Melanie
Welcome to the Monday Morning Marketing Podcast for all decision makers and action takers. Take it away, Esther.
Esther
Good morning and welcome back to another episode of the Monday Morning Marketing Podcast. Today we're joined by Aoife O'Brien, Founder of Happier At Work, Host and Creator of the award-winning Happier At Work Podcast. And we're talking about, guess what? Podcasting. Welcome, Aoife.
Aoife
Thanks so much, Esther. Absolute pleasure to be here.
Esther
Well, we're so glad to finally pin you down because like ourselves, your podcast has been going for quite a while. So tell us a bit about your podcast, how long it's been going for, how many guests you've had on, how many cups of tea you've consumed in the whole making of it. I mean, all juicy details.
Aoife
Can I preface this to say I am not a tea drinker as such. I drink herbal tea, but I don't drink tea tea. So I'll just put that out there first. But like you say, podcast has been going for a long, long time. I've been doing this since around August 2019, more or less without a break. I take a break at Christmas every year. So for a couple of weeks, I don't put out any episodes of the podcast. And then I took a bit of a break after I submitted my master's dissertation back in 2020. And if you cast your mind back to what was going on then, we don't want to. Intense time in the world. And I took a bit of a break from the podcast for two or three months after that because I just needed it after everything I did for the master's dissertation. So it's been running for over five years. I absolutely love it. And I suppose my whole reason for starting it was I had a message and a microphone and at that stage, a SoundCloud account that was probably dormant. And I wanted to start talking to people about these really important topics, because for me, I came from a background that I always, always enjoyed my jobs.
I was really ambitious, and I just found myself in a couple of workplaces where I wasn't getting where I wanted to be. I didn't feel like I was getting the recognition. And I certainly wasn't thriving at work. And having come from a place where I had the opportunity to thrive in a really positive work culture, I was so shocked and surprised by this. And I left to subsequent organizations because I didn't know what was going on. And I went on and I did that master's to help me figure out what was going on for me and how can I help other people, both organizationally and also from an individual perspective, as an individual to be happier at work and as an organization, to create those happier, thriving working environments, but not in a fluffy way, actually using data and using science batch methods. So that's a little bit of the background of it.
Esther
Brilliant.
Melanie
So what was the specific attraction to creating a podcast, Aoife? What had you learned or understood about podcasting before starting?
Aoife
Good question. Probably I didn't know a huge amount of the back end of podcasting and what it takes to put a podcast together, which I think a lot of people don't realize until they go to actually do it, just how much work is involved in it. But for me, I loved consuming podcasts. I was a huge, huge fan of a podcast called Happier by Gretchen Rubin, which I believe is still going. But if I'm being perfectly honest, I haven't listened to that podcast in a long time. But that was my inspiration. I loved it. I loved the format of it. I loved how there were insights. It was bite size. You listen in your own time. And I just loved the overall approach of it. And I thought, well, hey, there's nothing to stop me doing. I was probably a little bit brazen because who am I to start a podcast? That thought didn't even cross my mind. I just went for it. I just was like, get myself a microphone. What else do I need? I need somewhere to upload it. I did a bit of research on the topics I should have. I reached out to people within my network to get them onto the podcast. So very early days, the people who I had as guests were all within my network. So I just reached out to people I knew, basically. Things have evolved quite a bit since then. But that was my whole reason for starting, because I love listening to podcasts and I still do. So when I say I don't listen to that specific podcast anymore, I love listening to podcasts. I listen to them when I'm out for a walk or a run or cooking or commuting. I absolutely love listening to podcasts. I love it as a format.
Esther
And podcasting is still quite an untapped market for a lot of industries. Would you encourage people to begin their own podcast?
Aoife
It's funny, I think. So there's a lot of people who perceive podcasting to be like, oh, I'm too late now. So if you imagine pre-pandemic Which is when you start your podcast, it's when I started my podcast. And then during the pandemic, I think people had a lot of time. A celebrity, especially, they're like, I'm going to start a podcast because they're at home, didn't have much else to do, probably. So they started a podcast. And I think it really, really took off. And because of that, I think there's this perception that if you're starting a podcast now that you're too late, and I don't think that's the case at all. What I'm seeing specifically with the company, One of the companies that I work with is internal types of podcasts as a way to communicate with staff. So using podcasting to share stories internally, which I think is such a fantastic way to build engagement management, to get buy in from people, to foster understanding. But they can use that content then in their branding, in their employer branding as well with people externally. So I still think there's a huge That untapped potential to use podcasts in loads of different ways. It's a way that people can learn. It's a way that people... Getting those bite-sized insights. If you listen to a five-minute podcast while you're making a cup of tea in the office or even while you're at home, and it's an internal podcast for the company, what a great way to keep you connected with that company.
