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Joe Casabona: Hey everybody. It’s another live coaching call. Scott Cowan runs a podcast called Explore Washington State. It’s part of a greater site all about Washington. The podcast publishes three to four times per week, and he’s looking to grow his audience and potentially increase his output to five times a week.
Listen in as I give Scott advice about SEO, website improvements, and pointing his large Instagram following to his show. Look for these top takeaways about having a good website with an easy-to-speak URL is a great way to send people to your podcast, how and why you should optimize podcast episode title and descriptions, and instead of trying to grow your podcast directly, how you should try to grow your newsletter and social media following and to share and promote your show through those channels.
It’s a really good conversation. Scott is doing a lot of really cool things. Publishing more than three times a week is very difficult. So it’s admirable that he’s trying to get to five. I hope you enjoy this coaching call.
You can find Scott’s podcast and all of the show notes over at howibuilt.it/280. Thanks so much to this week’s sponsors MOFT, Nexcess and LearnDash. You’ll hear about them later on in the show. But for now, let’s get to the intro. And then the interview.
[00:02:38]
Intro: Hey everybody, and welcome to How I Built It, the podcast that helps small business owners create engaging content that drives sales. Each week I talk about how you can build good content faster to increase revenue and establish yourself as an authority. I’m your host Joe Casabona. Now let’s get to it.
[00:03:02]
Joe Casabona: All right, I am here with Scott Cowan. Scott, did I say that right?
Scott Cowan: You did.
Joe Casabona: Excellent. We were discussing this on the pre-show. I always want to make sure I pronounce the name correctly. We’re doing a coaching session today. So I’ve done a few of these episodes. They’ve been very popular.
Scott is the host of a podcast called Exploring Washington State. Is it the Exploring Washington State Podcast? That’s what I have written in my notes.
Scott Cowan: Yeah, that’s correct.
Joe Casabona: Excellent. And we were just chatting about baseball and fun stuff. So I’m excited. But Scott, tell us a little bit about your podcast, the target audience, how long you’ve been doing it. And then we can get into some of the things that you’re struggling with.
Scott Cowan: Great. Thanks, Joe. So the Exploring Washing Pod… Washington State Podcast. I can’t even say my own show. What the heck? Anyway, we started the show back in May of 2020. Initially, we started doing one episode a week, and then in early 2021 we started with two and now we’re up to three to four a week. We just released our 185th episode.
Joe Casabona: Wow.
Scott Cowan: So currently the way it’s set up is that Mondays we talk to people in the music business, Wednesdays is kind of catch all businesses, authors, hikers, things like that, and then Fridays food and drink.
So our audience is people who are interested in hearing about interesting people doing things in Washington State, finding places to go, things to see, new music to listen to. So if you’re interested in learning more about what’s happening around the state, that’s our target audience.
Joe Casabona: Nice. I like that, especially because… I mean Washington state is kind of prolific for putting out popular bands. At least when I came of age, a lot of bands that I listened to came from the Seattle area.
Scott Cowan: There’s been a handful.
Joe Casabona: Yeah, right? That’s awesome. And it’s cool that you have them themed. So like music Mondays, then business on Tuesdays, and Fridays food and drink. People are looking to find something fun to do on a Friday evening. So I like that a lot.
Now, you’re up to three to four per week. That is a lot of content. And kudos to you for doing that. I usually recommend… Well, I do two episodes per week and I might go to three episodes per week. People who are members of… I guess as we record this, maybe by the time this comes out, I will be at three episodes per week. Members of the Creator Crew now when I’m thinking about there.
So this keeps you very busy. What made you start the show, I guess? Let’s talk about that for a hot minute.
Scott Cowan: Sure. So the show is a spinoff of our website Explore Washington State, which is a website full of content mirroring what the podcast does just in written format. And I thought it would be more interesting for me than writing articles to sit down and have conversations with people. That for me is a better use of my abilities.
Yeah. So it was to supplement the written content on the website. And COVID because we weren’t getting out to go see things. So we could sit remotely like you and I are doing and have a conversation.
Joe Casabona: Nice. That’s really cool. Is this a full-time gig for you? Is this a side hustle? Is it a hobby?
