Let's Talk "Strategic Podcast Marketing" with Buzzsprout's Head of Marketing

Want to hear about the latest Buzzsprout features directly from the source? Get ready to geek out on podcasting and marketing with the return of Alban Brooke, Buzzsprout's Head of Marketing. Alban, a voice familiar to the pod, gifts us a download of Buzzsprout's latest gizmos.

Picture this: a mobile app and fan mail functions so innovative they'll have you rethinking your podcast strategy. As I walk down memory lane, sharing how Buzzsprout's clever feature rollouts have jazzed up my podcasting ventures, you'll catch a glimpse into the magic that keeps creators at every stage not just afloat but sailing full speed ahead in their podcasting adventures.

Together, Alban and I dissect the art of whipping up content that pleases the ears of both the creator and listener, much like crafting a soulful melody. For a taste of Buzzsprout's brew of fun, we'll pull back the curtain on how they like creating content, including an '80s infomercial spoof.

Plus, we discuss Buzzsprout's Fan Mail feature—it's a game-changer. With a click of a link, they've created a space for listeners to engage with show hosts, tying a knot in the connection between podcasters and their community. This nifty function provides podcasters with a new tool to engage with their audience.

So plug in, sit back, and let the fusion of insights ignite your passion for podcasting, whether you're already in the Buzzsprout club or mulling over your ticket into the audio revolution.

Take the "What’s Your Hidden Content Talent?" quiz and find out if you're an Idea Innovator, Engagement Expert, Tech Whiz, or Brand Builder today! Go to krystalproffitt.com/quiz now.

Click the "Send Krystal a Text Message" link above to send us your questions, comments, and feedback on the show! (Pssst...we'll do giveaways in upcoming episodes so make sure you leave your name & podcast title.)

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Transcript

Krystal Proffitt: 0:00

I love whenever I can bring on guests that have been on the show not once, not twice, and I don't even was this three, was this fourth time? Like we I still don't know, I still don't know. And we talk about it when we get into the episode. Like that's literally how we just get started, we get right into it. But Alban Brooke, he is so much fun. He is the head of marketing at Buzzsprout and we get into you know kind of the story of how long we've known each other at this point. But it is so much fun to sync with him and just nerd out about the Buzzsprout, like the new updates. So if you've been seeing me like talk about things like their app and fan mail and all these other, like today we are unpacking it all and we're also getting into the mindset of how they approach features and what that looks like.

Krystal Proffitt: 1:01

And if you've been podcasting for a while, then you've been listening to the show. You know how much I love Buzzsprout. I say it all the time I drank the Kool-Aid. Some episodes just end up being a full-blown commercial for Buzzsprout. That's kind of what it is today. So if you are a Buzzsprout user, then you are going to love all of the features and the behind the scenes that I haven't really even shared some of it publicly, like how much I make from Buzzsprout ads and what that looks like. But we're getting into all of it, and if you're not a Buzzsprout user, I hope that today's episode encourages you to give them a try, because they have so many incredible features. So I'll just go ahead and throw it out and make a plug for them now. If you're not a Buzzsprout user, you can sign up for a free trial by going to Krystalproffitt. com/buzzsprout.

Krystal Proffitt: 1:51

But let's get into this incredible conversation with Alban. Let's get right to it. Welcome to the Profit Podcast, where we teach you how to start, launch and market your content with confidence. I'm your host, Krystal Proffitt, and I'm so excited that you're here. Thanks for hanging out with me today, because if you've been trying to figure out the world of content creation, this is the show that will help be your time-saving shortcut. So let's get right to it. Shall we Start today's conversation today.

Krystal Proffitt: 2:23

I was going to look up if this is your third time on the show I don't know how many times your second or third, not because I don't pay attention to the show.

Alban Brooke: 2:34

It's because we talk so much, it's not the show.

Krystal Proffitt: 2:38

So what you're?

Alban Brooke: 2:38

saying is.

Krystal Proffitt: 2:39

it's not that it's not memorable, it's just that we've had so many quality conversations over the years.

Alban Brooke: 2:57

You remember all of them and they all blend together. That's what you're trying to say, I think, because we've only had three or four hour-long conversations and they're almost all podcasts. You and I I think it's a minimal amount of the time we've interacted has been on a podcast. Most of it has been like a conference, or you're telling us about some feature you're testing out or just catching up.

Krystal Proffitt: 3:21

Yeah Well, welcome to the show, Alvin. I didn't even give you the official Hang on. Let me back up. All right, Profit Podcast listeners. We have Alvin on the show today, If you haven't already learned who we're talking to. So welcome Alvin.

Alban Brooke: 3:36

Hi Proffitt Podcasters and Krystal thanks for having me on the podcast.

Krystal Proffitt: 3:39

Yeah, I mean this is so fun. I always love whenever I get to talk to you because I mean you're just a fellow marketing nerd like me and we could just easily go down a rabbit hole and talk about AI and content what new people are trying. But I just really want to dive into Buzz Sprout as a company. The thing that I love about it so much is that, like you, were there for your customers in ways that I have never seen any other like company in this space. It's why I have been with you forever. I know you're every listening is like oh great, it's going to turn to a best brought commercial, as most of my content does yes, yes, yes.

Krystal Proffitt: 4:22

You're like free, free marketing. I love it. Keep talking Krystal. But I'm curious for you like, when you think about marketing and you think about the people that you're trying to serve, like what is that mindset that you get into? Is it like we want this to be really easy for people to create content, or is it a seamless process? Like, what is your goal? Like as the marketing guy for Buzzsprout, what are you thinking about?

