Welcome to Podcast Insider.

I'm Mike Dell, vice president of customer relations at Blueberry.

And I'm Dave Clements, technical support and social media specialist here at Blueberry.

Today, we're gonna be talking about how to experiment with your show format without freaking out your audience or yourself.

You're listening to Podcast Insider, a weekly podcast bringing insights, advice, and insider tips and tricks to help you start, grow, and thrive through podcasting with the support of your team here at Blueberry Podcasting.

Welcome.

Let's dive in.

Yeah.

Freaking out the audience is a thing.

It's just people you know, now I being the king of pod fade, I've tried every format and all that, and, you know, none of them really stuck.

So my, you know, my format changes a lot on my main show.

But on my little daily show, it's almost the same every time.

And, you know, it's it's always good to to mix it up once in a while, you know, as long as I I deal with that a lot too.

I've been doing this for I think this is officially my thirteenth year, fourteenth.

I don't remember now.

But I know all the different shows that I've I've done.

I have changed the format largely because I get bored.

I'll do it like that for a couple years, and I'm like, nah.

I gotta switch it up.

Is that kinda the case with you, or is it just the show died, you brought it back, it died, you brought it back?

No.

That's weird.

Yeah.

With me, it's, kind of I do a show.

I do an episode, and it's a serious episode.

And then, you know, the next one, well, I got a different topic.

It's not so serious, and I just change it up.

I mean but my audience sort of expects that.

They never they never know what they're gonna get when they hit play.

And but, you know, like, Todd was always saying about Geek News Central as he would just do one little thing, you know, like, he used to do a cold open, and then he'd play a theme song, And then he would go into, you know, his personal stuff, and then he would get into the meat of the episode.

And and what he would do is he'd sometimes he'd play the theme first for a while and then do the cold open and or not cold open, just open.

And, you know, just little tweaks like that.

He's, you know, changed up the theme song and, you know, just that kind of thing.

And, you know, as long as it's not too abrupt and too ridiculous, it's not bad, you know?

And, you know, it there are some people out there that, you know, listeners that will be offended that, well, you're not doing this anymore.

Why?

You know?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think that that's always that's always what I've done is little changes.

You know, my first and what I would call my flagship show, it was a pop culture podcast, and I started out where it was just me.

It was just me behind the microphone, and I'd talk about a comic book or a movie or something like that.

And then at some point, I made friends with a guy who liked all the same stuff I did, and I was like, well, come in as a cohost.

And that was a huge change, but people really responded to it well.

Because, apparently, I work better in a multi person, you know, format rather than a solo format.

So people have always been really happy that it's always me and somebody else just to have that dialogue and and to bounce ideas and opinions off each other.

But I've changed music and all kinds of stuff.

But, you know, doing this for as long as we have, we've had a lot of time to experiment.

Oh, yeah.

It's, you know, it's it's fun.

It keeps you excited, you know, when you're changing things up.

And but, you know, you also kinda gotta keep it sort of the same at the same time.

And I know that's weird, but, you know, adding a cohost to what was formerly a a solo show can add excitement for you, can, you know, help the audience get to know somebody else and all that.

We've switched this, this show's format up a couple of times in its, history.

And, you know, but we've done really big, abrupt changes, probably not the best way to do it.

But, hey.

We still got you listening or whoever is listening.

That's good.

Right.

But, you know, we've we've you know, we used to cover, you know, current events and all that.

And, you know, there's enough other shows out there doing that, so we decided to focus more on helping you, you know, with podcasting stuff.

That's what a podcast about podcasting is supposed to do.

But, you know, we've done minor tweaks to our format.

You know, you'll notice that we don't have as bit much theme music as we once did.

You know, used to do a cold open.

Sometimes we do.

Sometimes we don't.

It all depends on what Kate's doing, our editor, and we leave it up to her.

She knows what she's doing.

And, you know, we're just talent.

Well, that's in big air quotes.

But, anyway, but, you know, it's, it's a lot of it's a lot of fun, you know, changing things up.

You know, test stuff.

Ask your audience about it too.

Hey.

You noticed we started the show a little different today.

What do you think?

And, you know, I might get some people talking to you.