Scott Cowan: It is my full-time non-paying job. I have another business that I run that keeps the lights on for everything. We’ve been doing Explore in some capacity since 2010. So this is more than a decade now. It’s morphed over that time. My interest, my focus really is the podcast.
My daughter handles the website and our social channels and all of that. And then I am the person who does the guest outreach, recording the shows. We have somebody that does light editing. And then I’m also the one that’s supposed to be promoting the show. Well, honestly, I don’t do a very good job of that.
Joe Casabona: Gotcha. I mean, that’s one of the tougher things is when you have a podcast, so much effort goes into getting an episode out that you kind of want to move on to the next one once it’s published. But as we were talking about in the pre-show, it sounds like your biggest struggle is audience growth. Is that right?
Scott Cowan: Yes. I mean, I think there’s probably not a podcaster who doesn’t want more listeners, right?
Joe Casabona: Right. Right.
Scott Cowan: That stat seems to be the Holy Grail, at least. But I don’t want it to be the north star of what we’re doing. But I do want it to expose the content to more people because I think given the variety of content… Let me ask you this question before I go further?
Joe Casabona: Yeah.
Scott Cowan: Since we have these siloed categories. So you might really be interested in what we’re talking about on Mondays. Like you want to hear me talk to, you know, Mark Pickerel of the Screaming Trees. You’re like, “That’s cool. I want to listen to that.” But you could care less that we’re talking to an author on Wednesdays. And then Fridays food and drink, and you’re like, “Okay, whatever.” So are we hurting ourselves by having such a wide variety of topics?
Joe Casabona: That’s really interesting. That’s a really interesting question. This kind of goes back to why did you start the podcast. So if I’m talking to people who want to start a podcast, I always think, why, what problem are you solving, right? And then that is the guiding light for your content and how you’re going to monetize and how you’re going to grow?
And if why you started the podcast is to get people interested in Washington State and learn about things that are going on there, no, I don’t think you’re shooting yourself in the foot. Because the thing is… I mean, Stuff You Should Know is a huge podcast. They put out four episodes a week or five episodes a week. They do their two main episodes. They do two short episodes. And then on Saturdays, they resurface old episodes and Stuff You Should Know select.
So if people are subscribed, they can choose whether or not they want to listen to a particular episode. So I think more content is probably a good variety. Where do you host the podcast?
Scott Cowan: It’s hosted on Buzzsprout.
Joe Casabona: Okay, cool. One thing that I’ve kind of experimented with doing is on Castos you can create these series. Like you can create a podcast network sort of and you can have these discrete feeds for each category that then I’ll filter into a main feed. Like The Incomparable does this too.
So you could have Explore Washington State Music Mondays as a separate feed and then food and drink Fridays as a separate feed, but then they both go to your main feed. That’s an infrastructural change I don’t think that will help you get more listeners. It’s just kind of more things to manage. But if you are worried about-
Scott Cowan: I was thinking about that though. So if somebody listens to music Monday and two people listen to Food Friday, does that mean that the show would show three listeners?
Joe Casabona: The way Castillo’s does it, yes, you could see an aggregated listener download, like listener or downloads numbers. And then you could break it down by feed and by episode.
Scott Cowan: That’s intriguing, actually. Okay. All right.
Joe Casabona: So it’s interesting. Podcast networks, in general, probably don’t work for most people. But in this case, you know, if you are putting this time and effort into a bunch of these kind of discrete categories that service this overall show, then I think a quote-unquote, “network” could work. But as far as audience growth, I think there’s probably a few things that might help a little bit more. So first of all, you use Buzzsprout. Are you publishing the episodes on the website?
Scott Cowan: This is where I have to admit that we are falling down 80% of the time. The intention is yes. And the intention is that each episode gets its own post. You know, Explorewashingtonstate/episode131 and content there. I accomplish that, if I’m lucky, 20% of the time.
Joe Casabona: Okay. So I think that could be a main driver of growth for you. I know, it’s a lot of work and I know this because I don’t do it myself. I have a VA who does it. Basically once I record these episodes, I write the description and the title, I might have to give my editor some notes, but after that, I don’t touch these episodes again. They go to my editor, my editor uploads it back to Dropbox, my VA takes it from there, and she uploads it to the website.