Melanie
So I've got to ask, you did touch on briefly about how much work is involved in the background of creating a podcast, and I can vouch for that, especially as myself and Esther, there's two of us, and there's still plenty of work for both of us to do. So could you outline to our listeners, if they're considering starting a podcast, what do they need to make time for? What do they need to learn about? Do you have any tools that you might recommend?
Aoife
I mean, we could probably talk for about three or four hours about this very specific topic, but I'll try to keep it brief. For me, if you maybe think about the before, the during, and the after. So before, it's making sure that you have the equipment. If there's any specific research that you need to do, if you need a guest. So let's take the guest thing in particular, because I have guests on my podcast. I think for the first maybe 70 or 80 episodes, I had only guests. And then I felt I was like, I need to share my own voice a little bit more. So I started in solo episodes, and then I was doing them every second episode was solo. I found that too intense because talking to myself is much harder than talking to other people. And so now at the moment it's two episodes. I think I reduced it to maybe three episodes and then one solo or three interviews and then one solo. And now at the moment is two episodes and one solo episode, which I think that's a nice balance. But when it comes to guests, as your podcast gains a bit of momentum, you're going to start getting queries from people.
So I've set up a whole application process that people need to go through. I get pitched by a PR firms, by people who have books, by people within my network, by people who've never heard of me reach out on LinkedIn and connect and say, oh, hey, you have a podcast I want to be on your podcast. I'm not quite how it works. And so thinking about all of the processes around how are you going to manage those guests? How are you going to collect the information that you need? This is a huge mistake that I made early on where the one that the episode that sticks in my mind, I recorded it late on a Thursday and was doing at that time all of the editing myself and everything to do with the editing, the social media, all of that stuff for the podcast that was going out in the morning. And I emailed my guest and I said, oh, hey, just wondering if you have a headshot because I haven't received anything from you yet. And he said, I don't have a headshot. So I basically took a screenshot from our Zoom chat, which wasn't ideal, but it meant that I put processes in place that I collected everything before people even booked a call with me.
So now I batch record everything. I collect all of the information first. So headshots, social media, bios, all of that thing before anyone even books on a call. And I have a, I use Calendly. I'm like, am I allowed to say this stuff? I use Google forms to collect that information. Submission on the thank you page or whatever you want to call it, the submission page. Once it's submitted, there's a link to my Calendly where people can then go and book a slot to record. And this year I'm experimenting with only recording, well, sorry, for a while I've been only recording on Thursdays. But this year I decided I was only going to do four months of the year. So January, April, July and October, only on Thursdays. And I do three per day. What I found is that's actually really intense. So next year I'm going to change things up a little bit because I've just found it overwhelming, basically, to do three episodes in a day. It takes a lot out of you. And then with rejigs and things like yesterday, for example, I had four recordings, which was, it's just a lot. So making sure that I have all of those. I have templates for everything. When I say that, I mean email template to say your podcast is coming out next week, your podcast has been released, here's the links. So I just need to update the links in the template. And then I also send follow ups to people to say this is how your podcast episode has performed. I at one week, at one month and at three months. But the email that I send for them to let them know that the podcast is out, again, and you'll know this, when you have people on your podcast, you get them because you want them to promote it to their network. Like that's why you have people on as a guest. It's their expertise, but it's your exposure to their network. Sometimes in the past, I've invited people on who I think, oh, if they share it to their network, then I'm certainly going to see the rankings go really high or whatever. But that's often not the case because A, they don't really share it that well or they don't share it at all or they just re-share your stuff. It's a half ass attempt, basically. B, maybe it's not the right fit for your audience. So people haven't really resonated with what the person was saying anyway. So all that to say, I make it as easy as possible for people to promote the podcast when they come on to it. So I provide them with a suggested social media post. I provide them with about 10 to 15 videos that they can use as well. Links where everything is. I send clips, I send images. And again, I would love to mention the tools that I use. So I use OpusClip, which takes those clips. Previously I did say one clip for an episode, did it in a few different ways. Now it probably takes around the same time, but now you get like 10 to 15 clips. And I say it takes around the same time because you have to actually look at the clips. I use another great AI tool called Cast Magic that helps with LinkedIn posts. It helps with creating show notes, creating titles for the episodes. Like these are all the things that you have to think about. And I think after about 18 months of doing this all by myself, and this before I used AI or anything like that either.
I started getting the help from someone else. So I've had various different editors over the years, and now I'm working with someone who's a sound engineer, but she also does the social media for me. So she's an all in one. I'm still doing the emails. I'm hoping to outsource that part of it soon. But hopefully that gives an idea of just the breadth of things that you need to think about. I think people think, oh, well, I have to distribute it to all of the different platforms. No, you don't. You upload it once and then your distribution platform puts it everywhere. That's not the thing that takes time. The thing that takes time is the editing, the promotion, the dealing with the guests, all of the admin associated with it.
