Podcircle Podcast

Mickenzie Vought: 00:06

Welcome to the Podcircle podcast where we bring practical tips and insights for every podcaster.

Kyle Cummings: 00:11

From aspiring podcasters to experts with hundreds of episodes under your belt and everywhere in between, these conversations dive into the topics that matter most to you.

Mickenzie Vought: 00:20

Alright. Today's episode is my sweet spot, copy.

Kyle Cummings: 00:24

Mhmm.

Mickenzie Vought: 00:25

I love some good copy. I think it can make the difference between someone pushing play and subscribe and someone just passing by your podcast. So let's talk all about copy. It can feel a little intimidating. I know it did for me when I first started a podcast to look at all the things I had to create around copy.

Mickenzie Vought: 00:46

Even just starting, it's like I have to talk about what the podcast is and I have to give a description and then I have to talk about the episode and it can feel overwhelming.

Kyle Cummings: 00:54

Totally.

Mickenzie Vought: 00:55

We're gonna break it down with a few tips.

Kyle Cummings: 00:57

Yeah. And we just recorded an episode, our last one on common mistakes and misconceptions. And I think this we could have easily added this to one is like, there's a lot of copy that goes into it, your episode description, your intro, outro. So we're gonna break it all down today.

Mickenzie Vought: 01:09

So I thought of about, like, 6 different copy needs you might have when you're launching a podcast. And the first one is just a show description, dotcom, you can find that blog post that will help you really break down how do I talk about that. We give you 3 steps and some examples and all of that. But a show description tells your audience what they can expect from your show and it really does compel them to turn a listener into a subscriber. Yeah.

Kyle Cummings: 01:43

I kind of think of it like a an email subject. How important is an email subject?

Mickenzie Vought: 01:47

Yeah.

Kyle Cummings: 01:48

I think it oftentimes an email subject is the determining factor of whether someone opens your email or not. So if people are they're interested in your podcast, maybe before consuming your first episode of 20, 30, 40 minutes or more, they're gonna take a glance at that show description and say, hey. Does this sound like something I'd be interested in?

Mickenzie Vought: 02:06

Yeah. And I think you can tell a lot about the tone of a show from a podcast show description. And so, also, according to a 2020 survey from the podcast host, listeners really do judge a book by its cover and do judge their podcast from their show descriptions. The 2 most significant things determining whether or not they listened was a show description and an episode description.

Kyle Cummings: 02:30

So It's really interesting.

Mickenzie Vought: 02:31

Kyle, I'm gonna put you in the hot seat here.

Kyle Cummings: 02:33

Okay.

Mickenzie Vought: 02:34

Alright. I'm gonna read you. I've got 3 different show descriptions and I want you to guess what the show is. Alright? There are 3 shows you should probably know.

Kyle Cummings: 02:42

Okay. So specifically, like what the show is?

Mickenzie Vought: 02:44

Yes. What the show is. I left the host out of them because that would be a dead giveaway. Okay. So the first one, this is how the news should sound.

Mickenzie Vought: 02:53

20 minutes a day, 5 days a week, ready by 6 AM.

Kyle Cummings: 02:59

Is it just the podcast called The News?

Mickenzie Vought: 03:02

No. It's the pa, it's The Daily with Marco Barbaro. Oh. I do have a good voice with him.

Kyle Cummings: 03:08

That was really nice. Yeah.

Mickenzie Vought: 03:09

Do you listen to The Daily?

Kyle Cummings: 03:10

I don't. Is that The New York Times Yeah. Podcast that they do? Yeah. There's a couple of those kind of daily ones.

Kyle Cummings: 03:15

I think NPR might be one of those.

Mickenzie Vought: 03:18

Up First. Up First is a great podcast.

Kyle Cummings: 03:21

Yeah.

Mickenzie Vought: 03:21

They do a great job from a production standpoint. I really it, like, keeps you interested. They tell you on the front end what you're gonna hear and then you're like so you're, you know, these are the stories we're covering and you know what you're gonna get and then you wait for your story and that's great.

Kyle Cummings: 03:33

Yeah. Oh, the NPR does a great job. I love all their stuff that I mean, talk about good planning and preproduction. Obviously, they haven't their large news organization, so you would expect that from them, but it's inspiring.