Yeah.

That was always a big thing that I ran into, in those earlier days where I was still trying to figure it out.

And, you know, sometimes I would prefer one format over another.

And so that would end up being my call to action at the end of an episode, which was, hey.

Do you like, you know, this segment that I added?

Do you wish this old segment I took out was still here?

And that would actually prompt feedback, because if I didn't hear anything, well, I'm just gonna keep doing it until I'm bored with it.

Mhmm.

And I think it's a really good way to start to build that community, And that's a that's a thing that podcasters talk about a lot is, well, how do I build a community?

Play around with your show a little bit.

That's what made my show bigger for me.

And, you know, I always got good feedback.

Sometimes I listened to it.

Sometimes I didn't.

But I think the the biggest recommendation I could give is start small with, you know, what I would consider tweaks, and then experiment would be your next step.

Like, move some things around.

And then if you have overhauls, like adding a cohost or removing a cohost or whatever, Those those big things, like, save those till last once you have feedback from your audience.

Yeah.

And, you know, getting feedback, it's amazing what one email can do to, you know, a person that's, you know, us doing a solo show, and they're not getting much feedback.

You know?

Tweak it a little bit and, you know, invite the feedback.

That's the that's the thing.

You know?

The listeners will tell you if you're doing something really wrong, most of the time, either that or they just disappear.

So if you see your stats crash, well, you know, well, that ain't working.

Right.

You know?

But, you know, it's it it's your show.

Do what you like, and, you know, keep it exciting for you.

Keep it exciting for the audience.

Again, you know, I'm not a very good, very good example with my personal show because, you know, one time, it's gonna be one completely different thing than the the next episode.

And that keeps it interesting for me.

And, you know, so far, most of my audience kinda sticks with me, but I do get some feedback from time to time.

And it's just amazing what, you know, just that one listener that says, hey.

What about this?

Or, you know, why don't you try that?

You know, I had one, email me, hey.

I I haven't heard you talk about this particular subject before, and that's a good idea.

So I made an episode about it.

Yeah.

You know, things like that.

But, you know, don't, you know, don't just go through and just change it completely.

You know?

I'm doing a show about dogs, and then next week, you come back and do a show about cats.

Well, no.

You know, stay in your genre if you've got if you picked a genre.

You know?

But, you know, you can vary that.

Even the subject matter change can, can can be a a tweak that you do.

You know?

Maybe instead of, you know, diving deep every episode, do an episode where you're just kinda doing tips and tricks or you're answering feedback that you've got.

He listened to an aviation show that started out as a solo, and he did probably a 100 episodes as as a solo.

Then he brought on a guest that was one of his listeners that was always sending in feedback, and he brought them on as a cohost.

And now he has a rotating cast of five or six cohosts, and you never know who you're gonna get in that show.

But it really helped him, you know, get, you know, first to know other people, know his community, and it's really, you know, a pretty big deal now.

You know, they've actually had meetups in London or in Atlanta or wherever of, you know, the community for the around that podcast where they, you know, maybe record you know, I think he did, episode 500, and he had a big party in Atlanta.

And, you know, all of his cohosts flew in from all over the world and and, you know, plus he had a whole bunch of, you know, whole bunch of other listeners there.

And, you know, he really can you know, did a community, around his show, and that was simply by changing up the format.

That's really interesting.

Yeah.

And so and, you know, he's still at it.

He's retired.

Our airline pilot now, and and, so he he he travels around, and they still talk about aviation, but he has, you know, I think there's, like, six rotating guest hosts.

You know?

Sometimes they have four of them on there at the same time.

It's, but, you know, it's it's always a little different, but it's always kinda the same.

So Yeah.

Another thing you can think about doing is, looking at the length of your episodes.

When I was doing the D and D podcast, a couple of years ago, it started out as they would do, like oh, jeez.

I think we're they were looking at, like, two hour episodes Mhmm.

Because they would record for, like, four, and they would cut them in half.

So those were two hours long, and, that was that was not necessarily manageable for a lot of listeners.

So after I got involved, I recommended, well, what if we do one hour episodes?

Because first of all, that makes more episodes for people to listen to.

