This episode, we are revealing how we've made Buzzsprout Ads even better with a way for advertisers to have more control over what podcasts run their ads! Plus, we've rolled out Fan Mail for all Buzzsprout podcasters and are taking the time to answer questions about the new feature. Then, we toss around the idea of a Buzzsprout meetup in a town near you!
View the discussion thread on Twitter/X!
Sound-Off Question: Should we come to your town for a Buzzsprout meetup?
Contact Buzzcast
Thanks for listening & keep podcasting!
This episode, we are revealing how we've made Buzzsprout Ads even better with a way for advertisers to have more control over what podcasts run their ads! Plus, we've rolled out Fan Mail for all Buzzsprout podcasters and are taking the time to answer questions about the new feature. Then, we toss around the idea of a Buzzsprout meetup in a town near you!
View the discussion thread on Twitter/X!
Sound-Off Question: Should we come to your town for a Buzzsprout meetup?
Contact Buzzcast
Thanks for listening & keep podcasting!
I think the idea of a tour is a great idea. It's a good idea. It just doesn't align with my personality.
Jordan:Well, you don't have to be there, we're not going to drag you.
Kevin:Who's going to come if I'm not there?
Alban:We're not going to have a Buzzcast tour without Kevin. Jordan's like, we're going to plan a tour, the best part is Kevin's not coming. Would you go, Jordan?
Jordan:Yeah, I would go.
Kevin:I mean, it's like Smartless doing a podcast tour without Jason Bateman.
Jordan:We're not doing live shows, Kevin.
Kevin:We're not?
Jordan:I'm talking about like going to do like a meetup or something. I'm not talking about like a live show. Could you imagine a Buzzcast live show? People would be like walking up the aisles about 30 minutes in like eh, this isn't really what I wanted Early reviews say the most disappointing experience of my life. Here we go. Welcome back to Buzzcast, a podcast about all things podcasting from the people at Buzzsprout. I'm Jordan, and with me, as always, are my co-hosts, Alban and Kevin. Hey guys.
Kevin:Hey Jordan, thanks for having us. This is what I'm Jordan, and with me, as always, are my co-hosts, Alban and Kevin. Hey guys, hey Jordan, thanks for having us. This is what I'm talking about. This is what we have to change. Okay, we can't do this. If we have a special guest on, I think it's fine to introduce the special guest, but I think every week starting off with uh, I'm Jordan and it's Alban and Kevin, thank you for joining me.
Jordan:I just feel like I'm so glad you were able to come to our biweekly.
Kevin:Yeah, I think as a listener it's just like skip, skip, skip, skip, skip Same thing every week.
Jordan:Yeah, I mean I did take up like a full, like two seconds of someone's life with that, so I need to give it back.
Kevin:It's. I don't want to throw around words like inconsiderate, but Inconsiderate it's not super respectful.
Alban:Wait to be clear this episode we were supposed to record 47 minutes ago and now we wasted two seconds. We have longer arguing about the intro than actually recording the intro.
Kevin:You know, I like every show to be different and then it always starts out the same and I always say the same thing Like hey, jordan, excited to be here. But sometimes that's not even true.
Jordan:But you don't have to tell me you're excited to be here. I don't care if you're excited to be here. I know Sometimes I'm not excited to be here.
Kevin:Sometimes you're just putting in the work. I'm not saying that's where I am today. I'm feeling that energy right now. No, oh man, I'm always excited about talking about podcasting.
Jordan:Sometimes it just takes me a few minutes to get into it. Yeah, no, it's fine, that's fine, yeah, so we can just skip over all that so how come I have a feeling that you're not going to skip over all that? I'm not going to skip over it.
Kevin:Okay.
Jordan:We'll workshop it. Yeah, next episode.
Kevin:It's always the next episode. Yep, you're gonna nail it on the next one.
Jordan:Yep, this episode. We're going to kick it off with an update to Buzzsprout Ads that gives advertisers more control with their ad campaigns. Alban, can you tell us a little bit more about this new update to Buzzsprout Ads?
Alban:Yeah, there's a lot of different ways that you can run ads. Sometimes you want to run ads that are targeted so specifically all the way to an individual. You want one person to get a specific ad, and maybe you're using something like Google ads, where you're targeting the right person at the right time because they searched a keyword.
Jordan:Yeah.
Alban:And then there's really broad advertising. You've got all the way. I don't know if the Super Bowl is the best example, but it's pretty close to the best. It's very broad amount of Americans watch the Super Bowl and you get these ads that are like almost everybody is a target for Doritos, so Doritos runs ads. They're very different ways of targeting people and with Buzzsprout ads we were a little more on the Doritos side in the beginning, or maybe we were closer in the middle where we said hey, we're going to help you run ads and you can target entire categories of podcasts. You know, buy a bunch of podcasts together and you buy a bunch of downloads and you run it across a ton of different shows. And we had lots of controls. We said if you find a show you don't like, you can block it and say I don't want to actually use that show. You could target shows based on a bit more of their demographics. You could say here's what they think their demographics are. So you could target that way.
Alban:But over time we saw more and more people wanting to have a bit more control and so we launched a new way to run Buzzsprout ads and that is where you can pick the exact podcast that you want to be in, and so I just ran one of these ads myself and what you do is just buy how many downloads you want and you upload your ad and you select all of the parameters what categories you think the shows are in, and you instantly start getting approved. Podcasters are like hey, I listened to your ad, that sounds good, I'd love it on my show. And now I, as the advertiser, can scroll through and I see how many downloads these shows are getting every week and I can go through and just kind of click off the ones I really enjoy, listen to an episode or two and run ads in their specific podcast. So it's much more tailored, it's much more fine-tuned and you're able to find podcasts that you're really excited about running ads inside of.
Jordan:Yeah, I really like this because, as we've discussed before, one of the things that really surprised us about Buzzsprout ads is that podcasters would just accept whatever ad, regardless of if it really was appropriate for their audience or not, and we were quite surprised by that, because we thought that podcasters would be a little more choosy about who they advertise with, and so I think that this is a really great update for our advertisers.
