Episode 59 Measuring your impact.txt
English (US)
01:00:00.000 — 01:00:02.400 · Speaker 1
You cannot expect overnight results.
01:00:02.440 — 01:00:14.440 · Speaker 2
Just doing the boring basic stuff consistently, which results every single time. 150 hours of long form video concerts is better than 5000 steps.
01:00:17.400 — 01:00:29.240 · Speaker 1
Welcome back to the podcast cave here at Hedgehog Studios. Today, Rich and I are going to be chatting about the impact that a podcast has on your business or brand. Hey, how are you doing?
01:00:29.560 — 01:00:30.640 · Speaker 2
How are you doing? I’m cold.
01:00:30.680 — 01:00:33.120 · Speaker 1
I’m also cold. I can’t feel my fingers.
01:00:33.160 — 01:00:33.600 · Speaker 2
Yeah.
01:00:33.720 — 01:00:35.560 · Speaker 1
Johannesburg is for the birds.
01:00:35.600 — 01:00:38.400 · Speaker 2
Yes, but it wasn’t much warmer in Durban.
01:00:38.440 — 01:00:39.600 · Speaker 1
Yeah. No, it wasn’t really.
01:00:39.640 — 01:00:46.840 · Speaker 2
Yeah. I think this topic is a very valuable one because this is the question we get asked.
01:00:46.880 — 01:00:47.520 · Speaker 1
It’s the first.
01:00:47.520 — 01:00:52.400 · Speaker 2
Question. I’m going to do my podcast. How will I know if it’s working? Yes. Or not working.
01:00:52.400 — 01:01:07.970 · Speaker 1
Yes. Well, I personally feel like this is a example of how it’s about a marketing principle, which is you have to do everything with consistency and you cannot expect overnight results.
01:01:08.290 — 01:01:27.690 · Speaker 2
Yeah, I think an example that everyone knows and one that you can, you can employ, um, help me, uh, is the the old gym analogy. So like, everyone knows, the pain of waking up in the morning when it’s very, very cold or whatever the case may be, when you feel tired or something, you don’t want to go to gym, same sort of thing you don’t do.
01:01:28.770 — 01:01:30.530 · Speaker 2
You get you get results, right?
01:01:30.530 — 01:01:33.650 · Speaker 1
Five sessions of gin doth not a hot body make?
01:01:33.810 — 01:01:34.650 · Speaker 2
Uh, no.
01:01:34.810 — 01:01:39.610 · Speaker 1
And five episodes of a podcast does not a million leads make?
01:01:39.650 — 01:01:41.370 · Speaker 2
Yes. That is very accurate.
01:01:41.410 — 01:01:41.770 · Speaker 1
Amazing.
01:01:41.810 — 01:01:49.130 · Speaker 2
Perfect. Perfect. Good point. Yeah. And I think, um, uh, I don’t know what I think.
01:01:49.250 — 01:01:54.449 · Speaker 1
Okay, good, good. Okay, so let’s talk about how
01:01:55.450 — 01:02:05.870 · Speaker 1
the consistency Factor turns into results over time and what we could potentially measure because I think, yeah, we can’t just say you can’t measure it. You just gotta do it for a long time.
01:02:05.910 — 01:02:37.790 · Speaker 2
No, no, no, of course not. There are signs that are earlier signs that it’s doing well and also data that you can gather as it’s going to make improvements and make changes. Yeah. I think, you know, with podcast, what I was going to say earlier is, is it’s a bit like comparing it to sort of older marketing tactics, things like SEO and those sorts of things that you have to just be consistently doing.
Yes, we’ve had so many clients that we’ll do SEO for three months and they’ll go like, I’m not seeing results and I’m bailing, right. And, you know, then it’s like, well, cool.
01:02:37.830 — 01:02:39.470 · Speaker 1
Of course, you’re not seeing results after three months.
01:02:39.510 — 01:03:12.880 · Speaker 2
Yes. It’s like a popularity contest you’ve entered here. You can’t just like bail. Mhm. Um, and those same people in 18 months, if they’d been consistent, they would be laughing. Yes. You end up in like a cycle where you’re just relying on like lead gen advertising the whole time. You’ve done no brand building like you.
You run Google Ads, and if you don’t supplement that with like SEO, if you turn your Google Ads off, your brand’s got nothing, you’ve got nothing. Yeah. Um, so podcasts super important. It’s a brand building exercise.
