95. How LaQuita 6Xd her podcast downloads in just 4 months

00:00:00
I was at a meetup here in Austin being held by Chris Krimitzos and Larry Roberts from Podfest, and we were actually all leaving because the venue provider needed to close up. I was walking out with Bonner and a capchovian of ours called LaQuita Monley when Bonner turns to me and says, did you know that since using Capsho, Liquida went from 2000 downloads in total to over 12,000 downloads in a space of four once? And that literally stopped me in my tracks. I looked at LaQuita in shock, really, I said. And she smiled at me and said, yes, that's why this tool is the truth.

00:00:36
Which of course is going to be our new tagline now. And my absolute favorite thing to do is to showcase capchovians, especially ones who are having success and that we can all learn from, including me. I love learning from my capchovians, which is why I had to have her on this podcast to share exactly how she utilized blogging to get her podcast visibility and new listeners. So if you've been struggling a little with how to really make the most of the blog posts that Capsho provides for you, or you really just want an overall strategy on how to make blogging work for your podcast and business, then this is the episode for you. My name is Deirdre Tshien, CEO and co founder of Capsho, the fastest way to repurpose and market your expert content.

00:01:18
And this is the Grow my podcast show.

00:01:32
When it was close to time for my husband to retire from the army, we tried to figure out what do we want to do when we grow up? So I decided I wanted to be a real estate investor and that requires a lot of lead gen. So I'd hired a coach who was coaching me through how social media works and said, hey, you need to just do organic stuff first. And so he told me to do a live. I didn't want to be a talking head.

00:01:56
So he partnered me with another gentleman who was also a real estate investor in Dallas. And I'm about 2 hours north of Dallas, about two and a half hours. Anyway, we started doing a live show called Create Your Future Self Live. And we did it for 18 months. And I had an amazing time, but both of our schedules got so crazy it was hard stand on that dedicated time.

00:02:18
So I said one of our guests was a podcast producer. So I reached out to him, his name is Ahmad. And I said, hey Ahmad, we're not going to do the live anymore, but I'd like to be a podcaster. Can you show me how? And that began my shaky leg journey in becoming a podcaster.

00:02:38
So I started doing the lives in 2018. By 2021, they were tapering off because of schedule and conflicts. And so in 2021, I launched my first podcast episode. My primary target audience are fellow military spouses. And that's because with all of the transitions we make it's really difficult to do several different things as a military spouse if you don't already have it.

00:03:02
Before you become a spouse, one is understanding who you are and being solid in your identity because you get so wrapped up into the military culture. And so, of course, then that goal for personal development, it either never happens or it's always put on the back burner. And being an entrepreneur, we are some of the most talented people on the planet. But becoming an entrepreneur is sometimes scary because our life is so transitional. We're rarely in places longer than maybe three or four years and then you transition.

00:03:35
So the purpose of my podcast is called Equita's Toolbox and my desire is for those that connect with the toolbox that they're able to leave with tools to help them grow personally and professionally. Is anyone as inspired as I am hearing about LaQuita's podcast journey and Mission? Right. And what I really wanted to know was the business purpose behind her podcast, what was she really looking to get from it? So initially it was all about leads.

00:04:01
It was all about because I was stepping out into the world as a speaker. Now a part of my life's journey is I've been a minister since about 2005, and because of my husband's job, I've been blessed to be able to speak in several different countries around the world. But it's always been inside the four walls of the church. And so my coach at the time, his name is Marcus Ogden, though he was my coach for real estate, he kept saying, LaQuita, the stuff you write in your blogs and that we talk about, that's good stuff. Like people pay me a lot of money to teach them these skills.

00:04:40
You should do that. And I'm thinking, I don't know, that's different. Well, fast forward some time is it was my coach for like three years. Fast forward some time and I decided he might know what he's talking about. So let me use the podcast to generate leads because I did not know how to do that.

00:05:00
My world inside of the church, I can work that with my eyes closed in my sleep. I understand how that works. The other stuff, I didn't know how it works. So we started with the podcast for Lead Generation and then it turned into a passion. And not that it doesn't draw leads.

00:05:15
I actually found that the leads got better when I stopped focusing on the leads and just started focusing on delivering a message and picking quality guests that deliver a message. Their links got access. People would reach out to them. When I stopped focusing about getting the leads and made sure that my guest set were focused on don't worry about the leads, we're going to promote it, but just deliver the message. It changed the game.

