Continuing Studies: for Higher Ed Podcasters

CSP EP19 | Justin Jackson
[00:00:00] Justin Jackson: RSS, that's the technical, well, a technical description. But I mean, RSS philosophically is, it's going to save us all. It's the answer to many of the world's problems.
[00:00:13] Neil McPhedran: Welcome to Continuing Studies, a podcast for higher education podcasters to learn and get inspired. I'm Neil McPhedran.
[00:00:19] Jennifer-Lee: And I'm Jennifer-Lee. 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.
[00:00:27] Neil McPhedran: Okay, Jen, so we've had some good feedback on our recent YouTube episode. So we thought we'd continue focusing on some of our episodes on more of the mechanics and the platforms that go into the production of podcasts.
[00:00:43] So in that vein, in this episode, we're talking to Justin Jackson, co-founder of Transistor.fm. a podcast hosting and analytics platform. So in this episode, we're gonna dig into some of the best practices around podcast hosting, distribution, etc. As a host provider, he has an incredible purview into tens of thousands of podcasts. So some really good insights we're gonna glean today. Justin, also the host of a couple of podcasts himself, and we get into that a little bit too.
[00:01:12] Jennifer-Lee: Yeah, and he's got a great radio voice. So not surprised that he aspired to be a podcaster. We could have really talked to him for a lot longer because we had so much content that we're actually going to be breaking it into two shows for you. Our only mistake though, it wasn't in person ‘cause I feel like we could have crushed some beers with him.
[00:01:33] Neil McPhedran: Totally.
[00:01:33] Jennifer-Lee: Awesome. Let's get into it.
[00:01:35] Justin Jackson: I'm Justin Jackson. I'm the co-founder of Transistor.fm, which is a podcast hosting and analytics platform.
[00:01:46] Neil McPhedran: Awesome. Well, let's, really good to have you here today. Let's start right at the top. What is an RSS feed?
[00:01:55] Jennifer-Lee: A million-dollar question. Do I get a point for knowing the answer?
[00:02:00] Justin Jackson: I mean, really an RSS feed is, it's just a file that lives on a server that gets updated every time you publish a new podcast episode. And what gets updated in that file is a item, and that item usually has your title for the episode, your description, and then enclosure that includes a URL to your audio file.
[00:02:22] And RSS, that's the A technical description. I mean, RSS philosophically is it's going to save us all. It's the answer to many of the world's problems. Like publishing to an RSS feed, like you do with a podcast or a blog is very different than publishing to a centralized platform like YouTube or Twitter or LinkedIn or Facebook or any of the big social platforms.
[00:02:47] Jennifer-Lee: I always like to tell people it's less work because even though it sounds confusing and to me when I, people are like, what is it called? And I'm like, real simple syndication. I was like, I just lose them. But I always explain, like, when you put a video up on YouTube, that's great. You put it up, you physically put it up, it goes up. But I said, the nice thing about the RSS feed is when you put your podcast up to a podcast hosting platform and that's it. It automatically updates on the Spotify and the twelve other hundred podcast players. So you don't have to do it every single time.
[00:03:21] Justin Jackson: That's right. The RSS feed kind of sits in the middle and all of those platforms are reading your audio file off that single RSS feed. It's a decentralized technology, but your RSS feed lives in one place on your podcast hosting platform. And then some people think you upload your audio file to Apple Podcasts or Spotify or whatever. No, every time you've clicked play on any podcast and any podcast app, that audio file is being read off an RSS feed that's hosted somewhere. And it's a really unique model because it means that Apple doesn't own podcasting and Spotify doesn't own it and Google doesn't own it. They have to play in this decentralized playground and they're just reading these RSS feeds and audio files off hosting platforms like Transistor.
[00:04:13] Neil McPhedran: I love it. I wasn't expecting you to get into the philosophical side of it. That, I think, is great. So, you know what, I just want to park that side of it because I totally agree with you. I think that's really interesting, especially for our audience, which is the higher education audience. It's about getting their message, which is typically, like, just only in their classroom.
[00:04:33] Like, I work with Stanford. So that's a very few people on the face of the earth that is going to get to attend a class at Stanford. And so, for Stanford, it's an opportunity to, um, the rest of the world literally can learn what these amazing professors, uh, and researchers are doing there. So I think that is really an interesting part of podcasting in the RSS feed, especially for our audience.