Kevin:Yeah, one of the things for sure that was a bit surprising is that podcasters are less specific or picky about the ads that run than advertisers are. Advertisers are actually more particular about the types of shows that they want their ads that run than advertisers are. Advertisers are actually more particular about the types of shows that they want their ads to run in, and so that was a good learning for us what this really is. Like Albin said, the controls were kind of there before, but they weren't optimized in this direction. They were more optimized for simplicity of the podcaster than they were simplicity for the advertiser. And so when you would run an ad, you would get, let's say, 600 podcasts that matched the ad that you just ran, and any one of those podcasts could just accept the ad and it would start running.
Kevin:Now, like Albin said, you could block them, but you had to go through a list of like 600 podcasts to figure out which shows do I want to allow and which ones do I want to block, and that's a pretty time intensive task, especially considering all those podcasts might not even accept your ad in the first place.
Kevin:So, turning that problem around, what we were able to do is say you matched for 600 podcasts, but so far only these five have accepted your ad and now you can just review those five and you can say whether you want them in or out.
Kevin:You know can they run your ad or not and so it's like five at a time and so you come back the next day and there might be five more, and you come back the next day and maybe there's seven today and maybe there's 10 the next day and you can control it without that massive time intensive task of actually like reviewing and approving or blocking podcasts that may never actually accept your ad in the first place. So it is another level of control, but it's mostly about just like convenience, like we're not going to waste your time approving podcasts or blocking podcasts that may actually never receive your ad. And the UI around it is actually pretty fun too, because it's fun to see that you know these five podcasts just accepted your ad. Now review them and if you say yes, I approve that podcast to run my ad, your ad goes live very quickly after that.
Alban:So I think using it was kind of the game changer for me, because I don't want to go in and block 598 shows so that I can accept two ads. That felt like the wrong way to do it. Now I can just say I don't want to auto-approve anybody. Instead, I want to go through and hand pick, and there were some that were like immediately from the title I was like I want to be in that podcast. So I was running a ad for Buzzsprout. The ad is about hey, you want to start a podcast? Here's how to start a podcast. Blah, blah, blah. Here's all the information.
Alban:And I'd see some that were about creators and people who are trying to break in to online digital creation or digital marketing. I'm like, okay, that's a perfect fit, so I want to be in that podcast. And then there were others that I was like it's kind of on point, it's not exact. So an example there might be. There was a podcast about women coding and I was like that's at least related to tech. It's not necessarily creation, though. So then I look and I go well, they're not getting mass downloads, so I'm okay with them being in my ad run, because they're not going to use up the whole thing. It's only going to be a few thousand. That sounds good. Then there was another that I think was a Buzzcast listener Farmer Fred has a gardening podcast and I'm like, oh, I love Farmer Fred, I'd love to be in there. And then I see he's getting massive downloads like very successful show.
Alban:And I went it's almost so successful that I went. I'm not sure I want to allocate so many of my downloads to that show, and so it was really nice to be able to go through. And then, when someone was on the edge, I could click in, skip around to their latest episode and listen to it. And when I hear it, there were some that I was shocked. This is such a well-done podcast, I want to be associated with it, and there's others that you go.
Alban:All right, they're doing good content, but it doesn't sound like something I want to be associated with, so I don't have to, and it just to me felt. I messaged the team that built it and I said this feels like a different product to me, because now I'm picking individual shows that I'm very excited about working with versus a broad-based marketing. Because, at least as far as I found in a lot of our ad buys for Buzzsprout outside of podcasting, I get super excited when I find a particular website or niche or ad type or something that does very well, and then we can just keep going back to it over and over and over, and with Buzzsprout Ads I'm hoping to find one particular podcast that does extremely well and then we just run ads in that podcast forever and we basically partner with them forever. Those are the relationships that, as an advertiser, that I'm looking for.
Jordan:Yeah, I've been in that situation. I've tried paying for podcast promotions on Spotify or Overcast. I've toyed with that and there's something about, for example, when I ran my Spotify ad. There's something about spending $200 on that ad and you wake up the next morning and it's done and it's over and I'm just like, well, where'd my money go? Like it went so fast and it's going to like basically the same amount of people, right, but there's something about it just going like so fast. I felt like it wasn't intentional. But then when I went to Overcast and I paid for it to be just in this little specific category and it took like a week to use up that ad spend, that feels a lot better to me. I don't know if it's a psychological thing or what it sounds like a psychological thing, but it just it feels a lot better when it's not going so fast. You have no control over it.
Alban:Well, you know it goes both ways. You've, on one side, there's times where you're running an event. An example I can think of for this is podcast movement. When I went to podcast movement one year, in the airport were ads that were targeted for people who are attending podcast movements. You know about podcasting. Here is this thing with podcast ad tech, and they had ads in the airport and I was like, okay, that's a very targeted ad that has to be spent in the next three days as people are arriving for this event and so they want to spend all the budget. Right, then, broad base it around this area. But then there's other times.
Alban:You're like I actually would rather this be spent out slowly because I don't want to just all of it be spent overnight. I kind of want to have those controls, and so what we're doing is we're giving more controls to advertisers. We started with lots of controls for podcasters because those are the people we knew better and my hope is that some people will find a lot of value in targeting specific podcasts. Others will find a lot of value in I want to be able to spend $10,000 today and run a ton of ads across the podcast ecosystem. Help me do that and I want to be able to do both of those at the same time. You know, help me spend $1,000 over the next year over specific targeted shows and then other people. Let me spend a lot today to try to do something that you know is very timely.
Jordan:So last episode we talked about how we sort of soft launched fan mail and we released it to the Buzzsprout for iOS users. But in between that episode and this one we've released fan mail to all of our podcasters on Buzzsprout and so that's been a big thing that we've been doing this week and last. Since then we've actually gotten a lot of feedback. It's been crazy. We've got about, I want to say, 30 responses in our fan mail inbox on Buzzsprout. So, yeah, it's been busy and we have a lot of questions about fan mail and we thought that we would take this time to kind of go through you know what people thought about it and then answer some questions that we keep seeing come up from our listeners.
