Good Morning Podcasters! Episodes 29-32

This content is repurposed from episodes of Good Morning Podcasters! Episodes 29-32. Good Morning Podcasters (GMP) explores the world of podcasting with a specific focus on marketing, public relations, and social media as they relate to content creation.

Episode Transcript

(00:01):
What you're gonna do, brother,when Jeff Townsend Media runs wild on you.
Have you been searching for a podcast? Do you want to learn from
some great content creators? Well you'vecome to the right place Indie Podcaster with
your host Jeff Townsend, the Indiepodcast Father. All right, all right,

(00:29):
all right, this is Jeff Townsend. Thank you for checking out another
episode of Indie Podcaster. This podcastis made for podcasters and other content creators.
Certainly don't consider myself a guru,or either do any of my friends
that will be featured in these episodes. But what we do like to do
is talk content creation, pick eachother's brains, and have a good time.
I'm proud to mention that this podcastis sponsored by Indie drop In.

(00:52):
Now, let me tell you somethingabout Indie Dropping. This is an awesome
network that my friend Greg has created. What he does is drop episodes from
independent content creator into his established podcastaudience on his feed, and he shares
your episodes to an audience that alreadyexists. Yes, it's like free advertisement
promotion for your podcast. He spenta lot of time, money, and
effort building it, and he alreadyhas an audience interested in the content,

(01:15):
and he can certainly help you bysharing your content is great promotion. Go
to indie drop in dot com slashcreators and check it out. If you're
a comedy, true crime, paranormal, for various other different kinds of podcasts,
you can benefit from this. SoI really encourage you once again go
to indie drop in dot com slashcreators and see if you can get your
stuff featured on indie drop in.We'll go back to the podcast here Indie

(01:38):
Podcasters. So what we've currently beendoing is sharing content from three different projects
that I'm involved in. The firstis Good Morning Podcasters with my good friend
Fuzz Martin. We also do somecontent on podcasting Sucks, and then in
these episodes you will also hear somecontent from podcasting Power Hour. Podcasting Power
Hour is a live thing we doon Twitter spaces. We get a whole
bunch of great podcast minds together wetalk podcasting. So if you're a content

(02:01):
creator a podcaster, I think you'lltake something away from every episode of the
content I'm going to share with you. With that being said, make sure
you check out Eddie drop in andmake sure you enjoy this episode. I
think it's important that we all continueto learn and grow every day, and
that will help us become even bettercontent creators. That's certainly what I try
to do, learn something new everyday. I'm excited to share this content

(02:22):
with you. I think it'll bea learning experience for you. Let's get
to this episode, and I hopeyou have a great time listening to it.
Good Morning Podcasters. Has anyone everactually promoted it on Reality Records?
Today we're talking about organizing your podcast. What's happening you, beautiful podcasters?

(02:42):
Welcome to Good Morning Podcasters. Iam Fuzz Martin, your host. I
also have the flu, So ifit sounds like I have the flu,
it's because I have the flu.I saw a question on Reddit which comes
up a lot about how podcasters organizetheir show and their guests and whatnot.
So I think on to talk aboutsome of the tools that are available and
how I organize my show. Wellshows, I actually have three, but

(03:07):
I use basically the same process formanaging all three. Having a podcast means
keeping track of a lot of things. You have to keep track of your
guests, your show topics, yourshow notes, maybe scripts if you have
a scripted show, research articles,audio, files, logos and other branding

(03:28):
elements, and design files, audiotracks, maybe sound effects, processing settings,
so many different things, and thereare a number of organizational tools out
there that will help you keep trackof all those things, or at least
most of those things. And youdon't have to pay a bunch for them
either, though you can if youwant to, of course, but for

(03:49):
some of these you can get awaywith the free version if you're a solo
podcaster, or maybe it's one ortwo of you podcasting. Some of the
good organizational tools out there or projectmanage tools which can be used for organizing
your show include Asana, Google Drive, Monday dot Com, Trello, Basecamp,