[00:04:58] But let's go back and talk about the host part. Okay, so there's the RSS feed, and then there's the hosting platform, and you talked a little bit about that. Maybe just sort of, um, peel back the onion a little bit more on a hosting platform, but I'd love to know, like, what, why are they not all built the same? Like, why are there so many of them? And what makes a good one? And what makes a not so good one? So a bunch of questions there.
[00:05:23] Justin Jackson: The reason there's so many of them is because we are playing in this decentralized playground. The same thing happened in blogging. So when you could blog on WordPress or Blogger or, uh, Squarespace or, you know, there's Tumblr, there's all of these platforms where you could log in, write a blog post, click publish, and that would publish your blog post to a feed that could then be read, uh, you know, in an RSS feed reader, or sometimes it would automatically email people. Uh, and so this, this same thing has happened in a variety of areas. Email's another one. There's Gmail and Hotmail and Yahoo.
[00:06:05] And, uh, they all, the thing they all have in common, is that they're all on top of these decentralized protocols. Uh, these old, old, uh, classic internet protocols that are just really a beautiful thing, um, because it gives, it creates optionality. It creates, uh, opportunities for smaller bootstrapped companies like ours to exist. Uh, typically the big platforms don't like these kind of, uh, you know, like RSS and, you know, all these decentralized platforms cause they can't own it. They want to have the whole thing. Uh, so that's why there's so many.
[00:06:42] And, uh, it creates opportunities for, you know, a company like ours. Uh, one of the reasons we started it in 2018, just, my partner Jon Buda, and I. I'd been podcasting, uh, for about six years at that point, and I just had lots of ideas, uh, at that point, um, a lot of the incumbents in podcast hosting were kind of old, crusty. They, their UI hadn't been updated in a while. The user experience wasn't great. The customer support wasn't always awesome. I experienced a lot of this pain, and so, and I also had some ideas around, for example, I wanted to start multiple podcasts on one count, but all the other competitors made you pay for each additional podcast you started.
[00:07:27] And so we were able to change our model to, you can host as many podcasts as you want, create as many as you want on one plan with Transistor. And we have great competitors as well. Actually, that's, you and I have been to Podcast Movement, the conference, and I hang out with my competitors. They, a lot of them are building great product and have great service, but we're all just kind of servicing different parts of the market. Uh, sometimes just appealing to different people, different features, different user experience, different level of customer support. And, uh, yeah, I think just the nature of podcasting has allowed lots of independent companies to flourish. Not just on the platform side and the technology side, but like on the service side, there's lots of different podcast agencies. There's just lots of opportunities in this ecosystem. And it all comes back down to RSS. RSS is really the key, the foundation to all that.
[00:08:19] Jennifer-Lee: And I love that we have hosting platforms now because it makes it so much easier to submit to Apple and Spotify because I'm going to date myself a bit, but when I did broadcasting school many, many years ago, podcasting was like, it was no end and people were doing it. And I remember one of our tests were we had to build a website, which seems like very difficult back then because you had to use like Dreamweaver and like, it wasn't like, you know, doing the Squarespace now where it's easy or Wix. But and then I remember iTunes was so archaic on the back end because you had to like, on our test, you had to like, submit the piece of code that was generated from your website to get the RSS. We had to wait like four to five days to see if Apple accepted it. And so like, I, at that point, and it's funny now to think because I own a podcast business. I was like, this is never going to take off there's too, it's too many. I wish I was smart like you and created a hosting platform. For people that don't know what I'm talking about, can you go back a little bit and say like, what is a podcast hosting platform and why is it important to have one in order to get your podcast on to Spotify and Apple?
[00:09:27] Justin Jackson: Yeah, it's the same thing if you wanted to start a website, you've got to go to a website hosting platform, either, you know, Bluehost or Squarespace or one of those options. A podcast hosting platform is the content management system or CMS for creating a podcast. So you create an account, you, uh, name your podcast, you upload your artwork to the hosting platform, you upload your first episode, the audio file and once you click publish, you can then submit your podcast to Spotify, Apple, Google Podcasts, all of the different platforms.
[00:10:05] And, uh, often the hosting platforms will have direct submission, uh, to the different platforms. So instead of you having to manually go into, uh, like I said back in the day, you had to submit a form for every single platform. You had to submit a, your, the link to your RSS feed on every single platform. But now these days you can just click one button and have it submitted once.
[00:10:31] And once you've submitted your podcast, um, you don't have to do that again. Every time you publish a new episode, the platforms will automatically scan your RSS feed, pick up the new episode, and then display it in the podcast apps that people use to listen.