01:03:12.920 — 01:03:45.200 · Speaker 1
So I think if we were to compare podcasting, which is a brand awareness or, um, credibility building activity, we could compare it to something like social media and posting organic content to your to your page. When you do that with regularity, you start showing up in the algorithm for certain interests, and you are more likely to be discovered by a potential customer.
Yeah, and podcasts work the same.
01:03:45.240 — 01:03:59.730 · Speaker 2
The same way. One thing that I have just seen through doing this for so long is that just doing the boring, basic stuff consistently gets results every single time. Yes. Always better than any alternative. Yeah.
01:03:59.810 — 01:04:17.209 · Speaker 1
I think also the the beauty of any content generation doesn’t matter if it’s, uh, blog posts and, and regular articles uploaded to a website, um, loads and loads of great organic content on your Instagram profile or your TikTok um.
01:04:17.250 — 01:04:18.209 · Speaker 2
Newsletters are good.
01:04:18.370 — 01:04:18.930 · Speaker 1
News.
01:04:18.970 — 01:04:20.090 · Speaker 2
Well, well.
01:04:20.370 — 01:04:51.570 · Speaker 1
What I wanted to say was that the the build up of that content can feel painful now, but then you’ll be amazed at how the sort of work that you did six months ago can all of a sudden become relevant again. Or you can be discovered or found by something in your back catalog. So that’s why I feel like anything that requires, um, sort of more production value.
So things that you put more effort into. And I guess newsletters is an example of that. It’s always worth doing because it doesn’t just last for five seconds.
01:04:51.620 — 01:05:15.260 · Speaker 2
Yeah, the new South one. I gave that example just because it’s something that you must do consistently if you’re going to do it, and people actually start to expect your newsletter, maybe you send your newsletter every Wednesday morning and people I mean, if you’ve done it well, people will come in and look forward to it.
The same with podcasts. If there’s just like one random episode. I mean, I follow lots of people on YouTube that one week, one post and I’ll be like.
01:05:15.540 — 01:05:16.540 · Speaker 1
Where’s my episode?
01:05:16.900 — 01:05:24.540 · Speaker 2
What am I going to do now on my Sunday evening? You know, like it’s yeah, you, you build up that kind of consistency and that’s advocacy.
01:05:24.940 — 01:05:36.380 · Speaker 1
So if we’re talking about this as a brand awareness tool, a credibility building tool, what are some of the metrics that we can look at to go, okay, this is working. This is getting us more brand awareness or credibility.
01:05:36.420 — 01:06:39.120 · Speaker 2
Yeah, I think, you know, specifically for me and what we do at haha is video podcasts. Yes, that seem to do very well on YouTube. And YouTube has some really great metrics that you can look at at every sort of stage of the the classical marketing funnel. There’s the basic stuff like reach and those sorts of and downloads and those sorts of things, um, which are good.
Um, but they’re kind of very top of the funnel stuff like impressions, click through rates, um, traffic sources, those sorts of things. Yeah. Um, those are very top of the funnel, um, metrics. Uh, then middle of the funnel is your more engagement side. So that could be the comments. Well know that that would come.
Engagement and content quality. So it’s like, um, how how how long are people engaging with your content for? So, like, um, the average viewer duration. Yes. And those.
01:06:39.160 — 01:07:29.010 · Speaker 1
Okay. And that, that actually just. Sorry. I know I’m butting in here, but that average viewer duration is always really been an interesting topic for me because shorts are so important, but they I mean, it’s in the name, they’re short. And so when a person watches a short, they’re getting a tiny little snippet.
Everyone feels like I’ve got to have loads of shorts because loads of that content means more viewership for me, which is true to a point. But actually, if you have got people watching a percentage of your episodes or the long form, even if they don’t watch the whole thing, but if they watch 75, 80% of that longer piece, you’ve got an actually more actively engaged viewer.
Yeah. And and that’s actually more worthwhile. So it’s it’s almost like there’s not a
01:07:30.050 — 01:07:40.410 · Speaker 1
black and white answer here. You do want your shorts views, but also you want to be looking at the consumption of the long form and the percentage of that.
01:07:40.450 — 01:08:06.659 · Speaker 2
So I think the argument there is like if you’ve 150 hours of long form video consumption is better than 5000 clip views. 15 second clip views. Absolutely. So. So that is a good metric to look at. The the the duration is also super helpful to. Kind of I don’t know edit a quality control your videos so
01:08:08.180 — 01:08:19.660 · Speaker 2
you can see if consistently like YouTube tracks all this data, you can actually see where people drop off on your video. Um, you can also see sparks sometimes if you’ve made like chapters and stuff like where people.
