PodCraft | How to Podcast & Craft a Fantastic Show The Podcast Host

Kay is the co-host of the In Da Trenches Podcast and asks about optimising their name, outline, and theme. 

Sometimes it helps to take a step back and look at the bigger picture of your podcast, asking questions such as:
What’s its purpose?Who’s it for?What does success look like for me?You can then start to work backwards from these.

Another very useful exercise is to use our free Podcast Planner Tool.

And we have thorough guides on Podcast Names, Descriptions, and Formats for a deeper dive on those topics, too. 
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Laurent of the Puissante Panoplie podcast asks us about breaks between seasons. He feels that these can halt his momentum, and make him feel a bit like a headless chicken, jumping from task to task with no real plan in mind. Once the break is over, Laurent adds, he feels anything but rested or organised going into his new season.

On this episode, we talk about ways to better structure your breaks in between seasons. We also cover the benefits of running an audience survey during these periods. You can even collect listener feedback in voice form, as we're doing on this season of PodCraft. 
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Our question this week comes from Teresa of the Homeschool Mama SelfCare Podcast. Teresa's asking us about the optimal position of podcast ads so as to optimise their impact and minimise the chance of them annoying the listeners. 

On this episode, we cover:
Is there a "right" time to play a podcast adThe difference between pre, mid, and post-roll adsThe difference between pre-recorded and host-read ads How you can make ads part of your contentAnd why ads might not be essential to the monetisation of your show, going forward. This episode was sponsored by (and made with) Alitu, The Podcast Maker. 
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On this new season of PodCraft we're going to be answering your podcasting questions. Here's how to submit yours!

This time around, we have a question from Brooke of Let's Talk Art With Brooke.

Brooke has been podcasting for six years and as well over 200 episodes, but is concerned with lack of audience growth.

This is a big question in and of itself (so big, in fact, that we actually wrote a book about it). But we find that there's always a few low-hanging fruits that can have an impact right away. These include good, compelling episode titles, Calls to Action, thorough SEO-friendly shownotes, and appearing as a guest on other relevant podcasts. 
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It's part two of our dive into the Podcaster Cares Survey data. This time around, we're talking NFTs, measuring success, social media, loudness, and bitrates.

We also take a look at some interesting differences between podcasters of five years or more, and folks who've been doing it less than five years.

Podcasters of 5 years or more have stronger opinions on Apple Podcasts and RSS Feeds
67.5% of the 5 years or more group agreed that a podcast isn’t really a podcast if it doesn’t have an RSS feed.Of the folks in podcasting for fewer than five years, 39.8% agreed, whilst 38.9% didn’t care. 25.3% in the 5 years or more group didn’t care about RSS feeds.44.6% of the 5 years or more group believe that Apple could and should be doing more to help podcasters. This is compared to 34.9% of the newer podcasters group.53% of the newer podcasters have no real opinion on Apple either way, compared to 34.9% of the 5 years or more group. Newer podcasters pay less attention to podcast loudness & bitrates
60.2% of podcasters of 5 years or more have a set and consistent loudness level for their show.This is compared to 31.4% of folks podcasting for 0-5 years. 29.7% of newer podcasters don’t worry about loudness levels.This is compared to only 15.7% of the 5 years or more group. 42.9% of newer podcasters have no idea what bitrates are. Only 15.7% of the 5 years or more group thought the same. Get the full Podcaster Cares Survey Report right here. 
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The more podcasting grows, the more people talk about it. Some of it is genuine news, and some of it is gossip or clickbait. Rather than waste your time with articles about irrelevant topics, we want to know what the average podcaster cares about most.
So, we put up a survey and invited our entire audience to take part through the blog, email and social. We offered a few prizes to say thanks, including a 1st prize gift voucher and a few of our own books (The Podcast Host Planner and Podcast Growth manual). 
We were delighted to see responses from over 500 podcasters (537 in total!) who generously shared their opinions with us. Let’s take a look at what podcasters think of the topics that spark debate in the content creation community.

Get the full Podcaster Cares Survey Report right here. 
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