Continuing Studies: for Higher Ed Podcasters

Ep 10 - Brandon Stover - Final
[00:00:00] Jennifer-Lee Gunson: Welcome to Continuing Studies, a podcast for higher education podcasters. In each episode, we talk to a university podcaster to ask some questions, get answers, and share tips and ideas about higher education podcasting. Hi, I'm Jennifer Lee. I'm a radio broadcaster and a podcaster.
[00:00:20] Neil McPhedran: And I'm Neil McPhedran, I've come to podcasting after 25 years in the digital agency world. Together, we've hosted, executive produced, and launched seven, and counting, higher education podcasts. Please remember to follow Continuing Studies in your listening app of choice and drop us a rating and or a review, we'd love to hear your feedback. While you're at it, also join the University Podcaster Network on LinkedIn.
[00:00:53] Okay, welcome to another episode of Continuing Studies. So, Jen, in this episode, we talk again to Brandon Stover. You'll remember we chatted with Brandon a couple of episodes. Episode 8. Go back and have a listen to that one if you haven't already. Where we talked to him about the Democracy Group Podcast Network.
[00:01:15] And in that episode, we really dug into a podcast network, the mechanics of the podcast network. Why create podcast networks, so on and so forth. Some really good stuff in there, so go back and listen to that one. But in this episode, we wanted to get Brandon back to talk more deeply because he's got a really interesting journey into podcasting and about his other podcast endeavor, Plato University.
[00:01:39] I thought what was interesting in this episode, and what we really dug into was how he's using podcasting as the actual delivery mechanism for the education itself.
[00:01:54] Jennifer-Lee Gunson: Yeah, and I like the fact too that he is really passionate about making this university accessible for everyone. That is the ground floor core value for him is like anybody is able to use this platform no matter what background, uh, you are.
[00:02:10] And I also like the fact that they are looking to topics that you wouldn't necessarily see or dig really deep into at a mainstream institution, like how to start a career, how to find your purpose, how to learn anything. I like the fact that he's got his own special Brandon spin on it. So that being said, let's get into it and let's chat with Brandon.
[00:02:42] What was your podcasting journey and how did you get into doing Plato University? Because that's a lot of work to be like, I want to make courses for people to learn something important in their lives.
[00:02:53] Brandon Stover: I originally went to school for architecture and worked three years in the field as an architect. I love architecture, I don't love the field and working in an office. And around that time, I was trying to find out a way that I could occupy my mind. Much of the time when I was working in the office, I would get stuff done very quickly and I'd be like, hey, I, I need more work, I need, you know, to work on other projects. And they didn't necessarily have something for me. It was like, well, I'm still here for eight hours, I need to do something.
[00:03:20] So, I started listening to podcasts and I was like, okay, if I'm stuck here, I can still, you know, educate myself. And I started listening to Impact Theory by Tom Bilyeu, uh, [00:03:30] and really kind of just like got swamped into listening all of those episodes, fell in love with podcasting as a medium, just because I could be doing something else and started listening to a bunch of other podcasts, so on and so forth. But I was like, it's so cool that he can invite guests on and ask him any questions that he wants. And being somebody that was an only child, uh, grew up poor, there was no, like, concept of having a network where people with mentors that I could reach out to. I was like, well, maybe I could do that, what if I had a show and I invited some of these people and started asking them questions?
[00:04:01] And... I took a small like podcasting course, basically consumed it really fast and decided to just like start interviewing a few friends that I had at the time. Uh, they were entrepreneurs. And so, I was kind of getting a little bit of like, how are you guys doing this stuff? What if I wanted to become an entrepreneur, how do I, you know, start doing those things and eventually started interviewing larger guests along the way. And that was actually my first podcast. It was called Hustle and Happiness. It may still be up somewhere, but it was my first-time podcasting, I didn't know what I was doing. So, it was like [00:04:30] a very big learning curve. And so, I think I did about 50 episodes of that before I stopped it, relaunched as the Evolve podcast, and that's where I started interviewing social entrepreneurs, um, people that were trying to solve big problems in the world.