Mickenzie Vought: 03:44

I love it. The second, a podcast that connects and unites people from all walks of life to learn about shared experiences through thoughtful dialogue and organic clarity. A nice surprise, in each episode, one of the hosts reveals his mystery guest to the other 2. What ensues is a genuinely improvised and authentic conversation filled with laughter and new found knowledge to feed the mind.

Kyle Cummings: 04:10

Oh, it's Smartless. I knew that right away.

Mickenzie Vought: 04:12

For sure.

Kyle Cummings: 04:13

Yeah.

Mickenzie Vought: 04:13

That's such an interesting format that they've created.

Kyle Cummings: 04:17

Yes.

Mickenzie Vought: 04:18

And I really do enjoy the podcast mostly.

Kyle Cummings: 04:22

Yeah. The dead giveaway for me was when they said that they, you know, the other host didn't even know who Yeah. The guest was gonna be. So, yeah, I don't know if they if they kinda started that, but that's a really cool hook that they've created on that podcast.

Mickenzie Vought: 04:34

Yeah. It's a really fun format. Okay. Last, unseeable forces control human behavior and shape our ideas, beliefs, and assumptions. This word, Latin for invisible things, infuses narrative storytelling with science that will make you see your own life differently.

Kyle Cummings: 04:51

I think it has to be Invisibilia. Right?

Mickenzie Vought: 04:53

It is. And literally today, I went over to the Invisibilia feed and realized that they are discontinuing the show. I also did the last episode.

Kyle Cummings: 05:03

Did they say why?

Mickenzie Vought: 05:04

Just funding, a shortage of funding at NPR. Yeah.

Kyle Cummings: 05:08

Oh, come on.

Mickenzie Vought: 05:09

I know.

Kyle Cummings: 05:10

Go on, NPR.

Mickenzie Vought: 05:10

So I really I know we we they're just saying your praises, but I really enjoyed that podcast. And I and I kept it in here anyway because I think it's, again, an interesting format, and it's kind of a nebulous idea that I think they did a good job of pulling it down and being, like, what is this actually about?

Kyle Cummings: 05:24

Oh, yeah. That and that's gonna be hard, like, especially if you have a really niche or nuanced podcast topic. To your point, that's why that copy that show description is so important because it's like, how do you how do we kind of encapsulate this this big idea in just a few words? I mean, as a musician and a songwriter too, I think about the same thing. Like Yeah.

Kyle Cummings: 05:42

How do you say a lot with a little? Yeah. So it's it's it's a true gift. To talent.

Mickenzie Vought: 05:47

And I think it's important to remember, like, one, I think you got the tone of 3 different shows on this. And then I also think they're speaking to their listener. Like, the this is how the news should sound is, like, quick. It's to the point. It's direct.

Mickenzie Vought: 06:01

And that's the type of listener you'll have. So sometimes we get bogged down and almost paralyzed in writing copy because we're trying to appeal to everyone

Kyle Cummings: 06:09

Mhmm.

Mickenzie Vought: 06:09

When we should just be appealing to our most target audience.

Kyle Cummings: 06:14

Totally. This is how the news should sound. It's a very good because it's almost it's like it's a little bit of, like, a of a repudiation maybe on the 24 hour news cycle of just like Yes. You don't need to consume this much news. We're gonna make it really small and bite sized, and there you have everything you need for the day.

Kyle Cummings: 06:29

So I like that.

Mickenzie Vought: 06:30

There you go. The second thing you need is episode descriptions. So I said that the 2 things that your listener is gonna judge your podcast on is your show description and your episode description. And, Kyle, I love to hear from your standpoint. Like, I think I've seen really in-depth episode descriptions where they go in it, you know, and give someone's a bio and there's a lot of copy and a lot of detail.

Mickenzie Vought: 06:52

And then there are just some brief like, what would be your suggestion from your standpoint of, like, how robust should we make this?

Kyle Cummings: 06:59

I think it's a good question. I don't have a strong opinion, honestly. I think it's something that can even can change over time. Like, I've seen shows that just have, like, a brief episode description, and then over time, they filled it in more with more, like, timestamped show notes. And then maybe they're as the podcast progresses, they're offering more that they're trying to advertise.

