Podcasting 101, Blubrry Thrive Bundle – PCI 387

Speaker 0 00:00:00 We are providing listener and subscriber data. You have the ability now through the Thrive Pan to track your audience growth with new stats, distinguishing between listeners and subscribers. And we've worked really hard to define those two topics. 'cause people always ask us, how many listeners do I have and how many subscribers do I have? And it's a very hard question to answer. You're listening to Podcast Insider hosted by Mike Dell, Todd Cochrane, and Mackenzie Bennett from the blueberry team, bringing you weekly insights, advice and insider tips and tricks to help you start, grow and thrive through podcast. All with the support of your team here at Blueberry Podcasting. Welcome. Let's dive in. This is Todd Cochrane, CEO and Co-founder of Blueberry Podcasting.

Speaker 2 00:00:50 And I'm Mackenzie Bennett, marketing specialist here at Blueberry. We offer so many additional features as part of the blueberry podcasting suite of services that not all of them can fit into our hosting and stats plans. So we bundled them together. We call it the Thrive Bundle.

Speaker 0 00:01:05 You know, our Thrive Bundle is a bundle that, for the better words, is continuing to having value added to it. It was one of those we designed to add lots of little tricks and tips. , is that the word I wanna say? Or features?

Speaker 2 00:01:22 We we, yeah, we did design it to be that way, but it came about on accident. We created a hole for ourselves of we were like, okay, we wanna offer this, we wanna do this, we wanna do this. We can't offer all of these things by themselves. So we decided, let's just bundle it and then go from there. And that's what we can use to constantly provide new features

Speaker 0 00:01:46 Here in the very new feature, we're gonna add a ton of value to the Thrive Plan and we're gonna be talking a little bit about that today, but a lot about it in a future episode. But the Thrive bundles really an affordable add-on. It's just $10 a month to your existing plan. And again, as I said, we want to continue to add value to it over time. It some point we'll probably say has it received enough value for the $10? And, and we may be at that point with the next feature we're gonna add. But one thing for sure is a lot of folks wanted the ability to do dynamic ad insertions, specifically a pre-roll, but did not want to have to upgrade to our professional podcast hosting plan that we talked about in the last episode. So we,

Speaker 2 00:02:35 It's an understandable want and need for people.

Speaker 0 00:02:37 Yeah, so we added DAI for pre-roll only. That allows podcasters to automate the insertion of ads or promos at the start of the episodes, again to promote previous episodes, events, sponsorships as just a single feature of the Thrive Plan. That in itself, the majority of folks that are using the pre-roll feature are on a pro plan, which is a much, much higher starting price. And that was just one of the features that we have included with Thrive Plan. We've got some more.

Speaker 2 00:03:10 One of those other things is the expanded episode listener comparison. So some people I believe with our advanced hosting plans get the episode listener comparison charts, but this gives you more control over it. You're able to pick and choose the episodes that you want to use as opposed to just the most recent five. So it's a great way to really see what's going on from episode to episode. I think

Speaker 0 00:03:39 The advance plan actually only allows the podcasters to analyze the last three episodes. And then when you add the Thrive plan you, like McKenzie said, you can analyze five episodes, any five episodes, and I'm in there a lot. I'm doing ab comparisons between content that was relatively similar to see which show is tracking better as far as the number of people that are listening to it in the same amount of time. So the expanded episode listener comparison is, is definitely a great value to be able to get that extra added data. And along with that, within the stats we are providing listener and subscriber data. You have the ability now through the Thrive Pan to track your audience growth with new stats, distinguishing between listeners and subscribers. And we've worked really hard to define those two topics. 'cause people always ask us, how many listeners do I have and how many subscribers do I have? And it's a very hard question to answer. And within the actual charts that we provide you in stats, we provide the actual formula that we use to determine the difference between listeners and those that are subscribed. And it does give you a good ability to see if you're gaining on the people that are actually following and subscribing to your show versus those that are just coming in and and clicking play. And uh, we think that that's pretty valuable data that a lot of podcasters would want. And again, that's part of the Thrive Bundle.

Speaker 2 00:05:09 I think that's probably my favorite feature. I think it's really nice to be able to look at that cohesive number here as opposed to logging into all of the different directories that you are involved in and doing the math yourself. This is really saying based on the information that we have and that we are able to track, this is what's happening. And I think it's just answers a lot of questions for people who, yeah, I mean you said it, we've been asked this question for a decade, so it's nice to have.

Speaker 0 00:05:40 One of the charts that we have in Stats is probably the most, I guess for a better words, most unusual is something we call average Daily Place. And again, it uses a very unique formula and we actually explain that formula in detail under the info button of this chart. But it's a unique metric offering insights into show growth and back catalog consumption. So basically what we do in essence as we look back 12 episodes and we see how those are tracking not only from the first date was released to today and we actually look at those past 12 episodes and get an idea of how, how are listeners tracking when it comes to older episodes. And what it really does is if you have a much richer back catalog, in other words where people are coming in listening to that back catalog, your average daily plays will will be higher.