[00:04:45] I had a very big interest in that as I was trying to become an entrepreneur myself, and as I was learning from them, and also feeling like I wasn't prepared professionally or personally much from college, you know, after I got out, how was I going to tackle life? I started digging into like, what is wrong with our education system, I loved learning as a kid, still love learning now, it was fundamentally broken.
[00:05:07] And so, I spent a good couple of years researching this stuff, talking to different people about the education system. And I wanted to connect these two things, these global problems that I was looking at, and then also looking at the education system and like, well, maybe we can use that instead of having everybody become software developers or architects or, you know, communication experts, what if we took that same learning and [00:05:30] the skills and applied it to some of these problems that we need solutions to. And that started the genesis of Plato University a few years ago, just with developing stages.
[00:05:40] Jennifer-Lee Gunson: Oh, that's awesome. I feel like, I think about how I started my career. It's been a lot of like failing and like figuring it out. And like finding your purpose, again, it feels like a big pie in the sky idea, but to be successful in anything you do, you need to find your purpose. You're breaking it down and making it easy for everyone to understand and actually not only understand but do.
[00:06:02] Brandon Stover: Right. All of our courses, the way they're designed is we're presenting basically what the topic is, why it's important to you as a student, because that question always comes up, why am I learning this? And then how do you actually do it?
[00:06:15] The two courses that you just mentioned, the purpose course and our career course; the purpose course is really designed to help you take these problems that maybe you have going on in your life or things that you care about and put that in match with something that's going on in the world. Something that I learned was [00:06:30] that the more responsibility that you take on as a person, the more fulfillment you have because you're helping somebody beyond yourself. And so, it's helping in that course, that person go from the individual; here's my values, here's what I believe in, here's what I would like to do in the world. And taking them to, here's the problems going on, do I match any of those? Do I care about any of those? And help them to gain the confidence and skills to reach that. So transitioning people, okay, they found their purpose, they found out how to get careers. How do they actually start tackling some major challenges?
[00:06:59] Neil McPhedran: So maybe just sort of digging further into how does podcasting play into that? Like how is podcasting used as a key part of the learning process?
[00:07:07] Brandon Stover: Absolutely. So, a big critique that I have of higher education is that all of this wonderful knowledge is gatekeeped. Not everyone is getting access to this. I also want to make education free to as many people as possible. And so that means putting it out in a medium that can be accessed by anyone, anywhere, many of the other educational [00:07:30] institutions have leaned into YouTube and sometimes put out some of their content. But as I was mentioning earlier, when I was sitting in the office, I had the ability to listen to podcasts and start learning when I was still doing other things, I wasn't, I didn't have to be sitting there in front of the computer to be doing that. Now as I go through my life, I often turn on a podcast as I'm cooking or, you know, walking to the gym or whatever to continue that learning. So, I see podcasting as a medium that could reach a larger scale than what our educational institutions are doing now, that is the benefit to the listener.
[00:08:05] The benefit to Plato University and in building it is it allows the students to basically try before they buy. They get to listen to all the education that's going on, well, everything that we're teaching, and then they can come to the platform and get extra resources or support. But they know already what's going on rather than the proposition that's happening now, where you have to apply to this university, but you don't really know what they're teaching yet, you don't know the quality of their education.
[00:08:30] Neil McPhedran: I really like that idea that in keeping with podcasting, which is kind of this ultimate sort of out-there free speech, you can't shut down an RSS feed. That's the same concept with what you're building, it's there, you can listen to it, it's access. And I totally agree with the whole, um, multitasking medium as well, too. It's different from so many other apps, which are video. It's a different kind of attention and just being able to multitask and do other things, right, but still learn is, I think is a really good use of the channel for sure. Yeah.
[00:09:02] Brandon Stover: The benefit of using podcasts is we try and make our lessons 10 to 15 minutes long and do it as like a daily thing. So, you'll see some of the courses, it'll say day one, day two, day three, and those are the lessons, and they kind of build on each other. What is it doing is getting a habit. Like if you actually listen to this every day, now you're in the habit of listening to them, but you're also in a habit of learning. So, you would listen through this whole course, and you'd be like, okay, I got to the end of this course, I'm already in this habit, maybe I can pick up another one. So, it's time to build that habit of learning into their life using this medium.
