Introducing Buzzsprout's Redesigned Podcast Websites

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We're diving into the latest announcement from Buzzsprout: redesigned podcast websites! The new podcast websites have several improvements to make your podcast website more engaging and user friendly, like episode search, a contributor page, a podroll page, highlighted Fan Mail messages, and more!

See the redesign and all the new features on these podcast websites:

• Buzzcast
• Happy to Help
• Dreamful Bedtime Stories
• Podnews Weekly Review

Also in this episode, Alban shares his experiment with Pocket Casts, a move that transformed his podcast-listening habits. We compare features like customizability and search functions across popular apps such as Overcast and Apple Podcasts, helping you enhance your listening experience.

We’ll also highlight the latest updates in Apple products, including the game-changing iPhone 16 Pro and AirPods 4, and their implications for podcasters & podcast listeners.

Sound-Off Question: Share your updated Buzzsprout podcast website & let us know what you think!

Links mentioned in this episode:

• Pocket Casts
• Buzzsprout's Rebuilt Podcast Websites
• Apple's "It's Glowtime" Event

Contact Buzzcast

• Send us a text message
• Tweet us at @buzzcastpodcast, @albanbrooke, @kfinn, and @JordanPods

Thanks for listening and Keep Podcasting!

Episode Transcript

Alban (00:00):
I'm not down this rabbit hole yet, but I know it's going
to happen.
The microplastics rabbit hole,oh gosh, I feel like it's on
this, the border in my brain ofbeing like totally made up.
And maybe now it's not totallymade up and maybe it is
something I should look into andmaybe microplastics are
actually pretty bad.
Kevin's looking at me like.

(00:20):
Kevin definitely believes inmicroplastics, for sure.

Kevin (00:23):
Yeah, 100%.
But why did you just have aweird transition into
microplastics?

Alban (00:27):
Because a lot of socks have, like all these polyester
and all these random syntheticmaterials.
Some of them are plastic based.

Jordan (00:35):
Oh, I mean, I have pants that are made from like water
bottles.

Kevin (00:39):
Okay, jordan has some plastic pants.

Jordan (00:40):
Yeah.

Kevin (00:41):
I think the biggest concern with the plastics and
microplastics, though, isingesting them, not necessarily
coming in contact with your skin.

Alban (00:48):
Well, I don't know, kevin .
I haven't researchedmicroplastics yet.
I'm just saying this is comingup, yep, and guess what?
My favorite olive oil brandcomes in a plastic bottle.
We're in trouble.
I'm blowing up my whole life IfI learn about these
microplastics.
I'm going to have to replace somany things.

Kevin (01:02):
I'll tell you, I think the biggest concern with the
plastics is the like, the hotfood and beverages served in
plastic containers.
That's the biggest problem.

Jordan (01:09):
Oh my gosh.
Do you guys remember when Cupof Noodles released that they
now come with like microwavablestyrofoam cups?
And everyone was like wait what?
Welcome back to Buzzcast, apodcast about all things
podcasting from the people atBuzzsprout.

(01:29):
All right, Alban.
So a couple episodes ago youtalked about how you're going to
start from a clean slate andonly use Pocket Cast for your
podcast listening, and I stillhaven't used Pocket Cast at all,
so I want to know what yourexperience has been using it.

Alban (01:44):
It's been good.
I unsubscribed.
Spotify kept pushing more andmore podcasts and I you know I'd
found a few shows so I had afew on Spotify and subscribed to
all those.
I started unsubscribing toeverything and overcast and I
declared pure podcast bankruptcy.
Like I didn't go and say I'mresubscribing to all my shows.
It was like like if I thinkabout it and I go, oh, I want to

(02:05):
hear that right now, then I'llgo subscribe.
I had 23 podcasts I waslistening to actively and
overcast.
Only eight made it over toPocket Cast and lost two weeks?

Jordan (02:14):
Whoa, that's crazy.

Alban (02:16):
It was funny to notice, like what would cue me to think
of oh, I want to listen to thatpodcast.
So some of them were like myfavorites that were easy to
think, oh, it releases today.
But some of them were like Isaw a social media post about a
show that I like and I was like,oh yeah, I forgot to subscribe
to that.
I should go resubscribe.

Jordan (02:40):
Just a little experiment for myself to see how many of
the shows was I just keeping upwith and how many of them were
like my favorites.
Yeah, I think like last time Icounted shows I follow it was
somewhere in like the 40s, Likeeasily I don't think actually
listen that many.

Alban (02:52):
I think I go through these periods where I have a
more exploratory, I'm trying tofind lots of new things, and
then other periods where I'mlike, alright, let's go back to
like the core, few shows Ireally love and it's okay if
some drops off.
Maybe it'll come back when Ikind of explore a bit more and
find new stuff.
So, yeah, quite a few shows gotlost.

(03:12):
It's been good and bad.
There's a few things that Iwish Pocket Cast had as opposed
to Overcast or Apple Podcasts orother apps.
But overall very good.
Fewer bugs than Overcast hadKevin, you chime in on this too
but like Pocket Cast feels likethe most customizable of any of
the apps by a lot.
There you can change things.

(03:33):
Like at the bottom of the nowplaying screen you can figure
out how many episodes you wantto auto download or even if you
want to auto download, or youcan change all sorts of default

(03:53):
behaviors.
You can skip the beginning ofevery episode of a certain
podcast so you skip the pre-rollads or skip the first 20
minutes of Buzzcast.
A few other things I like.
I've got a whole list of goodthings.
Search in Pocket Cast is sogood.
It's so much better of animplementation than I think I've
seen anywhere else.
If you go and you search, it'spulling up.

(04:16):
Here are the podcasts that arethe best.
It's right at the top, it'sjust a big list and then right
below that are episodes and theyseem to be searching at least
descriptions, if not even someof the content, but definitely
titles and descriptions.
So I was searching for thispodcast, dwarkesh podcast, and I
searched Dwarkesh Patel andthen all of a sudden I see he's

(04:39):
been on all these other podcastsand I go, oh, I would
definitely listen to thatepisode and so I download it and
it's really nice to have thatsearch.
That was never available inovercast.
I know Apple podcasts has thisas well, right, yeah, yeah, but
it's still like.
This felt like a very cleanimplementation.
Podcasts are first, episodesare down below it.
Yeah, lots of slick animations.

(04:59):
You know the forward and backskip buttons have a cute little
animation.
Play pause is a nice animation.
You can add bookmarks if youthink a spot is good and even
title it so you can come backand listen to it later.

Jordan (05:12):
Oh, that's nice.

Alban (05:13):
There's ratings like a five star rating scale for all
podcasts.
Jordan, you're voting down.
Okay, well, you'll like this.
Well, I don't know.
This is good and good and badokay if you haven't listened to
the episode, it will say hey,why don't you listen to an
episode before you rate it?

Jordan (05:31):
oh, that's what spotify does too.

Alban (05:32):
I think you have to listen to like a minimum of like
three episodes before you canrate them the downside is that
you could have already listenedto multiple episodes and you
still can hit that notificationand it doesn't tell me how to
get around it.

Kevin (05:45):
I ran into it when I started using podcasts and you
just have to be patient.
I think I came back after aweek of using podcast and I
could rate almost every show.

Alban (05:53):
Well, I was running into it still with a few shows.
There's a few weird artworkthings.
Episode artwork isn't alwaysdisplayed like on now playing.
I think podcast artwork forshows that change their podcast
artwork Don't refreshautomatically.
I had to do that manually.
So Kevin and I both listened todithering, which changes the
podcast artwork every month, andI noticed it wasn't updating.

(06:17):
But besides that, like overallvery, very good, they have
adopted a lot of the bestfeatures from every other app.
And then there's just littletiny things, the few things I
still miss from Overcast, thoughthe Overcast UI I still think
is the cleanest of all.
It matches my brain in howthings should be organized.
I don't like playlists, I justwant to like click a show, then

(06:38):
click an episode and audiograms.
I do this all the time Ilistened to a section, I go, oh,
this is really good, and I wantto take a clip and share it
with somebody.
And I know if I share a videoclip that they can listen to it
and we're not trying to get into, you know, I'm not sharing a
link to an app, and so I wouldclip a little audiogram in
Overcast and post on socialmedia or send it out to the team

(07:01):
or something like that, and Ireally would love that to be in
pocket casts.

