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May 2, 2023

58. Revitalize Your Podcast Strategy: How to break through Progress Plateaus

58. Revitalize Your Podcast Strategy: How to break through Progress Plateaus

Feel like you’re doing everything to promote and market your show but growth feels a little stagnant? This episode will walk you through a framework to identify the next level of growth for your podcast!

Sometimes we feel like we're putting out all this content, and we're recording all these podcast episodes, and we're collaborating with all these people, and we're doing all the keyword research, and you're doing all these things. But then you look at your results and you don’t feel like things seem to be growing at the rate of the effort that you're putting in. 

Podcasters who desire growth and success should never underestimate the importance of  optimization  in their marketing strategies. Identifying your goals, monitoring key performance indicators, and fine-tuning your approach will set you on the path to reaching your objectives.  

In this episode, you will be able to:

  • Decode the Traffic Pyramid technique for unparalleled podcast audience expansion.
  • Elevate your optimization game by establishing goals, measuring metrics, and continuously iterating.
  • Sharpen your social media focus, bypassing platform saturation and honing your marketing efforts.
  • Exploit qualitative feedback to upgrade podcast discoverability and laser-target your audience.
  • Sustain consistency and embrace adaptability for a future-proof podcast marketing journey.

Related Grow My Podcast Show episodes you may enjoy:

The 4 Steps To Getting Unlimited Traffic To Your Podcast

Getting serious about exploding your podcast listener baset? But feel like you’re throwing spaghetti on the wall? What you need is a step-by-step strategy to follow.

I’m revealing my 4 step strategy, The Traffic Pyramid, to show you exactly how to get a flood of new listeners.

Content Dripping: How to turn strangers into listeners and listeners into leads

This episode will cover my Content Dripping Framework that is going to help you systematically build know like and trust with your audience using a simple but effective content creation and release strategy.

Resources mentioned in this episode 

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Connect with Deirdre: Instagram  | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | LinkedIn

Transcript

00:00:00

I was speaking to a listener of The Grow My Podcast show recently, and it actually came about because I was asking, what is it that they were currently stuck on? And by the way, the reason why we got to this was because if anyone had attended the annual Grow My Podcast Summit recently, you would have heard Alex Sanfilippo from Pod Pros talk about getting reviews. And he dropped this strategy. It was like a couple step process about actually reaching out to the listeners of your podcast, getting them on a call, and actually asking them specific questions. So I actually did that myself because, again, very coachable.

00:00:49

And I do the things, and I'm like, oh, okay, I should start doing this. I went ahead and I did it. And on this particular call with one of the listeners, when I asked, what is something that you're currently stuck on? A piece of feedback that I got was that they feel like they're doing everything already, all of the marketing things, to grow their podcast, but they feel like they've stagnated and they don't know what to do next. And immediately, I was like I was like, oh, this is a 15 minutes call, and I want to almost go through all of the things with you right now.

00:01:21

But I couldn't. And so I decided to do a podcast episode on it instead. And that's what this episode is about, because, honestly, fundamentally, I'm a marketer. I mean, the whole co founding, team building Capsho, we're all marketers. Hence why we built a marketing tool.

00:01:37

This is the stuff that I love, that I'd absolutely nerd out about. And so when he was like, I feel like I've done everything already, I was like, oh, really? Let's talk about this. Okay, so this is exactly what this episode is about. It's what to do when you feel like you've done everything already in your marketing.

00:01:57

Maybe either you've gotten results and you've stagnated, or you feel like you're not getting results. So hang with me because we're actually going to talk about this. All right? So when you feel like you're doing all the things and what do you do next? What happens now?

00:02:11

My name is Deirdre Tshien, I'm the CEO and co founder of Capsho, the fastest way to market and grow your podcast. And this is the Gray My podcast show.

00:02:33

Welcome to the Grow My Podcast Show. I am delighted on this episode because I have someone special for you. Okay? I don't know. Are you really that special?

00:02:44

Wow. Do you treat all of your special guests like me? I believe I am. So I have my co founder and CEO, Bona Rai. Hello.