[00:09:31] Jennifer-Lee Gunson: I love the fact that you're making education bite sized like that. And like, I think sometimes people are scared to do shorter podcasts, but I'm like, no, you need to do them shorter, cause our attention span, like I don't have time to listen to a 45 minute or an hour podcast. When we're in this medium right now or this day and age of like, I need it in like two seconds, so shorter, the better.
[00:09:53] Neil McPhedran: Um, maybe just sort of flip it a bit here. I'm curious, what have your students taught you? I think you probably get some interesting feedback there, but what have you learned from your students now that you've been doing this for a while?
[00:10:03] Brandon Stover: Absolutely. So, a couple of years ago, I think when I was first coming up with the idea, I did a small beta program with three students where it was a cohort that we did together and I was working on personalized learning plans for them around issues that they wanted to tackle, problems they want to tackle. For example, we had one gentleman who was a UX designer, and he wanted to create a community around mental health, especially in the design field because it’s very intense and you get, you know, beat up on all the time about your ideas.
[00:10:32] So, I did a 12-week cohort program with them, and they taught me a lot about what that will look like in the future. And it taught me a lot about coaching my students and finding out what is it they actually want to do, how did they learn, what best resources will be there and trying to figure out how I'll be able to scale that in the future. Because right now, the reason we do education the way we do is because we have to give it to a lot of students; so, it needs to be standardized in some way. That was my first learning.
[00:11:01] The second learning that I had was I do a student feedback interview, so I'll just have a Calendly set up. And so, people that have gone through one of my podcast courses and want to get in touch with me about additional questions or feedback that they have, I'll do an interview with them. Something that surprised me, one of them came on and he was taking my purpose course and he said to me, if you ever question or wonder if you're having an effect on anybody's life with this, you absolutely are. He was like, [00:11:30] this course has really changed my life. It's made my life a lot better. And in that moment, I was like, holy crap, because I ask myself that every day.
[00:11:37] In a podcasting medium, we don't have direct contact with who we're speaking to. You can start to create communities and places that people can go to, to you know, interact with them, but otherwise you're just kind of putting stuff out into the ether. You have no idea what effects is going on. And so, hearing that sort of feedback is amazing, it helps me to, okay, I want to keep doing this, I want to keep putting these out.
[00:12:00] Neil McPhedran: I love that Calendly idea. Like, so how do you communicate that to your students? Is that something that you mention in some of the podcast lessons or, cause, I think, wow, it just got me thinking about a great way to generate audience feedback.
[00:12:15] Brandon Stover: Yeah. So, I will mention it in the podcast, I also have my email available everywhere. So, like you can go on my LinkedIn, you can find my email and it's in the RSS feed. It's so if you go searching for it, you will find me, and I will get emails all the time. People asking me questions about something on the course, and when they that, I will say, hey, if you wouldn't mind, go ahead and leave me a review on LinkedIn about the course. And, um, if you'd like to have a call, I'd love to just get a little bit of feedback from you and I'll just, you know, do 15 minutes with them.
[00:12:42] Neil McPhedran: That's great. And do you get like a large percentage of people taking you up on that? Or like, what do you think there, percentage wise?
[00:12:47] Brandon Stover: I mean, I probably get, uh, one or two a month. I mean, it's not a huge influx.
[00:12:52] Neil McPhedran: Still, that's great. I mean, if you're, if you're a podcaster out there in the dark, like, like it can be lonely, right? So, I like that.
[00:12:58] Jennifer-Lee Gunson: Yeah. Even once or twice a month is amazing because like I said, we're working a radio yet, no feedback, sometimes once in a while, someone will complain about...
[00:13:06] Neil McPhedran: unless someone has something to complain about, right?
[00:13:08] Jennifer-Lee Gunson: Yeah, but that's about it. So, hey, if you have two comments a month, that's still pretty good. People are taking time out of their day to talk to you. Do you heavily market? Word of mouth? Are you the guru in Texas for everyone to go to, like, how to get new students?
