SHOW TRANSCRIPT

This transcript is automatically generated by Descript.  Any errors or omissions are unintentional.

[00:00:00] Jeff Sieh: Welcome to Social Media News Live. I’m Jeff Sieh and you’re not.

[00:00:03] Conor Brown: and I’m Connor Brown. And this is the show that keeps you up to date with the happenings of the world of social media and more. I

[00:00:11] Jeff Sieh: So if you ever found yourself pondering the art of creating a podcast that truly engages your audience, maybe you’re intrigued by the secrets behind a successful podcast. Or maybe you’re looking to transform your passion into a captivating and popular podcast. If these questions… Strike a chord with you, then you’re in for a treat today because I’m so excited that to welcome a guest who has mastered this craft.

He’s a guru of podcasting who has turned his skills as a popular radio host into helping you create an engaging podcast. Shannon will be sharing his journey, his insights, and his top tips for successful podcasting. So clear your mind, clear your schedule. And get ready for an episode that is going to be packed with knowledge and inspiration.

So let’s dive right in Shannon. How are you doing today? My friend.

[00:00:59] Shannon Hernandez: I’m [00:01:00] doing alright, man. How are you?

[00:01:01] Jeff Sieh: Good. This is going to be fun. I’m so excited. If you don’t know Shannon is, I got to tell you, he doesn’t like to brag about himself, but I’m going to do it for him. He is a 20 year radio, 20 plus year radio veteran, podcaster and podcast producer.

He helps me with, guy Kawasaki’s podcast, and with his work in radio broadcasting, he’s got the knowledge and experience to bridge traditional media tactics and strategies with developing online content and marketing. So you can find his videos on podcasting and podcast marketing on YouTube. He hurriedly coat, I think it’s, this is still true.

He currently holds down the weeknight time slot for 98 KUPD FM and is the current sound design and editor for Guy Kawasaki’s remarkable people podcast. Shannon, once again, thank you, my friend.

[00:01:45] Shannon Hernandez: Once again, thank you for having me.

[00:01:48] Jeff Sieh: Ed, I got it.

[00:01:49] Shannon Hernandez: we’re going to clear things up hopefully with my camera too. I’m sorry for the bad, I don’t know what’s going on right now.

[00:01:54] Jeff Sieh: Well, you’re a podcaster, so, you know, it doesn’t really matter. But still, just, so, it, it, who knows, [00:02:00] it’s the internet, guys. It’s hot in Phoenix. It’s probably cooking all the… The signals and we’re just, we’re going to have to deal with it, but that, that’s fine. But I want to do a shout out to our friends over at Ecamm.

They actually have a summer sale going on right now. If you’ve never tried Ecamm before, you’ve got to give them a try. You can do live streaming like this. You can do up to 4K. You can, it’s great for presentations. I use it because when I’m done, I have separate audio tracks. I have separate video tracks.

It makes it super easy to actually take all this and repurpose. So they are having the summer sale through July 2023. Just go to socialmedianewslive. com forward slash ecamm. There’s a code up at the top you will see overlaid on the top to help you get this discount. And if you’ve never used Ecamm before, it’s perfect for a new subscriber, new subscription.

So go check them out. socialmedianewslive. com forward slash ecamm. Alright, so we’re going to be talking about this art of podcasting today because Shannon, Really does know a ton about this. So, we want to just start off [00:03:00] about the basics of creating and engaging podcasts. All right, Shannon. Like, so I want to, cause I think it’s such a big deal and I, and I, and a lot of people don’t have this skill set that you have.

So I want to know how did your background in radio influence podcasting? Mm

[00:03:18] Shannon Hernandez: Uh, podcasting from the radio broadcasting world was kind of a natural fit for me. I mean, it was you know, when it came out many years ago, I was, I was like maybe five years, a little late to the podcasting game, but I had heard about this because of the iPod and podcasts showing up there. And so as I had heard podcasts, I was like, well, this is like, this is like radio broadcasting unfiltered.

That’s really what I saw it as. And I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to go into podcasting thinking that I could be like this, some grand, awesome podcast, you know, like what we see now, these influencers, we didn’t even call them influencers back then. We’re just like, Oh, we’re podcasting. And [00:04:00] I just knew that my skillset and radio would transition very easily over into that.

I knew that there were skillsets such as a sonic branding. I knew that there were skillsets such as some of the, the tricks and tactics that we use in radio, like, segmenting your, your, your podcast in terms of. you know, allowing the listener to listen in chunks versus listening all at once. And, and, you know, there’s, there’s different research that comes out.

I mean, I, I see this research that comes out, whether it’s from the podcast, business journal or whatever news outlet. And it’s all over the place really. It’s all over. People consume podcasts very differently. Talk to me maybe five years ago. At a podcast movement and someone say, no, I would consume that all the way through for three hours.

And there are people that are like that. So my skillset in radio really has allowed me to take those, those strategies and skills from radio, such as segmenting, such as sonic brand new, such as [00:05:00] things like what we call liner notes. sponsorships, monetization, and implement them into podcasting. And I gave a talk, I believe you were there at that podcast.

It was like a podcast movement kind of as many one in San Diego many years ago. And I gave a talk on segmenting. And I think it blew everyone’s mind when it came down to the hearing, like this, this information that’s like brand new and then fast forward to 2023. And this is what everyone’s doing now, you know, and not saying that I was on the, I was on the precipice or I was on, I was way ahead of everyone else.

But that’s just how the market had gone because that’s where I believe you know, we started getting influencers, tick tock influencers, things like that. And Instagram influencers and sponsorships started to crop up. Of course, then when sponsorships started to crop up, then there are these things called endorsements or sponsorships you know, live reads, things like that.

And these were just all things that I had already known. And so it’s not anything that has been new to me. They’re just things that are implemented inside of podcasting. [00:06:00] And so. My skill set from radio over the last 24 years in radio has allowed me to kind of implement that stuff into podcasting. But on the opposite end of that, on the flip side of that coin, digital media has allowed me to learn a lot about what I can implement online and transitioned over to into traditional media as well.

So both, both things, both, both, I guess, you know, areas are very, very in congruency with each other. They work well with each other. It’s all based on, you know, what traffic you’re getting, how you can drive traffic to your podcast. How you can drive traffic to your radio show and vice versa. So that’s why I, I really latched on to podcasting a lot.

You know, obviously right now I’m not podcasting a whole lot. We do a lot of stuff with guys podcast and helping him with his podcast and the sonic branding of his podcast. But for the most part you know, when, when someone comes to me and they asked me [00:07:00] any advice, I’m telling them, okay, you can do it this way, you can do it that way, and it’s really a choice, it’s a choice on the podcast or what, how the podcaster wants that.

How they want that podcast to sound right. And I always started out with what is your objective? Like you gotta have an objective with your podcast. What’s the objective of your podcast? Is it to get more downloads? Is it to get more subscribers? Of course, those are going to be the things, but you have to have like a deep objective in order to know and understand what it is that you’re trying to accomplish.

Because that objective in radio is to get ratings. And the objective is to get ratings so that we can sell. Ads, right? And so most podcasters are trying to monetize their podcast. On the base level of what you’re asking me, all these skills that I have, the skill sets that I’ve had, base it all around the core of the core principle of what is your objective.

You’ve got to figure out an objective. You don’t have an objective, then you’re just podcasting for fun. You’re just throwing, I hate saying it this way, but you’re just throwing money in the wind and watching it fly away.[00:08:00]

[00:08:00] Jeff Sieh: That’s right. And we don’t want to do that

Right.