(04:10):
though I don't believe they have afree tier, and Smartsheet, which
also doesn't have a free tier.Plus there are a whole bunch of other
apps out there. There's writers roomapps, there's different things like that.
Each of these tools allows you toorganize information in their own sort of way.
Some have similar features, some aremuch different than the others. It's
all a matter of your style andthe needs of your show and how your

(04:34):
brain works. Really, so whatdo I do and what do I use?
Well, my main hub for allof my shows is Trello. Trello
is a Canban style digital organization board. So Canman is a manufacturing management system
and relies on cards kind of likedigital sticky notes or in some cases actual

(04:54):
physical cards or sticky notes that areset into different columns which happen to be
a stage of the process, andyou move a card from the beginning of
the process to the end along theway, and you can see what stage
of a project each card is currentlyin. The great part about Trello is
that you can make however many columnsyou want or need, and then you

(05:15):
can add as many cards underneath thosecolumns as you need. So for my
show, in my Treillo board forGood Morning Podcasters, I have these columns
on the far left. I haveone called Incoming. That's where I write
down any two do item that Ican think of, any sort of thing
that comes to mind. I immediatelyput it into Incoming, so I can

(05:36):
get my thought down and then Iworry about organizing where it goes later.
Then I have three columns where mostof the business gets done. The first
column is called this week's Good MorningPodcasters episodes. You may have seen screenshots
of this on my Twitter feed oron my Instagram feed. In this column,
I only keep the three episodes thatI'm going to publish this coming week,

(05:58):
so I have Monday, Wednesday,and Friday episodes right in there so
I can stay organized and know whatis coming up. To the right of
that, I have a column callednext Week, which is obviously next week's
shows, but it's kind of atentative list of ideas for next week's shows.
Those get moved around a lot,and sometimes they don't make them into
this week's shows, but that's kindof my staging area of I'm doing these

(06:20):
three this week and the next week, I'm going to do this and I
can kind of see what they alllook like next to each other. After
that, it's a column called Topics, and this is a full brain dump
of any sort of topic that Imight want to cover on this show.
So I currently have one hundred andeighty six cards in that column. Some
are absolute garbage, some are great. It's brainstorming, so I put it

(06:43):
all down there because it might sparkanother thought. But the cool part about
Trello, or one of the manycool parts about Trello, is that it
is really easy to grab a cardand drag it to the top. So
let's say I have an idea thatI want to bring to the next episode,
or I'm like, this is areally good one, I should talk
about this, or this is topicalright now, I can drag it to
the top and then it's there forme to see. Also, when I
drop a new idea into my incomingcolumn, I will then drag it into

(07:08):
the kind of level of importance inthat topic column to say, like,
Okay, this is an important topicthat I need to get too soon,
or maybe I'll just put it inthere for later, like this is something
I can talk about down the road. If it's very important or very topical,
I'll keep it at the top,or I might even drop it into
my next week column. And ifit's something i'd like to cover later or

(07:29):
when I'm struggling for an idea,then I drop it down to the middle
or the bottom of that stack.The fifth column is called social posts,
and this is really just a reminderof what posts I need to create for
each episode. So it reminds meto post it on Twitter, it reminds
me to create an Instagram story andto put it in my Instagram News feed,
and also any other pieces that Imight need to create for social are

(07:53):
all in my social post column.So the right of that is my done
column. I drag topic cards thatare completed into that column so I can
easily reference them instead of having itscroll through my RSS feed. I can
just either search through that or justscroll down and look through. Then the
next set of columns are for brandingand marketing purposes. So I have a
resources column that contains a card calledcolors, which holds the Good Morning Podcasters

(08:18):
brand colors, the hex codes,the RGB codes, CNYK, etc.
It has my logo files in Photoshopformat, in ping and JPEG and in
different sizes and such. I havemy head shot and Jeff Townsend's headshot in
case the journalist or another podcast asksfor them. I need to put mine