00:05:43
It made writing the blogs easier. It made creating the social media post easier. And the organic reach of the podcast became easier too. Wow, there is so much wisdom in what LaQuita just said. Just focus on delivering the message and the leads will come.

00:06:00
I've personally found that to be true too. When we stop trying to force the things we want to happen and just focus on providing value to our audience, then it happens. Pretty simple, right? Simple, but doesn't mean that it's easy. The great news is that it also doesn't have to be so hard.

00:06:17
Especially when you have tools like Capsho available to you, which is what LaQuita also found. I don't even remember who dropped me the DM to try Capsho for free. I got that message for Capsho and it's another platform. And I'm sorry to say I can't even remember the name of the platform because when I compared the two, I dropped the same episode in both programs and the information that I got back from Cap Show just changed my life. Like the Chipotle song, it changed my life.

00:06:48
It's like, oh my God, this is amazing because we're like a team of two. It's just me and my son. So getting the time to write the blogs and make the social media captions and learn all of the different bits, it took a lot of time. So though we batch record twice a week, I may be recording six episodes in a week. I couldn't get them out because I couldn't get all of the content or it would be Lat like behind the power curve.

00:07:21
We tried our Cap Show and my son was mom like Defante. This is it. I don't even care how much it costs, it is going to change the game because most people have a VA or you have someone to do copy for you. When I calculated the cost, it was like, I know people can't see me, but it was like the cost of Capsho was here and the cost to do everything else was up there. It was a no brainer and it saved time.

00:07:47
So I went and got as many episodes as I could afford at the time and went back and went through all of my previous podcasts where I'd had significant guests, where their podcast episodes already did good, but their message was powerful. So like the episode with Marcus Ogden, I made sure to drop that in Cap Show. A couple of other influencers that I'd had an opportunity to have on the show, a marketing and branding expert from YouTube, letitia Styles. She came on the show, her episode did good, but when I put it in Cap Show and got all of the things and stuff, it went from being like two or 300 downloads to 2000 3000 downloads. And I saw that change in the episodes, even if it wasn't, say, big like that, because the person's name wasn't already known.

00:08:40
Dr. Monley, she's an amazing psychologist out of Dallas. Her episode was really good to me on a personal level. People liked it, but it only got like, maybe 75, 80 downloads when I re ran it back through everything and sent her the blogs, because all of the new collaterals that I make, I resent it to the guest. And it shot her episode up to like 700, 800 downloads, which I'm still a small indie podcast.

00:09:08
So to me, that was significant for me to have episodes that are five, 6700 downloads. Wow. Okay. So LaQuita was able to literally ten X her download numbers. Was that what really got her excited in her journey utilizing AI it created.

00:09:26
It was nothing like specific that I was looking for with AI, because I was still trying to get my feet wet with chat GPT and learning how to create the right prompts. Because Chat GPT is great, but if you don't know how to create the right prompts, you don't get the same results as someone who does. And honestly, I didn't want to pay out another several hundred or several thousand dollars for someone to teach me that that didn't fit in the budget. So when it said free, okay, what harm could it do? I'll try it.

00:10:00
And it was amazing. Like, the YouTube, I was already using TubeBuddy to try to figure out keywords and all that stuff to go on my YouTube, but Capsho gave it to me. Then I knew I needed to create more blog posts and LinkedIn articles. But knowing you need to do it and having the time to do it was two different things. And then it was so accurate, I went and looked back at it because I created the episode.

00:10:29
So when I looked at the even the show notes were like, my God, okay, I can use this. I can take the show note. Depending on which ones, even if I did the listicle one, I could take that and create a whole nother blog post. So it just gave me endless content, the TikTok captions, the Instagram captions. And then what do you want this post to do?

00:10:52
Do you want it to create engagement? Do you want it to promote do you like it's? So many options. I can promote one episode on social media, on the different social media platforms, probably at least five or six times. And that's me just going, making sure there's no spelling errors.

00:11:09
Which, to be honest, I've never really found any. I could take that and don't even think about it and drop it. And people are like, It's so good, LaQuita. Where did you get that from? And it's like, I got a secret.

00:11:20
Let me tell you about it. But it's the sheer pieces of content, because podcasting is like, the more I learn about podcasting and how to grow it organically, it's still, at the end of the day, it's about SEO. It's still about SEO and understanding podcast, SEO and your website, SEO, and all of that good stuff that's connected to your podcast. I'm not by any means an expert, but having the help using Capsho is like having a team just dedicated to your podcast. And if you're an indie podcaster like me with little to no budget, it's a no brainer.

