Podcast Host: What It Is & Why We Are Changing

WEBVTT 1 00:00:05.540 --> 00:00:09.170 Welcome back to another episode of B two b growth. This is Dan Sanchez here 2 00:00:09.170 --> 00:00:12.790 and today I'm just talking so low to give you some exciting news about 3 00:00:12.790 --> 00:00:16.800 what's going on at sweet fish behind the scenes. And if you have a podcast 4 00:00:16.800 --> 00:00:20.980 or planning to start a podcast really soon, this information is going to 5 00:00:20.980 --> 00:00:24.790 apply to you, because today I'm going to talk about podcast hosting now. This 6 00:00:24.790 --> 00:00:29.110 is one of those topics that's usually kind of behind the scenes it zwart King, 7 00:00:29.110 --> 00:00:31.980 and nobody really knows. It's kind of like a Web host unless you're a Web 8 00:00:31.980 --> 00:00:35.670 designer developer like who really cares where the Web host is right? As 9 00:00:35.670 --> 00:00:39.500 long as the website loads fast and it works right, the website host, Is it 10 00:00:39.500 --> 00:00:45.840 relevant? But if you are managing a podcast, then a podcast host is of 11 00:00:45.850 --> 00:00:49.630 extreme importance because it does a number of different functions beyond 12 00:00:49.630 --> 00:00:54.310 just delivering episodes to the players, like the one you're listening to right 13 00:00:54.310 --> 00:00:59.260 now. So I wanted to tell you a little bit more about what we're looking at in 14 00:00:59.260 --> 00:01:03.110 our Web host, why we're actually leaving our current Web host and what 15 00:01:03.110 --> 00:01:07.110 we're excited to move Thio. And of course, I can't help but be excited 16 00:01:07.110 --> 00:01:11.160 about the new company we are moving to as a Web host. So let's get started. 17 00:01:11.170 --> 00:01:16.040 Hey, everybody. Logan was sweet fish here. If you've been listening to the 18 00:01:16.040 --> 00:01:19.930 show for a while, you know, we're big proponents of putting out original 19 00:01:19.940 --> 00:01:23.980 organic content on LinkedIn. But one thing that's always been a struggle for 20 00:01:23.980 --> 00:01:28.390 a team like ours is too easily track the reach of that LinkedIn content. 21 00:01:28.400 --> 00:01:31.970 That's why I was really excited when I heard about Shield the other day from a 22 00:01:31.970 --> 00:01:36.480 connection on you guessed it linked in. Since our team started using shield, 23 00:01:36.490 --> 00:01:41.020 I've loved how it's led us easily track and analyze the performance of are 24 00:01:41.020 --> 00:01:45.040 linked in content without having to manually log it ourselves. It 25 00:01:45.050 --> 00:01:48.410 automatically creates reports and generate some dashboards that are 26 00:01:48.410 --> 00:01:52.730 incredibly useful to see things like what contents been performing the best 27 00:01:52.740 --> 00:01:56.180 and what days of the week are we getting the most engagement and our 28 00:01:56.190 --> 00:02:00.050 average views proposed? I highly suggest you guys check out this tool. 29 00:02:00.060 --> 00:02:03.400 If you're putting out content on LinkedIn, and if you're not, you should 30 00:02:03.410 --> 00:02:08.820 be. It's been a game changer for us. If you go to shield app dot ai and check 31 00:02:08.820 --> 00:02:13.680 out the 10 day free trial, you can even use our promo code B two B growth to 32 00:02:13.680 --> 00:02:19.660 get a 25% discount. Again, that's shield app dot ai And that promo code 33 00:02:19.670 --> 00:02:24.810 is be the number to be growth. All one word. All right, let's get back to the 34 00:02:24.810 --> 00:02:25.570 show. 35 00:02:27.140 --> 00:02:32.680 So, as you might know, there's been a ton of excitement around podcasting 36 00:02:32.690 --> 00:02:37.360 over the last couple of years. Amazon's being in the game recently to compete 37 00:02:37.360 --> 00:02:40.650 with Spotify, who's been thrown out hundreds of millions of dollars into 38 00:02:40.650 --> 00:02:45.170 investing into podcast. And naturally, all this big money being thrown around 39 00:02:45.170 --> 00:02:49.670 in podcasting means there's a lot of small players and startups jumping into 40 00:02:49.670 --> 00:02:53.090 the space is well, I feel like I meet a new start up doing something innovative 41 00:02:53.090 --> 00:02:58.330 and podcasting every single week. And naturally, the competitive line side 42 00:02:58.330 --> 00:03:02.580 for hosting has become much more competitive than just was five years 43 00:03:02.580 --> 00:03:06.790 ago. In fact, when Sweet fish started, we decided to go with the kind of the 44 00:03:06.790 --> 00:03:12.150 big host in the industry called Lipson. They've been around for a long time and 45 00:03:12.150 --> 00:03:15.320 have been honestly, pretty good. They've been steady, they've been 46 00:03:15.320 --> 00:03:21.650 reliable. They're pretty cheap to host your podcast and they just work. The 47 00:03:21.650 --> 00:03:25.090 problem is, the industry has gotten a lot more competitive. And so we decided 48 00:03:25.090 --> 00:03:29.070 to take a look at what else was going on around there in podcast hosting, 49 00:03:29.240 --> 00:03:33.420 because there are a few frustrating things out there when it comes to 50 00:03:33.420 --> 00:03:39.120 podcast hosts, the biggest one being analytics and discover ability, the 51 00:03:39.120 --> 00:03:44.710 biggest to being discover ability and analytics. It's hard for people to find 52 00:03:44.710 --> 00:03:49.270 podcasts unless they're looking especially for you. It's also hard for 53 00:03:49.270 --> 00:03:53.670 them for people who manage podcast, actually know who's listening to and 54 00:03:53.670 --> 00:03:56.910 where they're listening to it from and how often they're listening to it. How 55 00:03:56.910 --> 00:04:00.560 long of an episode they listen to Podcast Analytics is a bit of a black 56 00:04:00.560 --> 00:04:04.160 box, because once we send the episode to the player, Apple doesn't give us a 57 00:04:04.160 --> 00:04:08.550 lot of data back, and neither does Spotify or Amazon or stitcher or Google, 58 00:04:08.550 --> 00:04:12.280 for that matter. So the more analytics we can get, the better. Those have been 59 00:04:12.280 --> 00:04:16.320 some of the pain points of podcasting for a long time, and we didn't feel 60 00:04:16.320 --> 00:04:20.910 like Lipson was doing a lot to make that much better, other than just being 61 00:04:20.910 --> 00:04:24.620 reliable, which good on them. They've done a good job of just being big and 62 00:04:24.620 --> 00:04:31.820 steady. So after comparing 35 different podcast host, we discovered a new one 63 00:04:31.830 --> 00:04:35.320 that has not been heard of much, and we're hoping to change that and they're 64 00:04:35.320 --> 00:04:41.090 called sounder dot FM sounder dot FM. There's a few reasons why we were very 65 00:04:41.090 --> 00:04:45.950 excited about sounder. For starters, they had the slickest like audio player 66 00:04:45.940 --> 00:04:49.100 on the market, like something you could embed in your website and listen to you 67 00:04:49.100 --> 00:04:52.710 right on the Web page. Yeah, there's looks the best. It is the cleanest 68 00:04:52.720 --> 00:04:55.890 looking and has all the normal buttons you'd want to see from. Subscribe to 69 00:04:55.890 --> 00:04:59.940 being able to play it at two times speed and all those kinds of things. 70 00:04:59.950 --> 00:05:03.440 But the big thing that we were really excited about with sounder is that they 71 00:05:03.440 --> 00:05:08.960 do automatic transcription and they offer it for free. Yes, they transcribe 72 00:05:08.970 --> 00:05:13.860 every single episode for you. Now if you're on a free account, which yes, 73 00:05:13.860 --> 00:05:17.600 they have freemium accounts that do automatic transcription. I'd say that 74 00:05:17.600 --> 00:05:24.030 transcription is probably 80% accurate so it's not perfect. But guess what? 75 00:05:24.040 --> 00:05:28.800 It's free transcription. Nobody else is doing this, and it's great for a number 76 00:05:28.800 --> 00:05:32.260 of different reasons. The biggest one is that it makes your content 77 00:05:32.240 --> 00:05:36.100 searchable. They actually built a search player into the top of every 78 00:05:36.100 --> 00:05:40.830 single website player, so that if you're looking through podcasts and 79 00:05:40.830 --> 00:05:44.330 want to find a podcast that has talks about a specific thing, you no longer 80 00:05:44.330 --> 00:05:47.130 have to skim through the episode. You know, however longer have to just 81 00:05:47.130 --> 00:05:51.210 search for it by listening to it and skimming through the player. You can 82 00:05:51.210 --> 00:05:54.430 actually just type in the word and bam. It'll pull it right up there for every 83 00:05:54.430 --> 00:05:57.460 single mention in that episode. And if you're using one of their pre build 84 00:05:57.460 --> 00:06:00.640 pages that it actually searched the whole database for mentions of that 85 00:06:00.640 --> 00:06:04.890 word across the episodes. And I find that to be a remarkable step forward in 86 00:06:04.890 --> 00:06:08.450 Discover ability and a different way to interact with podcast is the whole 87 00:06:08.640 --> 00:06:12.120 nobody else had really offered that. At this point, some people are doing 88 00:06:12.120 --> 00:06:15.470 transcriptions but charging a lot for it. But no one's really making podcasts 89 00:06:15.470 --> 00:06:20.680 more searchable other than maybe Google themselves, so we're very excited about 90 00:06:20.680 --> 00:06:24.420 that. We're also excited that having these transcripts available and makes 91 00:06:24.420 --> 00:06:28.320 it easy to listen to with captions and makes it easy to read all these 92 00:06:28.320 --> 00:06:31.620 episodes for anybody who's deaf and can't listen to all this amazing 93 00:06:31.620 --> 00:06:36.210 content, they can now read it. All the few other things that we were excited 94 00:06:36.210 --> 00:06:40.520 about was just dynamic ads. They make it easy to find sponsors. They