Jordan (07:07):
I mean you can always like screen record here, the
clip, and send that.

Kevin (07:11):
That's true.
Yeah, you can definitely sharefrom the current position is
what they call it.
There's pros and cons of both.
The nice thing about what Alansaid is if you share an overcast
soundbite video thing, whoevergets it can absolutely just play
it because you just sent them amovie, basically, so they can
hear exactly what you want toshare.
The drawback is it's not supereasy for them to then follow it

(07:33):
and listen to the whole episodebecause you just sent a movie
clip.
If you share from any other appat the current position, then
there's problems if the persondoesn't have that app installed.
So like I get random podcastclips sent from people who are
like listening in Spotify orsomething I can't.
I don't even have Spotify on myphone.
Half the time I keep installingit, uninstalling it.
I wonder if there's a solutionto that.

(07:53):
I mean, I know the like forBuzzsprout podcasters.
You can always share from yourBuzzsprout website and then that
just plays in a browser soanybody can play that.
But there's not like auniversal way to share podcast
clips that kind of just worksfor everybody and lets them jump
right into the app that theylike to listen to podcasts on.

Alban (08:11):
That's what Nathan did with Podlink.
His goal was every podcast.
I'm just going to pull togetherall listings, figure it out,
and you can send out this linkand people can go there.
What would be really nice,though, would be if you had
something like Podlink thatdidn't need a business model
behind it.
The whole business could justbe send this link and it auto

(08:33):
sends you into the podcast appthat you use on your phone.
Yeah, similar to the way abrowser would work.
There's a website, and whateverbrowser is the default opens it
, and, I think, just the worldof apps, where everything is
sandboxed away and Apple andAndroid control the whole thing,
and they don't really want tocreate an app switcher between
all the podcast apps.

(08:54):
There's not a lot of incentiveto build that world out, but I
think that would be the nicest.
You just shared a link, andthen your podcast app opened up
and was like Okay, I grabbed allthose and so we're ready to go.
I mean, really, I guess this iswhat the RSS feed should be.
You just share an RSS feed, andthen it's like okay, I see that
this is a podcasting link, I'mgoing to open it up in your

(09:14):
podcast player, whichever oneyou have as your default.
And here we go.

Kevin (09:18):
Yeah, it seems like there has to be a certain level of I
don't know general use orpopularity or something before
those.
Those are like operating systemlevel preferences that have to
be built, and I think Apple isjust now getting to the point
where they're getting enoughpressure from the outside world.
Where they're, they'll let youset a different default browser.
Is that even?
Can you do that?
I don't even use a differentbrowser, my iOS, I just use

(09:40):
Safari.

Jordan (09:41):
But can you set like if you had Chrome.

Kevin (09:42):
Can you set Chrome as your default browser?

Alban (09:44):
Yeah, and you can set like a different default web
search and you can set adifferent.
I think you can have a defaultlike music player now, at least
for the home pods and stuff.
Yeah, so they're adding more ofit.
The irony would be thatpodcasting is one area.
Apple only spends money.
They don't make money, and sofor them to be like, okay, we're
going to build an app switcherpiece into the operating system

(10:06):
so that you know you can open uppocket casts.
It'd be nice of them to do that, but that's just another area
that really wouldn't, you know,align with all of these concerns
that have kind of driven thebrowsers or the search bar and
all that stuff.

Kevin (10:20):
Yeah, but I do put I imagine it's in a similar
category for them as providing amap service or a weather
service Like these are justgreat native experiences that
they want to ensure that theirphone has.
But I don't think they'reopposed to third party
developers.
I mean clearly not because theyprovide an app store where
third party developers can makethese things, but as of right
now, I don't think there's.

(10:40):
I don't even know if there'smuch of a use case for defining
it like a different defaultweather app or a different
default mapping app.
But you do see, this come intoplay sometimes when apps ask you
like if I check into myMarriott hotel and then I say
like, show me the directions tothe hotel, It'll say do you want
it in Apple Maps or do you wantit in Google Maps?
Well, it'd be nice, or do youwant it in Waze?

Alban (11:07):
It'd be nice if OS and the same type of thing for
podcast apps, but it hasn't cometo maps yet.
Gosh, not going to come topodcast apps for ever.
So overall pocket casts uh, Idon't know four and a half stars
.
I feel like I've done my twoweeks Very, very good.
Probably the best third partypodcast listening app.
I think I'll stick with it.
It's probably the one I'veliked the most.
There's still pieces of it ofovercast.
I'm like, oh, I really wish Icould get that back.
Overcast is very clean.

(11:28):
I really like the organization.

Kevin (11:31):
I have really struggled in embracing the aesthetic of
Overcast.
I never really liked the oldone and I really don't like the
new one.
But that's great.
People can have differentopinions on what appeals to them
or not.
So Alban really liked theaesthetic of Overcast, I really
didn't, but I also really likedthe aesthetic of Pocket Cast.
I think it's.
For me, it aligns with mysensibilities really well, and

(11:52):
that's the wonderful thing aboutpodcasting is that there's lots
of different apps out there,and so, as a podcaster and a
podcast enthusiast, I think thetakeaway here should be,
hopefully, that people feelencouraged to try to find new
apps if you're really intopodcasting.
There's so many really goodoptions and there's probably no
one app that speaks to everybody, and that's great.
That's a wonderful thing.

Jordan (12:15):
So, as many of our podcasters know, all of the paid
plans on Buzzsprout include awebsite for your podcast and
they were nice and they lookvery clean and, you know, had
all the basics that your podcastneeds.
But now they have beenrefreshed with a new design that
not only looks very likepolished and professional, but

(12:36):
we've added some new things aswell.

Alban (12:38):
This is something we've talked about for a long time.
Yeah, because last time weredid the websites I don't know
it was years ago.
And you, we get lots of ideaswhenever we talk to podcasters,
especially ones who use thewebsites, or maybe even when you
get the best feedback frompeople who don't use it, because
they went and they built theirown Squarespace sites.
They wanted something slightlydifferent.
Yeah, and we just kind of havehad this list.

(13:01):
We've been building good ideas,some ideas that maybe not great,
but we had lots of good ideasand, with Cameron on the team,
we have an opportunity to leanmore in on the design side.
So now what we're giving arethese professional podcast
websites without all the hassle.
You don't have to go and do allthese configurations, you don't

(13:22):
have to go set up somethingelse.
Your podcast website is goingto pull everything together your
episodes, your transcripts,hosting, guest bios, directory
links, fan mail and a lot moreand now it's just this very
clean, organized page so thatyou can send one link out and
know everything about my podcastis here and people can jump

(13:44):
from there out to the rest ofthe world to get access to
everything else you're doing foryour show.

Jordan (13:49):
Yeah, and I think like one of the biggest things that I
noticed right off the batseeing this new design is that
our previous website design feltvery like top heavy.
All of the navigation was at thetop, we had all of our like
links at the top, support was atthe top and, yeah, like I said,
it's very top heavy.
But this one feels a lot morelike spaced out and even though

(14:09):
we have added more features tothese websites that podcasters
can enable or publish, it justit feels a lot cleaner somehow,
even though there's more so, andI know that that is all thanks
to the design team and you know,just their incredible work
making sure that everythingdoesn't feel as cramped as it
could have felt.
One of the main things thatyou'll notice on the new

(14:31):
websites is there's a new liketop navigation bar and it
includes episodes, contributors,fan mail about podcasts we love
support and follow, and I thinkthat we have added what one,
two, three, four, five, six ofthose, or rename them in some
way.
So, yeah, that's that's a bigchange, just right off the bat.

Alban (14:52):
Just looking at the menus , All right, can we walk through
these?
Maybe we'll start at the leftand walk through and talk about
all these things we've changed.