(08:39):
and Jeff's standard bios in there aswell so that I don't need to rewrite
those anytime we get asked for them. But that's a good best practice for
you from a PR standpoint, isto always have that kind of stuff on
file and ready to go. ThenI've got a column called parking lot.
This is ideas that I have forthe show that might be useful in the
future, are on hold for now. Maybe they're too ambitious, I don't

(09:03):
have time for them, or they'lltake more work to put in, or
maybe want to wait and see ifthat's something that I want to do.
And I have my sponsor's column thatincludes information about show sponsors, potential sponsors,
those kind of things, contact information, whatever we've negotiated is in there
so that I know and then Ican mark off. I've got a little

(09:24):
inside a Trello card. You candrop a checklist and then check it off
as you go. So let's sayI have four sponsored pre roles. I
can check those off as I completethem, and then I know when that's
done or if I still have moreto do, and that's it. Those
are my Trello columns. I alsomake good use of Trello's label system.

(09:45):
I like Trello's labels because they havea color blind mode, and I'm quite
color blind. Their colorblind mode usespatterns on top of the colors to make
it better stand out from one another. More apps should adopt this. So
for labels, I have marketing,public relation, social media, advertising,
general podcasting. I've got one forpodcasting, sucks episodes I've got one that

(10:07):
says sponsored, so I know whenI have a sponsored episode, I have
done and I have show stuff.I label each topic card with its overall
theme, whether that's marketing, advertising, PR, social media, or general
podcasting, so that it can easilylook at a glance and make sure that
I have a good mix of differenttypes of topics throughout the week and I'm
not just heavy on one theme.It's real easy to do a whole bunch

(10:30):
of social media posts because there's alwaysso much news out there about that and
I like to spread that out.I have a done label, as you
heard, because it feels good tomark something is done, and then I
drag it into the done column.And it's really more for a dopamine spike
than for actual organization. And that'sreally the gist of how I organize Good
Morning podcasters in my real life workworld. I use some of the other

(10:56):
Treilo features, like team tagging,so I can tag people and assign them
different tasks, which you could certainlydo if you have a co host on
your show, or maybe you're workingwith a producer. Really easy way to
say who's responsible for which thing.And that's all included within Trello and that
epic creative. We also have ittied into our website with Zapier and automation

(11:16):
software, which, by the way, it's pronounced the Zapier. I know
it's written like Zapier, and alot of people get it wrong because of
that single P. But I reachedout to Zapier and they told me in
quotes, Zapier makes you happier,which is much better than you get the
idea. Trello also has some ofits own automations. There's a feature called

(11:37):
Butler, and a whole bunch ofother power ups that you can explore,
and you can tie them into allsorts of different things like scheduling software and
things like Google Calendar, things likethat, and again the other apps like
Asana and Monday. They all havereally good features that might make sense for
you and your show setup. ButI just wanted to explain to you how
I do it. Your mileage,as they say, may vary, and

(12:01):
with that, I'm gonna drop thisepisode in the done column and call it
a show. Thanks for dealing withmy voice and thanks for listening to Good
Morning podcasters. You can catch everyepisode at good morningpod dot com. Please
consider following the show and your podplayer that you most prefer, as you
know very well because you're a podcaster. All you have to do is click

(12:24):
that follow button, click to thebell if you want notifications, and watch
for this show to come out everyMonday, Wednesday, and Friday. I'm
also hoping to have an episode ofPodcasting Sucks with Jeff Townsend out soon.
Those come out on Saturday mornings,but we'll see where the world takes us.
Otherwise, have a great weekend andwe'll talk to you Monday right here
on Good Morning Podcasters. Good MorningPodcasters, let's talk about how to make

(13:05):
the links you share on social medialook better. Welcome to the thirtieth episode
of the all new Good Morning Podcasters. My name is Fuzz martin. In.
Each week I bring you three episodesdedicated to helping you get better at
marketing, advertising, PR and socialmedia as those things relate to podcasting.