Alban:Sounds great. I think we confused our listeners a little bit by talking about it so much last episode.
Jordan:Yeah.
Alban:Because it was just available for people who are using iOS. We'd been using it ourselves a little bit longer, secretly, and so I think we got a lot of questions that were like, how do I turn this on right now? And we were like, oh, kind of in a, not a beta, but like a limited release. You know, there's a lot of laws around texting, there's lots of differences with international numbers, and we were just figuring out a lot and so we rolled it out. But we rolled it out to everyone who's using iOS just because that was a nice subset that really got the benefit when they're getting all the alerts and everything, and so right now it's out for everybody. And it's really exciting because we just sent out an email to everybody on Buzzsprout telling them you can turn this on, and we're getting tons of people who are turning it on for the first time.
Jordan:Let's go through some of the questions that seem to keep coming up about fan mail, and the first is sort of an obvious one that I think we skipped last time, which is where can I find this feature on Buzzsprout? And so where you can find fan mail if you want to turn it on for your podcast is on the episodes tab just right next to episodes. You'll see fan mail and then you can click on that and turn it on for your podcast.
Kevin:Yeah, we gave a slightly different answer last week because it was in the iOS app, and so you can also enable it from there, that's true. Yeah, which is it's found under the more tab at the bottom, but now it's available on both, then you can enable it from either spot.
Jordan:Another question that has come up a lot is does it work internationally and are there fees involved?
Alban:What I love about this question is we have at least four of them One from Australia, one from Denmark, one from Nepal and one from the international country of Grand Prairie, texas. I'm a native Texan that does sometimes feel like another country, I mean. The short answer to this is text. It's SMS are dealt with differently in every country and also are dealt with differently on every phone plan. You know there are some places where you are going to be charged a penny. Some it's unlimited, for free, some might be as much as 10 cents and you can add in.
Alban:You know, when you tell people, hey, you can text the show, you can add in. I guess that standard, like standard text messaging rates may apply. You can put that in there if you'd like. But my understanding is that most people know texting can cost money and the person who's best equipped to know how much their own texting plan costs them is the person who's sending the text. And if they see that oh okay, I'd opened my texting app and about to send it to an American number, they're probably best equipped to know how much that will cost them.
Kevin:Yeah, in the US there are some laws, fcc regulations, I guess about like, if you have a contest or if you have some promotional texting numbers or something like that, that you do have to disclose that standard text messaging fees may apply. I don't think that applies if you're just saying, hey, you can send me a text if you want to. There's no benefit of you sending a text and so you're not like luring people into texting you and so you don't. I don't think legally need the disclosure. Now, that said, I am not your attorney. I'm not anyone's attorney, including my own, and Albin, although he did study law, is not your attorney. About to not be an attorney at all.
Alban:I have a little update there.
Kevin:Okay, but that's our understanding of how those rules and regulations work. So is it a nice kind thing to say, possibly on your show, when you're talking about hey, click the text if you want to? It's an easy way to get in touch with us. Sure, nothing wrong with that. I don't know if you're legally required, unless you are enticing people to do it as and there could be some potential benefit for them of doing it.
Kevin:So we got two fan mail questions that are similar, from 7018 in Austin, texas, and 5002 from East Boston Massachusetts, both asking is this like one way communication or can you text your listeners back? Yeah, we did cover this a little bit last week. If you haven't listened to last week's episode, I encourage you to go back where we give you in depth, but we position this as a way for your audience to be able to connect with you, and then the way that we're thinking about it is, the best way for you to connect back with your audience isn't by texting them back, but it's by giving them shout outs on the show. So we hope that 7018 in Austin, texas, and 5002 in East Boston Massachusetts we're hoping that you're listening to this episode that you came back from last week and want to hear us respond to your question. We think that's the most engaging way for you to get back to your audience.
Kevin:So could this at some point turn into a two-way texting? It could be, but we're not really trying to solve texting Like texting has already been solved. You could give people your number, they could text you, you could text them. What we're trying to do is give your audience a way to contact you and then the way that you go back to them is through your podcast. That's what we're trying to do is drive engagement on the podcast. So I hope that makes sense and I hope it works good for your show, yeah.
Alban:The way I've been describing this is yeah, it's, it's two way, but the one way has always been there and that was podcasting. Podcasting is out and the end is now fan mail, and I think that is the goal is to have. The response is always going to be the podcasts. Yeah, I saw this one come in from five to oh seven in Garden City, new York, and they were asking does this work with Apple Podcasts and Spotify? They turned it on. They're not seeing the messages show up on those platforms. Short answer is yes, it works with all the podcast apps that we tested it on.
Alban:And that's a lot because between the three of us we have about 18 different podcast apps on our phones, but they sometimes take a little bit of time to update. So as soon as you turn fan mail on, buzzsprout puts it in all your show notes, but Apple may take a few hours to update your show notes. Spotify might take a little bit to update your show notes, but maybe it's going to be a little bit faster in Castomatic or in Fountain or something else. So if you look at different apps, they'll take a little while to update, but when you're releasing new episodes you'll start seeing it right away. It's right there at the top. Click here to text the show and that link is out there. So it works with all of the podcasting apps now and it works well on phone and on desktop.
Jordan:Something else that podcasters might be running into where they're not seeing the link show up in their show notes could be because they've already downloaded their own episode in that podcast app and so sometimes you have to just like unfollow your show and then follow it again and it kind of resets it and then you'll start seeing those links show up, because I had the same thing happen in Buzzcast and I was like why am I not seeing this? And I unfollowed it and I was like, okay, it's because I already downloaded those episodes.
Kevin:Yeah, and if it has cached your descriptions and all your old episodes, as soon as a new episode comes out, it'll grab that one fresh and the link will be there.
Jordan:This was kind of a creative question that I saw in the Facebook group and Crystal said new texting tool from Buzzsprout question. Super cool tool, Love it. Can we put a link on our homepage instead of just on the episode? Our podcast site is on pod page and I think that this can happen.