Kyle Cummings: 07:22

So maybe they're trying to advertise a course, or maybe they're trying to advertise a book. And so you see those show notes get a little bit longer because they're trying to get in more of those plugs. Yeah. Maybe they review products, and they have an Amazon affiliate program that where they're linking, you know, linking different things. So, yeah, I I don't feel like I have really strong opinions there, but I do think a really important thing to consider is just the search engine optimization, that SEO, and making sure that you have those targeted keywords, that if people are trying to find content like yours, that they can because you've made it easy for them by writing really good copy would and that's, you know, it's a big deal.

Kyle Cummings: 08:01

That's we talk about that a lot here at Podcircle. And our show notes writers are very well versed in in SEO and pulling out those rich keywords there.

Mickenzie Vought: 08:08

Yeah. And it's something that if it feels intimidating, we can help you with because Absolutely. It's, you know, every episode you're like, no. How do I talk about this again? How do I do this?

Mickenzie Vought: 08:19

There's so many pieces to it. And I think we sometimes interchange episode descriptions and show notes that episode descriptions are a part of your show notes, and they're gonna quickly tell people what the episode is about. But then you can create show notes that are all the corresponding and complimentary items from an episode. And so you might include summaries and timestamps as you mentioned. You know, you can go to 404 and we talk about this.

Mickenzie Vought: 08:41

And at 75, we talk about this and all of that. Transcripts are a great way to boost up your SEO and, they're also a great accessibility play.

Kyle Cummings: 08:51

Mhmm.

Mickenzie Vought: 08:52

If someone wants the content but can't listen to it or, has some limitations where they can't consume your podcast in that way, they're really great. You can create a longer blog out of your show notes and create extra links and link out to other places. And then you can also that's a great place to include your guest info or maybe a more fuller robust bio on your person that you don't wanna put in your individual episode description.

Kyle Cummings: 09:16

Yeah. If you can't tell, we're huge fans of podcasting in terms of what they can do in terms of content creation. I mean, a 15, 20 minute conversation or longer, obviously, there's so many different ways you can repurpose that content, show notes, transcriptions, blog posts, and we do all of that on a on a daily basis. One thing this is, harkening back to something you said is kind of granular, but about the timestamps show notes is that in a few players like Spotify, they actually hyperlink those timestamps. So if you have a really, you know, a time conscious listener who's like, Yeah, I maybe we just want to fast forward to 23 minutes and 4 seconds where you're talking about something that I'm interested in, they can actually just click that time stamp in Spotify, and it'll it'll take it right there, which I think is really great.

Kyle Cummings: 10:05

But I know that Transistor, our preferred podcast host, if if you go to the podcast landing page, they do that at that as well, and you can kinda jump around. I just think that's a a nice little value out there.

Mickenzie Vought: 10:16

And is there any special formatting that you need to do to do that, or how do you have to identify those spaces when you're putting in the file? What does that look like?

Kyle Cummings: 10:23

Yeah. I I think you just you just literally write write the time stamps. So if it's 24 minutes, it says 24 minutes. Is it colon or semicolon? I never know.

Kyle Cummings: 10:32

I'm 36. I still don't know.

Mickenzie Vought: 10:33

I think it's a colon because the semicolon is, like, only the semi and the bottom. Right?

Kyle Cummings: 10:37

Okay.

Mickenzie Vought: 10:38

I could be wrong, everyone.

Kyle Cummings: 10:39

And you probably are because we don't know. We still don't know.

Mickenzie Vought: 10:42

We still don't know. I studied communications, and I still don't know.

Kyle Cummings: 10:46

So right just right time. And then Yeah. You know, if 24 colon, semicolon, whatever, 4 seconds

Mickenzie Vought: 10:53

Two dots.

Kyle Cummings: 10:53

And then, yeah, just format it like you're reading it off the clock, and and then Spotify picks up on that and says, hey, that's a time.

Mickenzie Vought: 11:01

That's great. Yeah. I love it. Alright. Now, let's talk intros, Kyle, because I feel like my opinion on this has changed.

Mickenzie Vought: 11:09

So one, what is an intro?

