Westwood One Podcast Network Executive Editor John Wordock

John fills us in with his strategies on How To Keep Your Listeners Engaged.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
We are joined today by Westwood ones podcast the editor of Westwood ones podcast network John wordoc John

(00:07):
Thanks so much for coming on. We appreciate your time. Thanks for doing this
Thanks, Ed. Nice to be on with you
Seems like the the way of doing things now is some sort of remote
Meeting and or zoom or something like that. Will you stream yard? But nothing seems to be live anymore John
How are you doing where you are? Where are you located?

(00:27):
Well, I am actually back in Maryland. I spent a lot of time in New York, but since March 12th
I've retreated to Maryland
Right outside of DC and I've been I feel like I'm on day
10,000 hunkered down in my home office
Now are they loosening things up a little bit? We're in Florida. So we're seeing a little bit every couple of weeks

(00:50):
How's it going by you? Yeah
Yeah around DC. I saw the mayor of DC just said, you know, we might start opening things up later this month
Maryland the governor has done a pretty good job but trying to be consistent, you know
But there are large counties the county I'm in Montgomery still has a lot of cases
So you got to pay attention to the news, right? So John, how did you get involved in podcasting?

(01:16):
How'd you get started in that industry?
Well, it's funny. I started in radio in high school and I worked my way through radio
doing
high school college even grad school doing radio and
I found myself
Working in a place what was then called CBS market watch
back in the

(01:38):
2003 2004 2005 and I had a boss who said, you know
We should be taking these audio snippets and putting them on the website and then from there
State jobs that Apple came along and said, you know
There's there's this thing called podcasting and we want to open it up and at that time
Both the Wall Street Journal and market watch were early adopters of podcasting. This is like oh five. Oh six

(02:03):
Where we were putting interviews out there and people would go what's a podcast?
So we would have to explain and then came the financial crisis
So, you know Oh seven oh eight oh nine and people wanted more and more news
especially financial news housing news
So we stuck with it. We kept doing podcasts and you know, so it goes

(02:25):
And you joined Westwood one when?
last year February of 2019 after being at Dow Jones and
You know the Journal of Market Watch for about 16 years
Got it
So we can't start a podcasting conversation off without the news of this week because talk about keeping your listeners engaged and viewers

(02:45):
Joe Rogan is the expert at it. What did you think when you saw that deal? He signed with Spotify? I
Well, my I guess would be w-o-w
Capitals it's like holy smokes and the Wall Street Journal puts the the tag at around a hundred million dollars
Which is amazing to see someone in podcasting getting that an individual person getting that

(03:10):
He is a phoenom and I'm sure he deserves every penny
But this is a really interesting tactic by Spotify to focus on a personality up to now
they focused on companies like Himlit and anchor and so on and now they have a
big-time personality
so was Joe Rogan really a podcaster because

(03:31):
With so many views on YouTube and and you know, it kind of was a TV show to me
It was a TV show. I don't think I've ever listened to the podcast
What does it mean to the podcasting industry for him not to be around?
Well, he'll be around but you know not for him not to be free on all the platforms
Yeah, I don't know. I think that's still an open question and right because you look at it this week

(03:54):
I spent a lot of time looking at Apple top charts a lot of people do it's very addictive to go on your phone and say
What shows doing well and he's always near the top
so what will that mean going forward for the shakeup with the charts and I think
Who knows that someone will always rise to fill in the gap, right? Right, right. So we'll have to see

(04:15):
So as a podcaster everybody wants more listeners
They I believe they want to grow their listenership so that perhaps they can make some some more money at being a podcaster
How do you keep listeners engaged? Let's kind of run through something that you wrote recently that we covered
You know keeping the listeners engaged right from the start to the end is important if you want to grow your show

(04:37):
So give us your first thoughts on why you put that together
The the list of things for folks to follow to keep their listeners engaged
And one thing we do at Westwood one is we look at audience
Insights and provide insights to folks out there both on the radio side and the podcast side
So I've been working on this for a while because there are more than a million podcasts out there

(05:02):
Reportedly on Apple and Spotify. So how do you distinguish yourself these days? How do you get noticed?
How do you build audience and how do you attract advertisers to generate money here? So
Working with an editor. I came up with some ideas
Basically the first one the first strategy is if you're going to use the Apple dashboard and just to explain

(05:24):
When you go on that dashboard, you can see things like time spent listen
You know time per device
And then something called average consumption or completion rate so you can see how long people are looking
Enlisting and when you look you can see the
The graph of the audience. It's amazing to look where the audience drops

(05:44):
Out so in this piece that I've written which people can find on twitter or on my linkedin profile
Or at westwoodone.com
The first thing is storytelling this may sound obvious
But if you're call and engage and you will hold your audience and as long as you can keep telling stories

