John McDougall:  Hi, I’m John McDougall, and I’m here today with John Maher, the director of multimedia and digital marketing here at McDougall Interactive. Today we’re going to be talking about podcasting your way to success.

Welcome, John.

John Maher:  Thank you.

 

Why Podcasts Are Gaining Popularity

John McDougall:  Why are podcasts gaining in popularity?

John Maher:  Podcasting is an interesting thing that really is kind of up-and-coming. It is gaining a lot in popularity.

When it first came out, it was called podcasting because Apple released this MP3 player called the iPod. People realized that in addition to just putting music on your iPod, you could have any kind of audio file, so people started utilizing that, and recording almost like a radio show, and then giving it to people so that they could put it on their iPod and listen to it like a radio show wherever they were.

It became called podcasting, because it’s a combination of iPod and broadcasting, but the audience for that was necessarily limited to just people who had Apple’s iPod device. But now, almost everybody has a smartphone. Whether or not it’s an Apple iPhone, or an Android device, or a Windows device, lots and lots of people have a smartphones, and there are podcasting apps available for any of those platforms.

People now are listening to podcasts much more. They’re really easy to listen to. You can listen to them while you’re driving in the car. I often listen to podcasts while I’m driving in the car to and from work. People listen to them at the gym, just while you’re walking around your house, or cooking, or cleaning.

Having the ability to listen to sort of a radio broadcast on your smartphone, which you have in your pocket at all times, and just no matter where you go you have this available to you, has just really opened up podcasting to a much wider audience.

John McDougall:  People are getting overwhelmed by so much text, right?

John Maher:  Right. When do you have time to sit down in front of your computer and read article after article on a blog? Or if you’re at work, you’re not going to sit down and watch all kinds of YouTube videos while you’re at work.

Your boss might be looking over your shoulder, and that’s probably not going to go over well. But you might be able to have headphones on and be listening to a podcast while you’re working, if you’re in that kind of situation at your office.

We’re busy. People lead busy lives, and it’s hard to find the time to do a lot of reading and watching of videos, but you can always pop those headphones in, while you’re walking, while you’re working out, while you’re driving. In those situations, it’s a really simple, easy thing to do.

You don’t have to look at something. You don’t have to use your eyes to be watching, so you can be concentrating on something else, but just be listening to it in the background. That’s really good.

 

How Podcasting Positions You As An Expert

John McDougall:  How does it position you as an expert?

John Maher:  Like a radio show, a podcast really brings a person’s personality out, so when you are listening to somebody in a way that you don’t maybe get from a blog post — maybe a really good blog writer might have a little bit of their personality in their writing, and you might get a little bit of that personality coming through, but when you are listening to somebody, you’re really connecting with them in a much more personal and intimate way. You really get to know that person.

Just like when you are watching a news anchor on TV. You start to gain trust in that person over time, because every night I sit down and I watch the news. I see this person telling me what the news is and explaining things to me. You start to trust them over time. In the same way, when you are listening to somebody in that intimate way — where they are talking right into your ears, literary — you start to, over time, really gain trust in that person. That helps to make you seem like an expert in whatever it is that you’re talking about. It just gives you that opportunity to show the depth of your knowledge over the course of weeks and weeks of podcasting.

When you are talking about different parts of whatever the topic is that you are discussing, people start to really look at you as being a knowledgeable industry leader in whatever the topic is that you are discussing. That really helps to cement that idea that, “I trust you. I look at you as being one of the most knowledgeable people that I know about this topic.” That really positions you as an expert.

John McDougall:  My father with his art gallery, after selling his ad agency, always likes to use the analogy for up-and-coming artists. If they are hanging next to, certainly Van Gogh, but maybe say an artist that’s much above them in stature. You go to a gallery and this new artist is next to this top artist. All of a sudden that younger artist gains some — a little of energy rubs off, like, “This young artist is right there with the greats.” It’s just so much power in interviewing other experts, and being associated with them like that.

