164 | Deconstructing Your Podcast: How to Improve Content, Sound Quality, and Listener Engagement for Maximum Success

[00:00:00] If you drive a car and you realize there is something definitely wrong with this thing, it is not running right, what do you do? Well, you take it to a mechanic, and the mechanic is going to problem solve. They're going to dissect your car and figure out why it's not working the way it should. So maybe we need to look at our podcast the same way.

[00:00:27] Sound matters. Be heard. Welcome to the podcast where you get exclusive behind the scenes tips to make your own show sound truly spectacular. This is Podtastic Audio.

[00:00:41] Hey, what's happening? How are you doing today? Thank you so much for being here. I am Chris and yeah, this is Podtastic Audio.

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[00:02:04] So just the other night, my wife Christine and I were having a discussion about a brand new idea that she had. Well, we both kind of had for her current business. Think of it more like an expansion package to go in with her current business.

[00:02:23] Now, as far as I know, nothing's been revealed quite yet. I'm not going to say anything right here.

[00:02:28] But let's just say it's something quite amazing that I think will really enhance new clients or current clients.

[00:02:36] Something that I don't think other people in her industry are doing or have the capability to do.

[00:02:44] So it's an amazing idea and I absolutely love it.

[00:02:47] So as we're brainstorming this brand new idea, we're figuring it all out, figuring out the layout for the website, like adding a new whole section to the website.

[00:02:56] And as we're brainstorming ideas, there's a level of excitement.

[00:03:00] We're excited about it. She's very excited about it.

[00:03:03] And she's like, this is great. I love it.

[00:03:06] And that is the moment that things started going south.

[00:03:11] Now, what I mean by that is this.

[00:03:14] The way I look at things is that, yes, it's amazing.

[00:03:17] Yes, it's something we should do.

[00:03:19] But at the same time, I look at every entry point for where things can go wrong.

[00:03:27] Which did kind of start an argument because she thought I was basically trashing her idea, but it's just the opposite.

[00:03:35] I absolutely love her idea.

[00:03:37] I just want to make sure it is locked solid.

[00:03:40] That is bulletproof.

[00:03:41] That every single possibility of how things can go wrong is covered and fixed.

[00:03:47] And then she pretty much said to me a little while later, Chris, you should have been an engineer because you like to go in there and figure out every single piece of the puzzle and what could possibly go wrong.

[00:04:00] It's almost like it's like I look at the bottom of a ship or a boat.

[00:04:05] And I'm thinking like, where's the water going to leak from?

[00:04:08] Let's fix that.

[00:04:09] Let's not worry about the pretty color of the boat.

[00:04:12] Let's not worry about painting the boat or naming the boat.

[00:04:15] Let's make sure it absolutely will flow and there's no leaks because leaks will damage your entire thing.

[00:04:22] And the same thing goes with any project you're doing.

[00:04:25] I'm constantly looking for the ways that things can go wrong and then address those problems and fix them before they become a serious problem.

[00:04:34] So as a podcaster or any kind of content creator, it's always good ever so often to look at your own show and basically deconstruct it.

[00:04:46] And hey, before I go any further today, you can do your own show however you want.

[00:04:53] It's your show.

[00:04:54] Don't let me or anybody else tell you exactly how you should be doing your own show.

[00:04:59] But if you want to make sure your show does not sync, well, we need to work from the ground up and we need to figure out every single piece of your show.

[00:05:10] What works?

[00:05:11] What doesn't work?

[00:05:12] What needs patching?

[00:05:14] Hey, how often do you actually listen to your own podcast?

[00:05:19] Maybe you do.

[00:05:20] Maybe you don't.

[00:05:21] There are a lot of shows that don't ever listen to their show.

[00:05:24] They maybe they'll edit it or whatever they do to it, send it out, and they never ever listen to their own show.

[00:05:32] If you want to deconstruct your own podcast and get into the nitty gritty of what works and what may not work, you need to physically listen to your own show.

[00:05:43] There's so many benefits to listening to your own podcast, especially when it comes to self-assessing your own content.

[00:05:52] So when you listen to your own show, you kind of have to listen in the ears of your listener, which may be hard to do.

[00:06:03] So one tip I can give you is don't listen to the episode you just recorded.

[00:06:09] Listen to an episode you did maybe a month ago.

[00:06:12] That way it's not so fresh in your mind.

[00:06:15] And you'll listen to it probably more with open ears.

[00:06:19] That way when you do hear it, you're like, what was I talking about?

[00:06:23] Or perhaps you had a guest on that was going on a tangent about something that was unrelated to the content you were talking about.