[00:08:03] Jeff Sieh: show. Exactly.

[00:08:05] Conor Brown: mean, if the brings it back, that’d be great,

[00:08:07] Jeff Sieh: yeah, but it just

[00:08:08] Conor Brown: no.

[00:08:08] Jeff Sieh: away.

[00:08:09] Shannon Hernandez: That would be nice. Yeah.

[00:08:12] Conor Brown: So, you know, Shannon, I love how you were talking about segmenting and, and all sorts of things. And I feel like so many people. Get daunted, you know, even when you’re just doing a weekly podcast of what am I going to talk about? What am I going to do to engage the listener? So I couldn’t imagine doing a daily radio show like you do every single day and coming up with engaging topics every single day.

But you’re a pro at it. As we know, so things for engaging listeners, keeping them in tune with the episode can you share some techniques and you know, how you can capture and then also maintain listener interest through the entirety of a, of a podcast episode or podcast segment.

[00:08:54] Shannon Hernandez: Yeah, it’s it’s, it can be similar in radio, but it can also be [00:09:00] different in radio or different in podcasting. It all depends. Let’s take for example, we’ll start with radio, then we’ll go into podcast engagement. So on radio, the levels of engagement that we’re looking for, we’re looking for obviously, you know, a quarter hour, we’re looking for a quarter hour of them to listen.

So we need them to listen to about 15 minutes of that of a full hour in order to start podcasting. you know, registering whether or not someone is interested in what’s going on. All right. As far as the content that is engaging, that is built out within the radio station promotions. That is also built out with within the talent.

At least this is how I see it, right? The other personalities will have, we’ll, they’ll give you a whole different answer, right? But this is how I’ve always seen it. I’ve always seen it as I provide value by constantly doing show prep. Back in the day when we did radio and the internet was not a thing, cat videos were not a thing.

We, we read, we read out of the news, literally the newspaper and we read in the newspaper, we read out of of trade [00:10:00] magazines and we had to start formulating some type of, I guess narrative that we would share with him and that narrative would typically be personal. So it would start with doing your show prep, trying to come up with a narrative, but how can that narrative relate back to the radio show?

How can it relate back to the promotions of what we’ve got going on? So then I look at it and I go, okay, now that we have social media and it’s been introduced, how do I get people to now really connect with me? Because back then we were using the phone lines, a phone bank. We would say, give us a call at this phone number and tell us your thoughts on why.

You know why you think the summer heat is going to impact your vacation plans, but I mean, we would probably back then I was a little more edgy and I would say something that would be ridiculous. Right? So, but you would try to get them engaged and you’re trying to engage them by something that is common, something that anyone can can come around and get around to the campfire and And [00:11:00] discuss these topics because once you create a fire, a fireside chat with them over the phones, you’re allowing them to become the radio show.

They’re the ones driving the bus. They’re the ones that are driving that engagement. Now, how do you translate that into podcasting? It’s a little bit different because it’s not in real time. I mean, most of it these days, if you’re doing it on YouTube you can do it on in real time. You have to have the tools that allow you to go into the chat, just like what we’re doing right here.

I mean, Jeff does, Jeff has done such an amazing job over the years that I’ve watched him do this. He’s pulling in comments. He’s constantly at telling people, Hey, leave a comment in the section below and I’ll put it up on the screen. Just like what we saw right now with our buddy, Jim. You know, you put a comment up right there and shoot, you can, you can engage with them in real time and it’s real time feedback.

It adds a legitimacy to you and your podcast. So, when we start building in things, say like segments into your podcast. You can build it around a [00:12:00] fireside chat. If, if it’s a specific niche audience that you’re talking to, then you’re going to want to really focus on this niche audience, right? And you’re going to want to focus on the news.

You’re going to want to focus on building show prep out and building some type of narrative. Jeff does a great job of that. He always talks about like, this is what I’ve, I’ve experienced with. A specific app or a specific service you know, using descript things kind of like that, right? So he can build this narrative around it.

And then of course he can start asking questions. What are some of the tools that you guys use, you know, and what’s making it easier for you to build out your content? And he starts getting that real time feedback, but it goes deeper than that. It goes a lot further than that. If you ask me in my opinion.

In my opinion, if you haven’t built something out on the back end of your website, then you’re starting, you’re just basically getting people to listen and watch you. It’s not a bad thing. You’re building trust with Jeff. If you’re a viewer or you’re a listener, you’re building trust with them. But eventually at some point in time, Jeff may want to, I don’t [00:13:00] know Promote a course.

Maybe he wants to promote some type of co op. Maybe he wants to promote some type of ebook. And that is really where we start talking about things like an objective, right? And we have an objective to not just necessarily sell, but to serve, right? We’re looking to serve someone. And that’s, I used to look at that word as kind of like, like a taboo, you know, you gotta serve, you gotta serve.

But I realized over the years after going to conference after conference, that what I do in radio is basically I am serving, I am serving. The audience in a very, in their world, it’s a very large way in my world. It’s like minuscule. I look at it as a very minuscule thing. I, I don’t like to pump up the idea that you know, I’m all that in a bag of chips, right?

But I have gotten feedback from people. I have them reach out to me and they say, Hey man, you know what? I deliver you know, I deliver beverages to stores all over the all over the valley. And of course I listened to [00:14:00] you on the app and I’m listening to what you’ve got going on. And even though some of those breaks that I’m doing are only like, say a minute long, you know, or a minute, you know, if I’m doing a minute and a half and radio, they’re like, Oh my God, get off the radio.

But what we end up learning is that they they love listening to us because of the quick wit banter that we are able to display. over the microphone and we’re able to communicate as fast as possible. So as far as engaging content is concerned, we’re looking for them to always be engaging with us so that they can be, they can create and be a part of the show.

They can be the ones that are running the ship. You as the host are basically kind of like the moderator. You’re just the moderator. I mean, you can bring points up inside of your presentation. But if you can get people to engage with you and you can have a conversation around what you’re talking about, then you’re winning.

You’re absolutely winning a hundred percent with the listener. Maybe, you know, if you’re doing it as a podcast you’re winning within your numbers. Maybe [00:15:00] you’re seeing downloads, maybe you’re seeing email opt ins, you know, your objective. now gets a little more clear. You start to say to yourself, Okay, what is my real objective?

Is it to get these listeners or is it to serve them? And when you’re serving your audience, then you find yourself you find yourself communicating and engaging them a little bit more because you realize and you see the return on that investment of focusing on your listener and getting them DMs. You know, YouTube, Facebook, wherever you are getting them inside because you’re building some type of trust.

And they’re going to likely share that out with someone else and say, like, Hey, you know, that Connor guy or that Jeff guy, he knows exactly what he’s talking about. He knows exactly. I mean, when I talked to Jeff, it’s, he’s got something always mind blowing that he’s sharing with me. And so what better way to build trust than to be knowledgeable, but to also help someone else achieve their goals.

[00:15:51] Jeff Sieh: So you mentioned having an end game, and you know, mine was at first is, I wanted to become a, this is way, way back in the Google Plus days. Once again, Chris [00:16:00] Stone, you can drink. It’s the, It’s having, cause he, every time, I mention it every, every show and he says it’s a drinking game. So, the thing that, that I did is it’s like I wanted to become, I just wanted to get knowledge.

And then that led to being kind of what they call a thought leader and then able to come out with courses. And in fact, the, the, this Descript course, if you go to jeffc. com forward slash Descript 101 is coming out this month. And that’s based on the people who have asked me when I, cause I’ve talked about Descript, we use it to repurpose the show.