00:02:52

Or what we'd like to call her. Bona AI. Yes. I do think it's very poetic that I ended up working in AI with a surname like mine. And for those of you who don't realize that is my surname, that that'd be the first fun fact of the day.

00:03:05

Bona is my first name. Rai is my surname because I always refer to you as Bona Rai. And I think everyone now thinks that your whole name is Bona Rai. And I was like, you know what? Just lead into it.

00:03:16

You're the Madonna. Yes. Bon Rai is a Madonna of Capsho. I mean, I didn't want to be the one to say it, but everyone's thinking it, right. But now it's no longer just Bona AI.

00:03:25

It is Bona AI. Bona. Bona AI. It's just what Capsho likes to call me. Anyway.

00:03:31

Exactly. Welcome, special guest. I'm excited to be here. Yes. So we're talking about what to do when you feel like you've done everything already.

00:03:41

And my mind, as soon as I heard this challenge, the gauntlet being thrown, not how that cort this is the internal dialogue. I was like, immediately my mind went to, there are so many things I can talk about. So I kind of want to systematically go through a few things, get them out of the way, but then really dive into the intent of this episode and truly, what the meat of it, what we want to be talking about. So, yeah, the first place that my mind went to is the traffic pyramid strategy. And so that's on episode Again twelve, I think we'll link it.

00:04:15

Okay, well, we're going to link that particular episode to this podcast. If you want to revisit the traffic pyramid strategy, it essentially has four tiers. It's also in the Honey Trap marketing book authored by Deirdre Tshien. I mean, you're welcome. No, but I don't talk about that book enough, so I guess I had to drop it in.

00:04:33

Deidre has a book, which is fun fact number two called Honey Trap Marketing. But in that or you can listen to episode twelve of this podcast. I talk about the traffic pyramid, and there are four tiers to the traffic pyramid. One is the first one is what I call the organic passive organic marketing. The second one is an active organic marketing.

00:04:53

The third is leveraging other people's audiences, and then the fourth is paid. So really quickly, organic passive organic marketing is kind of the content that we create. It's the things that we're putting out there, we push out, and we kind of like, awesome, it's gone live. And now we just wait. We passively wait for it to do its thing.

00:05:11

Active organic marketing is when we actually start being way more active around it. We start actually being intentional. This is where outreach comes in. This is where SEO, like, doing actual keyword research comes in. This is the stuff that actually starts to turn your passive content active.

00:05:31

The third tier is the one that I actually personally love, leveraging other people's audiences. And this is all the stuff, like guesting on podcasts, getting guests on your podcast, doing things like the virtual summit, which is I hope you were part of that because that was amazing. So there's so many ways that I think we can collaborate with the people around us, that there's just no shortage of things that you can do there. And then the fourth is paid ads, which we all know and probably hate most of the time, to be honest. But it is truly once you've kind of really nailed the first three tiers, paid is a natural extension then, of how you can really supercharge growth.

00:06:09

So that's really, in short, the four tiers of the traffic pyramid. Now, when you're doing the traffic pyramid, honestly, you could just lose yourself just a sliver of one of those tiers. Not even the whole tier, just a sliver, because we've done that time and time again where you just lose yourself in it. But what I really wanted to let's say, even though I feel like this is not possible because we're not even at the stage where we're doing everything in the traffic pyramid, but let's just say that you feel like you've done everything in that traffic pyramid. You feel like you are doing everything, and you're like, now what else is left?

00:06:47

What I wanted to dive into in this particular episode is then the extension of that traffic pyramid, which is all about optimization. It's now all about looking at what are you doing at each of those tiers, each of the slivers, each of the actions that you're taking in each of those tiers, and actually optimizing that result. Because if you feel like you're doing everything already and you're stagnating, then you're actually not. Maybe you do feel like you're doing everything because it's a feeling, right? I don't want to downplay that, because sometimes we do we feel like, oh, my gosh, we're putting out all this content, and we're recording all these podcast episodes, and we're collaborating with all these people, and we're doing all the keyword research, and you're doing all these things, and you're doing and doing and doing.

00:07:34

But then you look at your results and you're like things that seem to be growing at the rate of the effort that you're putting into it, of what you're feeling. We're no strangers to this feeling. We're all about the feels. Yes, exactly. But then how do you find the facts within them?