But also, it makes it easier on your editor, and I think people would pay more attention with those shorter episodes.

And when we changed to that format, it allowed that show to go from once a month to once a week.

And I think, before that kind of took a hiatus, they were doing, like, once every other week just for editing purposes.

But, you could consider, like, shortening your episodes, you know, so that it you could stagger them out a little bit, or, you know, maybe you're just cutting off fluff that people don't really wanna listen to.

That's just an idea.

Yeah.

That's, you know, again and, you know, I mentioned before, you can alternate between, you know, the really deep episodes and, you know, some quick episodes.

So, you know, even within the list of episodes, you could have one that's an hour long and one that's ten minutes long, you know, and, you know, maybe alternate those or have, you know, special episodes.

You know, there's a there's a way in most RSS creation tools to mark something as a bonus episode.

So you feel like doing something completely different, throw one of those in there.

You know?

Yeah.

Always fun.

You know?

No.

You know, I my my first show, that went from me to a single co host to there were a total of four of us, sometimes five.

And I remember a piece of feedback that really helped me was we I would just, like, start the recording and leave a lot of, like, the super casual conversations on at the beginning.

And I would get feedback where people are just like, I I'm glad you guys are having fun, but I don't like the fact that all of the guys are surprised that they're being recorded.

And, like, that makes me feel weird.

And I was like, oh, okay.

Well, I guess we'll just cut that out.

And that actually helped.

I saw downloads go up, believe it or not.

And people just responded much better because they're like, instead of you guys goofing off, you're actually, like, getting into the movie to review that you're doing or or whatever it was that we were talking about.

So that was that was again, going back to that feedback, that my audience was like, no.

You've got to cut this part out because it's not enjoyable to listen to.

Put it at the end or something.

You know?

You could always do that, and they can they can bail after the the good stuff, I guess.

Yeah.

You know, you know, a lot of lot of podcasters, you know, back in the day okay.

I'm an old guy.

Would, you know, have all the fluff at the beginning and then get into their topic.

And, as it went on, they would kinda get rid of the fluff or put the fluff at the end or or maybe just not do it.

Again, it's all about your audience.

Some some of your audience really don't care what the subject are.

They just wanna listen to you.

Believe it or not, there's a lot of that going around.

I mean, I listen to a show that I really could care less about the subject matter.

I just like the person.

You know?

That's cool.

I might be a little weird about that, but, you know, it's it's just, you know, not not something I am super interested in, but there that person's personality and take on the subject, it is somewhat interesting.

And, you know, it's it's something I can listen to while mowing the lawn or something.

You know?

It's not not that I have to pay super attention to the actual subject matter.

But, you know, that and you're gonna find all kinds of audience members' preferences are, you know, gonna vary.

You you do something, somebody's gonna get mad about it or somebody's gonna really love it, and it could be the same thing.

You know?

So don't don't don't be afraid to experiment a little bit.

Again, you know, it's it's your show.

Do what you want.

And, you know, now for shows that are more subject oriented where, you know, you've got a definite niche and you're definitely talking about this every time, you know, then maybe, you know, tighten it up a little bit.

But, again, like like this show, we, you know, we do a little fluff in here sometimes, and sometimes we don't.

And we've changed up formats and all that.

I don't think we're gonna do any major changes this year.

We had talked about it, but I think I think we're gonna stay about what we're doing now and, rotate between Mackenzie and Dave and I.

And sometimes we're gonna have all three, but, nothing, you know, nothing jarring, I hope.

Might change might change the artwork.

Yeah.

Sometimes that's jarring enough.

I mean, that is something you can talk about.

You know, I, over the years, have changed artwork because I get sick of looking at it.

Yeah.

This was, of of course, when I was doing it, that that was before episode artwork was a thing.

Yeah.

So I would change out, like, maybe a couple times a year, and then I would get feedback.

Oh, I like the blue artwork, and you have red now, and that was, like, too much.

Okay.

So it's back to the blue.

And Yeah.

You know, those are those are changes that you may not think about.

I we've been talking about format a lot, but you literally could go through and, you know, if you have episode numbers at the beginning or, like, in your titles, you could put those at the beginning.

You can move them to the back.

You can get rid of them altogether.