So they have reached out you know, online or whatever and said, Hey, I want to do this. I don’t know how it’s too hard to do to do. Can you teach us? And so that course came out of that, which you were like saying, providing value, listening to your audience, engaging with your audience. And that’s what you can do on a podcast.

You just don’t want to start a podcast to say, Hey, buy my course. You want to have that time where you’re providing value and then doing the ask. So I Chris Stone over on LinkedIn goes clink. Yes, he’s already started [00:17:00] at 10 in the morning. But I, I wanna, I wanna go back and talk a little bit, Shannon, about the importance, the structure of a podcast episode is.

And I know Chris is a podcaster, Jim is too, and we have some other people watching that are. And I have, like, I have a structure. Like, I have a three point, you know, kind of show that I always do. And I usually have five questions. If I don’t have any from the audience, I always at least prepare five for each section.

So that’s kind of my show flow, and you taught me that, how important it is to have a structure to your show. But let’s talk about how important that is for people maybe who’s, are starting or, or want to kind of revamp their show. And I’d like to let you use the example of Guy’s show, because you do some things when we’re editing Guy’s show.

In the editing process that has a structure, we have the little, you know, kind of pre roll, and then we have the, you know, we, we call them back in the middle, and, because we don’t really have ads right now on the show, it’s but you break it up in certain ways to keep the audience engaged and listening.

So can you talk about that a little bit?

[00:17:59] Shannon Hernandez: Yeah, [00:18:00] so the idea structure came from radio and I talked about this and San Diego all those years ago and it’s still a part of my core principle as far as being a podcaster is concerned and being a podcast. I guess you could call it. I got a consultant. Are we consulting stuff? I mean, I mean, you could call it that.

And it’s always been a part of my philosophy is that if you build into structure, because it’s not to say that I don’t like podcasts that just start rambling and they go on for like an hour. And then I’m like, what? What? What was the point of that? Like, I just killed an hour of time and podcast. That’s how podcasters look at it.

I mean, yeah. They look at it in terms of, hey, it’s a good time. It’s a couple of bros hanging out, drinking some beers at a bar, and they’re just talking about life, but not everyone’s going to get that. And that’s where the struggle comes. Right? So when it came down to structure, I had discovered that with morning shows with.

News talk radio shows. They always had this structure and the structure would start out, say at two p. m. You had the afternoon show that came on and they started out and it was if it was a talk radio show, they [00:19:00] started out and they had a specific segment. Maybe it started with the news and they still wanted to talk about this thing.

This this fireside chat that went around something right and they wanted to Start engaging the audience. So this will go back to what Conor is talking about. How do you get them to engage? So you start building out this, you start doing your show prep and then you start building out this narrative. Okay, well, what if, and you know, like if you listen to like a lot of news talk, it’s very political, right?

And I don’t want to get into the politics, but you have to understand the structure of why they do that because they’re trying to get ratings. They’re going to talk about something that everyone in that niche is going to be very, very hot on the topic with whether it be about politics, whether it be about policy, whatever it may be, right?

And they build this narrative. Oh, I don’t want to do this and I don’t want to do that. And I don’t, I don’t believe in this and I don’t believe in that. And they’ll go on for like, say, 10, 15 minutes. Remember, I say in radio, it’s about a quarter hour. So about a quarter hour, so about seven minutes. And you have to add, you have to compensate for time in terms of ads.

If you’re not doing that in a podcast, it’s okay. You can do 15 minutes. And then maybe what you do is you bring in comments after that. So in radio, you would [00:20:00] bring in comments. So what are your thoughts on this particular, you know, I don’t know, this particular topic, what do you feel about that policy or what do you feel about that?

And you’re starting to gather engagement. So segment one is to build out the story, build out the beginning. You know, that’s the top, that’s the bottom part of the piece of the sandwich, right? It’s the bottom part, you’re going to build the foundation of whatever you’re talking about. Then the middle piece is going to be the, the meat, the content, the people that are going to bring in their, their thoughts, their, you know, their opinions, whatever it may be.

And then, or maybe you’re bringing in. a show expert or a content expert that wants to talk about that, you can build that into part of your segment. And then maybe the segment that comes after that will be engagement from the listeners. So when you’re building out these things, you’re going to have, say, a foundation or structure of the narrative or the show prep that you want to build out, then you’re going to bring in, say, a show expert.

And then after that, you’re going to bring in comments. All right. You’re gonna bring in phone calls. You’re gonna bring in all that. Then maybe the structure of that goes into if you have ads, if you [00:21:00] have sponsorships. And I, I definitely recommend to podcasters when you build out your overall objective is that you have, you have a library of things that you can promote on your website, whether that be merchandise, whether that be free downloads, whether that be something that they can gather so that you can build an audience around that you can build a loyal audience around So you can start promoting that with you build out for yourself.

You don’t have to necessarily get a sponsorship for your podcast. You can be the sponsor of your own show. Cause you’re promoting it for yourself. And it’s not, it’s not dumb. It’s not stupid because as a radio station, we do the exact same thing. We promote our events. We promote our golf tournaments.

We promote our, our, our craft beers. We promote all these things inside of our, our, our radio programming. And you can do the exact same thing. It doesn’t necessarily mean you have.

[00:21:52] Jeff Sieh: I was gonna say, couldn’t you, couldn’t you also do When you’re first starting out, do an affiliate thing, too. So, I, one, I think it makes it sound more professional when you [00:22:00] start if you’re starting a broadcast, and having these natural ad breaks or whatever this, different sections in your show, even if you don’t have a sponsor, you can get one later, and you’ve already got it, got the show set up to do that right from the start.

Correct?

[00:22:14] Shannon Hernandez: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, you can do an affiliate, you can do whatever it is. I talk about this in my, my book that my ebook that I have, I’m still, I’m just done. I finished writing. I finished recording it. And it’s I talk about the different ways in which you can monetize and affiliate marketing is just another way.

I mean, in fact, if you’re going to be doing affiliate marketing, that’s going to be the way that you should go. I mean, because you’re, You’re going to see that return on the investment of time that you’ve built out the affiliate programs or the products that you want to share and promote and see that on the back end of what, you know, and you know, I guess the one that you’re looking at, if you want to look at it this way, the common one would be Amazon.

But like say for instance, with other programs, with Adobe Creative Cloud, you can do an affiliate program [00:23:00] with them. I. You could do anything that, that is in that nature. Sorry for my fuzzy picture today, guys. I don’t know what’s with the internet today. So, you know, you just want to get your assets together because you can build those into the structure of your podcast.

All right. And you do a really great job of this. You talk about say a descript thing, or maybe you’re going to talk about an Amazon affiliate program where it’s an actual product itself. Maybe, Hey, get the roadcaster pro and this is going to make your life a thousand times simpler. Things kind of like that.

You want to build that into your overall objective. You want to make sure that you’ve got these products or maybe you’ve got these webpages set up because there’s no point in doing podcasting if you’re not making it worthwhile, right? You’re not giving value to the audience itself. So when we talk about the structure, we’re building the foundation.

We’re building the. The expert expertise from someone else. We’re getting the feedback from someone else. And then maybe you go into a break. And so maybe by that time you’ve reached a quarter hour to 20 minutes and you can build an inventory of how many ads that you build into your hour, [00:24:00] your hour. Say it’s an hour podcast.