[00:13:23] Brandon Stover: That's the beauty of podcasting is it's a marketing format in and of itself. People go searching out for this and then all of the lessons, like in my podcast, they're labelled in a way that's a little bit clickbaity of how to do X, but it's things that people are actually searching out on these apps. And I kind of found that insight by the way I was looking for information and I wanted to learn.
[00:13:43] I was like, okay, when I type this in, what am I looking for? And it's usually like some topic or subject and I'm like how to do this or trying to learn. So, I market all of my podcasts in that way. That is basically the primary growth engine for Plato University. On the platform right now we have, I think last time I checked 630 users. And those have all just come in, no, you know, marketing dollars or anything going out all from the podcast because all the podcasts have a call to action to come to Plato University for extra resources and all of that.
[00:14:11] Jennifer-Lee Gunson: Hey, I have a question about your clickbait titles because I like the clickbait titles, but are you one of these people that, like, give me the answer to do with my clickbait title, like, on, like, the 80th page and I have to scroll down to find the answer, because that's where I get angry.
[00:14:25] Brandon Stover: No. So, like I said, all of our lessons, they're, you know, 10 minutes, 20 minutes at max, you're going to get the answer right in there. And they're not extreme clickbaity, like, trying to, uh, razzle you up. They're just more of, like, curiosity based. How to do X, you're going to find the answer in there.
[00:14:40] Neil McPhedran: Just so I'm, I'm clear, cause I'm pretty sure I understand what you're saying. You've kind of like spent some time in the platforms, i. e. in Apple or Spotify, YouTube, or some of the other apps. Similar to SEO research you would do for websites and whatnot you're applying that same concept to the search discovery elements of each of those podcast apps, and then serving up your titles and your descriptions in a way. That you're going to quote unquote rank high within those search results from in those app. Am I getting that right?
[00:15:11] Brandon Stover: Absolutely, yes. And the way I think about it is from the building a course perspective, when you come in and you start creating your course outline, you're asking, okay, what is the outcome that I want my student to do? So, for example, our how to start a podcast course, the outcome is to start a podcast.
[00:15:26] Okay, what are all the steps that they need to do in order to be able to launch? So, I break all of those down into an individual lesson, to an individual step. Then, I take that lesson and I can say, what's the most salient thing that they're looking for in that? And I will go to resources like, Answer the Public is a really good one for keyword research, because that puts all of the questions that people ask on the internet and how much they're getting ranked. And so, you look for one that's close to that. You know, if we're doing podcast publishing, a question might be, you know, what's the best publisher or how do you publish a podcast? And I will label my title just like that.
[00:16:01] Neil McPhedran: That's clever. I think there's a lot for our audience who may are putting their courses out as podcasts. I think there's a lot of learning there as well, cause most of us are in the higher education, where there's some level of education component to it, maybe not sort of as overt as, as what you're doing where it's the podcast itself. But I think what you're doing takes a bit more work, doing your research.
[00:16:25] We'll put this in our show notes too. Answer The Public. So, I, what I like about that one is it's like real, its kind of, it's not like SEO garbly goop. It's like the real way people are searching for things, right? So, I think, I think like we could all learn something from that.
[00:16:39] Jennifer-Lee Gunson: We could do a podcast just about how people search.
[00:16:43] Neil McPhedran: Yeah. There you go. Do you have an episode on that?
[00:16:46] So, I think the other key component, but at least for me from the outside looking in is. How core your website is to, to the overall. And I know you're also a website developer. A lot of our work we're doing right now is [00:17:00] working with the pre-existing podcasts and sort of helping them kind of level up. When we start working with a podcast, commonly that's one of the things we start to work on with them, where it's almost like a forgotten component. They really haven't treated it as a core to sort of the overall mix.
[00:17:18] Just sort of curious of your philosophy, I guess, of what the website being core to your podcast and maybe just share some keys that you've learned about how that the website itself is so important to receiving traffic from your podcast, but also probably driving traffic back and awareness to the podcast too.
[00:17:34] Brandon Stover: Yeah. I was mentioning earlier, I was studying from a bunch of different entrepreneurs and trying out entrepreneur ventures myself. So, I learned a lot about web development, marketing, copywriting, um, I built sales funnels for a couple of ecommerce products, things like that. And I took all of that knowledge into what I'm doing now.