(13:31):
If you listen to last Friday show, which actually came out on Saturday morning,
you'll know that I am getting overthe flu, and while I feel
a lot better, I'm still notone hundred percent and that's mostly coming through
in my voice. But the showmust go on. It doesn't really need
to go on. Like you,I could have really taken some time off

(13:52):
for rest, and I'm sure youwould have been fine with that. But
I like podcasting and I like myroutine, so let's get into it.
Do you know what the term opengraph means? Open graphs are meta tags
that work behind the scenes on awebsite page. So when somebody shares a
link to a page with proper opengraphs on social media, those open graphs

(14:16):
are retrieved and the preview for thatpage looks great. When there are no
open graph tags, the preview usuallylooks like garbage. You get a little
square to the left, usually withan oddly cropped image or a broken image,
and then some text on the right, and it just looks ugly and
mailed in. People are more likelyto interact with a good looking link,

(14:39):
and therefore that link is more likelyto perform better on social media, specifically
in the algorithms, because the algorithmslike posts that are getting clicks and likes.
The op protocol was actually created byFacebook in the early twenty tens,
and then a few years later,Twitter, LinkedIn and other social net working

(15:00):
sites adopted them as well. Thereare four real types of open graph tags
that are required when a link isshared on social media. The first is
the title, so this would bethe title of your page as you want
it to appear on social media.It shouldn't be any longer than sixty characters,
so if you're using a regular titletag on your website, you get

(15:22):
your title there. Your social tagshould be sixty characters or less so that
it doesn't get cropped when you sharethat title on social media. The type
that's the second kind of open graphtag that's required. This is the type
of content. Usually you'll use websitefor everything unless it's a article, and
if you're using an article, thenyou'd use the article tag, So it's

(15:45):
either article or website. If you'reusing some plugins like yost or seo Press,
they'll give you the option to togglethat. The third required type is
image, and that's the one we'regoing to talk about a bit more coming
up. But the open graph imageis the preview image that people are going
to see when your link is shared. This one is the most visible,

(16:07):
you know, since it's an image, and this is the one you should
care the most about. And againwe'll talk more about that coming up.
In a few moments. And thefourth required tag is the URL tag.
So obviously the URL that is beingshared you should use the canonical tag and
I'll provide a link to aa trefsthat you can read more about on how

(16:30):
to use the canonical tag with yourURL open graph tag. One other important
tag, though it's not required,is the og description tag. You get
a very limited snippet of text belowyour image when you share a link on
social media. If you use theopen graph description tag, you can make
sure that the text is written toconnect to those seeing that post on social

(16:52):
media Specifically, there are a wholebunch of other types of open graph tags
as well, but those that I'vementioned are the most important for your social
posts. So now let's discuss opengraph images again. The open graph image
tag, when used correctly, willmake your images look great whenever your link

(17:14):
gets shared on Facebook and particular,but also LinkedIn Twitter, Slack, post
news, masted on MySpace, Igot nothing. Your open graph image should
be twelve hundred by six hundred andthirty pixels. It needs to be less
than five megabytes, though you shouldnever really have images that are five megabytes
big on your website. Page.Ever, that'll kill your site load speed,

(17:40):
so don't do that. Make thatas small as you can make it
while still having good quality. Yourimage should be branded relevant to your episode.
You can always just have one sitewide open graph images if this is
something that you don't want to dofor every single episode, but just know
that when you share that, it'llbe the same image that's shared every time
linked your website is shared. Butyou want a twelve hundred by six thirty

(18:03):
image. I try to make themcustomize for each episode that I do.
Everything's the same, I just changedthe title and maybe swapping a different background
image or color. So how doyou install and edit open graph tags on
your website? It really varies fromsite to site, but if you're in
WordPress, I recommend installing the freeversion of the yost plugin. This will

(18:26):
take care of that for you.Then you can scroll to the bottom of
any new posts that you create.You click on the word social inside the
yost seo box, and then youcan edit your open graph title, description,
and image in there. If youedit the Facebook area and this goes
for any site, you should begood pretty much on any social media platform.

