110: The Latest Podcast Industry Updates

Written By Britany Felix
 
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What’s This Episode About?

In this first episode back from my summer hiatus, I do a quick recap of the latest podcast industry updates from the past two months that you should be aware of to help stay on top of the podcasting game and help alleviate some potential frustrations; including the reason your podcast downloads may have dropped this summer, the extremely popular platform that’s finally giving podcasts the attention they deserve (and what you need to do to make sure you can take advantage of it), the easy way you can continue to stay informed about the industry news and tools, and more.

Transcript

Welcome to podcasting for coaches. I'm Britany Felix and I'm a podcast launch consultant who specializes in helping coaches and consultants utilize the power of podcasting as a way to build brand awareness and generate new leads for their business. I realize not every new coach or consultant can afford to hire someone to help launch their show. So I created this podcast as a way to guide you through the process of launching and utilizing your very own podcast to help you grow your business and reach a new audience of adoring followers and potential clients. If you're ready to get your voice and podcast out into the world, head over to podcasting for coaches.com to learn more.

Welcome back to podcasting for coaches, in case you haven't been around the show has been on hiatus since the end of May. So this episode is just going to be a quick recap of what has happened in the podcasting industry, that I think you as a coach or consultant podcasting as part of your business needs to be aware of. So these are the things that happened in June in July. And the first thing is that when we left off before the summer hiatus, Apple had recently rolled out an entirely new Platform Podcast connect a new version of the app, Apple podcasts, and it was kind of a fucking disaster. So I am happy to report that most of those issues have been worked out most of the bugs have been fixed. And Apple podcast is now just about back to normal for almost everyone. One of the things that I wasn't aware of at the time that the show went on hiatus, that I became aware of over the summer, and wanted to update you on is that there was a bug with Apple podcasts that was causing some shows to not auto download episodes for subscribers. So if you're not familiar with this, the reason that Apple's numbers are higher than just about any other platform. Yes, they do have a lot of users. But a contributing factor is that if someone subscribes to your show, it automatically air quotes downloads the episode, whether they've played it or not. So it counts as a download for you, even if the listener has

not actually hit the play button, even if they've not listened to a single second, which is why all the way back in Episode 30. for understanding your podcast stats, I broke this down for you and said that your download numbers can be deceiving. And I don't want you to Super focus hardcore on them. And especially not the specific number, because downloads do not equal actual listens. But a lot of people saw their podcast download numbers from Apple podcasts dip pretty dramatically in June and most of July. And that could be for a variety of factors, it could be a very real thing. However, it also can probably be contributed to this bug with the apple podcast app, not automatically downloading episodes for subscribers. So if you saw a dip in your download numbers throughout June, and throughout July, you did not go on hiatus, you release the same amount of episodes you normally do. You promoted it the same way you normally do. You change pretty much nothing about the show, but you still saw a drop in your downloads. This is a potential reason why it could also be because people are getting back out and doing things now that people are getting more vaccinated and they're feeling more comfortable to leave the house. That could also be another factor. But just know that if your downloads start getting back to normal in August and September, then the dip and downloads in August was most likely due to this glitch. Another issue that happened over the summer as a result of Apple's royally screwing up rolling out these new things was that over most of the summer, hyperlinks were not really allowed in the episode descriptions in Apple podcast, which means that if you put links to your show notes to your courses, your programs, your newsletter, any of those things, it probably didn't work for you all summer long. And you may not have even realized that if you don't use the app yourself. The good news is is that has now finally been resolved. And HTML links should start working. They should already be working actually, in the apple podcast app. So if you had that issue over the summer, so you haven't been putting links in your descriptions. Don't worry, go ahead and put those in which still do it anyway as you should have because not everyone uses that mobile hot gas, but they should be working fine now so you should be good to go there. Also over the summer I saw quite a few people in podcasting communities and even some of my own clients have issues with the platform or Riverside. Now I have been personally using Riverside and recommending it for a while now. I do still recommend it. It does still have my top recommendation for recording remote interviews. And I am happy to say that it does seem like these glitches that happened over the summer They do seem to be disappearing. I haven't seen the frequency that I did, I think they kind of had some issues on the back end of things with the platform over the summer. But I think most of those have been resolved. So I do still recommend Riverside, if you do have any issues, please don't freak out, because a lot of them can be solved by Riverside and their support team is fantastic. So if you have an issue with one of your Riverside recordings, I want you to reach out to support. Now if you do this from inside the studio, there's like a little chat box there, you're going to likely get a bot that responds to you. So it might seem like you're not really getting anything accomplished. But you can request that an actual human being contact you back. And they can usually save the recording if something's gone wrong with the upload or anything like that. If something's missing, if it's an empty file, there are also if you go into your recordings page, there is an option for internet backups. So they actually for every call, do a backup of the audio and the video if you record video as well. So sometimes you can just go and download those backups on your own. And you don't even need to contact the support team. I have actually saved several of my clients shows the summer by using those internet backups. And then it wasn't an issue at all. So if you have an issue with Riverside, hopefully you don't hopefully, it's been resolved. But it is tech, it's going to happen at some point nothing, when it comes to technology is going to work perfectly 100% of the time forever. So do you have an issue, see if you can get an internet recording backup from the recordings page in your Riverside account. And then if not contact to the riverside team and see if they can help resolve it for you. And I do want to just kind of alleviate some concerns here that these issues with Riverside even though people have had them over the summer, and they do seem to be again, calm down, it's still nothing compared to the issues you're going to have with zoom the issues, you're going to have a squad cast, clean feed, Zen caster, all of those things have had far more issues. They can work perfectly for some people. So if you're using them and it's working for you

