Podcast Websites: The Blubrry Way – PCI 353

Speaker 0 00:00:00 The biggest mistake you could do of having your own website is instead of a big fat popup that shows up like five seconds after they land on the website for you, asking them to sign up for your newsletter,

Speaker 1 00:00:11 They just asked me to leave.

Speaker 0 00:00:12 Because really what you're doing is if they don't know you, they don't know your website, you're basically said, Hey, hey Stranger, sign up for my spam. Liz,

Speaker 2 00:00:23 You're listening to Podcast Insider, a weekly podcast bringing insights, advice, and insider tips and tricks to help you start, grow and thrive through podcasting with the support of your team here at Blueberry Podcasting. Welcome. Let's dive in.

Speaker 0 00:00:37 This is Todd Cochran, CEO and co-founder of Blueberry Podcasting.

Speaker 1 00:00:40 And I'm Mike Dell, the VP of Customer Relations here at Blueberry. And a website serves many purposes for your podcast. And today we're gonna go over the blueberry way, what that means in relation to your internet presence.

Speaker 0 00:01:00 Ooh, this, this is a warm topic. We can talk about this a little bit here recently, Mike.

Speaker 1 00:01:05 Yes, you have. So it'll be a good one.

Speaker 0 00:01:07 And you know, someone said to me the other day, they said, why? Why do I need to have my own website? And a new reason that I've been overlooking? Can't believe we haven't talked about this for a long time. Basically kind of crept into my subconscious. And what it really is, is, let's think about this for a second, Mike. Let's say that you are hosting on a competitor's website and your show lives, all the posts, all the episodes, all the show notes lives on your competitor.com/your keyword website for your show. Well, what happens when your show kind of grows up, and let's say you've done a hundred episodes and Google with whatever little SEO o you may get from that site, Google knows where those orange points of those episodes are, and then you decide, I'm gonna move and I'm gonna move to my own website, then what you really are invoking is chaos for a little bit, because you're gonna move the source point for all those articles, which should have been the first place on your own.com.

Speaker 0 00:02:17 It's going to probably take 60 to 90 days for Google to kinda get its head straight and say, Hey, this content is no longer over@somepodcasthost.com, your site is now on my seo optimized.com domain. And I think that's something that is, that we've failed to talk about. Obviously, you know, the saying that we've all used in the company I think people have adopted from me over the years is you don't build your, you don't build a castle on rented land. And if you're building your brand and building your castle, building your show on a rented property, then you need to change. You need to have a website. And there's multitudes of reasons of why having that. And again, if you don't have it on your own website already, it's not too late. You need to move to your own.com as soon as possible. And let, let's talk a little bit about some of those reasons they should have their own podcast website.

Speaker 1 00:03:14 Well, first and foremost is seo. Google and other search engines know the, the origin point for your show. And if it's not on something you control, then you don't get all of the Google juice. You may get some of it, uh, you know, and through the different apps and whatnot. But again, you know, it is important. A lot of, a lot of other podcast hosting companies and gurus will say, ah, you don't need a website. You know, it's fine to be here and there. And yeah, I mean, guess for podcast itself it is, but discovery is done in Google and other search engine, you know, being somewhat and some of the other ones. And that's one of the main reasons. The other main reason is you need a home base for your show because, you know, apple might decide that they don't like you anymore and take you out. Well, if your listeners know where to find you, because you're saying it on every episode, like, you know, come to podcast insider.com if you ever, ever miss this show. Cuz that's where we'll be

Speaker 0 00:04:21 The same point though too, Mike. It's not just protection of your show brand and your feed, it's also lead generation. It's merch, it's newsletter. I mean, there's this whole host of things that can be the jumping off point for people that are your listeners of your, of your show to be able to come in and to, to basically be involved in the podcast. Right? Right.

Speaker 1 00:04:46 You know, you know, you build a bit of a community around a website and, you know, and just podcasting is not the end of it. You, you have to promote, you have to, you know, there's a lot of things. And a, and a website definitely helps that, and I, I put this in here, pride of ownership. You know, when, when I design a website and I'm not a good website designer, but, you know, sometimes I hit a home run and I like to show it off, and I'm kind of proud of that, and it's something that I control. Like if you're on podcast hosting company and you got, you know, a little landing page there, chances are you don't have a lot of control over the look of that. And with your own website, you do have control over that.

