] podcast, because I feel like a lot of times it can be hard for podcasters to see the return on investment from having a team member, especially dedicated to their podcast.
[00:30:13] There’s not as much of a like, Direct line of, Oh, they clicked on this episode and then they immediately bought this thing from me. They’re spending hours listening to you, then they’re going to your website and then they’re finally emailing you. And you may not even know they listened to your podcast for hours before they purchased or signed up with you.
[00:30:36] Yes, this is true. This is true. So, um, I’m gonna, I’m going to give you all the, the, the real deal on this. I, the one thing that I dislike about podcasting in general is the lack of visibility, right, is the fact that I can’t necessarily give any proper attribution. I do use links in the podcast episodes to try to see which episodes are driving which traffic, but even that gets cumbersome after you get to hundreds and hundreds and you start to look and say, okay.
[00:31:09] episodes How else can I measure the impact? And before I say this, I’m just going to let you all know, there is an invaluable way that this podcast directly affects impacts and grows my business that I am not going to share publicly. [00:31:30] Okay. But just know that it is, it is a different way of looking at it.
[00:31:36] I think that a lot of times we’re looking for the direct impact. Well, this way is a way that I found to use my podcast strategically to grow my business. So outside of that, that’s the piece that’s tucked away. My community folks may or may not know the answer to this one, but that’s for the, that’s private.
[00:31:56] Right. But publicly I have to say this, Cassy, I have, she is my witness. There have been many times where I have thought just because I can’t measure, you know, to the level that I would like to just like, man, I don’t, I don’t know if it’s worth it. I don’t know if. People would even care if I stopped talking with people, even realize, Hey, Chris, where’s the podcast.
[00:32:15] Right. Um, and I think we all have those moments in, especially as podcasters, like is what I’m saying, Matt mattering. If you don’t have sponsorships and millions of views and all of that, but I have to say this, Cassy, I can’t count how many times I’ve met somebody at a conference. And they’ll tell me how much they love the podcast.
[00:32:37] I can’t tell you how many times before somebody shows up to enroll in a program or something, they’ll start off by saying, I’ve been binging through your podcast, right? I can’t measure it. But from my experience, these are the things that keep me going. I mean, I can be at a [00:33:00] conference and somebody will stop me and take a picture of me.
[00:33:04] Not of me, take a picture with me from the podcast, Cassy, not like, Hey, I know you from lead pages and active camp. No. Hey, all systems go loved episode. Duh, duh, duh, duh, duh. Right. So I think those are things that are invaluable and in a day and age where I do like to be able to measure every single thing, when I stepped back, I realized that this podcast is one of the strongest and nurture machines.
[00:33:35] that I have. And the fact that podcasts are being more widely adopted and looked to as like the first option people are actually searching for them lets me know I’ve got enoughmore than enough legacied episodes to support somebody’s binging desires for weeks probably if you’ve binged every episode it may take you a couple of weeks to go through as long as, moving forward, When I start to get people like you all will see that I’ll have the founder of keep come on right and I start getting these What we will call bigger name Individuals that are saying hey, we would like to come on the podcast to me.
[00:34:19] Those are positive signs of that what we’re doing is working and, and, and making an impact. So, um, I also add this, I think that there were times [00:34:30] where I may have been too close to like pulling the plug because I was looking at metrics similar to like a webinar or something, right? Hey, 50 people came on this webinar, three bought.
[00:34:46] What is the podcast doing? Right. And I think that that can be very dangerous. Everyone. I think you have to sit back and really understand all the ways a podcast can impact your business and figure out how it best works for you and your business in your particular use case.
[00:35:05] Absolutely. Agree. I could go on and on for days, but I’m sure we’re getting pretty close to our time, but uh, especially about getting too in the weeds, looking at your podcast downloads and I think in the last four or five, six months, Apple changed the way they report your podcast downloads.
[00:35:28] And so now you could definitely get lost and get very down thinking that your podcast downloads are. Nobody’s listening anymore, but they’re just being reported completely different. So it’s hard to look at those numbers and try to make any big decisions off of them.
[00:35:45] But try
[00:35:46] and think about the impact more than anything.
[00:35:48] It’s kind of like the email open rates now, right? With Apple privacy and all of this other stuff, you just really can’t trust them. Um, now you never really could, but you, you really can’t. So, so let [00:36:00] me, let me flip it on you real quick. Um, we we’ve got a couple more minutes, uh, Cassy. What would you say are the metrics or the metric that somebody running a podcast should can give them the most insight?
[00:36:18] I’ll say it like that, can give them the most insight.
[00:36:22] Well, a few things. Um, for one, if you can log into your Apple podcast, connect or have your podcast manager log in there, it’s only going to show you the people who listen on Apple’s. Metrics for this because you’re looking at apple podcast connect, but most people are listening on apple a good portion of them so it’ll give you a good idea and listen to or look at the um, listen through rate to see how much of the episode, the percentage of each episode they’re listening to, that can give you a really good indicator on if you need to be recording shorter episodes or if there’s a point where you’re losing people.