Alban Brooke: 4:48

Well, for us, it starts with we really love podcasting. We have other products that we've built in the past, that we built software, but they weren't for things we were passionate about, and we were very passionate about podcasting. I specifically left law to go work at Buzzsprout because I loved podcasts and as we've been working on it, we get to share the passion we have for this product and this medium with other podcasters, and so we get to help enable people's podcasting journey. Personally, over the years that's morphed into, I really think it's valuable for people to be creating stuff. Even if you don't end up becoming somebody who monetizes their blog or their podcast or YouTube channel, whatever it may be, it's still good for you to be creating and learning and exploring. And so with Buzzsprout, we see our job.

Alban Brooke: 5:45

We used to see it as only as how do we help people start, and we were trying to make that as easy as possible, and in the last few years, what we've really leaned into is how do we help people keep podcasting? So start podcasting to keep podcasting, and so all of our features come from people on our team podcasting or us just experiencing the issues of podcasters who are using Buzzsprout and we're like okay, we feel like we're pretty good at the starting podcasting and we are in a period where we are really leaning into. How do we help someone who started podcasting to keep podcasting and to get better and better at their craft and how can we come alongside people and actually make them successful in the thing they're trying to do? I uh, I'm sure you've bought these courses before, where you think you want to do something.

Alban Brooke: 6:36

You know you want to be a YouTuber and you buy the YouTube course and like they have all this stuff and it's like if you do this course, by the end of it you'll have a youtube channel, it'll be blowing up, you'll be doing all this stuff and you the promises are so high. And then you do the course and you're like get kind of delivered but it didn't really hit it. And our goal is we we won't make that promise because we don't really believe if you do our little course then you will be successful. But our goal is to do the deliver part. How do we come alongside you to make the chances of you being a successful podcaster much, much higher than if you started with somebody else?

Krystal Proffitt: 7:16

Oh my gosh. And I love this perspective too, and it's one of those reasons why Because people will ask me like well, Krystal, you don't really talk about downloads a lot. And Cause people will ask me like well, Krystal, you don't really talk about downloads a lot and you don't talk about, you know, like some of these other things that these other you know podcast or content educators will talk about. And I'm like, yeah, because that's not my like. My message is I want you to consistently create content and I want it to be fun, like that's my thing. So when people come to me, I feel like I'm a podcast therapist. I'm like, how can we add some more fun into what you're doing?

Krystal Proffitt: 7:47

Because clearly, this relationship that you have with your content, where you're like, oh hey, like I have to do this again and I'm just not loving the people that I'm interviewing, or I feel stupid by by myself trying to create solo content, it's just not worth it. Like that's the part where I love to step in and say, no, it can actually be so much fun. And what I love about you know that buzzsprout, like you use your own tools and you create your own podcast, and I think that y'all demonstrate so well how to have fun, and I think that that's why, from the very beginning, we've aligned so well. I'm thinking back to actually you're going to have to remind me. I think that that's why, from the very beginning, we've aligned so well.

Krystal Proffitt: 8:24

I'm thinking back to actually you're going to have to remind me when was the YouTube video that you did? That was like your Magnum PI, like you're living your best, like 80 sitcom life, like what video was that? Cause I can just see you like in this, like old school, like you. Just you have to tell us about that. Tell us about that and tell me, was that fun creating it?

Alban Brooke: 8:48

Um, so we wanted to make a video. I'd had this idea for a video for a long time. I wanted to have a podcast guesting video, because there's so many little things. If your guest knows, they can make the podcast much better. How to what? Mike, in their home? They have mics in their home. They know, you know they do. It's either their laptop or it's a headset, or it's a phone or it's AirPods.

Alban Brooke: 9:13

And so I was like I want to go through and like figure out which of these are the best and then like rank them for people and what can they do to get a better internet connection and what can they like? I want to do all that troubleshooting. And then we were like, okay, how do we make this exceptional? And I don't remember exactly which of us had the idea, but we made it like an eighties infomercial.

Alban Brooke: 9:34

And so I went and bought a bunch of old clothes and like oversized suit and a really too short tie and I shaved everything off except like full mustache and, yeah, we did a whole video. The whole joke was this has come out of the archives you know the Buzzsprout archives. We could link to it for people. It was a ton of work to do, and so in the moment there were some really funny parts, like we wrote a rap for John to perform Our VP of product development or software is like dancing around in like early 90s kind of like hip hop clothing, like doing a rap about wearing headphones doing a rap about wearing headphones, but that's what I'm saying.

Krystal Proffitt: 10:29

Like it was so fun to watch and it stuck with me, and I think that that's the thing is.

Krystal Proffitt: 10:31

People think it's kind of like arbitrary to like, oh you know, fun comes after you have viral stuff or whenever you can. You know you've made it to the top then, but but now I need to do this algorithmic thing that's going to be, you know, a framework that I can repeat and I'm like, actually no, like you can just chase the thing that's fun and then run away from all the stuff that's in between, like the things that bog you down, or just you know, like on days, whenever I have like I have three podcast interviews today and I have so much energy and if you were to tell me, Krystal, you have three like hours that you're going to spend in Excel spreadsheets, I would say, oh my God, there's not enough coffee to keep me awake to get to the bottom of that many spreadsheets. I couldn't do it, but with podcasting it gives me so much energy. So I just, I know that we have that in common and I just I love just chasing the fun.

Alban Brooke: 11:29

I think that fun is such a useful rubric because one it's counterintuitive for most people. I think most people imagine discipline means being disciplined, like as a child having a parent say do your homework, you know. And so what we end up thinking is maybe the way to get me to do my content is to like be the mean dad who kind of tells me, like, do your content. But really what it needs to be is kids learn the best when they're just excited about what they're learning.

