Harnessing Superfans for Podcast Success #622

In this episode titled “Harnessing Superfans for Podcast Success,” hosts Todd Cochrane and Rob Greenlee engage in a lively discussion covering various podcasting topics. The episode opens with Todd humorously admitting he overslept, leading to their usual banter about their long-standing podcasting journey. Rob introduces the idea of podcast superfans, referencing an article that illustrates … Continue reading Harnessing Superfans for Podcast Success #622 →

The post Harnessing Superfans for Podcast Success #622 appeared first on New Media Show.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Todd and Rob in the afternoon.
Hey. Afternoon
to love.
With Todd and Rob.
Oh, yeah.
Hey. We are Rob even though we're a
little late because I didn't get out of
bed. And people thinking get out of bed.
You guys are you guys are late.

(00:21):
The time change, I used to be able
to get up at eight,
be ready to go here by 9AM, and
I forgot that I need to be getting
up at seven and be ready to go
at eight. So Yeah.
It's a big time difference between us. Yeah.
Well, not you know, now it's just it
was just my stupidity. But anyway, hey.
Here we are. And, welcome to the show,

(00:43):
everyone.
Yeah. Yeah.
Great to be back again after all these
years of doing this every every Wednesday. Right?
So
there was a there was a period of
time when we actually did this twice a
week. Oh, during COVID.
Yeah.
So
that seems like a long time ago, doesn't

(01:04):
it? Oh, it does. And, you know,
even thinking
all the way back to the beginning of
doing this show,
and we've been doing this thing a long
time.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So,
anyway, I know you did some preparation
today, which I I did not
because obviously,

(01:25):
obviously, I
am I'm awake about let me hear Yeah.
You were sleeping. Yeah. I'm I'm awake about
nineteen minutes here. So
Yeah. Right.
Right.
Well, as as usual, there's always a lot
of stuff going on, and I pulled from
past past days too of things that are
going on in the space. But,

(01:46):
I thought it was interesting, the article that
came out from Odysee,
talking about podcast superfans
are super spenders, which I thought was kind
of a a funny
headline that came out of this, you know,
and I think it follows common sense. You
know? Heavy podcast listeners,
those that are tuning in for more than

(02:07):
eight hours per week.
I guess that's a that's a pretty serious
consumer of podcasts are
are significantly
more engaged with advertised products
compared to average consumers. And,
you know, I think that's that's been the
case when podcasting for many, many years. I
I I think that's what the research has

(02:28):
been showing for a long time.
I don't is there any comments about this,
Todd? Well, the question is
they're talking about
ace a podcast superfan,
not a
super listener of a specific show. Right?
Yeah. I would say they're kinda speaking more

(02:49):
broadly. Right? So if you listen to, I
guess,
more than eight hours of podcasts a week,
you're you're significantly
more likely to convert on advertised purchases,
on advertised products
and purchase them, I think is what what
it is. It says
heavy listeners are 60%

(03:11):
more likely to buy products
advertised online. Now it didn't say advertised
in podcasts online,
but
but it does say,
increase in in store purchases.
They're likely 71%
more likely to purchase advertised products in physical
stores as well. So

(03:33):
I think this is really
going after a lot of kind of brand
podcasters
to some degree or brand advertisers.
You know, in the positive
reception to ads and podcasts, 76%
of heavy listeners acknowledge
that the podcast ads introduced them to new
products and services,

(03:54):
and 57%,
that they they had a likelihood to purchase.
Well, it always
comes back to the advertising, doesn't it?
Well, yeah. I think I was talking to
a person that works for Katz Media,
and I thought it was an interesting conversation
around advertising because

(04:15):
this this person was telling me that the
CPMs did drop over the last couple months
Mhmm.
Fairly significantly and may,
may also,
be a reason why we don't really hear
people talking about CPMs much anymore publicly.
So
and then also that, most of the advertising

(04:36):
now
is programmatic,
at least coming from
Katz Katz Media side. So which is a
radio centric
kind of Is it is it DAI
or is it programmatic? That's the question.
Is programmatic and first that it's d a
I, you mean, is it d a I?

(04:58):
Yeah. Versus programmatic because,
programmatic infers is just you get a random
set of ads.
Right.
Yeah. I mean,
I know their platform. They primarily do the
prerecorded
and then product.
Yeah.
Programmatic,
dynamically inserted advertising. They don't

(05:20):
I I'm getting a sense that the radio
folks don't really do much with the
with the host reads anymore.
I gotcha. I don't know what that distribution
is between host reads
that are being done utilizing
dynamic ad insertion. Right? So they're saying that
the the category. So they're saying programmatic
ads dropped, which is curious.

(05:43):
We've not seen a corresponding
drop.
Did it get in Yeah. He didn't say
specifically that. He he was just saying
more specifically
that
the the the overall CPMs in the industry
dropped from what he's hearing Mhmm. From the
buying side.
So
they're just not,

(06:04):
I guess the budgets aren't as strong and
maybe they don't have as much confidence
in
in podcasting from a programmatic perspective. I I
don't know. I'm not sure at the detail
level what's what's going on here, but
it does appear like the the research is
showing, at least what's being put out publicly,
is that

(06:25):
the conversion rates and you have
to stop and think, you know, why are
they putting this information out,
about the conversion
capabilities of podcast ads. And and that's to
drive more interest on the part of the
brands to get involved in the medium and
to show that there is
conversion to be had here. Right? You know,

(06:47):
I I
I've
check up on a periodic basis with,
with Dave over at BackBeat Media and, you
know, they're doing all of our host read
deals for podcasters and, you know, it seems
like things are strong. You know, CPMs vary
on those on a campaign to can be

(07:08):
basis, but, you know, I've heard not you
know, no one being under
22, 20 three, kind of in that range
where it's been. So
when someone says there was a dramatic
drop,
it makes me go,
Yeah.
It does for for me as well because
I I've I've definitely gotten the impression that

(07:31):
the host read or the talent read that
is either
baked in or even dynamically inserted is the
the most highly
coveted
Mhmm. Advertising slots that are out there. And
it also depends on where they are in
the content as well. Are they towards the
beginning? Or are they towards the end? It's

(07:51):
all the context, isn't it?
Yeah. It's all and this is what's driving
this conversation around
getting better metrics. Right?
For the advertisers
to know where their content
or their ad content is being consumed in
the content and what the
you know, in that attribution piece and all

(08:11):
that stuff, which is
challenging.
There's already a solution. Yeah. We I've talked
about it several times. Oh, yeah. Yeah. On
the chapters. Right? Yeah. You know, so, you
know, when, you know, people, you know, like,
they wanna cry me a river.
And here's another thing too. The folks I'm
hearing is this attribution piece is not even
in conversations right now in most cases.

