Ideas for getting traffic

**Chabrenas** · January 28th, 2012, 3:28 PM

Andy, when you say post to your blog, I presume you mean in slightly modified form? Successful writers always try to sell a story as many times as possible - in forms tailored to the places they sell them to. Somehow, it hadn't occurred to me that I could do the same around my own group of sites. I'm even dimmer than I thought.

**PatFlynn** · February 11th, 2012, 9:49 PM

New member here, and I just came across this thread and just have to put in my 2 cents about how much of an impact podcasting has made in my business.

Short and sweet: it's been huge, and I never expected the kind of reach that podcasting (and more specifically, putting the podcast on iTunes) has given me.

In 2011, in preparation for a presentation at Blog World Expo, I had surveyed my blog readers and asked them one question

How did you find out about me or my blog?

(My blog is at http://www.smartpassiveincome.com, in case you're interested).

I asked this question only a couple of times at the tail end of a couple blog posts, and never asked my YouTube audience or my Podcast Audience to answer, and the results were pretty amazing:

19% of people who now read my blog found me through my podcast
16% found me through YouTube
15% links through other blogs
11% other
10% Google search
8% Word of mouth
7% Link from a Forum
7% Twitter
5% Facebook
3% Can't remember

This is from a pool of over 2500 respondents, again - those who were reading my blog at the time of the survey. I knew I had some reach on iTunes (I was and still am getting emails from people who find me on iTunes at least 4 or 5 times a week), but never knew it accounted for this much reach.

Now, this is not to be confused with my #1 Traffic source, which is actually Facebook (mostly for returning visitors), but I do now my blog gets a significant amount of new eyes (and ears) on it from the podcast. It's hard to determine exact traffic from iTunes and other podcast directories, because unlike YouTube, there's really nothing to click on. On through unique urls can you determine click-throughs, but even then there are show notes on the blog when you have a podcast that people are more likely to click on.

To my existing audience, I believe it added a level of authority - I wasn't just a blogger or a person who owned a website anymore, I became a brand that had a blog and a podcast and a YouTube channel. This is called my "Be Everywhere Strategy" and is what I presented about at Blog World Expo in LA last year.

I don't want to spam the forums here, so if you're interested in a link to the actual presentation, let me know and I can send it to you (or if someone asks here, I'd be happy to drop a quick link. Again, I'm a newbie here on the forums and don't want to abuse it at all).

As far as getting started - it wasn't easy. I wanted to start one for over 2 years, but never took the time to figure it out because it wasn't a 2-step or 3-step process, more like a 40-step process, but one that I wish I had done earlier. Just this January of 2012, my podcast, only 32 episodes in length, has just passed 1,000,000 downloads.

The best place to get started would be my friend Cliff Ravenscraft's site who helped me setup my own. He created this video series, 100% free, no opt-in required, to help people understand the ins and outs of podcasting.

I hope this helps, and if anyone has any questions about podcasting, let me know. I've recently helped a few of my colleagues setup their own podcasts and get to as high as #2 in the business section in iTunes (although it did help he has an existing audience and email list to push) - that's not to say you need one in order to get exposure in iTunes. If you have good content, quality audio and a decent looking podcast logo, it's fairly easy to get in the New & Noteworthy section in iTunes.

**Chabrenas** · February 14th, 2012, 3:55 PM

Pat, I'm surprised how long your podcasts are (and many other people's, too). I have always assumed that a series of short ones would be more effective. I have the same feeling about videos, too. It's very rare that I can sit and watch a vid that lasts half an hour or more (except when they come from TED).

If they really need to be that long then I need to be able to find and repeat some sections, which is much easier to do with a PDF transcript.

However, there is plenty of evidence out there that I am not typical - videos and podcasts are the preferred medium for a large part of the population, so I need to find some good guidelines about how to create successful audio and video material for various different purposes.

**PatFlynn** · February 14th, 2012, 4:23 PM

Originally Posted by Chabrenas

Pat, I'm surprised how long your podcasts are (and many other people's, too). I have always assumed that a series of short ones would be more effective. I have the same feeling about videos, too. It's very rare that I can sit and watch a vid that lasts half an hour or more (except when they come from TED).

If they really need to be that long then I need to be able to find and repeat some sections, which is much easier to do with a PDF transcript.

However, there is plenty of evidence out there that I am not typical - videos and podcasts are the preferred medium for a large part of the population, so I need to find some good guidelines about how to create successful audio and video material for various different purposes.