John Maher:  That’s one of the great things about the Web in general is that, it gave this platform for the small guys to compete with the big guys, in a way that just really wasn’t possible before.

I might go online. I might buy some piece of electronic equipment, or something like that, from some small little guy who is in his garage, rather than go down the street to the big box shop and buy something there. It gives that guy in the garage the same kind of opportunity that a big‑box store would have, because the Web just equalizes everything.

I think it’s that way, too, with people, like you said. You don’t necessarily know the difference between this person, who’s an expert because maybe they’re a university professor, and they’ve written 20 books on the subject. You don’t necessarily know the difference between that person and just this other guy over here that just has a daily blog. They both seem really knowledgeable people, and they both really are knowledgeable people, but it equalizes things.

 

Getting Started With Podcasting

John McDougall:  Yeah, quite a bit. How easy is it to get started podcasting?

John Maher:  It can be as easy as you want it to be, or as hard as you want it to be. The most simple thing that you can do is just to have a monologue. You have a topic that you’ve planned. Maybe you create a little bullet list of certain things that you want to talk about in that episode, and you just talk.

You need a recorder, some simple recorder, whether that’s your computer, a laptop or a small recording device, or just your smartphone. You can just make it really simple.

There are services available online, like BlogTalkRadio as well, that you can just sign up for. You just call in on your phone and record it that way. That’s the most simple thing to do, just to have a topic, and you just talk and record it, and then that’s it. You’re posting up that recording onto your blog, or on iTunes, or whatever.

That can get more involved if you start to say, “I really want to interview other people.” Now you have to set up and schedule interviews with people. Are you going to do those in the same room, where you’re having that person come to your location and do the interview? Are you going to do that over the phone?

If you’re going to do it over the phone, how are you going to record that? Are you going to do a round‑table discussion with three, four, five people all in a room, all talking? That makes things a little bit more complicated, because now you have to have microphones for everybody.

Do you want to make your podcast sound really professional, and add music intros and outros to it? That’s going to add a little bit of complexity to it, and maybe make it so that you have to have certain equipment in order to make that happen.

Again, you can go really, really simple and just talk by yourself and record it, or a little bit more complicated, depending on if you’re going to do interviews or round‑table discussions, etc.

 

The Best Podcasting Equipment

John McDougall:  If you want to get a bit more on the complex side with equipment, what are some of the best mics, headsets, MP3 players, et cetera, for podcasting that you like?

John Maher:  At the most simple side, there are some apps available for smartphones. There’s one that I know of that I haven’t played with a lot, but it’s called Bossjock. That is a paid app, but I know that it has the ability to do music and sound effects, and to add those into your podcast while you’re recording right on your smartphone. That’s a really simple option.

 

Portable Digital Recorder

You can buy just a simple, what’s called a “portable digital recorder”. The one that we use a lot is the Roland R‑05, which is just a really simple handheld digital recorder that has a pair of stereo microphones in it. You can just hold that in your hand and talk into it, or maybe place it on the table.

You could even use that for two people if they’re talking. You could put it on the table in‑between those two people, and talk and just record that way. That’s the most simple way.

 

Portable Digital Recorder Plus External Microphones

If you want to get a little bit more advanced than that, the intermediate solution might be to have this portable digital recorder, but then you’re adding in an external microphone, or external microphones, to that.

You’re always going to end up with a little bit better quality if you can get a good‑quality microphone that you have right in front of your mouth. You’re going to pick up less of that background noise than you would if you just had a recorder sitting on the table.

You can use the Roland R‑05, or there are other things available, such as the Zoom H4N. That’s a good solution. One of the nice things about that one is that it has two microphone inputs that are right at the bottom. You can put in a pair of external microphones that plug in right at the bottom of that portable digital recorder, so that you can get better quality.

You can start off with just a portable digital recorder, maybe a pair of Shure SM57 microphones, which are just really basic, really reliable and strong and sturdy microphones and get little tabletop stands for them. That would be a perfectly good solution.