Alban Brooke: 11:59

And so for me, I found so much more success in not just marketing, but like my own health, or in podcasting. All of them come around. What am I find in this area? There's really fun, and how do I just do only that or as much of that and as little of the like stuff I really hate. There are times I love being an Excel spreadsheet, but it's for certain types of work and so like identify what those are for you and for a lot of creators. I know it's actually not podcasting and that is totally fine.

Alban Brooke: 12:35

Some people in some niches like, really lend themselves to. You should be doing an Instagram page, or maybe you should be doing Pinterest, or maybe you should just be doing a blog or writing on a forum, like. Whatever it may be. Find out what it is, that's so easy for you and now lean into that so that you're having fun, because fun is going to keep propelling you forward. Forcing yourself to do it over and over is probably an indication that you really don't like it.

Krystal Proffitt: 13:06

Yeah, oh yeah, it's so true. And actually, well, like speaking of fun, I know that one of the features and we were kind of talking about this before you know we started recording is we have so many updates with buzzsprout that we have to cover, but you mentioned that one specifically is like from your brain child, like it's the thing that you thought of, and so I want to know what kind of fun you were having when you thought about fan mail. How did this happen? And then I want to tell my story about how I interacted and engaged with it. So I don't know if you want to go first. You want me to go first. You let me know how you want to lay this out.

Alban Brooke: 13:44

Well, first, I don't want to claim all the credit for it. I said it was my baby, in that I'm extremely protective, in the same way that I have a human baby. Uh, I'm not solely responsible for that human baby, I am only a small part of her. Uh, but with fan mail A long time. You know, in the US texting is so it's the dominant way that we communicate outside the US. Whatsapp and line and all these other messaging apps are so much more common, but in the US it's really just texting. And so many of my closest relationships, the very best quote unquote social network, is all just done in group chats. And whenever I'd see marketers figure out a way to be in inside of that app, inside of the texting app, I was like it's so smart. You know, when I have to sign up for an alert and then they text me and say here's a promo code. If they can get in there and I let them hang around, it's because I really like it. It's so much more powerful than a newsletter. So that's been sitting in the back of my mind, honestly, for a couple of years.

Alban Brooke: 14:56

And at the beginning of this year we were recording Buzzcast, our own show, and Jordan, my co-host, starts rattling off. Here are the 10 ways to contact the show send us a boost to grab, do, uh, do twitter and leave us a tweet. And then write us on here and send an email and kevin goes I really we've got to figure this out. I'm going to figure this out this year. It's my like resolution to figure it out. And the next week I said you know's texting? I think we got a text. He's like okay, if that's what you think, we'll try it. But why is that any different? And the piece that ends up being true that we hadn't connected was texting is so natural for us.

Alban Brooke: 15:42

If you're on your phone, 85% of downloads are on your phone and so now we have a link in the show notes that says text the show. You click it, it pre-populates a little bit of text, so we know what podcast you want it to go to. You send a message and you fire it off. And texting has all of these kind of built-in understandings. Texts are supposed to be short, they're supposed to be casual. It's not a big deal, you don't have to proofread it, you don't have to think through it, you just click it, write out your thought, send it off, you're done. Where in the world of email, you know, I started offating this belief that we have? What we found is way more people write in. It's not just the same people writing in, it's actually new people are also reaching out, and I think it's because what feels intimidating to leave a voicemail or send an email is not intimidating when you're just sending a casual text For sure.

Alban Brooke: 16:47

And so fan mail is a way for podcasters to hear from their audience. The audience is already hearing from the podcaster because they're listening to a podcast, but now the audience can send fan mail into the host and the host can read it and be like oh wow, these are real people who care about what I'm doing.

Krystal Proffitt: 17:07

host can read it and be like, oh wow, these are real people who care about what I'm doing and it's so fun, y'all. I just have to say it is so fun so what I was doing. I told Alvin because we haven't talked about this when he was like, oh, I'm trying to get this thing, I'm so excited about it. And I was like, oh, I got to tell you my story. Look, hang on, I'm looking, I'm showing him real time. I have two. I have two waiting for me that I have not even seen. We're actually going to read these. We're going to read these.

Alban Brooke: 19:12

If I'd have been smart, I would have sent one myself.

Krystal Proffitt: 19:14

Oh my gosh, like this is so fun. So I do have a test, one that I did, and then we're going to talk about how you actually set these up. But what this is is I'm in my Buzzsprout app for everybody. That's just listening and you're not watching the YouTube video. I'm in my app and one day because I really truly use the Buzzsprout app, like besides just uploading the audio file on my desktop once that's done, if I am trying to, I'll create my soundbite again on my desktop, but then I download it on my phone. I will, you know, grab the co-host, like AI driven, like social content that it's suggesting, like I'm looking at my stats on my phone. I will, you know, grab the co-host, like AI driven, like social content that it's suggesting, like I'm looking at my stats on my phone, I'm looking at other things that have been uploaded, like I'm doing so much on the mobile device. So kudos to the team that developed that, and we'll talk about that, too in a second about the app, cause it's so fun.

Krystal Proffitt: 20:02

But I was on here and I was looking at some other stuff and I was like, what is fan mail? What is this? And how, like, how does this work? And so when I click on it, of course there was nothing there. I was like no new messages. So I did go back to my desktop and I'm like clicking around and I'm like, just all of a sudden I'm an investigative journalist, I'm like I'm going to figure out what the heck this thing is. And then I realized, oh, people can now send me text messages. So the first thing I did was, of course, send a text message to myself because- you are not unique in that aspect.

Alban Brooke: 20:35

I think for the first few days half of the fan mail received was test fan mail message.