[00:06:31] You're like, why did I just cut that part out?

[00:06:34] Or why did I bring that guest on?

[00:06:36] They added no value at all to our show.

[00:06:39] What are they even doing here?

[00:06:40] What was I thinking?

[00:06:42] Things like that.

[00:06:43] Or just the opposite.

[00:06:45] You could have something like, that was a really good point.

[00:06:48] That person said something that made me go, aha, I totally get it now.

[00:06:53] That totally made sense.

[00:06:54] Why did I not just highlight that and get rid of all the extra crap and make the show centered around that one hot take?

[00:07:03] That was great stuff.

[00:07:04] It could be you.

[00:07:05] It could be a guest.

[00:07:06] It could be a co-host.

[00:07:06] It doesn't matter.

[00:07:07] Just evaluate the content overall and see whether or not that content actually aligns with your show.

[00:07:17] And if you are a listener to the show and you came there for your content because everybody comes to everybody's show for their content first.

[00:07:27] And when you click on it and you listen to it and you say, yes, this content matched up with the title of the episode, the show notes, everything aligned perfectly.

[00:07:39] It made sense from end to end the things they talk about.

[00:07:43] So basically what I'm saying is if you can find an episode you did in your past, maybe a month ago, listen to it, analyze it, and even jot down some notes and say, hey, I think this part was a really good take.

[00:07:57] This part was not a really good take.

[00:07:59] This part, well, we kind of went off the rails here and we talked about something completely non-topic at all.

[00:08:07] So when a listener pushes play on it and the title says one thing and you're talking about something completely else, that is a red flag.

[00:08:15] Make a note of that.

[00:08:16] That way you can fix that for future episodes.

[00:08:19] Okay, and the next thing you need to do when you deconstruct your podcast and evaluate your show is when you listen to that episode or any episode reel you've done, focus on elevating your audio quality.

[00:08:36] Now, I know you might have your perfect setup.

[00:08:39] You might have the best gear or any gear or whatever gear you have.

[00:08:43] Trust me, I have seen and I have heard a lot of shows out there that are using subpar equipment incorrectly.

[00:08:52] And you can tell.

[00:08:53] You can hear it.

[00:08:54] You can listen.

[00:08:55] And you can definitely tell there's something wrong with the show.

[00:08:59] Now, that's one thing I remember somebody told me a while ago about the Chris and Christine show that they thought the show was not an indie podcast because the show sounded too good.

[00:09:14] And I thought that the indie style sounding show, which is basically five people huddled around a Blue Yeti in the center of the room with lots of reverb, like that sound, like that style, I never liked it in the first place.

[00:09:29] So I never wanted to create a show that sounded like that.

[00:09:32] So from the very beginning, I was looking for ways to make sure my show did not sound like that, that it sounded more professional.

[00:09:43] Because if a show sounds more professional, it's taken more seriously.

[00:09:47] When you hear a show and it sounds like two people using a Blue Yeti in an empty room, there's that echo sound.

[00:09:55] The audio levels are kind of all over the place.

[00:09:57] It's kind of low quality.

[00:09:58] When you hear that, the first thing you think of, oh, these guys are amateurs.

[00:10:04] Why am I going to take any advice from amateurs?

[00:10:07] I came here to get solid, amazing content, great advice.

[00:10:12] And you got these two yahoos who can't even use a proper microphone.

[00:10:17] If your show sounds like that, there are some simple and easy ways to fix it.

[00:10:22] Step one, get yourself a decent microphone.

[00:10:24] And if you have more than one person on your show, say two, three, four, don't matter.

[00:10:30] Make sure every single person has their very own microphone.

[00:10:34] Don't be sharing a microphone.

[00:10:36] Don't do that.

[00:10:37] And also, this is a tough one for you video folks out there.

[00:10:41] That is get close to the microphone.

[00:10:45] Really close.

[00:10:46] I'm talking maybe within like a few inches away from the microphone.

[00:10:50] It seems kind of odd that a lot of shows that especially do video and have the microphone sitting like just away from the camera or maybe down below by the laptop on the desk.

[00:11:02] And that's where it really starts to pick up all that reverb, all that space, all that echo sound on your podcast audio track.

[00:11:11] Now, there are ways to fix it if that does happen.

[00:11:14] But we're talking about using AI and different audio elements.

[00:11:19] And there are plenty of them out there.

[00:11:21] The one I like to use is by Adobe Enhance.

[00:11:24] It's Adobe Podcast Enhance, I believe.

[00:11:27] I am paying for the subscription to that place.