(08:34):
They're not they're not the attribution
it's not even a word that's being talked
about. So
it's, you know, they say in one word
that we need all this, need that and
then and then when I hear people say,
no, they're they're really not bringing up attribution.
Maybe one out of 10 ad deals is
talking about
pixel attribution. So I don't know. But getting

(08:56):
back to that superfan piece
Yeah.
You know, I think
just like anything else,
you know, they're hardcore
podcast listeners. But at the same time, I
think it's more at a show level.
I know on my show who my Yeah.
Quote, unquote, superfans are,

(09:16):
and,
it's by the donations they send in.
Yeah.
It and again, the bigger the donation, you
would think the bigger the fans. So
Yeah.
It's that direct relationship that's
that I think the industry is moving towards,
as what maybe what the future looks like

(09:38):
more and more
is these, you know, the whole concept of
a superfan is somebody that you would think
you'd be able to convert into a private
community. Right?
And I think some people are are better
at that than others, to be honest with
you. Oh, yeah. Oh, I agree with you
a % on that. Yeah.
Yeah. Some show genres lend themselves to it

(10:00):
much better than others too. You know? And
it's something, you know Personality driven too. Yeah.
It's something we've been looking at, you know,
internally is, you know, it's always about this
engagement thing, you know.
They're podcasters,
well, let's just be honest,
and here I'm umming this morning a lot.

(10:21):
If you
if
you can get a donation, if you can
get a comment,
if you can get a boost,
if you can get any type of feedback
from
a fan
Mhmm. That's just like a dopamine hit
and
that will
carry you to the next episode

(10:43):
and being
motivated
to to do the next show.
Mhmm. And when it's crickets, when there's just
nothing going on and no nobody's providing you
any feedback at all.
Yeah. Yeah. That's when a lot of content
creators
on all sides,
doesn't matter if you're doing YouTube or

(11:04):
podcasting. That's when
that's when you start,
questioning.
You know,
is is this is this paying off?
Yeah. It's the engagement part that, that keeps
people energized to keep their shows going
through, you know, what
could be seen as a tough time. Right.

(11:28):
When they're not making money from doing their
show, you know, that that's the thing we
talk about that a lot on this show
is expectations
for making an income from creating content now
is
probably at the highest level I've ever seen.
Well,
I don't hear it.
We're doing, every Tuesday.

(11:48):
Mhmm. We're doing an office hours where we
basically
they don't people don't have to host with
Blueberry at all. They can just show up
and and ask podcasting questions and we rotate
it between Mike, Dave, and myself.
And
the,
some weeks we have dedicated topics and this
past week was about

(12:09):
monetization.
So I I it was, you know, we're
gonna talk about monetization
the whole time. And
the
one of the folks that I knew well,
matter of fact, you might know him. I
better not say his name because we did
everything in
confidence. We didn't we don't record these.
But, anyway, this long term podcaster who is

(12:32):
on
another platform,
getting advertising. He he's just being drove crazy
by no transparency
from
the company
that he's dealing with to deliver advertising.
Is there just,
you know, you you take the ads and

(12:52):
it's kind of like a you'll take the
ads and take it,
and there's just not a lot of transparency
in in the process.
And So it's an ad advertising rep? Yeah.
You can see. Is that what it is?
Yeah. And a pretty big one too.
And,
he he's at a point where,

(13:13):
he he just you know, he's looking for
a new home because he feels that he's
just a number
over there with the company. And he does
great numbers on
on one of his shows. He does, you
know, fantastic. Matter of fact, part of it
is syndicated radio too. So he actually made
it from podcasting to syndicated radio.

(13:33):
So he had the
about the time Leo LaPorte was drawing down,
he kind of filled a few of those
slots.
So Okay.
You know, I probably just gave away who
it was. But
he he is,
very disgruntled on that. And then the on
the other side of the fence,
you know, the the question really,

(13:55):
came down to
with
the the other creators that were on the,
on the call.
You know, a little bit discussion about programmatic
and, you know, what it looks like from
a CPM standpoint. And and then the conversation
of,
you know, do I really wanna run this?
Because based on my show size, I'm making

(14:17):
I'm only gonna make x, not x x
x
x.
The difference between, you know, making $23
a month versus,
you know,
a dinner or car payment.
So for smaller shows, you know, my advice
always goes back to them is,
you know, build that

(14:38):
value for value.
And you're probably gonna just by doing value
for value as a smaller show, you're gonna
make more money than you ever will on
advertising as a small show.
So I think people get wrapped around the
axle these days of, oh oh oh, I
have to have a GoDaddy or oh oh,
I have to have a,

(14:59):
you know, whatever is the the the top
spender of the day,
advertiser du jour.
Mhmm. Then they completely forget about,
oh, yeah. I've got a PayPal account. Oh,
yeah. I've got to buy me a coffee
account. Oh, yeah.
I you know, there's lots of things that
you can
do to

(15:20):
earn revenue and it doesn't always
have to be the,
you know, in some media buy. And I
I
I and and they just they kinda have
this, oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Why don't I
do that?
So
Why don't they is the next question or

(15:43):
They don't think about it.
They don't think about it. Yeah. They're so
wrapped around, so laser focused on
on just getting an advertiser,
you know.
And A sponsorship.
Yeah. And there was, you know, one gentleman
that was on long time podcaster,
intermittent

(16:03):
publisher. In other words, he's not on a
consistent
episode publishing scale
and
he he was like, oh, yeah. Why don't
I do that?
You know, I've had a few donations come
in over the years but I never asked
and I think that's
a big part of this is
you have to ask.

(16:24):
Yeah.
Yeah.
If you There's a bunch of,
ways that people can attempt to generate revenue.
I mean, I think that's the other
secret in the creator economy right now
is creating diversified revenue streams for whatever you're
doing. Right? You can't just rely on one
source of

(16:45):
of of revenue coming in.
You have to create some merchandise. You gotta
create some products. You gotta create,
you know, different ways that you can
you can hopefully chip away at that revenue
challenge if that's what's required for what you're
doing
to keep going.
And I think that's what a lot of
people struggle with right now is, you know,

(17:07):
doing all that work. Right? It's a lot
of work to keep up with all this
stuff. Well,
you know,
are we are we have we become a
society of wanting everything given this to us
on a golden platter?
You know, I'm
Well, I
that's that's a very deep interesting question, Todd,

(17:29):
that
I don't know that there's a clear answer
to. I think a lot of people do.
And I think I'll there are a certain
amount of people out there that are willing
to work hard and
do what it
takes to to create something. But
even working hard and doing what it takes
is no guarantee that it's gonna work out
It's these days. That's the other problem. It's

(17:50):
true. And I think at the same time,
we have,
well it's a train of thought. It was
on the tip of my tongue here.
I in the end,
we're all responsible
for what we do
And everyone wants to be a superstar,

(18:10):
but not everyone is gonna be a superstar.
Right. This is the thing we've said from
the beginning of time
of
the podcasting space and and, you know, people
pump their numbers for years.
I'm seeing more of that going on now
again where it wasn't before. It kinda for
about seven or eight years, there wasn't

(18:32):
a lot of pumping of numbers and, you
know, discussions.
So,
you know, the ugly baby talk a little
bit. But at at the same time, we
have to be responsible
enough to understand that this is work.
This is this is hard hard work. Now
you and I, you know, we've been doing

(18:53):
this for a while. We can, like I
said, overslept.
I sent you a text. I said, hey,
you know, give me ten minutes to,
you know, at least brush my teeth and
and and get Yeah. Everything turned up here.
And, turned out to be fifteen minutes or
so before. But again,
and maybe I'm not a %. Maybe I
needed a cup of coffee, but, you know,