Now, the way I have it set up right is I have to publish on my website in order for a new episode to go public. So I’m using WordPress and I’m using Castos, and I’m using Castos WordPress plugin. So when I publish a new episode in WordPress, that is how my feed is updated.
But I think having this canonical link for people to go to makes it shareable, right? Because otherwise people are just trying to share in whatever app they use. And if they’re sharing it through Apple podcasts, now you’re alienating slightly less than half of the United States but like 70% of the world who don’t use Apple devices. Or even worse, like if I share using Overcast, that’s probably like 10% of podcast listeners at best.
Whereas if you say, “Yeah, go to explorewashingtonstate.com/164,” and then you can share the episode, get the show notes. Now people are maybe looking at other episodes that they want to check out. Or you have the “subscribe” buttons right on the episode page.
That’s always the number one thing I recommend people do. And if you don’t do that, at the very least you can have a… So you have slash podcasts, right?
Scott Cowan: Yes.
Joe Casabona: I’m not sure if Buzzsprout… I’m gonna assume they do because they’re pretty modern. In fact, I recently interviewed Alban Brooke who is the head of marketing over there. So you can check that episode out as well. We talked about starting a podcast. So Buzzsprout is pretty on top of things. Do they have a playlist widget? Like a playlist thing that you can embed on your website?
Scott Cowan: No, they do not.
Joe Casabona: No, they do not. Interesting.
Scott Cowan: Let me re-answer that. I am not aware that they do, and I believe I would have found it if it was an option.
Joe Casabona: Yeah, yeah. Right. If you were looking for it, I imagine…
Scott Cowan: I’d like to ask you a question.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. Yeah.
Scott Cowan: So you said, you know, explorewashingtonstate/163 or whatever.
Joe Casabona: Yeah.
Scott Cowan: I have heard in the past, though, that for SEO purposes, wouldn’t it be… So what am I my trading off here? So I do like the way on your show you’re like, you know, “Slash 125,” or whatever. It’s super easy to remember. We’ve named ours episode dash one two five. Doesn’t mean I can’t go in and rename them all.
Joe Casabona: Right.
Scott Cowan: To me, am I losing something in SEO?
Joe Casabona: Yeah. This is important. People will be able to go to howibuilt.it/208 for the show notes. But that is going to redirect people to something that says like howibuilt.it/live-dash-coaching/grow-podcast. So I have a redirect in place for the number that will then take you to something that is more SEO friendly for the URL.
But that’s a great question. Because you’re right, the URL does need to have the keywords that you’re trying to jam on and rank for. And a number won’t do that. So the number is driven by a redirect. So let me ask you this. What are you using for the website?
Scott Cowan: WordPress?
Joe Casabona: Okay, cool. So there’s a few plugins that you can use for redirects. My favorite is Redirection. It’s free. It’s very simple. That’s the one that I use most of the time.
There’s another one that I think it’s called Quick Redirects, where you can actually create the redirect on the page. But Redirection is a good one because it has its own page in the WordPress admin. You grab the full link, the permalink for the posts, or the episode or even, if we’re doing this, you can get the Buzzsprout page, right? Because that’s creating a page for each-
Scott Cowan: Those are pretty limited what you do with them.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. I am going to recommend that you create the page on the WordPress site.
[00:17:50]
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[00:18:58]
Scott Cowan: I’d like to ask you another question, though. This is SEO related too. So we do our show differently than how you described it. You said you publish it and then that’s what pushes out the syndication.
Joe Casabona: Yeah.
Scott Cowan: Our episodes go live at midnight on the date of publication. And so that Buzzsprout page that’s created for each episode is technically Google would think that was the original content versus the show page we create.
Joe Casabona: Right.
Scott Cowan: Am I overthinking that? Am I…
Joe Casabona: A little bit. I mean, I’ll just straight up say I’m not an SEO expert here. In this case, the canonical link is whatever you’re going to want it to be because they’re not exactly the same, right? The Buzzsprout page basically serves as a way to push your episodes to Spotify and Apple podcasts and all the other podcast directories, right?
Scott Cowan: Right.