[00:10:47] Jennifer-Lee: That was awesome because, uh, great explanation because that's the one thing I get asked all the time when I meet with prospective clients and people, they're like, oh, but like, how do I get it on to Apple or Google? And they don't realize there's a hosting aspect of it. Yes, you could technically generate one from your website, but then you don't have all the fancy things like the analytics or anything like that.
[00:11:08] Justin Jackson: That's right. Yeah. Because we're hosting the audio files, we can also determine, you know, where in the world people are listening from, how many people download or listen to a specific episode, um, and then that gives you stats like, you know, which of my episodes is the most popular. Um, we even have a burndown chart, which will show you like on day five, if you had a spike, it'll show you, oh, you got a bunch more downloads on this day. Um, so there's all sorts of, you know, great analytics you can get, um, along with the hosting part of, you know, uh, just somewhere to host your audio files and generate the feed.
[00:11:48] Neil McPhedran: Okay. That's great. Okay. So I feel like we got the basics, but I want to jump into some of the mechanics now. You see a lot of podcasts. How many podcasts are there on transistor?
[00:11:59] Justin Jackson: I think we're at Let's see, just over twenty-seven thousand.
[00:12:05] Neil McPhedran: Okay. So let's start maybe a bigger picture here then I want to drill into a couple of things. But so, what do you think makes a good, successful podcast? You see a lot of them. So what out there makes a good kind of successful one?
[00:12:18] Justin Jackson: I mean, I poll people on this all the time as well. The answer is that a good podcast is compelling content for the audience. It's content that people want to listen to, it's content that people are seeking out. It's the kind of content that people would recommend to a friend or a colleague. That's a good podcast. And, uh, it's a simple definition, but difficult to do in practice because a podcast episode isn't just competing, uh, for the attention of pod, you know, for people that are looking for a show to listen to. People have lots of things they can do with their time. They could listen to the radio, they can watch Netflix, they could, not listen to anything, they can listen to music. Um, and so when someone does get in their car to commute to work or someone does put in their earbuds to walk the dog and they take out their phone, first, the first thing is there something compelling enough in your show that will make them say, you know, instead of listening to music on Apple Music, I'm going to go to my podcast app?
[00:13:25] And then when they see the list of shows available to them in their podcast app, what is it about your show or the episode you just released, that is compelling enough, interesting enough, engaging enough that they're going to want to listen? And, uh, different shows accomplish this different ways. Um, some people come back again and again for the host. They develop, uh, kind of a relationship with the host that I would say is even different than, you know, the, uh, the relationships people develop with YouTubers. Um, so there's lots of people that watch, you know, MrBeast and other YouTubers. But the relationship that people have with people uh, the folks they listen to in their ears, when they're doing other things like walking the dog or driving to work every day, it's kind of like you are their friend that's sitting shotgun next to them in the car who's you know, spending time with you as you go to work. And when you do that week after week and month after month, people start to, they're kind of like on a journey with you.
[00:14:41] And, um, you know, an example for me is Marc Maron, uh, has this podcast he's been doing forever called WTF. And I like often will listen to the first five minutes of that show just to hear Marc's monologue, just to hear how Marc's doing, you know, just to check in what's going on in Marc's life. And it's because I've been on a journey at this point, that's probably, wow, like maybe fifteen years, fifteen years old, I've been listening to Marc and there's just this ongoing relationship where I want to hear how he's doing, what's going on in his life, what he's thinking about. That's what keeps me coming back to the show. So there's lots of ways people can, um, you know, craft a compelling story, compelling content, a compelling arc, uh, compelling information that keeps people coming back or that gets people interested in, uh, in the first place. And one of the ways you can do that is, uh, developing this ongoing relationship with the listener. That's really unique, I think, to the audio format.
[00:15:52] Jennifer-Lee: And to continue that relationship, because you brought it up a little bit, I'd be curious to know, because you co own an audio hosting platform. What is your thoughts on YouTube? Because obviously no hosting platform yet has kind of combined the analytics of YouTube with the rest of Spotify and them, obviously, because there's no videos. Spotify is kind of getting into video a little bit but.
[00:16:14] Justin Jackson: Yeah, I mean, I'm, I think centralized platforms are a fact of life. Like if you're in communications, um, you know, certainly if I was in communications at a university. Or, even if I was a professor, uh, publishing my lectures, I'd want it to be on YouTube. Uh, because YouTube's a massive platform, it's one of the biggest discovery platforms in the world, it's one of the biggest search engines in the world. But, at the same time, I'm suspicious of the big platforms. Um, and we've seen this in different ways. Um, the big platforms really are almost all of them are trying to drive advertising revenue. That's Facebook, that's YouTube, that's Google, that's Spotify. Uh, Spotify also has a subscription side. But, uh, you know, that's their aim and to maximize shareholder value.
