I am one of the unholy people who commits the seasonal crime of listening to Christmas music too early. I get the itch around early November, but exercise restraint until a week before Thanksgiving.
Every year, I set aside some time to review and update both of my lists: the family-friendly one, and my personal list — a combination of classics and slightly more vulgar songs from my youth. This year, I came to a realization…
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Joe: I am one of those unholy people
who commits the seasonal crime of
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listening to Christmas music to early.
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I get the itch around early
November, but I exercise restraint
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until a week before Thanksgiving.
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Every year, I set aside some
time to review and update both
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of my Christmas playlists.
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The family friendly one.
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And my personal list, a
combination of classics and.
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Slightly more vulgar songs from my youth.
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And this year I came to a
realization and that’s what I’m
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going to talk to you about today.
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But first, I do want to tell
you about a month long event
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or really a season long event.
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I guess I’m doing over at podcast
workflows called pod cast advent.
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These are daily posts that you’ll
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the 24th of December one each day.
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But they’ll also be just tools,
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Most of those articles will
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All right.
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So let’s get into this realization.
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I came to when updating
my Christmas playlist.
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.Welcome to podcast workflows, where
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you get daily tips to
improve your process.
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Grow your show and maybe
even make some money.
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Each week.
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I also do a deep dive into the process of
the world’s most successful podcasters.
00:01:42.397 –> 00:01:47.407
And reveal their tools, processes,
and systems to help you simplify
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the production of your own show.
00:01:49.567 –> 00:01:51.787
And reclaim hours in your day.
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You can improve your own
podcast production process
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by seeing how the pros do it.
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Joe: I’m your host, Joe Casabona.
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And today I want to ask you the question.
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What’s your Christmas song.
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See, there are lots of artists on those
at four mentioned Playlist’s that I only
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listened to during the Christmas season.
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Leona Lewis in sync.
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And Bobby Helms, just to name a few.
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These artists likely know that there’s
a specific part of the market that they
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could capture by having a Christmas song.
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And while Leona Lewis and in sync
at least had huge international
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success before their Christmas songs.
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There are artists that are primarily
known for their Christmas music.
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And have used that Christmas
music to grow their fan base.
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Pentatonix and Michael
bublé while they became.
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Uh, public before their Christmas music.
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Come to mind.
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There’s a reason musicians want to make
a Christmas song, Lauren entire album.
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They sell.
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To a more.
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Broad audience, a more general
audience than their niche audience.
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As podcasters.
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We don’t have a lot of chances
for our episodes to go viral on a
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platform like Tik TOK or YouTube.
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But that doesn’t mean that
we can’t have our own.
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Christmas song.
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An episode that has wider appeal
beyond our niche audience.
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Now I was lucky that my show saw
some success early within my niche.
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I got some great guests asked
the right questions and I got
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early support from the community.
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And I was happy to continue on that path.
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But I did.
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Something interesting and
special for my 100th episode.
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Uh, a little over two years in
and things were going pretty well.
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So I had my friend Jeff large
turn the tables and interview
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me on how I built the podcast.
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Now Jeff is a great interviewer
and a teacher, so he was able to
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elicit some great answers from me.
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He even asked me a question that I
used to ask every guest at the time.
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Do you have any trade secrets for us?
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I thought it was a great episode,
but I was shocked to see the stats.
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It was far and away the most
popular episode for a long time.
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And it showed me that people
love behind the scenes content.
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People from all niches.
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That was my first Christmas song.
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All the elements were there to make
it a more generally popular episode.
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I had a guest and a fellow podcaster
who knocked it out of the park.
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I was covering podcasting.
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As opposed to what I was covering at the
time, which was WordPress development.
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And it was a behind the scenes.
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Look.
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At how the idea of my podcast
happened and continue to happen.
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This doesn’t mean it was for everyone.
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But it was for an audience
way bigger than my niche.
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That kind of happened on accident.
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But it’s not a lesson
that I let slip away.