Kevin:Yes, yeah, you can absolutely do it. So the Buzzsprout fan mail tool automatically drops a link into your show notes. You don't see it necessarily when you're editing your descriptions for your episodes and stuff, but the final episode description that gets published, the link is in there. So you could just go to your Buzzsprout website, click on your episode. You'll see that link at the top and you could right click on that, go down to copy the link and then you can paste that wherever you want. So you can paste it on your own website or anything else, like for Buzzcast. For example, we wanted the link in our show notes twice. We put it. You know it automatically gets put in the top, but we also wanted it in our episode footer and so it's also at the bottom. And the way that we did that is we copied the link and then we went and edited our footer and we added a bullet right at the top and we just pasted the link in right there.
Alban:Yeah, I also did this for our email newsletter. When we sent it out to everybody I said go listen to this episode of Buzzcast for more info and if you have any feedback, send us a text. And I did the exact same thing. Kevin said I copied the link address and then I just pasted it as a normal link into the texting solution that we use. So really easy way to do it.
Alban:This will kind of tie in with a couple other questions we've had that make it a little bit easier. It will work on desktop as long as the desktop computer has texting enabled. So my Mac has texting enabled, but I know some Windows machines don't. Some Macs may not have it turned on. So if you click the link and nothing's happening or it's prompting you to download an app or something, that's probably because you're on desktop that doesn't have any texting solution. It's why mobile, which is 85% of all podcast downloads, is what we're really optimizing for People listening on the phone. Click the link, it opens up texts on their phone and they send off a quick text. So that's where most people will use it. But if it's a computer that supports texting, then fan mail will work there as well.
Jordan:Computer that supports texting, then fan mail will work there as well. Another question that we got a few times was from our Buzzsprout for iOS users. They encountered an error when they were trying to use fan mail sometimes.
Kevin:Yeah. So two different ways that this error was popping up. One, if you had the iOS app installed yourself and then you went to a different podcast and you were listening to it like an Apple podcast or something, and then you tapped their link to send them a text. Sometimes it would try to load up your iOS app and you couldn't text from there and they couldn't access that podcast from your app. So very confusing, weird circumstance. The other thing that would happen is if you had more than one podcast that you managed through Buzzsprout and you had the iOS app installed, you'd get a notification that you just received fan mail and you would tap it and it wouldn't route you to the right podcast. So therefore it wouldn't display the message properly. It would say, oh, we can't find that message because it wasn't on the account that you were active on at that time.
Kevin:Anyway, both of those errors were related. They have to do with, like, a manifest document that we can update on the app side, but then we have to push that to Apple and Apple has to distribute that out to all the installed people. So that's why we're able to fix it very quickly, but we had to wait a little while for Apple to kind of propagate that out to everyone who had the app installed, and we can't force that. It's on Apple's timeframe, not ours. So it lingered for a few days. So people kept reporting these different errors over and over again, and after a few days we thought we had it all rooted out and find out that there were still a few people lagging behind. Anyway, new stuff Bugs are bound to happen.
Kevin:It's just unfortunate that one dragged on a little bit longer because we were dependent on Apple for helping us get the update pushed out to everybody than just doing it directly. But that's what it was, Nothing too alarming, but yeah a little annoying that it just took more than a few days to get that fixed annoying that it just took more than a few days to get that fixed.
Alban:This is not a question, but while Kevin was saying that, I got a fan mail notification myself from 7208 in Baltimore, maryland, that said I'm in the middle of listening to the show First time doing this. Love the feature, thank you. So thank you to the person out there in Baltimore, maryland.
Kevin:That's like breaking news, that's breaking news baby, as we're recording they're coming in.
Alban:Yeah, this just in, literally we can actually legitimately say that now, though we will now take two and a half days to release the episode, but this is real time, baby.
Jordan:We have another question from Veronica saying is there a way to know which episode the listener is referring to? I tested it out and it shows up almost instantly but does not reference a particular episode.
Kevin:Correct. That's not something that we felt was critical to be able to get this version one of the feature launched and out to everybody. We're thinking about it as it's just a way to contact the show. If there's something unique about the episode that they're commenting on, we hope that they would put that in context for you. So like listening to your latest episode and you talked about this and I think this, but if it's just general feedback for the show, then maybe that doesn't matter what episode they were listening to.
Jordan:Yeah, and that's the way all of our communications are. You know, whether it be Twitter or email or fan list. You know DMS, like we're not going to know what episode they're talking about unless they tell us.
Kevin:Yeah, the one exception to that for sure is like the boostograms and the streaming sats and stuff, you get a lot of data with that. We've been using that for almost three years two and a half years now with this show. We still get you know a few every now and then that come in. It's never really caught on in the way that we'd hoped it would. Hopefully over time that becomes more and more. You know it continues to grow on this slow and steady trajectory but, as I was saying, with that you do get a lot more data. What we found is that, even though you get the data, we never used it because they're timely and so you almost know like all the messages that came in last week had to do with the last episode. Every now and then you get an outlier of somebody listening to something in the back catalog, but usually the messages that come in around your latest episode are kind of tied back to that episode and so on and so forth.
Jordan:It's time for sound off the segment where you send in your responses to our podcasting questions. Let's start off with some boostograms.
Alban:We had somebody named Dwev reach out. I think name is Dwev D-W-E-V. Dwev sent us 2,500 sats Amen to encouraging the rising tide that lifts all boats and then sent us another 1,024 sats and said the fan mail feature sounds really cool, but is available to podcasters outside the US and, importantly, listeners outside the US? Yes, Available to everybody worldwide, as long as you can send a text.
Jordan:And then we got boost from the late bloomer actor. Hey, sounds like you guys are talking about late bloomers. Reminds me of a great podcast on that topic, david Clark, aka the late bloomer actor podcast, and I think that this is in reference. I cannot remember if it was Alvin or Kevin. One of you guys said from the late bloomers, so I think that that was a correction on his podcast name. So sorry, david.
Kevin:All right. Barnabas wrote in, said I'm feeling a little let down now that you're moving only to text because I don't have a phone yet. I probably have to borrow someone else's iOS device soon to install the app and get the text feature working. It's an amazing idea, but might not work well for my audience because we're all mostly under 13. Overall, one of the best features in Buzzcast history. So thank you for being optimistic, even though it might not work for you and your audience. I do kind of agree, though, that, like under 13, kids probably don't need phones yet. You're not going to believe me at, barnabas, but your life doesn't get better once you get a phone.