I think it depends on your audience, and of course how well you believe you can keep people's attention for that long. Those "quick and dirty tips" podcast series in all of the categories are very popular for a reason, but I like to get in depth with my shows and unfortunately if I try to cut it down it eats up on some important content I would rather keep in...and I talk fast too, lol.

If you do get into audio/video production, I wouldn't go TOO hard on the side of doing what everyone else wants instead, because then essentially you're not doing what you want and it would reflect in your show/content. Make the show who you are and your audience will learn to like it if you deliver the goods.

**Clinton** · February 15th, 2012, 4:40 AM

Pat, thanks for sharing what podcasting has done for your site.

We did discuss here about doing some podcasting for EP. As you'll see from the thread there didn't seem to be a great deal of interest.

You aren't the only one who swears by it, others do too. But people here don't seem keen. Why the contradictory signals? Is it perhaps indicative of the audience? Are people looking to get MMO information and make a living online more reassured by hearing the voice behind the advice? Are people who run successful businesses more the impatient type who want to scan the information very quickly before deciding whether it's worth reading in greater detail?

What do you do when you come across hour long podcasts at other locations?

What swings the balance and convinces people to listen to a podcast?

**akirk** · February 15th, 2012, 4:45 AM

Clinton, I think that a lot depends on the content - and what is offering...
I am involved in the photography world - there is a strong interest there in webcasts / podcasts / etc. - people like the ability to learn in that way...
Perhaps in this world there is a switch off for many on here because there are too many examples of people who use them as a selling technique rather than as an information provision and most on here are not into agressive selling?

Alasdair

**Dave McM** · February 15th, 2012, 4:53 AM

On the general point of long presentations, I'd agree that anything much longer than about 20 minutes is ambitious, no matter how interesting the subject matter. Some of my lecturers at university could hold me spellbound for the full 50 minutes of the lecture, but not many.

**akirk** · February 15th, 2012, 5:57 AM

Originally Posted by Dave McM

On the general point of long presentations, I'd agree that anything much longer than about 20 minutes is ambitious, no matter how interesting the subject matter. Some of my lecturers at university could hold me spellbound for the full 50 minutes of the lecture, but not many.

would agree - better anyway to split a more complex topic into several bits...
smaller files are just simpler to use / and you don't feel that you have to invest a huge amount of time - i.e. with a 50 min podcast that is quite a chunk of time to commit in one sitting...

however I could see that for some there might be a perception that more is better and that a 50 minute podcast must be good as it must be packed full of detail... so from a selling point perhaps it works well?

Alasdair

**PatFlynn** · February 15th, 2012, 11:45 AM

Originally Posted by Clinton

You aren't the only one who swears by it, others do too. But people here don't seem keen. Why the contradictory signals? Is it perhaps indicative of the audience? Are people looking to get MMO information and make a living online more reassured by hearing the voice behind the advice? Are people who run successful businesses more the impatient type who want to scan the information very quickly before deciding whether it's worth reading in greater detail?

What do you do when you come across hour long podcasts at other locations?

Different people just have different preferences for consuming content. Some people only listen to my podcast and don't read my blog and/or watch my videos, for example.

When I personally come across an hour long podcast, I set it aside and wait until I go on a drive, or I'm on a flight, and then I listen. Or maybe I'm sitting in bed next to my wife while she reads her Kindle. It's a great way to learn while on the go, which is why many of my listeners are people who go to the gym or go on walks or have longer commutes and would rather learn something than listen to the radio.

**Chabrenas** · February 15th, 2012, 2:34 PM

I hadn't thought about people who listen while doing other things, but you can't treat a video that way. Oh, wait, isn't that how many people with TV sets spend a lot of their time?

Alasdair, I can see the value in both audio and video for tutorials. Where the subject is visual (Photoshop, camera techniques, composition, etc.,) video adds a lot of value. But tutorials are structured and concise. Discussions can be allowed to wander, as long as they maintain a bit of intellectual challenge. If not, I'll either switch to something else or just let my mind float.

People who sell things have a reason for doing things the way they do, and just about all IM folks produce the same long, dumbed-down pitches with no more than 5 percent of useful information in them. Why? Most of them don't even make an attempt to entertain me (whatever his faults, Frank Kern is one of the very few exceptions in my book, but I may be in yet another minority there). It's all so different from TV commercials, because they're not paying by the second for the exposure. If TV ads were free and commercial slots were of unrestricted length, would Unilever run half-hour ads?