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So, what should you do if you want
to find your own Christmas song?
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The trick is to pick something
that aligns to, but it’s not
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exclusively for your audience.
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You still want to fulfill the
mission statement of your show?
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But you want to expand it?
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Let’s look at our musical artists again.
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And sync has a very popular
Christmas song that you probably
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can sing off the top of your head.
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At least if you’re in the United States.
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But it’s still in their
genre, which is pop.
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They didn’t try rap or country.
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And that’s what you want
to think about as well.
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You want to do the same
thing for your show.
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One of my most popular annual episodes and
again, a Christmas song for my episodes.
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Is my gift guides.
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They’re still for solo,
preneurs and creators.
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But there are a lot of people
looking for gift ideas for loved
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ones who work at a computer most
of the time, or work from home.
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Most of the time.
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So that episode does very well.
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In fact, the 2023 version is
leading my episodes in downloads
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over the first 30 days.
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Despite not being out for 30 days yet.
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Another episode that does well
is my yearly theme episode,
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which I do in January.
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More than just solo preneurs,
like to think about goal setting
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and the idea of a yearly theme.
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Uh, ha already has a
big community behind it.
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So I make sure to produce
those episodes every year.
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Because they are an opportunity
for growth and discovery.
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So, if you’re thinking you
want to do this, here’s a quick
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litmus test to ask yourself.
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It’s two questions.
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Is this topic helpful for my audience?
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And is this topic only
helpful for my audience?
00:07:07.024 –> 00:07:08.884
If the answer to one is yes.
00:07:09.244 –> 00:07:10.684
And the answer to two is no.
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Then you might have
yourself a Christmas song.
00:07:13.954 –> 00:07:18.244
Number one is crucially important
because you can likely come up
00:07:18.244 –> 00:07:20.704
with a topic that has mass appeal.
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Most things that are controversial
and stated, absolutely.
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Find a big audience.
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But there’s a strong risk that you’ll
alienate your current audience.
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The people that you serve
for the rest of the year.
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The other thing you can do
is use the data you have.
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I realized that my
hundredth episode was a hit.
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Because I noticed it was getting listened
to a lot more than my other episodes.
00:07:49.354 –> 00:07:50.404
You can leverage your.
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The podcast platform stats and the data
that you see at apple podcasts connect.
00:07:55.834 –> 00:07:58.504
To see what people are listening
to and how long they’re listening.
00:07:59.344 –> 00:08:00.454
And get ideas from that.
00:08:01.534 –> 00:08:04.174
If you usually talk about how
runners can leverage their
00:08:04.174 –> 00:08:05.974
phone to create better habits.
00:08:06.694 –> 00:08:09.694
Maybe you can talk about your
favorite fitness apps or how
00:08:09.694 –> 00:08:11.554
you use your apple watch.
00:08:12.334 –> 00:08:15.784
This serves your audience of runners,
but it also appeals to a wider
00:08:15.784 –> 00:08:19.264
audience of aspirational exercisers.
00:08:20.854 –> 00:08:24.904
The biggest thing you can do here
is take action and experiment.
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Unlike the Christmas song, you have more
than one shot per year to make a hit.
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Every few months, try something different.
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Uh, format or topic that might
do well beyond your audience.
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Measure the data and see what
kind of feedback you get.
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Then try again and keep what works.
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Thanks so much for listening to this day.
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One.
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Quote, unquote of podcast advent.
00:08:54.214 –> 00:08:57.484
You can read this article, it’ll
be linked in the show notes.
00:08:57.514 –> 00:09:01.144
You can find all of the
days of the advent calendar.
00:09:01.444 –> 00:09:04.474
over@podcastworkflows.com slash advent.
00:09:05.194 –> 00:09:08.104
If you want to get these delivered
directly to your inbox every day,
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you can also sign up over there.
00:09:10.144 –> 00:09:11.614
Thanks so much for listening.
00:09:11.644 –> 00:09:15.454
And until next time I can’t
wait to see what you make.