(19:14):
we're we're cranking here and talking about topics
at hand.
Mhmm.
Is it gonna be our best work? Well,
from my standpoint, maybe not. But from you,
I'm, you know,
you've had more time to prep.
So Yeah. But again,
there is this opportunity. I think as creators,

(19:35):
we're we're in charge of our own destiny
here. This thing is gonna succeed or fail
based upon
what we put into
it.
I think about my own podcast and the
work I've done over the years and the
the changes I've made of recent
to try to improve the show at twenty
plus years

(19:55):
making changes.
Yeah. And sometimes you have to ask yourself
is is it enough? You know, is it
keeping
you know, same with this show when we
think about this show. Is it enough to
keep up with
the expectations of audiences and
the market.
And,
you know, that's a very difficult question to

(20:15):
answer conclusively.
As you look at your own content, you're
very close to it. You have a lot
of Mhmm. Ingrained
habitual behavior,
that that that happens around your patterns of
what you do.
And I think there's a danger that that
we kinda stray

(20:37):
just based on our own, you know, inertia.
Stray away from the the moving target that
is the podcast expectations.
You know, I I struggle with this with
even the the other shows that I do
too is that I do have this ingrained
thought in my mind about what a podcast
is and how it should be done. Mhmm.

(20:58):
And it's very difficult to radically change that.
You know, I think it's a different challenge
for us, Todd, because we've been doing this
for so long. Yeah.
That We're old dogs.
Right. It's hard to teach, an old dog
new tricks. Right? That's the old saying goes.
And it's
that's why oftentimes we get labeled as, you

(21:18):
know, we're OGs or we're Right. Right. Or,
you know, past our
our prime or something like that because we've
been doing it a long time and not
doing what the cool kids are doing now.
So
I think we both struggle with that to
even know what the cool kids are doing
now.
So that's that's what I try and do

(21:39):
every day
with what I'm doing here. But
sometimes
doing what the cool kids are doing doesn't
match with who we are or who I
am. Right?
So that's where the disconnect can happen. Well,
the perceived cool kids, if I look at
some of the top running shows, I have
no inclination
to want to run a show like that.

(22:00):
Right.
Well, that's part of it. Right? It's it's
it's this ingrained inertia of who we are.
We are who we are. We can't change
that. I can't make myself
convert into being
a 32 year old again. Right. Right.
I can't have, you know, long hair and
and tattoos and, you know, and all all
this kind of stuff that that's just not

(22:21):
who I am. But maybe that's
you know, if you look at a lot
of the most popular podcast hosts, they they're
tatted up and
they've got, you know, they're they're I mean,
you've got the bold look, but certainly the
the most popular podcast
podcasters out there are have that look to
them. They're they're really, you know, beefy and
strong and muscular. And

(22:44):
and it's just,
it's just a different kind of attitude than
than what we bring to podcasting.
But I think, you know, that kind of
attitude people,
appreciate now. It's like this very aggressive approach
and this very kind of,
edgy, cutting edge kind of
content that's being produced. Just look at, like,

(23:06):
a guy like Joe Rogan. He's a great
example of what I'm talking about.
What is that x factor that Joe Rogan
has that that made him the most popular
podcaster in the world? You know, he's willing
to smoke a joint on the show. He
I don't know if he drinks during the
show.
Oh, oh oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. He does.
You know, so, you know, I'm not sitting
here at, 08:00 in the morning in my

(23:28):
time with a with a bourbon.
You know, maybe that, you know, and then
and then if I did drink a bourbon,
like, oh my god. He's got a problem.
Yeah. Well, yeah. I mean, I think you
and I are both could come from a
different generation. We come from a time when
when it wasn't professional to do that kind
of stuff. But You know? I think there's
a lot of you know, we're in a

(23:49):
different time now where people feel like they
need to be really completely raw to who
they are. Yeah. Right? And if they're like
that in real life, they're gonna bring that
to the podcast. The
the only thing I changed on my personality
when I started my show is I quit
swearing.
You know, because
and every once in a while it comes
out but you know I was

(24:12):
You were a sailor, Todd. Yeah. And believe
me, I could give as good as any
of them, you know, when it come to,
you know, to expect this.
So, you know, it's it's like yesterday I
had a little situation and I, you know,
f word came out about five times in
a row. And,
you know, so it's just like I'm sure

(24:32):
my neighbors like what's going on with this
dude? Yeah. Right.
So I think there is a little bit
of that. I mean, life to do is
listen to an episode of Theo Bon or
somebody like that, and he'll give you an
idea Yeah. Of what that what that vibe
feels like in in some of the biggest
podcasters in in the world. And they're they're

(24:52):
they're just raw. They're real. They're
funny. They're humorous. They talk about things that
maybe they shouldn't talk about, or they they
say things that they shouldn't say if they
came from a earlier generation
like us.
So for us to become that,
I think is a No. Is a stretch
for us. Yeah. What I I just don't

(25:13):
think it I don't think it works. I
think people would be like, you guys need
a psychiatrist. What's going on with you guys?
You know, you're not being who you are
and that's boring.
Right. Right.
Yeah. But we do a different kind of
show too. We're not doing a
show that requires comedy and
Right. You know, and to be edgy.

(25:35):
They'll they'll I'm sure that would help our
numbers if we did. Oh, I'm not. Sure
it would. You know? Everyone likes it when
we fight, you know, if we have a
good argument. Yeah. That's that's
that's that's kind of a good example of
what I'm talking about too. And I think,
you know, at times, you play the devil's
advocate with me. Yeah. And it, causes that
kind of

(25:55):
banter and back and forth that people are
annoyed with as well as That's right. Yeah.
They they enjoy. So it's it's giving everybody
that that full emotional experience.
And,
speaking of emotional experiences, I noticed that,
YouTube added a podcast tab to the home
screen of,

(26:16):
their
their platform.
So I haven't seen it I haven't seen
it on my,
YouTube TV yet.
So Yeah. I don't I'm not sure it's
on the smart TV yet, though, but but
it is
I have seen it in the web version,
like in the browser and stuff. And I
and supposedly it's in the Android TV app.

(26:38):
So
I would imagine
But the problem is is, you know, everyone
gets excited and, you know, it's cool.
But guess what?
You'll never 95 or 97%
of podcasters will never be seen on that
tab.
Well, that and also,
you know, I don't know about you, but
when I
access the the YouTube app, I go to,

(26:59):
you know,
like a
like a featured page. Right? I don't think
it goes to the master directory where I'm
gonna,
you know, click on a tab or something
like that. It's more No. It's I don't
have to go look at that. It's just
like the home tab. I'm sure
it's a curated of what they think you
should watch.
Yeah. Exactly. That's the majority of what you

(27:20):
get presented with. And increasingly,
I've I've noticed on mobile
that YouTube really puts front and center,
Shorts
increasingly.
Shorts is really where the
the energy is that I see. On mobile,
it makes sense because
maybe you don't have time to watch a
full feature. Yeah. It's like a TikTok experience.

(27:42):
Right? Yeah.
Yeah. I did add it to my my
landing page on YouTube, all of the shorts
that I've been publishing.
And,
they get they get decent views, but it's
not like it's, you know, you're right, hundred
thousand or something like that. So I will.
You're not just you're not doing content that's

(28:04):
gonna get a hundred thousand views because the
audience isn't that big.
Yeah. For the type of content that I'm
talking about. Right? And that's
that's always been a limitation
on the type of genre of show that
we do, Todd, is is that it doesn't
have a huge audience reach. No.