Jordan (15:00):
Absolutely.

Alban (15:00):
All right, first is episodes, and the thing I am
excited about here is episodesearch.

Kevin (15:08):
So on the episodes page.

Alban (15:10):
This is totally redesigned, Looks really good.
It's this one page that's like,dedicated to every episode that
you've released and then at thetop, you can search the title,
you can search the descriptions,you can search for the guests.
You can search the title, youcan search the descriptions, you
can search for the guests.
If you want to try to find hey,I'm looking at the Buzzcast
website.
When was the last time thatthey talked about value for

(15:32):
value?
You can go and search value forvalue and pull up all the
episodes where we mentioned itand you could jump in and listen
to those.
It's going to be really nice, Ithink, especially for larger
podcasts that you've beenpodcasting for years.
You've got 155 episodes.
That's what it says for us.
That's a lot for people to kindof scroll through, and this is

(15:53):
a much easier way to findcontent, especially if you
haven't listened to everyepisode already.

Jordan (15:58):
Yeah, let me tell you this is one of the things I am
most excited about, becausethere are so many times in past
episodes where you guys havebeen like, oh yeah, jordan can
link to that episode in the shownotes where we talked about
this at like some unnamed dateand time, and I have to then go
through and find what episodeyou guys are talking about, and

(16:20):
so I'm very, very excited aboutthis one.
I think it's going to make myworkflow a little bit easier.

Kevin (16:26):
And then from the main episodes page you can click into
an individual episode.
Those pages have also beenredesigned and the player has
been simplified, which I reallylike, because our standard embed
player used to show a lot ofstuff that was like repetitive
in the context of that playerbeing on your own website, so
you could get to the chaptersand you can get to the show

(16:48):
notes and stuff through theplayer.
But now, when you're looking atthis in the context of your own
website, that stuff is alreadyall there and so we were able to
really simplify that playerexperience and I think it just
looks absolutely beautiful.
And there's a really nice sharelink as well where you can
share from a specific startingposition or a timestamp, and you
can also quickly share it toFacebook and Twitter and

(17:08):
LinkedIn or just copy the URLstraight to share the page.

Alban (17:12):
Yeah, these look really nice.
I forgot about that, kevin.
Like if we looked at the oldembed player, you know the title
of this page would have beenlock screen widgets and.
But then the player would saylock screen widgets and then, if
it was like playing, you mightsee it a third time somewhere.
Now it's been simplifiedbecause we know our player is
going to be on these pages.

(17:32):
This information is already onthe pages.
So this is a special way weredesigned it.
It does look a lot cleaner.
You've got your show notes.
You've got your chapters.
The chapters have a nice littledesign, so if you click it
it'll jump the player to thespot and then you can click over
to transcript and you can readthe episode if you want to, as

(17:53):
you're listening, and then downthere at the bottom you've got
every, all the people on theepisode, so you could click in
and read Jordan's biography andsee all of the episodes she's
been on, or same for Kevin or I.

Jordan (18:09):
Yeah, and I mean really that segues nicely into our next
update, which is thecontributors, and these are
roles that we've added.
You know, it used to just bethat we would allow you to list
hosts and co hosts, but nowwe've expanded it to include
producer, editor and guests andthe guests can be linked to
specific episodes.
So, you know, if you click theepisode and you have added the
guests as a contributor and youhave like their bio and their

(18:31):
link, you can go into theepisode and click add guest and
then select them and you can dothat for multiple episodes.
And it's really cool becausethen when you go to the
contributor page on your website, you can see all the episodes
that that guest has been a partof.
It's very fun to, you know, havemyself listed correctly as a
producer or editor on otherpodcasts I'm a part of, instead

(18:55):
of host, because I'm not a hostor I wasn't listed before, you
know, in some of these.
So it's really cool, you know,especially being able to lift up
your editor.
So if somebody listens to yourpodcast and they go, man, the
editor is so great.
I want to see what else theywork on and you can link to, you
know their personal website andjust really promote them that
way, and it's really neat.

Alban (19:16):
Yeah, all this comes out of the podcast taxonomy project,
where they went and they pulledout all of these different
roles that people had host,co-host, and I mean they had 50
different roles.
And we went in and we said, allright, there's a lot of roles
here, but what are the mostcommon?
And so we started looking atall of our shows that we have.

(19:36):
We said, okay, what roles do weknow are very common that we
would use?
And so host was obviously oneof them, co-host, guests, the
editor, producer.
So we pulled a few of those in.
It's not everything.
There's tons of.
You know, you could have thebest boy grip version or
whatever the equivalent is forpodcasting.

Jordan (19:57):
I mean that was the thing was like looking at the
taxonomy, it was just like, okay, what are the most common ones,
or you know, maybe like mostimportant?
And it was one of those thingsthat was really difficult to
decide between, because it waslike, man, we can see so many
use cases for voice actors orfor this and that, and by the
end of it, where we were like,all right, these are the most
important ones, these are theones we have to have, it was

(20:19):
just like way too long of a list, and so it slowly becomes a
thing of like okay, like whatcan encompass more roles.

Kevin (20:32):
You know what can you put together?
And, yeah, for a service likePodchaser and their mission was
to part of their mission was tobecome like an IMDB for the
podcasting space I do think it'simportant to have a taxonomy so
that everyone who's involved inthe show could be credited
accurately.
Right, and those credits mean alot in that context.
But in the context of a websitewhere you're just listening to
podcast episodes and the purposeof the website is to make them

(20:54):
easily accessible and to promotethe shows, that context becomes
less important.
It's still important to makesure that people are credited
for the work that they did, buthaving the exact details and the
nuance around all of the titlesof exactly the function that
they performed in that specificepisode becomes less important
there.
And so, not to take anythingaway from the important work

(21:15):
that the Podchaser team led anddid with the podcast taxonomy
project, we think that isfantastic, but it's just becomes
a little bit nuanced for whenyou're displaying an episode on
a public website.

Alban (21:25):
Yeah, and if you think about it, it's not like I'm
going to listen to this episode.
I'm like oh, jordan's a co-host, not the producer, or some like
some little nuance in the exactpiece of work you did.
You're the editor, not theproducer.
You're a co-producer.
So like I wouldn't be like oh,now I'm not listening.

Jordan (21:42):
You're a voice actor, not a guest.
Yeah.

Alban (21:45):
But the big thing is now there's a place to say hey, this
is the guests, and I feel likewe added a handful of the guests
for Buzzcast.
And then I scroll down and I'mlike, okay, this is a pretty
good group we've got.
I mean, we start the list offwith Adam Curry, the podfather
and we've got all sorts of bigpodcasters in here and I mean

(22:06):
I'm seeing these guests and itgets me excited to think about.
Oh man, we've been doing thisshow for five years.
We've had a lot of really coolconversations with people in the
podcasting industry, when wedon't even do that many
interviews.
This is not an interview show.
It's not, and just through theyears we've had opportunities to
bring people on for littleconversations and we really have

(22:27):
a pretty, pretty awesome groupof people who've been on the
show.

Kevin (22:31):
Yeah, and there's.
There's two little butimportant things to note about
the contributors.
And one is that we hope that ifyou add a person as a
contributor who you might have aguest, be a guest on your
podcast, and then link them tothat episode, then when you
share that episode with them,they will then see that they're
credited on it and it's nice.
And if you grab a headshot fromthem or find one online and put

(22:51):
it in there, they see theirface.
We hope that gets them moreexcited about sharing it with
their circle of influence aswell.
So that's a struggle thatpodcasters often have is they
say oh, I had this person on asa guest and I'm having trouble
getting them to promote theirown episodes.
How can I help?
Well, maybe having theirpicture on there with a little
bit of bio linking to theirwebsite, it gives them a little
bit more incentive to push it alittle bit further.