(18:47):
But I forgot to mention this earlier. Twitter has created its own protocol
called Twitter Cards. It's pretty muchthe same thing, though slightly different.
Twitters preferred image size is eight hundredpixels by four hundred and eighteen pixel,
but if you scale that up byone and a half, it comes out
to twelve hundred by six twenty seveninstead of twelve hundred by six thirty,
so you're three pixels off. It'llbe okay. Also, if your Twitter

(19:11):
card information isn't available, Twitter willjust default to your open graph tags anyway.
So I've only used specific Twitter cardsa handful of times in my life.
You should be fine with open graph, standard images and open graph tags
unless you really want different image ordifferent texts on Twitter specifically, or if

(19:32):
Elon changes something on us, whichhe is wont to do. If you're
using squarespace to edit your open graphimage, just go to page settings,
go to social image, and thenupload. If you're on Wix, you
can edit this in the social sharingsettings area of a post. It's a
bit of a tongue twister. Andif you're using podcast page dot io,

(19:55):
once your episode has gone live,click edit, scroll all the way to
the bottom of the page. There'sa little edit pencil button next to advanced
SEO settings. Click that, andthen you can edit your SEO title,
description, and image, which includesthe social sharing image. I've been starting
to ask as many connected people aspossible to make updates to the podcast RSS

(20:19):
protocol to include open graph images inthe RSS feed, so this can be
an automated process with websites, we'llsee if anybody's listening. Are you listening,
please include the open graph image inour podcast RSS feeds. Thank you.
You're spending a lot of time puttingout great content for your show.

(20:44):
It only makes sense that your webcontent is as good looking as possible,
and when you share an episode oryour website or an article from your website
on social media, that it looksgreat and you're getting good interaction with your
page. There are few things thatmake me cringe more than when somebody posts

(21:07):
a link to their website on socialwith a broken open graph image or even
an ugly image. Make yourself sometwelve hundred x six thirty pixel open graph
images and make sure they're properly installedon your site. I've got links to
the Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedInpost validators and inspectors on good morningpod dot

(21:29):
com, or you can check theshow notes. That'll do it for today's
episode of Good Morning Podcasters. Ifyou found this episode helpful, please consider
giving me a five star review onyour preferred pod platform. Also, please
consider following the show and telling yourfriends who podcast about GMP. Thanks again,

(21:49):
we'll talk to you on Wednesday righthere on Good Morning Podcasters. Sh
Good Morning Podcasters, Let's talk abouta couple of different types of advertising.

(22:17):
Hello, I'm Fuzz Martin and thisis Good Morning Podcasters. Thank you for
joining me today on the thirty firstepisode of GMP. On today's episode,
I'm going to discuss advertising strategies,particularly awareness versus intent. We'll talk about
what those terms mean and how they'reimportant to your podcast, But first I'm

(22:41):
going to give you an example ofawareness advertising. Today's episode is brought to
you by podcastpage dot io. Ifyou have a podcast, you need a
website. Podcast Page is an easyand intuitive platform that allows you to create
a full podcast website and basically notime at all. The platform syncs to

(23:03):
your show's RSS feed and automatically createsnew episode specific pages every time you release
a new episode. It even workswith your YouTube channel It also imports reviews
and has subscribe icons for all themajor podcatchers. It comes with the ability
to create a full blog, guestprofile pages, intake forms, contact forms

(23:26):
of voicemail widget. They've got beautifuldesigns and templates, and a dragon drop
editor. Podcastpage dot Io will haveyour show's website up and running quickly without
costing you a lot of time ormoney that you would spend on other web
platforms. Go to podcast page dotIo and get started today. Thank you

(23:47):
to podcast page for sponsoring today's episodeof Good Morning Podcasters. So do you
see how that worked? I wasmaking you aware of a brand. Awareness
is pretty simple to understand as itrelates to advertising. It refers to the
extent to which consumers or listeners arefamiliar with your brand, product, service,