(28:24):
And and that's that's been been the case
though. I have seen many many YouTube videos
that have been produced that have the topic
of podcast, like how to start a podcast
that have, you know, a half million views
or something like that. But I think that's
rather kinda kinda rare, actually.
And that maybe happened in the past and
those numbers are from

(28:46):
that that video being published many years ago
too.
Well, you know, we're we're starting some things
on Blueberry to
beef up our YouTube presence.
Okay.
And, you know, we're now starting to see
a TikTok of
in in because we we hadn't paid attention
to it for years, but we're purely using

(29:08):
it for marketing.
Yeah.
And, you know, I'm not I'm not a
complete dummy.
Yeah. I'm not gonna abandon
you know, we did. I probably should have
done this a year ago, but,
you know, having added the people in The
Philippines has given me the bandwidth to be
able to,

(29:29):
do this extra stuff that we just didn't
have the bandwidth to do
as a company before.
And having a full having a full time
video editor is helping too.
Yeah.
And the new reality that TVs are now
the primary
device now based on what the data that
we're seeing for I believe that. Viewing. I

(29:51):
believe that. Yeah. It's it's the landscape is
changing, you know? And I think that the
the legacy media out there, and and I
know we've talked about this a lot on
the show, is really kind of, I think,
gonna struggle going forward, you know?
I think some are embracing it.
Well well, they are. But the problem is
that, people aren't gravitating towards media,

(30:15):
like big media brands. Right?
They're they're gravitating towards,
well, YouTube's trying to shove Fox News down
my throat. Every
every every other video that they suggest is
a is a Fox clip.
And,
I, you know, maybe I watch one too
many Fox News clips. Now they it thinks
that's what I want to watch.

(30:37):
Right. So I'm sure those that are in,
you know, if you watch MSNBC
or CNN or whatever, you probably get shoved
those videos too.
But,
what what I'm seeing is that, you know,
like a Chris Cuomo is a really good
example. I went and looked at his

(30:57):
his show that he does on NewsNation,
And I compared it to his show that
he does,
called
the the Chris Cuomo Project.
And his numbers on his own channel
are like five times or more larger than
the views on YouTube of his,

(31:18):
NewsNation
show that he does.
It's, you know, his own personal brand is
actually much more popular than the show that
he does on cable television.
Well So Yeah. I had a great interview.
Let me see here.
A
week ago with,

(31:40):
Robert excuse me. Joe Polizzi.
Mhmm. And,
it is probably one of the best.
It'll come out in about probably a month
as we're we're scheduling stuff out.
And,
I told my entire team, I said, you
got you got to just watch this
because,

(32:01):
Joe is a long time,
content marketer.
You know, he he's a guy that, was
very very early
in understanding the value of Internet marketing and,
and and what really
works in building an audience and keeping an
audience in marketing. And and I you know,

(32:22):
he's marketing focused,
but the rules apply back to
to to brands.
And,
he's he's a big advocate of
same things I am in in regards to,
yes, you can be
in all these locations.

(32:43):
You know, you can be
you have a successful YouTube channel. You can
have a successful
TikTok or whatever you're doing. And Mhmm. But
he, in the end, has said his three
pieces
of
his three most valuable
endeavors
and everything he does today

(33:04):
in the current landscape is, one,
his website, number two, his mailing list, and
number three,
his,
his podcast.
So when you say mailing list, is that
linked with a newsletter?
Yeah.
Yeah. So everything that he does, everything he
promotes, everything that is,
being announced

(33:25):
is direct
tie to his audience
and he has access to his entire audience.
Because for years, he has said sign up
for the newsletter. Sign up for the newsletter.
Sign up for the newsletter. Sign up for
the newsletter. And he gives them good he
doesn't put out a newsletter, like,
every day.
He does it on a very dedicated has
very purposeful. So when people get it, they

(33:47):
understand there's value.
And
he says, I've launched conferences.
I have launched brands. I have launched
products
all because
I am able to control
the
I have the access to the people that
listen to me.

(34:08):
Those direct relationships. And he says on YouTube,
he says,
I lose all ability
to have a direct relationship with the audience.
Mhmm. Because it's a proprietary platform.
I can get nothing out.
He says, but my podcast

(34:28):
and my and again, this guy is super
super super super successful
for many many years.
He's basically said these are the three pillars
of his strategy,
and and
that's what he's focused on and it was
a very
he's not an old school guy. This is

(34:50):
a guy that is,
pretty mainstream
and
well, I was pretty astounded that those were
the three pillars
of reaching the audience that he wants to
reach
because everyone that is, subscribed to his newsletter
is probably subscribed to the podcast.

(35:12):
He guarantees
that they are going to see the new
episode.
It's not gonna be hidden.
It's not gonna be by happenstance so that
shows up on some page because that happens
to me. I have
a whole bunch of shows I subscribe to.
YouTube does not
surface when maybe three or four

(35:34):
of the top things I watch on YouTube
are surfaced on my home link. I have
to dig into my subscriptions
to find
new episodes
of content.
YouTube
decides what it wants to present to me
and he and his point was in podcasting,
that's never the case.
Because people have done this direct action to

(35:56):
engage with you and
have physically subscribed to the show
in the app, on the website,
everything aligns.
Yeah. And if you can give them access
to be able to subscribe
or follow you on these platforms, that helps
as well. But again, it doesn't guarantee in
YouTube
if you follow or subscribe to someone.

(36:19):
Yeah.
You are not gonna know that there is
a new episode out unless you are a
hardcore dedicated
watcher. Unless you're watching those videos on a
regular basis. Right. Otherwise, otherwise, the 80 things
that you've subscribed to, you're only gonna see
10 of them.
Right. And he says in podcasting,

(36:41):
he says that's not the case. That that
episode is there front and center
for them in whatever app that they are.
So his
his take up is kinda like my show's
take up seventy two hours.
You know, he is people have listened to
that episode within
within seventy two hours and he's able to

(37:01):
invoke on whatever marketing campaign he wants.
Whereas
Mhmm.
I may watch something on YouTube that was
recorded
a month ago just because I didn't go
down
in the stack deep enough. And guess what?
It may be not relevant.
Someone has a Valentine's,

(37:22):
episode or, you know, something has happened a
month ago because it wasn't presented to me
in a timely fashion,
then
it's I'm gonna skip it.
So this is what his strategy says. Podcasting
is the only medium that guarantees
his audience is going to

(37:43):
them all. Content. Yeah. To engage his content.
I thought, wow.
That was a bit of a different perspective
even for me now. You know, I was
on board with building your own brand on
your.com.
Right.
And that's that's a key.
That's a key factor, you know, and
I think the unknown right right now, how

(38:03):
does how does AI factor into that? Oh,
that's a big it's gonna change everything.
Yeah.
And how that works in this
this this next story that I wanted to
talk about too.
I don't know if you're seeing it, Todd,
but it's,
Chris Stone,
posted publicly about
he,
added 4,000

(38:24):
downloads
in thirty seconds to his podcast.
And he's he was he was surprised he
didn't think of it before,
but all he did was,
change the publish date of
an old episode
to today's date,
thus putting it at the top of people's
listen lists. Yeah. That's cheating a little bit.

