What’s New In Podcasting

Harry Brelsford of SMB Nation and Ben Baker sit down to discuss the three things podcasters need to focus on. 

Video Transcription

Harry Brelsford 

Hey nation nation back with one of my favorite Canadian. Oh no, my favorite Canadian Ben Baker out of Vancouver, BC How you doin, Ben?

Ben Baker 

I am doing awesome. I love being called a Canadian. I actually hold both passports but you know what? I waved the flag proudly?

Harry Brelsford 

Oh, absolutely. No, you know, as you very well know, 32 years in Seattle before I moved to Austin, so Vancouver is a sister city. It really is. We enjoy going to Vancouver. I hope you enjoy coming to Seattle. We're different cities, but it was always a really symbiotic relationship. You know what I mean?

Ben Baker 

Oh, absolutely. I mean, it's just, you know, it's two and a half hours down the corridor. I mean, it probably takes you longer to get through the border than anything else. But it's a great city. I love Seattle. I spent many, many years in Seattle. My dad ran a business in Seattle for years. But I've always had an affinity for the Pacific Northwest love the whole area.

Harry Brelsford 

Absolutely. Well, hey, let's get to let's cut to the chase. What's new? What's new in podcasting?

Ben Baker 

It's really interesting. What's new in podcasts? Because you asked me this off air. And I had to think about and say, Okay, what are the top three things that people want to think about? And I think there's three things that we need to focus on. One is shorter podcasts. Number two is live podcast. And number three is video podcasts. And I think that those are the three things that we really should focus on. Because those are the things that people either are doing right, or they're doing very wrong. And I think that might be worth exploring those. Yeah,

Harry Brelsford 

yeah, exactly. As you know, we call ourselves a podcast. But we're actually shooting video, right? I think in the day, we would have said webinar or webcast or whatever. And you can you can get it both ways, right, you can download, you can get just the audio, and or you can see the, the people, I enjoy the video because of the the facial expression so I can bounce off, I can bounce off you, right, versus just audio.

Ben Baker 

Exactly. And, you know, full disclosure, my podcast. I mean, it's five years old, I've been podcasting for over a decade. Now, my podcast when I record it, I record it with video. But we don't use the video in terms of the podcast itself, because our podcast is 35 to 40 minutes. And what we've realized is the majority of people do not have the attention span to sit in front of their desk, and watch a video that is not, you know, CNN quality, that it's not movie quality, it's not dynamic, and diverse and explosive for 35 or 40 minutes. So I find that we record the video using you with video in order to have that dynamic fusion. So we can play off each other we can have the eye contact, but but we use only the audio because we find that at that length. People want to do it while they're driving or they want to do it while they're working out or cutting the grass or whatever. And it allows them to do something else while they're doing it. But the shorter podcasts like yours, because they are short entity, do allow to have both video content and the audio content and be able to utilize both.

Harry Brelsford 

Yeah, know what I do. Let me let me grab something just off camera. I my home office also has my bike in here. I feel like a college kid in the dorm. But let me let me show you something. So I have Spotify, amongst other tools on my phones. Okay. And what I do is this is a Bluetooth bicycle helmet. And is these little bones. They they put out connectors. Yes, yeah, yeah, they they kind of reverb into your ear, but they don't cover your ears. So your ears are open to hear the traffic. Right and, and then I you know, I'm a biker, but I now ride on country roads. I don't I don't ride on busy roads. I've made that decision. There's hundreds of miles of country roads out here in the hill country. So why go on a highway. But I'll listen to podcast while I'm biking. I mean, that's what I'm getting at. Right. And that's, that's cool, right? Yes. Like, I'm working out and I'm improving myself, professionally, mentally. And it's a double dip.

Ben Baker 

It's absolutely a double dip. But what we need to realize is that different people listen to podcast differently. And you know, it's a matter of looking at it going okay, what is not going to work for me, but what's gonna work for my audience? What is my audience want? Does my audience want a shorter podcast? Like if I'm doing a podcast that is almost a news update type podcast. Nobody wants to listen to that for 35 or 40 minutes but they might want something that's Five to eight to 10 minutes, that gives them a short sprint gives them that, that that knowledge of the day or that knowledge of the Monday and sets them off for the week. And that's a very different podcast than an in depth insight podcast that like people like mine, that run, you know, 3540 45 minutes that are going deep into a subject. So it's a matter of understanding who your audience is and what, what really is, are they looking for? Yeah, you

Harry Brelsford 

know, two thoughts. One is my now 26 year old son. In his generation, they're really into podcasting. I had the pleasure of helping them move from California to Boston, we drove across the country. And all he did was play podcasts Now that said, it was his truck. So it's like, okay, you get to

Ben Baker

pick my truck by rules, right? Yeah, exactly.

