Treat Your Podcast Like a Book: Why Listeners Don’t Come Back for Chapter Two

Some of the best decisions about podcasting happen when you take the concept out of podcasting.

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So I see this all the time, and I saw this on Reddit.

Basically somebody saying, look, we do all the work, we edit, we do this, we do that, and our numbers are getting smaller.

And you know, what do we.

Maybe we need to do more promotion.

And that's what everybody jumps to.

You need to let people know it's there.

Because of course, what did they say about their content?

Oh, it's great.

We don't need to change any of that.

And I love to take stuff like this and take it out of podcasting and then go, what advice would you give to that person?

So let's take this instead of being a podcaster.

You're an author and you write a chapter of a book and you put it out there for people to read, and a bunch of people come by and read it, and then you write a second chapter and you go, hey, hey, here's the second chapter.

And less people come to read it.

You're like, hey, be sure and tell your friends.

And then you write a third chapter, and there's even less people doing that.

And they're like, well, maybe I need to promote this more because, you know, I wrote it, it's good.

Okay, what would you say to that person?

You're like, what do you mean?

Well, they wrote one chapter and they had less people read chapter two and even less people read chapter three.

What is that a symptom of?

It's a symptom that the book is not resonating with the people.

Now, in theory, we could argue, well, maybe they're not their target audience, but let's pretend they are.

Let's maybe.

This was a book made for women.

55 Going through menopause and a bunch of 55 year old women going through menopause come to read your book.

And by chapter four, they're not even stopping by the table to see if there's a new episode.

What would you say to that person?

Go find the person that read chapter one and say, hey, I noticed you didn't come back for chapter two.

How could I make this book better?

What were you looking for?

That's not in this book.

I'm listening to a book right now by Jay Akunzo.

I love Jay.

I've actually been lucky enough to meet him.

It's called Break the Wheel.

And the first part of the book, he talks about Death Wish Coffee.

And this is where the founder was running a coffee shop that was going right down the drain.

And he realized that he had a few people, usually truckers, that were like, give me the darkest, strongest thing you got.

Because they wanted to get a jolt out of their coffee.

And so he made that product to be the most highly caffeinated coffee ever.

And it's for people who are workaholics, hence the death Wish kind of thing.

Now, he listened to what the audience wanted.

It was a smaller audience, but he was losing steam trying to make a coffee like everyone else.

So he found his target audience, gave them what they want.

Now, it wasn't perfect out of the gate, but his goal was, can I sell one bag a week?

And then one turned into two, turned to like, can we do 20?

Can we do a hundred?

And all of a sudden, it started to take off.

Why?

Because he listened to his customer, what do they want?

And it became those people.

That little niche of people are like, man, this is exactly what I'm looking for.

It's great.

And birds of a feather flock together.

And it was so good.

Here's the thing, it was so good that people that would drink this coffee would remark about it on social media and say things like, you haven't had coffee till you had Death Wish.

And they had all sorts of social stuff, but it started off by giving their audience what they want.

And I do not understand this when.

Well, actually, I do.

We're afraid to get feedback.

We're afraid to ask the audience for feedback on our show because what if they don't even fill out the form?

What if I get 0 replies?

I totally get that.

I do that once a month.

I do a question of the month, and I'm always like, is this the month that I get no responses?

And if you do, you are actually getting a huge amount of feedback.

And that is, whatever you're doing ain't working.

And we hate to hear that.

So instead, we keep doing what's not working and wondering why it's not working.

We need to have the courage to simply go, hey, do you need more salt on your fries?

No, you're good.

Great.

Just ask someone how it's doing.

But I see this all the time where, hey, my numbers are going down.

I'm not sure what to do.

And when you ask them, well, what did you get when you surveyed your audience.

The answer is we didn't survey our audience.

And I realize I have done many an episode that ends with, you need to survey your audience.

And the reason I say that is you need to survey your audience if things aren't going the way you want them to go.

And if you're not sure what to do, try taking podcasting out of podcasting and comparing it to a book or comparing it to a movie or a musician or something like that.

Because we're all in the entertainment business and sometimes when we move podcasting out of podcasting, the answer becomes crystal clear.

And for some reason, we couldn't see it when it was a podcast.

So keep that in mind when you're trying to make a decision and you're like, I'm not really sure what to do.

What would you do if this was an author?

How would you handle that situation?

If you need help, of course, you can always go over to schoolofpodcasting.com that's where you get one on one consulting with me, along with my courses, my community, and a whole lot more Listener parties.

You want feedback?

We do listener parties.

So you can see, are they laughing?

Are they crying when they're supposed to cry?

It's all there.

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I'm Dave Jackson.

I've been helping podcasters for over 20 years and I can't wait to see what we're going to do together because I want to be your podcast consultant.

Sam.