(06:06):
And keep doing
Intelligent interviews and having great guests or doing interviews with great people
Great guests or doing a great narrative
You'll hold your audience going forward. So prepare for interviews
Know your questions know the answers or try to anticipate them and then build your interview on that or

(06:27):
If you are going to go do a narrative, you know work with your producer
Sit down and rip through your script to see what works what doesn't and then see
How you can go from there to try to maintain your audience looking for you know points of drama
You know, who are your main characters and things like that?
So that that's a huge part is storytelling
The second thing is you know, yeah before you get on to number two the strategy

(06:53):
How important is it for podcasters to get right into the content at the beginning?
Of their show as opposed to again joe rogan roard lead seven eight minutes ads
Not that everybody has that many ads to read but sometimes there's some content at the beginning that you just you're rolling your eyes at
Um, you know, they're talking about uh, you know
Their microphone or talking about things around in the room and it just you tune into a podcast because what you see in the

(07:19):
In the title or what you see in the artwork and how quickly do you need to get into the content?
You really should get into the content quickly, uh, because
People will tune out there are so many options. I know I do it myself
If you don't have my attention really within the first two minutes i'm gone and I will move to the next thing
Um, and so you really have to tease your audience. You have to telegraph what's coming up in the show

(07:45):
Maybe play a snippet from the the guest you're going to have on, you know a sexy juicy bite
And then make sure if you do have a pre-roll ad
This moves to strategy point number two get creative with that, right?
So you don't want to turn people off automatically by playing a pre-roll at the very top listen
Joe rogan is the exception right the guy can do whatever he wants as far as i'm concerned, but the rest of us

(08:11):
You know who are mere mortals have to think about how do we creatively open up the show?
Get around a pre-roll if there's a sponsorship and then go into the meat of the show
Gotcha so, um any way to give some folks tips on creative, uh pre-roll ads should it be voice read should it be?
Uh recorded does it really matter as long as it's creative

(08:35):
I think that will depend really on how you want to structure your show and
You know what content management system you're using and whether you want to use dynamic ad insertion
That's probably going to have to be up to you and your producer
and if you have a business manager to figure that out, but
My feeling is and this gets back to storytelling right energy
The read should be awesome

(08:57):
The the uh, the content the copy should be awesome. You really need to have strong copy to carry the day
Uh, and that is a huge part of all this discussion as well
Do you really know a lot of podcasters that have producers and business managers?
Actually, I do
Wow
It's amazing. What's going on here talking to folks?

(09:19):
Because there there are podcasters out there who will go find a producer right and say hey
I'll give you 35 an hour. Can you help me edit my piece, you know, and then help publish
And there's this cottage industry growing up, uh, especially around big cities like new york and washington and st. Francisco in la
in chicago

(09:41):
You know, I i'm getting off the beaten path here a little bit
But have you been watching what's been going on with barstool sports and this call her daddy podcast and
They've been getting so much publicity. I've never listened to an actual show
I did listen to portnoy talk about the show on the feed because now you're hooked in with all the drama and
They were even in the new york new york times yesterday, uh on uh, you know wednesday

(10:05):
So it just seems like that podcast is blowing up and it's not even it's not even being produced anymore
So how do you you can't even buy that kind of publicity?
You can't know to have the new york times cover you and you haven't published an episode, you know
The two girls haven't published an episode
So since april and look what's going on there. Yeah, what a drama. What a drama

(10:26):
Uh and portnoy is the master. I mean he really is to see what he's done with barstool over the last
15 years really it's amazing
So the third strategy you talk about is experiment. What do you mean by that?
Well, one thing I love to do is I like to use the apple metrics to go on there and see what's hot and what's not
Because you can break it down by individual episodes so you can see hey

(10:51):
We just did something on mcdonnell selling a new kind of burger or hey
We just did something on you know, how you can pay down your student debt or something, right?
So wow, look at that. We had really strong audience retention all the way through
Or look at all those downloads
We got more downloads and then you can start looking for patterns when you experiment so using the apple metrics

(11:13):
You can try to uh, look at what I would call a digital focus group, right?
To look at how certain episodes do and how well certain episodes don't do and then trying to make content strategy decisions
So that so you mentioned apple metrics a few times. Um
Uh, i've got a few podcasts
But i've never gone into apple to look at their metrics because I always feel like apple is so difficult to maneuver through

(11:39):
How do you get people into the apple metrics? What how do they do that?
well, uh, you can uh
Contact them i'm sure
And ask for a dashboard
Your larger content creators do have access and they do look at their own
Their own material I do it for our shows for most of our shows at westwood one

(12:02):
We have just over 40 podcasts
So I spent a lot of time going in there because at the end of the day it's about advertising, right?
In many ways you can have great content
but if the great content doesn't draw in advertisers, then you have an issue and
Uh, that's where I come in and try to look at how can we get a lot of the audience?

