Welcome to Podcast Insider. I'm Mike Dell, vice
president of customer relations at Blueberry.
And I'm Dave Clements, technical support and social
media specialist here at Blueberry.
Today,
we're gonna be talking about how to experiment
with your show format
without freaking out your audience or yourself.
You're listening to Podcast Insider, a weekly podcast
bringing insights, advice, and insider tips and tricks
to help you start, grow, and thrive through
podcasting with the support of your team here
at Blueberry Podcasting. Welcome. Let's dive in.
Yeah. Freaking out the audience is a thing.
It's just people you know, now I
being the king of pod fade, I've tried
every format and all that, and, you know,
none of them really stuck. So my, you
know, my format
changes a lot on my main show.
But on my little daily show,
it's almost
the same every time.
And, you know, it's it's always good to
to mix it up once in a while,
you know, as long as
I
I deal with that a lot too. I've
been doing this for I think this is
officially my
thirteenth year, fourteenth. I don't remember now.
But I know
all the different shows that I've I've done.
I have changed the format
largely because
I get bored. I'll do it like that
for a couple years, and I'm like, nah.
I gotta switch it up.
Is that kinda the case with you, or
is it just
the show died, you brought it back,
it died, you brought it back? No. That's
weird. Yeah. With me, it's, kind of I
do a show. I do an episode, and
it's a serious episode. And then, you know,
the next one, well, I got a different
topic. It's not so serious,
and I just change it up. I mean
but my audience sort of expects that. They
never they never know what they're gonna get
when they hit play. And
but, you know, like,
Todd was always saying about Geek News Central
as he would just do one little thing,
you know, like,
he used to do a cold open,
and then he'd play a theme song, And
then he would go into, you know, his
personal stuff, and then he would get into
the meat of the episode. And
and what he would do is he'd sometimes
he'd play the theme first for a while
and then do the cold open and
or not cold open, just open.
And, you know, just little tweaks like that.
He's, you know, changed up the theme song
and, you know, just that kind of thing.
And, you know, as long as it's not
too abrupt and too ridiculous,
it's not bad, you know? And, you know,
it there are some people out there that,
you know, listeners that will be offended that,
well, you're not doing this anymore. Why? You
know?
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
I think that that's always that's always what
I've
done is little changes.
You know, my first
and what I would call my flagship show,
it was a pop culture podcast,
and
I started out where it was just me.
It was just me behind the microphone,
and I'd talk about a comic book or
a movie or something like that. And then
at some point,
I made friends
with a guy who liked all the same
stuff I did, and I was like, well,
come in as a cohost.
And that was a huge change,
but
people really responded to it well. Because, apparently,
I work better in a multi person,
you know, format
rather than a solo format. So people have
always been really happy that it's always me
and somebody else
just
to have that dialogue and and to bounce
ideas and opinions off each other.
But I've changed music and
all kinds of stuff. But, you know, doing
this for as long as we have, we've
had a lot of time to experiment.
Oh, yeah. It's,
you know, it's it's fun. It keeps you
excited, you know, when you're changing things up.
And
but, you know, you also kinda gotta keep
it sort of the same at the same
time. And I know that's weird, but, you
know, adding a cohost
to what was formerly a a
solo show
can add excitement for you, can,
you know, help the audience get to know
somebody else
and all that. We've switched this, this show's
format up a couple of times in its,
history.
And, you know, but we've done really big,
abrupt changes, probably not the best way to
do it. But, hey. We still got you
listening or whoever is listening. That's good. Right.
But, you know, we've we've you know, we
used to cover, you know, current events and
all that. And, you know, there's enough other
shows out there doing that, so we decided
to focus more on helping you,
you know, with podcasting stuff. That's what a
podcast
about podcasting is supposed to do.
But, you know, we've done minor tweaks to
our format. You know, you'll notice that we
don't have as bit much theme music as
we once did.
You know, used to do a cold open.
Sometimes we do. Sometimes we don't. It all
depends on what Kate's doing,
our editor, and we leave it up to
her. She knows what she's doing.
And,
you know, we're just talent.
Well, that's in big air quotes. But,
anyway,
but, you know, it's,
it's a lot of it's a lot of
fun, you know, changing things up. You know,
test stuff. Ask your audience about it too.
Hey. You noticed we started the show a
little different today. What do you think?
And, you know, I might get some people
talking to you.