Kyle Cummings: 11:11

Let's so let's make a distinction. Are we talking about the podcast intro? Yeah. Or are we talking about the actual intro to that episode? Or are we talking about both?

Kyle Cummings: 11:22

I think I don't know if anyone's standardized language around this. Yeah. I know. I don't know that we have other than we might say like a standard intro. But that could just be an intro, like, hey, welcome to the pod circle podcast where we provide practical tips and insights for every podcaster.

Kyle Cummings: 11:37

That's kind of our big Yep. Overarching intro. But then we have another intro that follows that typically, that introduces our specific episode. So what would you say about that?

Mickenzie Vought: 11:47

Well, I'm gonna contradict myself because I host a podcast where we have a static standard intro, And then I send you an episode intro on a weekly basis to edit into that. That's introducing our guest and the topic and some things we talk about. It's probably 30 seconds to a minute. I try to keep it short, but, you know, sometimes I talk a lot. And I think I have kind of changed my tune on it, and I think you can give yourself permission to do that.

Mickenzie Vought: 12:13

I think we're gonna do a revamp where we kind of intro the podcast at the top and say, welcome to the living center podcast where we blah blah blah blah because people skip over that.

Kyle Cummings: 12:23

Yeah.

Mickenzie Vought: 12:24

And you're just at the start of your podcast creating a space for people to skip over and potentially miss the information you want them to actually listen to. So that's my opinion, but I think there's there's ways you can do that. You can say, hey. I want to record this so I don't ever have to think about it again. I've got my words perfectly.

Mickenzie Vought: 12:41

I've said it perfectly, and then we just got a static intro that goes into it. At the beginning of the episode, I'll just quickly introduce what we're talking about. That's totally fine too.

Kyle Cummings: 12:49

Yeah. I I don't have super strong opinions on it. I'll tell you what the ones that I listen to, the ones that I don't skip through are the ones that people

Mickenzie Vought: 12:57

just record every time. Because

Kyle Cummings: 12:58

it's quick too. It's quick and, you know, if something funny or interesting happens at the top of the episode, you don't wanna miss that. You know?

Mickenzie Vought: 13:04

If you listen to Dax Shepard Armchair Expert, he always introduces himself as he's like, welcome, welcome, welcome

Kyle Cummings: 13:12

to armchair

Mickenzie Vought: 13:12

expert. I'm and then he always gives himself a weird name.

Kyle Cummings: 13:15

Mhmm. So

Mickenzie Vought: 13:16

That's a perfect example. Who are you gonna be today? You know?

Kyle Cummings: 13:19

Yeah. Like, what's the vibe today? Like, how are we feeling today?

Mickenzie Vought: 13:21

Exactly. Alright. So what your intros, you can have outros as well. So you can have a rotating or a static. And again, I also think what has been the standard in podcast has also evolved and shifted where it used to be way more formulaic of, like, here's the static intro, here's a static outro.

Mickenzie Vought: 13:38

It stays the same. We don't touch it. And I think now, with a change in podcast of how they're more organic and we're recording them remotely and there's less expectations for a high tier of production quality and all of that. I think people have also leaned into, let's do an outro on the back end where we talk about maybe, hey, in this episode, we mentioned this and go on instead of saying here are the 4 CTAs that we're gonna just rotate on blast.

Kyle Cummings: 14:04

Yeah. And we were just actually talking about this. We're 4 episodes into this podcast. We're like, hey, we should maybe let people know, and we'll just do it now that we have an incredible podcast starter kit, a download a free download at podcircle.com/start that we wanna let everyone know about. We also think that we're providing, hopefully, really good content in this podcast.

Kyle Cummings: 14:26

And so if you know another podcaster or someone who's maybe podcast curious, thinking about starting a podcast to share the show,

Mickenzie Vought: 14:32

I guess curious,

Kyle Cummings: 14:33

you know, that's how this podcast will grow with your help. So putting you back in the driver's seat here, just letting people know how they can, you know, get more episodes and grow the show and obviously ratings and reviews and things like that help and just make a clear ask. You know, I think I think that's something that's easy for us to forget. It's like, yeah, we're gonna provide this really great content or this entertaining talk, but then kind of maybe sometimes forget on the back end to drive some traffic where we want them to go. Totally.