(12:23):
To stay right through the first mid-roll position
You know because mid-roll ads tend to be higher cpm, but they bring tend to bring in more revenue
So how can we work with the host? How can we work with the producer?
Um to try to get the audience to roll right through and when you go on to the apple metrics you can
You can see how long the audience is lasting

(12:45):
Are you keeping 70 of your audience or 80 or 90?
If you're hitting 80 or higher, I consider that a success these days
So should a independent podcaster work through their hosting company like libson or
Blueberry or spreeker or any of the other ones to find the stats or should they go to apple connect and try and keep an eye on that?
As well, I would approach apple directly to see what you can get from them. Uh, there's a good crew there

(13:12):
James bogg steve wilson lauren osan in particular to reach out to them and
You know listen things are heating up and podcasting right? Look at what spotify is doing
They're putting a lot of pressure on apple
Yeah
So apple in many ways has to be in the customer service business. So if you have interest in learning more about your metrics
You should approach apple
John does length of a podcast really matter? We we kind of get that question all of it all the time

(13:36):
Somebody wanted to know about short pods
Five minute shows things like that. Does it does it really matter how long your show is for it to be successful?
I think that really depends on who the host is how engaged the host is with the audience
And uh what the content is, right?
I mean these days we're all looking for tidbits of information about what's going on with coronavirus

(13:59):
And if you look at some of the top shows right now like the npr newscast or the fox news
Podcasts, they're all doing really well because we are looking for that five minute shot of news to keep us informed
But if you are looking for escapism, right? Maybe you want a 45 minute podcast for comedy
So I think it really depends on um, how engaging the host is and

(14:24):
What genre you're dealing with right now?
The next strategy on your list is hold the audience number four. So why don't you tell us how we can hold our audience?
Yeah
by
Practicing tips one two and three, you know be a great storyteller
Try not to make the ads too burdensome on your list

(14:45):
Uh, try not to make the ads too burdensome on your listeners be creative
Be engaging
whose uh
Passion right? That's it's all about passion and engaging and reaching beyond and and hitting that person right between the ears
So, uh, that's what those are some of the things you should do
and then with experimenting

(15:08):
What I like to do with metrics is if we tweak something how can we make it better right?
That's ultimately how can we grow the audience? How can we hold the audience as long as possible?
So tip number four is you know, look at the consumption rate on apple metrics
And some podcasts may only have 60 or 70

(15:29):
That's not great. I mean try to improve on that try to hit the 80 mark for many years
It was thought that 80 was the industry standard. I like to aim for 90 or higher because that means ultimate
Right. You are a hero winning the day if you can hold 90 of your audience
Whether it's a 20 minute podcast or an hour-long podcast if you can keep someone that long and keep a lot of them

(15:55):
You have a successful podcast
john, what do you think is a respectable number of downloads after somebody has 5 10 15 shows in their uh,
You know in their lineup, uh of their podcast if they're doing a weekly show, I mean, uh,
Uh, sometimes people give up after seven or eight or five or because they look at those numbers and they get depressed by it

(16:17):
So what uh, what do you think is a respectable number after you know, you start to get into a groove?
Well, yeah, we are seeing that pod fade right where people give up and they toss in the towel
You really got to be committed here and you got to have a game plan and when people ask me, you know
Should I launch a podcast?
I actually have a one sheet that I hand out to people here like 10 questions

(16:39):
You should be able to answer if you can't answer these questions
You should not be doing a podcast and you should not commit to doing a podcast for six to 12 months
so
You really got to be in it for the long term, right? It's uh, it's not a sprint. It's not a 40-yard dash
It's more like a marathon plan on running 26 miles and change here folks because you're going to need

(17:00):
to uh, you know, there are going to be days when you think that oh this episode is so great and
And the downloads aren't there in terms of monetization. You should try
uh, you should really keep pushing
To 20 30 40 000 downloads per episode because that's when you're really going to start attracting advertisers
I think that's been the traditional threshold of trying to hit 50 000 downloads per episode

(17:25):
Is there a way somebody could get the uh, one sheet from you or is that something for westwood morning?
Uh, if you want to do business with us, uh, sure. Um, I don't really
You know, really I have to be working with a client but sure
If someone has a show and they want to pitch us let us know, you know

(17:45):
If you have an established audience in mr. Rogan, you know, we're listening if the
but
One thing I will say it is I talk to a lot of people who want to start podcasts
And my I answer emails
I answer phone calls and I you know when they reach out on social media
I tend to answer as soon as I can so if anyone's out there and they want to check just let me know

