Reimagining the Podcast Feed 🤔
Plus, put Podcast Bestie in your ears!
Hey Besties,
If you haven’t heard, I have an exciting announcement:
Podcast Bestie is now also a podcast! 🥳
The trailer dropped on Tuesday. Give it a listen.
I love doing Q&As for the newsletter, and I want the chance to ask follow-up questions and dig even deeper into our guests’ craft or marketing advice. I love the newsletter format, so don’t worry, Podcast Bestie will continue in its current form with the newsletter as the main thing. But moving forward, I’ll sprinkle in some long-form interviews that help us create better content and grow and monetize our shows.
And I’m currently booking guests! If you’re a podcasting professional or indie podcaster crushing it AND you’re willing to share your secrets with the Besties, please reply to this email and tell me about your area of expertise and what you can teach the Besties with 4-5 talking points.
I want to cover things like SEO as an engine for show growth, successful cross-promotional and advertising campaigns, archival and SFX sourcing for great sound design, and much more. Check out the trailer for more about my Podcast Bestie podcast vision and how you can be a part of it.
And Podcast Bestie isn’t the only new audio project I’ve been cooking up… Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about how to approach some limited series podcast ideas that I would like to do, and that’s got me thinking about distribution. So today, I’m bringing you my behind-the-scenes musings about the podcast feed and its out-of-the-box potential.
A Case for the Artist-Driven, Multi-Use Feed
If you’ve been a Bestie for a while, you know I typically have a bunch of different projects going on—plus, I just added Podcast Bestie, the podcast. It’s like I’ve got a fever, and the only prescription is more podcasts.
And since, obviously, I don’t know how to quit launching podcasts, this has got me rethinking my feed strategy as I figure out how best to package and release some upcoming audio series and short explorations I’m interested in doing.
I feel like currently there’s an expectation for podcast feeds to have a high level of cohesion. But I don’t want to start a new feed for each project. That seems crazy. Sure, a separate feed is preferable for an ongoing show about a specific topic—I’m glad Private Parts Unknown and The Bleeders have their own feeds. But not everything needs to be a long-running show about the same thing. Yet the podcast infrastructure of building an audience for a limited-run series and then BUILDING ANOTHER AUDIENCE FOR YOUR NEXT LIMITED RUN SHOW is so wasteful and really throws a wrench in one’s ability to sell advertising inventory. I feel nauseous just thinking about releasing a limited series that way, much less two or more. 🥴
Thus, I’ve been thinking the miscellaneous artist-centric feed could be a cool way to get around that.
Sure, some podcasters cover a wide range of topics, but topically the format is highly cohesive. Tim Ferriss, for example. He’s covering a wide range of topics, but the episodes are almost always long-form interviews with the same intro music and structure. That’s not what I’m talking about here.
I want to make what feel like distinct shows. But instead of starting multiple new feeds for each new limited series, I want to build an audience willing to follow me down whatever weird rabbit hole I want to go. I want to reconceptualize my feed to be more of a buffet where the content tends to be more varied. If you like my taste and POV, you’ll follow along, and you can pick which episodes you listen to based on which topics strike your fancy… and if you like what I’m putting out, you might even trust me to listen to an episode about a topic you didn’t think you were into before.
In searching for inspiration and previous examples, I remembered Spotify hosting multiple series on one feed. (I can’t find this or remember the name, can anyone help me out?) I listened to a few episodes, and though the multi-use feed was a little chaotic, I didn’t fall off because of it. However, I think a big disadvantage of a company-led multi-use feed versus an artist-driven feed is the lack of an overarching voice. It can be done. This American Life is a bit like what I’m talking about: they cover many different topics and switch up the format as it suits them, but the Ira Glass factor makes the show feel very unified. Even when I’ve heard guest hosts, they tend to invoke Ira’s sensibility. I think that voice could be the critical unifying element even when the topics are all over the place.
I’m ready to do and see more auteur podcasting, like what Jamie Loftus has been doing with her limited series. I was thinking of her as a case study. She’s unique in that she amassed an audience through her movie podcast, The Bechdel Cast, and typically releases with iHeart. But if she were a smaller creator, I could see her having a lot of success using the same feed from project to project.
