Creators Lab: Descriptions, Subtitles, and Keywords

It's the first episode of New Media Lab's spinoff - Creator's Lab.  Each week, Rob answers questions from Kevin Long and offers advice for how to have a successful podcast.  Good for newbies and seasoned podcasters alike!  

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#NewMedia #Podcasting #Business #YouTube #Blogging #Vlogging

Transcription

00:00:00
This is a really difficult question. Oh, that's a great question. That's a good question. That is a great question. It's a really good question. I love this question. And I think this really is going to help me kind of meditate and grow on. It wanna hear the answers checkout season two of new media lab with Robert Southgate new episodes every Tuesday available on Spotify. I tunes. Google hod Cass and wherever you subscribe to your favorite podcasts. Welcome to the new media lab, creators lamp island. It's a pretty good name for this. What we're gonna do is. I am going to over. The course of the next. I don't know ten weeks four weeks. We'll see how this last. I'm going to interview Kevin long from the Kevin law show. Hey, kevin. Hey, I actually have not interviewing Kevin what we're going to do with. It's a very horrible thing that we're going to do and I'm gonna put it on a regular free feed. And if it turns out that people are really into this and want to get a little bit more. We might do supplemental episodes that we put on the patriot only. But for now, let's give it away because let's face it people have questions and just to give a little background about you. And I'm sure I want you to jump in on this. Kevin. Kevin is part of our network. He's part of the Southgate media group network came to us what three years ago.

00:01:34
Yes. All right. And wanted to podcast, and boom is a podcast. And here's the deal. First of all, it's very niche the Kevin long show, and we'll get into what the niches in the second is a very specific group that were retargeting with it. And in the course of three years we've seen very tiny growth. Now, I believe that that growth is directly related to what Kevin is or isn't doing. And what I as a network had 'em doing or not doing. I think we can make this show grow. And I think the most important thing here is. Between us very often you and I right on Facebook. It'll be just a quick ask question. I'll give a quick answer boom or out. And then I thought you know, what I bet there are a lot of people that have show. That's three years old. That has you know, whatever let's say fifty listens and episode, and they really can't figure out why am I not up to five hundred or a thousand and they're going to be in the same boat. You are there are also people brand new to podcasting that can learn a hell of a lot before the three year Mark if we start talking about it now. Right. So Kevin I'm going to turn it over to you to get started. I want you to give background about the Tevin long show. What is it Harare? The Kevin long show is a weekly podcast that has to chose. I guess we'll call him shows on Monday. We talk about magic items and magic spells in dungeons and dragons and how you can use them.

00:03:17
In your game. And on Thursday. We have the main Kevin long show where we used to talk about a whole bunch of nerd stuff. But I decided that by original concept was dungeons and dragons, so we're going to go back to focusing on just dungeons and dragons and basically the love of the game. Okay. It's happening in the game as a whole things that like new creator contents for all the old editions one thing that I have coming down the pipeline is some dude in Utah compared what what's characters the Utah Jazz would be if they were in the indie game. So we're gonna look at that. And just dungeons and dragons in all the stuff that comes with it. So you're gonna very specifically talking about that as a property the other the other fitness out there. We have a few shows that I know you listen to there's a thing called actual play podcasts where they played a game. And then you hear your fly on the wall listening to it. And they walk you through it. That's not what you do. You're talking about dungeons and dragons as a fan, so almost like a fan podcast of Dan. And eventually with the original goal was to do an actual play podcast. We're just not there yet as as a show. Okay. Okay. So first of all, here's one thing. I'm going to say. What you just said when we started versus where we are. Now where we started throw it away. We're starting from right now.

00:04:58
Okay. The actual play thing. Let's let's make that part of your vision board. Yup. So right now we have magic Monday. And then we have the Kevin long show on Thursday. The the other thing the the actual play part of it is something that as a creator. We can say well, okay now, it's got legs. Now, we've got a lot of fans now we've got people that are really invested in this. And I want to do this actual play thing. I've got a cast for it. Great. We can either add that to this thread, we can give it its own thread, or that's the type of content that you say, this is my patriotic. Here's the Kevin long show patriot. This is what's going to be the fuel to help keep this going to pay for and what have you and you put your actual play show only on there. We're not there yet. Right. But that is definitely a goal that you want to put a pin. It. Okay. Now, everything you just said if I was starting to show. The very first thing. I would do what I'm going to kick you off with an assignment here real fast. Okay. Is you have already figured out your niche? Okay. What you need to do is figure out where that niche is. So tell me exactly what you're inches in niches deity phantom perfect. And you'd be surprised how many people ask a question like that. And they start talking about all sorts of what gigged of a nerd stuff and all this. Nope. Your niche is fans of DND, which there are a lot of it's a nice broad niche, but it is niche.

