the iPhone has a "Phone" app. the Apple TV has a "TV" app. the Watch has a "Clock" app. but where is the mac's "Computer" app --Joe Groff
Not many links this week – I've been on the go pretty much nonstop.
I went to a podcast barcamp in Düsseldorf last week – what a great event! The Podcastverein organized it, and this was the first time they held it at the Central Library in Düsseldorf instead of Essen. Since it's just a short walk from my place, I figured why not give it a shot this year.
During the intro round (about 80 people showed up), I couldn't help but notice that practically everyone was self-employed. Interesting crowd!
One workshop that really caught my attention was about using AI tools in podcast production workflows, led by Der Schepp and Frank Sarodnick. I came away with tons of ideas for automating my own processes. So much to implement! Part of me wonders if there's a product opportunity here... but no, I've already got way too many side projects as it is!
A lot of the sessions focused on growing your listener base. Here are my main takeaways:
- Just throw a short trailer on YouTube and drop $50 on ads – definitely worth trying
- Guest swap with other podcasters – brings new listeners to both shows. We already do this, but should probably do it more. Interesting insight: lesser-known guests might actually be better than big names because they're not overexposed (if you've heard someone famous on two podcasts already, a third appearance isn't as exciting)
- Every podcast needs a newsletter! Maybe, but ugh, more work...
- To grow on social media, you need to actively engage with similar podcasters' posts. Honestly, this is exactly what I hate about social media. I enjoy hanging out in certain online spaces, but scrolling through LinkedIn feels about as appealing as buying drugs at the train station. Not quite desperate enough for that yet.
- Have social media templates ready for guests so they can easily share content (sounds like a ton of work though)
- Someone mentioned castbox.fm as a good traffic source – never heard of it
- There's apparently SEO-style advice for podcasts, like "don't put 'podcast' in your subtitle" or "only tag people who are actually active on social media, because dead tags hurt your reach"
- Include a clear call-to-action with a link for comments in your episode descriptions
Tips for landing sponsors:
- Contact companies that sponsor conferences in your niche
- Reach out directly to CEOs and try to book them as guests
- You need a certain size before Apple will even talk to you (for iTunes features, etc.). Team up with other podcasts to hit that threshold.
I also sat in on a session about the business side of podcasting by Christoph Falke, which really opened my eyes to how successful niche podcasts can be. Way more than I'd realized! It got me thinking that our podcast might actually fit into that "small but mighty" category. We probably need to step things up a bit to really capitalize on that though.
Gear
I was surprised to learn that most podcasters now use tools like riverside.fm or zencastr.com. We're still rocking our old-school reaper/ultraschall/auphonic setup and honestly, I love it. We even ship headsets and audio interfaces to our guests to ensure good sound quality. They connect through StudioLink directly into our Ultraschall DAW, and the audio quality is really solid.
Overall, it was a really enjoyable event. Can't wait for next year!
Open Source Stuff
- Switched over to uv
- Added support for password managers like 1Password – you can now use them to supply your credentials when fetching API tokens
- Also migrated to uv
- Did some documentation updates and general cleanup
Links