[00:17:02] And so for example, Spotify released a bunch of cool free tools for podcasters. And then this year, because of pressure from shareholders and the board, they canceled them all. So tools that people had come to rely on are now not available. Um, so I think people in communications should use these platforms. But for me, RSS is always kind of like, and podcasting, is always kind of like the fortress. It's like, this is my, this is the part of my media ecosystem or my communications strategy that we own. When somebody decides to follow or subscribe to your podcast, that is a high friction activity. It's not as easy as, you know, uh, liking a video on YouTube. But when somebody does that, they're often going to be a listener for a long time. I think they're just different, they're just different mediums. Um, and they should be a part of, I think, a lot of people's communication strategies, but they're different. They're, people use them in different ways and, um, you know, people have been, the other thing I keep thinking about is, uh, you know, I used to work for a email newsletter company and we used to hear all the time, people would go, uh, you know, eventually, you know, the kids these days aren't using email. They're using Snapchat and they're using, you know, different messaging things. And now I have, uh, some older kids, my daughter's in college. And it's funny to watch the life cycle of that because eventually kids go to college and what's the first thing they get when they go to college? An email address. What's going to happen next? She's going to graduate. She's going to get a job. What's the first thing her company is going to give her? An email. And you know, what also comes with the job, is a commute. And what's the first thing she's going to go to? She's going to listen to the radio for a bit, and then she's going to start listening to podcasts. This is just the cycle of, you know, the way things go.
[00:19:08] So I don't think podcasting will ever be as big as video on YouTube. I think it's a smaller thing, but I think it's a valuable part of the media ecosystem. And it just grows in terms of listenership. Podcasting for probably twenty years now, fifteen-twenty years, just grows ten, fifteen percent a year. Nice, constant growth, and there's nothing viral about it, which I like. There's nothing super addictive about it. It's not trying to keep you scrolling on the platform so that they can serve you more ads. It's just mindful, slow technology. And yeah, I think uh I think it has its place, right? It's going to, YouTube has its place and then audio only also has its place.
[00:20:00] Neil McPhedran: What are some of the things that we're not getting right when we're setting up our show, uh, for the first time in our hosting platform? I know that's a really important thing to, there's a lot of buttons you can push. There's a lot of fields you can fill out. And then there's all the, you talked about distribution and connecting in. So, what do you, as a host, what are some of the things we're not getting right?
[00:20:28] Justin Jackson: Uh, I mean, there's a lot of things you can do when you're setting up a show that, the title of your show is actually pretty important. Um, the search engines on Spotify and Apple Podcasts and these other places are not incredibly sophisticated. They're doing pretty kind of blunt keyword matching. And so if you, um, if you're a podcast about, um, legal education, um, I would want to have some of those keywords in your title because if anyone does search Spotify or Apple Podcasts for, you know, legal education podcasts or whatever, um, you want to be able to match at least some of those.
[00:21:10] And so having keywords in the title that might match what people are actually searching for is, uh, one thing I see. People sometimes try to get too creative with the, uh, I think the example I use is, you know, if you have a podcast about farming, I think it would be better to have the word farming in your title or description than something, you know, super creative like the modern agrarian, you know, like people are searching for farming podcasts. They're probably not searching for, you know, the modern agrarian. So don't get too creative with the title.
[00:21:47] At the same time, you want to have a title that's evocative, you know, that intrigues people. Um, and so there's a balance there, but I'd say try to get some of your keywords, your topical keywords, in either the title of your show or the description. And then also in your episode titles. Uh, there's a, if you search for something on either Apple Podcasts or Spotify, um, you'll get a list of shows. But then you'll also get a list of episodes with that keyword. And uh, it's just an opportunity if people are looking for something to listen to, you know, that's an opportunity right there.
[00:22:23] Show art is also important. I think we could actually learn a lot from the YouTube world. The way they construct thumbnails is like a science there. And, uh, in the same way that they're testing thumbnails and trying different things out, I would look at some of what's working on YouTube and bring that into your podcast cover art. Um, so it shouldn't be too busy. It should almost like invite a loop of curiosity, a cycle of curiosity, of intrigue, like, oh, what's this about? Oh, this looks interesting. And you can do this with your podcast cover art. And you can also do this with your episode cover art. You can have custom episode artwork as well.