 

Using A Mixing Board For Podcasting

If you want to go more advanced, now you’re looking at getting a mixing board. What a mixing board does — you’ve seen this in television shows and movies, where somebody’s doing recording — they’ve got those sliders, those faders that they’re sliding up and down, to adjust the volume level of different microphones or inputs. We have one of those here in our studio. Ours is a Mackie mixing board. There are lots of different brands of mixing boards that are fine. Again, you can just plug in lots of different microphones into that.

You can also plug in other audio sources. Maybe you have a way to play music that’s plugged into it as well. We have a laptop plugged into the mixing board here in our studio. That allows me to use Skype. If I’m going to do interviews with people who are outside of the office, I can call them via Skype, and have that recorded.

Every bit of that audio that goes into the mixing board, I have control over the volume level of each one of those microphones or inputs individually with these faders. Then, that all get mixed down on to a recording device. In our case again, we’re using that Roland device with that portable digital recorder, to record.

Everything that’s coming from the mixing board gets mixed down on to that portable digital recorder. You can also have the output from the mixing board go on to your computer, and do the recording there. You can use a piece of software on your computer, and do the recording. I tend to stay away from that just because as you know, software can be flaky sometimes. Computers can be flaky. You could be…

John McDougall:  No! [laughs]

John Maher:  Yeah. Amazing, right?

John McDougall:  Windows would crash?

John Maher:  Right. Occasionally.

John McDougall:  Maybe Windows 10 might be better.

John Maher:  I hope so. You might be in the middle of a recording, and then have your computer flake out, and the software crashes, and then you lose all that recording. I suppose that could happen with a portable digital recorder, but it’s just made for what it does, and it does it well. I’ve never had a problem with the recording of one of these devices.

John McDougall:  We’ve never actually had to replace those, have we?

John Maher:  No, I’ve been using this one for years now, and it’s been fine…

John McDougall:  …at least three, four, five years.

John Maher:  Exactly. I’m still on the same one that I got five years ago. It’s a great piece of equipment. Like I said, software can be a little flaky. It doesn’t crash. It’s stable. I trust that more than I trust software on a computer.

 

Podcasting Microphones and Setup

John McDougall:  It’s a little frustrating to set the stuff up, as easy as you make it sound. We just get a mixer and some cables, and XLR cables, and plug them into the mics, and all that. You have, what are these, instead of the SM57, these are Shure…

John Maher:  These are also Shure microphones that we’re using. It’s called an SM7B. These are about $350 each. They’re nice microphones.

John McDougall:  But they sound good.

John Maher:  They sound good. They give you that real radio voice, bass quality. We have them set up on those typical radio station boom arms, so that you can have the microphone hanging in front of your mouth. I like the way that it looks. It makes it so that you don’t have to hold anything. There’s nothing to bump. I can’t bump accidentally my arms, or something like that, into a microphone, and make it go thud.

John McDougall:  [Bump] Like that?

[laughter]

John Maher:  You could, if you really wanted to.

John McDougall:  You studied some of this in college, so, as a musician, it’s a little easier.

John Maher:  Right. I’m a musician. I’ve been a musician most of my life. I’ve done a lot of…

John McDougall:  It’s how John and I met, by the way.

John Maher:  We were in a band together.

[laughter]

John Maher:  I’ve done some home audio recording. I’ve done some recording, like you said, while I was at school. I’m familiar with how to use the mixing board, and how to set it up, and the ins and outs of that. It wasn’t too hard for me, but for somebody who’s coming at it as a total beginner, there might be a little bit of a learning curve there, but it’s not too bad.

For the most part, there’s things that are getting plugged into the mixing board. Those are your inputs. Then, you have some output coming from the mixing board going into a recorder. There’s not too many moving parts.

John McDougall:  Unlike back in the day, when I tried to set up for our band, the home studio, the Cubase, and all the software in the computer, I hated it.