00:11:58
Absolutely no brainer. Okay, and now we are starting to head into some of the juicy things. I want LaQuita to talk to us about SEO and blogging. What I find interesting is everyone's different starting points when it comes to creating content. Some people are just natural talkers, so they can just turn on a microphone and just start talking.

00:12:17
Some people might need at least an outline to follow to ensure that they get their main points across. And some, like we heard LaQuita mention earlier in this episode, might write out a full blog post or script first and then read that out as their podcast episode. And knowing that this was LaQuita's starting point meant that she probably knows a thing or two about blogging. I know that blogging is important. It don't matter what you're doing, if you're selling something on the Internet, you need a blog, or you need to have an agreement with someone to put your stuff in their blog.

00:12:49
So I went out and I looked at, okay, here's Tumblr. Honestly don't know how it works real well. Here is reddit. I go on Reddit for really good laughs because people say amazing things on Reddit and Twitter. But to know how to use it from it, like I'm creating it.

00:13:06
I'm still learning, but I know people are there. And then another podcaster said, Liquidity, you need to get yourself on Medium as well. So I use those three. I created a blog post section for my website that I use as well. And I utilize LinkedIn articles and my posts because LinkedIn loves long form and those keywords that I've researched on my own for that particular episode.

00:13:34
And again, back to Cap show. You guys are rarely wrong. I don't think I've ever had a keyword that come up, or even a hashtag, because the science of hashtag is amazing. I haven't even been there yet to discover that. But the relevant hashtags, it's all there.

00:13:51
And so I want to make sure that I have it in as many places as possible. So that when people are doing a Google search, that my goal, is that I come up on that first page, even if they're just blanketly Googling, LaQuita Monley. What I want to come up is, yes, my website. But then everything that's connected to me, I e my podcast. And to be able to go out and find that.

00:14:19
So right now, that's what I'm playing with to see which places are being most effective. Because everywhere I put it, I tweak it a little bit. I do something a little bit different to it, just so when I go back and see, okay, this many impressions have gone, or this many people have liked it, this many people have shared it. Like, when I first started, I didn't even realize people could share your blog article on Tumblr. Like, I knew it on Reddit, but I didn't know it on Tumblr until I started seeing people share my blog article and making sure that when I set up those profiles, I'm probably all over the place, y'all, please forgive me, but when I set up the Tumblr, it's like setting up any other piece of social media.

00:15:01
You have to tell it what area you want to show up because and I did that for my Tumblr. I did that for Reddit, I did that for Medium, and even another platform that I'm partnered with called Parade Deck. It is created by military influencers. For military influencers, that is a big space. That because my audience I want to draw military spouses, they also let me host my blog on their platform, which generates more attention when people are looking for specific things they're searching for.

00:15:36
So that's kind of where I am right now to see if that's, I mean, it's working good for me, but how can I improve it, what changes I may need to make? And is Tumblr really working? If it's not, let's not go there. Is Reddit really working just to determine, okay, which platforms are working the best, and then spend more time learning that platform to maximize it. Right now, everything is just a test.

00:15:58
I've been speaking to Capshovian LaQuita Monley about her journey, growing her podcast from 2000 total downloads to over 12,000 in the space of four months. And we know that blogging is a big part of that for her. What I didn't know was some of the specific tactics she used around blogging that are ingenious things I'm going to start looking at doing myself. But when she started, what results did. She actually see so immediately, it wasn't a lot of results immediately, but just from researching how SEO works, I understood that.

00:16:32
So if people I will say this, if you're doing organic and you're looking at SEO and somebody somewhere on these internet streets have told you immediate, either they know a secret that I haven't read about, or they're lying, it's one of those two. It won't be immediate, but you will begin to see some results. And I judge those results because on that, like, Captivate is my hosting provider. So when they click that embed link that I put in there, that gives me the details. Even if they don't click A, like if they don't share, I can go back to Captivate and click on that compare, and it tells me how many listens and where that was, where that Embed link was.

00:17:18
So that is how I get my information on what's working and what's not, because they listen. Let's get into some specific results. So I'm looking at my dashboard. So I started using Capsho. When was the podfest virtual?

00:17:33
I want to say, was it like May or April? I think it was about May or April. And at that time my total downloads on the show was right around about 2000. Right around about 2000. It wasn't much at all for the show at that time.

00:17:51
And I'll be fair even to myself, I changed hosting platforms. So the previous downloads, I'd lost them and I just changed to Captivate in January, like January, February, I had just changed to Captivate. So at that point it had only reached back about 2000. So today, as we're having this conversation, I am at 12,600 downloads when I started seeing the downloads, because I get up in the morning, I check them, or maybe at lunch I check them. And a few times I went back was like, this thing must be broken, this has to be broken.