[00:23:07] And, uh, you know, if you're a faculty member of a university, and you're well known, like people know your face, you should definitely be using your face on cover art, uh, both for the podcast and for, uh, episode artwork. The categories matter less than you'd think. And then I'd say the other thing is people wait way too long to submit to all the platforms. What I recommend is you record and edit a trailer episode first. Just a really short thirty to sixty, maybe two minutes, um, just a little teaser of here's why you should listen to the show. And, uh, upload that, publish it right away on your podcast hosting platform, then submit to all the platforms. And then, that's when you got to start your marketing.
[00:23:59] Uh, that's when you got to start promoting, uh, the show and say, hey, listen, uh, episode one's not out yet, but right now you can go to Spotify and Apple and Google Podcasts and Pocket Casts, and you can follow the show right now. You can click follow, and then when the first episode drops, you'll be the first to get it.
[00:24:19] The, uh, people miss out on the most potent time for promoting their show, which is actually before you launch. People, like, think, oh no, I got to get episode one out and then I'll start promoting it. No, no, no, no. You got to start building anticipation way before you publish episode one and getting people excited about it. Talk about it in all of your other kind of owned, um, media channels, your email newsletter, your website, your social media channels, and be teasing, that the, uh, your first episode's coming soon and have one action you want people to take, which is please follow or subscribe to the show in your podcast player.
[00:25:00] And, um, that's a missed opportunity that most people aren't taking advantage of. Whether, you know, regardless of kind of what the show is for, you can do all of that work before you publish episode one and then, you know, start promoting it. No, no, no. Get kind of a bunch of cheerleaders who are anticipating the show launch. And then when it launches all those people you've been talking to that whole time, like on your email list and social media platforms, then you can say, hey folks, today's the day we've been waiting for the shows out now, partner with me, and tell your friends about it, because now episode one is out, right?
[00:25:38] So you're building anticipation, then you launch, but then you partner with the people you've been building that anticipation with. And, uh, that's how most shows get discovered, is you have people who are fans or, you know, are eager to hear what you have to say and you ask them to share it with a friend. That's how most shows get listened to.
[00:25:59] Jennifer-Lee: Oh my God. That's a lot of information, but really great information. I'm having a bit of déjà vu because I literally was just on a farm yesterday with a client talking about, no, I'm not even joking this is so funny. Like, were you in my meeting? I was like, I was saying, don't make your title fancy. I said, if you're going to talk about horses, make sure there's some like equestrian thing in there. So people will like, click on it. I said, don't make it too fancy. So that's funny.
[00:26:24] That was another great conversation that we had. And I can't wait to get to part two. But first, let's recap some learnings that we just did in this episode.
[00:26:33] I really enjoyed his RSS feed explanation. I really thought he made it easy to understand. Where he was like, it's all the data for your episode, because that's the hard part when I'm talking to people or clients of like, I'm explaining an RSS feed and they think I'm crazy, uh, but they're so important. And of course they go hand in hand with hosting. There's another conversation I have because a lot of people are like, oh, how do I get my podcast on Spotify? Or how do I get on Apple or any of the other podcast players? And they don't understand necessarily that, uh, you need a hosting site. So I really, again, thought he went through some basics that I think are overlooked sometimes when people start a podcast.
[00:27:13] Neil McPhedran: Yeah, for sure. Carrying on from that point, his tips into distribution and how to get started were incredible. I actually think there were some great insights there, especially talking about distribution and a couple of other things that for longer standing podcasts to go back and fix actually. I know that when we start working with certain podcasts that have been going for a while, that's one of the things we find that just hasn't been done properly from the beginning, that distribution.
[00:27:41] So, some really good insights there and some learnings for us all. Okay, so, that's the end of this episode, and please tune in for the next episode when we get into the second part of our conversation with Justin and we talk about private podcasts.
[00:27:56] Jennifer-Lee: Private podcasting, the world of private podcasts, something not a lot of people think about, but I'm excited to jump in the conversation with him.
[00:28:04] Neil McPhedran: Sounds good. Okay, see you later.
[00:28:06] Jennifer-Lee: See you later.
[00:28:08] Neil McPhedran: Thank you for tuning in to 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 our podcast on your preferred platform, so you'll never miss an episode.
[00:28:25] But if you've found this episode particularly valuable, please consider sharing it with your friends and colleagues who also might be interested in higher education podcasts. We also invite you to join the University Podcasters Network group on LinkedIn. Just search for University Podcasters Network, where you can connect with other podcasters in higher education and learn from others in the field.
[00:28:47] 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.