SOW 178 – The Complete Podcasting Low-Down with Freddie Mixell

 

Joining Jason Hartman on today’s Speaking of Wealth Show is fellow podcaster, Freddie Mixell. Freddie is something of a podcasting guru with his various websites, including the Podcasters’ Boot Camp. Today, he lets listeners into his ultimate top tips on podcasting, ranging from creating interesting content, how to get your podcast up and running, and how to work your way as high up iTunes’ charts as possible.

 

 

Key Takeaways
02.56 – Freddie Mixell’s very first tip is fundamental: having an idea is great, but your podcast is nothing until you actually put in the effort to create it.
04.25 – The introduction of guests adds a new element to your show, and is great for increasing your audience.
05.25 – Social media, in its very nature, can help emerging podcasters in so many ways!
06.10 – iTunes lists and rankings are fuelled by ratings and reviews; take every chance to get those
09.48 – Every piece of information you give is important. Work out the tricks to filling in forms.
14.00 – Turn podcasting into a social experience and see your audience and following grow!
17.27 – Find out more from Freddie Mixell at www.PodcastersBootCamp.com

 

Mentioned in this episode
Podcasting: Good to Great by Jared Easley

 

 

Tweetables
iTunes lists and rankings are fuelled by ratings and reviews; take every chance to get those 5 stars!
When it comes to podcasting, use any way you can to get more people listening to your shows and enjoying your content.
Who says your content has to stay as a podcast? Repurpose it, turn it into a YouTube video and find a new audience.

 

 

Transcript

Introduction:
This show is produced by the Hartman Media Company. For more information and links to all our great podcasts, visit www.HartmanMedia.com
Speakers, publishers, consultants, coaches and info-marketers, unite. The Speaking of Wealth Show is your road-map to success and significance. Learn the latest tools, technologies and tactics to get more bookings, sell more products and attract more clients. If you’re looking to increase your direct response sales, create a big-time personal brand and become the go-to guru, the Speaking of Wealth Show is for you. Here’s your host, Jason Hartman.

Jason Hartman:
Welcome to the Speaking of Wealth Show, this is your host Jason Hartman, where we discuss profit strategies for speakers, publishers, authors, consultants, coaches, info-marketers and we just go over a whole bunch of exciting things that you can use to increase your business, to make your business more successful and more and more passive, more and more automated, and more and more scalable. We will be back with a great interview. Be sure to visit us at www.SpeakingOfWealth.com, you can take advantage of our blog, subscribe to the RSS feed and find many other resources for free. That’s www.SpeakingOfWealth.com, and we will be back with a great interview for you in less than 60 seconds.

Announcer:
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Jason:
Hey, it’s my pleasure to welcome Freddie Mixell to the show, he is the highly acclaimed creator of Your Podcast Questions Answered; it’s one of the top-rated podcasts out there and I like his quick tips that he gives. He’s coming to us today from Pennsylvania – Freddie, how’re you doing?

Freddie Mixell:
Hey, thanks for having me, Jason.

Jason:
My pleasure. So we’re going to go over some tips for our listeners today for if they’re interested in podcasting, and want to learn more and just get some quick tips. It’s a nice format that you have on your show, and I thought I’d bring you in to share some of that with our listeners today. We’ll try to hit 7 of them – I asked you to pick 7 of your favorites. Maybe they’re the ones you get the most questions on, or that you think stump and confuse most podcasters. Let’s dive in. What’s your first favorite tip, Freddie?

Freddie:
OKay, well the number one tip that I always have for everyone is to just create your podcast. So many people have a concept for their podcast and they never actually get off the ground. Nothing is going to be perfect, so just create your podcast and improve upon it as you go along. You’ll never get started if you don’t just jump right in whenever you have that first initial concept.

Jason:
That’s an awesome first tip, Freddie, it’s great to start with that because life and podcasting and anything is an iterative process. You start and you fix it along the way. The stars will never align perfectly. You’ve got to just jump in and start doing stuff, so great first tip. Alright, what’s your next one?

Freddie:
Okay, my next one is for pre-launching your podcast. When you’re in the pre-launch phase, you’re recording some episodes – you want to make sure that you reach out to as many guests as possible because that way, you can reach out to their audiences when the podcast goes live. The most important thing about podcasting is to get people to listen to your show. All of these different guests that you have will share your show with their audience, and then that’s more exposure. They don’t have to be superstars or anything, but get as many people as you can reach out to. Make sure you interview some people; even if you like to do solo shows, interview a few people.

Jason:
Yeah, I gotta tell you: my first podcast, The Creating Wealth Show – I got to about 65 episodes and I started feeling like I was running out of things to talk about, although I really wasn’t. I kind of just felt like it. I changed the format up, and that’s when I started to bring on guests. Gosh, I started getting some real celebrity guests and it was awesome. It really increased the rankings because you get to ride on the coat-tails of their SEO. Their name is known. People search their name and they find you because you’ve affiliated with them now. That’s a really exciting point that you make, and the other thing about it is of course, some of the time they’ll spread it to their audience, especially if you ask them to. Then you get a double hit, so that’s great. That’s a real good way to increase your audience. Alright, what’s your next one?