(38:48):
Yeah.
Because he was, you know, I guess he
had a campaign or what whatever, an ad
campaign,
that he had to hit his his,
numbers.

(39:12):
A
things that he could do to add another
4,000 downloads or, you know, multi thousands of
downloads to his numbers.
And he went through this this list, you
know, like,
his normal levers are like social promotion.
While the it's free, it has a relatively

(39:32):
low impact.
And then extra love on the website,
he says here has a relatively low impact.
I guess it gets back to that engaged
audience like you're talking about, Todd. You can't
just
only have a website.
It has to be linked up with
a pathway for audience to connect directly with
you that you can regularly

(39:54):
reach out to them. Right? To let them
know about new episodes and things like that,
or paid display or audio ads, and it's
expensive. Right? So what are the levers that
podcasters have to
drive an increase in downloads?
And so
he he tried this, you know, change the

(40:14):
the publish date of I don't know if
he did it to just one episode or
something like that,
and it got him a bunch of downloads.
Now that's not necessarily
listens. Right? Just because he triggered more downloads
doesn't necessarily mean that that
because those those downloads could have been
from people in the

(40:36):
people in the past that maybe had already
listened to the episode. Well, the if the
app anything about this, I have to experiment.
Would the app recognize that as a new
episode?
I don't think because, MingYang over at quick
and dirty tips, they do this
a lot too. Where they republish

(40:56):
old episode. Yeah. And I don't know if
they just been doing that for I don't
know if they
make it a whole new episode
because
the apps should still recognize I guess I'd
have to go look.
Never thought about it
because apps will know when you have downloaded

(41:16):
and listened. It will not redownload that.
But I don't
I I don't know. But
linked up with the
the ID
The GUID.
Or the GUID, right, of each of the
items. I I think we'd have to look
at the look at the individual app
and
see
see what happened. Traffic

(41:38):
came from. Right.
Yeah. And see if I would the Goog
would stay the same, I think, if you
just change the date.
But would it be enough to trigger,
you know and if you've had an audience,
you know, this is okay. So then, you
know, let me play devil's advocate here. If
your show's been growing and people haven't went

(42:00):
to the back catalog and you've got a
show that's got valuable content in in the
back catalog,
then I'm not saying that this is a
bad strategy.
But at the same time,
how much of that is
getting to new audience
versus people that have already heard?

(42:21):
Yeah. He claims that it it wasn't just
downloads. It it it was verified listeners. Okay.
How did he do that? Well,
but I don't know that, you know, he's
not stating that he got
verified listeners.
All he said is he's got verified
downloads.
Okay. That's simple. You know? You know?

(42:43):
So was that
yeah. The question is did people listen?
Yeah. Maybe someone in the audience,
that knows a little bit of it more
about
the mechanics. And I again, I haven't I
know that this has been done. This is
not the first time, obviously, that someone has
done this.

(43:05):
Yeah.
You know, but I can imagine it would
I think it I can imagine the reaction
my audience would get if I, moved episode
100
up to the top.
Well, you're a news producer. That's exactly right.
It won't work.
That would be Yeah. You featuring
content that is outdated. Yeah. Going into a,

(43:26):
you know, time capsule.
Where I think it works better probably with
a platform like,
if you have evergreen content.
I mean, like a minion's
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Type of type of a network where it's
creating that evergreen content. Yeah. And it's short
content too. So

(43:46):
so it's not demanding
on people's time
to potentially watch it. Someone said sound is
bad. Oh, that's not good.
What's going on with the sound?
Our sound is bad? Yeah. Someone said our
sound is bad.
Your sound coming to me sounds good. So
I don't know if it's a problem on

(44:09):
the outbound out outbound side.
Yeah. Could be.
Could be.
Right. I'll I'll investigate.
Okay.

(44:30):
So another thing that I found
online too is is,
and and so many stories came out of
pod news as the, the, the, the idea
is buying it. So thanks, James. I know
he recently got caught up in a typhoon
or something like that down in Australia. So
he wasn't able to go

(44:51):
to to Radio Days Europe, I guess. Mhmm.
But,
but anyway, this this other kind of topic
I wanted to talk about is,
is this concept of smiling in your podcast
art.
Yeah.
So I actually, I I took the artwork
that I normally use on my YouTube channel,

(45:15):
that features the show and stuff like that.
And I I found a piece of artwork
out there or photograph of you, Todd, where
you were smiling. So I added that to
my thumbnail.
And then I had one
in there too that I added. So
so that was
so I guess,
ads for hotels and hospitality

(45:36):
shows
have seen a 21%
increase in sales
with pictures of smiling people rather than serious
looking people.
So
and this tends to,
put people in a more likable and trustworthy
kind of view on the part of customers
or in this case would be possible listeners.

(45:59):
And it also says
that male hosts or males just in general
can benefit more from smiling than female hosts
because men are generally perceived as less warm,
making customers more uncertain about their style or
or hosting.

(46:20):
So
so this is a little bit of a
stretch to apply it to podcasting, but I
think it's it
it is an interesting perspective on people's emotional
reactions
to smiles and how that could help you
in your content or maybe help you with
your your marketing.
I don't know. Do you think about this,
Todd? Well, anytime you smile, you,

(46:42):
you're definitely more
more positive. So what it was, Rob, your
my and your output audio levels were low,
so I cranked this up. So they're saying
it's better.
Oh, good. Okay. So that's that's my fault
in not knowing OBS real well.
Yeah. Yeah. I did hear people say in

(47:04):
last week's episode that our
my audio was low Yeah. Last week. And
I I always think about the production in
the other end. So my apologies. It was
my fault here.
Well, in in you you probably run this
episode through,
what, some audio normalization
process. Right? But I don't really like the

(47:25):
on demand part.
Sounds better. The on demand part is the
issue.
That's where the
people are complaining is the on demand's lower.
Well, yeah. But the show's not over, so
it's not on demand yet. It's still locked.
Right. Right. Right. And I don't reupload
over the top of
the YouTube video. I don't take the live

(47:47):
and replace it. So the live the live
audio is low then. Oh, yeah. Yeah. On
the Yeah. Yeah. Instant replay. Right? Yeah. Yeah.
Exactly.
But in the podcast, I I noticed
on the replay on the podcast, it, it,
it sounds better.
Yes. It definitely sounds better on the replay.
Yeah.

(48:07):
So it's probably
you're running it through an audio optimization
process.
Yeah. So so the so what really has
happened here is I just had the the
levels too low.
So,
Rick said Rob is good now. Audio level
is much better.
Okay. So, hopefully, that fixes it for me
too because I crank myself up.