Yeah. That was always a big thing that
I ran into,
in those earlier days where I was still
trying to figure it out. And, you know,
sometimes I would prefer one format over another.
And so that would end up being my
call to action at the end of an
episode, which was, hey. Do you like, you
know, this segment that I added? Do you
wish this old segment I took out was
still here?
And that would actually prompt feedback,
because if I didn't hear anything, well, I'm
just gonna keep doing it until I'm bored
with it. Mhmm. And I think it's a
really good way to start to build that
community,
And that's a that's a thing that podcasters
talk about a lot is, well, how do
I build a community?
Play around with your show a little bit.
That's what made my show
bigger for me.
And,
you know, I always got good feedback. Sometimes
I listened to it. Sometimes I didn't.
But
I think the the biggest recommendation I could
give is
start
small
with, you know, what I would consider tweaks,
and then
experiment
would be your next step. Like, move some
things around. And then if you have overhauls,
like adding a cohost
or removing a cohost or whatever,
Those
those big things, like, save those till last
once you have feedback from your audience.
Yeah. And, you know, getting feedback, it's amazing
what one email
can do
to, you know, a person that's,
you know, us doing a solo show, and
they're not getting much feedback.
You know? Tweak it a little bit and,
you know, invite the feedback. That's the that's
the thing. You know? The listeners will tell
you if you're doing something really wrong,
most of the time, either that or they
just disappear. So if you see your stats
crash, well, you know, well, that ain't working.
Right. You know? But, you know, it's it
it's your show. Do what you like,
and, you know, keep it exciting for you.
Keep it exciting for the audience.
Again, you know, I'm not a very good,
very good example with my personal show because,
you know, one time, it's gonna be
one completely different thing than the the next
episode. And
that keeps it interesting for me. And, you
know, so far, most of my audience kinda
sticks with me, but I do get some
feedback from time to time. And it's just
amazing what, you know, just that one listener
that says, hey. What about this? Or, you
know, why don't you try that? You know,
I had one,
email me, hey. I I haven't heard you
talk about this particular subject before, and that's
a good idea. So I made an episode
about it.
Yeah. You know, things
like that. But, you know, don't,
you know, don't just go through and just
change it completely. You know? I'm doing a
show about dogs, and then next week, you
come back and do a show about cats.
Well, no. You know, stay in your genre
if you've got if you picked a genre.
You know?
But,
you know, you can vary that. Even the
subject matter change can,
can can be a a tweak that you
do. You know? Maybe instead of,
you know, diving deep every episode, do an
episode where you're just kinda doing tips and
tricks or you're answering feedback that you've got.
He listened to an aviation show that started
out as a
solo, and he did probably a 100 episodes
as as a solo. Then he brought on
a guest that was one of his listeners
that was always sending in feedback,
and he brought them on as a cohost.
And now he has a rotating cast of
five or six cohosts, and you never know
who you're gonna get in that show. But
it really
helped him, you know, get, you know, first
to know other people,
know his community,
and it's really, you know, a pretty big
deal now. You know, they've actually had
meetups in London or in Atlanta
or wherever of, you know, the community for
the around that podcast where they, you know,
maybe record you know, I think he did,
episode 500, and he had a big party
in Atlanta.
And, you know, all of his cohosts flew
in from all over the world and and,
you know, plus he had a whole bunch
of,
you know, whole bunch of other listeners there.
And, you know, he really can you know,
did a community,
around his show,
and that was simply by changing up the
format.
That's really interesting.
Yeah. And so and, you know, he's still
at it. He's retired. Our airline pilot now,
and and, so he he he travels around,
and they still talk about aviation, but he
has, you know, I think there's, like, six
rotating
guest hosts. You know? Sometimes they have four
of them on there at the same time.
It's,
but, you know, it's it's always a little
different, but it's always kinda the same.
So Yeah.
Another thing you can think about doing is,
looking at the length
of your episodes.
When I was doing
the D and D podcast,
a couple of years ago,
it started out
as they would do, like
oh, jeez. I think we're
they were looking at, like,
two hour episodes Mhmm. Because they would record
for, like, four, and they would cut them
in half. So those were two hours long,
and,
that was
that was not necessarily manageable for
a lot of listeners.
So
after I got involved,
I recommended, well, what if we do one
hour episodes?
Because first of all, that makes more episodes
for people to listen to.