Krystal Proffitt: 20:42

Yes, exactly Like all of them test, test, test. But it's really cool to see like I can actually see where people's numbers are from, which is interesting because my phone number isn't actually like I live in the Houston area and then phone number that I have isn't actually for this area. Which is interesting because then I was like, oh, I got a new one. I totally psyched myself out. I was like, oh, there's one from Longview, texas, and then I was like, oh wait, that's me. I felt like the biggest goober. I was like, okay, it says hey, Krystal. I even texted myself.

Alban Brooke: 21:16

Hey Krystal.

Krystal Proffitt: 21:18

Just texting this new text app. Okay, I'm such a nerd, I'm so red right now, but anyway, I have three new ones, so I'm actually going to I going to read this out. Is that OK, if I go ahead?

Alban Brooke: 21:28

and read these out. Let's see what we got.

Krystal Proffitt: 21:31

This is from Fayetteville, arkansas, so it says hey, kp, it's Joe. Just listen to your interview with ChatGPT and I found it very interesting. I wonder if it'd be possible to turn into a side character in a podcast, maybe not a co-host, but just to add some personality. So that is. This was on May 7th and that episode came out like a week that week. It came out that week. So in real time I'm getting feedback from my audience in a way that I mean we could screenshot this and use it as social proof on Instagram and say, hey, by the way, you can now text. You know, text us. There's there's still total anonymity. I don't have this person's not. I mean he said his name was Joe, joe from Arkansas, like so happy that you submitted this, but there's total anonymity for someone if they don't want to share their name or share anything else about them, and I just I love it so much. Do you want me to read this other one?

Alban Brooke: 22:29

Yeah, well, actually for Joe I'd say the I love that you did that chat. Gpt episode. They released a new model yesterday, gpt-4-o. O as in like the letter O, and its voice capabilities are so much better.

Alban Brooke: 22:48

So if you go into voice mode in the one of the things I didn't like about the old voice mode was if you ever spoke over chat GPT, it got really messed up and now you can just interrupt the way that you would a human. So if a person starts rambling on, like I probably will in this podcast, you can jump in there and redirect the conversation. So I think the capabilities for there to be some type of AI co-host is definitely getting better. I don't think it's something Buzzsprout's going to build anytime soon, but I think the ability for people who want that it's improving rapidly.

Krystal Proffitt: 23:25

It's so fun. I mean, I sat here with my phone and I just had a full-blown conversation and the way that it pauses and it's like um, now I'm like it's incredible, like it is so fascinating to me and I just cannot wait to see, like where this continues to take podcasting in the future. I just think it's so much fun. But we have another one, and this is again about the AI episode. This was again on May 7th, so that was apparently the day where I started talking about this, but from Green Bay, wisconsin, it says, hey, kp, love this episode on AI. It's getting my mind thinking about my podcast. Thanks for doing something different. This is so cool,Alban. And again, I don't know who this is, but this isn't something. Back to what you're saying about being casual, I think that someone in a Facebook group would say, ah, that's not worth posting. Like that's just, you know, like that's just a quick thank you, that that doesn't feel right to send Krystal message that way. But it's also not really a full-blown email.

Alban Brooke: 24:28

That feels kind of weird, unless it was like a reply to an email, and it also doesn't feel like something that they're going to do in like Sky Letters with anything like that so this is so cool, it's so fun so how often do you look at something on Twitter or on a big social post and there's like somebody in the replies who's like you're so great, I love you, and like they're on a bunch of posts saying that and you're always like seems weird, it's out of place, like the conversation is about something in particular, and then there's random people chiming in like great job, and it's kind, but it feels almost like it's a counter to the original post.

Krystal Proffitt: 25:10

Right.

Alban Brooke: 25:11

With fan mail. We're saying this is called fan mail for a reason.

Alban Brooke: 25:15

Fan mail is a way to show appreciation, to give a little bit of feedback and for it to be casual, and so now it feels totally appropriate to say, hey, I mean I've sent tons of messages now, if I listen to a podcast that's on Buzzsprout and they have it, hey, I mean I've sent tons of messages now. Um, if I listened to a podcast that Tom bus brought and they have it enabled, I just message him like, thank you so much for doing the show. I really enjoy it. I want you to know I'm listening.

Alban Brooke: 25:37

And maybe something else I should mention we, when we came up with this idea, we were doing something on our show about maybe stats aren't always healthy for creators. You know, all we do is we compare stats and really stats, at the end of the day, are just a number that represents humans, and what we really want is the human connection. And so we were talking to our own listeners and what we found is most of them were really looking for I just want one or two people to tell me they liked the show. Yeah, and now with fan mail, they're getting those messages, and those are so much more valuable than seeing the numbers boost by 50 or a hundred. Having a real person say, hey, uh, this is Joe from Arkansas Great episode. And you're like cool, there's somebody out there in Arkansas who's listening to this. He's a real person. That's so much better than seeing the number count one higher.

Krystal Proffitt: 27:06

Yeah, and I mean and you said the word valuable but I also think about the thing as a creator. It's validating too because it's again. Someone may feel awkward reaching out to you and saying, gosh, this episode changed my life. Or you know this, this show.

Krystal Proffitt: 27:23

I listened to it habitually every single Tuesday, like you commute with me, like every single time I go pick up my kids from school, or you know I'm on a run, like whatever it is, and I think that this is just really setting people up to have those conversations where it can just be like oh, wow, like maybe it's that validation that one podcaster needed to create their content for the next week, or, you know, to keep going. Maybe they were just questioning, like is anybody even listen to your point of? Like these stats are crap? You know, like it's not very much. But then you get a message.

Krystal Proffitt: 27:57

You know, like this one from Wisconsin, like this is so cool, like, keep doing what you're doing. I'm like I will. I will like, thank you so much, this is so cool, so awesome. But now I want to get into the mechanics of if someone's listening, cause I know so many of my listeners like they love Buzzsprout as much as I do, and so many of them already have Buzzsprout accounts and they're like y'all are blowing my minds right now. How do I enable this immediately? Can you kind of walk us through what that process looks like?

