Why I’m Making My Podcast the Linchpin of Everything [Audio Note]

All right, they say third time's a charm. I recorded this twice and lost it both times with Super Whisper, so I'm back on Whisper Memo. I'll do a whole thing about how I can't believe how unreliable this is, but that's not what I'm recording this voice note for.

I wrote an article earlier this week that talked about how I let AI ruin my podcast content strategy, and I ended up just like not having a strategy. Um, I just had a bunch of tactics, and so I'll link that in the description; it's over at casabona.org. But, uh, I want to talk about the tactics now.

So, uh, the gist is, um, I leaned on AI to come up with my ideal listener avatar and then proposed or supposed problems that this ideal listener avatar had. And instead of paying attention to the download numbers for my podcast, which are way down, um, I mostly just conscribed that to, um, Apple Podcasts in November 2023, like changing the way that it does downloads. But you know, we're like a year in now, and my downloads continue to decrease, and it's because I was focusing on tactics. I was more worried about, uh, what episode number parody and making sure the show is just on YouTube, not that it's a good YouTube channel.

And a lot of that stuff, um, is frustrating, uh, to me, because I, my show was built on, you know, actual good content, and that's how it grew. And I really knew my audience. And so I've spent the last couple of months really trying to understand my audience, busy solopreneur parents, uh, who are overwhelmed by their business. And it's like cutting into family time, right?

I say, I help busy solopreneur parents put in systems for their business so they can stop checking email at the playground. But my content hasn't really been serving that. And so my strategy is this: make the podcast the linchpin of my content strategy. All of my content is going to be filtered through the podcast in some way. I will create videos when it makes sense. I will put these voice notes on the main feed instead of worrying about maintaining a separate feed.

And I will actually create content based on feedback I get from you and people listening and people on my newsletter. And like seeing what articles resonate with people and turning that into podcast episodes. And so the strategy is show up generously, because that is the best way I get clients. Showing people what I know, being the teacher that I am, is the best way that I can get clients.

And so what do the tactics look like there? Well, these tactics are like anti-tactics. They're like the opposite of what I've been doing. And I'll talk more about like how I'm doing this stuff in future episodes, future voice notes, or future full-length episodes. But basically, instead of, uh, worrying that the episode numbers displayed in Transistor match the episode number that I say it is on on the episode, I'm just going to publish more.

I'm going to put like these voice notes - the reason that these voice notes have been their separate feed is because I'm approaching 500 episodes, and I was like pre-scheduling, so like I would like pre-schedule episode 486 for two weeks from now, and I would say the episode number in the episode, which means that if I was worried about maintaining episode number parody, which I was, I couldn't publish an episode before 486, right? It's like that, like that was handcuffing me. And even as I say it out loud, it sounds stupid.

So, like, I'm just going to - I've yeah, slash 485 or whatever. And these will just be voice notes that live on the feed. And so, like, I also simplified the publishing process. So, like, the website will have all the episodes now. That was a whole other thing.

But, anyway, episode numbers don't matter as delivering value. That's really my point here. I'm also going to move the videos for these podcast episodes to the main YouTube channel. I am talking about the same thing on both channels, and I should maximize the effort I put into one channel. The Joe Cassabona YouTube channel is the biggest one. It's monetized, and I am talking about the same things.

So that's going to be something I'm really going to put effort into moving forward. I think YouTube is a great discovery engine, and it allows me to show up, right? It's the thing that allows me to teach to people. On that same token, I'm only going to publish select episodes to YouTube.

I was so worried about feed parody between the audio and then the YouTube channel. And that just doesn't matter. Like, YouTube is such a different beast. The YouTube audience has different habits. It doesn't matter. What matters is creating good videos for the people on YouTube.

And so, nobody wants to, I've maintained this for a long time. Nobody wants to watch side by side of two people in different rooms talking over Zoom or whatever, Riverside, whatever. That's just not good video. And so it'll probably be mostly solo episodes unless I do in-person stuff, which I'd like to do more of.

But that's going to be the main focus. I'm going to put the good videos on my main YouTube channel. I'm also going to put more effort into YouTube packaging. If you go to my YouTube channel now, you'll see, you can do that by going to streamline.fm slash YouTube. You'll see my thumbnail. I'm like A/B testing thumbnails, and I hate the thumbnails. That's a whole other thing that I'll talk about at a different time.

But I'm gonna put more effort into the titles and thumbnails because those are the things that get viewers. I gonna continue publishing helpful shorts in a way that makes sense to me. Like, there was all this decision fatigue and overhead about how well this short is related to the podcast. Should it go on the podcast YouTube channel? Should it go on this one? It's helpful for both. Doesn't matter, right? Publish it all on the Joe Casaboni YouTube channel.

And I'm going to have a better process to go from audio to written word and vice versa. So, like, this sounds like a lot more work and a lot of tactics, but it's actually an incredible simplification, because before this, I was having my VA upload a YouTube video and then upload the audio and then create the blog page on my main website and then publish it to Substack.

And then I was like, does this make sense? Where should this short go? And now it's just an incredible simplification. I've set up an automation. I'm using a plugin called Podcast Importer Pro to publish all episodes of Streamline Solopreneur on the Streamline.fm website, not just the ones that I considered main episodes.

I'm not having to worry about, oh, this voice note is helpful for my Streamline Solopreneur audience, but it's only in this feed that's the podcast equivalent of a junk drawer. It's all going there. I don't have to worry about where shorts are going to go because they're all going to go on the same channel, and I'm going to have less blank cursor or blank page syndrome, right? Blinking cursor syndrome or whatever, because I have newsletter articles and I know how those do well, and I can make them solo episodes or I can take stuff like this and turn it into written words.

So that's what I'm doing. I'm reducing the amount of decision fatigue I have by simplifying my process by saying people find me here and here. This is where I will publish stuff. That's it.

So, I'd love to get your feedback and your thoughts. You can send that over at streamlinedfeedback.com. That's streamlined with a D, feedback.com. Thanks so much for listening to this voice note. And until next time, I hope you find some space in your week.