go find 95 00:06:40.520 --> 00:06:43.590 them for you and just stick the ads right in your podcast where you say 96 00:06:43.600 --> 00:06:46.780 they can, where they can stick them so they have dynamic ads. And if your 97 00:06:46.780 --> 00:06:49.960 podcast is reaching enough people, they could get host, read ads where you 98 00:06:49.960 --> 00:06:54.760 partner with the company and read the ads for yourself so that you can have 99 00:06:54.760 --> 00:06:59.110 it uploaded right to your episode. So there's a lot more advertising options 100 00:06:59.110 --> 00:07:02.160 there for people who don't want to take the time to go find their own 101 00:07:02.160 --> 00:07:06.360 advertisers and have show sponsors they can actually monetize their podcast 102 00:07:06.360 --> 00:07:10.170 more easily. So we're actually gonna be a monetizing BTB growth shortly here 103 00:07:10.170 --> 00:07:14.350 through Sounder and are recommending all our customers to monetize their ads, 104 00:07:14.350 --> 00:07:17.850 because what better way What better thing is that? Toe like produce 105 00:07:17.840 --> 00:07:22.440 podcasts that are marketing except you have advertising in it that essentially 106 00:07:22.440 --> 00:07:25.810 pays for your marketing Is that I don't know, to me is a marketer is just like 107 00:07:25.810 --> 00:07:30.650 mine. Blow up like toe. Monetize my marketing. Yes, please. And then the 108 00:07:30.650 --> 00:07:33.610 last thing that I'm most excited about is the analytics. They just have a few 109 00:07:33.610 --> 00:07:36.610 different things that make it a little bit sweeter, much better than the 110 00:07:36.620 --> 00:07:40.320 Lipson analytics. And this isn't new. I mean, there's there are other hosts out 111 00:07:40.320 --> 00:07:44.070 there that have some pretty sweet analytics dashboards, though they have 112 00:07:44.070 --> 00:07:46.740 a little bit more information that you could tell you what people are 113 00:07:46.740 --> 00:07:49.760 searching on different players and where they're searching him from, 114 00:07:49.760 --> 00:07:52.820 because people you could embed this player on the other websites as well, 115 00:07:52.820 --> 00:07:55.090 and you could tell where they're listening to it from, so it gives you a 116 00:07:55.090 --> 00:07:58.390 little bit more insights into that podcast. So if you're wondering what 117 00:07:58.390 --> 00:08:02.630 this looks like, I really encourage you to go to Swedish media dot com, find 118 00:08:02.630 --> 00:08:06.980 the BTB Growth podcast and go and find one of these players. In fact, let's 119 00:08:06.980 --> 00:08:12.710 make it easy for you just go to sweet Fish media dot com slash player, and it 120 00:08:12.710 --> 00:08:16.320 will send you to a recent episode that has one of these players embedded if 121 00:08:16.320 --> 00:08:19.540 you want to take a look at it for yourself. So again, we're very excited 122 00:08:19.540 --> 00:08:23.120 at Sweet Fish Media to be working with sounder, and we're hoping that it 123 00:08:23.120 --> 00:08:26.440 provides you the listener with a different way to interact with the 124 00:08:26.440 --> 00:08:30.480 content. So you confined what you're looking for and listen to the podcast 125 00:08:30.480 --> 00:08:35.059 and a better way across just beyond the player that you're listening to this 126 00:08:35.059 --> 00:08:39.730 right now. So if you're starting a podcast or currently managing a podcast, 127 00:08:39.730 --> 00:08:42.440 hopefully you found this helpful and that there's another option out there 128 00:08:42.440 --> 00:08:46.360 for you. And transferring from one service to another might take some time. 129 00:08:46.370 --> 00:08:49.510 But it's totally possible, and sounder will actually help you with the whole 130 00:08:49.510 --> 00:08:53.410 process. This is kind of standard for any podcast you could swap from one 131 00:08:53.410 --> 00:08:57.750 host to another fairly, fairly easily. So there you have it. Don't. 132 00:09:00.240 --> 00:09:03.580 For the longest time, I was asking people to leave a review of B two B 133 00:09:03.590 --> 00:09:07.580 growth in apple podcasts, but I realized that was kind of stupid 134 00:09:07.590 --> 00:09:13.020 because leaving a review is way harder than just leaving a simple rating. So 135 00:09:13.020 --> 00:09:16.820 I'm changing my tune a bit. Instead of asking you to leave a review, I'm just 136 00:09:16.820 --> 00:09:20.860 gonna ask you to go to be to be growth in apple podcasts, scroll down until 137 00:09:20.860 --> 00:09:24.780 you see the ratings and review section and just tap the number of stars you 138 00:09:24.780 --> 00:09:29.880 wanna give us No review necessary Super easy. And I promise it will help us out 139 00:09:29.890 --> 00:09:34.190 a ton. If you want a copy of my book content based networking, just shoot me 140 00:09:34.190 --> 00:09:38.030 a text. After you leave the rating on, I'll send one your way. Text me at 141 00:09:38.030 --> 00:09:42.750 4074903328 e.