Speaker 0 00:06:37 Whereas if they're not listening to that back catalog, your average daily plays will not be as, I guess for better words, have as much upward momentum. But the goal is to still see that chart climb over time. A decline of average daily plays is usually an indication that you need maybe need to look at your content a little bit and see what you're doing. But, and it doesn't require a lot of an uptick or a lot of a downtick to really get a quick glance at what's going on because the way the average daily plays looks, it's because it uses a set of averages. And again, we give you that formula, you can calculate it yourself as well based upon the data we provide by downloading the spreadsheet. But again, it's a pretty unique metric and it's one that most podcasters have the hardest time looking at. But at the same time, I feel has a great deal of value if you look at that over, over a period of time seeing where's what's happening across the last 12 episodes. Of course, if you're a new podcaster and you add Thrive Planning, you don't have 12 episodes yet that chart will not be as valuable to you as it will be once you get past those first 12 episodes.

Speaker 2 00:07:47 It's worth the wait though for that data to collect similar to Google Analytics or anything like that. You can't, you have to have more data is always better. So one of the things that we also added was just some more customization with our quick links so everyone receives quick links, which is like a fun way for you to add an all encompassing link to for people to find everything associated to your podcast. But this just allows you to get some ana, add some analytics, add some donations, customize it a little bit more. And one of those things is podcasting 2.0 feature. So Todd, I'll let you handle that one. That's more of your forte.

Speaker 0 00:08:29 Yeah, so if you go over to podcast show slash podcast, you'll see the podcast Insider Quick Links page and we love that Quick links feature because it's basically like a link tree almost for a podcaster, but a link tree on steroids. So go over to podcast show slash podcast to see the one here from this show. But the podcast 2.0 features allow you if you're participating in the value for value ecosphere, it allows you to, uh, to be able to receive donations that way. Also be able to tie into the a standard donation link through maybe a PayPal or Patreon. But yeah, it's just added some additional features. So those of you that are participating in Value for Value or Podcast 2.0, you have a little more information on your quick link page. Again, little additional features that we add on. And I think more importantly, the customizable links that you're able to add to Quick Links is probably the biggest value there by having Thrive. And of course in conjunction with all the other things that we've provided in the Thrive package, which is one more and plus some more soon.

Speaker 2 00:09:38 I'm very excited about what we are adding soon. I think the way that people are able to work on their show will probably be adjusted by this. We

Speaker 0 00:09:48 Should recommend or also note too that we do provide, when you are on Thrive, you're able to get your Apple Podcast reviews in your stats. So this allows you to look at those reviews to come in, how often who, where, what they've said. And then you've got the ability to promote your so success with easy social media sharing of those reviews. And again, those are found right in the stats system itself as well as an added value of the Thrive Plan. Now here's the thing that we've got coming. We've spent a lot of time, a lot of testing and developing and this is probably, I don't know, how far back did we start planning the six months ago?

Speaker 2 00:10:27 Yeah, for sure it was warm . Yeah, that's what I, that's what I remember.

Speaker 0 00:10:31 And, and we've really worked hard to bring you our new podcast AI platform and we're gonna be going into the details of that. But the podcast AI platform is gonna be become a part of the Thrive package. And I, I will just say this, we have compared and contrast platforms that are out there, dedicated podcast AI platforms out there that charge a hundred dollars a month, some that charge $50 a month, 49.99. It's always really expensive. And the feature that we're basically gonna replace most of those AI platforms with their key features, some of those platforms will have some other features that we don't have currently, but we will ultimately build, we're gonna get this full-blown AI platform that's gonna help you with production, it's gonna help you pre-production, post-production, social. And what we just demoed a few days ago is the ability to do some clippings.

Speaker 0 00:11:31 Those four things are gonna be part of the Base Thrive package and we're gonna add some more AI stuff, uh, that's gonna be available free within, uh, the blueberry dashboard itself as well. But for those that are really wanting to up their gain, and all I will ultimately say is the output, the metadata output that is going into show notes, chapters, images, has vastly improved my show. And, and believe it or not, all these other little AI tools that I was using before, I was spending a lot more time, like an additional 30 minutes producing my show. Now the way we have this flow set up with this new a AI system from blueberry, I'm actually saving time. It's remarkable. I never thought it would be the opposite. I'm actually getting all those 30 minutes back plus some additional times. We'll talk about the AI system here probably in the next episode. But we're very excited to bring this and add this to Thrive.

Speaker 2 00:12:29 I had a good time going around to each service and trying to do something and figuring out what do I not like about this, what is great about this and how can we emulate this for our own customers? So I think it'll be a great addition and really round out a good set of features that can help any podcaster.

Speaker 0 00:12:51 And I'll just tease, it's coming very soon, . Very soon we made a decision not gonna be released until it's ready, but I've run enough tests and our beta testers to run enough tests. We're close. We're very close. So there we go. We're looking forward to it. And there's Thrive, add Thrive to your plan. And by the way, we will be giving everyone a free trial of the AI system. So don't worry if you don't have Thrive, not Thrive, you are gonna get to do a few tests. But hey, just add it to your plan now and be done with it. Get all the extra other stuff. Thanks for joining us. Come back next week and in the meantime, head to podcast insider.com for more information to subscribe, share, and read our show notes. Check out the latest suite of services and learn how Blueberry can help you. Leverage your podcast. Visit blueberry.com. That's blueberry without the ease because they can't afford the ease.