83: Why You Should Avoid Podcasting Trends

This is Grow the Show. My name is Kevin Schminden. I am your podcast growth coach and in this quick hit episode, I am going to really quickly tell you why we here at Grow the Show do not hop on podcasting trends. Now, we've got more than 4,000 podcasters in the free Grow the Show Facebook group. We've got more than 320 podcasters in the Grow the Show accelerator program and we've got more than 20,000 podcasters listening to the Grow the Show podcast and on our email list combined. So we serve a lot of podcasters here at Grow the Show and podcasting is a quickly growing and fast evolving industry. And so because of that, we here at Grow the Show get tons and tons of questions about the newest podcast trends and tools and tricks and whether podcasters should drop what they're doing and adapt whatever the new trend is. Literally, I kid you not, I get DMs virtually every week that responds to some piece of podcasting news that says, Kevin, what do we do about this? Should I change everything? And my answer is always the same. No, change nothing. So when it was Kevin, what about clubhouse? Change nothing. Kevin, Facebook is adding RSS feeds. What do I do? Nothing. Then it was Kevin. Apple is adding the ability for listeners to pay to subscribe to my show. What should I do? Nothing. I think you're probably noticing a trend here. This episode of Grow the Show is sponsored by Riverside.fm, the leading platform to record studio quality podcasts. More than 70,000 other podcasters use Riverside, including myself, GuyRaz, GaryVee, Spotify, and even the New York Times. Riverside is not only great because it has unbelievably high recording quality regardless of your or your guests internet quality, but it also gives you separate audio and video tracks for each person speaking. It's high tech, but easy to use. Unlike Zoom, you don't have to have anything installed on your computer and your guests don't either. And did I mention that the audio quality is way better? If you're recording your interviews remotely, get off of Zoom now and hop into Riverside for your next interview. Your listeners will thank you. Head over to Riverside.fm and use code Grow. That's GROW to get 63 minutes of recording and 15% off a membership plan. The link is in the show notes. Now, I don't know what other podcasting experts say about trends. I know I see a lot of those who say you got to get on the latest trend and you got to ride the wave or be ahead of the game, ahead of the curve, whatever you want to call it. But in my opinion, I think as a podcaster, you should do exactly the opposite. And so for me, what I try to do is literally in podcasting to be the last person to join a trend because I would rather see if the new trend or the new platform or the new software or the new tool or whatever it is. I want to see if it works and actually gets results and is impactful to other people before I interrupt my focus on what I'm working on now with my own podcast to accompany it. And the reason I do that is because since podcasting is a new Wild West fast growing industry fast growing area, there's new tools, there's new tactics, there's new strategies virtually every single day. And there are tons of new people entering the space. New companies being founded to solve podcasting, you know, to disrupt podcasting. And even huge tech companies every day decide that they're going to enter the podcasting sphere somehow, right? So it was Facebook announcing last summer that they were going to add RSS feeds to the platform. It's everything that Spotify does. It's Amazon adding podcasts to Amazon music, all these different things. And so especially when these big companies make adjustments or do something for podcasting, everybody tends to freak out. But my message for you is if you can ignore all of that noise, try to quell the FOMO that you feel whenever there's some sort of new strategy or new tool or new trend or something like that. And focus on what you have to do, which is namely to make incredible podcast episodes, get new listeners to discover your podcasts regularly and reliably. And of course, monetize your show by converting a portion of your listeners to customers, get them to buy something, either something that you make or something that someone else makes. It all boils down to that. And so you've got enough work to do to make all of those things happen on a regular basis. You don't need to distract yourself by chasing trends. And that's that tends to be exactly what it is a distraction, making a great show, monetizing your show regularly and reliably. Those things are not easy to do. It's uncomfortable. They likely involve skills that you don't have yet and that you have to build, which is a fact. And it's uncomfortable to build those skills. And so what we do is human beings whose brain doesn't want to use energy by learning new skills, it would rather chase shiny objects and chase trends because it feels better to do that. And it feels like that new trend might be something that allows you to skip the hard work of building up the skill of making an amazing show, building up the skill of marketing your podcast and building up the skill of monetizing your podcast. You have to build those three skills and your podcast is not going to work until you do. So for that reason, anytime there's a new tool or a new trend or some big news in the podcast space, I invite you to do what I do. Completely ignore it. What I do is I completely ignore all of the news. I am totally not up to date on all the latest podcast news and trends because the vast vast majority of them don't matter and will distract me from my core mission of helping you to grow and monetize your show. I've got my hands full trying to develop frameworks that make it easier and easier and easier to grow and monetize your podcast. I don't need to be testing out the latest new podcast startup tool that claims to make it super super easy because spoiler alert, it probably won't. But here's the thing. If it is true, if the latest podcast tool that you discover really is going to change the game and change the industry, you will find out and it won't be too late. You're going to hear it from the people who did chase the trend, discovered it and found out, oh, actually this one does change the game. And so that's what I do as well. I'll wait until I hear about something over and over and over again from different people and then I say, okay, I think this is worth checking out and I'll check it out and it's awesome. And then I share it with you. So I plan to share this episode with people for literally years to come as each week's breaking podcast news or groundbreaking new company to enter the space makes podcasters panic and think that they've got a rush and change everything about their show to adapt to this new trend. My message to you is you don't don't worry about the FOMO. Try to do the opposite and see how many podcasting trends you can ignore until the ones that truly matter are so loud that you have to take advantage of them. And remember that at that point, it's not too late. You won't have missed out. So that is it for today. Just remember to keep your eyes on the prize. Try not to distract yourself with the latest tools with the latest trends. I promise you that when I do discover a trend or a tool that really, really is worth doing or that I find very, very important. I'm going to share it with you right away. So just stick around. Join us in the Grow the Show Facebook group. Subscribe to the Grow the Show YouTube. Subscribe to the Grow the Show podcast and you're going to know at least what I think are the key tools and trends to follow here in podcasting. So I'll leave you with one that I actually do believe is going to be a big deal, which is sometime around next year, I do think that YouTube is going to make some sort of move to pull all podcasts onto the YouTube platform. So I do think that that will be a trend worth watching. But again, there's nothing for you to do today. Nothing at all. Don't worry about it. Don't think about it. You're not going to be left in the dust. If you focus on your goals, making, growing and monetizing the show without worrying about new trends, you will be in great shape to take advantage of the right trends when they are ready to be taken advantage of. So that's it for today. Thank you so much. I will see you in the next episode of Grow the Show. Join us in the Grow the Show Facebook group. And if you want my help directly in growing and monetizing your podcast, feel free to apply to the Grow the Show podcast accelerator at GrowTheShow.com slash apply. That's it for this one. I'll see you in the next one. Thanks so much.