01:08:19.700 — 01:08:21.700 · Speaker 1
People are skipping to the helpful part.
01:08:21.740 — 01:08:36.460 · Speaker 2
We look at this all the time to kind of see, you know, we worked quite a lot on our intros. Yes, because sometimes it’s fairly depressing where 95% of your of your viewers drop off.
01:08:36.500 — 01:08:37.460 · Speaker 1
Disappear after the.
01:08:37.460 — 01:09:02.430 · Speaker 2
Intro 15 seconds, and then you go and look at the video and your intro ends at precisely 15 seconds. So like, yes, obviously that, you know, that needs work. Yes. Um, you, you there’s tricks to try and get people to stay and watch your video, but generally just good content. Yeah. Um, but so we were doing our intros.
Yeah. Not fantastically. And and we changed that. Yeah. Um, so you do get that data to make decisions.
01:09:02.910 — 01:09:29.630 · Speaker 1
Um, so I think just going back to the kind of original thinking here of like, whether or not my podcast is actually making an impact. I think that part of the problem here is that there are a lot of data points supplied to us by the channels. So if you go into your YouTube studio and you have a look at the stats for your most recent video, your library and total etcetera.
It’s overwhelming.
01:09:30.390 — 01:09:30.710 · Speaker 2
Yeah.
01:09:30.750 — 01:10:35.650 · Speaker 1
And I think that for, for us, some of the, the things that we have had to really wrap our heads around is that it’s actually not so much an individual episode that is going to make or break this interesting information there. Like what you’ve just described, the drop off and whatnot. Yeah. But actually it’s looking at your channel holistically, your content holistically, and looking at the trends to then measure things like impact and, you know, looking at our, our viewers over a window period of about 30 days has been a much better way for us to measure the impact that our content is having.
Um, and in that, in our case, that’s typically four episodes, one a week. Um, and I think those are the kinds of shifts and mindsets that I would love to have. Um, our clients have, because it’s not so much about this episode did well or this episode did poorly, but rather the overarching effect that all the episodes together are having.
01:10:35.690 — 01:11:20.300 · Speaker 2
Yes, um, you know it. You’re right. The YouTube data studio is fairly comfortable. It’s like you said, there’s so many different aspects to the video that it’s quite hard to see. So in general, like I, it’s quite hard to know what a successful video actually looks like. Is it viewer duration? Is it viewers?
Yes. Is it, um, you know, when did they drop off? The same as view. But there’s a lot. There’s most lakhs. Sometimes the most comments, like you’ve got to decide what’s important to you. I would say that a combination of just views and viewer duration. Yes. That’s quite a good way to see how popular a video is.
Yeah. Um,
01:11:21.540 — 01:11:29.420 · Speaker 2
yeah. Also, just the other data that you can glean from that kind of thing is just what type of guests work. Yes or no guests.
01:11:29.420 — 01:11:30.540 · Speaker 1
Or if guests work at.
01:11:30.540 — 01:11:54.910 · Speaker 2
All, if guests work at all. Um, we’ve seen sort of mixed data, and it seems to be quite fickle. Yes. You know, obviously if people have big sometimes someone has a big following. It actually doesn’t equal more views on your on your video, which is was interesting. Yeah. Um, so yeah, I think you’re right. I think the general long term growth of the channel I think is also.
Yes.
01:11:55.070 — 01:12:29.230 · Speaker 1
And sometimes distilling it down to the simplest of things, like we want to track our impact via growth of followers over a period. So what does the last 30 days look like compared to the previous 30 days? And not worry so much about all the nuances. It’s not, um, it’s not that those details don’t matter, but I think maybe sometimes we, um, agonize over the tiniest little things, and they don’t necessarily all stack up to to a very specific, hard and fast black and white answer, which is what we’re all.
01:12:29.310 — 01:12:56.640 · Speaker 2
I think we’ve jumped ahead a little bit. So I think the viewer duration, those sorts of things are very much middle of the funnel stuff, and they don’t you can glean data from it, but the, the sort of bottom of the funnel is, is the real good stuff. That’s where the, the sort of meters it’s direct engagement.
So likes and comments and stuff. The other stuff is gold shares. Like if people are sharing your content, that is excellent. Um, eventually you can even like off platform clicks.
01:12:56.680 — 01:14:16.100 · Speaker 1
Okay, so that’s my favorite part. Yeah, that for me is when you really feel like you actually made an impact in that client’s life. Yes. Because, you know, a viewer is important and consumption of a video is important. But I think about my own, um, activity, listening to podcasts. Sometimes a podcast is on, but I’m not actively listening.