But also, it makes it easier on your
editor,
and
I think people would pay more attention with
those shorter episodes.
And when we changed to that format, it
allowed
that show to go from
once a month to
once a week.
And I think,
before that kind of took a hiatus, they
were doing, like, once every other week just
for editing purposes. But,
you could consider, like, shortening your episodes,
you know, so that it you could stagger
them out a little bit, or, you know,
maybe you're just cutting off fluff
that people don't really wanna listen to.
That's just an idea.
Yeah. That's,
you know, again and, you know, I mentioned
before, you can alternate between, you know, the
really deep episodes and, you know, some quick
episodes. So, you know, even
within the list of episodes, you could have
one that's an hour long and one that's
ten minutes long,
you know, and, you know, maybe alternate those
or have, you know, special episodes.
You know, there's a there's a way in
most
RSS creation tools to mark something as a
bonus episode. So you feel like doing something
completely different, throw one of those in there.
You know? Yeah. Always fun. You know? No.
You know, I
my my first show, that went from me
to a single co host to there were
a total of four of us, sometimes five.
And I remember a piece of feedback that
really helped me was we I would just,
like, start the recording and leave a lot
of, like, the super casual
conversations on at the beginning. And I would
get feedback
where people are just like, I I'm glad
you guys are having fun, but I don't
like the fact that
all of the guys are surprised that they're
being recorded. And,
like, that makes me feel weird. And I
was like, oh, okay. Well, I guess we'll
just cut that out. And
that actually helped. I saw downloads
go up, believe it or not.
And people just responded much better because they're
like, instead of you guys goofing off, you're
actually, like, getting into the movie to review
that you're doing or or whatever it was
that we were talking about. So
that was that was again, going back to
that feedback,
that my audience was like, no. You've got
to cut this part out because it's not
enjoyable to listen to. Put it at the
end or something. You know? You could always
do that, and they can they can bail
after the the good stuff, I guess.
Yeah. You know, you know, a lot of
lot of podcasters, you know, back in the
day okay. I'm an old guy.
Would, you know, have all the fluff at
the beginning and then get into their topic.
And,
as it went on, they would kinda get
rid of the fluff or put the fluff
at the end or or maybe just not
do it.
Again, it's all about your audience. Some some
of your audience really don't care what the
subject are. They just wanna listen to you.
Believe it or not, there's a lot of
that going around. I mean, I listen to
a show that I really could care less
about the subject matter. I just like the
person.
You know? That's cool. I might be a
little weird about that, but,
you know,
it's it's just, you know, not not something
I am super interested in, but there that
person's personality
and take on the subject, it is somewhat
interesting.
And, you know, it's it's something I can
listen to while mowing the lawn or something.
You know? It's not not that I have
to pay super attention to the actual subject
matter.
But, you know, that and you're gonna find
all kinds of audience members' preferences are, you
know, gonna vary.
You you do something, somebody's gonna get mad
about it or somebody's gonna really love it,
and it could be the same thing.
You know?
So don't don't don't be afraid to experiment
a little bit.
Again, you know, it's it's your show. Do
what you want. And,
you know,
now for shows that are more
subject oriented
where, you know, you've got a definite niche
and you're definitely
talking about this every time,
you know, then maybe, you know, tighten it
up a little bit.
But, again, like like this show, we, you
know, we do a little fluff in here
sometimes, and sometimes we don't. And we've changed
up formats and all that. I don't think
we're gonna do any major changes this year.
We had talked about it, but I think
I think we're gonna stay about what we're
doing now and, rotate between Mackenzie and Dave
and I.
And sometimes we're gonna have all three,
but, nothing,
you know, nothing jarring, I hope.
Might change might change the artwork.
Yeah. Sometimes that's jarring enough. I mean, that
is something you can talk about.
You know, I, over the years, have changed
artwork because I get sick of looking at
it. Yeah. This was, of of course, when
I was doing it, that that was before
episode artwork was a thing. Yeah. So
I would change out, like, maybe a couple
times a year, and then I would get
feedback. Oh,
I like the blue artwork, and you have
red now, and that was, like, too much.
Okay. So it's back to the blue. And
Yeah.
You know, those are those are changes that
you may not think about. I we've been
talking about format a lot, but you literally
could go through and,
you know, if you have episode numbers at
the beginning or, like, in your titles,
you could put those at the beginning. You
can move them to the back. You can
get rid of them altogether.