[00:37:03] That’s an indicator I would look at to improve your recording, your episodes, but an indicator to see if you’re feeling like you’re being successful with your I would have something set up where Like if you’re, I don’t know, a coach or a service provider who is trying to get new clients through [00:37:30] your podcast.
[00:37:31] If there’s some question on a form when they sign up for you that says Where did you hear about us or something generic, something similar to that, an option of having the podcast and that drop down to see, I bet you would be a lot of answers be the podcast because there’s so much nurturing that happens when they listen to your podcast.
[00:37:53] Yeah. And yeah, I think that would be a good indicator to see, should I keep going with this or not?
[00:37:59] Yeah,
[00:38:00] absolutely. But to piggyback off of one other thing you said, where podcasts can be like the first thing people are looking for from someone now when they’re going to search, that is absolutely true. I feel like.
[00:38:15] Sometimes people think there’s so many podcasts out there already. Maybe I don’t need to start one. But for me, if I’m interested in learning from somebody and I’m looking at their website, the first thing I want to do is go look at their podcast. I mean, not just from the podcast manager standpoint, but just out of curiosity, I want to go see what they have available for me to listen to.
[00:38:38] And if they don’t have a podcast yet, honestly, that kind of makes me be like, Huh. Do they really, like how long have they been doing this? You know?
[00:38:47] Yeah. Yeah. That’s a good point. It’s kind of
[00:38:49] the standard.
[00:38:50] Yeah. And Cassy, I, there are countless times that I go to somebody’s website of interest to me and there [00:39:00] is nothing, I just can’t get any more information.
[00:39:04] They don’t have a YouTube presence. Maybe they post some stuff on LinkedIn, but yeah. So I know it, I know it feels like it, everybody’s got a podcast, everybody’s talking into a microphone. Every time I log in. But here’s what’s crazy. In closing, here’s what’s crazy. If I can go, I feel, this is what I personally feel.
[00:39:25] I feel like there’s 80 percent of the same content being circulated. Because my wife can, can come to me and say, have you seen this video? And it didn’t click, Cassy, until I’m like, well wait a minute. It’s like, I have seen it? In this stratosphere of unlimited content? Clearly I would have a different experience than you, right?
[00:39:46] But it’s the same video. Like when someone watches a video, they shared it. And before you know it, you’re, you’re really realizing that actually there’s so much unseen stuff. And if you think like, I’m really seeing the same types of people, the same thing. you’ll then maybe, hopefully, be able to put together, there’s not as many creators as you think.
[00:40:09] Yeah.
[00:40:09] And there, the space is not as reserved and taken up as it may appear. There are plenty of seats at the table. There are plenty of spaces, plenty of space for, for new voices and things of that nature. Okay. Cassy, I, people don’t know this, but we do, I can, me and Cassy can talk all day about podcast strategy, uh, marketing strategy, [00:40:30] ideas, things of that.
[00:40:31] What have you seen? Oh, here’s what I’ve seen, Cassy. So I will not belabor you all with that. But what I want to do is this. Somebody has been listening and they’re like, okay, I’m ready to get started. I think I can do the recording, but I was always confused at what happens after the fact, or they may be doing it and just don’t want to do it anymore.
[00:40:53] Like, Oh yes, finally. Where can they go to potentially reach out to you to get more information? See if they’re a good fit for the podcast services that you provide.
[00:41:05] Yeah, they can go to my website is Cassy Sorden. com and that’s C A S S Y S O R D E N. com and they can book a free call with me there and we can chat and see if it’s aligned, if it’s a good fit and if I’d be able to support them.
[00:41:26] Yes, everybody that’s in the show notes and you know why it’s in the show, you know why it would be in the show notes. Because Cassy herself will be putting that link in the show notes for you. Um, Cassy, thank you so much for jumping on the podcast. I, um, we’ve been planning this for a while, everybody.
[00:41:47] As much as I want to keep Cassy to myself, like my secret, my secret weapon, and I don’t want to overwhelm her, I also understand that. The world needs the service that you provide and the peace of mind that comes with [00:42:00] this. So I hope that, uh, this was both informational revelatory and, and clarity providing for you all.
[00:42:07] And I hope it’s, it’s has excited you that there is a path to get that podcast published. Once it’s recorded, that doesn’t have to require. Any of you, except for maybe some, some magic buttons. So again, thank you so much, Cassy for, for jumping on the podcast. Greatly appreciate it.
[00:42:30] Thank you.
[00:42:31] Yes. Yes. Yes.
[00:42:31] All right, everyone. Thank you all for listening. And until next time I see you online, automate responsibly, my friends.

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On the show, Chris reveals all of his automation strategies he has learned from working in (and with) a variety of SaaS companies so you can put your business on autopilot quickly and without error.

Discover how to deploy automated marketing, sales, and onboarding systems to scale your business without working long hours to do so.
Chris L. Davis - Chief Automation Officer
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Chris L. Davis

Chris is an Electrical Engineer turned entrepreneur and the Founder of Automation Bridge. He is an international speaker, facilitator, and startup consultant that specilalizes in scaling profitable processes.

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