00:07:48

Is really the challenge there. Yes. And so that's what I wanted to really talk about on this episode, which is the unsexy part of optimizing of optimization. And this is where AI comes in. One AI.

00:08:01

Yeah, but this is the part that AI can't really do for you. Unfortunately, Bonnari is joining us on this particular episode. Okay, so, Bonnari, let's get into step one of optimization. And I don't know whether what makes sense, whether we I feel like we could we might be jumping around examples here, but I do want to anchor it in stuff that we do, even for our business and our podcast via the traffic pyramid. So we always kind of go, okay, well, this is what we're doing.

00:08:28

And then this is actually step one of optimization. All right, so let's talk about specifically like what we do for the Grow My podcast show. So definitely, obviously the first layer, like did we spoke about is the passive organic marketing tier. And really, this is what we're doing right now, recording first and foremost, but then as a minimum, publishing it. So we're very similar to everyone else listening to this.

00:08:50

We record, we edit, we use Capsho to come up with publishing stuff. Yeah, and that's exactly if you picture a pyramid, you can tell that that bottom tier is actually the meatiest and it's actually by design. And that's why Capsho is such an awesome tool, because we know how long it takes to create all those pieces of content. And that's what Capsho is here to help you with. Right?

00:09:14

It's like it really streamlines that whole process. So you're not there trying to create these things from scratch. It's there for you, Capsho does it for you, but that only gets you a certain amount of the way there. Exactly. It's one thing to create.

00:09:27

I mean, there's the whole effort required to create the content itself, but then turn that into all of the other pieces of content that we can publish, that we know we have the ability to publish on all these different platforms. Whether we do it or not is a decision that we need to make. But essentially for us, we just follow the content dripping framework, which we'll link here as well, the episode we did on that. And that's kind of our passive. So we have a bit of a structure.

00:09:48

It is, we said by design, passive, but if that's not there, then there's really nothing to optimize or activate. So that's the foundational layer for the Grow My podcast show. Now, every time we do this, we look at it, we're like, publishing is a feat, don't get me wrong. So kudos to us. But there's always just so many things where we're like, we haven't properly validated this.

00:10:09

Everything is a hypothesis at this point. It's how I look at it. But you need to congratulate yourself for doing that consistently. A lot of people, I think, do that and then they get frankly salty about why it's not being successful. Because I think to your point earlier about the feeling, it's the feeling because you put all of this effort in.

00:10:25

Just recording is a huge effort. But I think it's very easy to fall into if you're not getting the results that you want. You feel like it's either me, there's something wrong with me and my content, or you judge your audience, there's something wrong with them, they don't get it, whatever, but usually the answer is in between. So I think that's the thing to remember in that first layer. So that's the first layer, the second one is what we talked about is active organic marketing.

00:10:48

So for us, we don't do a ton of outreach for the podcast. That's not really our thing. Again, if that's what you do, there's challenges and obviously perks with that what we tend to focus on. Our main thing is really kind of going, okay, now that we've created this content, because we don't start with SEO, we start with what our listeners are telling us or our community are telling us that they want help around and we plan our episodes accordingly. Or you meet amazing people and you're like, wow, this is going to be so helpful for our audience.

00:11:12

Please be a guest on my show. And then SEO is a really big focus for us in terms of activating that to say, okay, we've just recorded an episode of Niching Down, for example, but what does that mean from that's? Great. And Capsho helped us do a really good job of coming up with the content to publish it, at least. Now when we've got the blog post, when we've got the LinkedIn article, when we're thinking about our social media captions, how are people thinking about this?

00:11:35

How are people searching for it? Which sort of specific SEO niche do we want this to show up in? And really doing that work to validate and if required, reword doesn't mean you need to keyword stuff, but really kind of touching it up a little bit to make sure that it reaches the people that are looking for that content. Yeah, and by the way, if you're using captcha, you can tell that we're trying to help a little bit in this space. We give you topics so that you can choose or you can put your own in.

00:12:06

And that's by design because we want you to take that step of, hey, is this actually something that people are searching for? Is this something that's going to help you get discovered? Same thing with our blog post. With the blog post that Capsho generates, you can actually choose what you anchor that content in. It's not posting a blog post for the sake of posting blog posts.

