It’s almost impossible to make a good podcast without listening to great podcasts. But it probably takes more than listening to get from good to great. The secret is learning those not-hidden secrets. Yes, today’s episode is about podcasting. But I must first set it up by briefly discussing food and booze. I promise it’ll all line up! I’m a competent cook. No one is going to confuse me for a trained chef. I’m not even qualified to be a line cook…

Finding advice on how to make your podcast better is easy. Knowing what advice to take and what to ignore is trickier. Before implementing any advice, take a close look at the agenda behind that advice. Your agenda is not my agenda. Sorry, but it’s not. We both indeed want to make podcasting-the entirety of podcasting-better. We share that agenda, and there are likely shared agendas between us. We’re good and decent people, are we not? …

Posting about your podcast on social media without posting ONLY about your podcast can be exhausting. I can’t fix that, but I can give you 10 questions to ask yourself that make for great social post ideas. So there I was, staring at the flashing “What’s happening?” prompt on my computer. And nothing was coming to mind. As a podcaster, I’m sure that’s happened to you before. If you’re a natural-born social media person, perhaps not all that often. Or, if you, like me, are a…

Podcast discovery isn’t broken. It’s just not one thing. And it gets a lot easier to improve podcast discoverability when a podcast listening app specializes in just one type of content. So… how’s that going? I tried a thought experiment four years ago where I’d look ahead eight years, imagining what the podcast discovery experience for listeners might look like in 2026. And no, I’ve no idea why I used eight years instead of ten. …

Too many podcasters skip a key step when publishing: the episode details. Or show notes, as you’ve likely called them. This helpful text isn’t optional. It’s required. And I’ll give you five new reasons why. I have been right there with you, podcaster. Slogging through all of the pre-production work. Sitting through multiple recording sessions. Slinging a slew of paper edits back and forth within your team. Writing out all the voice-over parts and working with talent to get their reads nice and tight…

Podcasters have a lot of jobs. One we don’t often think of is being ambassadors for podcasting. But it’s an important job if we’re to grow the entire podcasting pie. Start by having some IHNIs at the ready. Way back in the summer of 2018, I introduced my audience, small that it was at the time, to a concept I called IHNI. No, I’m not making a judgment call about your convex belly button. My term IHNI is an acronym where the letters I, H, N, and…

Listening to podcasts is like eating a submarine sandwich. Making a podcast is like making a submarine sandwich. But too many podcasters try to make one like they eat one. Let’s fix that. When I started this show way back in 2018, Podcast Pontifications wasn’t a podcast. It was a live video show I did via Facebook. …

Growth and monetization are at the top of every podcaster’s wish list. At least every podcaster who’s yet to achieve those two things. Or perhaps not at the level said podcaster is happy with for their own show. Buzzsprout aims to change the growth and monetization question with a new product they’ve just released called Buzzsprout Ads. And interestingly enough, they’re tackling both of those challenges-growth and monetization-with the same solution.

Politicians get in trouble for flip-flopping on issues. But for podcasters, changing opinions and approaches is a survival tactic. Think about these three questions over the next few months to prep your show for 2023 & beyond. It’s early June, which is an odd time for me to be pontificating about podcasting, as this is generally the month I take a break from producing episodes. But that was when I was releasing episodes four times a week and I needed a break! June is my birthday…