Alban:My experience was it got worse. I got a phone at 17 and it's been downhill.
Kevin:So enjoy this time in your life when you're not constantly distracted by something buzzing in your pocket or when you're driving in a car and you don't have a device with you and you just have to look outside and find something interesting in nature to look at. This is a really good time. Embrace it, because as you get older and get a device of your own, you're going to find that these are very addictive. And it's not all upside. So enjoy this time, and I'm sure we'll come out with another feature soon that'll be more appropriate for you.
Jordan:I forgot to put it in here, but Barnabas actually followed up saying that once we released the fan mail feature to desktop, he enabled it, and so now he's hoping that he gets some text into his podcast, the Kids Code Podcast. So if you want to reach out to Barnabas and send him some fan mail, kids Code Podcast.
Kevin:Yeah, and Barnabas, tell your listeners that maybe they could ask their parents if they could use their device to send you a text. Yep, they could borrow it for a second.
Alban:We got some fan mail from 9792 in Westminster, colorado. Did you guys hear Tim Ferris on Invest Like the Best? He's all in on audio only podcasts, admittedly at the expense of YouTube growth. I didn't hear this specific episode, but I've heard Tim Ferris talk about audio only for podcasting many times.
Alban:Tim has a really good blog post about there's a point where you get so famous and especially if you have kind of like a unique look like he does, that you start getting like uncomfortable amounts of attention and there is a level of celebrity that's not good and between not wanting everybody to know who he is all the time everywhere he goes. Also, he said that his audio-only podcasts he thought were a little bit better because people weren't looking at him. He actually records without video. So when he would record audio-only he said it just felt like better conversations and that's what he's trying to do a little bit more of these authentic conversations, just audio. And so I'll have to go listen to this specific episode on invest like the best. But yeah, I've heard it before and thank you for the link.
Jordan:Is he saying that he doesn't even do like video chats, like what we're doing in Riverside right?
Kevin:now.
Jordan:Like I can see your guys' faces, but he just does audio, only recording too.
Alban:Yeah, the way he records at least this is a few years ago, so maybe this has changed. But last time I heard Tim Ferriss talk about it he was recording as if you just didn't have any video on. Same as a phone call works, and my experience has also been pretty positive. I get worn out looking at video for a long period of time and I feel a little bit more like I'm performing and it feels a little bit more natural for me just to do the phone call only version, so we all can see each other. But I rarely am looking at the screen with both of your faces because it just feels better not to Ouch, that's not a ding at you. It's actually that I can't hide my own face and if I look at my own face then I'm performing in a mirror and I hate it.
Jordan:That's true.
Kevin:I agree, there's types of podcast episodes that I'd like to do with. A video chat Like this is one of them, because we all know each other pretty well, not just from doing the show, but from outside of the show. We've worked together, we've known each other for a long time and we also, like, have come up with little hand signals. Like I'm notorious for my excellent miming skills, so like I can can make hand gestures, and Albin and Jordan know exactly what I'm trying to communicate.
Alban:Kevin was twirling his hand in the air. Jordan's like what, wrap it up? And he's like no, no, no, those were finger guns. I'm excited.
Jordan:Kill a segment, what?
Kevin:But two of my favorite interviews that I've ever done one was with Pat Flynn and one was with Jared Easley done. One was with Pat Flynn and one was with Jared Easley. So those two podcasts are Smart, Passive Income and Starve the Doubts. I think they're both still active. Those were audio only, no video, and I enjoyed them the most because after you know like I'm used to doing video. So the first five minutes felt a little bit weird, but then I was very quickly able to just kind of get out of myself and into the conversation and I found that not having the video ultimately allowed us to have a better conversation less distractions, less things to look at, whatever.
Kevin:I will also tell you a little fan mail story. So this fan mail from Westminster, Colorado, came in right when I was on a five-hour car drive this weekend, and so I was stopped for gas and I checked my phone and we had some fan mail. I tapped in and I saw this link and I love Tim Ferriss. I listen to the show all the time but I don't listen to invest like the best. So I queued up invest like the best and found this episode with Tim Ferriss and listen to it for the next hour or so of my drive. So thanks for the recommendation. I really did enjoy that. I really did enjoy Tim talking about why he loves podcasting and is not really interested in video. So if anybody's contemplating whether video is right for you, like, Tim has a great take on it. He's just not super interested in it and I kind of agree with his perspective on it. So thanks for the tip.
Jordan:And then we got fan mail from Girl Dad Nation. Cool new feature. Way to go, buzzsprout. Thanks, matt.
Alban:Thank you. 5236 in Akron, ohio. I still want to say boost, pretty cool, dave Jackson, school of Podcasting. Dave, you can keep sending us boosts. We're still going to read boosts, so please feel free to send them all in.
Kevin:Yeah, just to be clear, we're fully committed to boosting and boostagrams and streaming stats and all that stuff. It's just it takes long for that technology to kind of become mainstream. Texting has been mainstream for years and years, and years. So we're jumping on like texting as a hey, this is easy for everybody, but it has nothing to do with like we're not getting down on boosting. That's still available on our show, shows that I listen to, I still boost all the time, but it's that's more cutting edge, a little bit more technical, a little bit harder for everybody to do. So, yeah, that's where we stand on both of those.
Alban:We got fan mail from 1627 in South Dakota. Molly from Small Business Hustle absolutely captured my attitude. There was sass. Last week she sent us a message I read it with a bunch of attitudes. I don't know if the attitude's there, but it's been confirmed. The attitude is on point. So, Molly, thank you for the message. Thank you for the attitude. We appreciate it.
Kevin:7657 from Mayock, north Carolina. Warren from Jaded, hr. Love it Simple, easy to use and no number to remember. I hope this is the tool that jumpstart some listener engagement. Thanks, yeah, we hope it is.