Harry Brelsford 

He's a bike racer. And so he would listen to these daily one hour podcast about tactics and mechanics of biker. I mean, this, this was a double click deep into his sport, right. And to be honest, I had to get up my Bose headphones, which are not handy to put on right now. And I had to listen to my own, like, you know, music, right? I just like, I can't, I can't take it. But there's a generational effect. That's that's what I took away from it was his generation listens to podcasts. I'm a relative newbie when it comes to podcasts. But you know, it sounds good. Well, they

Ben Baker 

say the average podcaster today, and there's millions, I think there's somebody said, there's 175 million people that listen to podcasts on a day on a daily basis around the world. And of those of those people or of those people, they listen about an hour to an hour and a half a day. Wow. Yeah. So I mean, there's an enormous amount of people that are listening to podcasts. And when they're listening, they're listening for an hour to an hour and a half. Now, that might be three different 20 minute podcasts. That might be one, you know, Tarik was a Tim Ferriss type fair podcasts, it's an hour and 40 minutes. Or it might be the Joe Rogan experience, which is three hours. It really depends on what you'll what moves your crank, what what interests you, what you'll what are the things that you're interested in? And how do you how do you grab that information? Do you just want short little sound bites? That says, Ah, got it. Okay, next move on? Or do you actually want to go into the minutiae, you know, like your son in the bike racing, so you really need to sit there and think about it. The other thing you need to think about is okay, do people want to listen to it on your schedule, or on theirs? And the majority of people listen to podcasts, because they listen, they want to do it on their schedule, there is this growing, need to have either Twitter lives or Facebook Lives or LinkedIn lives, where you're sitting there and you say, Okay, I'm just going to flip the switch, and I'm going to record, I've got a mic, I've got a couple, couple lights, off I go. The problem with that is who's listening? The people that are listening are the people that have nothing better to do in there, at that time of the day, than listen to it? So the question is, are those people really your audience? Are those the people that are going to call you or those are the people that are going to do business with you? Are those people that are going to recommend you to other people? Or are they just people that are, you know, between opportunities, or, you know, you know, bored at work and looking for something to do? You know, and the question is, are the people that are the decision makers going to go back and listen to it later on in the day? Probably not in a video format there, that video format doesn't work for them. So it's, again, it goes back to who is your audience? What do you want to tell them? And what format is going to work for them and your analytics are key for understanding that? Yeah,

Harry Brelsford 

yeah. And I was just listening to you, it almost sounds like, you know, there could be a recovery movement per podcast, right? It's an addiction. And, you know, I'm actually crossed the line about what addictions exist during the day, but the folks that are out there, there's an addiction for you. And but if you're taking that kind of I don't have that kind of times. Right. So if you're taking that kind of time out of your day, there's a recovery movement somewhere out there for podcast listeners.

Ben Baker 

Well think about think about when when clubhouse was the big thing. And I think clubhouse thank God is going into the, you know, going into the way of the world, it's, you know, it's dissipating very quickly. But when clubhouse was the big thing, and everybody had to listen on clubhouse, I knew people that were on clubhouse seven or eight or nine hours a day, and they were looking at as like a radio station where they would have just playing in the background, you know, and chime in when they did chime out when they didn't. And I'm sitting there going okay. I You know, I personally needed deadly quiet when I'm working. When I'm working, I need a deadly quiet first of all, because I'm usually recording something. But second of all, when I'm actually you're writing or thinking or building an Excel spreadsheet or whatever, I need it absolutely quiet. So I can think. So it then it comes down to how do you work? Yeah, what's conducive for you? What's conducive for your audience? How do they, first of all grab material? And second of all, how do they digest it? And then what do you want them to do with it? Yep.

Harry Brelsford 

Well, and we're all different. And maybe I'll end on this bid, we're starting to bump up on our speaking of the shorter format. But, you know, I am a self proclaimed ADHD kid in elementary school still have a little bit of that today. I call it my secret weapon as an entrepreneur. And so I have my Amazon sound speaker, just off camera, and I play public radio music during the day. So I need noise, right? I need, you know, multiple screens and a couple things going on. I respect how you work. But that's, that's what makes the world go round. Right?

Ben Baker 

Absolutely, you know, your work environment would drive me nuts in my work environment would probably drive you that. I can't work in those, you know, those open office concept type things where it's 16 people on one long desk and everybody's sitting there with their headphones, and it would drive me nuts. But other people, that's the best place to work. So we all we all come to this from different places. And we need to realize, who are the people that we're going after? How do they consume information, and be able to build our content, our content, so it resonates with them? The best way for people to get more information is I've written an ebook on this. If you go to your brand marketing.com backslash ebooks. So more brand marketing.com backslash ebooks tried to make it as easy as possible. If you look for the green cover on podcasting, scroll down you'll find a green cover. There's 90 books. There's one right up deal right on podcasting. That'll give people some great information to move forward with. Hey, I'm doing it right now.

Harry Brelsford 

Backslash

Ben Baker 

ebooks with an S. /ebooks

Harry Brelsford 

Plural. Okay, you got it. There we are. All right. All right, man. We'll make that the final world. World Final Word. We'll see you next quarter, Ben.

Ben Baker 

Hey, sounds good. Thanks for having me on the show again. All right.