00:06:41
Okay. The name the Kevin long show doesn't tell us that. Okay. One thing that we need to do it will upfront. Here we go. We're going to get into assignments. When when you're launching a show. Let's see you're on Lipson. That's where I do all of our stuff from there are different fields that you have to fill in when you're launching the show one is your show description. Okay. So if I go to the Kevin long show right now, which I am going. Two. And I look at it shows settings. Here's what I have showed us corruption. Kevin is buddies discuss all things geeky that's old, and it's horrible. That's not telling us anything to what I need you to do this week is write me a paragraph. Do an elevator pitch about what the Kevin long show is really niche it down. We know that it's fandom for DND. I want it to say that Kevin talks about his phantom for dungeons and dragons and do it in the third person because reading it is not you or is not talking to you. So it's in the third person and give it a good like four or five sentences that really tell the audience. This is what my show is. Here's what we do. Okay. And then from a technical standpoint the last part of it is to give a good setup. Oh, and we can add this later. I'm more concerned about getting that first part.

00:08:14
Right. But we can add like a weekly podcast, though, podcast drops on Tuesdays, or whatever it is that the more information you can give to the audience the better off you are. But in the beginning getting that description right is key. When you when you go down, and you look at things like tags and keywords, I have things like table top nerd geek, dungeons and dragons, it's all in their guess what? Those don't do very much. I know people get very hung up on that in your feed for like Lipson. It turns out I tunes doesn't use those tags. Okay. So really where you want it to get those words is up in your show description. Okay. But it's got to be natural. I know that seems hard. But it's got to be natural. It's a show about dungeons and dragons, guess what we have keywords. Right. All right. Another thing that we did. Right. From the beginning is we call Kevin long show podcast as opposed to buck Kevin long show as soon as you put in front of it, you now are competing with every other show out there that has the word thaw. Yeah, I heard that last week on new media lab. Yeah. Yeah. Dave Jackson talked about it. So that is something we did very well from the beginning, we called it. The cabinet. We call it. Kevin long show. Even though it is when you say it, it's duck Kevin long show.

00:09:37
That's fine. But we gotta fix that show. Description the keywords, I'm not gonna worry about. Okay. From a back end thing. Now, this is something you don't deal with. But they're all these different things. I can do this is where I'm at fault for you where I can start filling in these fields on Lipson, for example. Is there a Kevin long show Facebook page? There is great. I don't have that in here. Is there a Twitter handle not for the Kevin long show? No. But you have one four swamp. It right. Yeah. That would go in here. Okay. If you have your own own Lincoln, we can put that on we need to put your I tunes your tune in your Stitcher your Google, play Google podcast address Spotify. And if you have a YouTube channel, I need that address. Okay. So I will send you a list. This is this is more. I don't expect you to write it down right now. But all those things can go and Lipson, and it will push your show to all those platforms. Okay. Cool. Now, we're gonna go to another part in here. And then we'll get to our other assignment. Now, this is one that doesn't matter so much for itunes, but for some of the other directories, it matters heck of a lot. Okay. When we post a show it says title. Okay, titles should not be an episode number. It shouldn't say like episode forty two. You should always have a name.

00:11:04
Okay. Now Magid bundy's I always start with magic Mondays. And then colon and whatever the name is the Kevin long show. You should just have a name something that ties in tells the audience what this show is. Okay. So for example, if it was this show, I would say something like like. Bins and and tags. What's it about something? Like that. That tells the audience what we talked about. Now, here's the other one that I need this attached to your assignment underneath title. It says subtitle. This is the thing that I tunes doesn't care about other directories do. Okay. I need a quick few words that say what this is. So at the top it says, you know, dies dungeons and monsters. That's the name of this week's episode. Let's say the subtitle remains the same on every episode at it should be something like like other dumping. We had Kevin and his buddies discuss all things geeky. That's it. There's your subtitle. But that's not the one we're gonna use. Right. So think about something like that. And then give me a good solid show description. That's like an elevator pitch. Okay. Now, we're not going to do show notes this week. I will have a spoiler. You a pretty good job on the show notes. Ex- except for one thing, which we will get to unin other episode. You got enough on your plate. But you don't man I got one more thing for you to do. So this week I want you to to since you're thinking about your niche.