Joe Casabona: If you’re creating this page on explorewashingtonstate.com and that’s where you’re sending people, that’s the canonic. And there’s a lot more content, right? You’ve got the show notes, you’ve got a transcript…
[crosstalk 00:20:18]
Joe Casabona: …and a transcript section. If you send people there, then that’s going to be the canonical link for the episode.
Scott Cowan: All right.
Joe Casabona: So I think transcripts too are helpful. They are expensive. I have them for my episodes. But you know, they’re gonna help with the SEO juice as well, right? Because some things that are stated… I mean, this is really good, though. Your show notes are very good. It’s basically a blog post. So that’s providing good content as well. That’s something you’re doing very well that a lot of podcasters don’t do is that. And I think that’s really good.
So first of all, definitely get a page on explorewashingtonstate.com for each episode. There’s a few ways you can automate this but you’re also doing the writing. I would recommend if you’re gonna put time somewhere, definitely do that. There are services too.
Again, if this is your full-time not paid job, I don’t know what kind of budget you have. But I use a service called PodReacher to turn some of my episodes into blog posts.
Scott Cowan: Was that PodReacher?
Joe Casabona: PodReacher, yeah. Podreacher.com. I’ll put it in the show notes. I’ll send that to you separately. But yeah, I’ll put that link in the show notes for everybody else. And they do a really nice job.
The other thing I would do here is… I’m looking at episode 164, Mónica Guzmán, Seattle author Episode 164. I would absolutely make this title something different, more clickable. Maybe you talked… Let’s see. She’s a mother of two. I never thought of it that way. How to have fearlessly curious conversations.
So I would probably have something like this where it’s how to have curious conversations in a… Gosh, what’s the word I’m looking for? In a polarized time with Seattle author Mónica Guzmán. Because now you’re putting the problem that you’re talking about in the front of the title.
And then that’s also going to help with maybe people who are just browsing podcast apps. Maybe they don’t know who Mónica Guzmán is, but yeah, I totally want to know… I’m like afraid to talk about whatever. I’m afraid to talk about polarizing topic of the day.
I’m afraid to talk about the Yankees with my close friends because I’m afraid they’re Red Sox fans or whatever. Right? That is a problem that’s solved. And then you’re still highlighting that she’s a Seattle author, that she’s a Washington State author. So those are a couple of things that I could do.
And then I don’t know what your descriptions look like for what you put into Buzzsprout.
Scott Cowan: So here’s the honest truth because anybody that is listening to this is, you know, looking to improve themselves. So I can open myself up. I typically write those right before I fall asleep the night that the episode is gonna go live at midnight. I don’t like when I’m writing. The fact that you’re looking at them, and I’m not cringing is sheer willpower on my part.
And I understand logically, though, that’s something that somebody who’s stumbling across the podcast is going to read and go, “Mm.” Or maybe they’re listening to it. So I know that we need to spend more time crafting a more compelling reason to listen to the show. Because I think the shows are better than the descriptions in most cases. I’m not trying to say the show is amazing, but I think the show is more informative and entertaining than what I’m writing.
Joe Casabona: I mean, that’s an art form. Like it’s really hard, right? I struggle with it too. I don’t think I do a very good job a lot of times. But I mean, the description you have here, just like reworking it a little bit, right? Mónica Guzmán… First of all, am I saying her last name right?
Scott Cowan: You are.
Joe Casabona: Great.
Scott Cowan: At least you’re pronouncing it like I would pronounce it. So we’re both wrong together or both correct. Okay.
Joe Casabona: Perfect. “Transparently left leaning, was raised by two Mexican immigrants that voted for Trump.” You can put that as the first line. “Then this inspired her to write a book about how to have conversations in these dangerously divided times.”
I mean, Trump is a very polarizing character. So this is going to get people intrigued and interested straight away, right? And then it’s like, “Oh, he wants to build a wall and these Mexican immigrants voted for him?” And then how did they raise like a left leaning daughter? Like, why is she left leaning when they’re so [mogga?] or whatever? You know, just a little something to spark that curiosity. I think, as people are scrolling or searching, then they’ll find, you know, they’ll be more likely to click on that.