(48:29):
So So if you
think about your marketing, your visual imaging, things
like that, you know,
smiling for men,
has a much more positive impact. Now, I
guess it depends on the
the topic of the podcast that you're doing
and how serious that is. Right?
It may not be a fit to have

(48:49):
a smiling host in a podcast that's really
kinda
extremely serious,
if you know what I mean. I mean,
it has to match
the the content that you have too, I
would imagine.
You know, I have a tendency when I
do selfies to not smile. I don't know
what it is.
You know, have a serious look, but I
don't put my face on my album art

(49:11):
or episode art.
I've never put my own face on
on any art that I've ever done.
Yeah. I do it,
for my thumbnail for us.
So it's,
it's something that I, I visually put in

(49:32):
there. You see a lot of,
YouTube kind of like thumbnails have people's
pictures on them. Right.
It's a common, common thing to
actually do. I can
probably
bring that up and I can
show that.
I'm cranking,

(49:53):
cranking audio here, so things should be much
better.
Okay. That's good. Yeah.
That's a good thing. And meanwhile, I'm turning
myself down in my headset because I'm blowing
myself out.
Oh, okay. Yeah. So sorry about that, everyone.
Thanks you for thank you for telling me

(50:14):
that we
all you have to do is ask and
we will adjust.
Alright.
So here is the
the artwork that I created for the show
today.
Oh, so it's we are smiling
in that artwork.

(50:36):
So you can see what what I did
there. I just kind of made sure that
both of us were
were smiling
more specifically for this artwork. Yeah. So I
guess the rare time you caught me smiling,
Yeah. Yeah. I found one while you were
doing a show. I was able to
screenshot it out. So right.

(51:01):
So let me
close that up.
You have a interesting thing that you, didn't
experiment with. Do you wanna share that now?
Oh, yeah. I did a
let's see here.
Jumping ahead a little bit, but,
I can do that. That's all right. I

(51:21):
did a,
I did a query
in,
grok
three,
that I I just ask it a simple
question. Can you summarize the most recent episode
of the new media show from 03/12/2025?
So he asked Grok this. This was from

(51:42):
Grok.
Okay. I I asked grok first,
but it came back saying that it didn't
have access to that information.
So grok three did not. Mhmm. I put
the same query
into chat
GPT
4.5,
asking for the same thing. And it came
back with a

(52:03):
fairly detailed outline
and
of all the topics that we talked about,
Todd. So I thought that that was interesting.
I didn't, give it a link to the
content.
It actually
went out and got the
the episode itself and
did a summary. Did it do a summary
from the description, or did it do a

(52:25):
summary from the It didn't actually give it
a description. All I said was, can you
summarize the most recent episode of the new
media show from March 12? But did they
use the description,
or did they use the audio?
I don't know about that.
All I did was ask, chat

(52:45):
GPT to
to give me an outline of the
conversation. So it may have just gone to
the website Into the website.
And pull the other AI generated summary and
and built this. So it basically built a
a outline of the episode and the topics
we talked about.
And I cut and paste that

(53:08):
pasted that into notebook l m. Oh, goodness.
And so it's
it basically created a,
Robot.
A AI
generated,
review of the episode
of us. It had a a female host
and a,

(53:29):
a male host.
Mhmm.
And so I wanted to play that,
so you you could hear the quality of
the audio and the quality of,
of the,
of the review. I'm almost scared to hear
this.
Pretty personal. So here, let let me pull
it up,

(53:50):
and I can do a share on it,
and I'll play the audio.
So here it comes.
So up on the screen is a is
a screen share of the,
notebooklm.google.com
website.
And so I cut and pasted that outline

(54:11):
into it,
and this is the audio that it created.
Here we go.
Okay. So from what we're hearing from a
lot of you, there's this, like, feeling of
being overwhelmed. Like, all this talk about AI,
all the back and forth about audio versus
video for podcasting, you know, it can feel
like a lot. Right? So for this deep
dive, we wanted to cut through that noise,

(54:33):
you know,
really get down to what matters right now.
Absolutely.
Yeah. I think a lot of people are
feeling that way. And we found a great
episode of the new media show for 03/12/2025.
Todd Cochran and Rob Greenlee, they've been in
the podcasting game forever. Oh, yeah. Those guys
are like the OGs. Exactly.
So we're gonna pull out the key stuff

(54:55):
they talked about. Like, what are some of
the practical challenges creators are facing? Right. And,
you know, what are the things we actually
need to pay attention to right now? Like,
what's really moving the needle in podcasting? Yeah.
Because there's a lot of hype, but we
wanna get to what's actually useful. Exactly.
So one of the things that really stuck
out is Todd talking about his, well, his
struggles with OBS. Uh-huh. You know, it's a

(55:15):
popular software, but it can be pretty complex.
Yeah. Yeah. It's powerful, but it's definitely got
a learning curve. And he was comparing it
to, like, the more integrated setups, you know,
things like Roadcaster and TriCaster. Which I thought
was really interesting because even someone like Todd,
who's been doing this for so long, is
still like, hey. Sometimes this tech is just

(55:35):
a pain.
Yeah. And it wasn't even just, like, a
theoretical thing. He had this very specific issue
with his Elgato
Facecam Pro. Mhmm. His MacBook Pro just wouldn't
recognize it. And it's like, those little technical
hiccups can just completely derail derail you. Absolutely.
I think everyone's been there. It's good to
be reminded that even the pros run into
these problems. Yeah. For sure. And it's not

(55:57):
just the video stuff either. Like, even with
the audio, which is, you know, kind of
the heart of podcasting. Right. Rob was talking
about how the audio quality can vary so
much between different platforms. Oh, yeah. Like Zoom,
OBS,
even the RodeCaster. It's like getting that consistently
good sound
isn't as easy as it seems. It's a
whole other layer of complexity.
Right? Definitely. And then on top of all

(56:19):
that, you know, there's all this buzz about
AI. Right? Right. It feels like everyone's talking
about it. But it also sounds like Todd
and Rob are picking up on a bit
of AI fatigue out there. Oh, yeah. For
sure. It's like, okay, another AI tool. What
does this one do? Exactly. And then you've
got that whole audio versus video thing still
going on. It's like some creators are like,
I'm sticking with audio. This is what I

(56:39):
know. Oh, yeah. And others
are, like,
diving head first into video. Right. And I
think the takeaway there is, like, there's no
right or wrong answer. Absolutely. Hey, Rob. Pause
this for a second. You Sure. Audience and
your content. Yeah. And
So what I did was I it brought
up the,
the new media show

(57:00):
website, and I'm looking at the
description
as this is going through, and they definitely
pulled from the,
from the show notes. They did not pull
from the audio because I'm just watching as
it is it stepping through.
Because on the last show, we talked about
the about the OBS issues and my issue

(57:21):
with the camera
and,
talk about AI fatigue. And that is a
specific word that's actually in the show notes
from last time.
So they definitely used
the
the show notes to come up with this
summary.
Yeah. I I didn't actually give it that

(57:42):
text. No. But you had told him the
last step. So Yeah.
Yeah. Correct. Yeah. So it actually went beyond
what I gave it
to get more information than what I actually
cut and pasted into it. Yeah.
So it's it's it's interesting here that,
in how

(58:04):
yeah. So it didn't look at the audio,
but it is it actually
not that bad of a summary.
Right.
And what I also noticed was that,
the
the female voice that was in this, I
could sense some,
human
kind of hesitation

(58:24):
in her spoken word too. I don't know
if you noticed that where it was almost,
I mean, not hesitation from a content perspective,
but just like natural
human like pauses
to breathe and things like that. I kinda
noticed that it was kind of interesting because
usually these AI voices
are very robotic. Right? And don't have that

(58:45):
kind of like breathing inflection of sorts. I've
played with this a few times and I
don't know if it's improved.
It doesn't to me, it doesn't sound like
it's improved because they still have those
quirky
transitions
that they do. And, oh, you know, and
and,
so
but,
what happens when we put our own voices