Speaker 0 00:05:33 No, and I think it's, it's important. You know, we obviously, you know, being from Blueberry, we want you to use WordPress and Power Press and be able to have, you know, all that power there to be able to publish or post, upload and publish your podcast right within your dashboard. You don't have to visit blueberry ever unless you wanna come check your stats or wanna use one of the extra tools, but really gives you this, this freedom to build what is yours. And like I've said many, many times, if Blueberry ever decided to pull the plug on our business, which, which we're not Power Press and WordPress would still continue to work. You would not have an extinction event, a plugin would continue to do what it's supposed to do even without blueberry around. Now that's not gonna happen. But I'm just, that's kind of, we build into this, into the DNA of the company, is that we want to make sure that you as a podcaster have a platform that you can rely on long term.

Speaker 0 00:06:28 And it's your platform. It's your platform, right? With the addition of our tools, we make it easier, obviously, but it's, it's one thing for sure, it's, you can, like Mike said, you control your brand, your intellectual property. I call it kind of internally, I don't tell my audience this, but you know, my site's kinda like moon base outfits where everything happens. Mm-hmm. , you know, it's the center of the, the shows universe, the earth revolves around my.com Hahaha. But at least for your show. Yeah. At least for the show. But it is a, a methodology too, and it's just one of many things you have to do to succeed as a podcaster. Again, you know, we're not talking about social promotion, we're not talking about getting on the news. We're not talking about getting interviews and appearing on another podcast or doing, you know, some sort of cross promotions.

Speaker 0 00:07:16 We're not talking about any of that. We're just talking about the very base podcast 1 0 1 function of being able to tell your audience, come over to my.com and sign up for my newsletter, come over to my.com and, and check out the new mugs we have or t-shirts or, or pens, or come over to my.com and make a donation to the show. Sign up and, and become a, a contributor. Come over to my.com and sign up writing my newsletter. It's just all these things that you can do where a originates with you and more. And also, let's say someone picks up your show from social media or from LinkedIn or Facebook or wherever they picked up the show and found out about it or been told by a friend of the show, they're gonna get on the show and they're, and they're gonna use the podcast app to subscribe based upon what someone has told them about your podcast.

Speaker 0 00:08:05 They're gonna search for your show name and they're say, is this it? Yeah, that's it. Go ahead and subscribe. And they're gonna listen. And it gives you the opportunity to connect with a brand new listener and say, Hey, can I do it on my podcast every time? Hey, if you're brand new to the show, make sure get over to such and such.com. Uh, make sure if you're not already follow and subscribe to the show. There's links there on the side of the website. Get signed up for the newsletter while you're there. We do have a chat room, it's here. Da, go through my little spiel where I dress all those new customers or new listeners. I shouldn't say customers potential. Yeah. Every time I do my podcast, and over time someone may be out and about say, oh wow, I'm listening to this great show that you can look it up.

Speaker 0 00:08:50 He's got a website, or she's got a website@chester.com or.show or whatever the de domain you picked up. And he's also, or she or he or she is also on Spotify, apple Podcast. Wherever you live, you know, whatever podcast, have your go ahead and check 'em out. It gives that extra piece instead of saying, come over to my podcast host.com/some keyword, that is not gonna work real well. It's harder, right? Harder, harder to remember. That's one of the reasons why we did quick links too, where you can have now an easy to remember, easy to spiel, uh, landing page for people as a jumping up point to find all this stuff we're talking about. Go to podcast.show/podcast. That's this show's Quick Links podcast Do show slash podcast. Easy enough to remember, right? So, but also podcast insider.com is pretty easy to remember as well, even though the show is hosted by blueberry on a blueberry.com podcast insider.com takes you to the podcast section blueberry. So it's really about, again, about building your brand. I'll give a word of caution. Um, nothing beats, if you're using any type of site where it's using an SS feed to build the content on the website, you use extreme caution because those are considered syndication sites and there's not as much as you can do. And yet get a lower authority from Google with those. Everything that you, where you get the authority is when you log into your.com and you publish your episode on that website and it originates on that.com. Yeah.

