Continuing Studies: for Higher Ed Podcasters

Jennifer-Lee: Happy Anniversary!

Neil McPhedran: Happy Anniversary Jen.

One year.

Welcome to Continuing Studies, a podcast for higher education podcasters to learn and get inspired.

I'm Neil McPhedran, founder of Podium Podcasts, an agency for higher education podcasters.

Jennifer-Lee: And I'm Jennifer-Lee, founder of Jpod Creations, podcasting is broadcasting.

We want you to know you're not alone.

In fact, there are many of you higher ed podcasters out there, and we can all learn from each other.

Please also join our community at HigherEdPods.com.

Neil McPhedran: So in this episode, Jen, it's just you and me.

No one to interview this time around.

And,

Jennifer-Lee: We're popping champagne.

Neil McPhedran: Popping champagne.

So since this is our one year anniversary, we thought
we would just share our learnings with the audience.

So this is a combination of things that you and I have learned as well as our three producers.

Yes.

We've gone through three different producers.

Jennifer-Lee: We're divas that's why.

Neil McPhedran: Yeah, but there's a reason.

They didn't just up and quit on us.

Jennifer-Lee: No, because you were asking for green M&Ms only, but that's okay.

We won't tell the real story here.

Neil McPhedran: I know I've got a very complicated rider.

Jennifer-Lee: Yes, you do.

Uh, actually a lot of news happened in the Continuing Studies family.

Kylé had a baby, so that was really exciting.

She is still on mat leave.

And then Gregg.

And you guys created your own baby together this year, and that was Higher Ed Pods.

And he became very busy with that so he went not on mat leave or paternity leave.

He went to go work with that because that's getting really exciting.

Some more to come on that.

And then Kat came and now she's stuck with us.

Neil McPhedran: That's right.

We'll keep Kat.

She's great.

Jennifer-Lee: Even if Kyle wants to come back afterwards, no.

Neil McPhedran: Yeah, that's true.

I gotta say, I'm impressed that we stuck to our cadence.

So we've actually, we haven't missed a single Monday
that we were supposed to drop an episode on, publish on.

We have stuck to our every two weeks.

We were a little bit late on a couple of them on a Monday.

But we still got it out and we stuck true to what we needed to do.

So that was great.

Yay us.

Jennifer-Lee: That's the hardest thing to do.

And we actually talked with a lot of our guests this year that
the most important thing with podcasting is to be consistent.

Because there's a lot of dead podcasts out there that don't get past podfade,
which last time I checked was creating eight episodes, so we are well past podfade.

Neil McPhedran: That's right.

I guess it comes down to one of the things that came up often in our numerous interviews with higher
education podcasters is that the podcast that we were talking about isn't their full time job.

And I think almost everyone we talked to, they were doing podcasting
as a component of their job or even more so off the side of their desk.

Jennifer-Lee: Yeah, because they just had messages that they
wanted to share about the institutes that they were part of.

And they also said, which everyone says when they come on, podcasts are a lot of work.

Neil McPhedran: Yes, we did hear that.

Over and over again.

And we know that for sure.

Let's just jump into a few of these things.

Let's start with maybe some of the things that we learned and some of the things
that our producers have shared with us as well that we've kind of all learned.

I'll start with the first one and that is about flexibility.

I think you're way better at this than I am.

I get the questions and I rigidly want to stick to them.

And I think maybe you with your broadcaster background are much better at it.

But I think we learned, and we actually heard this
from a few of our guests as well, of being flexible.

It's great to have preparation, and we can talk about that
in a second because being prepared is a very good thing.

But flexibility and letting the conversation go where it goes, I've definitely learned that.

But I've also been like really pleasantly surprised.

Sometimes it's like where our conversation is going to go and where I think I want to steer it.

And it hasn't gone that way.

And I've been pleasantly surprised about things I've learned
and just sort of letting it be more conversational yet still be

Jennifer-Lee: prepped.

You're learning to be a broadcaster.

I'm so proud.

And going on that, it's all about your questions too.

So, recently we just talked to the Games Institute and they said they like to dive in
to their first question, which is, what is the first video game that you ever watched?

Because they're a Game Institute podcast, but instead of being like, tell
us about yourself and those regular questions that we hear all the time.

Which we learned in broadcasting you shouldn't be doing, but
I know we have done them before because sometimes we're lazy.