John Maher:  There’s a big difference between having a whole bunch of microphones plugged into one mixing board, and live mixing that onto a recording device, and when you’re recording something for a band, where you’re trying to record every one of those microphones, or instruments, as a separate track.

You’re talking about multi‑track recording, where then you can go back afterwards and add effects to certain tracks, or change the volume level after the fact. That’s a little bit different, and it’s definitely more involved.

John McDougall:  People shouldn’t be too freaked out. If you really do want to get a nice home recording setup with the mixing board, better microphones, and get that setup for a long‑term thing, it’s potentially doable. You can certainly call John here at McDougall Interactive, or the podcast…what’s the…

John Maher:  The Podcast Answer Man. I got a lot of great information from him when I was first setting up the studio, about what equipment to get, and how to set things up.

John McDougall:  If you want to start really basic, if you do it locally, get the Roland recorder, and sit it in front of you.

John Maher:  There’s no reason, if you want to experiment with podcasting, and see how it goes, whether or not you have anything to say and you want to try it, just get yourself a portable digital recorder, put it in front of you, and start talking.

John McDougall:  Either an app, or the Roland, or BlogTalkRadio. Get started, and see how it goes.

John Maher:  I think that’s the most important thing, it’s to get started. The next most important thing if you want to step it up, honestly, is the microphones.

John McDougall:  Quality of the mics.

John Maher:  That makes the most difference. You can get any mixing board. You can get any portable digital recorder. You can use different software for your computer, but the most important thing for getting a good quality recording, which is important because you want people who are listening to your podcast to see you as being professional.

When they hear that you have good professional audio quality, that keeps them on board right from the beginning. If the first thing that they hear is noise, or your voice sounds like you’re coming from across the room, lots of echo, or your dog’s barking in the background, things like that, immediately they start to tune out. Like, “Oh. This is just some guy in his kitchen recording this.” You start to lose a little bit of that credibility.

John McDougall:  With that said, what’s interesting is, a huge amount of podcasts are recorded over the phone, because you often want to have guests, and the likelihood to get national experts that are across the country to come into your office.

Even if it’s a nice office, that’s less likely. Skype and a reasonable Skype headset, that’s not the best way. All the podcast gurus will say, “I’m so much better with these excellent microphones,” but the likelihood to get people physically to you, even we find, scheduling is tough, even over the phone.

John McDougall:  The good news though is that, in that case, I’m here in our studio. I’ve got a nice microphone, and I’m the host of the show. I’ve got good audio quality. If I’m talking to somebody over Skype and their quality is decent, it’s still good. I’ve got good audio quality. Even if I’m talking to somebody on the phone — you’ve heard a million radio shows, where somebody calls in on the phone.

The host is in the radio studio with a great microphone, and the other person is on the phone, you forgive that because they’re doing an interview with somebody over the phone. You expect to have a little bit of a phone quality sound to their voice. I think that’s OK as long as the host of the show has a decent quality.

John McDougall:  Although, they do have some device at radio stations, to get the phone quality up a notch.

John Maher:  You can adjust the EQ, and things like that, to make the phone quality sound a little bit better, but you’re still dealing with sound over the phone. You can only go so far.

John McDougall:  To minimize that, we typically tell our people that we’re going to interview for ourselves, or for our clients, “Get XYZ headset.” I forget the model of it, off‑hand.

John Maher:  There’s a couple of different ones.

John McDougall:  Sennheiser, isn’t it?

John Maher:  Sennheiser does a good job.

John McDougall:  40, 50 bucks. I found one that has been quite successful, with a couple of comments.

John Maher:  Any USB headset that plugs into your computer, and allows you to do Skype, would work well. Look at the reviews, and save. If people are saying that the quality sounds good, then go with it. We definitely find that we get almost as good quality interviewing somebody over Skype with a good headset, as we do with them being here in the studio. Almost as good.