Speaker 1 00:10:29 Your r s s feed address, which most people don't really care about as far as what it is, but if it has your domain in it, that's extra Google Juice that you wouldn't normally get. And there's not very many ways of, of doing that. Power press and WordPress is, is our way of doing it. And it's, you know, I just know that it's easier for me to find episodes of shows that are hosting with us and doing this. So if I wanna find an episode about something, a lot of times it comes up as a blog post on that.com and then, oh, hey, it's a podcast. Here's a player. Oh, here's the subscribe links. It's, it's, it's a great way to onboard new listeners based on your episode topics, which a lot of other podcasts, you know, ways of podcasting doesn't give you.

Speaker 0 00:11:24 And I would say too, that there is a little bit of an art and it's really the art's not the right word to to use, but I always tell content creators that are creating content on their own websites. You, you record for your audience, you write for Google and your show notes, your, your episode title backed up by the first paragraph of your episode show notes should be very rich so that you give some Google something to chew on. Uh, again, listeners are generally not coming to the website to listen to your podcast on the website, although some tech sites get quite a bit of traffic. But again, this is really what you're doing is with having your own website. I call it your feeding the 800 pound gorilla called Google and you're trying to get indexed, as Mike said, any show, any show name generally can be found in Google. Doesn't matter really where it's at.

Speaker 1 00:12:15 Yeah, if they already know the name, but how are they gonna find the name? That's the thing.

Speaker 0 00:12:21 Or the key is, it's not necessarily about finding a name, it's about discovery. So as an example, one of the episodes that I did on my show, the title of it was A Logarithm Changes by Facebook Lee's Publishers in Dark. And it was an article about a 50% drop of traffic coming off Facebook, going to individual websites because Facebook doesn't want people leaving Facebook. And I talked about this value of continuing to build your own brand, build your own website, being able to give the, the search engines ability to chew on data so that when someone, as an example, searches for a li a logarithm changes by Facebook, guess who shows up in the first five results on Google? I do. And they come to the page and there's a little bit of a description of that title on that post, but lo and behold, guess what else is there? Right? There is the player to play and subscribe, links to follow or subscribe to the podcast right on the page. So even though the percentage of people that hit that page will subscribe, it is an opportunity to convert someone to a listener. Now, the biggest mistake you could do of having your own website instead of a big bat popup that shows up like five seconds after they land on the website for you asking them to sign up for your newsletter,

Speaker 1 00:13:41 They just ask me to leave.

Speaker 0 00:13:42 Because really what you're doing is if they don't know you, they don't know your website, you're basically said, Hey, hey stranger, sign up for my spam list. Well, you need to get to know somebody. They get to need to know you. I have no popup on my website. I have a simple link that says newsletter that people can click through. And when they get there, there's a click to, you know, click the subscribe button.

Speaker 1 00:14:04 When, when I say that to people, they say, but oh, it works. I get X number of signups, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well yeah, it works. But I bet you if you make it more subtle and ask people to sign up and give 'em them away to do it without popping it up in their face, you're gonna have more success

Speaker 0 00:14:26 And people are gonna stick around longer and not be yeah, disgruntled and leave.

Speaker 1 00:14:30 And remember, this is an audio format, so everything that you want people to do, say it in your show and give them a place to do it.

Speaker 0 00:14:40 Yeah, and I, and I think really key here is, again, this is a, this is a long-term game. When you first start your show and you publish your third, fourth, fifth episode and you go looking for it on Google, if I'm trying to find an episode, you may not find it yet cuz Google doesn't trust you yet. So it's gonna take a little while, month or two, three months of consistently publishing your episodes. And then Google's gonna start to say, oh, yep, this site's putting out original content. It's not a, it's not a spam site, it's not a link bot, it's, you know, it's all these things that they discourage, it's all the thing, it isn't, in other words, it isn't. It's all the things that they want. It's all original content, original posts, link to original content. Maybe you've got your transcript linked there, there's just a whole whole of things.

