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How Buffer Drove 500,000+ Downloads In One Year With a Podcast Side Project

Hailley Griffis & Brian Peters

Co-Hosts of The Science of Social Media

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Our Podcast Tool Stack

Hosting: Libsyn

Microphones: Blue “Yeti”

Recording: Skype + Call Recorder

Editing: Adobe Audition

Newsletter: MailChimp

Show Notes: WordPress

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Transparent Download Numbers

Per Week: 15,000

First Year: 511,000

Second Year: 595,000 (so far!)

Total: 1,106,000

Avg Per Episode: 10,600

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We should start a podcast!

It’ll be easy!

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Podcast Excitement Levels Timeline

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Podcast Reality Check

Everything will be fine!

Uh oh!

Show launch

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What Were We Doing Wrong?

Deprioritized the podcast for more pressing work
Same interview style show as everyone else
Couldn’t control the quality of our guests
Production value much lower than peers

We sort of started asking ourselves what we were doing wrong. I mean the initial spike is normal but for it to keep dropping was pretty scary.

So a few things that we realized:

We didn’t have a lot of time to spend on the podcast, we both have full time roles outside of the podcast and we didn’t have a ton of time to dedicate to it. I spent a lot of time trying to book guests but the scheduling for a weekly show is really busy.
We weren’t standing out from other shows at all, we literally had some of the same people on the show, we did have a few unexpected people, but ultimately we were doing things really similarly.
Related to being the same as everyone else, when you try to get people who aren’t on other podcasts, it’s really hard to control the quality. Are they good speakers? Brian edited some rough episodes!
And finally we weren’t at a high quality of production like the others in our space.

Brian quick story about each guest - Ryan Holiday / Neil Patel / Rand Fishkin

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Something Had to Change

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So we experimented...

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Wait!

Our biggest learnings

(and failures) to this point.

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What We Did Right

We leveraged our existing network
We ran contests and encouraged reviews early on
We asked all of our guests to share the podcast in a non-pushy way and even created assets for them

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Where We Failed Miserably

We didn't start an email list from the beginning
We were very sporadic on creating show notes
Didn’t cross-promote the podcast on other channels

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Things We Wish We Knew About iTunes

Quality traffic to iTunes matters
Downloads and actual listen rates are huge
Reviews are critical (get them early, get them consistently)

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That’s all you need to know to market a podcast.

Seriously!

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Back to downloads…

How do I get more of those?

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The Secret:

Challenge everything you think you know about podcasting.

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Steady + Sustained Growth = Good

Now we’re talking!

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The Turning Point For Us In Podcasting

May not have “gotten it right” the first time around
Needed to experiment in order to find out what really works and what doesn’t
Needed a quicker feedback loop for the show (one week was too long)

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And so “Bonusodes” were born.

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What Are Bonusodes?

A way for us to “hack” extra downloads so that we could get quicker feedback
A way for us to inject our personalities into the show
A way for us to give our listeners some variety from what they hear with every other podcast

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You watch to just hear perspectives. Between your smartphones and everything else—you’ve always got the news. People think they know. They’re not interested in learning. They’re interested in hearing whether or not your perspective is aligned with theirs.

The job is to be enough of a personality that they want to know what you think.

“

Stephen A. Smith

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Using Data + Intuition To Ask Questions

Why are we using the guest format?

Why do people listen to our show?

What makes them stick around for the full episode?

What makes them come back every week?

What are others doing in our niche or vertical?

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What The Data Showed

Bonusode

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Idea validated!

So we doubled down.

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What We Learned In 3 Short Months in 2017

Bonusodes were performing better than our interview episodes
There are only so many guests out there
Tons of really great interview-style podcasts

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Let’s talk about the concept of standing out...

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2018 Podcast Stats

550,000+ total podcasts on iTunes

18,500,000+ total episodes on iTunes

Comedy is the most popular podcasting genres, followed by education and news

Only 35% of podcast listeners listen to a full episode

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Standing Out From a Very Large Crowd

Must dominate a niche in order to grow

Can’t be everything to everyone - focus

Must give people a reason to come back every week

Production value is key in the world of NPR

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What makes you different than the 1,000 other podcasts in your space?

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Everything will be fine!

Uh oh!

Show launch

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Now we’re talking!

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3 Big Podcast Learnings from 1M Downloads

Don’t give up. It took us two years, 100 episodes, to get 1 million downloads
Try new things. Don’t assume you got it right on the first try, aim to be the best
Build a community. Email list, social media, hashtags, groups, newsletters & partners

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Thank you!

Hailley Griffis | Brian Peters

@hailleymari | @Brian_G_Peters

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The Science of Social Media

buffer.com/podcast

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