Jordan:I know from experience reading off that long phone number to text us. It's a lot easier just to say tap the button in the show notes. That's right 60 30, pittsburgh, california. Love the new fan mail feature but wish there was a way to collect email addresses or have an option for our listeners to opt into our newsletter as well. Thanks so much for all the cool new features. Alessandra from the Dom, sub living podcast.
Kevin:Yeah, I mean, do both enable fan mail so people can reach out to you and send you a.
Alban:Fan mail from 2445 in San Rafael, California. Love the new fan mail feature. Turned it on immediately and I hope to get some messages. Glad to be with you as my hosting provider. We're very thankful you're trusting us with your podcast.
Kevin:4073 from Chicago, illinois Love it, but can we get the Android app soon? You can get the Android app soon. I don't I can't say exactly when, but think it's going to be soon. And what I consider soon, yeah, six weeks or so. Roughly Can't hold me to it because I never committed, but I have a feeling that will be, you know, somewhere around that six week mark is kind of what we're targeting.
Alban:So six weeks like end of June is your prediction for end of June. We're coming out.
Kevin:Albin, you're trying to ask specifics right after I said I can't be specific right, wait, wait.
Alban:You just said six weeks. That's specific and I'm just trying to do the math.
Jordan:I said roughly six weeks. No, don't do the math for them, Alvin.
Alban:What you needed to say was like before the moon crosses the celestial plane or some sort of like that, something that no one would know what it meant.
Jordan:Kevin's just hoping it's like a bunch of people like me who can't math and we'll never know. Like six weeks, that's August, right.
Kevin:Here's what I'm hearing. Here's what I would feel like if I were you. Companies all the time say stuff like yep, yep, we're working on it, we're working on it, but in reality there's really no work being done.
Kevin:That's not the case here. I have an Android app. I have an Android phone sitting right here in front of me and it is running an Android version of the Buzzsprout app and it is like 99% the same feature functionality as what's on the iOS app. But there are some little glitches and hiccups and we want to get all that stuff right and so we're just putting the finishing touches on it and then we've got to do some testing, then we got to get it submitted to the play store and stuff like that. My word is my oath. I don't know what's the word is my bond. We have a functional Android app and it is coming soon, but I just can't give you an exact date only because I just don't want to disappoint anybody. But it will be here soon-ish.
Jordan:All right, and then we have fan mail from the Netherlands. Hi Buzzcast team, your Snapcast episode reminded me to check this new feature out. Works great. Keep up the good work, sander, ooh, sander, oh boy, here we go. Vermitslar's podcast.
Alban:Vermitslar. Vermitslar. Vermitslar 6600 at Fayetteville, arkansas. Hey, by the way, this is Joe. I have a feature suggestion. Co-host AI spits out a blog post. Are there any plans on implementing blog posts with a website that Buzzsprout offers? This is a great question for Kevin because, as many of you might know, kevin used to work on a product that was a website builder. So, kevin, any hopes of adding blog posts to the Buzzsprout site?
Kevin:Right now we don't have any plans to add blogging to the Buzzsprout website, but it's a really interesting idea. So we'll talk about it with the team, figure out if there's any opportunities for us to add a little bit more functionality there. So yeah, thanks for your feature request and we'll give it a talk. 0447 from Cedar Springs, Michigan. Request and we'll give it a talk. 0447 from Cedar Springs, Michigan. Thank you for adding the new feature we have Michigan murders and music podcast. Can't wait to use it. That is a really interesting sounding podcast. I'm going to check that out. I wonder if they're like talking about murders and talking about music, or if they talk about murders in between music while music is playing.
Kevin:Yeah, yeah, I don't know.
Jordan:It's like the YouTube channels where they do like makeup while they talk about murders. Maybe it's something like that. Or they're like playing music while they talk about murder makeup and murders.
Kevin:Yeah, yeah, there's YouTubers that do that it's great Interesting spin on true crime, all right 58, 62 from Oceanside, california.
Jordan:I'm pretty stoked on this. Started up all my shows today. Great Thanks for the forward thinking Mike from the quiver cast and the stinky booties. Thanks for the forward thinking Mike from the Quivercast and the Stinky Booties.
Alban:A few days ago my daughter, who's eight, asked me what's the biggest project you've ever worked on? And I was telling her about some projects and then she said what's like the last project you worked on? And I was like probably the last one was this thing called Fan Mail for work. And I was like you know, we have an ILS app and she's like I'm so, she's so excited that we have a phone app and I'm pulling it up and this is the message that comes in as as it's there. So she sees it. She's like what are the stinky booties? I'm like I don't know. We're working on a potty mouth in the Brook house right now and then this comes in. So thank you.
Alban:Oceanside, california Also got fan mail from 7934 in Ireland. Love this feature. Another reason to recommend Buzzsprout to my clients from Fiona podcast manager. Fiona, thank you so much. We always say word of mouth is the best way to find out about podcasts, but it's also the best way to find out about podcast hosting companies. Most of our customers are referred by other podcasters, so thank you so much for recommending us to all of your clients. We really appreciate it.
Kevin:Hey, do you guys mind if I jump in with the sound off question for next episode? I've got an idea that I think could be interesting. So once a year, the people who work at Buzzsprout go to one place in the US and we all get together for a few days and do some work. I thought it'd be fun if, wherever we decide to do that this year, if we did it in a place where I'm sure there's some other Buzzsprout podcasters, if we scheduled one night to actually like go out and do a Buzzsprout meetup in town.
Alban:Do an actual podcasting meetup. Yeah, oh my gosh.
Kevin:Would that be fun? I think that's a great idea. And then anybody in that area, you know, within reasonable driving time or whatever could come meet the team and hang out with us for an evening and and the whole team would be there. So it's not just like the team that goes to conferences, it's not just like the marketing team and some of the support team and stuff. It's like the programmers would be there and designers would be there and the infrastructure guys who are actually making sure these podcasts don't go down.
Kevin:Yeah, there's so many people on our team who never get to meet customers in real life or irl, as the kids say, so this would be opportunity. They don't say that, and so that leads like how does that transition into a sound off question? I am interested to hear from the buzzcast listening audience if you want the buzzsprout team to come to your town. Like, shoot us a text and tell us where you live and why that would make a great place for a Buzzsprout meetup.