John McDougall:  If you do it right with a decent headset.

John Maher:  If you do it right with a decent headset, you almost don’t notice that the person is not right here in the studio with us.

 

Podcast Consistency And Scheduling

John McDougall:  That’s great. How important is it to have a consistent day? I was reading recently with Neil Patel on “QuickSprout” — who’s one of my favorites — he said running multiple podcasts can be a challenge for an entrepreneur.

With myself, I’ve got multiple podcasts going, and I’m running around scheduling different ones. I’ve got to do a better job sticking to a particular day. That may not be the case for everyone. What are your thoughts on that?

John Maher:  If you’re trying to run multiple podcasts, it’s probably important to be more on the organized side, and stick to a regular schedule. If you’re scheduling guests to be on your show on a regular basis — maybe you have a weekly show, and you have a different guest every week — it would be helpful to be able to say to somebody that you’re calling, “Hey, I do a podcast. I record every Thursday at noon. Which Thursday coming up can you do?” That would make it easier to schedule, because otherwise you end up going back and forth — “When are you available?” “I’m available these three times next week,” or, “I’m available these two times the week after that.”

Trying to coordinate that could end up being a fulltime job. Just being able to say, “My podcast is on Thursdays at noon,” or whatever the time is that you pick, that could really help. It’s not necessarily the way that people listen to podcasts. Unlike a television show in the days before DVRs, or a radio show that’s on the radio at the same time every day, “The Morning Show” that’s on at eight o’clock, podcast people subscribe to your podcast, and then they listen to it whenever it’s available. I might get up in the morning and check my phone and say, “Oh, there’s a new tech podcast that’s on. I’ll listen to that on the way to work.” Maybe I don’t listen to it for a couple of weeks and three, or four, or five episodes pile up on my phone.

Then I say, “I kind of miss listening to that show.” Then, you go and binge listen, and catch up on it. I don’t think that a regular show is necessarily the way that people listen to it. Although, it could be. I know that at least one of the podcasts that I listen to, they release the show…it’s like every Monday morning, the new episode comes out.

There’s some comfort in that. Knowing that, okay, when Monday rolls around, there’s going to be a new episode of the show. Certainly, having a recording schedule where you’re staying consistent and on a regular basis, will help people to stay subscribed. That’s definitely something to look for. If you go several weeks without a show, it’s very easy for people to go, “Oh, that show’s seems to be dead. There hasn’t been a new episode in weeks.

John McDougall:  Exactly. Same with a blog.

John Maher:  Then they unsubscribe. Maybe you came out with a new show the day after they unsubscribe. They’re not even going to know. Once somebody unsubscribes, that’s it. Staying consistent, so that people don’t hit that “unsubscribe” button, is important. It depends on how consistent and organized you can be as a podcaster.

Again, people don’t necessarily listen to podcasts on an exact schedule, but recording it on an exact schedule could be helpful, in terms of getting more subscriptions, or keeping those subscriptions, and certainly with booking guests.

 

Podcast Promotion & Hosting

John McDougall:  You’re much more relevant, if you’re consistent. What about promoting podcasts? How do you suggest promoting podcasts?

John Maher:  Definitely get your podcast up on the major podcast outlets, like iTunes and Stitcher. There are a few other ones as well. That would be the most important thing. That’s fairly simple, as long as you are hosting your audio files on a service that gives you an RSS feed, that you can submit to iTunes. It’s simple to submit your podcast to iTunes.

John McDougall:  What is an example of that?

 

Podcast Hosting

John Maher:  What you would do is use a service, like SoundCloud. They didn’t support podcasting for a while. SoundCloud was mostly for bands, putting out their music albums. For a while, you had to request an RSS feed from your account. Then, it would take a long time. They might give you that RSS feed. They’ve recently opened that up, and embraced podcasting to a greater extent.