Maybe you only allow for three minutes of ads, but you can break those three minutes of ads up if you wanted to into smaller segment ads. So let’s say it’s three minutes of ads. Let’s say instead of doing three minutes of ads, you offer a sponsorship, or maybe you just create something for yourself, a 15 second, a 15 second ad.

And then you do another 15 second ad. You can just keep promoting those things. When you listen to the radio, it seems like forever, right? It seems like forever. But it’s only three minutes this because they’ve stacked everything in 15 seconds, 15 seconds segments. Right? So depending on your philosophy of how you want to structure your podcast is up to you.

Me, just one. I would use one, maybe two, depending on the inventory that I set based on the hour that I’m going to create now. With that being said, and you structure that out over the course of an hour. So typically it would be like, so from the top of the hour to the 15 minute part of the hour, I would do content.

And then maybe from 15 minutes to 20 minutes would be maybe [00:25:00] some ads and then go back into the content and build in some new content, tease them with more stuff, right? That’s the way I look at it. And even though it feels like you’re creating inside of the podcast, you’re creating, say, you know, content that seems like a teaser.

You can always consider and think about later down the line, building in a more in depth podcast behind a paywall. So there’s another way you can start monetizing and you can say, we’re going to talk more in depth about AI on the back end of social media and news live, you know, plus or whatever. And we’re going to really get in deep with Connor.

We’re going to talk about AI and some of the tips and tricks that you could really get into. With AI and what some of the crazy stuff that we’ve got going on and building out training courses, maybe copy things like that. And so you’re just adding a different layer. So the structure of the podcast can really lead to being a tease to forward Pete, to push people forward into another area of, of your podcast.

[00:25:56] Jeff Sieh: So I want to push back, not push back, but get you to clarify a little [00:26:00] bit, so people can go listen and see what you do and kind of walk them through what you do for guys podcasts, because you have specific things like every, like, I don’t know what your formula is for how many minutes, because then you do that, you kind of do a tease of what’s coming up in the next section and all that stuff, because I know like when I first started, I didn’t, you come from radio and this is like built into your, your brain on how this works.

And for us who aren’t, high, these big DJs in Phoenix, how do, we do that? Because I’d like to, if they want to, they can go listen to guy’s show and get an example of how you do it. So kind of walk them through that if you would.

[00:26:36] Shannon Hernandez: Right. So walking from the very beginning, let’s talk about it from the very beginning. So it’s typically you know, you’re, you and I are reaching out to each other in a Slack and you say, Hey. I’ve got so and so I got, you know, Phil Zimbardo is uploaded into the drive. So how we have structured it on the back end, I mean, I’m giving like the big secret out right here, right?

So the [00:27:00] secret is, is that we set up a Google drive. And I said, Jeff, okay, when you get some of these pieces from, from guy, after you’ve gone through and you’ve, you’ve created some, some content edits, I need you to upload that into Google drive. So you upload it into Google drive and then I pull it down from Google drive.

And so on my end, what I have done is I’ve also gotten some assets from guy that he has already recorded. He’s given me the music, he’s given me the the pre recorded pieces that he would need to have at the end of the podcast. And then from there, I build out, I build out a template inside of Adobe Audition.

So I build this template out, and this is what saves me so much time. In the process of editing now, it’s, it’s not going to say like, I can edit and create a podcast in five minutes. No, you and I are very particular about Guy’s podcasts. We listen to this podcast because we want to make sure that by the time it goes through to me, it’s the third pass, right?

It’s the third pass. And if there’s something that someone had missed in the first two passes, I’m going to find it right. [00:28:00] So then I go through and I, pull in these intros. I pull in the intro that has been uploaded to Google drive. I pull in the main content that we have created and then I pull in the outro.

So then I start by uploading, everything into Adobe audition. And then I start sound, treating it. I treat it with sound and because if you’re using like a roadcast pro, it’s gonna give you some pretty decent sound. But every time you record, it can be different, right? You can get a different sound depending on the recording, different people, things like that.

So I’ll go through it. I’ll sound treat it. And so then I’ll go through and I’ll start listening. And so then I know that if the podcast is an hour long, I need to create a segment at 20 minutes and at 40 minutes. So listening behaviors in radio and it varies. It truly does vary. If you look at Tom Webster and how long someone listens, the numbers will vary, right?

And he’ll, report on how the numbers vary. And I’ve always looked at it as like as just do 20 minutes, and create 20 minutes of something. Most, commutes are 20 minutes, 30 minutes long. [00:29:00] And by the time they, they get out of the car and they have to go somewhere and let, you know, unless they’re listening in their AirPods and they’re just like, I don’t care.

I’ve created five accidents on the way, you know, it doesn’t matter. Right. But. For most people and most responsible people, they are listening and then they’re getting out of the car and then they, you know, maybe they put their ear pods in and it’s like a break. Like we have to take breaks. Like we don’t just do this unintentionally.

We do it very intentionally so that we can get where we’re going so we can talk to people and all that. So 20 minutes is like that threshold. So that’s when I add in and I go in and I use the tools I’ll use. I use Envato Elements. I go through a library and I listen to the podcast for specific elements of what Guy and his guests are talking about.

And typically whenever I go into a break or a 20 minute break where there’s going to be a musical interlude I am looking for a, a poignant or a very sharp point. In which that guest has made a point. So whether they’re telling a backstory about how they [00:30:00] grew up in, you know, I don’t know, maybe let’s just make it up.

I can’t remember, but let’s just make it up. We’ll just say like in, in Nazi Germany, and they were in a concentration camp and they got out alive and they say, this is how it built me and built me into the person that I am today and helping others overcome PTSD. And they have this real strong point that can give you chills on your arms.

That’s where I stopped that because. When we hear stories like that and we hear them in speeches, we hear them in presentations. You hear them and you will get chills and be like, wow, I can’t believe that person relates to my story and always allows you in, say, like a speech you have, you want to, you want to reflect on these things.

You want to go. Wow. I want to reflect on that. So these musical interludes that are laid underneath are allowed are meant for the listener to reflect on what the point was about. How does it relate back to them? So that’s where I look at it from. There are days where not going to lie. I mean, it gets a little [00:31:00] difficult at times because sometimes the conversations and it’s no, it’s no fault of guys or anyone else.

Sometimes the conversation is just going all over the place. Right. And, and that’s how the conversation happens. But most of the time when he’s asking the questions, I listen to what guy’s intent is, and you can get a good picture of how guy is going to push that conversation. And I can go, okay, guy’s going to go here and he’s trying to create a very poignant.

Moment for the podcast to get the listener to go, Oh, that makes it. this is how it makes sense for my business. And you add that interlude in, it’s about the interlude will last anywhere between, 40 seconds to a minute. So you hear that coming in. So you might hear these things like in laundry or things like that.

And I’ve heard them. They’re all radio people that do the same thing. You hear that it fades in, it goes, it fades up. And then it plays out for about another 10, seconds. And then I fade it out and then we go on to the next point. So if you ever notice in guys podcast, he’ll ask a question and I look for the [00:32:00] question.

Then guy answers it. And then he asks a completely different question. Guy will ask a follow up question. That’s completely different. And that’s how it’s done on radio. That’s how it’s done in TV.

[00:32:08] Jeff Sieh: Yeah. So that right there, folks, is worth this listening to this show, because it’s really good. I mean, a lot of people don’t understand this, and it is a formula. But it works. And then he has, like, I’ve even done some reads for that, where you’re listening to the guy Kawasaki’s remarkable people podcast, and that brings them back in after that poignant moment that gives them that chance to reflect.