00:12:25

It's posting a blog post that's a, one, going to be valuable, and two, is actually going to get you discovered. So you can tell that we're not all the way there yet with Capsho, but we are bringing these pieces in intentionally. But again, it can only get you so far. It's not enough to just rely on a tool to try to get you to create content and get you discovered and grow your like, that's just not it's not going to be possible. That's kind of why we designed 2.0 the way that we did, because we want you to be intentionally involved in the process.

00:12:59

And involved in the process means, hey, what are those extra one, two, three tweaks things that I can do as a human, as the creator, to actually make this content better and more aligned to what it is that I want to get out of this, or what my audience wants to get out of this. That's such an important point. And for me, it's kind of the flip between Bona AI and Bona Rai. Like, all jokes aside, I think that is something that's going to be the hill that I personally die on. And I know, Dean, this is really important to you as well.

00:13:27

Being creators of an AI product, this is the step, really, ironically, that we think is going to change the game for you and your content. So this is so incredibly important, it cannot be replaced. Sure you can delegate it at some point, but I think being involved, having that human involvement with the content and it's really going to be the difference between being discovered, especially now with so many AI detectors around, so many people using AI to create content, it's what can you do to truly make it found by a human? Yes, 100%. So that's the second tier.

00:13:54

The third tier, which, like we talked about is your favorite, is really on leveraging other people's audiences. And I love that it's higher up the pyramid for a reason, because I know some people like to jump to this. And especially, I know you get this all the time in terms of wanting to be on people's, being invited to be on people's shows and collaborate without really the person thinking about what value they're bringing. So we recommend doing this at a point after you've built enough credibility and self confidence around your own expertise to then start to leverage other people's audiences. Because you may not bring a huge audience.

00:14:26

That's not what this is about, but you bring a certain perspective. You bring a certain way to make them be seen that's different and novel. So I think that's a really important thing to remember. But once you are at this stage, this is such a powerful thing. So for us, obviously, we have a very intentional guesting strategy.

00:14:42

We don't invite just anyone. It's purely by invitation only. And we cycle, I think, between solo and guest episodes. I know early on, up until about episode 16, we just did solo, just either yourself or you and me. And that was part of the grounding.

00:14:57

We had to go through that to then start to invite people in. And I think it's a really good mix that I personally think it's a really good mix. And we've had really good feedback around this to say it's a mix of continuing to add expertise from our perspective, but also bringing expertise that we just don't have, and really leveraging those people's sort of audiences as well. With a ton of collaborations, we're really excited. That's sort of the reputation we're building because we enjoyed them, too.

00:15:22

Oh my gosh. I didn't think I would again, introvert Shy as well. I would say. I mean, people get surprised at this because when they meet me in person, I'm generally quite like bubbly and I am that person. Just so you know, afterwards I die.

00:15:38

I literally am like I remember that was the last night of podcast movement evolutions and we were hanging out with Alex and his wife Alicia, alex and Felipo from Pod Pros and his wife Alicia. And I literally had to tell them because that was what, day five of us being in Vegas. I was like, I apologize, I am completely antisocial. I'm like tapped out, so I'm just going to come along and be quiet. And you're in body.

00:16:04

Exactly, but definitely not in spirit or in any other way. I didn't think that I would actually enjoy collaborations as much as I do, but I think fundamentally what I get the joy out of is having switched my mindset. When I started on the whole collaboration journey, it was like, oh, how can I get this out of it or how can I make this really advantageous or beneficial for me? And that was I don't know, I just didn't feel and I didn't really enjoy it that much, to be honest. But now I'm all about when I flipped it to be like, how can I serve you?

00:16:35

I just want to help either promote you or help you in some way. And honestly, ever since that and just doing that and just really focusing on that, I don't have to think about what I get out of it or what I don't think about that anymore, honestly, because that just falls into place. Yeah, as soon as you're unconditional about that, I think that's right. The opportunities come up. I mean, we progress our business along alongside.