Now, there are some big, major shows, that are hosting their podcasts on SoundCloud. In SoundClound now, when you sign up for an account, it now comes with an RSS feed, that you can then submit to iTunes. The other one that we use a lot is called “Libsyn,” L‑I‑B‑S‑Y‑N. Liberated Syndication it stands for. They’ve been around for a long time. A lot of podcast shows are hosted on Libsyn.

They have some good tools for uploading your podcasts, and then getting the RSS feed that you can submit to iTunes. The only other thing you need — when you submit it to iTunes, obviously, you have to make sure that you’ve filled out all of the information about your podcast, your title, your description, all of that sort of thing — you also need artwork, because iTunes will show that artwork when you go to do a search for a podcast. That artwork has to be at least 1,400 x 1,400 pixels. Get somebody who knows what they’re doing to create a nice cover artwork for your podcast. Make it look nice and professional. Make sure it’s at least 1,400 x 1,400 pixels, and then you submit that along with your podcast.

John McDougall:  Get out of your pajamas, basically.

[laughter]

 

Ask For Subscriptions

John Maher:  Exactly. Some other things that you can do, is ask for subscriptions. At the end of every one of your podcasts, it’s a good idea to say, “Hey, make sure you subscribe to this podcast on iTunes,” because you can listen to a podcast on iTunes without subscribing. You can just download individual episodes.

That doesn’t mean that that person is subscribing, which makes it so that every episode that you release gets automatically downloaded on to their device. It’s important to try to get those subscriptions. Just ask for them. Say, “Hey, if you liked the content in this episode, make sure you subscribe to our podcast. We’re on iTunes. We’re on Stitcher. We’re on this.”

John McDougall:  Everybody, please subscribe to this podcast.

[laughter]

 

Ask for Reviews

John Maher:  Then, you can ask for reviews. Getting good reviews on iTunes and the other podcasting outlets, helps to put your podcast at the top of the list, when somebody does a search. By getting good reviews, you end up at the top of the search. You’re more likely to get people listening. Again, just ask for reviews.

John McDougall:  More subscribers, more reviews, more activity, fairly typical for algorithms like that.

 

Show Notes & Promotion On Your Blog / Website

John Maher:  Outside of your podcast, things that you could do would be to link to your podcast from your blog or from your website, if you have a website that’s set up for your topic, and you should. You should be, at the very least, having a blog, where you have what are called “Show Notes,” which are a little description about what that episode is about.

If you mentioned some particular links in that episode, you can give those links to people, so that they can go back and click the links. You can go even a step further than that, and maybe even do a full transcription of your podcast, and post that whole transcript of the podcast in the blog post, along with the audio player. That’s an option.

John McDougall:  Sorry, just to throw in there, Copyblogger does a great job with the show notes. We do a lot of putting the full transcriptions. It’s great for SEO, and we’ve had great success with their clients. Also, I like how Copyblogger does a paragraph and some bullet points, it gives you the benefits, why would you listen to this podcast or their blog version of it?

 

Paid Promotion

John Maher:  Paid promotion, on Facebook, or LinkedIn, depending on what your topic is. If it’s a business podcast, maybe you want to use LinkedIn. Paying a little bit for paid promotion of your post and your blog…

John McDougall:  Even 10 or 20 bucks of Facebook‑promoted posts.

John Maher:  It can get your podcast in front of some new eyes, get some more subscriptions. As we talked about, post that transcript if you can to your blog. We do that because it helps us and our clients to get organic rankings. If somebody happens to be searching for a particular topic, and then your podcast blog post shows up in the Google search results, somebody new is going to be coming to your site and might find that podcast, and then say, “That looks interesting.” Or maybe they’re listening to the audio player and, “That’s really interesting. I’d like to hear more of that.” There’s your call to action graphic that says, “Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes.”

You get that click, and you get somebody subscribing. You can gain new listeners by organic traffic from the search engines. As long as you’re offering them some easy way to listen to the podcast on iTunes and subscribe, you’re going to keep those people coming back.