Freddie:
My next one is you want to make sure that you join groups on Facebook that pertain to your niche, as well as podcasting groups. Jason and I actually met through a podcasting group that I created, and I would never be on the podcast, talking to you, if it wasn’t for that group. Make sure you join as many different groups in your niche as possible. Just start talking to people who join the conversation – that’s how you can find guests for your show, that’s how you can become a guest on people’s shows. It’s just a great way to network and expand your reach for your show.

Jason:
Great point, and that is exactly how we met, I remember when it happened, Freddie. That’s great. Good stuff. What’s your next one?

Freddie:
My next one is: once you launch your podcast, you want to make sure that you get a lot of 5 star reviews, obviously, so that you jump into the iTunes’ New and Noteworthy, because that will put you in front of a lot of new people who have never heard of you, and it’ll help you to build those initial listeners for your show. A way you can do that is by joining a podcasters’ group like one of mine, called Podcasters’ Boot Camp. There’s another one called Podcasters’ World, and if you join those groups on Facebook, people will check out your show and they’ll give you a rating or review. If you get a lot of those, it’ll help you to jump up higher on iTunes and onto the first page.

Jason:
Good stuff. We know Google is so secretive with their algorithms for search, and everybody’s always trying to figure it out and they’re always changing it to keep people from figuring it out. I’ve always wondered, and nobody talks much about it, but what happens in iTunes? What about their algorithm? Do they change it up all the time? What happens? Any thoughts on that, Freddie?

Freddie:
I believe that they do change their algorithm, but it’s not anywhere near as often as Google or a regular, traditional search engine would. They definitely do change it, because you can just tell. You’ve had your podcast for a long time, so I’m sure you can see ups and downs in your stats over the time period that you’ve had it. Before, they used to be able to put keywords into your show, but now they don’t look at the keywords anymore. I think they’re more focused now on a mixture between five-star reviews – I was starting to talk with somebody about this; I think the less 5-star reviews you have and the more listens, the better. That brings me to my next tip.
You want to have five-star reviews, but you want to have more listens. That’s a major factor. The more listens you have, the quicker they’ll put you on the front page, and then it just snowballs and you get tons and tons of listens. The way that I always have new people do this is by doing this little trick on Twitter where you follow people who are big-name people in your niche. Say you have a business podcast, well find some big name people, follow like 200 of their followers and before you follow them, post a tweet to your latest episode, and some of those people will come through and listen to your show. Every single day that those people listen, if they come back, it just keeps piling up and up and up, and that will boost your listens up.

Jason:
Explain that one again, if you would. So follow a famous podcaster..

Freddie:
Yeah.

Jason:
And then follow their followers?

Freddie:
Yeah, so just click on their followers and follow. You don’t want to go crazy; I would only recommend doing about 200 because Twitter will ban you if you do, say, 1,000. Follow 200 of their followers every day, and before you do the following, just Tweet out your latest episode. Whenever those people see that you’ve followed them, they might go back and look at your profile and then they might go check out your podcast episodes. It’s a good way to find new listeners that could turn into subscribers. It just boosts your listens and helps you get into the front page of iTunes, so then you can get even more listens, which helps keep you there.

Jason:
Cool, good. These are some good tips. Okay, give us another one.

Freddie:
Alright, another tip is: whenever you are filling out your information – say if you host your podcast in Libsyn, there’s a field for Author or Artist Name, I guess. Most people will just put their name. Say you would put Jason Hartman, but what you don’t realize is that with iTunes’ SEO, they keywords are now being drawn from the Title and from your name. If you put ‘Jason Hartman: Business Strategist’ or some other relevant keywords to your podcast, it’ll help you rank for those keywords. If you look at some podcasts, it’ll say the name and then a couple of different keywords after that. If you take those keywords and search for this in iTunes, they’re ranking number one or number two for those keywords because they put them in. It’s just another way that you can rank higher and be found by people that are searching for things in iTunes. Remember, it is a search engine.

Jason:
Yeah, of course it is, and iTunes SEO is an important part of the whole game, I completely agree with you. What I did a long time ago, and I mean years ago, is I started listing the names of the famous guests that I had in my show description. Of course, they’re in the show notes and the show title, but you’re talking about the show description, not an episode description. Not show notes for an episode, right?

Freddie:
Yeah, it’s like the meta-tags for your podcast. If you have Libsyn, you can just change it if you go to your show settings – it’ll say your name and your show title and everything. Just add the keywords in behind your show title and behind your name, and that’ll help you rank for more keywords in iTunes.

Jason:
Okay. This is one of your tips coming up, but do you want to talk about the actual show title and the show notes for the specific episode too? It sort of goes with the same topic, so maybe we’ll jump ahead. That might have been a later tip..