[00:11:29] I think it's around $10 a month, but it does do a fairly decent job of removing the echo.

[00:11:36] Now, the problem is that the more you enhance the echo sounding audio, the more filtered, more muffled sounding it does get.

[00:11:46] So you got to play with it.

[00:11:47] You can go full blast on it or you can tame it back 50% or whatever, anywhere in between, which is what I kind of do.

[00:11:54] I play with it to find something that doesn't quite sound super muffled, but it doesn't sound super echoey either.

[00:12:02] So somewhere in the middle, leaning more towards less echo.

[00:12:06] But when you do listen to your own podcast and if you do a guest interview and you have multiple people on your show at one time,

[00:12:15] there's sometimes it's a little tricky to balance out everybody's vocals.

[00:12:18] There's lots of tricks to do it.

[00:12:21] But if you are working with separate audio tracks, basically a really simple way to do it is to adjust the volume for each person to pretty much match.

[00:12:30] So speaker one is talking and the meter is hitting a particular mark.

[00:12:35] And speaker two, when they're talking, their volume is kind of hitting that same mark and so on and so forth.

[00:12:40] Now, I know if you have a guest that has horrible audio because they're using some random headset or maybe just those stupid earbuds or whatever,

[00:12:48] when they're jingling all over their shirt, there's nothing really you can do about that.

[00:12:51] I'm talking about things that you can control, which are your own audio for your podcast.

[00:12:58] Okay, moving on to the next thing you can do when you deconstruct your own podcast is you want to look at how you are boosting listener engagement.

[00:13:08] What? Yeah, well, you see your listeners who listen to your show and you now are a physical listener of your own show because you went back and you're listening to an episode.

[00:13:19] Listen to how you physically approach and speak directly to the listener.

[00:13:26] And I said listener, not listeners.

[00:13:29] It is not broadcasting.

[00:13:31] We are not broadcasting anything.

[00:13:33] This is not going out to a million people in some big giant theater.

[00:13:38] It's not working that way.

[00:13:40] If you want to have a deeper connection, listener engagement, you have to talk directly to the listener, the one single person.

[00:13:50] I know I made the same mistake myself, thinking, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the show.

[00:13:56] Hello, everybody.

[00:13:57] All my great listeners.

[00:13:58] How are all of you doing?

[00:14:00] And I was doing that on my show, the Chris Christine show.

[00:14:04] Every single time I opened the show, I would say, hello, everybody.

[00:14:08] How are you all doing?

[00:14:09] Thank you all for listening.

[00:14:11] All that kind of stuff, which we all know there's more than one person listening to the show.

[00:14:16] But if you focus your efforts on talking to a single person, they don't care that 1,000 other people are listening.

[00:14:26] They have no idea.

[00:14:27] They don't even care.

[00:14:27] All they care about is that they are listening.

[00:14:31] And you want to structure your content towards that one individual.

[00:14:36] Because when you do that, what happens is it builds trust.

[00:14:40] It builds community.

[00:14:41] And it makes sure that they feel important and that they need to be listening to this episode.

[00:14:47] Because the truth is, they are listening to this episode.

[00:14:50] And if you can talk directly to that person, like directly to them, not to everybody, directly to them, they will feel more connected and part of your world, which is a fantastic way to build your community.

[00:15:06] So when you're looking at these things, listen back to an old episode and see whether or not you actually are talking to everybody or you're talking directly to that one person.

[00:15:18] It's a very simple thing to do.

[00:15:20] And I know it's kind of hard to get out of our heads because we think broadcasting when we get on here.

[00:15:25] But you got to really fine tune yourself to say, hey, you.

[00:15:29] I'm talking to you.

[00:15:30] Not to everybody.

[00:15:31] I'm talking directly to you right over there.

[00:15:34] And the last thing you can look at when you are deconstructing your own podcast and looking back at an old episode and trying to figure out where can I fix things?

[00:15:43] What are going wrong?

[00:15:44] Where can I patch these holes so my podcasting ship doesn't sink?

[00:15:48] Is if you have decided to go down the path of monetization, well, what path are you taking and how does that look?

[00:15:57] Because sometimes I know some people, they try to jump in to this whole idea of I have a podcast.

[00:16:05] I just launched it yesterday.

[00:16:07] I need to get ads.

[00:16:09] I need to get sponsors.

[00:16:10] I need to make sure I can make some money with this podcast because I just put it out there.

[00:16:15] Well, you know and I know it doesn't always work that way.

[00:16:18] And making money with your podcast isn't always as easy as it may look by following other podcasters, other bigger podcasters.