Um, I’m doing something else, and it depends. Sometimes I am, I’m sitting in traffic and I’m not doing anything else, but sometimes I’m busy with something else while it’s on. And so that information for the business is maybe not as useful. Yeah, but when someone engages with the business by signing up to their newsletter, for example, as a result of a call to action in a podcast, that for me is the gold.
Yeah. Because you’ve now sort of de platformed that person. Good word. Oh, I know, I felt pretty fancy using it. You’ve got them. They’ve got you in. You’ve got them into your community. That’s that’s closer held. Yeah. It’s not out there on YouTube. It’s not out there in meta where you almost don’t have a tangible connection with that potential customer.
When they when they’re in your newsletter as an example, they are they’re much closer.
01:14:16.620 — 01:14:24.819 · Speaker 2
Yes. But that’s another reason why I do just like the video podcast format and YouTube, because
01:14:26.380 — 01:14:56.350 · Speaker 2
this is not based on any data. But I would imagine that people are watching it as well because they can. An audio only podcast. You are almost guaranteed to be doing something else while you are listening to it. Yes, because only a fool just stares at a at a thumbnail. Only forever. That’s true. So I think just the nature of audio podcasts as people are doing other things.
So it would be much harder to convert. Yeah. Um, yeah. So but YouTube, I generally feel people might be watching it.
01:14:56.390 — 01:14:56.750 · Speaker 1
Yes they.
01:14:56.750 — 01:15:01.750 · Speaker 2
Are. I mean, they the viewers now get to watch us sitting in a chair.
01:15:01.790 — 01:15:03.430 · Speaker 1
I know it’s thrilling.
01:15:03.990 — 01:15:05.230 · Speaker 2
Enthralling, enthralling.
01:15:05.270 — 01:15:08.590 · Speaker 1
It’s thrilling. It’s thrilling and enthralling. It’s thrilling and thrilling.
01:15:08.790 — 01:15:10.150 · Speaker 2
Yes. I’m feeling and thrilled.
01:15:10.190 — 01:15:26.990 · Speaker 1
Yeah. Okay, so, um, just to. Sorry. I don’t want to be the negative Nancy in the room, but I do think that the double screening issue does still occur. So YouTube is on, and I’m watching it, but I’m also doing something else as well.
01:15:27.950 — 01:15:29.350 · Speaker 2
Sure thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No,
01:15:30.470 — 01:15:41.160 · Speaker 2
there’s definitely that happening, but I’d say there’s more likelihood of someone actually watching it if there is somebody to actually look at. Yeah, that is true. I mean, that just seems like common sense, I don’t know.
01:15:41.200 — 01:15:43.240 · Speaker 1
No it is. You’re right. I’ll take it back.
01:15:44.840 — 01:16:18.040 · Speaker 1
Um, okay. So we’ve spoken about, like what some of the metrics might be that you could look at. Um, I also think that there’s a certain amount of, um, us as marketers having to do some education with the client around what it means to build credibility and share knowledge without the need for it to come back in such a black and white manner.
Like, I need x number of leads as a result of ten episodes. Yeah. For example.
01:16:18.040 — 01:16:19.159 · Speaker 2
That’s the classic
01:16:20.240 — 01:16:34.770 · Speaker 2
problem with marketers trying to get business people to buy into things. Yes. Um, again, it’s just it’s the long term. You’ve just got to have someone that actually can see that long term. Yeah. Yeah. Um, but yeah, to your point. Like, how do we convince them?
01:16:34.810 — 01:17:18.249 · Speaker 1
Yeah. And I do think that in the age we are moving into now where AI is, is defining what marketing is going to look like in the next 5 or 10 years. I feel like we have a job where we are working with businesses who are trying to develop their credibility, um, in terms of getting human faces in front of other humans.
And a podcast is not neat and perfect, like a well crafted banner ad or website landing page or even a TVC. You know, this is more real
01:17:19.370 — 01:17:24.489 · Speaker 1
human interaction, and I think measuring that is
01:17:25.530 — 01:17:51.430 · Speaker 1
very difficult, But it comes through in the long term success of a brand in terms of like organic search in Google. Um, and name becoming synonymous with a certain industry or space? Yeah. An individual becoming synonymous with a certain sector. Um, as a, as a person that knows a lot about that space. And
01:17:52.510 — 01:17:56.310 · Speaker 1
those have always typically been very difficult to measure.