(59:06):
in there?
Well, that that would be the next step.
Right? Is to go
to like a 11 Labs. Labs or something
like that
and then pull the the direct transcript
from, from the show and put it into
11 labs and just tell it to, I
could probably do this today with the script

(59:28):
actually.
I just don't know how good the audio
quality would be for your voice to us.
Mine's been trained pretty
heavily in the platform. Yeah. I don't use
the script. So
Yeah.
So
but I thought it was an interesting
kind of

(59:48):
comparison
to
to really give us an idea of where
the AI voices
are getting close to. I think it's sounding
pretty, good, Todd.
Well,
again, we
it's two distinct voices, So you know it's
that platform. So
for people like me, if I heard that

(01:00:12):
and because I know what it is, I'd
be like, oh my god. And I would
back out of it.
But maybe not everyone would do that.
Well, I I mean, especially when you go
to the next level of actually doing it,
with
clones of our voice. Right?
Would they be able to

(01:00:32):
at some point, would they really be able
to tell
I think it wasn't
us? I think that's I think time will
tell.
Rick said that,
he says it's
so impersonal. Notice these AI characters never introduced
themselves or gave their names.

(01:00:55):
Right. Yeah.
Of course, I don't true. I didn't hear
any names
given
either. That's an interesting point, Todd. Yeah. It
is. He He says he also says, my
boss and I tested the Google AI podcast
a couple of months ago.
I find it rather creepy. And I I
think
from an experiment standpoint,

(01:01:17):
it's fun to play with it, but
it's, you know, it's again, this is
that's the stupidest thing we'll ever use.
It'll Yeah. Right. It's only gonna get better
from here. Right? You know, and, you know,
at what degree? What you know, what happens
three years from now?
Yeah. Or even a year from now. Yeah.
Right?

(01:01:38):
Well, and and
part of what attracted me to to do
this tonight was, I guess, Google Gemini now
has,
Yeah. Has it built in now? Yeah. Yeah.
They took the notebook l m And put
it in. And put it into Gemini.
Yep. Our Gemini. Is it Gemini or Gemini?

(01:01:59):
Gemini, I think. Yeah.
AI. So,
I'm not quite sure what that means for
the interface
of the Gemini platform, but
you can kinda see where, you know, I
think even
chat GPT
and GROC three don't have this ability

(01:02:20):
yet built into them.
So,
you know, what's interesting
and I'll give you this is not completely
related, but we are looking at improving
one of our products.
And I'll just leave it at that. We
had a brainstorming
session where we said,
you know, we spent an hour in what

(01:02:41):
how do we wanna change this? And we
came up with a list that probably had
25 line items in it
and, just bullet points.
And then what I did is, I've been
I upgraded for one month for ChatGPT Pro.
I paid for the $200
version
of it, and then I used the o

(01:03:02):
one
pro model.
And I basically
the query was,
we have this product.
It's you can find information about it on
this web page.
We've had a brainstorming
session
to

(01:03:22):
come up with ideas on how to expand
this product and service,
analyze
this data,
and then ask me some questions. If do
what what have I missed here?
And that was the assess essence
of using the reasoning model.
So
it looked at the web page.

(01:03:44):
It looked what we'd come up with, and
then it came back and it asked me
about 10 questions.
You know, what is the goal? And it,
you know, ran me through.
And it took me maybe thirty minutes to
answer all the questions.
Mhmm.
And, the and I just kinda wanted to
see what it would do. I didn't tell

(01:04:04):
it to rack and stack,
and it on its own
then output.
And it's and it basically came up with
two ideas that we hadn't come up with
already because we were had a pretty thorough
brainstorming
meeting.
But then again, it said, okay. Based upon
your current
offering

(01:04:24):
and what you wanna add to the offering,
it actually talked about MVPs.
It talked about,
adding stuff, how we should add it sequentially.
Mhmm.
And I would have done this anyway. I
would have went
back and
worked out from that brainstorming
brainstorming
notes, and I would have done the same

(01:04:46):
process. I would have made sure we knew
what the goal was. And then, you know,
I'd had this in a project document,
And I would have said, okay. These are
the things we can do incrementally one, two,
and three.
And one builds on the other and won't
confuse the customer. And
it was
pretty
damn good.

(01:05:09):
I would say
from
a project planning standpoint,
based upon that brainstorming
Mhmm.
It saved me probably ten hours worth of
work.
And probably, I got a better output project
document
than I would have ever put together myself.

(01:05:32):
And so I thought to myself, okay. Was
that worth $200?
Just that one
utilization
of that tool.
And
and how I'm gonna bring this back is
to me, it was like, okay. What was
what's my time worth
and what can I move on? So, obviously,
you know, if I just look at my

(01:05:54):
salary
and what I make on a daily basis
and kinda did that from a math standpoint,
And considering eight to ten hours of work
saved
and probably more than that, I probably would
have been revision after revision. I'd have probably
spent two or three days.
And I may spend some more time on

(01:06:14):
it because it needs a second look. You
know, you let something rest for twenty four
hours to go back.
Yeah. I got my money's worth out of
that just that one exercise.
So what happens
when
we have a pro level tool
that
does

(01:06:34):
exactly what you're
referring to
and is better?
Well, Todd,
take it to the next level because
where this
this AI
and that's what I'm saying. Path
is, it'll do more than potentially

(01:06:56):
just outline it for you. It will actually
do it. Well, that's what I'm saying.
It's not
you know, I think where we're at right
now is it's coming up with ideas and
it's creating documents.
But what the next phase of all this
is the fact that it it's gonna create
that and then it's gonna give you the
option to say,
build it.

(01:07:16):
Well, you know, in considering
that this is gonna require a bunch of
code update,
what we're finding because of the code base
that we code in, which is PHP,
So far,
the AI hasn't been real good at coding

(01:07:37):
and any of the stuff we've been testing
in regards to our stuff. But I think
if I was to say, okay. Build me
a
stand alone website
Right. That will support this,
then
it may be a complete game changer.
Right. And I'm doing a lots of different
these reasoning models,

(01:08:06):
really
are allowing me to ask questions that I
may not have ever asked before.
So it as an example, I I fed
it a page and I said, how do
we make this better?
You know, and here's here's the goal. I
said, here's the goal of what we wanna
do. How do we how do we make
this better?

(01:08:27):
And then it came back and it, you
know, it asked me this
I think it was 20 questions.
Mhmm. And it wanted a deep reply
on
each one of those and I thought, well,
I probably would have done five of those
but I wouldn't have done taken the time
to do the extra 15.
So what I did is I went back
to the team

(01:08:48):
and I said,
everyone free form. Every person answer each of
these 20 questions,
and then I will
mold the
the team response
into a I'll I'll make sense of each
of them, and I will, you know,
basically take the
the all the inputs and we'll we'll come

(01:09:09):
up with one, reply
and then we'll feed it back into the
system.
And it's extraordinary.
The the outputs.
I shouldn't be sharing this. It's it's it's
a
it is a game
changer in my opinion, force multiplier.
Mhmm.

