70. Want a New Audience to Find Your Show Through Search? Optimize These Key Podcasting Elements! (POP: Calling Daisies)

About half of all podcast listeners discover a new show through a search in their podcast players. Want a new audience to find your show this way? In this episode, I chat with Flora from Calling Daisies about how she can set her podcast up the right way from day 1. Tune in to hear about the key podcasting elements to optimize so that your show appears in the search results and stands out as the best option!

Listen to Calling Daisies

Want to make your podcast POP? Schedule a free call with me at www.ThePodcastTeacher.com/pop

This episode was produced by me, The Podcast Teacher! Contact me at Hello@ThePodcastTeacher.com.

Transcript

Julia Levine:
Welcome to podcasting for solopreneurs. I'm Julia Levine, AKA the podcast teacher. As a former elementary school educator turned podcasting solopreneur, I'm here to teach you how to use your podcast to grow your online business. On this show, you'll learn proven strategies to boost your podcast's reach, attract more listeners, and ultimately turn those listeners into clients. Let's get started. Hey. Hey. And welcome back.

Julia Levine:
Today, I have another pop episode for you. I have reviewed someone's podcast and created a podcast optimization plan to make their podcast pop. If you're a current or aspiring podcaster, listen in as a fly on the wall for our conversation. I guarantee that you'll find something of value in the episode that you can apply to your current or future podcast. If you'd like to chat with me about how we can make your podcast pop, you can schedule your own free call with me at the podcast teacher.com/pop. Today, I'm chatting with Flora, a brand new podcaster and the host of the show, Calling Daisies, which is just getting started. We talk about how to optimize her podcast so that her ideal listener can easily discover it through a search and choose it from the list of results. If that sounds like something that you want too, keep listening.

Julia Levine:
Hey, Flora, and welcome to Podcasting for Solopreneurs. It's so nice to meet you.

Flora:
Hi. Thank you so much for having me here. I'm so excited.

Julia Levine:
Awesome. Well, I'm so excited to look at your podcast, and I see that you haven't officially launched yet and don't have any episodes published, though you do have a trailer. Is that right?

Flora:
Yeah. That's right. I actually have my first episode. It's just in the final processes of editing.

Julia Levine:
Gotcha. Okay. Well, let's start just by establishing kind of your vision. So paint the picture for me 6 months from now. What does the ideal scenario look like for you when it comes to your show?

Flora:
6 months from now, the ideal scenario would be just to have listeners. Why do you want to grow my podcast to be something bigger in the future? Like, right now, the goal is probably just, like, to get listeners in general.

Julia Levine:
Fantastic. That's always a a great place to start. And so with a brand new show where we don't have episodes to analyze, we don't have kind of a workflow or a promotion, a marketing strategy to analyze. I like to look at kind of the 3 foundational pieces, which are the title, the cover, and the description. So if that's cool with you, I have some thoughts on all three of those that we can discuss.

Flora:
Yes. That is great. Thank you.

Julia Levine:
Okay. Great.

Flora:
Yeah.

Julia Levine:
So let's kick it off with the description. So your description is great. I noticed that this is a revised description. So when you first scheduled the call a couple weeks ago, I looked at your podcast just to kinda get a little bit of an idea of, you know, who you were, what the show context was, and all of that stuff. And so I noticed when I looked at it yesterday to prepare for this call that it has been revised. And the second version is like knocking it out of the park. So, so, so much better. So fantastic job on that front.

Julia Levine:
In particular, I love that you're framing the content in a way that conveys the value to the listener. So you use language like this is your safe space for heartfelt conversations about sexual assault, depression, abuse, and PTSD. You reference navigating and sharing the journey with them. So I feel like at this stage of the game, with your show just launching, I have a pretty good idea of what the show is going to be about and who it's for from just reading the description, which of course is the goal. So fantastic job there. One suggestion that I do have for you is to add some Google style questions. So these are things that your ideal listener might be typing into their search bar and that your show can fulfill their need.

Flora:
So how would I incorporate that into the description? Because there's also the character limits or the descriptions on, like, my hosting site.

Julia Levine:
Yeah. So when you host on Spotify for podcasters, formerly Anchor, they do give you a character limit, which is kind of challenging to work around sometimes. So if you can, you know, typically, I recommend adding 5 to 10 Google style questions, but even 1 or 2, like, heavy hitting questions would be great. And I know that right now, you have information in the description about when the show is launching. And so, obviously, if you take out that sentence once the show actually launches, you'll have at least another sentence of space to play with. So I think that you can finagle it a little bit. And then maybe down the road, if you decide to change platforms, other platforms don't have a character limit. And so it's a little bit more easy to get all the information in there.