It gives them an emotional break. So it’s not because sometimes there’s some heavy stuff. The guy talks about on, on the show and having that break and then a, you know, and now back to da, da, da, da, and then it just flows really well and adds another level of professionalism into your podcast and also it just works.

So, that right there is gold. Thank you my friend

[00:32:50] Shannon Hernandez: And I believe, wasn’t it who was it that said they loved that musical interludes. Why am [00:33:00] I spacing his name? Cause I used to watch on my head bangers ball all the time, Adam, Adam

[00:33:05] Jeff Sieh: Podcasting, Godfather of Podcasting.

[00:33:08] Shannon Hernandez: pot, the pot father.

[00:33:09] Jeff Sieh: Yeah, yeah,

[00:33:10] Shannon Hernandez: Yeah. So he, he has said the same thing. So this is now my age showing, cause I can’t remember names, even though I follow them for years.

You know,

[00:33:16] Jeff Sieh: Yeah. Anyway, Connor, you had a question. Sorry. I had to get and go down that rabbit hole.

[00:33:22] Conor Brown: I can’t offer any headbangers ball help, unfortunately.

[00:33:26] Shannon Hernandez: Adam Curry, that’s who it was. Sorry. Yeah.

[00:33:29] Conor Brown: More of a t r l kind of guy. No, that’s actually not true at all. I, I used to watch Headbangers all the time. It was great. So I love, you know, the whole planning aspect of it all. ’cause I feel like it can be very daunting, but I, I almost, I get nervous for people who just go in cold to starting a podcast like, oh, we’re just gonna have a conversation.

I think people listen to great podcasts and they think, wow, these two people are just having being. A normal conversation, and they [00:34:00] don’t realize there’s so much planning that goes into it. So they think they can show up and wing it and go from there. And it’s that old adage, you know, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail.

It’s that sort of thing. You have to have your questions ready. You have to know what your structure is going to be like. Of course, it’s going to take detours, but you want to kind of start at this central point. You’ve talked a lot, Shannon, about Guy’s podcast and how you work with that to create compelling narratives and.

Those sorts of things. But do you have examples of other podcasts that you think are particularly engaging and what they’re doing that, that makes it so.

[00:34:33] Shannon Hernandez: Well, any podcasts that I’ve ever, edited, I have always coached them into saying, you need to build into, A narrative of some sort. So there was a podcast that I was editing and she’s still going to this day is Carey Peña reports. And so she still does this to this day. She builds out the segments.

Her philosophy behind all of this, though, is to have shorter, episodes. So hers would be like, I don’t want an hour podcast. I want a 30 minute [00:35:00] podcast and that’s what works for me with a video element. And being that she has come from the radio, I’m sorry, the TV industry, itself she tries, she does exactly the same things when it comes down to building a narrative.

Hers is built around positivity, right? It’s built around all this positivity, about, positive news. we see so much negative news and so she will do the research. And when I was working with her, she would do, the research. She would go through and she would do the research online.

She would look up whatever website it was. And then she would ask questions. So as a contact creator and as say, like, anyone who wants that answer you have to put yourself in the shoes of the listener and say, Okay. Well, if this is something that’s on this website and we all do it, this is something that’s in this YouTube video.

well why can’t I put And we’ll use air conditioners, for example, because that’s what we’re going through [00:36:00] right now. Why can’t I put this condenser line on the other side of the house? Why can’t I do that? So you as the content creator are trying to figure out and predict what that listener or that viewer is going to ask and you want to answer that question.

I do know that in the past, like I mentioned this a long time ago, Mike Stelzner did it. There was one, one podcast that has done it. And I listened to it still to this day is the marketplace podcast because they segment everything out and their interviews are really short, but they ask. They ask specific questions, right?

They ask specific questions that are going to be relatable to the listener, whether it be about employment or whether it be like common issues, you know, these, these commonplace issues where people can relate, Oh, the, the, the, the pinch in your budget is really getting to you, not just in Michigan, but it’s getting to you in Texas, wherever it may be.

And they ask these pointed questions to some of these guests. And then you’ll hear sometimes these interludes that will come through and they’ll build a structure out. So, and Marketplace is only really, I think [00:37:00] it’s only like a 20 to 30 minute podcast, if that, and you hear so much value that podcast has never gotten the love, that I think it deserves because we hear a lot about NPR, we hear about all these other podcasts that have been built out and don’t get me wrong.

Those are great. How we have or how we create our podcast is up to us. But it’s really if you haven’t figured out your objective, then maybe your podcast, you may think that your podcast sounds not so great, but if you have an objective, say like marketplace, they’re looking for downloads, they’re looking for sponsors, they’re nonprofit, but they’re looking for something and they’re looking to get the listener engaged, but they’re still building it around a radio philosophy of structure and that structure when they’re layering in this music, they’re looking for those poignant moments.

much.

[00:37:49] Jeff Sieh: So I think what I hear you saying is that it doesn’t matter really the length of your podcast. You have to be an hour podcast. You can still be engaging and you want to have a structure even for a short 20 minute podcast. You’re [00:38:00] not just flipping it on and just kind of, let’s just talk. You actually have a structure.

One of the things for this show that I’ve always tried to do, and like, Dave Jackson, Dave Jackson. I sent you an email by the way, Dave. He said Adam Curry. He knew. He’s from the school podcast. He knows, he knows that. He’s been probably doing it as long as We’re having Lou Mangello on next week to talk about some more podcasting ideas.

Dave has been doing it for a long time as well, but the point is is what I like to do is I have my questions, but if I see a question similar from the audience, I’m going to pull theirs instead of go to with mine because I want to have that engagement. I want to have that. And, and when I’m, when this is released as a podcast, I want the listeners to go, Oh, maybe I should watch his show live because I could ask my own questions of the guests.

So. I think being engaging is super key for any sort of podcasting, no matter live, you know, length, whatever it needs to be. So I want to talk about this next, because this is something that a lot of people get hung up on, Shannon. And you [00:39:00] helped me with this at the beginning, and I used, at the beginning, like, I think I used that Yeti that we used for, like, years before I upgraded the PR 40.

And it was a great mic. It did what it needed to do at the time. So I wanna ask you, how does the quality of sound and editing, because editing, editing is an important factor too. How does it impact listener engagement?

[00:39:22] Shannon Hernandez: You know, do you hear the old saying, you know, the thing is you’re going to hear the saying, you know, like people will not forgive, you know, poor audio. And it is true, but I mean, I, I don’t know if it’s, I have, I have two ways of looking at this because I, now I’m seeing traditional media pull these people in from zoom calls, right?

And the audio, like there’ll be like, like they’re like, Oh yeah, I’m in the war field of Ukraine and they’re on a zoom call. Right. And you’re just like, and you’re like, Oh my God, this is driving me nuts. And it drives me nuts because I’ll be cooking lunch and I want to hear what’s going on. But that video or [00:40:00] that audio is breaking up kind of like my video today.

It’s not very good. I’m sorry about this guys. But either way, when it comes down to it, the audio is what is important to you want to be able to hear the message that is being delivered, right? You want this message delivered out. And if you’ve got poor audio, if you got someone who sounds like they’re like way far away to me, I don’t know.

This is opinion. You know, everyone’s got a different way of looking at it. My opinion is that when the audio sounds far away, if I have to lean in and listen to it, I’m annoyed. Like that’s just me. I’m annoyed by it. Right. So we have a lot of these tools that we can utilize inside of podcasting these days where we can make the audio sound better.