Alban Brooke: 28:27

If you have the BuzzPro iOS app, you can just open the app, click more, which is the bottom right, and then there's something called fan mail and you click it and you turn it on and then it's on and instantly we will go add a link to send the show a text message to all of your show notes and then you just want to start talking about it. So mention it on an episode, record a piece of dynamic content and put it in every episode. But let all of your listeners know there's now a way to text the show. It's in the show notes. Just click it. It should open up your texting app and boom, now you can start reaching out to the show. These texts are one way. So it's fan mail. It comes in to the creator. They're not going to be able to write you back right now they can't even see the phone number.

Alban Brooke: 29:21

Buzzsprout can see it, but we don't show it to the podcasters right now, and then the podcaster can reply by doing exactly what Krystal is doing right now, which is reading them on the show. The piece of the loop that's been missing for I mean honestly since the beginning of podcasting has been the reply. We've had lots of people podcasting and that's one way from the podcaster to the audience, and this is a easy as we can make it way for the audience. Just quickly reply to the podcaster and now that we've closed that loop, you can continue to kind of build the community by reading off the messages.

Krystal Proffitt: 30:00

Oh.

Alban Brooke: 30:01

Hey, it's this person and it's Joe in Arkansas. Again, it's somebody in Wisconsin. Hey, there's somebody here in Texas. It turns out it's me. But we're all messaging into the show and, as more listeners here, you read those messages, then they go. Oh, there's a place for me to message it.

Krystal Proffitt: 30:20

Yes.

Alban Brooke: 30:21

Then they go oh, there's a place for me to message it. Yes, so now I'm going to be a part of it.

Krystal Proffitt: 30:29

Oh I actually have.

Alban Brooke: 30:30

You know, I listened to the episode and I didn't like it because, as a creator, I feel like it's kind of mechanical and it that's not what I want to be a part of. Well, now I know that's out there so I can share my voice with the audience. You know, it doesn't always have to just be affirming the content, it can also be adding your perspective, and so our experience was we were experimenting with a tool called slick text where we could receive texts, and then, when we actually built a fan mail, the whole time we've been saying text the show, and it's only grown, even in the world of apple podcasts, auto downloads really cutting the downloads we receive for our podcast yeah the amount of fan mail messages we get are way through the roof.

Alban Brooke: 31:13

So I would not be surprised if, when I open this, we have 15 new fan mail messages, because now we have I mean, since I checked this a few days ago we have seven new ones.

Krystal Proffitt: 31:28

That's so cool.

Alban Brooke: 31:30

And that's seven new ones in a few days. And now anybody you know, now I can go in. I see the notifications come in and I know next episode we're going to have a really long segment reading these off, sharing what we think and what we feel about it.

Krystal Proffitt: 31:47

Yeah, and I think it's a few different things. So actually I wanted to show this real fast. So everybody that's watching right at the top, it's totally backwards because it says send us a text message. That's what you would see in Apple Spotify. I mean, does it show up that way in all the players or is there one that's kind of wonky and it doesn't really work in the app?

Alban Brooke: 32:07

I think the one that is wonky is YouTube, if you're importing your podcast into YouTube and YouTube doesn't allow the URLs to be inside of the description box as a link. So that's the one that's a little wonky, but everywhere else it'll work and anywhere that you can click a link, we can then try to open up the texting app that you have on that device to try to send a text.

Krystal Proffitt: 32:33

It's so fascinating because so, you said it right Like you're creating community, but you're also creating that community loop for people to be like oh, that's easy, Like I could do that, because for a long time I had, you know, like a speak pipe or you know something, where I was like, okay, I was trying to get these audio messages, and you would find the people that were already confident behind the mic. They're like first to sign up. They're like, yeah, there's. You're like, oh, my, you talked for five minutes. Like I said 90 seconds, like that's not what we needed. But then you find the people that aren't as confident but they have still really amazing questions or they want to, you know, share information that they have. It's like a way to really break open that window for them to be able to say, okay, I can participate too. It's still anonymous and it's something that's casual and fun, and I just I think it's so fascinating, so fascinating.

Alban Brooke: 33:26

Yeah, if you, uh, if you've ever been part of a church or you've ever been part of, like, a class where there's an opportunity to speak in public, you know why the pastor or the teacher holds onto the microphone. You know they hold it because they go. We have to be able to take this back. Yes, some people that are very comfortable talking for long periods. And what did we find when we started asking, hey, send us a message, a voice message? Well, we would get a few people who call in with a rapid fire question, and it was awesome. And then we'd have other people who are professional podcasters with wonderful voices and all this equipment, and so they'd drop us a five minute message. No matter if you ask for 30 seconds, we would still get five minutes.

Krystal Proffitt: 34:16

Yes.

Alban Brooke: 34:16

And so we'd always have to edit it down and feel guilty Like yes, almost like we're censoring what they say, when really we just don't have enough time in the podcast. Well, texting is just built in to like the social dynamics of texting. If you ever get a multi-paragraph text, you know like it's the beginning of an argument, there's something, it's weird, and so you're like what am I getting all this stuff? So we put so much text in here, and so a fan mail has worked out really well, because they're almost always one, maybe two sentences long. So you get a sense of the community, you get some feedback from the community and everybody has the exact same expectations for what type of content and the format of the content.

Krystal Proffitt: 35:07

That's so cool. Do y'all have any numbers yet on how many times like a text message has been sent through it? Or anything, or is that all still pretty new?

Alban Brooke: 35:17

We had thousands a few days ago when I asked, but that would have been thousands before we, I think, sent out an email about it Okay, and that's what we're going to get by far the most.