don't feel like you need to jump ship. But if you're using Riverside, I don't want you to jump ship on that yet, either. If I change my mind in the future, I will of course let you know. And right here, I feel like is a good time for me to mention that I do actually post these industry updates and my recommendation changes monthly in my podcasting insiders club. So my podcasting insiders club is a once a month paid email newsletter, it's only five bucks a month. So it's super cheap. And it's essentially what this episode is. So every single month, I go through and give you the latest industry updates, the changes, any of my recommendation changes or new things that I've discovered new tools. So all of these updates that I am giving you here, the people in my podcasting insiders club got those in June and July, and the beginning of August, because they were part of that club, they didn't have to wait for me to do an episode on it when I got back from hiatus. So if you want to make sure that you're always up to date with these industry changes, these new things that pop up new tools that you can try out, glitches with some platforms that may explain some issues you're having anything like that. I go through and read all these blogs, listen to podcast episodes, stay up to date with all of this industry news and filter through and only find the things that are relevant for you as somebody who's podcasting as part of a business, and then I give those to you in one concise newsletter every month. So if you want to learn more about that, just check out the show notes. Or of course, go to my website, there's a tab right there in the main menu for the podcasting insider's club. And I would love to have you join that so you can stay up to date so that your podcast doesn't fall behind. You don't experience frustrations, you don't need to. And you can really stay on top of your podcasting game. Okay, and the next update that I have for you is that Facebook has officially gotten into the podcasting game, they did finally roll out actually a Facebook feature for some people. So certain pages, they have to be listed as a podcast, the page has to be set as a podcast category. So if your page is not set as a podcast, and you do want to potentially utilize this in the future, make sure you get that changed. But they have extended invites to a small number of people to test out this new feature where they can actually add their RSS feed to Facebook, I believe it's a little bit wonky how they're doing it. But then your episodes can get posted to Facebook, they can listen to full episodes on Facebook. Facebook has also recently announced that they're rolling out some other features like being able to pull audio clips and share things and kind of do a lot more with it. So we'll see where it all really goes. But it has officially rolled out for some people. And I do believe that come September, it's going to be rolled out for pretty much everyone who has a page set as a podcast. So again, if That's something you're interested in doing. And your page is not set as a podcast right now, because it might have been set up for your business, you will need to get that changed over. I'm not sure what repercussions that will have for anything else that you're doing. I don't do much with my Facebook page. So I don't know if that has an impact on like ads or algorithms or anything like that. But if you are really interested in this podcast feature, and letting people listen to your episodes on Facebook, then you want to have your page set as a podcast page. Alright, so the last update that I want to mention here is that I am super excited to announce that I am going to be speaking at Shi podcast live this year. Now if you're not aware of this event, it's geared towards female female identifying and non binary people who either have a podcast or want to start a podcast or provide products and services to podcasters. And it also happens to be my favorite podcasting events slash conference by bar. So I attend several podcasting events and I have in the past, but this one is amazing. The vibe at it is just so supportive and fun and light and carefree, and caring, and just beautiful. It is a fantastic event. And there are a ton of amazing people giving awesome presentations. And I am one of them. So my presentation is going to be on strategies for podcasting as part of a service based business. And the event is taking place in Scottsdale, Arizona from October 14 through the 17th. And I would love to see you there. If you're going to attend, please let me know so that we can make sure we meet up in person. All right, that's gonna wrap up this episode. I want you to come back next week where I'm going to be interviewing a gentleman whose podcast I was actually on earlier this year. He is an awesome guy. We pretty much agree on like just about everything when it comes to podcasting. So I think you're really going to enjoy the conversation and he's actually going to be on talking about

basically the power of podcast guesting to help grow your own show and your business. So definitely come back and check that out. Thanks so much and have a fantastic week. And that wraps up another episode of podcasting for coaches. If you'd like to connect with me further, you can do so on Instagram at podcasting for coaches. If you know it's time to finally get serious about starting your podcast, go to podcasting for coaches calm and click on the work with me tab in the main menu to learn more about my one on one launch consultation packages or my self paced online course. And I look forward to seeing the podcast that you create and put out into the world.

 
Britany Felix
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111: Growing Your Audience Through Podcast Guesting with Jason Cercone
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2021 Summer Hiatus Announcement