So those are optimizations that you can make to your episode titles, descriptions, etc. That’s not the whole thing, though, right? Because you still need to get it in front of other people. The best advice which this is timely, because I just saw recently is, don’t necessarily try to grow your podcast. Grow your newsletter, grow your Facebook group, grow your Instagram, or Twitter or TikTok following. And then promote your podcast to those audience who have opted into following you in those places.
And I think that’s really good advice, because people might not always listen, but you have an audience where you could put the show in front of them when a new episode comes out.
Scott Cowan: Are you aware of any ways to track conversions from let’s say Instagram to listening to a podcast episode?
Joe Casabona: The best way to do it probably is to create a short link with… They are called UTM codes. Is that the right word? It’s like basically stuff at the end of the URL that’s like, “Source: Instagram,” or whatever. Twitter automatically adds these. This is why they convert everything to their short link, because they want to know where people are going and what people are clicking.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Instagram… Well, Instagram is a little different because they’re not putting links in places. You can do it in your stories now. But yeah, like using those UTM metrics would be the best way to do it. And then you would go to Google Analytics and see, Okay, Instagram is just killing it, or TikTok is killing it or Facebook is not, even though they’re kind of… Do they have a place in Washington? No, I’m thinking of Amazon and/or Microsoft.
Scott Cowan: Well, Facebook has a small campus in Washington.
Joe Casabona: Oh, okay, okay. Cool. That’s so interesting. I feel like Washington is like the Silicon Valley outside of Silicon Valley.
Scott Cowan: I think we have the nickname like the Silicon Forest or something like that.
Joe Casabona: Oh, I like that.
Scott Cowan: Because when you think about it, Amazon’s here. Microsoft is here, Nintendo.
Joe Casabona: I did not know Nintendo was there. Wow.
Scott Cowan: Fun fact: I used to be a game counselor for Nintendo back in the day when the Super NES first came out to the shores of the United States.
Joe Casabona: Wow.
Scott Cowan: That’s how old I am.
Joe Casabona: That’s awesome.
Scott Cowan: We have, you know, King County where Seattle is based. You know, that region is tech workers galore. In fact, I saw a stat last year that there was more people with the title of software engineer than worked in retail.
Joe Casabona: Oh, wow. Wow. That’s really cool. That’s a fun fact. So here’s another thing that you could do, I think, to try to grow your audience. Interviews are fun. People also like short-form content. Like short form tidbits, takeaway content, things like that.
I had a coaching client that had a recipe of the day podcast, and she would basically… It was a short form podcast, and she was repurposing her blog content. Because she had a recipe blog. So she would pick one of those recipes, publish it as a podcast episode, then she would put the player on that recipe page. So should I like listen or read on?
Especially because the other thing you told me you might want to do is try to do more episodes per week. These shorter form podcasts maybe that’s just you are easier content for a lot of people, right? Because then you don’t have to book and do the schedule dance, and do more editing. And maybe you can repurpose old blog posts and then embed the podcast episode on an already well-ranking page with subscribe buttons. Because I mean, if the domain is over 10 years old, you’ve got good domain authority, right? Do you get good website traffic?
Scott Cowan: 30,000 sessions a month.
Joe Casabona: Okay. I mean, that’s better than my personal site gets. That’s better than any of my sites get actually. This podcast is the most popular content that I make. That sounds really good, right? So you want to leverage that.
I know we’re bleeding into this other struggle that you have. But repurposing that content could be a good way to surface old content, get people to listen maybe instead of read because people do prefer to listen instead of read, especially when they’re commuting, and then get to more episodes.
So let’s see. I have lost my train of thought in there, but we are talking about repurposing, how you can grow getting in front of… Repurposing that content to get in front of different audiences.
[00:31:57]
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[00:32:54]
Scott Cowan: I have a question on something we’re not doing, something I hear people talk about. And basically, the intro, you know… We have no calls to action on the podcast. There’s no calls to subscribe. There’s no calls to sign up for the newsletter. There’s nothing.
We have a newsletter that we send out to about 2,500 people once a week that basically references the podcast episodes that we’ve published that week and references articles that we’ve published that week, or every now and then I pull something out that’s relevant that’s timely, or evergreen. Would you recommend a second newsletter for just podcast listeners? And if so, what would be the reason that they would want that newsletter?