(01:09:30):
And anyone say that it's not as, I
believe at this point, foolish.
Yeah. And once you get to a point
where all of these
capabilities
get converged on each other, you know, the
the visual, the imaging,
the
the actual ability to take action
on various parts of it. Once you get

(01:09:52):
all of these
capabilities connected up like a CRM platform with,
a database of contacts and email and,
and
ways that
things can get researched automatically and then formatted
into plans
automatically and then implemented once approved.

(01:10:15):
It it's just like like you say, Todd,
it's a complete game changer on how we
think about
everything. And I think it's gonna come to
robots too.
You know, this capability of building anything, creating
anything, repairing anything,
you know, that's gonna change everything in our
world. If if if it gets, it's almost

(01:10:35):
to the point now where as an example,
I could do
very
rapid
a b testing on
Yeah. Specific stuff. You know, I could say
give me a b version
of this. And, you know, we're seeing from
a heat map.
You know, here's the heat map data.

(01:10:56):
How can we how can we improve this?
And and give me a a b version
based upon what we're seeing from, you know,
a week's worth of
clicking on a page and whatever they may
be doing Yeah. And and that yet mocked
up.
I think, we're gonna see this come to
platforms like a YouTube too where it'll analyze

(01:11:17):
the effectiveness
of your
of your content.
And it'll give you direct feedback and
ways to improve it. And it may even
give you tools to
to fix content.
I don't know. I mean, I'm not sure
how far this is gonna go, but I
think the feedback is the is the first
logical piece.

(01:11:38):
And, you know, again,
you have to be careful here because I've
been experimenting with this as well.
Been taking the transcript and say, okay. And,
Chris, the transcript doesn't hear the emotion.
Yeah.
It it it just sees raw text
and, you know, analyze. You know, everyone can

(01:11:59):
do this. Take a transcript of your show
and pump pump it into chat g p
t and say analyze this text. And
it was, you know, explain it came from
a recorded podcast, my
voice, you know, give it as much inputs
as you can. It was recorded on a
Friday at 7PM or, you know, all these
variables.
And

(01:12:19):
and then
what can I do to improve?
What should I do in the future to
improve my show?
And it you know, I think it's back
to what's the training,
data that was used to on on a
clone voice or something like that. If it's
a detailed
training data set like us, you know,

(01:12:42):
let's say the training data had access to,
you know, ten years of the content that
we produced on the show
as a basis for generating a the audio
for a new episode. Well, what it's doing
now is
it's basically saying, hey. You said, 18 times.
You had weird transitions

(01:13:04):
22 times.
It's giving stuff that it can see textually,
but it's not really being able to
pull because you're just reading text, so there's
no emotion in the text.
It can't tell when there was a dramatic
pause. There's not a dot dot dot dot
dot dot. You know? So when there's That's

(01:13:25):
what the
the training data Right. The actual Yeah.
Audio from the human comes into play is
that
that that model can be modeled after the
the speaking patterns
of conversational.
But there's not a lot of people out
there that are doing
reviews on content and publicly posting

(01:13:48):
how to improve something.
So the models don't have a lot of
training data in regards to you know, let's
say we had a professional review this show
and and say, okay, Todd and Rob, you
know,
you need to stop doing x, y, and
z
Right. Because this is driving people crazy.

(01:14:11):
Yes. Somehow that AI model needs to know
that information about the audience too. And it
may
the only signals that exist right now is
when people tune in and tune out. Yeah.
Right?
Where people are engaging, you're seeing this in
the YouTube tools today is that you'll see
a a pattern like a chart of the

(01:14:32):
episode starts playing, and then you you can
see bumps. And this has been in podcast
for a long time. It's been in YouTube
for a while. Yeah. Yeah. And it's in
it is it's been Apple Podcasts for a
long time too is
how far are people listening
to it in their platform, and they're showing
it on a chart. Right?
By the time you get to the end
of any episode,

(01:14:53):
there's almost nobody listening. Right? I could I
could foresee
statistics
platforms giving a lot more
information in the future. It just makes sense
because
a lot of that
not only demographic data, if people are actually
collecting demographic data and
historical listening patterns are

(01:15:15):
are in the stats. So that's probably where
it's going to initially originate.
Yeah. It's
yeah. I'm just fascinated by how this is
gonna impact,
you know, a human created medium like podcasting.
As you look to the future, it's gonna
help us have a better understanding of what

(01:15:35):
we're doing
right and what we're doing wrong. Right? Well,
I take an example. We're looking at
okay. Every company has people that come into
your commerce system and it abandons a cart.
Yeah. So if you have is whatever information
they have put into the cart at the

(01:15:56):
time they abandon,
then
you can address the abandoned cart via an
email.
You know, you can say, hey. We see
you saw you left.
You know, and you can you can have
three or four versions
of that abandoned cart email to be more

(01:16:16):
personal. Now you you you're not gonna it's
gonna be too creepy to say, hey. We
saw you got to the point where you
put your podcast title in and you quit.
That would be a little bit too weird.
But at least we can say
something to the fact of, hey. We saw
that you abandoned the cart. Our support team
is here. They can help with show ideas.
They can help with your description.

(01:16:37):
You know, if you if you've gotten kind
of stuck at that point, you know, where
we get stuck in the process,
you know, drop us an email or, you
know,
we're happy to help you.
And Yeah. So if I can help
because if the if I lower my abandoned
cart rate,
I got my sales, you know. It's more

(01:16:59):
conversion on the transaction. And
and if you can find those friction points,
right, then you can maybe find out some
way to streamline your sign up process to
not need that step to be there.
So, yeah,
definitely will help a lot.

(01:17:21):
So I think we're getting toward the end,
Tom. Yeah. And one thing I may have
to do is I may have to work
on the audio.
There's a reverb
people are saying they're hearing
now. I I just,
I'm a little annoyed.
What what I saw
and one thing that is
what's going into
the RodeCaster
is perfect.

(01:17:42):
It's what's coming out of OBS
is got
Going going streaming. Some issues. Yeah.
Yeah. So I will replace the YouTube video
going forward until I figure this out.
I'll provide and give that to you too
because
people watch it live, but if people come

(01:18:03):
in behind and listen and have a bad
experience, that won't be good.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah. Oh, yeah. We are yeah. I I
overslept it. Yeah. We made it
to ninety minutes or so here. Okay.
So,
apologize on the audio for those of you
live. We'll we'll get it fixed.
I'll do some testing here over the next

(01:18:24):
couple of days.
But I'm [e-mail]
x at geek news at geek news dot
chat on Mastodon.
Rob?
Yeah. I'm on x as well at Rob
Greenlee
on YouTube at Rob Greenlee on
Facebook at Rob Greenlee and on the Instagram

(01:18:45):
platform,
Rob
w Greenlee.
So you can find me over there and
then I I'm on robgreenley.com
and,
and,
and those are all great places to get
ahold of me. You can send me an
email to
Rob Greenlee
or just,

(01:19:06):
yeah, Rob Greenleegmail
dot com. So it's a great place to
reach out.
Hi, everyone. Thanks for being here. Of course,
again, to all the AI models, you're free
to use the content from newmediashow.com
and from this podcast in your training data,
And, use it in any referencing you do

(01:19:26):
when people ask you questions
about podcasting.
Alright, Rob. We'll see you next week, and
hopefully, I get up on time next week.
Alright. Alright, Todd. Alright, whenever you take care.
Thank you. Yep. Bye. Bye bye.