(23:12):
And then the other thing that'snice is that when you add
contributors and then you linkthem to specific episodes, that
stuff also lands in your RSSfeed by way of the person tag
which is a podcast namespaceproject tag that's been accepted
and standardized and more andmore apps are starting to pick
up on that tag and display theimages.
So no longer is Apple Podcaststhe only app that can do this,

(23:34):
and they do it their own way.
Now more third party apps canstart to do this as well.
So I know like CastomaticPodfriend TrueFans.
Of course, TrueFans doeseverything, and PocketCast says
it's on the way.

Alban (23:46):
Another improvement for the number one
Buzzcast-supported third-partyapp, PocketCast.

Kevin (23:53):
Yeah, so that'll be fun to add contributors, I guess,
and then see those in yourfavorite podcasting apps.

Alban (24:01):
Before we leave the contributors page my favorite
feature of this page we've stillmissed.

Jordan (24:04):
What is it?

Alban (24:06):
This ridiculous headshot of Kevin as a cowboy.
Jordan, did you put this inhere, or is this Kevin?
I don't know who put it.

Kevin (24:17):
I did it you did it, Kevin.
I did it.

Jordan (24:19):
So you willingly did this.
Oh yeah, what do you meanwillingly?
I did it so you willingly didthis.

Kevin (24:21):
Oh yeah, why?
What do you mean willingly?

Jordan (24:22):
I mean, you look handsome, it just was unexpected
.

Kevin (24:25):
That's my new look.
You're going to see thisbecause we're going to Nashville
next month and, of course,nashville is a cowboy hat state,
so that will be my look forthat whole week.

Jordan (24:34):
Oh man.

Kevin (24:35):
Yeah, we traveled out West on a family vacay this
summer and I had to pick up acowboy hat because I was out in,
you know, the Tetons.

Alban (24:41):
This is a big boy.
Cowboy hat.
Kevin, this isn't like just alittle dress up hat.
It's a 10 gallon, it's a bigone.
We joked about adding a cowboyhat feature to this page.
I think, seeing this, I thinkthat'll there'll be something we
need to do.
We need to figure out a way toadd cowboy hats to every image
on this page.

Jordan (25:00):
Yeah, we'll have to see how many feature requests we
have for AI cowboy hat filterson those photos.

Alban (25:07):
No, we just need to reach out and be like.
You know, adam Curry gave us aheadshot for when he was a guest
.
You just be like Adam.
I'm gonna need a photo from youof you wearing a cowboy hat.
Ariel Nissenblatt hey, we'vegot you on here.
We're going to need a cowboyhat photo.
Cat.

Jordan (25:21):
Flynn A cowboy hat.

Alban (25:23):
I'm confident there's an Adam Curry cowboy hat photo.
Oh yeah, For sure.

Kevin (25:26):
I'm sure that exists.
Oh yeah, he lives in Texas.
For sure, we've got it.

Alban (25:30):
All right.
The next page that we shouldtalk about now is fan mail.
Fan mail is not just off on itsown.
You getting texts and youhearing from your fans.
You can now highlight fan mailon your podcast website.

Jordan (25:44):
It's really great on your fan mail messages for each
message.
So it's not like an entirethread or anything like that,
and you get to choose which onesyou want to highlight on your
podcast website and there's justa little link next to the
message that says you know, pinthis to your website and so you
get to publish that fan mail andthen it shows up as like a nice

(26:04):
little quote.
It's very similar to when yousee those websites that have
like the quotes with likeratings or reviews or things
that they do.
And I love this because it'snot ratings, it's not reviews
you know I hate those, but it'slove letters from your fans and
so you get to finally publishthose and say see what a nice
message I got from this listenerand it's a way to show your

(26:26):
appreciation.

Kevin (26:28):
Yeah, and we hope that this drives engagement with
through fan as well.
So now, if you don't, you know,on this show we ask questions
every episode and we ask peopleto respond in through fan mail
with answers to their questions.
Those things don't make likegreat things to publish as love
letters from your audience.
Right, they're very hinged, butyeah.
But we've had a few that are,and so we've gone ahead and

(26:50):
published those as greatexamples.
But now I think it expands theopportunity for what fan mail
can be used for.
So now you know, as a listener,if you write in, use fan mail
feature and you can answer aquestion, or you could just send
something nice like what wouldyou love about the podcast, or
whatever, and there's a goodchance that we'll end up
publishing that to the website.

Jordan (27:08):
It's still anonymous, you still can't see.
So if you want to, you know,shoot your friend a text and say
hey, will you please saysomething nice about my podcast
so I can publish it.
No one's going to know, so Ican publish it.

Alban (27:20):
No one's going to know.
We launched this feature like30 seconds ago.
We're already telling peoplehow to subvert the system.

Jordan (27:25):
It's not subvert the system.

Alban (27:26):
Send yourself a positive text, then post it to your fan
mail page and make it look likeDuh.

Kevin (27:33):
You have to get a bunch of cell phones.

Alban (27:34):
This rating and reviews fan mail page.
This was only a pure system forabout 30 seconds before
Jordan's like here's how you canhack it.
Jordan went and picked out acouple that were on here based
on most of our fan mail.
We have a lot, but most of itis like Kevin said, it's people
asking questions.

Jordan (27:52):
Or sending us weird out of context things like 2x.
That's crazy.

Alban (27:59):
Right, all of our fan mail would be arguments about
Merino wool socks and whether ornot you should listen to a
podcast at 3X.
But we had a few that werereally nice and so those are on
there.
But yeah, I'm sure over timewe'll get more.
Now that we're specificallysaying, hey, if you do text the
show with just a kind of like areview of the show, if it's more

(28:20):
of a review style, I thinkthat's the kind of things we'd
want to put on here.
Yeah, why would people likelistening to this podcast?
They can see it on the fan mailpage.
Next page is I just am likesliding down this top navigation
is an about page.
This is something that theBuzzsprout websites have never
had and probably the mostrequested feature.

(28:40):
You know it's just a nice tohave a single page that's about
the podcast.
You know what's in thedescription for your podcast.
What is it about?
So now people can click it,they can jump over there, they
can read about the show, theycan see the contributors, they
can go out and subscribe to thepodcast.
I think it's kind ofself-explanatory, but it is

(29:02):
really nice to have this on aspecial page so it's easy to
find online.

Jordan (29:05):
Yeah, and you know, again, it's another feature of
contributors, so you have tomake sure that you get your
hosts and editors and guests onthose pages, because it's going
to look really good.
Another thing that I reallylike that we added to the about
page is next to the cover art,there's a nice little like since
the date your podcast startedand how many episodes you have,

(29:26):
so it's a really easy way tojust quickly glance and see how
many episodes your podcast ispublished.
The next tab that we have ispodcasts we love, which is also
known as your pod role.
I just love this page and itsays check out these other fine
podcasts recommended by us, andit's so sweet.

Alban (29:43):
Yeah, it's just a clean page that says podcasts we love
and you can see all the showsthat we recommend and if you
click on them you jump to thepodcast index page for that show
.
So the it links out to all thedifferent podcast directories
and it's a nice little way torecommend podcasts that you
enjoy and you think yourlisteners might also like.

Jordan (30:04):
Absolutely.

Kevin (30:05):
Yep, and some people might ask like, why link
directly to the podcast index?
And Alban hinted at it.
We wanted to link somewherewhere the show would give you
the option to subscribe andwhatever or follow in whatever
podcast app the person wants.
The way around that, of course,is to give specific links right
here on this page, but then itbecomes a very messy page, like

(30:26):
every single podcast that yourecommend would have an Apple
link and a Spotify link and aYouTube link and this, that and
the other, and then all theother third-party apps are under
another menu.
It just gets really clutteredreally quickly.
The other option, of course, wasto link to.
Almost every RSS feed has apodcast website link there, and
that would be nice too, but thena lot of podcast websites are

(30:46):
not very good about giving youeasy links to be able to follow
the show, and so this is why wedefaulted to the index, and we
love the index.
The index has to continue tothrive and exist.
This is one of the main thingsthat is keeping podcasting open,
so just wanted to address thatquestion.
I've heard it a few times.
Yeah, that's the reason.