Joe Casabona: I think if you are asking that, then probably no. But I don’t know what you’re using for your newsletter provider.
Scott Cowan: ConvertKit.
Joe Casabona: Okay, great. So what you could do is have a call to action that is, “Hey, do you not want to miss an episode? Do you want to get a digest of everything that we put out and pick the favorite thing that you want to listen to or read? Sign up for our newsletter. It goes out every Monday, Sunday, Friday-
Scott Cowan: Friday, yeah.
Joe Casabona: “It goes out every Friday. It tells you everything that we covered this week. You can sign up over at…” And then have like a… I would say subscribe is probably a good one, right? So explorewashingtonstate.com/subscribe. Have the form there, tag them as podcast listener or even make a separate form that you’ll know if they sign up from that form because they’re a podcast listener.
Then you could also on that page have your subscribe buttons, right? “Hey, while you’re here, why don’t you give us a little subscribe in… wherever your podcast player is.” But that’s a really clear call to action. It promotes the website, and then it gets people on your mailing list, which then…
Because here’s the thing, either people aren’t checking their podcast player every day or they are skipping titles that maybe don’t sound enticing to them. But no matter what, they’re going to see you in… They’re at least going to see your name in their inbox.
And then if you say, “Hey, in this episode, we talked about a liberal woman who has two Mexican immigrant parents who voted for Trump.” This is a story that you absolutely want to hear. I said liberal but it said left leaning. That’s not me editorializing, that’s just the word I grabbed.
So, again, this is a way you’re getting people into a place where you are seeing them and understanding them a little bit better. And then you can also reach out to them and get feedback. Hey, what do you want to hear about? Because podcasting feels like a very one-way street. And anyway, to make that a two-way street is going to give you an advantage.
Scott Cowan: Okay.
Joe Casabona: Cool.
Scott Cowan: Do we have time for me to ask you one question?
Joe Casabona: Yeah. I was just gonna say, “We’re coming up on time. Why don’t we do one more question?” Perfect.
Scott Cowan: Do you have any recommendations of how to get the guest to share the content that they were on?
Joe Casabona: This is tough. This is tough because not everybody’s going to want to be inclined to do it. People who are sharing a lot probably have their social sharing schedules very tight and curated or manicured, I guess.
But here’s what I do. Everybody who comes on my show—you’ll see this because you’ve signed up with my Calendly link. When my show publishes, you automatically get an email saying, “Hey, Scott just wants to let you know your episode is out. You can find it at howibuilt.it/280. I would love and appreciate if you shared that.” So there’s one nudge. I mean, some people are super generous. They’re like, “Yeah, I’ll totally share it.”
The other thing I do is that same day I use an app called Tweet Hunter to schedule all of my tweets. And on published days at 11:26, to make it look real, I have a three tweet thread. “Hey, new episode of the podcast is out. This week I talked to (I tag guests name. Like their Twitter handle because I asked for that too). We talked about whatever whatever. You can listen here.” And then I have like in the members only special, “We talked about this. Thanks to our sponsors.”
This is good for… If they’re tagged, the very least they’ll do is retweet it. Right. And same thing like if you tag them on Instagram or something like that. The very least somebody will be willing to do is share it to their story because that’s like a one button push for them.
And then similarly, my sponsors will also usually like or retweet that tweet. That’s not advice I usually give out because usually I’m putting the cart before the horse. Well, if you get sponsors, they’ll share it. But like that’s not always the case. And usually-
Scott Cowan: The point though is you’re showing the sponsors that you’re appreciating them for sponsoring you. I like that.
Joe Casabona: Yeah, totally. So those are the two things that I do. What I’ve seen done where I could be better is also send the graphics because my VA also creates a couple of graphics, attach them. “Hey, here’s some artwork that you could share on social media if you want.” But that’s going to require them to create a post, right? I would sooner create the posts myself and tag them in it and then they could share it that way.
Scott Cowan: So the email that you send out when the episode goes live, is that through Calendly?
Joe Casabona: No, that is a little how the sausage gets made. I’m a developer. So I wrote a plugin that sends the email when the episode publishes.
Scott Cowan: Nice.