[00:16:29] If your show has a healthy number of downloads, a real audience with real engaged people, then perhaps maybe you can get a sponsor for that podcast.

[00:16:39] But even with a sponsor, the revenue isn't like millions and millions of dollars.

[00:16:45] If you really want to make money with your podcast, let me tell you a really easy way to do it.

[00:16:50] Are you ready?

[00:16:51] Listen up.

[00:16:52] If you want to make money with your podcast, have something to sell and then sell it on your podcast.

[00:17:01] What?

[00:17:02] What?

[00:17:03] Sounds amazing, right?

[00:17:04] I know a lot of people go down this path of I'm going to get ads and sponsors and that will be the thing.

[00:17:10] I will sell my show to the advertisers so that I can make money with the podcast that way.

[00:17:16] And I know that's how radio does it.

[00:17:18] That's how television does it.

[00:17:20] But radio and television, they've got millions and millions of viewers for a particular program.

[00:17:28] We usually do not.

[00:17:30] Us indie podcasters have much, much smaller, much, much smaller audiences than that.

[00:17:35] So what do we do?

[00:17:37] The easiest thing to do is to have something to sell directly to your audience.

[00:17:42] Now, if you have nothing to sell, that's fine.

[00:17:44] You can sell something for somebody else through affiliate marketing.

[00:17:48] Now, most, not all places, but most places do some kind of affiliate marketing.

[00:17:53] You have to apply for it and then they basically give you a code.

[00:17:56] And what happens is that that code, you mention the product, the code will be in your show notes.

[00:18:02] They click on it and you get a small percentage of the sale if it comes directly through your link.

[00:18:08] Now, another way to make some money with your podcast is to have something like a Patreon or a Buy Me A Coffee.

[00:18:15] These are like donation sites.

[00:18:17] So basically, if somebody loves your show and they want to give you money, like a tip or something like that,

[00:18:22] or perhaps maybe on Patreon, you can offer premium content, like content that they would not normally get on the regular show.

[00:18:32] Or perhaps maybe you could have your normal show loaded with all kinds of random ads that everybody hates anyways when they hear it.

[00:18:42] But you can say, hey, check this out.

[00:18:43] You can have an ad-free version if you subscribe to the Patreon.

[00:18:47] It's kind of the way YouTube does it because YouTube regular, you get the ads, all the different ads in the video, which is great.

[00:18:55] But if you pay for their upgraded YouTube version, then you get to watch all their stuff without having any of the ads.

[00:19:03] Either way, YouTube wins.

[00:19:05] They get paid from the ads or they get paid by you who have chosen to skip the ads.

[00:19:11] So you can do something very similar to your show if you absolutely are dead set on making money with your podcast.

[00:19:20] But remember one important thing with any of this stuff when it comes to either a Patreon or people buying stuff or anything like that with a podcast,

[00:19:30] typically you will see about 3% of your entire audience actually make a purchase.

[00:19:38] So if you have an audience of 100 dedicated listeners, that means you should see roughly 3 of them buy your thing or buy your stuff.

[00:19:50] 3 people.

[00:19:51] Now I know that doesn't sound like a lot of people.

[00:19:54] It does not sound like a lot of money.

[00:19:56] This is why when you go back and listen to your previous episode,

[00:20:00] listen to the thing you're trying to sell or the thing you're trying to monetize

[00:20:04] and listen to it and think like, hey, would I buy that thing?

[00:20:08] Maybe when you listen back to your show and you hear it, you're thinking, man,

[00:20:12] I was not very convincing selling that one thing on my show.

[00:20:18] Maybe if you want to, if you could, please maybe, you know, follow our Patreon.

[00:20:24] But why should you follow your Patreon?

[00:20:26] Oh, just because we need money.

[00:20:28] That is not a very good convincing.

[00:20:30] I would not support someone's Patreon if all they were saying was,

[00:20:35] we want to make money with our show, so just please support us on our show.

[00:20:39] It's got to be a really, really good reason for anybody to spend money on anything.

[00:20:45] So make sure you have a very convincing reason for your listeners to actually spend money.

[00:20:52] So to summarize the things you need to look at when you deconstruct your own podcast

[00:20:58] is that you need to look at your own physical content.

[00:21:01] Does it make sense?

[00:21:02] Would the listeners get this?

[00:21:04] Does the title of my episode follow through with what's in the actual episode?

[00:21:09] Did we go on a tangent that's totally off topic?

[00:21:12] Are we talking about things that are not in our niche?

[00:21:15] Figure that stuff out.