(24:11):
or say, your podcast. Thiscan include something as basic as knowing
about your show, being familiar withit, or even being able to recall
specific details about your show. That'sawareness. The goal of awareness campaigns in
advertising is to increase familiarity, inthis case, with your show and make

(24:33):
it top of mind for your potentiallisteners. When it comes to an awareness
campaign to promote your podcast, thatcould include things like promo swaps, network
ads, banner ads, Facebook andInstagram ads, billboards, television radio,
any sort of mass media or advertisingnewspaper, anything you want to do to

(24:56):
reach a wide audience that does notlikely know about your podcast. Conversely,
pretty much any of the advertising thatyou do on your show, so your
host red ads, interviews you dowith different people who are trying to sell
something, whether that's a service ora book, or an upcoming event,

(25:18):
programmatic spons that you may run inyour show through your hosting platform. Those
are all examples of awareness advertising.Intent, on the other hand, is
how we describe advertising or marketing towardpeople who are already in the know and
ready to take action, or aswe might say, they intend to take

(25:40):
a specific action. Goals of anintent based campaign would be to get a
potential listener to take the next steptoward becoming an actual listener, whether that's
by going to your website or goingto your Apple Podcasts page. Let's give
an example of what we would calla potential listener that would benefit from intent

(26:03):
based advertising. Let's say there's somebodyout there who's fully aware that there is
a thing called true crime podcasts thatexist in the world, and that person
really enjoys them. And let's saythey go to Google and search for a
new true crime podcast to listen to. They might type in true crime podcast

(26:26):
or type in new true Crime Podcaststwenty twenty three into their search bar.
Well, you, as a newertrue crime podcaster, would not be able
to compete with those who have establishedtrue crime shows because there are so many
out there, and those shows mighthave been featured on NPR or New York
Times. They may just be huge, and therefore those established shows SEO will

(26:52):
likely blow yours out of the water, and the results for your show would
likely be buried deep. However,you could skip the line and create some
Google search ads for those types ofkeywords. Now your ads will be served
to those who are typing in thekeywords you want because they intend to listen

(27:15):
to a true crime show and they'vetyped that into their Google search bar.
Or let's say somebody already came toyour website, looked around for a bit,
but never clicked the play button,or they never clicked off to Apple
Podcasts, Spotify, good Pods,et cetera. With retargeting and conversion tracking,
you could serve display ads to themwherever they go on the Internet,

(27:36):
essentially to remind them of their previousintent and get them to come back to
your site. There are also someads called lead generation ads or lead gen
ads that are designed to get peopleto sign up for things like your newsletter,
provide their information for a giveaway orsweepstakes, or for some sort of
demo. Those are all examples ofintent or consideration advertising. And also when

(27:59):
someone signs up for your emails,they have the intent to follow your show
and are likely to listen to yourshow, so that would be considered intent
advertising as well when you send outan email to that group. If you're
going to advertise your podcast, whichstyle of advertising should you choose? Well
depends. The right answer is probablya mix. I advertise good Morning podcasters

(28:23):
through Reddit ads on subredits like ourpodcasting or our Adobe audition, because I
know the people who are in thosesubreddits are there with the intention of finding
information about podcasting and audio editing thosekinds of things, so to me,
that would be considered intent advertising.I basically know who those people are and

(28:48):
why they're there in that spot atthat time. I also run ads on
Facebook and Instagram to a wider audienceof people who are likely not on those
sites looking for information about podcast buthave podcasting as an interest. Because that's
a wider audience that I want tobecome familiar with Good Morning Podcasters, I

(29:10):
would consider that awareness advertising, andthere's obviously great area in between all of
those. Your strategy should always startwith your goal and then use a mix
of tactics to get there. Ifyou want to increase newsletter signups, definitely
going to be intent based advertising.You want to increase awareness about your show,