Jordan (31:03):
And then the last thing that we have here is a follow
button.
So your podcast used to havewhat we called like a share page
and now it's kind of beenrenamed to a follow page, and
this is just to like encompassfollowing the show on like
social media, subscribing to iton podcast apps.
I'm very excited about this.
It just looks so good, so ithas a little bit about the

(31:25):
podcast.
It has all of the links tosubscribe to the podcast or
follow the podcast on thedifferent podcast apps that
you're listed on.
You can also copy the RSS feedand all the social media links.

Alban (31:38):
I know lots of podcasters you'll use like a link tree or
something for this.
You know they'll try to puteverything together in one big
tree and send that link out, butnow with your podcast website
you can send a single page hey,follow this podcast wherever you
listen to podcasts and you sendthem this one page.
And what's really nice is theycan go click into any app and

(31:58):
listen, but they could also jumpover and check out fan mail and
contributors and all this otherstuff.
It's really nice.
It's mobile friendly, so itlooks great on your iPhone or
whatever phone you use.
It looks great on desktop andit works everywhere.
So I really love this page.
I love the design of it and itmakes it really easy to just
send one place to everybody andsay okay, follow this podcast

(32:21):
from this single page.

Kevin (32:23):
And the last couple things I think that we should
point out is one have you guysnoticed how fast these pages are
?

Jordan (32:30):
Yes.

Kevin (32:31):
I mean it is crazy fast as you're moving from section to
section.
The search is really fast,navigating between pages is very
fast, and the team did a really, really great job of making
that a high priority.
So there's a couple of reasonswhy that's super important.
With webpages is one like justuser experience.
There's a point at whichwebsites respond so quickly that

(32:53):
it in of itself becomesdelightful, and I think we've
achieved that, and it's rare,because most websites just don't
, and so you can get a websitethat performs so quickly that
it's like this.
It feels like it's almost likelocal to your computer, it goes
so quickly, and so I'm reallyproud of the work there for that
.
The other thing and Alban canprobably speak to this is that
it impacts the ability for youto rank higher.

(33:14):
So search engine optimizationsone of the key things that you
can do to get better searchengine results for your website
is for it to perform veryquickly, because Google knows
the best sites perform quickly.
The faster the site performs,the more likely that site is to
have high quality content and bea really good website, because
a lot of websites that are kindof cheap and just thrown up and

(33:34):
just have a bunch of junk onthem.
They're just thrown on sharedservers that don't perform that
well, and so Google uses that asa metric when they're
determining where to rank yoursite.

Alban (33:42):
Yeah, some other stuff that went on in the back end
around.
That is breaking everything offinto its own pages.
A lot of this info wasavailable.
You know things like the aboutpage, but when they're not on
their own page, that doesn'tshow up in Google as a separate
page.
You know, you've got this onepage that's kind of like for the
whole podcast, but it's alsothe episodes page, has all the

(34:03):
episodes there.
When everything like that iscollected, it just makes it a
little bit harder for Google torank, and so I think these
improvements are not just goingto be better for people and for
listeners and for the podcasters, but it's going to be a
significant improvement forsearch engines and my hope and
we will be able to track thisvery quickly, since we have so

(34:25):
many podcast websites out therebut we'll be able to see that
these are hopefully rising inthe rankings pretty well, so
that podcasters who talk aboutcurrent events or talk about
things that are really popularcould see their shows getting
higher ranks in Google and thengetting more listeners that way.

Kevin (34:43):
Yep, and the other cool thing I would like to point out
so forever you've been able tocustomize your website.
You can add a header image youcan choose, like a highlight
color to use on your website tomake it more aligned with your
podcast brand.
We've added a new way tocustomize your site as well,
which is a list of fonts thatyou can select from that will be
used as your header font, andso that's a really nice way to

(35:05):
make your website lookdistinctive, match a little bit
closer to the branding of yourpodcast, and so this is a
feature that we've snuck in atthe last minute, and so, if it's
not, this episode drops Friday.
If it's not available yet onFriday, don't freak out, it's
coming.
But just like with anything, welike to fully test stuff before

(35:27):
we roll it out, and so we'reseeing it in development.
Everything seems to be workinggreat.
I hope it's out by Friday, butif not, it will be shortly
thereafter.

Alban (35:32):
When Kevin says we snuck this in there, snuck it in
meaning Jordan and I have anoutline of what we're talking
about today.
It's not in the outline oh thisis live.
By the way, I just changed thefonts for Buzzsprout and so all
of our headers are this like big, chunky buzzcast, which I
actually think looks really good.
Yeah, it's a bit more.
It makes the page a little moredynamic, I like that it's fun.

Jordan (35:53):
So what are the like font options that people have to
choose from?

Alban (36:02):
Knowing Cameron, it's going to be some font you never
heard of but looks really good.
That checks out.
There's going to be no comicsans.
I'm sure papyrus didn't makethe cut no lobster cocaine,
cowboy, whatever that wild oneis my favorite fonts.
None of those are going to makeit in there, yeah.

Kevin (36:15):
I'm not.
Some of these font names arevery hard to pronounce so I make
I can pronounce inter andrailway and play fair, but the
rest are a little bit hard topronounce.

Alban (36:23):
So I can pronounce Inter and Railway and Playfair, but
the rest are a little bit hardto say.
Give them a shot, kevin.
We can't see them.
You can see it.
You got to give us a chance,just say it with confidence All
right, chivo, okay, oh yeah,classic Classic.
Chivo font.

Kevin (36:36):
Oh, I can say the next one DMrapay, oh, a-r-a-p-e-y,
arapay, railway Playfair, rubik,rubik, r-u-b-i-k.
I think is Rubik.

Jordan (36:46):
That checks out like Rubik's Cube right.

Kevin (36:48):
Yeah, and Sign S-Y-N-E Ooh.

Jordan (36:51):
Sign.

Kevin (36:53):
So there are eight different options and they're
pretty.
You know.
Cameron did did a really greatjob of going through all the
options that are availablethrough the Google font list.
These are fonts that are safeto use on websites and available
for free for anyone to use ontheir website, and he chose
eight that are distinctlydifferent from each other and
will match a wide range ofstyles, so you're not going to

(37:14):
be overwhelmed with like 300fonts to choose from, like we've
all been in that scenario andMS Word trying to figure out
which title.

Jordan (37:20):
And then the words start looking weird.
When you like, scroll through.

Kevin (37:24):
Yeah, but it's a really nice safe list.
It's almost like you can't gowrong list.
All of these fonts arebeautiful.
All of them will look good withalmost anything next to them.

Jordan (37:32):
Yeah.

Kevin (37:32):
And they are also distinctly different.
So you should be able toquickly find one that kind of
matches the aesthetic thatyou're going for, and then you
have a site that's just thatmuch more personalized for you
and your podcast.

Jordan (37:42):
Well, if you want to see the new design complete with
Buzzsprout subscriptions,publish fan mail messages and
everything else the new site cando, I'll drop a link to the
Buzzcast website in the shownotes for you to check out.
So yesterday, Apple had itsglow time event where they
announced a whole bunch of newproducts coming down the

(38:03):
pipeline and updates to currentapps and things like that.
Alban, I know that you kind ofkept tabs on this You're kind of
a resident tech guy and so Iwanted to see if there was
anything that you thought wouldbe good for podcasters.

Alban (38:19):
Before I start, do we know why it was called its
Glowtime?
I just thought like iPhoneannouncement, but they called it
it's glow time why?

Jordan (38:27):
Okay, if you look at their phones, because they're
pushing AI really heavily,whenever you use, like, the AI,
there's a pretty like rainbowglow that comes in on the phone
screen, and so I think it's likea halo, and so I think that's
what it's in reference to.
And so I think it's like a haloand so I think that's what it's
in reference to, but I'm notsure.