[00:17:52] And what I learned during that time was the importance of owning, uh, somewhere that you can collect all of your customers, the people that you will be talking to. A podcast has the RSS feed and yes, while you own the RSS feed, it still has to go out to all of these apps, which you don't own. They can shut down those apps at any time. So, you want to build some sort of asset that you actually own, that you can communicate with your listeners in case any one of those other platforms gets shut down. This is the reason why I actually don't do a ton on social media, and I focus so much on my assets.
[00:18:28] So building a website is like your home, it's where you're going to collect all of these people that are listening to your podcast. To go one step further, you want to open up some sort of communication with them on that website. So, email has been the tried and true forever. Even though not as many people open up their emails or read things, it's still the best communication because you can take that email list and move it anywhere you want. So, on Plato University's website, we have people sign up and the very first thing they do is they put their name and email in. [00:19:00] And that way I can take that email list and move it wherever I want. Even though Plato University, the website's built on Webflow, I could technically take all that code, build it somewhere else and take that email list. And I still have direct contact to those people.
[00:19:13] Neil McPhedran: It's owning that spot on the web, which is also your show, which, you know, to your point about it's, it's almost the glue for everything. I think as podcasters, we don't think that way. We're concerned about making sure people follow us on the podcast apps, but, that email part is an important component to building your audience and owning your audience.
[00:19:33] Brandon Stover: And for people that have multiple podcasts, like when you come to Plato University, we have all those courses, each one of those is a podcast. If somebody comes from, you know, the career podcast, comes to Plato University, they're going to see all these other ones, and they could subscribe to those, start taking that course, and of course that counts all as RSS downloads for me on the other podcasts as well. So, again, bringing one central hub, everybody comes here, they find something new.
[00:19:57] Jennifer-Lee Gunson: You're just so smart with all this. Email is so important, and a lot of people aren't thinking of email because they're like, oh, that's an older way of doing it. But I'm finding out a lot of ways that we used to market things and might be like an older way, like email lists are actually what is successful. So, you're hip, Brandon.
[00:20:14] That being said. What do you think the role of podcasting is going to be in higher education? What do you see the future as?
[00:20:21] Brandon Stover: Obviously, I'm very bullish about it being a medium that educators, uh, get out more of their content, that's what I'm doing. But I've seen the major educators come to the forefront. We can look at Andrew Huberman as a perfect, uh, case study of bringing the things that he's teaching in the classroom out to the public, and he's one of the top podcasts now, people want this stuff.
[00:20:41] I think there is a break from educators, uh, people doing this research, scientists being able to take what they know and distill it to the public. I think it's a skill that would be of great benefit for them to learn. Because they can go around, I mean, [00:21:00] podcasts are for the rebels, they can go around the institutions that they're in, or the ways that maybe this has been gatekeeped in the past and give this information and knowledge to the public.
[00:21:10] So I see it being a large key, especially as podcasting grows and gets more mainstream, in some of the ways that it's being accessed and the tools that are being developed for it. I think it's just going to get easier and easier to for educators to do that.
[00:21:25] Neil McPhedran: Yeah. One of the podcasts we work with Think Fast, Talk Smart, which is the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Matt Abrahams, the host, teaches preeminent MBA students. He started doing it so he could reach outside of his classroom. You know, he may have a cohort of, I don't know, I'm just going to make this up, say 200 in a semester, but this is a way he's reaching people all around the world now. So I appreciate your observation. I think you're totally right. That is the opportunity. I
[00:21:51] Brandon Stover: mean, for perspective, the. Courses at Plato University, 320,000 downloads, uh, from all the courses combined the last time I checked. So that's 320,000 people that have heard some sort of education from this, from all around the world. So, I mean, it's just a greater opportunity as an educator to get out the stuff that will help to change people's lives. I think there's also an opportunity, uh, for us podcasters that are not educators, um, but want to help the education get out there. So, I was mentioning my climate change course will be coming out soon that has, um, about 30 different scientists, uh, professors from all across the country and, um, some from the UK that I interviewed on different topics on climate change, um, different solutions and whatnot.