It really opens up because like they were telling us, Emma was in that episode, that it really
opens up who the people are when they say what their first experience of video games are.

And it really does tell the story and it kind of leads you naturally through everybody's journey
without having to say, well, how did you get started ?And why did you start designing video games?

So interview questions as well as being prepped, which is our next one.

It's very important.

Being prepped, you hear me drone on about this all the time, Neil, but when you are a
radio DJ, when you are in a podcasting space, it doesn't matter how amazing you are.

Even the pros prep, prep, prep, prep, prep, even Oprah preps.

The more you're prepped, kind of what you're going back to flexibility.

You can go backwards and forwards and sideways if you're prepped because you know everything.

And if something major happens, and I've had this happen
before, not on a podcast, but back in the day in radio.

If something goes wrong in the interview, especially with somebody of note or celebrity
status, you want to be able to quickly figure out how to continue the conversation.

Neil McPhedran: Yeah.

I think it was Miriam and Kristi in episode 26, which was
where they collaborate on the Yale Harvard podcast together.

But I think what was interesting, they had such great charisma and they were obviously friends.

And that was such a fun interview we did with them because that's who they are.

But they specifically told us they are very scripted.

And it's funny because when you listen to their podcast and the way that they
play off of each other, you wouldn't go, oh, that's a super scripted podcast.

But they found that by being super scripted, it gave them the freedom and, uh,
the ability to sort of infuse that personality and more freer flowing into it.

So it's kind of counterintuitive, but it's a great example when you listen to that, to their
podcast, how you know, you wouldn't think it was superscripted, but it's superscripted.

Jennifer-Lee: But that's why it sounds off the cuff and natural because it's prepped.

And I tell people this all the time.

It's like one of my hot button issues.

The more you prep, the more you'll sound natural.

So going back to Kristi and Miriam.

Another thing that was interesting about their podcast, they're part of two
massive institutions, Harvard, Yale, Ivy league schools, staples of education.

A lot of people aspire to go there and not only that,
it's the two law programs, which are highly regarded.

And they created a podcast to tell you how to get in to law school.

And it's not just about Harvard and getting into Yale.

They said they will interview other programs for law too.

So I thought that was a neat way of doing it, is kind of a peek
through the curtain of really what does it take to go to a law school?

Neil McPhedran: Yeah.

And it just shows you that quote unquote competitive institutions
can collaborate together and you know together then they've got that
social power of each of their schools that they're bringing together.

And then they're able to talk to their fellow colleagues from
other admissions offices that they can pull in on it as well too.

So yeah, that also is a great insight too.

Don't think about your competitive institution as your competitor.

Collaborate and it'll be a better podcast and everyone's going to be better for it.

So that was a great one too.

Jennifer-Lee: And speaking of admissions, the other one that I liked that was
about admissions, but this is more general was the Yale Admissions podcast.

Talking to them was really cool because when, you know, there's so many
movie references and I know we talked about in that episode as well.

My idea of these Ivy League schools was Legally Blonde and it was
when Elle Woods was going to Harvard and making her video to get in.

And It was all these men around a table of glasses and they're like, I guess we'll let her in.

Sure, welcome to Harvard.

And that's what I thought admissions process was.

I didn't realize they have a day where they actually have snacks, people are nice.

They actually look at so many different parts of your application and they thoroughly go through it.

I thought they would just be like, next, next, oh, this one looks interesting.

So, I'm learning so much that it's not just mean people behind a
boardroom when it comes to Ivy League schools for admissions process.

Neil McPhedran: Okay, so the next one is getting into the weeds here a bit more.

Titling strategies.

We go back all the way to episode one where we chatted with
Jenny Luna and she went deep on the importance of episode titles.

And I think what's really interesting is how to think about not just like you want a catchy title.

Yeah, we all want a catchy title and we want to explain what the episode is and so on and so forth.

Of course you want that.

But also think about how the listener interacts with those titles.

And typically they're going to find your show, not at episode one and continue on.

They're going to find your show, discover your show, and you've got a whole bunch of episodes.

So someone's going to discover this show.

They're going to pull it up in the app and they're going to scroll through all of the episodes.

Kind of like a menu, as Jenny was telling us, and they're going to pick the episodes for them.

That they're going to learn from, typically that's the kind of
podcast we're creating here, and they're doing something else.

So they're multitasking.

It's interesting to think about it that way of like,
what are we going to, what is the person going to learn?

Someone's going to scroll through and read things.