00:18:28
But then I also started getting more positive feedback from the guests because at that point I wasn't so much focused on using Cap Show for my current episodes as I was previous episodes. I was trying to keep it in a balance just for a realistic picture. I was downloading using it for four new episodes. And at the same time I would be using Cap Show for like four old episodes because remember, I was trying to purchase as many as the previous. The older guests were like, oh, this is good, LaQuita.

00:19:01
I'm going to share this blog post in my newsletter going out. Or they share it in their social media. So now I have more relevant things for them to share and that look good in their media sections of their websites. I started seeing guests just post those blog, especially the blog articles. Yes, I'd give them the copy for, hey, repost this, here's your headliner.

00:19:28
Audio track, little video track, but here's for LinkedIn, here's for Instagram, here's for Facebook, here's giving them that copy and say, okay, here are the links to the places that I place your blog article. And I started seeing people reshare that and asking me, where did you do that? When did you have time to do that? So then I was like, okay, here's the tool, go grab this tool. This is what's helping.

00:19:54
So I can't say that I did it by myself, but I gave my guest more things to work with the new guests. It became the standard that they expected. The previous guests were like, wow, this is great. Now it gives me because it was like more content for them. It's like they just had another place that they spoke at, another thing event that they did.

00:20:14
That's how they were promoting it, and it worked. So LaQuita has already started sharing what worked for her, how she's been able to get this massive growth. Let's actually break it down into its component parts now, shall we? And you're going to want to grab a pen and paper and write yourself some notes because I guarantee that what LaQuita is going to share is going to blow your mind. Now, we'll start with step number one, creating a blog post for your website.

00:20:39
What does LaQuita do here? So when I go to create my blog post, I go in and I look at the different versions that Capsho has for just your regular blog, and I see which format pops out and I think that delivers the best message. And then I'll use that one. The same thing with the LinkedIn. I'll compare the LinkedIn articles and the blog posts as the same because they're all honestly written in a form that LinkedIn likes.

00:21:08
And that's the platform that I like to use. So I go in, I compare, I make this choice. This is the version that I'm going to put out on my blog post. So on my website, I host my own podcast page. Yes, I do have one with Captivate, but I built a landing page just for my podcast.

00:21:26
So I go in and I update it there, and I use some of the copy from Capsho to make it pop out. So when you go on that page, that podcast page, you'll see my most recent episode. Then underneath it, you'll see four or five of the most recent episodes. When a person clicks on there to listen, that takes them to my blog page. And my blog page is full of podcast articles.

00:21:52
It's all about the podcast. So the embed link is there. They can still listen to the episode, but they also have that long form blog article that they can look at. And if they like it, then they can flip through the previous episode. So that's how I update my podcast first.

00:22:09
When you're creating the blog article on the website, I still have to know the keywords. So as I'm writing it on the side there, because I use Kajabi, so I still have to tell it what tags to look for, what keywords are going to be associated with it. So I still have that. It still has this SEO section where you want the keyword rich short, like two three sentence description, and then also a keyword rich title that's shorter than the actual blog post title. So I fill in all of this stuff.

00:22:41
I've learned that I can't leave any of that blank because it makes my SEO score go down. So make sure every area on whatever the blogging platform that you're using, make sure everything is filled in okay. Did you write all the notes down? Because LaQuita shared some pretty epic things with us. Things like how to choose the right blog post from Capsho, setting your podcast website page in the right way to entice a visitor to listen, how to have them peruse your other episodes, and how to complete all the details to give your blog post its best chance of ranking.

00:23:12
Pretty cool, right? So that's step number one. Create a blog post for your website. Because step number two is going to be all about creating a blog post for other websites. What can LaQuita share about how she does this?

00:23:26
So, again, no strategy like it probably should be, and I probably shouldn't be saying that out loud. It's not like I haven't studied each platform enough to know what it likes. So right now I'm just playing with it to see what blog post style each platform really likes. Now, LinkedIn wants lots of words and they want step by step because they want you to say they want to position you to be a thought leader. So if we're going to start at LinkedIn, then you need it to be rich and long.

00:23:57
So like the listicle style, you wanted to do that. I've even taken some of the listicle and then some of the how to and mixed it together to create a block because you could take some from each one to create a blog post. So I'm really just mixing it up to see which one works better. On the parade deck where it's military people, we think step one, step two, step three, step four. So that is always effective.