I know that there are some people who just don't care about episode numbers.

It used to be a sticking point for me because I wanted to know like, that was a, that was a point of measuring my own success.

Oh, look at this.

I finally hit episode 30.

Yep.

And, you know and it was cool, like, when episode 100 came around, and that was a nice fun episode to to record and be able to note that it was episode 100.

But most people were like, I don't know.

You talked about that Krampus Christmas movie.

That's that's what it is.

I don't know what number it is.

So I ended up moving episode numbers out of my titles, and I never mentioned them in the actual episode itself.

Yeah.

I I do the same thing now.

I used to put them in the, at the end of the title of the episode, and I've cut them out.

I do put them in the file name for the m p three just so I can keep it straight.

Yeah.

But I, you know, I don't make a big deal about you know, unless it's a a you know, like, I I crossed 400 sometime last year, and I made a big deal out of that.

But, otherwise, you know, I don't make a a deal about what episode number is.

I always, you know, announce the date at the beginning because, who knows, somebody might be listening to this, you know, fifteen years from now.

Who knows?

So I, you know, I might, you know, throw the date in in the in the intro.

But, you know, in something like what we're doing here, you know, somebody could listen to this five years from now, and it's still relevant.

So the date really doesn't matter.

You know, when we were talking about news and and topical things on this show, you know, we used to mention the date and the episode number, you know, just so people had a context if they did happen across it five years from now.

Oh, this was back in 2025, you know, or whatever.

And, you know, so, you know, experiment with that kind of thing too.

Also, your show notes.

You know, how robust do you want your show notes, and do people actually notice that?

You know?

We we do fairly robust show notes for this show, whereas on some of my other shows, I don't.

You know?

I do just enough to let you know what it's about, and that's it.

And maybe throw relevant links or something in there, but I really don't, you know, do this extensive show notes anymore because I really don't believe a lot of people want or, you know, read them.

Now with us, this goes on our company blog as well as, you know, this podcast.

So people do come to that blog, podcastinsider.com, just in case you're wondering.

And, they, you know, they do read these posts even if it is a podcast episode.

You know?

So that's something that you could experiment with is, you know, how how much show notes do you wanna do?

Yeah.

I mean yeah.

Like, we we have customers that they love their show notes, and they want them formatted a specific way, and they want them to appear in a specific way.

And that's cool.

We do everything we can to make sure that they that they get what they want.

But then you have some people like Mike.

You know?

It's like, here's two sentences.

I talked about a Coney dog this week, and Yeah.

That's all people care about.

Okay.

Cool.

I just saw the little description in my podcast app, and I move on.

So I I think, you know, you're gonna know if you messed your show up when people start contacting you and they're yelling at you or if you see your your, your numbers drop.

Yeah.

You know?

Yeah.

You know?

And but the thing with the numbers are, you know, and this is just a theory of mine, but if you have a bad episode, that bad episode probably is gonna get downloaded as many times as the good ones because they don't know what's in the episode until they download it and play it.

But the next episode is the one you wanna look at.

So if you get a serious drop in numbers, look at the episode prior to that one.

That's Yeah.

That's, you know, not not so much that one because you know?

And and if you get a big bump in an episode, what that could be is everybody's going, hey.

Look at this and sharing it with friends and stuff.

So, you know, you look at the current episode if you get a bump.

You look at the past episode if you get a drop.

That's just my theory.

Yeah.

That's that's always a good thing.

I know when people get in touch with you and I, I mean, that's one of the first things that we'd we check on our side, but then we also have them look and go, well, you know, what what was your previous episode about in this date range?

Can you think of anything that you might have changed, or did you show up somewhere that would cause that to spike or dip?

So, yeah, you just look at trends and you you eventually, you'll find your answer.

It's not usually, oh, there's, you know, some random group of people from Mongolia that are listening to my episodes now, and that's why it spiked.

Yeah.

That that can happen, but it's pretty rare.

You know, it's you know, we had one guy, not too long ago talking about stats.

He says you know, he had, like, 20 downloads per episode was you know?

So he was just, you know, not not really getting a lot of plays, a lot of listens.

And he was really curious why 15 of the 20 were in New York.