So we want shorter titles.

You want to make sure that it's showing up.

We should look at our titles in the apps and not just do it and leave it.

But actually like have a look at those titles in the apps.

And if I take this one step further, for me, what I've
also learned is Apple specifically isn't just the title.

If you're in the Apple podcast app and you're at the show view where you're looking
at all the episodes, like we were talking about, like a menu, it's the title.

But then there's a character count and it also can include up to
the first sentence of your episode summary and your show notes.

So, think about those two things, how they work in tandem.

But also think about if you put in this episode of continuing studies, we talk about,
you just swallowed up a whole bunch of characters there and it's telling you nothing.

So that if someone's scrolling through and it's like every single
time, in this episode of, in this episode of, we see that all the time.

So think about how those things roll together.

And that first sentence is also super important that goes with your title.

Jennifer-Lee: Yeah.

And that goes on to what we were talking about in the second half of the year
was Podcasting 2.0 because titling is a big part of that and many other features.

And I didn't know what Podcast 2.0 was.

I thought it was just about Bitcoin.

And then Neil told me that was not the case.

Because when you read a lot about it, they make it sound like it's trying to
be like the freer version, not putting anyone down for speaking their mind.

It's a lot more than that.

It was really interesting to talk to a few experts, James
Cridland, Sam Sethi, and we had a few episodes on them.

What really made me, interesting to me was the fact that a lot of, no one platform, especially
recently like Captivate just released features, Transistor's been putting 2.0 features.

It's a bigger thing than we think.

And it's not like a hidden society of podcasters, which sometimes are painted.

But it's more about getting listens because podcasting as Neil and I know
in all the conferences we go to, they still say it's so young podcasting is.

It's still in its first inning.

And the biggest thing that nobody's figured out is really how do you get your podcasts seen?

So I really like the fact that 2.0, that's their big goal is working on that.

Is how do you get everyone's wonderful podcasts out there and seen by everybody.

Neil McPhedran: In this episode we're going to feature and spotlight the Podroll tag.

It's got a bad name.

It's not the best name for this one.

Jennifer-Lee: I don't mind Podroll.

Neil McPhedran: There could be a better name for it, but the name comes from, if you hearken
back to the blog days, if you're going to age yourself in the internet years, we had,

Jennifer-Lee: You make it sound like there were horse and buggies back then.

Neil McPhedran: Yeah, that's right.

Jennifer-Lee: Not that long ago.

Neil McPhedran: We had the blog roll feature.

So that's where the Podroll comes from.

It's a legit term that came from the blog roll.

So bloggers, um, I brought up blogging the other day and
one of my kids laughed at me just even using the term blog.

Anyway, blogging is where a blogger would sort of end his or her blog and
share their favorite next blog to kind of like, so you kind of kept rolling.

So that's where that twist comes from for Podroll.

Um, so what's a Podroll?

So it's another tag, another feature within Podcasting 2.0 as we've been moving through those.

And it's where we can share a favorite show directly below or within our feed.

So we can reference another show.

We could actually reference another one or two shows that we
wanted to recommend, or we can reference specific episodes.

So that I think comes into play for academic podcasting.

Where maybe we want to reference another episode that's related to the episode
we just covered, you know, the episode topic we just covered, so on and so forth.

But essentially, at the end of the day, it's a way for us to control
a way to recommend other shows or recommend specific episodes.

So why does it matter?

It builds community.

It's ability for us to, you know, foster that community,
share the love with other podcasts, vice versa.

Enhance discoverability, it's the conundrum of podcasting.

How do we find other podcasts?

How do we recommend other podcasts?

This is a built-in way that we can do it.

And content creation is another reason it really matters.

So it allows us to cure additional content for the audience, like my example with the episode.

So as higher education podcasters, why do we care?

Well, it's a great tool to extend the learning experience.

And to support our fellow colleagues within our institution, other shows.

Think about it as a way to do a promo swap without having to do the promo thing
where, you know, you could go like, hey, um, from another faculty, I'll recommend your
podcast if you recommend my podcast, you drop both shows into that Podroll feature.

So, how do we get started?

This one's really interesting.

So again, we've talked about this a bunch of times.

But it's about using the right hosting solution that is adopted the Podcasting
2.0 features, and then it's about using the right apps so these Podrolls come up.

So we'll obviously share that, like we've been sharing those links in our show notes.