00:12:45
You're thinking about what keywords you want in there in that description? I want you to do me a favor. To favors look at that. Adding to it already. I want you to go to a website called hash tag, affi- me K K. I'll put it in the show notes for this show. I know sometimes when I tell people that they're like, oh, you got to pay for it. You don't have to pay for it. There's a free version of it. Go into the website type in in the search bar DND or dungeons and dragons or tabletop scroll down, and it will show you what other words associate with that that are big keywords K. So you may be surprised you may type in dungeons and dragons when you go down, and you look it may say tabletop, and then it may say nerd, est, and you go why would it say that? I don't care right down the ones that make sense the big ones. Okay. Here's what we're going to do with it. We're going to do one thing. We're gonna put it in the tag the tags and keywords on the show, which I told you don't matter, but we're gonna put them there. We're also going to keep that list around. So when you're writing your show notes those words keep popping up. And then here's the other thing. And this is this is the one that you're going to get beat up real good on as everybody does in a future episode. We're going to do specifically different social media tactics. At if you have those those keywords already pulled aside, you know, the hashtags that associate it's gonna make it so much easier when we get to Instagram or when we when we niche down on Twitter.

00:14:28
But for now just gathering list, and this goes for everybody. If you have a show if you have a subject out there take that subject. We do a show called about orange is the new black. We type in orange is the new black. What are the names that come up or the things that come up? I'll tell you one that comes up is net. Flicks. I'll tell you another one that comes up is crazy is a character on the show. Okay. Things that I would think would come up like the name of the author almost non-existent interesting. Right. A little I I would think if I was guessing atom that would be in there. But when you hashtag affi- me, you can see there's just no activity on that name unless that name hits the news. And then you could add it in your show notes. Okay. So your first assignment give me a really solid show description that really tells the audience what your show is. Go to hashtag affi- me starts researching hashtags now, I'll give you another clue as a way to do that. Go to Instagram you have Instagram. I do. Okay. I'm sure you follow people that do kind of what you do. Yeah. Like, a big big names. Like, let's say geek and sundry, right? Yeah. Okay. So go to their Instagram and steal a bunch of their hashtags. Okay. Write them down. What you'll notice is. There are some that are like oh this week. They talked about.

00:15:49
I don't know sushi go because that's what they were doing this week. Well, you don't need that hashtag because you're talking about sushi go, right, but the rest of their tags if they could fit seventeen tags in there. They're gonna take like four and make him about this week's episode of the other seventeen are going to be the Sarah fifteen or whatever it is. I did the math wrong thirteen are going to be the same every week. They're going to be tabletop DND dungeons and dragons dungeons and dragons like it's going to be the same every time. Right. So get that big old list. I mean, I don't care if you come back, and you're like, I got forty ash tags off at my niche, great, let's play with that. Okay. So all right, Kevin. I'm giving you assignments we've kind of talked about these are these are basics for for new people. These are things you want to do before you launch for somebody like you. These are things we can do to tighten this up, and I'm going to fix those settings and get you. So you're across all those different platforms. Even though you are I want to make sure they're fed through Lipson. Okay. All right. So that's going to be this week week one. Last thing. What questions do you have is there something I can answer this week or that we can plant for next week? So this week's question is is it important to be on other channels like Pandora or Spotify or as a podcast.

00:17:10
Okay. Just being on itunes. That's a great question. Okay. So first of all there's a couple of different schools of thought on this. And then I'll tell you what I think I have heard people say, Nope. I do it exclusively on ITN's. I've also heard people say no go to everything you can. I've heard people say YouTube is worthless. Why would you put it on YouTube? I've heard people that are like, you know, I'm Ernie on soundcloud. That's the way to go. All right. Let me let me clarify my thinking on it. I think you should be everywhere. You can be. Soundcloud is kind of worthless. From for for me, we we actually used to put all of our shows on their ended amounted to a few listens. If it was a thousand a month across the whole network to me, that's that's a win. But then I noticed they weren't quality. What I was getting was people that were putting their own music on. They would say, hey, man. I just listened to your track. Can you listen to mine and give it a like it's like getting a lot of these messages? But they're not listening to my shows. Right. That's not worth it to me. So I don't I don't mess around. With sounds cloud. I do let things push to it sometimes. But that's just in case. Somebody happens to see it. It's like throwing a line in in the ocean knows the other part of it, though is I do believe you should be on every district distribution channel, you can be unless you have an exclusive deal with Stitcher or Spotify. You should be everywhere. Because here's the deal. A lot of people are I tunes listeners.