 

Email Marketing

Obviously, if you’re a company and you’re sending out an email marketing campaign, maybe you have a few thousand people on a list, or 10,000 people on an email list. You’re sending out a weekly email newsletter. Go ahead, and include information about your podcast in that newsletter.

It could be as simple as just, “Hey, have you checked out our podcast? Here’s the link.” Or, “Hey, in this week’s episode of our podcast, this is the topic that we’re talking about.” Have a description about that particular episode. Send that out to your whole email list once a week about what the latest episode was of your podcast, and get more people listening.

John McDougall:  I just got a great one yesterday. Jared Morrison, on Rainmaker.FM, the Copyblogger podcast. I’m subscribed via email, and it comes in. It’s about podcasting, I just forwarded it to you. Email is a great way to promote.

 

Guest Podcasting

John Maher:  Finally, be a guest on other people’s shows, if you can. Find other podcasts that are related to your topic. Then, try to be on those shows, because for the most part, when you’re on as a guest on somebody’s podcast, the host of that show will give you a little bit of an opportunity to give you a little plug to what you’re doing, what you’re up to. You might have the opportunity to say, “Yeah. I’m the host of this other podcast. You should check that out.”

John McDougall:  If they have a large audience, a large social following, or they’re Tweeting out that, “Hey, check out the latest podcast.” You’re getting in front of their audience.

John Maher:  Exactly.

John McDougall:  Blog commenting, as spammy as it sounds. There’s an old school tactic that’s totally dead now, or hopefully it’s dead. Hopefully, people aren’t still spamming links. I guess they do to some degree still.

John Maher:  It used to be that people would, in the blog or forum comments, just put the link to their website.

John McDougall:  Buy Via*** here…

John Maher:  Which is just totally spammy.

John McDougall:  On a website about toys, and all of a sudden, “Buy Via***.”

John Maher:  I think the most important thing is that, if you’re going to try to do that, you just have to add value. If you’re adding real value to the conversation that’s in the comments, or in the forum that you’re posting to, then it’s OK.

It’s OK to mention, “Hey, I loved what you said in this particular blog post, and I happen to be the host of a podcast about this topic, called whatever.” Name your podcast. “This is what I found, over the course of conversations I’ve had with people in the industry,” or, “The guests on my show think this.”

John McDougall:  You don’t even have to link to it, because you’re more promoting the idea that you’re there to help, and like you said, you’re adding value. Sure, you can mention your podcast, but don’t always necessarily link, even.

John Maher:  A link could be viewed as being spam, whereas if you’re just mentioning it by name, that’s probably more OK, because you’re just giving information. You’re saying, “Hey, this is why I’m an expert in this field, because I host this podcast here.”

Set that up, and then, “Here’s all the information about what I think about this topic.” Again, you’re adding to the conversation. You’re adding value, and that’s the most important thing.

John McDougall:  I was just commenting on Bill Slawski, I don’t know if I’m saying his last name right, SEO By The Sea. Unbelievable expert on Google patents. So Saturday morning at 6:00 AM, I hate to admit, I was reading a Google patent that Bill was reviewing.

John Maher:  I was sleeping.

John McDougall:  [laughs] You were sleeping? He sucked me in with a thing about Dr. Seuss. He said that “Green Eggs and Ham,” when you think of that, you think of the author, Dr. Seuss, and so this Google patent now is about author rank, that Google used to tie to Google+, but now they’ve disassociated their author rank from Google+ with this new patent.

They’re documenting how they’re able to track authors, and who the important authors are on the Web, and less reliant on their own social media network, Google+. I made a comment or two, and Bill would say something, and then I’d reply back.

It’s really more of a conversation, whereas the old‑school spammers would just slap the same two sentences with a link, and just do that over and over, and Google can detect that.

If you’re out there talking with other experts and creating conversation, that’s probably OK.

John Maher:  Absolutely.

John McDougall:  Great talking with you today, John.

John Maher:  Thanks.

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