Flora:
For changing top forms, which one would you recommend, like, without a character limit? I think I might as well just do it from the get go.

Julia Levine:
So I'm a big fan of Buzzsprout. They are my absolute favorite. I feel like their platform is really easy to use, really intuitive, and they have the absolute best customer service that I have ever experienced. So I I'm a big fan of them, and their plans are very reasonable. I pay $12 a month for my current hosting plan, so they're not outrageously expensive either.

Flora:
Okay. Perfect. Thank you so much. I'll do that, like, once we're done with the call.

Julia Levine:
Yeah, absolutely. My pleasure. And just as a, a piece of information, you know, it's going to ask you if you are starting a new show or if you are transferring an existing show. And so even though you haven't, like, officially published episodes yet, your show is live on Apple Podcasts. So make sure and choose the option that you're transferring an existing show so that you can pull in what's already there. Because if you start from scratch, you'll create a duplicate entry in Apple Podcasts, and that would be confusing. We don't want that.

Flora:
Alright. Perfect. Thank you so much for that advice.

Julia Levine:
Yeah. My pleasure. So let's move on to the title of your show. So Calling Daisies doesn't really mean much to me on its own. And so when I first looked at the show, I hadn't read the description yet. I really had no idea what this show might be about. I typically find that people have personal reasons for choosing a more creative title such as this, and I don't like to pick a fight and ask someone to change it and kinda go down that rabbit hole. Alternatively, I think that we can add some clarity and also optimize it for search by adding a subtitle.

Flora:
I think I am kind of married to the title just because of the meaning behind what, like, daisies represent. So I would like the alternative option, please.

Julia Levine:
Yes. Absolutely. So for a subtitle, I like to use the what for who formula. Given the information from your description, I might go with something like calling daisies, healing conversations around trauma and mental health for Gen Z women. And, of course, that is just a starting point, a place to kind of get the wheels turning for you. You don't have to use that exactly. But what I'm trying to do here is I'm trying to give some context for someone who may see, calling daisies. What's that about? So I'm trying to give some context of what the show is about, the what, and who the show is for.

Julia Levine:
So that what for who formula. And then I'm also trying to get some keywords in there that people might be searching for so that your show is more likely to come up in the search results. And so that's what I'm doing with words like healing, trauma, mental health, gen Z women. Those are all words that could kind of go at the end of someone saying, hey, I'm looking for a podcast about trauma. I'm looking for a podcast for Gen Z women. Do you see where I'm going with that?

Flora:
Yes. I definitely see where you're going with that.

Julia Levine:
How does that first draft feel to you and the idea of adding some of this clarity and the keywords into the subtitle?

Flora:
I definitely see the value of adding the extra keywords to the title. And I think that the first draft is pretty good. I just feel like maybe it's a little bit long.

Julia Levine:
Yeah. So when you are saying the name of your podcast, so you meet a new person and you're like, oh, yeah, I have a podcast. You can just tell them it's called Calling Daisies. You don't have to say the title extension. And in some cases, I don't even recommend putting it on your cover art. In your case, I do, which we'll get more into in a moment here when we talk about the cover, but you don't necessarily have to say the whole big long thing every time. So when you start each episode, hey, welcome back to Calling Daisies. I'm your host, Flora, blah blah blah, and you get into the episode.

Julia Levine:
So you don't have to say the whole big long thing. Does that make it feel a little more doable?

Flora:
Yeah. It definitely makes it feel more doable. What section do you add, like, a subtitle to?

Julia Levine:
Great question. So the subtitle is actually just formally part of the actual title. So in whether you are in Buzzsprout or, you know, a different hosting platform where it says, like, enter the title of your podcast, you're just going to put all of this in. So I like to separate kind of the main part of the title from the subtitle with either a dash or a colon or a vertical line, something to just kind of, like, break it up a little bit visually. So you would put in calling daisies dash healing conversations around trauma, mental health, or Gen Z women, or whatever you choose. It doesn't have to be all of those words, but something along those lines, and it just goes straight into the title field.

Flora:
Perfect. Thank you so much.

Julia Levine:
Yeah. You're welcome. Alright. And so moving on to the last piece to look at for this brand new show is the cover art. And so, as I mentioned a moment ago, I don't always recommend putting the subtitle on the cover art, particularly if the show's main title is relatively clear. But in the case of a creative title where it's not quite so clear, I do recommend putting your subtitle or at least a portion of the subtitle on the cover art so that someone can see that front and center right away when they're scrolling. And so, of course, your podcast cover art is one of the first impressions. People see it in their podcast feed and, you know, we process a lot of information visually.