(18:11):
Are there a lot of people that are trying to start a podcast every day still?
Yeah, uh, you can see because what's going on in the radio industry in particular?
People maybe they lose their job as a morning show host somewhere and they say, you know, we have an audience here
How can we take that audience and move it into a podcast? And I think we are seeing

(18:31):
some of that
Still, you know
Even though it's getting extremely competitive in podcasting now
So the fifth the strategy you have on your uh on your list here is deal with the dips
Yes, and uh when I mean dips, I don't mean people who uh, you know are idiots. I mean
people who

(18:51):
On the apple metrics will notice something that goes down on the chart. It's like what is that and that's the ad
because even the best
Uh host the most engaging most colorful host will will have a dip and so how can you creatively?
segue from
your content
Through the ad making the ad sort of sing along

(19:14):
With the narrative of your content and then right through the ad
back to the content so
uh
You will have dips but you should look at trying to make sure those dips are smaller and smaller
And by going on the apple dashboard, you can see how much audience did I lose?
Oh, i'm getting better at this
And if you do have ad copy, you know pre-read it

(19:39):
Learn to love your your copy
Because it benefits you it benefits your listener and it benefits your sponsor
So john how important is it to have good quality audio?
I know there was a time where the audio didn't mean as much because there was a smaller group of a number of podcasts to
To pick through but now it's it's it's gotten so large. Not all of them are active

(20:01):
Everyone says there's a million podcasts, but not all of them are active or producing podcasts every week
But really how important is it for you to you know, at least invest in a couple of good microphones and figure out how to record it
So you have good quality sound
And the one thing I would say about that is it's gotten much easier now to do a really good podcast
using

(20:22):
Equipment that doesn't cost an arm and a leg
And I think audio quality is a big way of distinguishing yourself because if people hear
crackly crappy audio
You're going to turn them off and they'll go elsewhere. I think just to be honest about it
I know myself when i'm listening to stuff

(20:43):
It's like boy. They couldn't do better than that
Um, and then that will then raise a red flag and then the next time you know
I get the episode another episode. It's like man. Do I really want to invest the time?
So that's what it comes down to is getting your listener to invest the time and if you make the audio quality really good
You will probably attract them to keep coming back for that second third and fourth listen

(21:07):
And how important is it for you to consistently drop an episode on the day? You're going you say you're going to drop one
Yeah, you got to get them addicted right? It's a habit if you
Publish every tuesday be there every tuesday explain, you know
We publish on tuesday make us part of your commute or you know your morning walk now. They're in my neighborhood

(21:28):
There are so many people out walking and they're listening and people are taking cups of coffee with them or if it's an after-party
Or if it's in the afternoon, some of them are taking adult beverages with them
Uh, and they're listening to stuff on their phones. So if you drop on tuesday drop on tuesday folks
I mean, you know have some discipline too and that gets back to what I mentioned earlier about have a plan

(21:52):
And and stick to that plan
Any final tips you want to share with our audience?
Yeah, have fun
uh, the one thing I love about podcasting
is
Every day I feel like i'm doing a hobby and that's how it should feel
You should really enjoy doing what you're doing and then everything will flow from that. So

(22:13):
Enjoy it and if you find yourself not enjoying the process of doing a podcast
You're trying to build out a business based around a podcast. Maybe you shouldn't be doing a podcast
What are your three favorite podcasts outside the westwood one network?
Uh, I will tell you the one i'm listening to right now, uh, is uh baseball by the book

(22:36):
by a
Veteran sports writer justin maguire. I'm a baseball fan
and he has on baseball authors talking about uh,
whether it's harry carrey
or um
You know the new york giants or baseball
Uh, you know in new york or whatever. So that's my favorite. I would say I I go to that

(22:59):
A lot and I also listen to uh
Podcasts that are being done by sports stations around the country to see what the sports industry is up to these days
uh
You know given I spend my day looking listening to podcasts at night
I will also use podcasts to try to tune out and by engaging with sports podcasts in particular

(23:20):
So the the baseball one that you mentioned being that it's so nichey. Do they have sponsors?
I have not heard one yet. Uh, he has a lot of great guests
uh
But I have not heard a sponsor yet
Finally, how can people reach out to you and get in contact with you? Where can they find you? Sure. I'm on twitter
Uh at john wardock j-o-h-n-w-o-r-d-o-c-k

(23:44):
LinkedIn just look for me
Uh, you can also if you want, uh, feel free to email me at westwood one j wardock at westwood one.com
John, thanks so much for your time. We look forward to seeing you in person real soon
Thanks. Thanks ed