Speaker 0 00:15:25 Factors are gonna say, Google's gonna say, okay, good, good, good, good, better, good, good, good. And then all of a sudden magic happens and you start getting referral traffic based upon the titles of your episodes that have been written so that someone searching for that topic in a way they would search on Google, find your content, find your website, and you gain listeners that way. It's again, a percentage of them will become listeners, but otherwise they're lost. You know, you write just some hokey title and some real one sentence show note, you're not gonna get any advantage here. So it's, it's more than just having a website. There's a series of things you have to follow through on. And with AI and all this stuff, now it's writing in show notes should be very, very easy.

Speaker 1 00:16:10 Yeah, ai, I think that could be overused.

Speaker 0 00:16:14 I think so too, but

Speaker 1 00:16:16 So just be careful if you're gonna be writing show notes and blog posts with AI that you go in and personalize it.

Speaker 0 00:16:24 Absolutely. Don't, don't just cut and paste whatever you do.

Speaker 1 00:16:28 I played around a little bit with the show notes for this show with some AI stuff, but I didn't just cut and paste. I Oh, that's a good idea. And couple of sentences and , you know, and you know, that's good in a way. But you know, again, you're the expert on your topic or, or at least that's what you're trying to portray to the world and having your own website is the first step of that. But second off, be original. I mean, you are you, nobody else is you . So some people may like that, some people might not, but you're never gonna know if you're putting on a persona that doesn't match who you really are. I know that's a little off the, yeah, having a website thing, but having a website is the first part of that. And again, you know, the, the biggest one is just having a home base. Because again, you know, you could say it every time in your podcast and then people know where to find you. I don't know how many times I've tried to, you know, I'm talking to somebody about a podcast episode I listened to and I can't remember anything except the name of their show, you know, because they never say where their website is. But the best way to find somebody is a website.

Speaker 0 00:17:43 So I think, you know, we beat a dead horse here quite a little bit here. I think the main thing is, is we understand the added value and we hope that you'll consider it as well. Don't let someone tell you, oh, having a website's old fashioned. Well look at all the biggest shows in podcasting. They all have their own, they have their own websites, their own brands. Find me one that doesn't. And and I'll look at it, but that is not the trend. And, uh, we want you to be on a winning solution to grow your show. As a reminder, I'm available three to five times a week to talk to you as a podcaster to help you with challenges that you're having with your show. I did a couple of these this week, it was great talking with podcasters to help give 'em some ideas.

Speaker 0 00:18:26 And then we follow up in, uh, three to six months after they've done a call with me to see how those changes have helped them. So don't be afraid to drop me an email. That contact information will be at the end of the show. Uh, but feel free to reach out and say, Hey Todd, I'd like to have a 30 minute consult with you. Uh, Mike does tech checkups as well. And again, I think we covered this in the ending, but it's just, I wanna personalize this a little bit and remind you that, that that is available for you.

Speaker 1 00:18:49 Yeah, got a couple scheduled for, uh, tomorrow actually. So , so yeah, take advantage of that, you know, if you're having some tech challenges or you just wanna make sure everything is working technically correct, you know, shoot an email to me, mike@blueberry.com and, uh, we'll, we'll get you on the schedule and check everything out for you.

Speaker 0 00:19:10 So tell us what you thought of this episode. Let us know. Are you gonna get your own website if you don't have one already? And guess and guess what, GoDaddy is, uh, one of our, I've been GoDaddy's, been sponsor of my personal podcast for years. Lots of places to buy domain names, domain name prices are going up, but there's lots of them available. So, but go out there and get yourself a domain name today, get one bought and, uh, get it, get your, get your personal website set up. Let's, and Mike and the team will help migrate you from wherever you are. Or if you're just using the current dashboard at Blueberry, we'll, we'll get you into one of our free WordPress sites here at the company that we give every hosting customer. So, uh, Mike, any other thoughts?

Speaker 1 00:19:47 No, uh, just, uh, go out there and be prolific.

Speaker 2 00:19:51 Thanks for joining us. Let's meet up next week. And in the meantime, for more information to subscribe, share or follow, check out the show notes@podcastinsider.com to check out our latest suite of services and help Blueberry can help you leverage your podcast. Visit blueberry.com. That's blueberry without the ease.