01:17:56.350 — 01:18:41.400 · Speaker 2
Yeah, that’s a good point. So like oftentimes if we are doing brand awareness activities in theory your your organic traffic, your branded organic traffic should increase because people know your name. So they are googling your name rather than your services. Yes. Um, again, it is a long term game, but we do see this happening.
Uh, also just people direct traffic. So people who just know your URL and going straight to it. You could also you could also look at people’s, the founders, the owners, whoever’s on the podcast. Names being sued and those sorts of things. So yeah, um, that is a good way to do it. That just it just gives you an indication of like, kind of sentiment change.
01:18:41.440 — 01:19:12.520 · Speaker 1
Yeah. So and I think what’s interesting there is that we would measure all of those things completely separate from the Spotify dashboard or the YouTube dashboard. You’d look purely at your Google Analytics data to see if there’s been any trends in that space. Even something like keyword research for me is a constantly fascinating space.
Um, I think that I am a nerd, so that is maybe part of the problem, but don’t know if you remember a little while ago. Um, it was more than a little while ago. It was maybe,
01:19:13.960 — 01:19:35.650 · Speaker 1
I think. Who was it? There was a famous speech that was delivered by someone, um, or a poem that was read by someone. This was in the States, and she was wearing a coat. And while that speech was being delivered, someone was measuring keyword searches for the coat that she was wearing. Do you remember this?
01:19:35.690 — 01:19:36.170 · Speaker 2
No.
01:19:36.210 — 01:20:01.770 · Speaker 1
Okay. Um, I actually need to go and find this. It’s a fascinating story, and I don’t have enough detail on it now that I’m trying to remember it, but, um, keyword research is another way that you can get an indication of whether a particular topic, especially if it’s really niche or a subject that you’ve been talking about for a long period of time.
Yeah, it’s starting to become more in the minds of people, just purely from what they’ve.
01:20:01.770 — 01:20:04.090 · Speaker 2
Probably ever used Google Trends before.
01:20:04.130 — 01:20:04.690 · Speaker 1
No.
01:20:05.010 — 01:20:15.170 · Speaker 2
It’s really cool. And people should use it. It’s it’s I think it’s a trend Google or something or Google Trends or whatever and literally shows you what’s trending like currently, like.
01:20:15.170 — 01:20:15.890 · Speaker 1
Right this minute.
01:20:15.930 — 01:20:29.980 · Speaker 2
Right this minute. But you can search, you can go back. Yeah. Um, I sometimes go and I’ll just look for our clients. And you can search for like in a category. Okay. Um, and you go and you can actually see. You can see trends shifting.
01:20:30.020 — 01:20:31.100 · Speaker 1
Yeah. Yeah.
01:20:31.140 — 01:20:37.260 · Speaker 2
From Google. And it’s all free. And anyone can go and do it. Go look for your brand. And. Yeah, see if it’s trending.
01:20:37.980 — 01:21:11.940 · Speaker 1
Um, yeah. So I think you know what? What really comes to mind for me on this topic is, you know, everyone is looking for a direct brand relationship between what are spent on producing this piece of content and what brand value I got out of it from the other end. But honestly, the, um, the value of developing yourself or your brand as a leader in a particular space is difficult and always will be to put a brand value on and completely subjective also in my opinion.
01:21:11.980 — 01:21:19.740 · Speaker 2
Yeah. I think that ultimately it does equal more brand value. It will. Yes. But it’s just not quick.
01:21:19.840 — 01:21:20.680 · Speaker 1
Yes, it’s the time.
01:21:20.680 — 01:21:24.640 · Speaker 2
And that’s. And people bail before they get to the point of. Yeah.
01:21:24.680 — 01:21:26.200 · Speaker 1
Like critical mass.
01:21:26.240 — 01:21:31.640 · Speaker 2
They bail before they’ve like crested the peak and then. Yeah.
01:21:31.680 — 01:21:34.400 · Speaker 1
And then all of that effort behind you was worthless.
01:21:34.400 — 01:22:01.760 · Speaker 2
Basically a waste of money and worthless. So yeah, that is you know, that’s it always seems like a little bit of a tall order for someone to bow when the people selling the product or saying, you’ve got to do this for really long. Yeah. You know, you know, but but it is. It’s true. Like, what do you mean you’re quitting?
You’ve got to do this. I would say another 18 more months, uh, you know, so I get it, I get the skepticism. But it is just. Yeah, it is what it is.
01:22:01.760 — 01:22:14.880 · Speaker 1
Thanks for tuning in on today’s episode of the podcast cave. Hopefully you are not too worried about the impact of your content in the short term, but if you do have any questions for us that we can maybe answer, please pop them in the comments.