I know that there are some people
who just don't care about episode numbers.
It used to be a sticking point for
me because I wanted to know like, that
was a,
that was a point of
measuring my own success. Oh, look at this.
I finally hit episode 30.
Yep. And,
you know and it was cool, like, when
episode 100 came around, and that was a
nice fun episode to to record and be
able to note that it was episode 100.
But most people were like, I don't know.
You talked about that Krampus Christmas movie.
That's that's what it is. I don't know
what number it is. So I ended up
moving episode numbers
out of my titles, and I never mentioned
them
in the actual episode itself. Yeah. I I
do the same thing now. I used to
put them in the, at the end of
the title of the episode, and I've cut
them out.
I do put them in the file name
for the m p three just so I
can keep it straight.
Yeah. But I, you know, I don't make
a big deal about you know, unless it's
a a you know, like, I I crossed
400
sometime last year, and I made a big
deal out of that.
But, otherwise, you know, I don't make a
a deal about what episode number is. I
always, you know, announce the date at the
beginning because, who knows, somebody might be listening
to this, you know, fifteen years from now.
Who knows?
So I, you know, I might, you know,
throw the date in in the in the
intro.
But, you know, in something like what we're
doing here, you know, somebody could listen to
this
five years from now, and it's still relevant.
So the date really doesn't matter. You know,
when we were talking about news and and
topical
things
on this show,
you know, we used to mention the date
and the episode number,
you know, just so people had a context
if they did happen across it five years
from now. Oh, this was back in 2025,
you know, or whatever.
And, you know, so, you know, experiment with
that kind of thing too. Also,
your show notes. You know, how robust do
you want your show notes, and
do people actually notice that?
You know? We we do fairly robust show
notes for this show,
whereas
on some of my other shows, I don't.
You know? I do just enough to let
you know what it's about, and that's it.
And maybe throw relevant links or something in
there, but I really don't, you know, do
this extensive show notes anymore because I really
don't believe a lot of people want or,
you know, read them. Now with us, this
goes on our company blog as well as,
you know, this podcast. So
people do come to that blog,
podcastinsider.com,
just in case you're wondering.
And, they, you know, they do read these
posts even if it is a podcast episode.
You
know? So that's something that you could experiment
with is, you know, how how much show
notes do you wanna do?
Yeah. I mean
yeah. Like, we we have customers that they
love their show notes, and they want them
formatted a specific way, and they want them
to appear in a specific way. And that's
cool. We do everything we can to make
sure that they
that they get what they want.
But then you have
some people like Mike. You know? It's like,
here's two sentences. I talked about a Coney
dog this week, and Yeah.
That's all people care about. Okay. Cool.
I just saw the little description in my
podcast app, and I move on. So
I I think, you know, you're gonna know
if
you messed your show up when people start
contacting you and they're yelling at you or
if you see your your,
your numbers drop. Yeah. You know? Yeah. You
know? And but the thing with the numbers
are, you know,
and this is just a theory of mine,
but if you have a bad episode,
that bad episode probably is gonna get downloaded
as many times as the good ones because
they don't know what's in the episode
until they download it and play it.
But
the next episode is the one you wanna
look at. So if you get a serious
drop in numbers, look at the episode prior
to that one.
That's Yeah. That's, you know, not not so
much that one because
you know? And and if you get a
big bump in an episode, what that could
be is everybody's going, hey. Look at this
and sharing it with friends and stuff. So,
you know, you look at the current episode
if you get a bump. You look at
the past episode if you get a drop.
That's just my theory.
Yeah. That's that's always a good thing. I
know when people get in touch with you
and I,
I mean, that's one of the first things
that we'd we check on our side, but
then we also have them look and go,
well, you know, what what was your previous
episode about in this date range? Can you
think of anything that you might have changed,
or did you show up somewhere that would
cause that to spike or dip?
So, yeah, you just look at trends and
you you eventually, you'll find your answer. It's
not usually,
oh, there's, you know, some
random group of people from Mongolia that are
listening to my episodes now, and that's why
it spiked. Yeah. That that can happen, but
it's pretty rare.
You know, it's
you know, we had one guy,
not too long ago talking about stats.
He says you know, he had, like,
20 downloads per episode was you know? So
he was just, you know, not not really
getting a lot of
plays, a lot of listens.