00:18:44
Right. So I tuned. Is I remember hearing something like eighty five percent of the downloads, come from itunes. That's in America. They don't have I tunes in Europe coming off all of Europe, bad move. They speak English use speak English. You should have your shows there. So now, it makes sense to be on Google. It also makes sense because they do use that for the Android devices there. But it also makes even more sense to also be on Spotify because both apple and Android users use Spotify. Okay. It makes sense to be on Pandora, even though. It's a new thing that's happening. And it's a little tricky getting on it makes sense because there are people. My mom listens through Pandora all the time. And she said, oh, I wish your podcast were here. People go where they are comfortable, right? And I'm one that uses Stitcher all the time. But you know, what truth be told our Stitcher numbers are terrible for our network. They're terrible. But I listened to everything unstitched. So I go, I don't I don't understand. But I'm gonna make sure we're there because if there are a hundred people that listen to Stitcher with that's one hundred people that are now getting your content, right? So yes, you wanna be everywhere you can be. And I also think you wanna push it to YouTube. If you know, the best thing is creating original video for you too. But. You know, what through what what we do is? We have it set up. So that our shows push automatically to YouTube. And that way if you have somebody who is peering paired, they can watch on YouTube, and they can put close captions on lice. And is that a huge percentage? Maybe maybe not.

00:20:32
But. The the first time somebody walks up to you and says, I'm a huge fan of your show. I'm so glad you have it on YouTube because I can read it you're going to go. Oh my God. Everything I do needs to go on YouTube. Right. So I do think you wanna push it everywhere. Now with that come something. That's we're going to explore in this show. You have to treat them all properly as well. Right. So like with YouTube, if we're just pushing it there, and there's no image. Guess what? It just says the Kevin long show, and it's not crap properly not doing any good. So if we can create either original artwork or have the show logo sized properly. So it pushes to you too. Great. And we'll we'll address sizes and artwork. And what I think of all that on a future episode. But did I answer it pretty well for your Kevin? You did. Thank you so much. All right. So, you know, your assignment let's hear it description that is above average. And hashtags specific to my show rock on. I also need that the. Yeah, the hashtags, and then I also need the subtitle. Right. And that's it. And then next week. I want to hear those we'll plug them into your show isn't going to make a difference. Immediately know will it overtime. I do believe it will. But we'll we'll address new stuff that will just start adding to this going forward. In fact, I'm gonna plant this right now, I think next week we should talk about a little some social media tactics that might have an impact immediately. So we can look and see. Hey, did your did your listens increased by ten twenty fifty one hundred percent?

00:22:17
All right. All right. Well, that's it. Thank you. Kevin. I will talk to you next week. And why don't you give your social media real quickly? So you can find us on Facebook. Just search the Kevin long show were also on itunes and anywhere else. You get your podcasting from. And you can Email us at the Kevin long show at gmaiLcom cool. And how about a how about Twitter do you have a Twitter? We do. We are at the swamp pit see. I knew you had that because I asked earlier so excellent. Yeah. Get in communication that is also a key. Communicate with your audience and your audience can help you by communicating with you. Sure. Sure. Thank you so much. So that's it for our satellite edition of new media lab, creators lab, and we will be back every Tuesday. I believe going through the nuts and bolts and answering questions starting with Kevin. Eventually we're going to make us so successful you won't need me. And we'll have to get somebody else. And yeah, I excited to see how this journey goes. And if you are listening one thing you could do to help out is give Kevin some ratings and reviews, check out his show wherever you get your podcast. Follow him on Facebook, follow him on social media. And Kevin you when you see those up follow 'em back. All right. All right. That's it. Sure. To listen to new media lab prime the main show which will air on Thursday, and our guest for week two is Brent hand from his Syria. Fifty one you do not want to miss. This one follows on Facebook just look up new media lab, you can follow me on Twitter at our Southgate. You can also find me on Instagram under rob Southgate. Or if you want to drop me an Email ask a question, we will address it on this show will address it on prime.

00:24:12
Send me an Email at Southgate small business at mail dot com. At south media that gmaiLcom and you can also find us on our website, which is south gate media group dot com.