Jordan:Yeah, I love that.
Alban:I like the idea. I think you're going to get a lot of planted answers, though. We're going to have like oh man, it would be really amazing to go down back to the Florida Keys. Oh, it'd be. Why don't you come over here to Hawaii and check out our beautiful beaches?
Jordan:And you're like I'm not flying everyone out to Hawaii. Come to Boise.
Alban:Idaho.
Kevin:I'm interested to figure out like where most of our listeners listening from. And if we came to your town and open it up for a night to come meet the Buzzsprout team, would you come and why? Would it be a fun time so why stop at the U?
Jordan:S? Let's make this like an international thing. We got listeners in Australia.
Alban:Ireland, Ireland.
Kevin:Denmark, you know me. I believe there's goodness in embracing constraints, and so for this year's meetup we're going to embrace the constraint of it's going to be in the US somewhere, maybe next year.
Alban:I'm almost 100% confident that Jordan's number is going to text in like Boise. Idaho, so I don't have to fly across the country again.
Kevin:Well, maybe in some future year we can open it up to international destinations, but for this year we're going to be in the US. So where do you think in the US that we should go? If we came, why would it be fun? And then if we end up choosing that city, then I'm assuming you're committed to come and meet us.
Jordan:You're committed to come and meet us, so hopefully let's hear the suggestions. Yeah, all right, so to have a response featured on our next episode, go ahead and tap the link in our show notes to Texas show and, as always, thanks for listening and keep podcasting. My husband really, really wants to get a dog and we don't have like the house for it, and so I convinced him that if we did get a dog, potentially in the future, it should be a Corgi, because Corgis are like quiet, they're not big, they don't require like a lot of running around outside and stuff like that. And now he's incessantly sending me links to like Corgi breeders.
Kevin:How do you spell Corgi? I need to see a picture of one of these dogs. C-o-r-g-i.
Alban:Yeah.
Kevin:Okay, oh my gosh, that is not a dog, that is a Pokemon.
Jordan:So you know how I only have, I only have cats.
Kevin:Yes.
Jordan:A corgi is kind of like a cat of the canine family. Corgis are very close to having a cat.
Kevin:I think, okay, these are like the little cutest animals I've ever seen in my life. These are like AI generated.
Jordan:The thing that makes them so cute is their butts. Corgis have the cutest butts ever. They were so cute they look like little cartoons.
Alban:Now Jordan. One thing I'm seeing on here is they're very affectionate with family. They're very good with other dogs. They're very good with other dogs. They're medium good with young children.
Jordan:I don't have young children.
Alban:You have youngish. You have seven, youngest Six.
Jordan:Yeah yeah, she's trained seven, the other one's 12.
Alban:So you don't, maybe they're not, maybe that's not young.
Kevin:What does medium good mean in a dog? Like it?
Jordan:Like medium good, I mean in a dog like it, like they might nip a little bit.
Jordan:They're hurting dogs they, uh, they bite you, but not super hard yeah that's medium good yeah it might nip you if you're like a little rough with it. I think I feel like a good dog with small children is that their two year old can like latch on to it and it's not gonna like get upset with them you know what I mean. Like pull on it, yeah, like maybe a golden retriever would just like take it, you know. But corgis might like nip a little bit like get off me.
Alban:Another thing I'm seeing here from the American Kennel Club shedding level is a four out of five. Five is hair everywhere it is a four out of five, they've got a double coat.
Jordan:I don't know about that.
Kevin:Yeah, so I have a. I have a Husky. Yeah, huskies are double, double coats too, right, and I'm pretty sure. Look them up, alvin. But I think a Husky has got to be a five out of five. I can't imagine a dog that sheds more.
Jordan:I don't know how you can be a podcaster with a Husky, because they are the most vocal dogs. I would love a Husky, but they're vocal at least mine is vocal, like you can control it.
Kevin:So with my dog anyway, once in a while she'll get a little bit talkative and then we can engage with that, like we talk back to her and she enjoys it, and then she's going back and forth and we play in that way. But if we don't engage with it or if I ask her, you know like no, quiet down, she will stop. Yeah, she'll like walk away, that's good they.
Kevin:They're very smart dogs. The shedding thing is a real deal. Now for us it's not that big of a deal because she's outside so much. We brush her regularly. I don't mind brushing the dog. My wife like does sweep every day Almost. We tried like a little Roomba thing for a while but it's not that big of a deal for us to kind of keep it under control in the house.
Jordan:Yeah, and we have long hair cats, like two long hair cats. We usually take them to get groomed and shaved, which you guys have seen photos of that. They look like they get like the lion cuts where it's the big mane around the head and the pom pom on the tail, and it's so funny and they get so angry for like two days. But it keeps it pretty clean in the house. So I think we'd probably just do the same with the corgi. Just make sure we get it groomed a lot.
Kevin:I'm all in on the corgi. I'm looking at all these pictures and I've never seen it. Looks like what my husky looked like when she was like three, four months old. Yeah.
Jordan:And they have like little short legs. They can't jump, which is hilarious. It's so cute, so we don't have to worry about it getting on the couch.
Kevin:Like it can't. And what are they like at full grown? What are they like 15, 20 pounds?
Jordan:I don't know, I don't know the weight, but I think they're like cat size. Yeah.
Alban:Up to 30 pounds for a male, 28 for a female, according to the AKC American Kennel Club. Oh, my gosh. I can also tell you. Here's a few more stats from the Kennel Club. Shedding level, coat grooming frequency and drool level are all the same as the Siberian Husky. Four out of five shedding, two out of five grooming one.
Jordan:Wow, drool level. That's great. So we're low. Yeah, I will take shedding over drool any day.
Kevin:Where are they in the intelligence level?
Jordan:They're very smart.
Kevin:That's I mean. There you go. That was my main criteria for whatever dog we got. I just wanted it to be trainable.
Jordan:Yes.