[00:22:38] They may not have the expertise or know how to format a podcast episode so that it's consumed in a way that the public gets. But I do, and so I can help them to bring their knowledge and get it out to the public. So, I think there's an opportunity for podcasters there.
[00:22:53] Jennifer-Lee Gunson: What is the number one piece of advice that you could give somebody that is starting out a podcast? And they've never done one, but they want to start one.
[00:23:00] Brandon Stover: That's a great question. I would say picking something, a subject, a topic that you actually enjoy, not one that necessarily... you think you can do a few episodes on. Because all of us start like, oh, I want to do a podcast and it's going to be on this subject. And you probably have what seems like a ton of ideas, but it's probably like six or seven ideas and they're just kind of floating in your mind, you haven't put them down or tried to make anything yet. And after you get done with those six or seven ideas, if you start recording episodes, you're going to run out and you're like, okay, well, what do I talk about now?
[00:23:34] And the number one key consistency to like being a successful podcaster is you have to keep doing it. You have to keep putting out episodes. I've been through several podcasts. My very first one, I did 50 episodes, I still wasn't a very great podcaster. Like it took me a long time to be a good podcaster. So, pick something that you are passionate about and curious. Like you want to keep learning, you want to hear from other people, or you want to sit down and do the research and dig into this topic. You're going to be doing it for a while.
[00:24:01] Jennifer-Lee Gunson: Great advice. And also get a microphone, never ever use your computer speaker.
[00:24:06] Brandon Stover: Yes, there's, uh, like very good mics that are under a hundred dollars on Amazon. Go get one.
[00:24:12] Jennifer-Lee Gunson: You answered it. You have to be passionate, which I totally agree with a hundred percent and good audio. So, I, uh, don't cry when I listen to computer speakers.
[00:24:22] Neil McPhedran: And go into it knowing you're in for the long haul. It's a, it takes a lot of time and a lot of work. I know Jen asked you about podcasting and higher education, but just about podcasting overall, like where do you, where do you see the next couple of years going?
[00:24:34] Brandon Stover: I mentioned earlier this problem that we have as podcasters and being able to connect with who our audience is, that's still a huge problem. I don't have a solution for it, if I did, I'd probably be building a business for it. But it's one that needs solved because if you're doing like the video format, you have YouTube and you have a community and comments and everything that you can get feedback and talk to your people. We don't have that in podcasting. I think that's a big hurdle that needs solved and someone will probably come up with a decent solution to it coming soon.
[00:25:01] The second trend that I see, I think we had mentioned this a little bit before we got on the call, is this idea around Bitcoin and, um, Web3 and how you can put your podcast as a part of the blockchain. Like this is your asset now and you've been, you know, labeled with that. And how can that be a source of funding for you? Like now you can directly fund maybe just an episode or a whole podcast or a person as they go across these many different [00:25:30] podcasts. I followed the Web3 space quite a bit, so I think that's an exciting part, but we probably won't see, you know, probably five years, ten years from now, like fully in development because podcasting has just now hit the major mainstream. I mean, you say podcast now and everybody's like, oh yes, I listened to this, that, and the other, where, you know, five years ago podcasts still weren't that big yet. So, still brand new, but I think that's where we're headed.
[00:25:55] Neil McPhedran: I think like not only is it sort of a revenue side of it, but also there's the technology side of it. And I think, you know, we're seeing some really cool stuff in that podcasting 2.0 space and some of that trying to be figured out. We got to get someone on here to talk a little bit about some of that podcast 2.0 stuff and explain it to some of the audience.
[00:26:13] Jennifer-Lee Gunson: Well, thank you so much, Brandon. I thoroughly enjoyed this second time around, maybe we'll get you on for a third time.
[00:26:21] Neil McPhedran: Yeah, it was great. Learned a lot. And I think there's some really applicable learnings here for the audience. We'll be sure to have links to Plato in our show notes. And as you said, we can find you out there. So, maybe some of the folks listening might have some more questions so they can reach out to you directly and, and, and learn from all the awesome stuff you're doing.