We can make the audio sound as though if they’re talking on a webcam, we can make it sound like studio quality sound. And again this is just, you know, One of the features of what the script does is the script allows you to create something like a studio sound. Does it work all the time? No, but I would say that when we have gotten and worked with guys podcast and we’ve gotten some of these calls where they’re on a webcam and we’re like, man, that sounds, that [00:41:00] sounds like trash.

I don’t know if we’re gonna be able to fix that. And we’ll say like, Oh, you’ll say like, let me run it through studio sound. And it, it, it creates this equalization process. If I’m going to say it like that, it’s going to create this equalization process where it makes that webcam sound, webcam sound like one of the mics we’re talking on right now.

And you’re like, Whoa, this blows my mind. You know, like when you first sent me that, I was like, what is this? You know, and I couldn’t believe that that’s what it was doing. And Adobe has their own tool to do that as well. And so, it’s, it, sound quality is important. And I think it is important when it comes down to.

How we listen. I’ve been saying this for years and I’ve had pushback on this for many, many years, but now here we are. And I’m not going to be the guy that says I’m right, but here we

[00:41:42] Jeff Sieh: are . Yeah,

[00:41:43] Shannon Hernandez: here we are. I mean, I’m not saying that I’m right, but this is, here we are, here we are. And I

[00:41:48] Jeff Sieh: don’t have to have a, you don’t have to have like a 3000 mic like you have at the radio station. You can get a a hundred dollars or more mic and it’ll be fine. Mm-hmm.

[00:41:58] Shannon Hernandez: No, yeah, you can get a hundred dollar [00:42:00] mic. I mean, you can get what you, what you can get a Heil Mike. You can get, if you wanted to go a little higher, you can get one of these. these shore mics, but you can get just like, you can just get regular dynamic microphone and start working. These things work. Like you want to get something that works, that makes it sound great.

You know, maybe you’re not getting a lot enough low end. Maybe you want to get a short SM seven beat. Maybe that’s up to you. Maybe you want to get that, but maybe you want to get us, maybe you want to get an SM, SM 58. That’s, you know, it’s for on stage microphones, but it’ll still work for podcasting. I mean, some of the biggest rock stars that I know that do podcasting like Jamie Josta, they were using for a long time.

SM 58s and that’s how they would do it. And that’s what they would use on the road. So I mean, we don’t have to be like wildly particular, but I mean, don’t be recording it from like a webcam microphone and then you can’t understand the banter that is going on back and forth because that can get really confusing.

[00:42:48] Jeff Sieh: Yeah, I want to pull up this comment from a friend Richard over on LinkedIn. He goes, can you can record separate tracks locally like Riverside FM. Yes, they can Richard and I love that that they do [00:43:00] that and they also record if you have max silicone because he cam is So Mac based. It also records isolated video tracks.

Which lets me go back and repurpose this thing like nobody’s business. So I love Ecamm. So, make sure if you’re, thanks for bringing that up. And it’s a great plug so you can go to socialmedianewslive. com. org. It’s like Ecamm. Once again, they got a summer sale going on. If you haven’t tried it out yet, this is the sale to check it out because it’s significantly discounted.

So, very, very, very good. So let’s Shannon you had a question. Sorry. I mean not Shannon, Connor.

[00:43:35] Shannon Hernandez: I don’t think I do.

[00:43:37] Conor Brown: So I, I think, you know, we talk a lot about the mistakes that, that occur, but what are the common technical mistakes that could lead to podcast listeners becoming disengaged? We talked about audio, about being far away from the mic, things like that, but in the setup and the editing, those sorts of things, what are some, some technical mistakes people should try to avoid Shannon?

I[00:44:00]

[00:44:00] Shannon Hernandez: You know, as far as I don’t know if I can answer this the best way possible because I’ve been doing it for so long, but I guess as far as technical mistakes that you can be concerned about is I would say leveling I level everything out as far as when I talk about equalization and leveling and normalization, I, I like to limit my audio.

My biggest problem with podcasts and I’m sure other podcast coaches and all this, Okay. whether they agree or disagree with me, this is the way the philosophy and how I work with it is that a look at audio tracks when they’re played in the car. or in through headphones. That’s how I look at it. I always look at it that way because when we’re listening to a podcast, if I hear that the guest has very, very soft sounding audio, low gain audio, and then their guests is like blowing the mic out and then you’re hearing it out of one ear.

Like this is a common mistake that I hear with podcasters that they’ll run a podcast. [00:45:00] And they have everything polarized to one side. They have the guests in this year and then they have their, they have themselves in this year on the final cut, right? On the final edit. And you’re like, Whoa, this, this is confusing.

Like you don’t need to be panning things out. And I, and I mean, I’ve heard, I mean, I have seen. Professional TV people do this, and I’m like, I don’t understand how you have a job in TV right now. I’ve seen professional radio people do this, and it’s, it’s, I don’t want to bag on them, but to me, it feels, it feels to me like it’s kind of a little bit embarrassing because but we’re all learning, right?

We are always learning, so if we can fix that mistake, and we can say, Cheryl, hey, you’ve got things panned out, or you, you did something with the individual tracks, and they’re, and they’re panned on left and right. Two different tracks. You need to mix that down. You need to mix that down into a game. Now, that’s the problem that we see with most podcasters.

I’ve never believed in the separate tracks. I know like people like I know you believe in it, Jeff. I don’t believe in the, in the separate tracks at all. Because I can always, I, [00:46:00] I have streamlined that process in one. And using the presets that are inside of Adobe Audition. So let’s answer this question that

[00:46:07] Jeff Sieh: So what do you, so what do you mean about that? I believe in separate tracks. What do you mean by that?

[00:46:11] Shannon Hernandez: We’ll use the separate tracks for the different, like the different, the different guests,

[00:46:15] Jeff Sieh: But we mix it down into two. We don’t,

[00:46:17] Shannon Hernandez: But we mix it

[00:46:17] Jeff Sieh: Yeah, yeah,

[00:46:18] Shannon Hernandez: right? Yeah, we mix it down though. So you, you want the individual sound from them, but when we ended up mixing it down, I can flatten that entire audio file and limit. And they call it a hard limit or inside of Adobe audition.

I can hard limit the, the amount. Of sound that is coming out and when you look at the actual file itself, it looks like one flat track, right? I don’t know if that makes sense. You know, people like maybe Dave Jackson probably could describe that, but I don’t look at it as a point in which you know, you have to be recording always in separate tracks.

You can record in one track because that’s how he’s always done it in radio. We’ve always got Everything depends on your mix. It depends on what you’re using on your mixing board [00:47:00] and how loud you’re, you’re pulling someone in. Now, will you get bad audio sometimes? Yeah, you will get bad audio. So to answer your question, Connor, the common things that I see podcasters doing that make it difficult in the post product production process is that they don’t know how to produce that audio.

They don’t know how to process that audio. And you’re getting lower levels than your guests or higher levels than who you were, than you speaking into the microphone. And that creates for really awkward listening experience for me at least. So I try to at least tell my clients say like, look, you’re, if you’re going to do this, this, multi track where everyone is on a different track.

You need to mix it down. Don’t make it difficult on yourself. Don’t make the process longer than what it is. Surveys that I’ve asked with people who get on my email list, how long does it take for you to edit up a podcast? And they’re like, dude, this takes me anywhere between four hours to eight hours a week.