And he was really curious why
15 of the 20 were in New York.
I don't know.
It's just random happenstance,
I guess, but, you know,
you don't wanna watch it that closely.
But you do wanna you know, if, say,
your episode gets
50%
of what you normally get for an episode,
look at what you did on the last
one and see if you mighta ticked somebody
off, or
you you mighta done something stupid or, you
know, not stupid, but, you know, you you
tried something that didn't work.
I guess that's the better way of putting
it. Yeah. Or, you know, the opposite. Maybe
they did jump.
You know?
So that's that's where stats can come in
and be be of interest.
I think some other things that are maybe
not blueberry centric, but, like, if you are
sharing things on social
Mhmm. You you can check your engagement there,
like, your replies and your you know, if
you're doing reviews on podcast
directories and things like that.
You know, just kinda see how that works.
And those aren't always one to one.
I think I can't even remember. There is
a percentage of people that will interact with
you,
on social media.
But yeah.
Yeah. I get a lot of my my
reactions
from Facebook,
weird weirdly.
But, you know, then I can post the
exact same thing on x and get nothing.
And, you know, I don't use Instagram
yet. Probably will.
But,
you know, it's one of those things. I
can only do so much. I I don't
wanna add yet another inbox to check. You
know?
Right.
But Yeah.
People know how to get a hold of
me if they listen,
so that's good. And, you know, and always
mention that too. You know?
You know, I'm gonna go back a little
bit in our little show notes here, but,
you know, always explain stuff to your audience.
I mean,
you know, there's no no harm in say,
hey. I'm change I changed this up. Did
you notice? What do you think?
You know, let them know what to expect
rather than just shocking them with stuff.
Or, hey. Next week, I got a new
theme song I wanna try out on you.
You know? And that might get them to
come back to hear it.
Just all kinds of stuff like that. But,
yeah, it's a but you you you you
know, if you do something that that
really causes a stir, either positive or negative,
you will hear about it. Oh, yeah. And
that's good. You know, you wanna hear about
it.
Yeah. I don't I would also recommend,
you know,
stick with
the feel of your show. Yeah. Don't you
know, if you have a very professional
show, don't do anything wacky.
You know, if if you use music, don't
change the music to some circus music or
something like that.
You know, kind of stay in your lane,
but but play within those confines a little
bit.
You know, I've I've
not seen too many shows do this, but
I have seen a couple of shows, I've
even done it myself,
where
you go,
well, my personality is, you know, I like
I wanna have a little bit more fun.
So
then you end up making a change that
just doesn't fit the feel of your show,
and that's usually not good. But, yeah, just
just a random thought I had there. You
know? Try and try and stay in your
lane.
Try not to be,
you know, the podcast for all people.
Yep. As they say, a podcast for everybody
is a podcast for nobody.
You know? You gotta niche down a little
bit in most cases.
You know? There are some
celebrities out there that could probably,
read the phone book and and do alright.
So Probably.
You never know.
But,
anyway, yeah, just, you know, here's kind of
the takeaway. You know, experimenting with your format
doesn't mean starting from scratch. It doesn't mean
throwing everything away and starting over, or it
might. You know? And if that's the case,
start a new show.
But Mhmm. Basically, you know, change one thing
at a time. Make sure you're communicating with
your audience,
and,
you know, check the data and the feedback.
Anyway, you don't have to blow it up
to make it better. Yeah.
Think of, you know, tuning or tweaking and
not rebuilding
everything every week.
Yeah. Your your listeners are gonna be a
lot more
adaptable
to to the changes that you make than
you might believe.
So
just make sure you bring them along, put
them in the passenger seat with you, and,
you know, they're gonna love watching your show
grow and change,
and stick around for the long haul. We
I know we do. I love talking to
customers that have,
you know, been doing their podcast for eighteen
years and
and things like that.
So,
yeah, if you want any more advice from
us, you know how to get in touch
with us. You can go to blueberry.com
and, podcastinsider.com
in order
to reach us, whether it's support
or, you know, contact the show. Right. And,
you know, of course, podcastinsider.com,
you can read our extensive show notes. Thanks
to Mackenzie.
Thanks for joining us. Let's meet up next
week. And in the meantime, for more information,
to subscribe, share, or follow, check out the
show notes at podcastinsider.com.
To check out our latest suite of services
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