Alban (38:42):
So it's go time for AI, using this glowing animation.
It's the iPhone glow up.
All right, yeah Well, I did notwatch the whole iPhone glow up
video, but I did go through allthe press releases trying to
find what.
In here I heard a few thingsthat sounded like these might be
of general interest forpodcasters and I came away with,

(39:05):
I think, like three or fourproducts that I think are
valuable for podcasters to thinkabout.
The first is the iPhone 16 Pro.
This is just like the flagshipiPhone model, but they spent a
good amount of time talkingabout these four studio quality
mics for higher qualityrecording.
So they're claiming thatthey've done good amount of time
talking about these four studioquality mics for higher quality
recording.
So they're claiming thatthey've done a lot of work to

(39:26):
reduce background noise, to pickup human voices better.
They're using AI so they canactually adjust the sound mix in
recordings, isolate audioelements like vocals, isolate
individual people's vocals Allsounds very cool.
And then I?
But when I start researching,I'm like what's studio quality
mics?
I start searching that phrase.

(39:47):
It's also the same mics thatare in my phone.
Now, oh, really, or at leastthat's what they were calling my
phone.
They called it studio qualitymics as well.
They are not studio quality.
In the iPhone 15 Pro that I'vegot on my desk I tried to record
a video yesterday and thought,yeah, I've got to record this
again with my microphone.
So it sounds like animprovement and it sounds like

(40:09):
there's a lot of cool AItechnology going into this.
I want to see what ends upcoming out of it.
And then I saw a nice Applepodcast improvement for chapter
markers and chapter titles.
So there's a little UIenhancement that will kind of
highlight, in the same way thatYouTube does hey, there's a
chapter break here in kind ofthat play bar.
There's no, you know, just anindication that there's

(40:32):
something different here and youcould jump forward to those
chapters.

Jordan (40:36):
Yeah, I love that.
I saw an image of that, youknow, in pod news.
James shared like a screenshotof pod news weekly review with
the little chapter markers in it.
Seeing it I was like man,that's so like intuitive.

Kevin (40:48):
Yeah, that's really nice.
Sometimes when you're about toskip forward in a chapter,
you're like, oh, I'm going toskip forward.
It's nice just to have a visualrepresentation of how much am I
skipping, like, am I skipping alittle bit of this podcast or
am I skipping a huge chunk?
And the UIs in podcast appsdon't always give you a really
clear indication of how faryou're going.
Yeah, and so it's a really niceway to do it.
It'll be a nice improvement tothe Apple podcast app.

Alban (41:08):
Or if you hate the buzzcast cold opens, or if we
get chatty you can just look andsee how much more chat you got
until we get to the next topic,right?
The other thing that reallystuck out to me where they'd
made a ton of announcementsaround AirPods and I'm like a
huge AirPods fan.
I think they're great.
They're probably my favoriteway to listen to podcasts.

(41:29):
It's nice to not have the cordand I don't like all the weight
on my head, and so I was goingthrough and listening very
closely to what did they add tothese AirPods, and quite a few
things sound like stuff I'mexcited for for when I listen to
podcasts.
So number one, airpods 4, theyadded active noise cancellation.

(41:49):
So these are like the AirPodsthat don't have the little stick
, the thing that sticks intoyour ear canal.
I hate those.
They just kind of sit in there.
These are just like they sit inthere.
They feel better, but now theyhave active noise canceling so
it listens to what's around you,plays the opposite sound wave
and actually cancels out some ofthe audio.
That's going to be really,really nice.

Kevin (42:11):
Yeah.

Alban (42:12):
If you've ever listened in a loud environment like when
I go run and I'm near a road Inotice I have to crank up the
volume.
Well, it's just that it's likeI'm blasting a podcast into my
ears really loudly and it's notgood for your hearing.
But with active noise canceling, you can listen at lower
volumes without not being ableto hear it.

(42:32):
So you can hear at a lowervolume.
So that's really nice.

Kevin (42:35):
It'd be nice to be able to not have to listen to that
truck that's about to mow youover.

Alban (42:40):
You definitely should like look around you when you
run across the road.

Jordan (42:44):
You know what's funny is I actually.
So I have my little AirPods,but I didn't know when I bought
them that they weren't noisecanceling, because I just didn't
research it, I just grabbedthem.
So I was very disappointed thatwhenever I go like an airports
or I'm in an airplane or I'mtraveling, like editing podcast
episodes is so hard.

(43:04):
And so this last weekend theyhad the AirPods pro maxes on
sale for $399, which is like ahuge discount.
So I went ahead and grabbed it.
And then I saw the thing thatthey announced new ones
yesterday.
So I was like, oh, of course.

Alban (43:18):
Pro and con for you.
Jordan is the one theyannounced are the exact same, oh
good.
The only difference are thecolors and the port.

Jordan (43:25):
Good.

Alban (43:26):
So yours has like a lightning port.

Jordan (43:28):
Yeah.

Alban (43:28):
And the new ones have a USB-C, so Dang it, man, I just
missed it.

Jordan (43:33):
But they're probably more expensive than what I got.

Alban (43:41):
So Dang it, man.
I just missed it.

Kevin (43:42):
But they're probably more expensive than what I got.
Yeah, they're $200 more.
So I think you probably made up.
I think that's the right way todo it.
I would say I don't expect thenoise cancellation on the
AirPods 4 to be the same as theAirPods Pro.
They basically toned downexpectations a little bit in the
presentation of how theyannounced it, but when you're
not isolating the sound is someis still going to leak through,
so they can.
It can only cancel so muchbecause it's not completely
sealed in your ear canal and soit'll be fine, but it's not

(44:04):
going to be the same exactexperience that you're going to
get from the pros or from likewearing a full ear covering
headphone.

Alban (44:10):
Yeah, a new feature that I heard about or maybe this has
been around, but I'd never heardof it Adaptive audio.
So if you have active noisecanceling on and, let's say
you're listening to a podcastand somebody starts talking to
you, it'll notice oh, a person'strying to talk to you.
It'll automatically tone downthe audio of what you're

(44:32):
listening to and amplify theperson's voice so that you can
hear them.

Jordan (44:36):
I hate that.
Yeah, I'm thinking aboutwearing these around my kids
Like no way Can you turn thatoff.

Alban (44:43):
Mom, mom, mom, mom, look at this, mom, look at this.
And the AirPods are likeactivating adaptive audio.
You're like, no, turn it off.
And then the Apple AirPods Pro2 have some cool stuff around
accessibility and hearing loss.
So one of the things theytalked about a lot was just,

(45:04):
everybody gets hearing loss asyou get older and probably if
you have AirPods in your ears24-7 blasting podcasts because
you're near something loud,you're going to have hearing
loss much earlier.
But one thing that they'redoing is they're like testing
your hearing and then, oncethey've tested it, they make a
sound profile, your like hearingprofile, what you can hear and

(45:27):
they will adapt everything toyour unique hearing profile.
So if you can't hear certainmid range sounds, it will adapt
the audio what you're hearing tonot you play those sounds and
instead play the soundssomewhere else in the mix.

Jordan (45:42):
That's incredible.

Alban (45:43):
Yeah, I don't know if this is gonna be great.
This is actually the same, asimilar promise that you get
with those colorblind glasses,where they're like, oh, they'll
make you see colors and they'rejust like remapping the colors
to different areas of the colorspectrum.
Those have never really beenworked very well for me, and so
this is kind of a similar ishidea, but it's really going to

(46:07):
be great.
You know, somebody couldn'thear any high pitch things and
you're listening to a podcastwith someone with like a high
pitch laugh, or maybe you'relistening to a podcast or a
music with high pitch noises.
It might just shift them downinto where you could actually
hear it.

Jordan (46:23):
I wonder if that works for like your outside,
especially if they're doing likethis adaptive thing Like I
wonder if you could wear it likeat a restaurant and it would
isolate like someone's voice orsomething like that.

Kevin (46:34):
Yeah, absolutely yeah.
All the high end hearing aidsdo exactly that, jordan.
They try to focus on theforeground sound and push out
and reduce the background noise,and it seems like that's what
Apple is trying to mimic withsome of this technology.