[00:26:37] Brandon Stover: Thank you guys for having me again. Thank you, it was wonderful., And I love the work that you're doing to help other educators with the podcast.
[00:26:44] Jennifer-Lee Gunson: Awesome. Thank you.
[00:26:45] Neil McPhedran: Wow, another, great conversation. Boy, did I learn a bunch of things, and I'm sure everyone listening learned as well. Yeah, a lot to unpack from Brandon.
[00:26:56] There's a few key takeaways here for me. One, is how he got into podcasting, that story he told us about how he was wanting to learn and, and how podcasting is such a great multitasking medium, as we know. But, how as a learner, how we can be doing this other stuff, but then consuming and learning a podcast.
[00:27:21] Jennifer-Lee Gunson: Yeah, I agree. He touched upon so many different things. Like I'm a big proponent of this, using your whole podcast as your marketing tool. And I think a lot of times people are so focused on listens and don't realize the true engagement that you can get from a podcast and being able to use it on your blogs, on your email list, as your social media content. Like there's just so much more than just cracking a mic open and speaking. And I also love the fact that because Brandon is so passionate, is hitting all the right things when it comes to Plato University.
[00:27:54] Neil McPhedran: I think that's a really key point, Jen, and I don't want to gloss over that. But really, I think as podcasters, we go, well, here's our content in the episodes, and we're going to put that out there. Okay. Now we need to do some marketing, where's our marketing content? And yeah, we create audiograms and stuff like that. But I think really what, what I learned from Brandon here is that he doesn't just use it for audiograms. The content is also the marketing tool in and of itself. An example of that is, I know he used the term clickbaity and I know he was he, he, you can't see, but on the video, when we were talking to him, he used air quotes. Uh, but I think it's a really smart strategy. He's going, okay, well, people are looking for content to learn, they're searching for things, so my episode titles should reflect what people are searching.
[00:28:44] So I think that's something great for us all as podcasters to take away. You know, our titles aren't just sort of catchy. We want our titles to have a hook and to pull people in, but that added level of research that, that, that he shared with us, that he [00:29:00] does to go like, okay, well, what are people searching for that this specific episode is going to answer? He's working some of those terms purposefully into his titles as part of his discovery and his search process. You know, a bit more time is involved than to come up with those titles, but what a, what a smart strategy. And I think we should start using that for, for our podcast we're, we're on right now.
[00:29:26] Jennifer-Lee Gunson: Yes. I love it. He is so on point with the titles. I talk to [00:29:30] people about this all the time, like you said, it's nice to have flashy titles, but you remember when you're putting a podcast out there, it's for the general public. So, they're not going to get your inside jokes, they're not going to get the fact that you're working so hard to make a sexy title. Uh, they want to know how you're going to solve their problem. And if 70 percent of people are listening, to podcasts, you want to make sure you're able to solve the problem in two seconds. So, if your podcast title is like how to build a podcast, I'm going to want to click on that.
[00:29:58] Neil McPhedran: Like just sort of going back to the [00:30:00] multitasking nature of, of podcasting, how podcasting is such a great medium for learning is really how he's creating these, he didn't use the term, but I'm going to use it, educational modules. It's based on this insight that people like to learn at their own pace. And he's thinking about how creating these little miniseries, if you will, of episodes or modules of episodes that people can access on their own time. So, they can tune into a series of episodes, learn their way through something at their own pace and how podcasting is just such a perfect medium for that.
[00:30:37] Jennifer-Lee Gunson: Anyways, on that note, I thought this is another great episode. A lot of different points. And the thing that's fascinating, Neil, to me is the fact that you and I talk about this every time, is that you think. that, uh, university and college podcasts or just post secondary education, general, all their podcasts are going to be similar. But I feel like every time that we interview somebody, [00:31:00] they have a real different reason for using their podcasts or they all roll them out differently. And I find it so fascinating.
[00:31:06] Neil McPhedran: Absolutely. Okay, great. Well, thanks for joining us people.
[00:31:10] Jennifer-Lee Gunson: See you next time.
[00:31:12] Neil McPhedran: See you next time, folks. Bye.
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