But it's super straightforward within the host solution.

You can drop it right in there at the show level, the podcast that you want to recommend.

You just drop in those feeds basically.

Or at the episode level, you can drop in those other
episodes or those other shows related to the topic.

So again, with all these other features.

We're going to give this a try.

So if you access this episode and our show using a modern
podcast app, again, the links to some of those apps are in there.

You'll see the podcast that we're recommending.

We're going to recommend a few of the podcasts that we have featured in Continuing Studies.

Otherwise, tune in next episode for our next feature
that we're going to talk about for Podcasting 2.0.

I haven't figured out what it is yet, but I will.

Jennifer-Lee: So it's not a Rickroll.

Never going to give you up, never make you cry.

Neil McPhedran: Oh, that's a way better name, Jen.

Jennifer-Lee: A Rickroll instead of a Podroll?

Neil McPhedran: I like it.

I like it.

Jennifer-Lee: I was like, that's all I can think about again, dating myself
because I'm sure your kids don't know what a Rickroll is, but anyone else.

Neil McPhedran: Well, if they're not into blogging, they're not into Rickrolls either.

Jennifer-Lee: There we go.

Neil McPhedran: That's a good feature, isn't it?

I mean, it's a super easy feature for us to adopt.

Like it just makes a lot of sense.

I know that Spotify is kind of doing it.

If you go into other shows in the Spotify for podcaster app, you can
recommend other shows, or you can recommend an audio book or something.

Uh, but that only works for Spotify.

This works across the board.

So it's a great feature.

Jennifer-Lee: And you can get that song on Spotify as well.

So there you go.

Neil McPhedran: We'll put a link to that one.

We definitely need to put a link to that one.

Let's keep going on things we've learned.

Jennifer-Lee: But my biggest takeaway, I was going to say, jumpin' back into it is,
drum roll, no Rickrolls, drum rolls, is the fact that every institution we talked to,
they're so large, they didn't realize there's other podcasts in other departments.

That, that like blows my mind.

Neil McPhedran: Networks.

Jennifer-Lee: Yeah.

So that was my biggest takeaway this year.

Neil McPhedran: It is interesting how we, multiple times,
introduced podcasters within the same institution to each other.

Yeah, that did happen.

But yeah, you're right.

I think that not only do they not know the others exist.

They're not even really reaching out to find those other podcasters.

But when they do there's such an opportunity for collaboration
and to drive discovery, back to the whole discovery thing.

So in episode eight we interviewed Jenna Spinelle and Brandon Stover.

They're from the Democracy Group Network podcast.

And then in episode 12, we interviewed Matt Hodapp from the University of Chicago Podcast Network.

So I thought they both were really good examples.

Obviously the University of Chicago podcast is all about the podcast.

I think there's dozens actually of podcasts that are coming out of the
University of Chicago, and it's a great way that they're collaborating.

They, you know, there's discovery, everything's on one website page.

You can, you know, you can see each other, they supporting each other, so on and so forth.

The Democracy Group goes across institutions.

And so they're networking around the topic of democracy
uh, and the institution of democracy, basically.

And multiple podcasts that sort of fall within that realm.

Both were really great examples.

Both interviews really got into how, you know, at the end of the
day, it's that old saying of the rising tide lifts all boats.

They're all working together and collaborating together.

They were able to improve their podcasts and up their game.

But also it gave them that, that discoverability for their audience to learn more
about other podcasts and the other podcast audience to learn more about their podcast.

Jennifer-Lee: Yeah, because if you're in Yale, you're
going to be more likely to listen to other Yale podcasts.

So I like it and other institutions want to learn from each other too.

So it's a really great thing.

I just found it interesting that there's a lot of, not many of them yet.

There's only a few institutions that are starting and they're just starting
to offer courses on podcasting as well, which is really interesting.

Neil McPhedran: We had five different episodes focused on alumni podcasts.

And you know what?

I kind of thought after two, maybe that was enough, but no, what was interesting
is, so it was episode 2, episode 9, episode 21, episode 24, and episode 27.

All featured different alumni podcasts.

And each one different and each one, there is some really amazing insights
in every single one of those five of different ways to engage alumni.

And podcasting is just such a perfect medium for it.

It's not about like growing some big Joe Rogan sized podcast.

It's really about niche, the targeting that alumni audience.

But it's such a great way to engage the audience and to feature other
alumni for alumni to know what's going on in the university and so on.