(29:33):
obviously it's in the title awareness advertising. I'll just put this out there.
If you ever have a question aboutadvertising, or if you ever want
me to give you some advice onwhat kind of advertising you should be spending
your money on, feel free toshoot me at DM on Twitter at GM
Podcasters, or you can email mefuzz at good morningpod dot com and if

(29:55):
I can, I'll help point youinto the right direction. That'll do it
for today's episode of Good Morning Podcasters. I hope you found it helpful.
If you did, please consider droppinga five star review on good Pods,
Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Podchaser,or just you know, draw five stars

(30:15):
on a whiteboard and send me aphoto that makes me feel good. It
makes me feel like what I'm doingis working. Also, be sure to
follow the show if you're not already. New episodes come out Mondays, Wednesdays
and Fridays. And speaking of Friday, I'll speak to you on Friday right
here on Good Morning Podcasters. ShGood Morning Podcasters. Let's talk about merch

(30:56):
How do y'all? I hope you'rehaving a great Friday. Happy Friday,
the third hope it's not too spookyfor you. Sorry. My name is
Fuzz Martin and this is Good MorningPodcasters, a show where we explore marketing,
advertising, public relations, and socialmedia topics as they connect to the

(31:19):
podcasting industry and more importantly, howyou can connect them to your podcast.
The idea for this show is toprovide you with practical, actionable ideas.
I have no place for gurus orthose who want to pump you up and
make you feel good. I'm adoer. I want you to be able

(31:41):
to do. So let's do today. I want to talk to you about
merchandise. So here's what we're goingto discuss. One do you need merch
Two? Is it worth it?Three? What kind of merch should you
get? And four? How doyou do it? It'll be pretty high

(32:02):
level. Sound good to you?Sounds good to me. Let's get into
it. Do you need merch?Let me answer that question with some questions.
Is your audience asking for merch ordo you just want to have some
merch for yourself? Who is goingto purchase your merch? Where are they

(32:22):
going to wear your merch? Willmerch help others start listening to your show?
Do you know anyone with a podcastingt shirt? Do you know anyone
who wears podcasting t shirts? BesidesEd Canard of the greatest song ever sung
poorly podcast? Depending on the sizeof your audience base and the rabidness of

(32:45):
your audience, it might be agood idea, but it also might not.
Podcast merchandise might also be good ifyou're, say, going to a
conference or trade show, speaking atan event, if you have a local
presence, or if you have anationally recognized show. So number two is

(33:06):
it worth it? Is having merchandisefor your show worth the money and time
involved in getting it up and running? It might be, but you need
to be careful. Here are somethings that I recommend you look out for.
Number one, Unless you have acrazy large following in brand and you
know that people are itching to getyour hands on that brand. Don't buy

(33:30):
merchandise in bulk. You don't wantto have a garage or a basement full
of boxes of T shirts in sizemedium, small, large, extra large,
double, xcel, etc. Youdon't want those sitting around molding in
your basement. Little anecdote for you. I run a nonprofit. I was

(33:52):
convinced to purchase a bunch of Tshirts for a fundraiser, which was a
great event and we raised a tonof money. We also spend twenty six
hundred dollars on approximately two hundred andseventy five T shirts and I have approximately
two thousand dollars worth of T shirtsleft. It's not a good place to

(34:14):
be and you don't want to bethere with your show. So I highly
recommend not buying a whole ton ofmerch in bulk unless you know that you
have the audience that is going tosupport and move that. And how do
you know you'll know? Or youcan just ask them, do a survey,

(34:34):
do a pre order. And numbertwo and is it worth it?
You need to be sure that youraudience is clamoring for merch. It's typically
a low margin product, so unlessyou can sell T shirts at thirty bucks
apiece or move a lot of volume, the upfront work might not be worth
your time. All right? Thirdquestion, what kind of merch should you