Joe Casabona: That’s more automated for me. Let’s see. If you know that you will always publish exactly, whatever, 10 days after the interview, then you can set it up through Calendly because Calendly does send those follow-ups. Otherwise, what I would probably do is just create a reminder on publish day. Like publish post email person. And then use like a TextExpander snippet. Full disclosure: TextExpander is a sponsor of the podcast.
Scott Cowan: This is an unsolicited plug. I use TextExpander and I do love it. I do love it.
Joe Casabona: Nice. So great. Yeah, absolutely. You know, have a TextExpander snippet that has just kind of like the stuff I just said. Some email clients will have like templates, too. But I generally like TextExpander the best there.
Scott Cowan: Okay.
Joe Casabona: Usually, you ask for it. And that will increase your chances. For me, I’ve heard like 25%. For me, it’s closer to half probably. Because I’m already giving them the link and I’m tagging them on Twitter, or whatever social media they’re on. So that makes the share a little bit easier for them.
Scott Cowan: For example, let’s just use this conversation. If you publish it, you’re going to tag us on Twitter. Do tag on all social channels or do you just do Twitter?
Joe Casabona: I don’t post the show that often to other social channels. So, for me, it’s Twitter. That’s where most of my audience is. I’m on Instagram, but that’s mostly like me sharing pictures of cigars and my kids. You know, two things that go hand in hand.
Scott Cowan: Well, you share photos of your kids with cigars, right?
Joe Casabona: Definitely not that. Each photo is discreetly a cigar or a child.
Scott Cowan: Okay, all right. Just clarifying question.
Joe Casabona: So Twitter is definitely the place for me. That’s where my biggest following is.
Scott Cowan: So would you recommend we do this where our biggest following is?
Joe Casabona: 100%.
Scott Cowan: Okay.
Joe Casabona: Feels like maybe Instagram is that for you or would it be Facebook?
Scott Cowan: We have like 86,000 followers on Instagram and 20,000 on Facebook.
Joe Casabona: That’s so many. Yes, both places. Definitely do that.
Scott Cowan: Twitter we have like 500.
Joe Casabona: So Instagram, for sure. And then Instagram allows you to automatically post over to Facebook, because they’re the same company.
Scott Cowan: Correct.
Joe Casabona: And if you convert to a business account, if you haven’t done that already-
Scott Cowan: We do. Yeah.
Joe Casabona: Okay. So you can do advanced scheduling. So like if you’re batching episodes, you can use like Buffer or Publer or one of the other million-
Scott Cowan: Tailwind, I think.
Joe Casabona: Tailwind, yeah. …to schedule those out. And that’s exactly what I do. On podcast batching days, I’ll record these episodes, I’ll put them in folders and then I will write the titles and the intros. It’s usually Thursdays. I’ll write the titles and the intros, I’ll record the bumpers, I’ll write the social media and I’ll put it in Tweet Hunter.
Scott Cowan: Okay.
Joe Casabona: So I’m kind of in that mode, doing it, churning through that. And then all of that goes out to either the robots that will publish it or the people, my team, who will do it. So totally recommend that.
And with Instagram, I mean, I don’t know how effective audiograms really are. The only stats I’ve heard about audiogram, which is like those video clips, the only real stats I’ve heard from them come from companies that specialize in making audiograms. So like four out of five doctors say, smoke or whatever. But what you could do instead is record a quick video and say like, “Hey, I just…” Or if you’re using Riverside, ask your guests, “Hey, is it okay if I record the video and release part of this on Instagram?”
Scott Cowan: All right.
Joe Casabona: Right? Because that’s not extra work. The thing I just said is extra work. Because you use Riverside, right? Is that what you said?
Scott Cowan: Yes.
Joe Casabona: So Riverside… Okay, again also full disclosure. They have sponsored this podcast in the past. I swear when I do this it’s because I already use the tools. But they’re pretty effective at picking good clips or screenshots.
Scott Cowan: I don’t agree with you. Everyone just looks awful.
Joe Casabona: Oh, really?
Scott Cowan: It’s like the screenshot will be you look great, I’m staring into space; I look okay, you’re staring into space. Can we cut and paste together and then we get one.