Alban Brooke: 35:30

I know that we have many thousands who have turned fan mail on. That's so fun. And then some of the podcasts I listened to Pod News Weekly Review turned it on almost immediately and they said the first week, I think, they got five messages and then the next week they might have gotten something like 10. Or maybe it was the first day they got five and that week they got 10, but they got quite a bit. So I'm hearing more and more from podcasters.

Alban Brooke: 36:27

The numbers are much higher than there ever were, for leave a rating and review.

Krystal Proffitt: 36:34

Yes.

Alban Brooke: 36:34

Go and send us an email. Go, do this thing. Most people are on their phone, so they're like I'll do that when I get to the computer, or maybe never. Now they're going, I'll just send a quick text.

Krystal Proffitt: 36:46

Yeah, and it's so fun. I love that. It says on here hey Krystal, hey KP, no-transcript. You already have at your disposal An idea for you if you're listening to this is record some dynamic content and put it on the end Like if you're like oh, I don't know if I want to put that at the very beginning put it in your post, roll Like it's your after the show and say hey, we just enabled this new feature, try it out and send us a text message where you're listening.

Krystal Proffitt: 37:35

I mean it's. This is what I always like to tell people. Album is like when we're going through different tools that we're trying just test them out and you will find things that you love. You'll find some that you're just like oh God, that was awful, but at least I tried it, and I know that it's not great for my show, at least not right now. And so, just trying and testing things. I know that y'all go through so much of this at Buzzsprout and this actually just segues perfectly. I didn't even mean to do that, but this is working well for me, so I'm just going to go with it into Buzzsprout ads. I want to talk about Buzzsprout ads because y'all have enabled something that I actually haven't tried this new. I don't know if you would call it feature or just the new style that you're doing, but can you explain more about, first of all, what Buzzsprout ads are, if someone doesn't know already, and then the new things that y'all are trying?

Alban Brooke: 38:25

Sure, so Buzzsprout ads is an ads marketplace where you can go on and upload an advertisement and then get that ad inside of tons of podcasts. So we have over 120,000 active podcasts across the Buzzsprout network. A lot of them, especially all the biggest ones, are using Buzzsprout ads. And so what you do is you go in, you say here's the categories that I'm interested in, here the general demographics I'm trying to target, and you can just upload the ad and then we will start getting it into podcasts. But we started finding out there were some advertisers who were very selective, you know, and they, like we, started as podcasters going. You know, we really want, as podcasters, we don't want to have to go find mid-roll placements. So we built an AI tool to find the right mid-roll placement. We really didn't want, as podcasters, to get ads. We never approved, I think.

Alban Brooke: 39:25

Right as we rolled out Buzzsprout ads, there was like a big mess up where an ad network accidentally put a wild turkey the alcohol inside of an AA podcast. Oh my gosh, I mean it's. It's, I guess, a little bit funny now that everyone knows that it was a mistake. But imagine the like reputational damage If you're running an AA podcast talking about hey, you can be alcohol, and then all of a sudden this thing pops up and it was like hey, wild Turkey, you have a party this weekend.

Alban Brooke: 39:58

So, uh, we were like we want people to have control, and so. And then the third was I, as a listener, could not stand it when I'd be listening to an ad and the podcaster has like a very soft and like welcoming voice and I feel very calm. And then it's like come down and get a new Toyota. I'm like, oh my gosh, why is the ad so loud? It's so aggressive. And so, uh, what we built for us red ads was we're going to normalize the audio and clean it up and make sure it matches your podcast audio.

Alban Brooke: 40:34

We're going to make sure that you have complete control over accepting the ads you want, and we're going to take care of what we found to be one of the most annoying parts of accepting ads, which was getting the file, uploading it, figuring out where to put it in all of your back catalog. We just do all that for you and then we pull it out of your podcast Once the advertisers budget has run out. We don't need to give away tons of free downloads for you. So we did all that and then we saw the advertisers show up and they'd say well, we want even more controls on which podcast this goes into. So the recent upgrade is, when you upload an advertisement, you can say don't auto approve any podcaster that accepts my ads. Instead, I want to go and listen to an episode, I want to screen it, I want to check out their website, I want to read the description and you can also see the stats for that show so you could see oh, that's a podcast I'm interested in, but you know they're getting 15,000 downloads a week. That's a lot. I don't know if I want my budget to get used up that fast. So maybe you don't accept that podcast.

Alban Brooke: 41:50

I found myself I ran an ad for Buzzsprout and had a hundred thousand downloads that I bought and I was picking all the podcasts I wanted to run in and there was one that was kind of on the edge.

Alban Brooke: 42:03

It was, I think, of like podcast about women who are coders and went well, they're in technology, it's not content creation, but it's close enough and their numbers were not massive. So I went I'll dedicate like 1% of my budget over here. And then there was another podcast which was somebody I knew, farmer Fred's podcast about gardening. And I was like I love Farmer Fred but his numbers are so insane, they're so big that I didn't want to run the ad until near the end because I'm like I don't want Farber Fred to eat up all my downloads because I'm not sure what's the overlap in women who code, who might start a podcast, and the people who garden who might start a podcast. They're not exactly the same. So it was really nice to be able to kind of pick and choose and move through and just kind of build that campaign from the ground up.

Krystal Proffitt: 42:54

Oh my gosh, I love hearing all this and I love, you know, one of the features that's in there. So I am like, I guess, a super user of Buzzsprout ads because I've done my own advertising where I've plugged, you know, my podcast and I've had it run ads on other shows. But I also like to date, like my all time revenue just from Buzzsprout ads. Okay, this does not include Buzzsprout affiliate payments or any other like type of monetization that's on my podcast.