00:16:59

So I think a lot of it's about timing too, but you're absolutely right. And collaborations big and small to your point, it could just be an introduction that you're making to someone because it's something that would be valuable for them and they just end up just by virtue of that sharing you and the business to their community right through the superstructured. Industry wide collaborations. We've done, obviously our state of podcast marketing, industry reports, we've done the virtual summit for a couple of years now. That's kind of like our flagship event.

00:17:26

We've done giveaways that are very intentional. They're not just sort of you see a lot of spanning giveaways, but they are specifically for the person that we serve and very strategically run. So again, all of these things take effort. That's the thing too. There's so much behind the scenes that go into this, making this, pulling this off for people.

00:17:42

But once we're out of place, we're really confident about the content that we're creating and what value we bring, and we know the gaps for our audience, we can start to field really strategic and effective collaborations to help fill that gap for our audience and for theirs. As well. So it's a win win for everyone. Yeah, totally. So I love this to you.

00:17:58

And if you are not doing this, do more of it. You can never do enough of this and you can never do everything in this, if that makes sense. There's no such thing as I've done everything in this tier. And then the fourth, which we're actually about to kick off an experiment around, so I've become really good friends with Mike Wiston from MOBO Media. Mo Media is the umbrella brand and then Mopod specifically for podcasters and they have this awesome service where they actually help boost your podcast through web based ads.

00:18:29

And so we're actually going to start testing it for this show and I'll definitely be sharing the results. I'll probably get Mike on as well to talk to everyone about Mopod and the results that we've seen, et cetera. But yeah, it's going to be a great way for us, I think, to really quickly, hopefully grow our podcast. So we'll see, we'll get back to it. So that's a traffic that's what we do.

00:18:48

And we could very easily say, yeah, I feel like we're doing everything. I feel like we're doing everything right. Like we've got doing a bit of everything, the base is covered, but are we really, are we really bonar? AI? We are not.

00:19:02

What else could we okay, so let's get into the meat of this. Actually, why don't we take a quick ad break and then let's get into what actually what is it that we're not doing right now that we need to be doing when we feel like we're doing everything as per the traffic pyramid? Okay, so we're back. We're back. And I know that you also had to take a break to go check out Capsho Capsho, but we're talking about what is it that we can do when we feel like we've done everything already?

00:19:29

Now, we've walked you through the traffic pyramid, so first of all, that's almost your foundation. Are you doing the things in the traffic pyramid? First step, second step now is if you're like us and you're like, yeah, I feel like I'm kind of doing everything, which, let's be frank, even we're not doing everything, but let's just say everything done. Yes. Then what is it we should be doing now?

00:19:51

What is it that we need to be doing? It is optimization. Sexiest word I ever was, boring, unsexiest word I never was. And yeah, I put this in Bonner's court. I'm like, Bonner does our optimization because I don't want to have to deal with it.

00:20:07

So I'm going to hand over actually the three steps to Bonner to talk about because quite honestly, you actually are the person who's doing most of this. Yes. So, like we talked about, optimization I think is boring because I think we all know deep down that it's really going to be the thing. Because after the initial hit, of doing the things comes out of it. This is the thing that's going to make the difference.

00:20:32

So the first step that we need to go back to, which feels really might feel counterintuitive, is asking ourselves what is the result that we want? And the reason for this is because when we first start, especially if we've just discovered the traffic pyramid or we've just discovered Capsho and all of these things, just doing it is a goal. And I think that's awesome, right? Because the number of people come on to Capsho and they're like, oh my gosh, I've been wanting to post, I've been wanting to do all of these things. Just have not had time.

00:20:56

I can now do so we always say go and do that for a little while. Just do it. Exactly. Just get yourself. So that in itself is a goal to begin with.

00:21:02

We appreciate that. So now with that already done, let's say again, quotation marks, because it was never truly done. But if you find that you're doing all of those things, we need to go back to say what is the result that we want? So for us personally, with our podcast, just getting it up, getting it out there, post, doing an episode a week and actually promoting it on all of the platforms because we didn't know where our audience was, was a huge goal of ours. And also then validating, okay, is Capsho really working all of these platforms?

00:21:29

But then we had to go back and say, what is the result that we want from this? We're not looking to get sponsorship, although that would be great. I mean, I don't know. I'm sure we have some ideal sponsors in mind, but that was not our thing with this podcast ever. So that's not where we're heading.