Mike shouldn’t take you that long. It should only take you at most, at most an hour long, you know, a streamlining. Every time I edit a podcast [00:48:00] with with a guy, it’s at least an hour. And that’s it. It’s an hour of my time.

[00:48:04] Jeff Sieh: So I do want to say, because it’s a separate track thing, the reason I like it is because a guy sometimes bonks his microphone, or somebody coughs, or something like that, it’s easy for me to take their track and mute them, and then mix it down, and that’s not there. It’s just easy for me to separate stuff like that.

That’s

[00:48:23] Shannon Hernandez: Yeah. And it’s a philosophy. It, it, it, there’s no right or way, wrong way of doing any of this, right? There’s no right or wrong way. The content is what matters. But I mean, if it’s constant, like, you know, if it’s constantly that, you know,

[00:48:35] Jeff Sieh: We’ve got a problem. We’ve got an issue. Yeah

yeah,

[00:48:38] Conor Brown: say that

[00:48:38] Shannon Hernandez: got to fix that.

[00:48:39] Conor Brown: that right or left, that actually makes me like physically sick, like I get headaches from it. I get dizzy from it. I, I do not like that.

[00:48:47] Jeff Sieh: I get it in some of the storytelling podcasts. Like, one of my favorite one is like Wondry’s Business Wars, and they’ll use some of those effects sparingly. They don’t have people coming out at different ears, but it’s like, if somebody’s walking across, [00:49:00] like, you know, the room, you can hear it going across.

That kind of stuff’s fine. Anyway, we’re getting ner We’re

[00:49:06] Shannon Hernandez: that gets nerdy, right? That’s called sound design. So when you do things like that, that is intentional. It’s, it’s the podcast that I find they just record and they’re, you know, they’re using a mono, they’re using mono inside of their plugs. And you’re like, Oh God, my God, I cannot hear this.

I do not want to hear this guy on this side. I need to hear it because like, like Connor says, like you get like, almost physically sick hearing it. And then I’m like, that’s one thing that will make me go. I’m done with this. I can’t listen to this right now.

[00:49:33] Jeff Sieh: One of the other things I would say that people, when they’re first starting out, is they don’t plan. we plan this show. everytime I always have questions ready, even though I would rather take questions from the audience. I always am prepared, and Shannon taught me this I always started, when I ever did any show, I always had ten questions to go out of the gate.

And now I have, for each section, I have at least five for each. So, that’s one of the things I would say too. I do want to pull up a comment from [00:50:00] Dave Jackson, I appreciate listening. over on LinkedIn. He says, if you want to start fishing, you need to buy a pole. If you want to use podcasting to promote your message, dear guest, you need to spend 70 on a Samson Q2U So, very great point there. Thanks Dave for that. I think you should also just remind yourself that like, Hey, how serious do you want to take this thing? Right. How serious do you want to take

[00:50:22] Shannon Hernandez: it

[00:50:23] Jeff Sieh: you

Can

upgrade

too

[00:50:24] Shannon Hernandez: yeah. And you can always upgrade. We, like you said, you and I started with blue Yetis. In the very beginning and then we just gradually upgraded.

I mean, last year I finally caved in because I was using a Yamaha, MG10XU for many years. I was like, this just works fine. I finally upgraded into a Rodecaster pro II And I’m like, okay, yeah, I’ve been missing life. Completely in a whole different way. This thing works just like a radio station mixing board.

So you’re going to upgrade eventually.

[00:50:52] Conor Brown: And we’re all working from home. You can use that for multiple purposes. It doesn’t just have to be a podcast. You can use it for your zoom calls, for whatever you want for recording [00:51:00] videos, you know, you upgrade maybe for a podcast, but you lose it for a million different things.

[00:51:05] Shannon Hernandez: A hundred percent. Yeah,

[00:51:06] Jeff Sieh: So, I want to ask, you know, we’re, gosh, I can talk about this nerdy app. I’m talking about nerding out. So let’s talk about

[00:51:12] Shannon Hernandez: nerd out.

[00:51:13] Jeff Sieh: Let’s talk about some of your, on this last question for this section, let’s talk about some of your favorite tools or software for recording and editing to help that engaging content.

We mentioned Descript, which I love because not only does it help me edit podcasts, video, repurposing, all that stuff. I love the Adobe suite of tools, but do you have some that I’m not thinking of, maybe some plugins or something like that, Shannon?

[00:51:34] Shannon Hernandez: You know, I’m not really using any plugins because I have found that plugins are basically someone, I mean, you. There’s a different opinions about this, but I have all that plugins. You can just go in and create them yourselves with the presets inside of Adobe audition. So I particularly like to be very hands on with that, but the tools that I will use will just be like Adobe audition and the script.

I love the fact that the script of how the script has is so versatile and you can utilize it. Is it an Adobe audition where [00:52:00] you can do a lot of sound treating? Yes and no, more no than yes. You know, things that you have sent over to me through descriptor like I’ve processed this if a little bit so it can help you out and those processes do help and work in tandem with what I’m using with adobe audition.

So, I don’t particularly like to spend money on plugins because then once I start digging into the plugin, I’m like, oh, that’s all that was. Oh, I can do this by hand, you know, so, you know, but for someone who needs things like that, you know, you look into different plugins, look into different things that you would need to use for Adobe audition.

Not everyone is going to use Adobe audition. Not everyone is going to use pro tools. You know, not everyone is, is going to use. Any other, you know, audacity if you’re starting out, not everyone’s gonna use that. So, just find the one that works best for you. The ones that I typically use are going to be mainly it’s mainly going to be Adobe Audition.

I will use Zoom. I will use my phone. Like, I have gone into so much tech with this stuff that at the end of the [00:53:00] day when I look at it, I’m like, I don’t need any of this stuff. I need what exists, right? My phone exists. I have, you know, whether, you know, I still have a Skype account. I’ll use Skype because sometimes people are like.

[00:53:10] Jeff Sieh: that’s of the devil.

[00:53:11] Shannon Hernandez: Yeah, it’s like I’ll still like use a Skype account or, or I’ll, but these days when, when you’re using things like, and of course this is not me covering it up. I’m just saying that this is a part of the tool these days. When you use something like, say like E cam E cam does so much more now these days, right?

It’s doing so much more. I can bring, you can pull people in and you can have them on a call just like on a zoom call. I mean, you can use things like Riverside. I mean, there’s just a. ton of them that exist out there. You’ve got to find the one that fits best for you for the purposes of what your objective is going to be.

[00:53:42] Jeff Sieh: Alright, so we’re going to have to do a fire round on this last section. So, but I think it’s really important because one of the things is you have been in radio for so long. You would not have survived in radio if you weren’t a storyteller. There’s a reason why. You’ve lasted as a DJ because you’re [00:54:00] able to keep audiences engaged.

And that is a skill. And that a lot of that has to do with storytelling. So how can podcasters use storytelling techniques to create more engaging content?

[00:54:11] Shannon Hernandez: You know, it’s like it comes back to the very beginning of what I was talking about in the podcast or this video is that it’s based around the show prep. You have to build a narrative that relates back to your audience. You have to build something that they relate to. As an example, here in phoenix, it’s 1000 degrees every single day.

It is a common thing. It’s a common thing that our air conditioners are going out. It’s a common thing that we are dehydrated. It is a common thing that we go to concerts and we think that we are complete we’re, excuse me for saying this bad asses for going out to a show, things like that. And those all build into the story of what we tell.

on the radio, you know, and you know, we just recently had some research that had came back. And I think it said that, like, you know, people love what we have to say, you know, like what they love [00:55:00] us. They love the jocks. They love how we, how we share the stories and how we engage people with common stories.