Krystal Proffitt: 43:22

I've made close to $450 just in Buzzsprout ads, Like it's totally passive income. All I have to do is approve. And again to your point, it's I have total control and I could say, well, you know, this particular, you know advertiser isn't a good fit for my show. And then I can say, hey, this one isn't great quality. And that feedback goes to the advertiser too, so they know, like this may be why your ad is rejected. So I love to tell people to play around with it again. They don't have to. You don't have to go and spend thousands of dollars to do this. To get started, I think I started what is the lowest plan? I always forget what the tiers are for Buzzsprout ads.

Alban Brooke: 44:05

You can go and get 10,000 downloads for $200.

Krystal Proffitt: 44:08

Yeah.

Alban Brooke: 44:09

So you could start there and you can ramp up all the way to a hundred thousand downloads, which I recently bought and have been running that ad for a few weeks now. It's nice because once you buy big enough, uh, the ad doesn't run too quickly, and I'm slowly adding more and more podcasts into it.

Krystal Proffitt: 44:25

Yeah, and I love it so much because you can get super targeted on the audience that you're trying to reach, but also you can play around with what you're advertising, right, like it's not just I don't have to just promote my podcast, I could promote a lead magnet, or I could promote a webinar or I could promote something else that's going on. So is that kind of how you're seeing people use the platform?

Alban Brooke: 44:46

Yeah, it started out because we knew podcasters had a specific problem, which was how do I grow?

Alban Brooke: 44:52

my podcast and for you know, what most podcasters wanted to do was they wanted to get a podcast promo into other shows. And so this was a quick way to just go and buy a promo and get it into lots of shows. And then we opened it up to advertisers and that's when I started running ads for Buzzsprout itself. So that ad says hey, you love listening to podcasts, have you ever thought about starting your own podcast? If you have, you can do it with Buzzsprout. And here is the link to go on how to start a podcast. Come check it out. And that ad's done very well for us and I could see people clicking through the link and you also know that there's some people that they don't click through the link. But now the branding is starting to catch in their mind and you're helping them think about maybe I should start a podcast.

Alban Brooke: 45:47

So I am very happy, especially with the targeting aspect of this. Uh, to me it felt like a different product, because sometimes I want to run broad market campaign. Just anybody who will run the ad, I'll run it with them. But there also were times where what I really want are targeted campaigns and I listened to a podcast and I go. I love what they're doing. You know I'm proud of them for doing their content, but these are not really my audience. You know, somebody was talking about some medical condition and I was like I just don't, don't feel appropriate for somebody who's just gotten a cancer diagnosis, that is learning about this cancer on a podcast, for me to jump in Like have you ever thought about starting?

Krystal Proffitt: 46:34

a podcast.

Alban Brooke: 46:35

No, that's not appropriate right now but now I can run targeted ads where it, where it makes sense, like the women who code podcast, and maybe not in the one that might be about a medical issue.

Krystal Proffitt: 46:47

Yeah, oh, this is again, and what I love about you and the team and your platform is y'all continue to iterate and listen to what podcasters want, and it's just why we're all besties, like I love. I love my Buzzsprout fam, like y'all are so special to me and to this audience and I am just so grateful. Now I want to circle back because we had said before we started recording, we were mentioned this we have the Buzzsprout app on iOS, but there is an Android one coming soon, right?

Alban Brooke: 47:21

There is an Android app coming soon. I mean, we have a bunch of Android phones that are running it right now and I'd say it's somewhere like 90% there.

Krystal Proffitt: 47:32

Okay, awesome.

Alban Brooke: 47:33

And it's the rough edges that have to be smoothed out. Have you ever I mean, I'm sure you've done this before Somebody launches an app, you get it and-.

Krystal Proffitt: 47:41

It's garbage, right, you get it.

Alban Brooke: 47:43

Yeah, you're like well, what a terrible experience. I just I didn't use the app for years and years and then you told me it was ready. And then it obviously wasn't ready.

Krystal Proffitt: 47:54

So what are you doing?

Alban Brooke: 47:55

So our goal is this needs to be rock solid, it needs to be smooth, it needs to feel good, and a lot of the people on the Buzzsprout team use iPhone and so for us, we know what it should feel like for iPhone. We don't know exactly for android, so we're working with uh, people who know android much better than us to make sure it feels native, it feels good and it feels natural. But the use cases for buzzsprout for ios are really just continue to grow. So I mean buzzsprout ads you you can accept your ads right there from the app Fan mail. You get notifications. Hey, you got a piece of fan mail.

Alban Brooke: 48:37

Go check it out, switch between shows, you can publish episodes, you can change things in your show notes, you can update your titles, you can check out your stats, you can screenshot things and share it on social media. It's not a full-fledged creation app. It is a companion for Buzzsprout desktop For 15 years. We said I don't think you need an app. And as we started convincing ourselves and our listeners to convincing us hey, maybe you could have an app for this and this we started going. You know, at some point there was enough reasons that maybe we should go see what we can do, and that was about a year ago. We said let's see what we can do. And in a few weeks it got far enough. We went okay, I think we're going to do this.

Krystal Proffitt: 49:26

Oh, it's incredible. I, like I said, I've been using it. I was, I was a beta tester, so I had the behind the scenes for a while and I could not say anything.

Krystal Proffitt: 49:34

And it was so painful because I was like my audience is going to love this and they were like, nope, we can't say anything yet. And I'm like, okay, okay, just tell me when I can unleash this monster, because I think it's so like literally after I upload my audio file, I'm like bye, see you desktop, I'm on my because, again, like you said, I got ad notifications the other day. I do all my ad management directly from my phone, my fan mail, all the things. So absolutely go check it out. But I've been like we're already at the end of this thing and we have to wrap this up Like it just went by, like that. So I have three rapid fire questions that, no matter how many times you've been on the show, I've already asked you, but I want to hear your answers today, all right the 2024 version.