00:21:42

Who are we trying to reach and what result do we want? And we continue to ask ourselves this, right? And that informs everything from the format of the show to you do regular outreaches to the audience. So what result do we want? And for us, the podcast is always about obviously adding value, but ultimately we're looking for conversions into Capsho in some way, shape, or form.

00:22:04

Yes, sometimes directly you listen to our ad break and say, what an amazing product. This is so good. Oh my gosh, let me go to my left laptop right now and sign up Capsho and put in capsh. O.com, I bet you're all thinking that right now and you've either already done it or you are doing it, right? And let's say that's 90% of people that do that, but then really, there's about 10% of people that really are looking at how through this journey of listening to the content that we're creating, going, that's really interesting, let me go and try that.

00:22:37

Let me sign up to the email list to learn more about the bonus content that's being created and then let me kind of be led down the path to sign up for Capsho. That is our ultimate aim. So really being extremely specific because even saying that sounds a little bit like oh right, if you have that kind of feeling about knowing exactly what you want, you need to really work through that and be okay with that. Because it's not like you're going to skip straight to that. You're going to add value, build trust, and eventually get people to that point.

00:23:08

But without that end in mind. When we first started the podcast, we barely even had Capsho. I think I kind of remember now it was this kind of like awareness, let's just do that and hey, I think we should have a podcast if we're going to be talking to Pod Casters. But now the result is so much more different. It's like, okay, we have a very, very compelling product.

00:23:25

What are all the things we can do to get people familiar with it, to get people using it and to get people paying for it? I love that. Okay, so definitely work out depending on your situation because we're all going to be different. But ultimately I would imagine if you're listening to this, you have a business, you're using a podcast as part of that business. What is that ultimate result?

00:23:44

Because one of it is, yes, you want to grow your podcast. That's what this show is all about. So that's one part of it. But ultimately why do you want to grow a podcast? Is it because you want more sales?

00:23:54

You want more clients? What is that? Really identify what that result is. That's step one. Love it.

00:24:00

Now step two, which is also not very fun because this is the least fun and can be very overwhelming as well. I do want to preface that. We need to no, but we should be fun. Okay. No, we have voice.

00:24:12

Yeah, we love this step and this step loves us. I think you're right acknowledging that it can be difficult and not fun. But how do you actually think about this is going to be the golden thing that gives you visibility of what you actually should be working on. So DA DA DA. Step two is tracking.

00:24:32

We love it, we love it. We love tracking. Track all the things, numbers and trends and stuff. Exactly. So like like did you said numbers and trends and stuff is all about this and look this in and of itself not like the social media platforms especially but all the platforms that you're publishing on are really stepping up their game in terms of giving because they want to validate their particular platform and why you should continue to use it.

00:24:56

So they're all about validating that for themselves. So they're going to give you a ton of data. So this is where it can get very, very easily overwhelming. But I just want you to park that reaction for. A second and really think about the intention behind this step.

00:25:09

So it's like if you can't track it, then you don't know what you're doing around it, right? So if you think about, this is going to be the toolkit that gives you the power to make a decision. So really think about being the CEO of your business or the CEO of your podcast. As much as Deirdre jokes about kind of this optimization being my job, we work so hand in hand with this because we're making decisions around what content we should be creating, what should we be focusing on, what should we not be focusing on, what should be feeling anxiety about and not about. So really think about, this is going to be the toolkit that gives you that.

00:25:39

So how can you effectively create one that's going to give you all the information that you need and will not kind of debilitate you to all of the information that doesn't really matter? Yeah, and that's huge. And this is a skill. And that's why I think hopefully you can tell that we're very open with where we are comfortable and where we're not. Obviously, this is not something that I'm naturally comfortable in, so it's a skill that we had to teach ourselves and something that Kate, Erks and Dumas actually highlighted to me recently, which I was like, oh, okay, this is the mistake that I've been making is that, again, going back to step one, that's why it's so important.

00:26:19

You need to know what the result is that you want in order to then make step two. Not overwhelming. The reason why I think I'm like tracking is because we used to get to so I remember every platform that we were on, so Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, YouTube. Our team was actually tracking like every minute piece. It was like, let's say it was just Instagram.