Freddie:
Yeah, this is something I was going to talk about. If you look at the show titles in iTunes, you can only see the first couple of words, so this isn’t exactly SEO, but it’s kind of like social triggers, I guess you’d say. For the first couple of words of your podcast, it’s very important to make sure that they’re compelling so you get people to click on your episode. Say someone is searching for business coaches or something, and one of your podcast episodes shows up, if it just says ‘Episode number blah blah blah’ and then dot dot dot – that’s not really a compelling title. Make sure that you create a compelling title for your episode because you only have a couple of characters to try to grab somebody in who could be a potential life-long listener or customer.

Jason:
Yeah, and that’s got to be keyword-rich, though, too, right?

Freddie:
Yeah, keywords are important, but I always put the keywords at the end. You know how they say headlines are why people read an article – if it’s not a good headline, it doesn’t matter how good the article is..

Jason:
Sure.

Freddie:
Well it’s kind of that way too with iTunes. When people are searching, you could rank for a certain keyword, but if they can’t see anything that’s going to attract their attention, then most likely they’re not going to click.

Jason:
Okay, good stuff. What’s the next tip?

Freddie:
Hold on, where are we?

Jason:
How many have we done? Maybe we did 7 already?

Freddie:
Did we do 7? I think that was number 6 right there.

Jason:
Alright, let’s get 7 in and maybe we’ll give a bonus one too.

Freddie:
Alright. So this one’s got to knock them out of the ballpark because it’s the last tip. Let me see,
what’s going to be my best tip that I could give someone?

Jason:
Heck, you’re bonus tip can be the encore, so just give another tip now, how’s that sound?

Freddie:
Okay. So basically, this is a great tip that I just learned from Jared Easley. He has a great book out that he just put out, it’s only $1 on Amazon, so I suggest to any podcaster to go pick it up. It’s called Podcasting: Good to Great, and in it, he talks about the power of collaborating. Over Christmas last year, he did a mash-up with a couple other podcasters, and each of those podcasters promoted to their audience and then when the people came to the Google hangout, which they later repurposed as a podcast episode, they heard all these other podcasters and jumped onto their audience. If you can make a couple of friends while you’re podcasting and you do it like a mash-up, then your audiences are going to intermingle and you’ll find your audience will expand a lot quicker that way.

Jason:
Good point, friends are always good to have, no question about it.

Freddie:
I have another podcast that I’m launching to supplement Podcasters’ Boot Camp, my site, and every month I’m going to do a live Google hangout with a different podcasting entrepreneur, and then that’s going to be repurposed into a podcast episode. You can do just one episode a month as a Google hangout with somebody and then it turns into a question-answer session. You’re really engaging with people a lot more, and you can always repurpose it as a podcast episode, or you could keep it as a YouTube video and use it in all kinds of different ways.

Jason:
Yeah. What I always say, Freddie, is create the content once and try and repurpose it as much as possible. Then you get people on different mediums. For example, if somebody isn’t a fan of podcasting or doesn’t listen to podcasts or just hasn’t discovered that world yet and isn’t into it, they may be big on YouTube and they may spend a lot of their time consuming media on YouTube. You’ll never come into contact with them there if you don’t repurpose your content and have it in multiple places. Very good point.

Freddie:
And for my bonus tip, this is also from Jared’s book – it was a great book. I just finished reading it yesterday, so it’s fresh in my mind. Another great tip that he had in there was: whenever you mention anyone in your podcast episode – anyone or any company – reach out to them and let them know that you spoke about them in the episode, and they’ll most likely share the episode with their audience. Say you mention Microsoft – that’s kind of a huge company, but maybe they’ll publicly thank you with a comment or something like that. Anyone that you mention, you should always reach out to on the off-chance that they’ll promote you.

Jason:
Right, unless you’re being critical of them. Then just forget it, don’t reach out to them.

Freddie:
Yeah, then try and block them from coming to your website. Try and get their IP address and block them. There’s a plug-in you can get for WordPress.

Jason:
Oh, you can really block their IP so they can’t come on?

Freddie:
Yeah, there’s a plug-in you can get for WordPress. If you can figure out someone’s IP address, you can block them and they can’t even see your website.

Jason:
The problem is there’s so many different locations from which they can come, they can visit you if they want to. That’s probably not going to work in any real way, but it’s interesting that you can even do it in the first place. So good stuff. Well, Freddie, give out your website and tell people where they can find out more.

Freddie:
My website is www.PodcastersBootCamp.com – you can come over there and check out some more podcasting tips if you like the ones you heard today. Also, come over to Facebook and just search for the Podcaster Boot Camp group – there’s a ton of podcasters in there, you can make a lot of friends and grow your reach.

Jason:
Excellent stuff. Freddie Mixell, thanks for joining us.

Freddie:
Thanks for having me, Jason.

Outro
This show is produced by the Hartman Media Company, all rights reserved. For distribution or publication rights and media interviews, please visit www.HartmanMedia.com, or email media@hartmanmedia.com
Nothing on this show should be considered specific personal or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate tax, legal, real estate or business professional for individualized advice. Opinions of guests are their own, and the host is acting on behalf of Platinum Properties Investor Network Inc. exclusively.