What Shane Hawkins Can Teach Us About Podcasting

Did you see 16 year old Shane Hawkins pay tribute to his dad at the recent Foo Fighters tribute to Taylor Hawkins?  Well, turns out how you heard about it and how you watched and reacted to it - can teach us a lot about podcasting.

How did you hear about it?  For me, it was a combination of social media post after social media post, and hearing friends talk about it.    Was it the same for you?  Did you run to YouTube to see it?  Or did you actually pull up the Paramount Plus app to watch the one hour highlight reel?

There are so many lessons here when it comes to podcast discoverability.  As we heard over and over at Podcast Movement, make your show SHAREABLE.  Have some kind of hook.  Have content that folks will want to tell others about.  Make is so they'll post about it, and tell their friends.

Also, and I mentioned this last week.  Getting folks to change platforms is hard.   When I watched this show, it was probably the second time in months I've used the Paramount app.  The first was to watch the new Beavis and Butt-head movie and channel the inner 15 year old in my head.  Huh Huh.  I said....nevermind.

Anyway, this was content that was worth opening a different app for.  If you're promoting your show on TikTok or Instagram, THATS the criteria you need to hit to get someone to open Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Onto this week's podcasting news.

Meghan Markle seems to have paused her podcast in the wake of the Queen's passing.  We will see if she resumes it, against (allegedly) the new King's wishes.

Twitter is upping their podcast game - rolling the feature out for their Blue (paid) subscribers).

Research from Amplifi Media and Podnews recently showed that there are only 155,000 regularly-updated podcasts out of the 4 million shows in existence.  The space is not as competitive as you might think.

There's a new podcasting publishing king - in terms of total audience of shows.  Spotify now leads the pack, followed by SiriusXM. iHeart rounds out the top 3.

I record my show on a Shure SM7B microphone.  It's the same mic that Michael Jackson recorded the Thriller album on.  And I just found out another, more contemporary big name in music uses it for his podcast.  And there's a Detroit connection.

Find jag on social media @JAGinDetroit or online at JAGinDetroit.com