00:26:40

It'd be like number of views, number of engagement things, number of followers of the it was literally every single piece of number that Instagram or the platform would give us. We were tracking. And that became really overwhelming because it was like, wait, what decision are we trying to make here? How is this impacting? We were just going around in circles, it felt like.

00:27:02

And that was like weeks and weeks, months of doing that. And it was good from one perspective because it kind of got us into again, as I said, we were self taught. So it was just getting to the habit of getting being comfortable with the numbers and the trends and things like that. But at the end of the day, it was actually, in a way, a bit of a waste of time because something that Kate said that was a bit of a light bulb moment for me was only track the things that will actually get you the results that you're looking for. So looking at those engagement numbers and the following numbers that ultimately, at the end of the day was doing nothing for the results that we ultimately wanted.

00:27:37

Exactly. And yet we were tracking it and spending a lot of time doing that and trying to optimize it. Exactly. So this step, I hope that what you're hearing from us is like the world of Tracking is actually humongous. Because to their credits, the platforms and stuff give us a lot of data, which is great on the One.

00:27:58

Hand, but not great on the other hand, because if we don't know how to use that data, then it is incredibly overwhelming to try to learn and to work out what is important to us. And so if we suffer from step one, which is, okay, just focus on that particular result and only then step two, which is then look at the numbers, track the numbers and the metrics that you know are going to move the dial for that result, then that is actually what you want to be tracking. Yeah, exactly. And which means you work backwards from the result in which in our case is sign ups for Capsho. And then you work backwards from that to say, well, what do I need to set up to know what's coming through?

00:28:32

Where are the people coming through from to convert into users of Capsho? And this is where especially if you're just starting out and you have all of this set up, qualitative feedback is really important too. So it's as simple as someone's on live chat with me or they jump on a call or they come into our universe, we just make sure that every single time we ask them, how did you hear about us? How did you hear about us? And not everyone's going to remember.

00:28:54

And that's okay as well, because guess what? You're not the center of the universe. As annoying as that is, I know a lot of them don't remember. What do you mean? What do you mean I'm not the center of the universe?

00:29:03

I'm definitely the center of my universe. Exactly. That's all that matters. But they will mention, oh, actually, so and so told me about you. Or I read it over here, actually.

00:29:10

I listened to your podcast and you're like, oh, okay. You start to build up at least qualitative data. That gives you a bit of a steer to say, well, let me at least make sure that that particular collaboration partner is looked after for now, if that's all I can manage. And let me just make sure I'm consistent with a podcast. So it actually will start to help you paint a picture that will keep you moving while you continue to add the details around that.

00:29:31

Yes. And in the show notes, we will link screenshots of those horrible spreadsheets we used to fill out every week. Oh my God, trip down memory lane. Yeah, that's terrible. So bad.

00:29:40

Okay, step three. Step three. Okay, now this is the fun part. And this is really, really fun when you have all of step one and two laid out and you're doing it consistently. Step three is about making the decision.

00:29:50

And some decisions are exciting to make, some decisions are difficult to make, some decisions are cathartic to make. So these are all, I think, good human emotions to feel. Because once you know exactly what result you're working towards, and you've sort of killed off as many distractions as possible, you're laser focused with your podcast. You have put in as much as possible the metrics, qualitative and quantitative to give you a sense to Kate's point of exactly whether you're on track with the result, and you're doing that consistently, then you're going to have a set of decisions to make probably every week. And some will be big ones and some will be small ones around.

00:30:24

Things that you want to stop doing, things that you want to continue doing, and things that you should start doing. Something start doing is exciting to be like, oh cool, I didn't realize that so and so was talking about Capsho. Let me reach out to them and see if we can do a collaboration. Super exciting things to keep doing. Okay.

00:30:39

Yep. A consistent stream of people are telling me that they're discovering us on the podcast. We need to keep going with this bit of motivation for the team. Things to stop doing. An example of what we've done is to say, well, we spent a lot of time working on Instagram content.