Krystal Proffitt: 50:15

Yes, 2024 version. So the first one is what piece of advice would you give to a brand new podcaster or content creator?

Alban Brooke: 50:24

I think. Take it back to the beginning of the episode. Follow what's making you happy, what part of it is fun, what part is bringing you joy, and lean into that side, the part that feels like pain and the part that you dread. If that's the show notes, then get someone to create show notes, use co-host AI. If it's the editing, get an editor. And if it's the podcast promotion, maybe let's not do that yet. Let's just focus on the part that brings you joy, so let that guide you. That's awesome. That's awesome.

Krystal Proffitt: 50:54

Okay, the next one's a two-parter. So what is the dream podcast in 2024 you would love to be on and who is the dream guest you would love to interview?

Alban Brooke: 51:06

Um, I recently uh, I think this is really today Um, I finished a book a few weeks ago about AI called co-intelligence uh, by Ethan Malik, I think and he is a professor at Wharton, I believe who writes about AI, and I I mean the dream podcast in the dream interview would probably be to do a podcast about AI with Ethan Just really insightful and very practical. Some people are way up in the clouds with these, like, hey, we're never going to have to work again or the robots are going to kill us. And his perspective is there's a lot of really intense stuff happening right now that's going to change the way we work and change society, and so I'd love to be able to talk to someone who understands the science but, is also very grounded in reality.

Krystal Proffitt: 52:02

Yeah, awesome, awesome, okay. And the last one is do you?

Alban Brooke: 52:08

consider yourself a perfectionist. Yes, yourself a perfectionist, oh yes. So what I've noticed is your taste is always ahead of your abilities. You know you, we regularly.

Alban Brooke: 52:20

If you do a podcast, it's because you've listened for years and you know what good podcasts sound like. And then you record and it did not sound like a good podcast. It sounded like a bad podcast, so bad that you know yourself that you'd have turned it off by now. And so you go bad job. Well, now I'll learn more and I'll become a perfectionist and edit, and really what that is is perfectionism is being very intense and holding you back from just putting yourself out there, and that was me for years holding you back from just putting yourself out there, and that was me for years. And the only the truth is, the only way to get better is to just start publishing more and just get better while you're doing it. And so maybe I'll change my first piece of advice Just go publish 10 episodes and then critique it, and you'll have already seen how much better you can get by episode 10, but don't critique it until you've done 10 episodes. Like, give yourself a little bit of grace.

Krystal Proffitt: 53:15

Oh, this is so good, so good. Thank you so much, Alvin, for everything that you shared today. Will you be attending any podcast conferences that people could come say hi, give you a high five at this year?

Alban Brooke: 53:27

I'm going to be at least at five podcast events for the rest of the year. So podcast movement is doing meetups in Philadelphia, in New York, in DC and in Orlando. Buzzsprout is going to sponsor all four of those. If you go to any of those and you've never been to podcast movement proper, then you're going to get a ticket to podcast movement for free. That's like a $400 ticket. So all of those are end of May and the beginning of June DC, new York, philadelphia, orlando I'll be at all four of those. And then podcast movement in DC is in August and I will be there as well.

Krystal Proffitt: 54:09

Awesome. Well, y'all have to go and tell Alvin like how incredible he did on this podcast, Say I heard you on the profit podcast and then send us fan mail about it. So then I can screenshot it to Alvin and say, look, it's working. I'm getting lots of fan mail from your episode.

Alban Brooke: 54:24

So I'll know that you listened to this episode of you go. Oh, I love the podcast with KP. Yes, and I sent it to fan mail, Then I'll go. Okay, this is a real profit podcast.

Krystal Proffitt: 54:32

Yes, exactly Well. Thank you so much, alvin, for being on the show today.

Alban Brooke: 54:37

Thank you, Krystal, I appreciate it.

Krystal Proffitt: 54:39

We really do have so much fun whenever we get a chance to catch up, and it's been a while. There was a time period whenever I was seeing Alvin and the rest of the Buzzsprout team was a time period whenever I was seeing Alban and the rest of the Buzzsprout team multiple conferences in one year, and it's been a while and I'm like, ah, I want to get the band back together and do something really fun. So if you are going to podcast movement or you're going to another podcast conference, then send us a DM like let us know what you're going to and make sure that you go say hi to Alban and any of the other Buzzsprout team. They are so warm and friendly and they always have the best like setup, like booth whenever you go to a conference and they're there and they're just so easy to talk to. I think that that's one of the reasons why I fell in love with the company from the very beginning is, you know, I was able to sit there. I talked to, I know all the founders like how crazy is that to say I know all the founders of the company. I've had dinner with them, I have talked to them and they are just such incredible people, but, above and beyond that, they really truly care about their customers, and that's what stands out to me. And so, again, it's another plug for Buzzsprout. If you have not tried kry stalproffitt. com/buzzsprout, go to to give them a shot.

Krystal Proffitt: 56:00

I mean, fan mail alone is worth checking out. I am so excited to continue to use this feature. So, like send us a text message. Where you're listening to this episode, you should see something that says send Krystal a text message. Where you're listening to this episode, you should see something that says send Krystal a text message. And I want to hear from you because I want to start reading these on the show. I think they're going to be like this was just such a surprise and delight to have fan mail while we're going through the feature. But we want to hear from you. We want to know what you thought about today's episode. So send us a text message through fan mail, but that's all I have for you today. So make sure you hit that follow or subscribe button wherever you are listening to the podcast and, as always, remember, keep it up. We all have to start somewhere. Thank you.