Julia Levine:
And so I love to get as much context on the actual cover as we can to help with that quick burst of information that the brain is absorbing the first time they see the cover art. And so I see that on your current draft of the cover, again, I noticed that it changed from the first time that I looked at it and you're moving in the right direction. And I see that right now, you kind of have already embraced this concept of providing a little clarity because you have the words heartfelt chats and healing journeys already on the cover, kind of as like a tagline. And so I wanted to say that that's absolutely a step in the right direction, and that's what we're trying to do here. I think that we can add even more clarity by getting more specific. So my initial impression when I saw that, and I hadn't yet read your description, I didn't know what your show was about. My initial thoughts were heartfelt chats about what, you know, is this about relationships? Is this about health? Is this about there's so many different things that can be a heartfelt chat Right And so same thing with healing journeys. You know, my mind immediately went to a physical healing journey.

Julia Levine:
So like a chronic illness journey or a, a disability journey, something like that. And so I would love to give a little bit more context to people initially so that the potential listener can process that information and decide like, oh, that's interesting. That's what I'm looking for here before they scroll on. Because if they have to sit there and say, I'm not quite sure what this is, they're probably not gonna take the time to find out. Does that make sense?

Flora:
Yeah. That definitely makes a lot of sense, and I can see people doing that because I do the same when I'm looking for podcasts.

Julia Levine:
Yeah. A 100%. So whatever final subtitle language you land on, I would add either the whole thing or at least the meaty first part, onto the cover itself. And in terms of your current design, you know, I like the image that you've used of daisies and that bright pink branding color really makes it stand out. So I think you're on the right direction there. I would, like I said, add that subtitle to add some clarity and maybe just play around, like, with this spacing and whatnot. I would recommend maybe making Calling Daisies a medium sized font, and then also making the subtitle a relatively medium sized font so that it's readable on that teeny tiny little image that pops up on the the phone viewers.

Flora:
Yeah. I definitely understand that. I was noticing recently that you can't really read the the smaller text on the phone.

Julia Levine:
Yeah. It's a challenge. And like I said, that's one of the reasons that I I typically don't recommend putting the subtitle on the cover. It's just because there's not a lot of room to begin with. And then when you add that text, it eats up a lot of room. And then what are you left with? So for you, I can see kind of using that transparent image of the daisies that you have in the background and then having maybe, like, calling daisies across the top And then like the whole bottom half of the image is just the text of your subtitle.

Flora:
Yeah. I can see what you're saying. I knew that something wasn't quite right. Like I was still messing with, like, the cover. I just didn't really know what to put on there, but I'm glad that you gave me the clarity.

Julia Levine:
Yeah. It's my pleasure. Absolutely. So those were kind of the three things that with a brand new show that we kind of have to work with. So description is great, just a few minor tweaks there. The title, adding that subtitle, I think, will be really, really, really helpful for you. And then changing up the cover a little bit to include that subtitle and give some additional context to that person who's brand new to you and scrolling by. So do all three of those things feel doable for you?

Flora:
They all feel doable. Yeah.

Julia Levine:
Okay. Great. Do you have any other questions for me?

Flora:
I do. There's, like, no episodes for you to listen to right now, but, with the trailer being up, I guess that kind of gives, like, a little idea to, like, what it's gonna sound like. Do you have any thoughts on it at all?

Julia Levine:
I don't think you have anything that you need to change right now in terms of recording.

Flora:
I appreciate that. Because I I'm using, like, a $20 mic from Target. So I was like, I hope that the trailer sounds, like, okay enough. Because that's, like, what the episodes were gonna sound like.

Julia Levine:
Yeah. Can it sound better? Of course. I don't have high end equipment. My stuff can sound better. There's always room to go forward. I like to ask myself, what's good enough for now? What's good enough to allow me to take action? And what you have going on right now is good enough for now. It's good enough to continue taking action and moving forward.

Flora:
Okay. Thank you so much. That helps a lot.

Julia Levine:
Yeah. You're welcome. And so as we are wrapping up, if someone out there listening wants to connect with you, what is the best way for them to do that?

Flora:
The best way would be to follow on Instagram and also to subscribe to the podcast on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. It's calling daisies on all platforms.

Julia Levine:
Fantastic. Thank you so much for your time today, Flora.

Flora:
Thank you so much for having me.

Julia Levine:
Alright. That's all for today. If you're interested in healing conversations about trauma and mental health, be sure to check out Flora's podcast, Calling Daisies. And if you'd like to chat with me about how we can make your podcast pop, you can schedule your own free call with me at the podcast teacher.com/pop. Until next time. Happy podcasting.