So, Jen, I think we got more runway for more alumni podcasts to learn more because
I think it's a real important part of the higher education podcast ecosystem.

Jennifer-Lee: Another alumni podcast, which I thought was interesting too,
is the fact that somebody that graduated that does a lot of give back to the
University of Penn State was somebody that now works for Goldman Sachs high up.

And he came to the university and said, hey, I would love to do an
alumni podcast to show people, uh, kind of what you can do after school.

And I have a lot of friends that've graduated from Penn State that would love to be on the podcast.

And then Katie from Penn State was amazing.

She is so much younger than all of us.

And I feel like she's already had a career that's like twenty
times longer than Neil and I's because she's super smart, lovely.

She teaches podcast courses, she builds the podcast for alumni.

And I just thought that was a really neat thing that a
lot of people that have gone back, we never saw that.

It was usually people that had started it and there's people that recent grads.

But not grads from longer ago, come back and say, hey, I want to help out the university.

It really helped me in my life and my career and I want to give back.

Neil McPhedran: Yeah, that's a great one.

And so much of alumni organizations are also focused on the
fundraising aspect of it, like tapping alumni for funding.

And what a great way to do that.

Not only time but also they're funding that podcast as well, too.

So that was a great way for giving back as you said.

Let's do one more, Jen.

What about, one of the things I think was really interesting is, and there was a couple
of examples of it, of how podcasting is this audio medium, yet it works really well
for what we would think would be a requirement to go deep on graphics or imagery.

But like to talk about things that are really like pictures or
graphics or whatever, podcasting is a great medium for that.

So in episode 11, we interviewed Jessica from Yale University Press Podcast,
and then in episode 29, one of our most recent episodes, we interviewed Dr.

Emma Vossen from the University of Waterloo's Games Institute.

Both podcasts are examples where they are talking about, well in the case of Jessica at
Yale University Press, she talks a lot about art history books and architecture books.

Okay, so how do you do that in the audio sense?

And then Emma, it's about gaming and producing and developing games, but also, elements of games.

And Emma was specifically talking about how it was sort
of a breath of fresh air with the podcasting medium.

Where normally a presentation, their version of a presentation is heavy graphics, heavy
slides, heavy demonstration of whatever research or gaming development they're talking about.

But there's a freeing sense almost with who they're interviewing and the conversations
they could have without having to rely on those super graphical slides, whatnot.

Jennifer-Lee: And they're both very popular podcasts.

And it's interesting that we never thought that things like that work.

But I guess it does make sense because before we had television and
pictures of that type of stuff, we, you're laughing at me, but it's true.

You would sit around and listen to the radio and radio plays, right?

So.

Neil McPhedran: Yeah, we're not that old, Jen.

We're not that old.

Jennifer-Lee: Maybe I'm not that old.

Maybe you did that, but

sit around, around and listen to the radio plays.

No, you're a young pup.

Anyways, it's been a year.

We still like working with each other.

So that's good.

Neil McPhedran: Yes, very much so.

I'm excited for the year ahead and we've got some super exciting episodes and interviews ahead.

We've got a lot more international.

That's right.

We've got a lot more international episodes coming.

I'm going to the Radio Days Asia, specifically
Podcast Day Asia in Kuala Lumpur in a couple of weeks.

So I'm going to meet a whole bunch of podcasters from Asia and Australia and New Zealand.

So I'm excited because that's going to, I'm definitely
going to find some folks there that we can interview.

But I'm really excited about what we've done and what we've built so far.

And I'm looking forward to another year and beyond of more of these
great, exciting conversations with higher education podcasters.

Jennifer-Lee: Yeah, me too.

Take me with you though.

We're not doing conferences together.

Neil McPhedran: You went to London.

You went to London.

And we're going to London.

We've got a couple of upcoming in September that we're going to interview there.

So, okay, Jen, you want to read us out?

Jennifer-Lee: Thank you for tuning into the Continuing Studies Podcast.

A podcast for higher education podcasters.

We hope you found this episode informative and inspiring.

If you enjoyed the show, we encourage you to follow and subscribe to
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But if you found this episode particularly valuable, please consider sharing it with
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We also invite you to join your peers on HigherEdPods.com where you can connect
with other podcasters in higher education and learn from others in the field.

Thank you for being part of our community.

We look forward to continuing to bring you valuable
insights and conversations around higher education podcasts.

See you in the next episode.