[00:21:17] And perhaps in the future for new episodes, you can easily fix that because your podcast

[00:21:22] is never set in stone.

[00:21:24] You can modify your show any way you want.

[00:21:26] For example, if you absolutely love talking about golf and your show is supposed to be about

[00:21:32] boats or whatever, then perhaps maybe you can change the show.

[00:21:37] You can do anything you want.

[00:21:38] It's your show.

[00:21:39] But look at your own content and look at it through the ears of a listener by going back

[00:21:45] and finding an older episode.

[00:21:47] And when you do look at those old episodes, listen for the sound quality.

[00:21:53] Does your show sound good?

[00:21:55] If you have a guest on, do they sound good?

[00:21:58] If not, why?

[00:22:00] What's the problem?

[00:22:01] What happened?

[00:22:02] Are you not using a proper microphone?

[00:22:04] Are you only using your laptop microphone or perhaps even just your phone to record the show?

[00:22:10] If you are, why are you doing that?

[00:22:12] You should have something fairly decent.

[00:22:14] Each person on the show, in the recording, needs to have their very own microphone.

[00:22:20] And a simple way to make sure everybody sounds at least at the same level is edit things with

[00:22:26] a multi-track editor.

[00:22:27] I like using Audacity.

[00:22:29] It's 100% free.

[00:22:31] You can do amazing things with Audacity, especially with multi-track editing.

[00:22:36] So each person, you can adjust their tracks individually so you can fairly match up the audio

[00:22:44] so everybody is fairly at least at the same audio level.

[00:22:49] You don't want somebody that's louder than somebody else because then it sounds totally off.

[00:22:54] Make sure everybody sounds like at least they're somewhat in the same room.

[00:23:00] And then when you are talking directly to your audience, remember to talk specifically to a single person,

[00:23:09] not to the crowd, not to the broadcast, to a single individual.

[00:23:13] When you do that, you'll build community.

[00:23:16] That person will know and like and trust you personally because they know you.

[00:23:22] That is how you build your community is by talking directly to a single person.

[00:23:27] And I know it's tough.

[00:23:28] I know because I did the same thing.

[00:23:31] Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, hello, everybody.

[00:23:34] No, it doesn't work that way.

[00:23:35] And of course, if you're trying to make some money with your podcast, look at ways that you've tried to make money.

[00:23:42] Are they working or are they not working?

[00:23:44] If you've tried to make money but you've made no money and nobody's buying your things

[00:23:50] and nobody's actually giving you money and you're trying to get ads and sponsors,

[00:23:55] perhaps maybe you have a small audience or perhaps maybe your show is not what they're looking for.

[00:24:02] If you're doing a cooking show and you're cooking recipes and cooking stuff,

[00:24:07] then having products that are related to cooking would probably make sense.

[00:24:13] Don't go trying to pitch, I don't know, maybe AutoZone.

[00:24:16] I don't think they'd be a good match.

[00:24:18] Or maybe you try to do something like a Patreon, but you're offering them pretty much nothing,

[00:24:24] but you're charging them thousands of dollars.

[00:24:26] Why wouldn't we buy that?

[00:24:28] Think about it.

[00:24:29] Would you buy the thing that you are trying to sell?

[00:24:33] If the answer is no, then you got to change it.

[00:24:36] You got to figure out a way that works best for you and your audience.

[00:24:40] By listening to your own show, by deconstructing it,

[00:24:44] you will figure out all of the spots where you need to fix and enhance things.

[00:24:49] It's not about trashing your show.

[00:24:51] It's not about looking back at your show and saying,

[00:24:54] oh my gosh, what was I thinking?

[00:24:56] I need to cancel my podcast right now.

[00:24:57] That thing's horrible.

[00:24:59] It's not about that at all.

[00:25:00] It's about looking at your own show and looking towards the future and realizing

[00:25:06] these are all things you can fix very, very easily.

[00:25:10] And on that note, that brings us to the very end of this episode today.

[00:25:15] Thank you so much for sticking around.

[00:25:17] I really appreciate you being here all the way to the very end of the episode.

[00:25:22] And if you found any value from the show whatsoever,

[00:25:25] if you enjoy this podcast,

[00:25:27] can you do me a small favor?

[00:25:30] Down in the show notes of this very episode,

[00:25:32] there is a link to review this podcast.

[00:25:36] And I'm not talking about Apple ratings and review.

[00:25:39] I'm talking about a physical podcast survey that I've created

[00:25:43] so that you can tell me how to make this show better for you.

[00:25:48] It's a circle of life, baby.

[00:25:50] So until next time, happy podcasting.