Joe Casabona: Right, totally. But they also make it pretty easy to clip the interview.
Scott Cowan: I haven’t played with that.
Joe Casabona: I haven’t extensively. I tried it out a little bit but it’s built-in now. I like to keep a pen and paper next to me. So like I look at the time. If someone says something prolific, I write down the time.
Scott Cowan: And I’ve noticed your hand hasn’t moved this entire episode, so nothing prolific has been said by your guest. I apologize.
Joe Casabona: You said something I wrote down. But this is me doling out advice, right? Usually I’m like… Oh, yes, that was a good thought that I had. That doesn’t feel very good to me. Again, this is a little bit extra work. But if you’re gonna leverage 86,000 followers on Instagram, even if we play like the 1% rule, that’s like a good chunk of people who might come over.
Scott Cowan: But see, here’s the thing. That’s not even close to what we’re converting over. If we put something on Instagram for the podcast, we’re lucky to get like two people. So what are you putting over on Instagram? I’m not allowed to go to Instagram. That’s my daughter’s job. I’m too old. So she said she’s [inaudible 00:46:29]. So we’d have to go-
Joe Casabona: I also feel too old for Instagram.
Scott Cowan: And that might be also part of it, though, is that the audience on Instagram is different than the audience for the podcast.
Joe Casabona: Maybe. Facebook’s audience skews older. So I might experiment a little bit more over there, right? Because you have quite a following over there, too. But it probably depends. Instagram has straight up said they’re favoring video now.
So if you at least experiment here and there with video, either like a 30 second thing that you or your daughter records and puts in reels saying like, “Hey, just had this great interview, like keep an eye out for it, blah, blah, blah,” or a clip that you’re lifting from Riverside. Try it a couple of times and see what it does.
Scott Cowan: Sure.
Joe Casabona: Because we’re all slaves to the algorithm on the sites. Instagram has capriciously decided that they want to do more video now. And then here’s something that I’m going to work on this summer, especially is vertical short form video that I can share everywhere.
So like, TikTok, YouTube shorts, and Instagram reels. Because again, this is something that if I carve out an hour, and I either bring a change of shirt, or just always wear the same shirt in these things, I can record a bunch of those and then schedule them out for a while.
So short form video is… Longtime YouTubers like CGP Grey has said this doesn’t work for him. But by and large, I’ve heard that this is a great way to get yourself in front of new eyeballs, especially on TikTok. TikTok really works with getting you in front of new people. So this is a thing that I have fought because I don’t like TikTok for a number of reasons.
But as I try to grow my audience and take this show and my podcast services to the next level, I think it’s at least something I’m willing to invest three months in will say. So, couple of hours record short form videos, send them over to TikTok.
Scott Cowan: I might try to put them on AOL because that’s nice.
Joe Casabona: AOL. Very good. Get those discs for free hour of internet.
Scott Cowan: I think I still have some.
Joe Casabona: I was using them as coasters for a little while, you know?
Scott Cowan: I think everybody was. At least in my circle of friends, we’d go over to their house and [inaudible 00:49:24] coaster.
Joe Casabona: Oh, look at that. Free coaster. Very cool. Well, Scott, I hope this was helpful.
Scott Cowan: Those are some great takeaways. Thank you.
Joe Casabona: Awesome. I took some notes here in Notion, so I will summarize. If you’re listening to this part, you’ve heard the summary at the top of the show already. But, Scott, good luck. I’ll keep an eye on your socials and I’ll subscribe to your show. I appreciate you coming on the show to do this live coaching session with me.
Scott Cowan: Joe, thank you so much for taking the time. This was great. Those are great takeaways for me. And I really appreciate your insight.
Joe Casabona: Awesome, awesome. My pleasure. And thank you so much for listening. If you’re interested in doing a live coaching session like this, I’m trying to release them every four to five weeks now. So you can head over to the show notes over at howibuilt.it/280.
And I give preferential treatment to people in the Creator Crew so you can sign up for the membership over at that show notes page as well. It’s just 50 bucks a year. That’s less than five bucks a month, which is absolutely less than a fancy drink at Starbucks, which you can [inaudible 00:50:39] in Washington. So thanks so much for listening. And until next time, get out there and build something.