00:30:53

That was kind of our past world as well. We taught it a lot around that it just wasn't doing, given the amount of time and resource we were spending on it. Our people aren't on there. Yeah, it was not getting the result. And by the way, the result isn't more for us, more listeners on show, it's actually sign ups to Capsho.

00:31:10

And it was just not getting us that particular result, at least not yet. And to be fair, look, maybe at that time we weren't using it the right way. But this is also a lesson for anyone listening to this, is that at the end of the day, if you're not getting results from let's say you're on multiple platforms, which we were on, if you're not getting results, it's probably because you're not spending the time that you need to on there in order to get the results. Yes. And so for us, that decision was the one that we made, which is like, actually, we need to focus.

00:31:40

We're going to focus on these. So our focus, for example, is Facebook and LinkedIn. Those are the two platforms that I personally and the brand are the most active on. Because then I don't have to think about Instagram, I don't have to think about TikTok, I don't have to think about what and with how all the multiple changes that these platforms are making every day and trying to keep up with them, I don't have to worry about that anymore. It's such a relief now to not have to worry about that and just focus on optimize for the one or two platforms that you know your audience are on and that you can actually get the results, the end result, step one result that you're looking for from it and you're personally motivated around it.

00:32:18

I think that's the thing. Those decisions are never they're never in a vacuum. So we decide to kill Instagram, which means we decide to double down on LinkedIn, which we were doing half heartedly at the time. We were doing everything half heartedly, so now it's like, okay. And LinkedIn did launch a lot of new features that we do need to get across, but I found the emotion around that was entirely different with one of excitement to say, oh, that's cool that LinkedIn is doing that.

00:32:38

That makes a lot of sense. Okay. Newsletters creator mode, LinkedIn Live, all of these things are rolling out. The stuff on Instagram was not as exciting, but there was a lot going on there too. So I think it's really following that.

00:32:48

And I think we'll also link a YouTube video that you've done on how to decide which platform to be on. Yes, that was a really good one because there's is obviously commercial strategic things, but also because you're a human and your success on the platform depends on how personally motivated you are. There's those factors as well. So that was one decision that helping have the metrics around it and helping having a really strong idea of the result helped us make it much quicker. Yeah.

00:33:12

And I do want to, because it might sound counterintuitive us saying this, but for our Capshovians who use Capsho, you would know that we actually do create posts for all the different platforms. I don't want the software to dictate what it is that you need to be doing all of the things we designed it so that, yes, if you were an absolute gun I think that's an Australian term, by the way. Oh, really? Yeah. People don't say you're, you're a gun.

00:33:36

Yeah. Anyway, that's an aussie term for your really good yeah. So if you're a total gun and please start saying it, that would be awesome. You're a total gun at being on every platform. Well, then, yes, you can use all of the content that Capsho in the way that Capsho designed it.

00:33:56

But what we're trying to say is that captcha is there to give you the starting point, and we find a lot of a Capshovians do this. They will actually use, for example, the TikTok caption on Instagram instead, or they'll mix and match and they'll even take things from the blog post, for example, and use that as posts. So I want you to think differently about how you can use Capsho as well. And please let us know, tell us that we can actually even start to highlight some of those use cases as well. Yeah, that's a good one.

00:34:24

Awesome. Okay, so step three is making that decision. So just to recap step one, you need to work out the end result that you are working towards driving to. Step two is to track and only track the things that is actually going to move the dial for you to get that result right. Like cut that overwhelm and only track the important things.

00:34:41

And then step three is once you know that you can actually make a decision, what do you need to start doing, what do you need to continue doing and what do you need to stop doing? So there you go. This is what you do when you feel like you've done everything already, especially when it is in marketing your podcast. A lot of us might think that we're doing everything already. If you have not started doing the traffic pyramid, start there.

00:35:04

And if you are well on your way in implementing the traffic pyramid, then optimization is something that you need to be doing on an ongoing basis. That's it from us today. We've linked a ton of resources on our podcast page, which if you go to the player description, there will be one link that will take you to all of the content plus some screenshots of the overwhelming that we had found ourselves in in the past. That's all over there. Yeah, that's it.

00:35:29

We are Bona Rai and Deirdre Tshien from Capsho. And as always, stay awesome.