I don't know.

It's just random happenstance, I guess, but, you know, you don't wanna watch it that closely.

But you do wanna you know, if, say, your episode gets 50% of what you normally get for an episode, look at what you did on the last one and see if you mighta ticked somebody off, or you you mighta done something stupid or, you know, not stupid, but, you know, you you tried something that didn't work.

I guess that's the better way of putting it.

Yeah.

Or, you know, the opposite.

Maybe they did jump.

You know?

So that's that's where stats can come in and be be of interest.

I think some other things that are maybe not blueberry centric, but, like, if you are sharing things on social Mhmm.

You you can check your engagement there, like, your replies and your you know, if you're doing reviews on podcast directories and things like that.

You know, just kinda see how that works.

And those aren't always one to one.

I think I can't even remember.

There is a percentage of people that will interact with you, on social media.

But yeah.

Yeah.

I get a lot of my my reactions from Facebook, weird weirdly.

But, you know, then I can post the exact same thing on x and get nothing.

And, you know, I don't use Instagram yet.

Probably will.

But, you know, it's one of those things.

I can only do so much.

I I don't wanna add yet another inbox to check.

You know?

Right.

But Yeah.

People know how to get a hold of me if they listen, so that's good.

And, you know, and always mention that too.

You know?

You know, I'm gonna go back a little bit in our little show notes here, but, you know, always explain stuff to your audience.

I mean, you know, there's no no harm in say, hey.

I'm change I changed this up.

Did you notice?

What do you think?

You know, let them know what to expect rather than just shocking them with stuff.

Or, hey.

Next week, I got a new theme song I wanna try out on you.

You know?

And that might get them to come back to hear it.

Just all kinds of stuff like that.

But, yeah, it's a but you you you you know, if you do something that that really causes a stir, either positive or negative, you will hear about it.

Oh, yeah.

And that's good.

You know, you wanna hear about it.

Yeah.

I don't I would also recommend, you know, stick with the feel of your show.

Yeah.

Don't you know, if you have a very professional show, don't do anything wacky.

You know, if if you use music, don't change the music to some circus music or something like that.

You know, kind of stay in your lane, but but play within those confines a little bit.

You know, I've I've not seen too many shows do this, but I have seen a couple of shows, I've even done it myself, where you go, well, my personality is, you know, I like I wanna have a little bit more fun.

So then you end up making a change that just doesn't fit the feel of your show, and that's usually not good.

But, yeah, just just a random thought I had there.

You know?

Try and try and stay in your lane.

Try not to be, you know, the podcast for all people.

Yep.

As they say, a podcast for everybody is a podcast for nobody.

You know?

You gotta niche down a little bit in most cases.

You know?

There are some celebrities out there that could probably, read the phone book and and do alright.

So Probably.

You never know.

But, anyway, yeah, just, you know, here's kind of the takeaway.

You know, experimenting with your format doesn't mean starting from scratch.

It doesn't mean throwing everything away and starting over, or it might.

You know?

And if that's the case, start a new show.

But Mhmm.

Basically, you know, change one thing at a time.

Make sure you're communicating with your audience, and, you know, check the data and the feedback.

Anyway, you don't have to blow it up to make it better.

Yeah.

Think of, you know, tuning or tweaking and not rebuilding everything every week.

Yeah.

Your your listeners are gonna be a lot more adaptable to to the changes that you make than you might believe.

So just make sure you bring them along, put them in the passenger seat with you, and, you know, they're gonna love watching your show grow and change, and stick around for the long haul.

We I know we do.

I love talking to customers that have, you know, been doing their podcast for eighteen years and and things like that.

So, yeah, if you want any more advice from us, you know how to get in touch with us.

You can go to blueberry.com and, podcastinsider.com in order to reach us, whether it's support or, you know, contact the show.

Right.

And, you know, of course, podcastinsider.com, you can read our extensive show notes.

Thanks to Mackenzie.

Thanks for joining us.

Let's meet up next week.

And in the meantime, for more information, to subscribe, share, or follow, check out the show notes at podcastinsider.com.

To check out our latest suite of services and how Blueberry can help you leverage your podcast, visit blueberry.com.

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