(34:58):
get for your show? The typeof merch you should perch completely depends on
your audience, your genre, yourpodcast's brand, personality, etc. Some
like overarching ideas or you know,of course, T shirts, stickers,
hoodies, coffee mugs, water bottles. There are hundreds of different ideas and

(35:21):
thousands of different ideas, and dependingon your show, there might be some
custom items that might make sense foryour audience. Let's say you run a
podcast about beer. I'm looking atyou, Dave from Beer in Front,
you could create custom cancoosies. I'dbuy one of those. My wife has
an education podcast. She often speaksat conferences. We've created notebooks for teachers

(35:45):
with the show's logo on them andthey're a big hit. So, depending
on your audience and your topic,could be some great ideas. Get creative
with it. People love free stuff. Just make sure that they're going to
use it and that it also mighthelp others find your show. It's all

(36:06):
about discoverability right. And finally,how do you get your merch created again?
Unless you have thousands of listeners eachmonth, I don't recommend buying a
boatload of merch and hoping it sells. You might get caught holding the bag
and left dropping off giant boxes ofyour podcast here t shirts at Goodwill.

(36:27):
Instead, I recommend starting with aprint on demand service. With a print
on demand service, you will getless margin per item, but you won't
have to worry about storing inventory oreven shipping that inventory when it sells.
The items are made by the dropshipper and shipped directly to your listener on
demand. There are a number ofprint on demand sites out there with good

(36:52):
catalogs. I've used two and I'vebeen happy with both of them. Threadless
has a very easy to set upstore you can create and point your listeners
to. The merchandise. Quality isokay, it's serviceable, it's good.
I've got a hoodie from there thatI wear all the time, and it's
about four years old. It's wornout, but it's comfy. The other

(37:14):
side that I use very regularly isprint full printfl is cool because it will
connect with the WordPress, Squarespace,Shopify very easily. It also connects with
Etsy, wix, eBay, weeBlee, Amazon, a whole bunch of
others as well. Printfal has agreat catalog of products that you can choose

(37:36):
from, both for screen printing typeor digital printing type products or embroidery.
And they've got hundreds of easy tofollow videos that will help you get started,
and you can even get a store. You could have a store up
and running in fifteen minutes, Soupto nuts, as they say, you

(37:57):
get this, set the price foryour merchandise on print fal and how much
markup you want to receive. Theycalculate the shipping and then you can customize
your invoices, the tags on clothing, your confirmation emails, all to wrap
your brand up. The only realproblem I see with printfal is that you
have to sell shirts at a prettysteep price in order to make any money.

(38:21):
But if you want your fans tobe able to get merchandised about your
show, and you don't want topay anything upfront, or you don't want
to have a stock of product onhand, then I think printful is the
right store for you. When itcomes to design and what your show's merchandise
should look like. That's a wholeother episode. There are a ton of
different ways you can go with that. Maybe we'll talk about that on a

(38:44):
future show. That will do itfor today's episode of Good Morning Podcasters.
If you have questions for the show, I am very accessible. Email me
Fuzz at good morningpod dot com.That's Fuzz if you zz at good morningpod

(39:04):
dot com, or shoot me aDM on Twitter at GM Podcasters. New
episodes on Mondays, Wednesdays, andFridays. Have a wonderful weekend, and
I will talk to you Monday righthere on Good Morning Podcasters. Thank you

(39:30):
for checking out this episode of aniPodcaster. I really do appreciate it.
If you're interested in learning more aboutthis podcast, you can go to podcastfather
dot com. If you're interested inall the different kind of work that I'm
doing, you can go to JeffTownsend dot media contact form on There various
other different podcasts and projects that I'mevolved in that I think you will enjoy.
But again, thank you for supportingme, and make sure you support

(39:53):
Indie Dropping Network like we cover tothe beginning, get your podcast featured on
there. Until I see you nexttime, take care of your off and
keep being you and keep being great. Ye Jeff Townsend, media sees you.

(40:16):
Good night. And the question isdo I stay here? Will you
be back? Are you gonna comeback? Will you be back? Are
you coming back?