Jordan (46:46):
That's neat.
It seems like Apple is reallygetting into sort of like a
they're getting more involvedwith like the health field,
obviously, like Apple watchesand stuff.
You know there's people thatdiscovered they were like
pregnant or had a heart murmuror something like that with the
Apple Watch, and so maybeApple's leaning more into that.

Alban (47:03):
Yeah, they've done tons with the watches and I know some
of like the Beats now willtrack your heart rate by using
the heart rate in your ear canal.
So it'll actually feel it.
I mean all that.
I mean there now, so it'llactually feel it.
I mean all that.
I mean there's some sleep apneastuff coming to not necessarily
great, you know, important forpodcasters, but these few
features, especially aroundhearing loss, I think we're, you

(47:26):
know, I was really excited tohear them.
You know, hear about thesefeatures and I know in the
future, when probably my hearinggets worse, I'll be able to
listen to more things bycramming these AirPods into my
ears.

Jordan (47:42):
It's time for SoundOff, the segment where you send in
your responses to our podcastingquestions.

Alban (47:46):
Ira Garr Wedding Pro CEO podcast.
Thank you, Alban, forclarifying why links are not
available on podcastapplecom onthe desktop.
Grateful for the show, we'regrateful for you listening.
Thanks for writing in.

Kevin (47:58):
Dave Jackson wrote in and said I noticed that I can't
stream or boost Buzzcast.
Why was this feature removed?
Wasn't removed.
So let me give you a tip here,Dave.
There's a really cool podcastcalled the School of Podcasting,
and they teach all about how toset this stuff up the streaming
sets and boosting a podcast.
I'm just kidding.

(48:20):
Dave Jackson is the wonderfulhost of schoolofpodcastingcom
and so I'm sure things are righton his side, and I tested and
confirmed things are right onour side also.
But this is new tech andthere's glitches and bumps once
in a while, so maybe you justran into one of those.
But give it another shot.
I tested just today and it didwork, so hopefully you'll be
able to boost and stream setsfor this next episode.

Alban (48:39):
We got another one from Missouri regarding Snapcast.
Consider rebranding them toMinicast.
A new name suggests a shorterformat but allows longer content
when necessary.

Kevin (48:51):
Minicasts Hmm, doesn't roll off the tongue like quick
cast or snap cast or fast cast?

Alban (48:58):
Or snap cast.
I still think snap cast isgreat.

Kevin (49:03):
But many cast is more descriptive.
I think you're right about that.
But so is quick cast right.
We'll nail it at some point.

Jordan (49:10):
We'll figure it out.
These things take time.

Kevin (49:12):
Rob from Wicked Wanderings writes and says where
do you get your stickers?
Well, we've gotten them from alot of different places over the
years.
One of the places I'm excitedto try is, uh, our local t-shirt
vendor just a few hours souththat we order t-shirts from is
called sunday coolcom, andthey're doing stickers now.
So the next batch of stickers wedo.
We're going to order from them,so if you're looking for a new
sticker vendor, maybe they'regood.
I can't vouch for them yet, butthey look good on the website

(49:34):
and that's the next place we'regoing to try.

Alban (49:36):
They actually do all our shirts and when I did our last
order of shirts they sent melike a hey, what other kind of
content do you want us to create?
What are the swag and numberone I put on there was stickers.
Be nice to have somebody justdown in Orlando who did
everything.
Yeah, check out Sunday School.

Jordan (49:52):
All right and day school All right, and our sound off
question from last episode waswhat experience have you run on
your podcast and how did it turnout?
First up, we have a familymessage from Kevin Lowe with the
grit, grace and inspirationpodcast.
The first idea was cool, but itfell flat.
I offered my listen blindchallenge, incurring listeners
to listen to certain episodeswith their eyes closed to see if
they could experience my guestand their story as richly and

(50:13):
vibrantly as I can.
I also dove deep into testingpodcast SEO by optimizing the
title and episode titles forcertain keywords, which appears
to make a massive difference indownloads, and a change in my
publishing rhythm has alsobenefited me, as my solo
episodes always tend to gethigher download numbers.
Yeah, we actually did somethingsimilar with the podcast SEO.
We had some podcast episodesthat were a little bit more like

(50:37):
fun titles and it didn'tactually describe what the
episode was about, and so wechanged those and, honestly, the
downloads have been up on thoseepisodes since then.

Kevin (50:47):
And Barnabas from the Kids Code podcast wrote in and
said I do a lot of experiencewith the podcast.
After every episode, I publisha road trip edition featuring
all the stories from eachepisode.
I've also tried subscriber onlycontent, but with fewer than 50
listeners per episode.
No one subscribed.
I recently started doingepisodes that are just secret
messages.
It's not something I would havedone if my listeners hadn't
asked for it, but it's beendoing well.

(51:08):
Those are fun ideas.
I like all those.

Alban (51:10):
I love the road trip edition, which kind of touches
on all the stories from eachepisode.
It might be pretty easy for youto miss an episode and never go
back for it.
I love podcasts, especiallywhen they get you know there's
more episodes, that theyhighlight old content they've
created and they recommend yougo back to it.
So that's a cool idea.
We had another one from SarahRossett, who is the host of Wish

(51:33):
I'd Known Then podcast.
She said we did a short-livedexperiment with transcriptions a
while back.
No one seemed to be readingthem and no one missed them when
we stopped, so that was a bitof a fail.
Our most successful experimenthas been opening up to
subscriptions using Buzzsprout.
We tried doing monthly liveZoom calls for supporters as
well as supporter-only episodeswith evergreen content.

(51:53):
Our next experiment will behosting online writing sprints
via zoom for our supporters.
That is cool.
By the way, I just bought somedarn tough socks for hiking and
fly fishing.
Thanks, Alban.
Still looking forward to thebest olive oil breakdown today
At some point.
Talk about olive oil opinions,did you promise?

Jordan (52:11):
I think we talked about how you did a deep dive in olive
oil, but you didn't go into thedetails of it.
It sounds like we should havegotten an affiliate code for
Darn Tough Socks Alban.

Kevin (52:22):
Well, I'm ready to move on with a new sock brand.
Ooh, what are you moving to?
Because do you remember whenyou were talking about the socks
, you talked about differenttypes of material.
Yeah, and you gave me.

Alban (52:32):
You started introducing alpaca wool.
That's right.
And I started looking at itafter that and wishing that I'd
done an alpaca wool comparisonRight.

Kevin (52:41):
So I went ahead and bought some alpaca socks from
hollowsockscom H-O-L-L-O-W Promocode K-Fan Hollowsockscom Yep,
and I got my first pair lastweek and they're great.
They feel like they're going tobe super hot because they're
super thick and heavy, but thenI wore them to play pickleball
for three hours in Florida and100% humidity and they weren't.

(53:03):
They weren't super hot.
They did a good job keeping myfeet dry and comfortable the
whole time.
So if you're interested in dry,comfortable feet while you're
playing pickleball, check outalosoxcom.

Jordan (53:17):
Use K-Fin for 0% off your next order.
And then we got a message fromCaitlin saying hey, team.
First, thanks for the amazingshout out, love you guys so much
and can't wait to hear how youlike the paddles.
Second, to answer the questionat the end of the episode we've
experimented heavily with OurKids Play Hockey.
It's an all network feed butduring the holidays we run
giveaway specificspecificmicro-podcasts with companies in
our industry.
It was a lot of fun last yearand we're planning to bring it

(53:39):
back again this year.
Definitely difficult to set up,but totally worth it and super
helpful for lead generation, wow.

Alban (53:45):
Yeah, I do have an update on the paddles that she sent us
, kevin.
Okay, kevin and I have tried toplay pickleball three different
times.
Since then.
I've gotten rained out threeout of three, but I did go play
with my wife a little bit withthem, and they're really good.
It also made me realize thatthe paddle that I'd whacked
against the ground did have adead spot, so quite a bit more

(54:05):
shots were going where Iintended them to go, so what
I've thought was user errormight not all be user error, so
they've been performing reallywell.
I need to go play, though, withpeople who are a bit more
aggressive, maybe a bit morecompetitive, so that we can see
how these really turn out.

