A Turning Point for How I Built It
I’m going to be honest with you my friends: Podcast Advent took up a lot of my content creation time in December. Between that and actually shipping my next LinkedIn Learning course, I didn’t have much time to focus on anything else.
That includes planning the next season of How I Built It. Usually I have at least a few guests line up — but right now, to be honest, I only have 1 interview recorded and 3 episodes planned.
I’m way behind based on my current standard of having 4-7 episodes ready to go.
This isn’t just because I had a busier than usual December. No — this is because I feel like I’m at an impasse with the show.
Good Storytelling
For the last year or so, I’ve been preaching the virtues of better storytelling with podcasting. That people don’t just want raw interviews.
I feel more strongly about that than ever. And while I’ve been working hard to tell better stories with my interviews, I don’t feel it’s enough. I don’t want to continue just releasing interviews for the show.
That doesn’t mean I won’t have guests…but I want to do it better.
I had a small brainstorming session and jotted down some thoughts:
Yes I want to increase my production value, tell better stories, and maybe even introduce a proper video version for YouTube.
But the truth is something I said in my episode with Zach Swinehart: I no longer have a clear picture of my listening audience.
Learning More About My Listeners
As the show moved from WordPress developers to busy solopreneurs, I’ve lost and gained new audience. My main goal with the show (really, the main goal for any show) is to serve an audience through good storytelling.
I can’t tell a good story for my audience if I don’t know who’s listening. It’s like reading The Great Gatsby to a 1st grade class.
Now…I do have a bunch of stats — that does provide some guidance for me. Transistor tells me which episodes had the best “Release window” (the first 2 days it’s live), as well as the best 30 day releases.
Apple tells me which episodes have the most engaged listeners, as well as episodes that have the highest percentage consumption. Using these data points, I can reasonably assume what listeners what to hear more of — or at least the episodes that had the most resonance.
But it’s not quite the full picture. For that, I need to talk to my listeners. S0 I’m releasing a survey. My goal is to learn:
- What they currently do
- What they want to learn
- Favorite topics so far
- Why they listen to the show.
I’m going to run a link to the survey as a pre-roll and post-roll ad for all of January as a way to get as much data as possible.
Using that, I’ll plan out the rest of the year.
Continuous Experiment
So…what’s the conclusion here? Does all of this mean I don’t have my podcast figured out anymore, or that I’m straying from my mission? No!
My mission is still to help busy creators and solopreneurs grow their business by working on it, not in it. I just want to know what will help them the most.
It’s important to have this kind of reflection every 12-18 months. Adapt as your audience changes and grows. Podcasts aren’t like semesters in college, where you keep running the same lessons to new people every few months. They are like an education for individuals. As your listeners evolve, your show needs to evolve too.
I’m ready to make the next evolution in my show. It feels like it’s going to be a big one.