Mickenzie Vought: 15:01

I said this on another podcast that we recorded, but you're providing value to your audience. You're providing consistent value for free. And so you're building credibility and you're kinda putting into a bank of people that you can withdraw from occasionally and say, hey. I've got this really awesome offering. Can I ask you to engage a little bit farther with me?

Kyle Cummings: 15:21

Yeah. It's okay to make that ask.

Mickenzie Vought: 15:23

Yeah. From a marketing term, we would say, like, you're not gonna ask someone to marry you on the first date, but you've had a couple dates and you can say, like, hey, can we maybe move from coffee dates to evening dates, you know?

Kyle Cummings: 15:34

Yeah. Love that.

Mickenzie Vought: 15:36

Let's talk about ads. Kyle, I think you are a little bit more of an expert in this space than I am, just because you work with so many people who have different kinds of podcasts and utilize ads in different ways. But what I know is that 69% of podcast listeners say that an ad actually introduced them to a new product or service. And so we do encourage you to use a podcast as a way to get people familiar with your product or service. And I'm a huge fan of internal ads.

Mickenzie Vought: 16:01

If you don't have external partnerships because you're a new podcast and you haven't created the numbers to get external advertisers, it's a really great resource to throw in the middle or at the end or something to talk about your products and services similar to maybe an outro as we were just saying to let people know other ways that they can engage with you.

Kyle Cummings: 16:21

A very common question I get is how do I monetize my podcast?

Mickenzie Vought: 16:24

Yes.

Kyle Cummings: 16:25

And the most common response that I give is to bet on yourself.

Mickenzie Vought: 16:29

Yeah.

Kyle Cummings: 16:29

And you can do this organically. It doesn't have to be super buttoned up. You don't have to hire a voice over person to record this really perfectly written ad for your product service business course, whatever you're you're promoting with your podcast. I think you can even do it organically, like work it into the to the conversation. Yeah.

Kyle Cummings: 16:49

Another tip that I think about here is, say, if you have a, you know, a 30 to 40 minute long podcast, I encourage folks to to make sure that they place their ad. And if we're working on the podcast, we'll do this just by default within the first 15 minutes. You wanna make sure that in in the event that someone doesn't maybe get through the end and doesn't kinda get to those CTAs, those calls to action that they've heard what you're trying to promote.

Mickenzie Vought: 17:12

That's great. What I know is, like, even just from my own anecdotal evidence that our retention rate is about between 60 70% of people when they start an episode listen to the you know, that's the percentage of the episode that they listen to. And so to know that you should put that in that first half.

Kyle Cummings: 17:29

Yeah.

Mickenzie Vought: 17:29

And another thing is if you do find ad partners, I would just really encourage you to write copy that feels relevant to your audience, not hire someone externally and do it yourself because the ads that I actually pay attention to from some of the larger podcast that I listen to is when they are talking about it themselves and make it relevant.

Kyle Cummings: 17:48

And when you say not hire someone external, you just mean like a voice over?

Mickenzie Vought: 17:51

Yeah. Like a voice over person or something.

Kyle Cummings: 17:53

Yeah.

Mickenzie Vought: 17:54

Or, like, keep it really scripted in a way that doesn't feel at all relevant. So if they're talking about, like, hey, I actually use this product and here's what it looks like in my life and blah blah blah blah blah. I remember when Brene Brown started her podcast, she was really strong in saying, I will not have ads on here that I don't personally use, or like an endorse. And so just making sure that you're in line with your own integrity in that way too. That was just my little little caveat.

Kyle Cummings: 18:19

I think you can always tell. I was actually just listening to a podcast with a comedian yesterday. And you can just tell he doesn't he doesn't use the products like it's Yeah. Feels so scripted. And then you can tell the podcast hosts that are advertising that do because they talk about it and they talk about it, their experience with it.

Kyle Cummings: 18:36

And I just think that's much a much more effective way, one, to sell the ad, which is 2, you're just gonna increase the brand partnership that you have with that advertiser. But I think for starters, like you mentioned, before you have those download numbers that are where you're really gonna be able to solicit that advertising, bet on yourself, advertise yourself, and you don't have to be feel sleazy or icky doing that. You're giving away free content, free expertise, entertainment, whatever it is. So it's okay to talk a little bit about what you do. If you're a comedian, we talk about this.