Kevin (54:27):
Yeah, and Caitlin Alban still has not delivered my
paddle to me yet he's holding it.
I don't know why.
I keep going in the office andwalking into my desk and
expecting to see the paddlesitting there, but it hasn't
shown up and I think he's had itfor a couple of weeks.
I think he's playing with twopaddles.
I'm over there Double paddles,one in each hand.

Alban (54:44):
So one thing I'm noticing from these experiments.
I don't know if y'all caughtthis theme too, but some of the
things that people said weresuccessful for them were the
exact same thing that failed forother podcasts.
Did you notice that?

Jordan (54:56):
I didn't actually.

Alban (54:57):
Like Barnabas the subscriber, only content didn't
really work.
But then Sarah said actuallythat was really good for her.
I don't know.
One thing that just kind ofcomes away for me is you might
need to test this stuff out foryour podcast.
The benefit is these areexperiments for your show and
your audience is going to be abit different.
But maybe some of theseexperiments that we heard about

(55:20):
from all the people who wrote insent us all this great fan mail
.
Hopefully those will kind ofspur you to try a few more
experiments for your podcast.

Jordan (55:27):
All right, so sound off question for our next episode.
We want to see your Buzzsproutwebsites.
So if you want to send us a fanmail message with a link to
your Buzzsprout website, we willfeature it on the next episode
and let us know what you thinkabout these new updates.

Kevin (55:43):
Yeah, take some time and customize it.
Choose a cool color, maybe aheterographic, switch the font
out if that's available, hope itwill be and set up things like
if you have any fan mail you canpublish, put in some guests and
link them to episodes.
Build the site out, shoot us alink and we would love to
feature them in the show notesof our next episode.

Alban (56:02):
Yeah, jordan and I, when we started playing with these.
Really, the websites look somuch better as you build them
out.
So you pin some fan mail, youset up your pod role, you set up
guests and everything.
The more that you do, thebetter the sites start looking.
So it'd be great to kind ofclick through and see all the
variety that everyone sends inand then we can highlight them
so everyone can get inspired bywhat you do with your sites.

Jordan (56:21):
So to have your response feature on next episode, go
ahead and tap the text button inour show notes and shoot us fan
mail, as always.
Thanks for listening and keeppodcasting.

Kevin (56:35):
I was told in a text message last week, fish are cut
bait and I started to thinkabout that saying for the first
time in my life.
I really started to think aboutit because I've always
interpreted that saying as it'stime to either like figure this
out or move on.

Jordan (56:50):
Yeah.

Kevin (56:51):
Oh no, it's different, but there's a, there's an
alternate meaning to this, yes.
And so I started to say, like,ask myself the question, like I
wonder if that's what they mean,because it was in a weird
context.
Or do they mean, like, figureout a way to be productive, like
figure out, either do this jobor this job, but you've got to
choose one of these two jobs.
You've got to figure out a wayto be productive on the thing

(57:11):
that we're trying to accomplish.
And so I looked it up, I did alittle online research and, sure
enough, there are twodefinitely distinct meanings and
, like, depending on the contextof the conversation, you could
be totally wrong about how youinterpret the same.

Alban (57:24):
Oh no, kevin wrote fish or cut bait post show.
That was all that I saw, and soI was like what's the etymology
of fish or cut bait?
And so I went and researchedthis too.
I, like you, kevin, had thoughtthe same.
I thought it was like eitherfish or cut the line, like cut
the bait off the line and moveon to something else.
But it doesn't really make sensebecause you never cut the bait

(57:44):
off the line.
It's like you're not lettingthe tackle go.
That's true.
It means either fish with therod in your hand or hand it to
someone else who will fish, andyou go cut some bait up because
you need to go do something.

Kevin (57:55):
That's right, like do some work.
Yeah, I think the originalmeaning of the word was for
people who were like standingaround not doing anything and
everyone around them was working, and so the saying of it listen
, there's multiple jobs to dohere.
You can either fish or you cancut bait, but don't just stand
there and do nothing.

Alban (58:12):
Yeah, you can't be the roadblock blocking other people
from doing something and makinga decision, right?
Oh, so which do you think itwas that?
This text message that you got,now that you have the two
alternatives?

Kevin (58:26):
I think it was the first one, which is which is, make a
decision or move on, but that'sreally a poor interpretation of
their term.
So the correct interpretationis find some way to be useful
here, but most people misuse it.
Anyway, after looking it up, Iwas like oh, here's a phrase
that I've heard multiple timesin my life, I probably use
myself and I've probably beenusing it incorrectly.

(58:47):
So I decided we should informthe world that this phrase needs
to be used properly.

Alban (58:54):
Well, I, when I was researching it, I was finding
all these famous usages of whenpeople would say Fisher cut bait
.
Sounds like it came from thecolonial times and it was like
the frontiersmen and women aresaying oh, you either need to
help make a decision or you gotto get out of the way and help
and somebody else made thedecision.
And it got picked up bypoliticians in the 1800s who

(59:17):
were often saying to like alegislature, you need to pass a
law, or you need to get out ofhere so that somebody else can
come in and pass a law and makea decision about this.
And so there were all theselike event these you know
colorful characters, you knowSir Richard Farnsbottom or
something like some famouslegislator.

(59:38):
It would say you would alwayssay this.
And then there's a bunch ofpresidents from the 50s and 60s
who would say it.
And now now we're talking aboutit on our podcast, so maybe
this will help inform people.

Kevin (59:52):
And now it's generally accepted that there are kind of
two meanings, twointerpretations of how you can
apply it, but one of them isclearly wrong.

Alban (01:00:00):
Yeah.

Kevin (01:00:00):
Like.
One of them is like at somepoint people started
misinterpreting what the sayingwas, but enough people had
misinterpreted it over time thatnow it's generally accepted
that both can be correct.
Yeah, I think that's alsointeresting.
Like that, we can get somethingwrong enough for long enough
that it just becomes correct,isn't that weird?

Alban (01:00:20):
Yeah, that definitely happens.
There's so many phrases that orwords that end up having two
meanings, sometimes oppositemeanings, and both of them are
acceptable.
Yeah, the word cleave it canmean to separate or to join
together.
The word cleave it can mean toseparate or to join together,
like think of the Bible verse aman should leave his father,

(01:00:41):
mother and cleave to his wife.
To his wife, you know youshould join with your wife, not
be like enmeshed in your ownfamily when you're married.
But then if you cleave food, youknow you're cutting you're
separating the food, and Englishhas there's a word for this,
but it's all these words thatmean two things that are exact
opposites.

(01:01:01):
We have like flammable andinflammable.
Both mean it can start on fire.
So sometimes people will saythis is inflammable and people
are like, oh great.
And like no, it could be comeinflamed and burn you up.
But sometimes they mean it tomean no, this will definitely

(01:01:24):
not catch on fire, which is likethis we really need to know
which of these two it is.

Kevin (01:01:29):
Yeah, and I think I asked this of Jordan in the last
recording that we did, but shesaid something about Tom's
famous podcast stats talk and Iasked you about like cause I've
heard people say the same thingin a positive way when they use
the word infamous.

Jordan (01:01:43):
Yeah.

Kevin (01:01:44):
But Jordan clarified for me that really infamous means
like famous for a not goodreason.
So it's a little bit.

Jordan (01:01:50):
It's a little bit negative but there's also, like
I don't know, I think of likethe folklore heroes who are
infamous but everyone like lovesthem.
So you know, you think of likeRobin Hood, or you know, uh,
bush, cassidy or whatever youknow.
So you have all these peoplewho are like outlaws and so they
live in infamy, but they'realso like folkloric heroes in a

(01:02:11):
way, and so I could see how itwould get turned around where,
like, infamy is a good thing.

Kevin (01:02:17):
You got a weird language.

Alban (01:02:18):
Yeah, it is definitely confusing.
I feel bad for everybody wholearns English as anything other
than their first language,because there's so many little
tips and tricks and nuances thatyou know you can be paying
attention to this stuff for 60years and still have no clue
what you're talking about.