In addition to building an audience, starting a feed to simply to serve as your creative sandbox is an excellent way to build a portfolio. David Weinberg, producer and host for KCRW, has had a feed called Random Tape for over a decade.
There’s something delightful about this feed of random stuff. This is a great way for new podcasters who are just trying to experiment, sharpen their chops, and collect a body of work. I’m teaching a class right now, and I will be encouraging my students to start a feed like this if they have many different show ideas they want to test out as they develop their voice and skill set.
In thinking this through, a significant consideration has been using my name versus a brand name. There are pros and cons to both. Of course, a brand name’s upside is that it is easier to pass the baton as you expand or even sell if it’s a hit. But some of the biggest names in podcasting—Joe Rogan, Tim Ferriss, Ezra Klein, Andrew Huberman—use their name for their shows. And it forces a certain amount of name recognition. Call Her Daddy is super successful, but it takes me an extra second to think, “that’s Alex Cooper’s show.” So if you’re interested in building equity in your name more so than a particular show (or building a business), maybe it’s a good idea to double down and lend your name to your show.
In my case, I already have three branded shows—Private Parts Unknown, The Bleeders, and now Podcast Bestie. I only want to add one more feed. That’s honestly all I can manage, and that’s part of the reason I want to keep the content more open-ended. I could host on Substack for free, where I already have a pre-existing audience, and call it The Courtney Kocak Show or something simple and SEO-friendly. Plus, the newsletter feature would encourage me to incorporate more writing into the listener experience, which I love to do anyway.
I’m just thinking about it right now. These plans are months out. But I wanted to share my thought process because more multi-passionate podcasters should consider using an artist-centric feed for their disparate projects. I’m trying to find some blueprints for how people have done this. Do you know of a podcaster using this model? If so, I want to know about them (and ask some questions!).
Managing Editor, Eichelberger Center for Community Voices (full-time) at WYSO Public Radio | Dayton, OH
Editor (part-time) at An Arm and a Leg | Remote
Staff Education Reporter, WAMU/DCist (full-time) at American University | Washington, DC Area Hybrid
Senior Producer at Sugar23 Audio | NYC-Area Preferred, Open to Remote for Exceptional Candidates
Associate Producer (full-time) at Sugar23 Audio | NYC-Area Preferred, Open to Remote for Exceptional Candidates
Story Editor (part-time) at Sugar23 Audio | NYC-Area Preferred, Open to Remote for Exceptional Candidates
Temporary Producer, Embodied (full-time) at WUNC/University of North Carolina | Durham, NC
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Private Parts Unknown: The Lusty Lady as a Case Study for Sex Worker Social Movements with Historian & Former Lusty Jayne Swift - Currently, there’s a strip club in North Hollywood called Star Gardens trying to unionize, and while unionizing strippers may seem like a novel idea, it has an antecedent—a classic example of stripper unionization that’s THE case study often pointed to: Strippers at San Francisco’s Lusty Lady organized into the Exotic Dancers Union in 1996. I spoke with historian and former Lusty Jayne Swift, who specializes in the history of sexuality, gender, and labor in the U.S., to dive into Jayne’s research on sex worker social movements and how sex workers are responsible for the rise of sex positivity and sex-positive politics/feminism.
So… ROLL CALL! 🗣
What are your thoughts on the artist-driven feed? Have you done this? Do you know someone who is doing it well? Would you be into this as a listener? Please share in the comments below.
Follow me @courtneykocak on Twitter and Instagram. For more, check out my website courtneykocak.com.
Makes total sense to me - creatives always have a tonne of ideas so why be limited to just one format feed? People buy people, after all - so I think there is weight to the argument that a feed that's a collection of a person's work would appeal to their core audience.
Hi, I just read your news letter about sharing the feed! We are currently doing this with Real Life Real Crime and a spin-off show Real Life Real Crime Daily- it is working and I was actually opposed to it! I would love to speak to its success more if you would like! My email is cyndi@realliferealcrime.com. Thanks!!!