As an example, the morning show that I work with their philosophy behind their entire show is that the content is very organic, but it’s still built around a structure. and their structure is the same thing every single day, right? But every single day has a different segment. It’s not the same segment over and over.

So Monday, say for example, they just have a regular day. Then Tuesdays, maybe they bring in this segment called, they call it, what would Brady do? And they ask one of the co hosts, what would you do in this circumstance? And they get this engagement from the listeners. They ask questions, you know, and there are these ridiculous questions that ask, you know, like, you know, my brother’s sister is, you know, dating so and so My father, and they’re these ridiculous questions, right?

And they’re done on purpose, but then you’re supposed to have the co-host answer in such a innocent way, right? So then on Tuesday would be that. Then Wednesday would be something called Rock Wars, and they would build a theme [00:56:00] around that. And Rock Wars would be mainly be like, okay, today’s theme is that there was a llama running around the street in North Phoenix and the cops could not catch it.

What is the theme song that we should play? For that particular thing. And so then they, so each guest, all four elements of that show, we’ll pick a song and then the listeners vote on it. They vote on the song that they want to hear. Right. So that might be Wednesday’s segment. That’s the big segment. Then Thursday might be a comedian that comes in Friday.

They have something else called Guadalupe squares. And that is where the main host, he is very good at impersonating actors. And so. they will pay, they will play something that is very similar to Hollywood squares, but they call it Guadalupe squares is a whole inside joke behind it. And that gets the listeners engaged.

And so they have to listeners that are going to say true or false on this question and whether or not that particular guest is going to you know, that particular you know, Hollywood guest is going to give the right answer or the wrong answer, right? And so it just builds this level of engagement with your audience.

And [00:57:00] so I think it’s really, really important that the show prep is a part of what you’re talking about. It comes back to building that narrative and building people into your show to allow them to build trust with you and know that, Hey, I can listen to this guy or I can listen to the show and I can always come back every single week because they have something to offer.

[00:57:20] Jeff Sieh: That’s great. Yeah,

[00:57:22] Conor Brown: Yeah, I think

[00:57:23] Jeff Sieh: go ahead. Go ahead.

[00:57:25] Conor Brown: if you’re, you’re, you’re talking about, you know, getting people engaged and all that, but how can you understand people are truly engaged? Do you have any strategies for knowing when they’re engaged, what your audience finds engaging? And, and then using that kind of, is it data? Is it just feedback?

What are those strategies to understand what they’re actually finding engaging?

[00:57:48] Shannon Hernandez: You’re going to pull that from many different areas. And again, it comes back to building out your objective. What is your objective? What is the objective that you’re trying to get across for yourself? And and [00:58:00] if you’re going to figure out that engagement, if you’re engaged, if your objective is to say, okay, I want them to, I want these people to talk about podcasting and I want them to talk about, or I want them to be more engaged in.

What is the process of podcasting? Hey, how can I reach out to you? And we’re talking specifically say about Jeff’s show. How can Jeff can go back and say like, okay, what were some of the most important points of today? And, and how can I help you based on today’s podcast? How can I help you achieve your objective in such a way?

So you’re either getting it from social media. You can get it from data. You can send out surveys through your email marketing list. You can you know, like, right, you can look at different different metrics inside of apple podcast, spotify, time spent listening, see where the engagement is, is really high, where it’s really low you know, whether those are, are accurate or not.

You know, it depends, but you can kind of see and you can get a general idea. I mean, I know YouTube does this. You can see where the highest [00:59:00] engaging point of your video is going to be. And you typically know, right? You always know whenever that engaging point is going to happen. But if you want to go back and look in and dig into the metrics, you can go in and you can see those things on the different platforms.

I really wish that there was more of a universal. Metric that you could look at as opposed to going into each and every individual platform like Spotify, Apple Podcasts, wherever, to see what those metrics look like on the levels of engagement and see where people drop off. I wish there was something that was more universal, but now that we have done podcasting for so many years, that there’s so many, there’s so many companies have cropped up as far as hosting providers are concerned, that everyone’s got something like that.

And so, You’re trying to look at like, well, where is that working? I mean, is it working more on Spotify? Is it not working better in apple podcast? I mean, you can take those or you can decide what you want to do with those metrics. All right. But you have to figure out what your objective is, because if your objective does not fall in line with what you’re trying to measure, then it’s not going to [01:00:00] make any sense.

[01:00:01] Jeff Sieh: Well, my objective for this show is to tell you guys how awesome Shannon Hernandez is. We have went past our cutoff time, but Shannon, this has been amazing. I always value your insights and your wisdom. It gives me more ideas. I know it’s given our audiences some more ideas as well. Maybe start their podcast or make their podcast better.

But where can people find the amazing Shannon Hernandez? Where do they need to go to find out more about

[01:00:29] Shannon Hernandez: I’m just gonna disappear like a genie is what I’m gonna do when I’m gone. And that’s it. No, you can reach out to me at the shanman dot com. There’s a contact me form right there. If you have any questions about your podcast, just go ahead and head on over there. There’s also a free quick start guide on how you can start your podcast.

This is a guy that constantly gets hit up by people who are looking to start a podcast. And I have a complete equipment list of what I’m using and maybe some other recommendations that You can also consider in your options of starting your podcast,

[01:00:56] Jeff Sieh: Yeah. And he does know what he’s talking. He’s helped me so much throughout the years. [01:01:00] Once again, he does the stuff that we put together for a guy Kawasaki’s marketable people podcast, which does really, really well and has some incredible guests on there. But somebody who also does really, really well is my co host, Connor Brown.

Connor, where can people find out more about you and what you offer?

[01:01:17] Conor Brown: You can find out more about me at www. opinion. com and across the social medias at www. opinion. com. I can help you plan your next awesome Disney vacation, Christmas Halloween coming up. You want to plan a trip to Disney world, Disneyland, Disney cruise line, or other places around the world. Reach out to me.

www. opinion. com.

[01:01:38] Jeff Sieh: And I’m heading to Disney in October, and Connor’s gonna be setting that up. So, I’m not just I also use Connor, I guess is what I’m saying. So, make sure you guys, yeah. So, by the way, I wanted to give you guys, thank you guys want to thank our sponsors, socialmedianewslive. com, 4Sites, Ecamm. They are what make this show possible.

They are great for podcasting, for live video, for live podcasting. All the things [01:02:00] we talked about today, the, the tracks that they have, the isolated tracks, the isolated audio, and isolated video like I talked about with Richard it’s, it’s amazing. It really does allow you to do so much with your show when it’s done.

And while you’re doing it. So make sure you check them out. So she’ll be news live. com for such ECAM. They got a summer sale going on right now. They also have something really cool coming up, which I’m a part of is their creator camp, which is October 11th through 13th. Make sure you guys go there at ECAM.

tv forward slash creator camp to find out about that. I think they’re almost 75% to 80% full. They’re keeping it locked down. This year because it’s their first event, but it’s going to be so much fun. So make sure you check that out. Ecamm. tv forward slash creator camp. And with that, I like to thank all of you guys.

I think Tatiana, Tatiana for coming today Tracy, Carrie, Richard, Dave Jackson, everybody who showed up. I appreciate you. We wouldn’t be able to do the show without that, without you guys watching. And Jim and Chris, all you folks who show up every week, we appreciate you. And with that, we’ll see you guys next [01:03:00] time.

Bye everybody.