Kyle Cummings: 19:08

Plug your shows. Plug them right away. If you have a course, share your knowledge and expertise and then plug your course. Give them a simple URL to follow, an easy way from in the show notes to find it, and, then you're off to the races.

Mickenzie Vought: 19:20

Yeah. Can you talk about dynamic ads? Because I was just thinking even just in that example you gave. Let's say I record a podcast. I'm a comedian, and I talk about I have an ad about a show coming up.

Mickenzie Vought: 19:30

Then in 2 weeks, that show is no longer relevant. And I've got a podcast that this is baked into an episode.

Kyle Cummings: 19:37

Yes. I love and I appreciate you bringing that up. I have a lot of conversations with podcasters recently about dynamic ads. So the old school way to do it, which is I think the way that a lot of people are still doing it is they're just burning their ads into their episodes. And then they're just there forever.

Kyle Cummings: 19:52

So if you go back and yeah. Hey, it happens. It's and part of it is is like a podcast hosting issue. You know what I mean? So not all podcast hosts are suited to do dynamic ads.

Kyle Cummings: 20:02

But what's great about dynamic ads, so say when I go to upload a new episode for a podcast that we produce for a client, I'll make a little market say like, hey, at, you know, 15 minutes, this is a great spot for us to add in an ad. And then in transistor, we'll say, hey, this week, we're gonna run this ad campaign, we're gonna talk about this book or this service or whatever we're trying to promote. And then we're gonna run that ad across all of their podcasts. So there might be a 100 podcast. But if people are going back and consuming that some of that content retroactively, especially if you create evergreen content Yeah.

Kyle Cummings: 20:38

That's not new Newsy and changing by the day. I work on a couple of podcasts that have old episodes where they had, you know, I'm thinking of one in particular, where they interviewed, Damon John from Shark Tank, and that episode still gets a ton. So we made that we took out the burnt in ads that we did a long time ago. And we replaced those with dynamic ads where they can market, they can run new ad campaigns

Mickenzie Vought: 21:00

in What's going on right now?

Kyle Cummings: 21:02

Yeah. And so I just think that's it's a no brainer. It's not difficult to do, especially if you're starting your podcast that way.

Mickenzie Vought: 21:08

Yeah.

Kyle Cummings: 21:09

And I just think you're gonna get kind of more bang for your podcast buck because making a podcast isn't free for most people. So give your content a longer shelf life. I just think that's the way to go.

Mickenzie Vought: 21:20

Awesome. Well, I told you I had 6, but this is my bonus. And it's just my soapbox, so I'll say it quickly. But another thing that you should be writing, another copy you should be writing on a consistent basis is an episode outline. I believe this can take your podcast to the next level.

Mickenzie Vought: 21:35

Plan, plan, plan. You can include interview research, include notes, themes you wanna hit. What I always call is like an episode road map, like, we'll start here and then we'll kinda go here and I think we'll go here. It creates room for spontaneity, but it also creates a little bit of a plan for you in a direction so that you don't hit a stall point. And so I just wanna encourage you to create an episode outline.

Kyle Cummings: 21:58

Such great advice. Copy is important. And like we said from the beginning, I think it's one of those things where it's like, man, I got this thing I wanna talk about. I'm gonna get me a mic off Amazon, we're gonna set this bad boy up, and we're gonna roll. Yep.

Kyle Cummings: 22:10

And then you get into it like, oh, I need to I need all this copy. I need this. I need to think through this stuff. So I hope this is really helpful to you guys. Yeah.

Kyle Cummings: 22:17

We have these kind of tips and advice, not only in this podcast format, but also in our podcast starter kit that you can download for free at podcircle.com/start. So pick that up. It's really, really valuable information. It's gonna get you where you're trying to go if you are a new or aspiring podcaster.

Mickenzie Vought: 22:36

Yes. Take you from that ideation to actual execution and make it palatable and step by step because it's not just this big thing that you don't know how to do. We've got checklists for you and things to really walk you through the whole process. So we will be back next week with more tips and more fun. Thanks, Kyle.

Kyle Cummings: 22:53

Alright. See you next week.