Kevin:What I found out with huskies is that they are very intelligent and are very trainable, but they're also very stubborn, and so almost 100% of the time with my dog anyway, she knows exactly what you're asking her to do, but it just depends on her mood whether she's going to do it or not. Yeah, as opposed to like a German shepherd or other working dogs like they don't have that personality. They just want to please you. So if they understand you, they will do exactly what you want. Huskies are not super interested in pleasing you. Yeah, we always say the Husky is more like a cat in the dog body.
Jordan:They are. Yeah, yeah, they're very similar to that. It's funny because in Boise we have a corgi festival and it's just hundreds of corgis in this park and it's amazing. But my youngest daughter, when she was four, she was terrified of dogs, like so scared of dogs, and my husband had the brilliant idea of taking all of us down to the Corgi Festival where it's just all these Corgis in these like cute little costumes and stuff, and she got over her fear so fast and it was like that one interaction was just like 1000 Corgis and she was just suddenly like, oh, dogs aren't scary, and so it completely changed her mind about it, and I think that's also part of why we're thinking about maybe a Corgi. Well, he's more into it than I am. I kind of am just fine with, like the two cats, but I think that the kids are maybe wanting something a little more fun than just two cats.
Kevin:Let me ask you this what do you do? I'm not a cat owner, but what do you do with your cats when you all leave town?
Jordan:Nothing. They do not care that you are gone.
Kevin:Like they can just take care of themselves. Do you have like, are they? They can go in and out of the house by themselves, or what?
Jordan:They're just completely indoor cats but they don't require like exercise or anything like that. Like they can run up and down the stairs all they want. They just walking the cats. I actually have leashes for walking the cats, so like sometimes we'll take them outside, but not a lot. They will just sleep on the couch. My mom lives down the street and so she'll come check on them like every other day when we're gone on a trip. But we've been gone for like a week and they've never like run out of food or water or anything like that. They're just so easy to take care of. Yeah.
Kevin:So I mean a dog? Obviously that's not going to be the case.
Kevin:Exactly yeah, and we like to travel exactly yeah, and we like to travel, so it that makes me a little nervous. So here I'll tell you how we've solved it, and everyone probably has their own solution. But from the very early age we started boarding our dog on a pretty regular basis, even if we weren't going out of town, because we wanted her to be comfortable. We wanted to be comfortable, we wanted to be able to go out of town for a week or so and not have to worry that she's not happy or she's homesick or whatever. And so we used to. We started off when she was probably I don't know six to eight months old, we started putting her in boarding like daycare, getting her assimilated with other dogs and used to spending the night there and just kind of work that up from six months on. And so now when we go to town she's happy. She's so excited she's bouncing out of the car as we pull up to the boarding place.
Kevin:She loves it there, oh, that's cool, I can't wait to go there. And so we never feel bad about if we're going out of town for a week like she's going to have a great time for a week and when she comes home she misses us, she loves us and it's super exciting again. But if we brought her back the next day she'd be bouncing out of the car age. So they're not like. There's. A lot of dogs get very anxious and don't do good in boarding situations and then it ends up really impacting on what the family can do and how often you can travel.
Jordan:How much does it cost to board a dog overnight?
Kevin:Way more than it should oh. I think like a three-star hotel for yourself is what you'll probably be paying for a dog.
Jordan:Yeah.
Kevin:More than La La Quinta.
Jordan:My mom really, really likes corgis, so I'm hoping I can like.
Kevin:Yeah, so same thing. Just bring your dog over to her house on a regular basis so she gets used to having it over there and the dog gets used to being there.
Jordan:And yeah, you know what's going to happen is one of the days she's going to be like you know what? I think I'm just going to keep them. That's really what's going to happen.
Kevin:A good friend of our family. They travel with us a lot because our team our sons are on the same swim team and they can't board their dog because their dog just gets like anxious and sick and just doesn't do well. And so every time we travel for swim meets for weekends, they have their dog with them. So they can only go to hotels that accept dogs. They've got to like leave between every event to go back to the hotel and check the dogs. They don't want to leave in the crate.
Jordan:The whole time.
Kevin:I mean, people love their dogs to pieces. But they can have a negative impact on your life if you don't kind of get them used to the habits and things that your family likes to like from likes to enjoy early age.
Jordan:Yeah, one of the other things I worry about is vet bills, because I mean cats like never have to go to the vet. You just you never have to take cats to the vet either, and so I'm just like, ok, so now we're gonna have like vet bills because I feel like dogs you have to take to the vet a lot, and I don't know why I have that in my head, but like it just feels like dogs you have to take like at least once a year.
Kevin:Oh yeah, at least once a year. I think we were twice a year. I think our dog gets checked twice a year and the first year it's like four times. Oh yeah, and if you get like a rescue or if you get them from a shelter, then they will come spayed or neutered. If you get them from a breeder, then you're going to have to do that yourself at some point. And that's not cheap. Yeah, yeah Dogs aren't cheap yeah.
Alban:Jordan. A few other facts I can tell you about the Welsh Corgi that I've learned by watching this video on autoplay on the AKC website, the Queen of uh. The queen of england had a corgi. The corgi was featured on some british coins. It looked maybe it was a pound cute.
Jordan:Could you imagine if it was like? The face of the corgi and then the butt of the corgi on the other side.
Alban:He's so cute it was, uh, it was sitting in the queen's lap oh, okay but it's also, you know, all those like dog races.
Alban:there's like obstacle courses where the person's like running along with the dog and they're doing his fast. Those are like all Corgis or at least in this video they are and they're dominating. So they seem to be very smart and they're a herding dog, even though they're so tiny. There's a bunch of them herding cattle, so it sounds like looks like pretty active, pretty smart, pretty friendly little dogs. I think you might have found the right breed. I hope so.
Kevin:Yeah, they look very similar to the Shiba Inu but, like many, a different yeah.
Jordan:Chonkier. They're like a stubby, chonky version of a Shiba. Yeah.
Kevin:Less athletic.
Jordan:Yes, definitely. Sure, they can't jump as high.
Kevin:Yeah, I mean, why not, you know, just tack on another. Another reason for people to text the show Smash that text button and write in Should Jordan get a corgi? Smash that text button. Is this going to happen.
Jordan:I love it.