00:24:26
All of the fluff and the words, yes, you do need to know the audience there. But just to be honest, I'm still playing with it. I do a lot of mix and matching with what's given to me from Cap Show. And then of course, we put it together and it has to be cohesive and make sense. So I do have to spend some time in it.

00:24:46
But it's fun. It takes away it's not as much as writing it from scratch. If you're on LinkedIn and you haven't started posting articles yet, then this is your sign to start doing it. And now this last step to LaQuita's growth is a pretty cool one. It's all about sharing with your guest, but she doesn't just do what the rest of us do and share some social media swipe files and audiograms and clips.

00:25:06
I mean, she does that too, but she also does something quite different. Honestly, it was because I didn't have time, but then I noticed I'm not that brilliant. I'm brilliant. But I'm not. So it was just so many things needing to be done.

00:25:21
Like I said, we're a team of two, so it got overwhelming. So even though the podcast was coming out weekly, as it should, the collaterals that needed to go out were not always going to their guests as it should. And I noticed something that the people who my dedicated listeners, when that episode come out on Tuesday, they are at the ready and you can see those downloads. But what I also noticed was it's like a reigniting of the download. So now it's intentional.

00:25:50
I intentionally don't give my guests their stuff until maybe I put it out on Tuesday, I may give it to them on Thursday or I may give it to them the follow me Tuesday and I title the email like this. Your episode came out recently and it is already doing fabulous and I'll say it's already reached this many downloads. Here are some marketing material for you to share with your audience to help to increase it. And people like to see that. Some people really like to see that their episode did great and it encourages them to go ahead because let's honest people guessed for leverage.

00:26:27
We do. We guess for leverage. And so they want to know was it worth their time? And when they see it was worth their time, I found that they share. So then the downloads will spike again.

00:26:36
And that works for me. Are you getting the nuggets that LaQuita's sharing with us? This stuff is so good. And when she mentioned when she reaches out to her guests, it actually also raised another question for me, which is around timings for her. What does she publish and when to get her the results she is looking for.

00:26:53
So I used to release the social media posts the day the podcast went out and I found that for my followers, eventually they didn't respond to it. They'd like it, but they wouldn't read it or they wouldn't follow the instructions on the link because I would say it began to be like, I guess pushy, so to speak. And people don't like that. On LinkedIn, I'm going to keep referencing LinkedIn because that's where I hang out. But on Facebook is different.

00:27:23
On Facebook and Instagram. It's very different. What I do now is it will come out on Tuesday, by Thursday, I'm posting something about it. Now on my LinkedIn, I do have a podcast page and I also have my personal profile. So what I do on my podcast page is that's where I don't really care what I'm not going to say I don't care what they think because that's wrong.

00:27:48
But I will post every single episode on my profile, however, because that's where the most people follow me. That's where I make sure I post the blog articles. Sometimes I let my podcast page post a blog article about it. But in order to get the views that I need, blog article definitely goes on my personal page post about the new episodes go on the podcast page itself. And I kind of mix that content up a little bit.

00:28:18
But to get people to click and listen, they'll read the LinkedIn article, you have the podcast inserted there, they'll listen to it versus reading your long LinkedIn post and then going down into your comment section and looking for the link to listen to the podcast. Dedicated followers will do that. That I found, but not those that aren't they're not going to do that. They'll read the post, they'll. Comment about the post.

00:28:42
Engage about the post, but I haven't found a lot of oh, let me listen to that in the comments. And if you put the link in the post, then LinkedIn is not going to share it very far. I love it when guests share the exact tactics they've seen work for them, things that they've tested and tested with, which has resulted in a specific result for them. Tactics and results that we can learn from too. I hope you wrote down a ton of notes because LaQuita shared so much gold with us today.

00:29:09
And just to recap, here are the overall three strategies she uses. One, create a blog post for your website that embeds your episode's player. Two, create and publish a blog post for other websites like LinkedIn, or it could even be Reddit, Substack or any other platform you know your audience are on. And three, share the blog post with your guest with early results on how their episode is performing. So many cool things to start to implement.

00:29:36
What will you start doing? Let me know by leaving me a comment in the show Notes. I'd love to see what you're committing to and implementing and shout you out on this podcast. If you want to hear more from. LaQuita, check out my podcast, LaQuita's Toolbox.

00:29:48
It can be found on every major podcast listening platform. Subscribe and share, and I'd love to hear your feedback in the comments. My name is Deirdre Tshien. Stay awesome.