Melanie
Basically, yeah. Now, have you ever done any sponsored podcasts or anything like that?
Aoife
As in someone sponsoring my podcast?
Melanie
Yeah.
Aoife
Around a year I was looking into that. I did a program all about podcast sponsorship. It was something I was really keen to do, to monetize the podcast because podcasting is expensive as well. There's the equipment that you have to pay for, there's the time that it takes. If you're working with editors, it's paying them as well.
Melanie
The outsourcing, isn't it?
Aoife
The outsourcing, yeah. The technology that you have to pay for as well to be able to get the podcast done. So I did to look into that and someone connected me with someone who I thought would be a good fit. That was earlier this year. And he basically ghosted me. So I put together a package for him. He basically ghosted me. And then, over the years, I've always thought, is it really worth the effort. So I made the assumption that the money was too much. It was more than he expected. That's my assumption. He didn't explicitly say that. He ghosted me. But judging by the numbers that I see online and how much people get, I often think that the sponsorship is not really worth it. Now, what I did learn from that course that I did is you get to charge what you want, because if you have a very niche audience and a really engaged audience on a very specific topic and the person like that is their ideal clients and if they're really highly engaged, then you should be charging accordingly as opposed to, oh, well, online it says you should be charging X dollars per download or per hundred downloads or a thousand downloads or whatever it is. And so that's a long way to answer your question. And the answer is no. And I will say that I have used my podcast strategically to promote my own business. So that was a big focus for me this year is putting in ads into the podcast, but actually using it to promote myself and my own business as opposed to someone else.
Esther
And you mentioned there about number of downloads and things like that. Where do you go to find all this information? Because like you say, you put it up onto one platform and it distributes all these other platforms. And each platform has its own analytics tool. So how often do you go and deep dive into these analytics and collect all the information?
Aoife
Yeah. So I do that on a monthly basis. So usually the first of the month, I will check a few different places. Excuse me. There is. So I use Captivate. I've started using Captivate. I started using that in October 2023. And so I've been using it since then. I'm really, really happy with them. So I'll take the the top line numbers there. This is the total downloads for this month so I can look at trends over time. And then I go into Apple, Apple podcast. I go into Spotify for podcasters. I always forget the name. So I type into Google and it pops up for me. So Apple and Spotify, the back end. And the kinds of things I look there are listener engagement. You can also look at specific episodes to see are people dropping off at a certain point. I think they're much more interesting to understand what are people really listening to. I used to use Chartable as well to see where am I in the Apple charts, especially since Captivate gave me the opportunity to define my podcast as a career podcast as opposed to just a general business podcast. And so I started seeing how I was performing in the careers charts, which was really well as opposed to general business, which is much tougher.
But they are a to use their words, sunsetting the business. It's such an interesting term.
Esther
Bye bye.
Aoife
Bye bye. So they are, can't use that anymore. But the other interesting thing that I used to use there was to look, because they They share global rankings and US rankings. And one of the things that I was interested to see recently, and I won't be able to track it any further unless I find something else. And I have signed up to something as well. But the podcast reached the top one thousand, which sounds like a large number. But for me to get into the top one thousand globally of all, I think it must have been business podcasts. It can't have been general. But of the top one thousand business podcast globally. Like I just was blown away by that. And it was also the top within the top one thousand business podcasts in America, which is also huge. A huge market of podcasts as well. And I'm trying to think of the name of the other one, I think it was Rephonic with OP3 or something. Captivate anyway, sent an email out about it. They put a link to an interesting article for different places that you could sign up. And I had another account with another with another tracker that I'm going to maybe keep an eye on that and see. But I liked Chartable and I imagine it's for monetary reasons, let's face it. It's for financial reasons that they're going, that they're saying bye-bye. But yeah, that's what I used to use.
Melanie
Well, if people are considering using the podcast or their own podcast for their business, and they are not going down the route of getting it sponsored, what insights or analytics are you looking at to see if it's actually worth, not just time-wise, but financially worth doing?
Aoife
That's a really good point. And I think the thing with podcasting is, and so many people have approached me over the years saying, How do you do it? And what do I need to to think about? The thing to think about is, it's not a quick win. You're not going to put out a podcast and suddenly have loads of clients overnight. This is a long game. I've been doing this for five years. And what I find is the people who reach out to me, who've listened already to the podcast, it's a no brainer. They want to work with me. They know they want to work with me. And it's just a case of working out the finer details of what they want to do and how much I'm going to charge them. But if you're getting into it for a quick win, absolutely don't do it. If you're getting into it for a branding exercise, for a long term thing, I think it's really important not to look at the podcast download metrics, but to focus more on what revenue is directly attributed to me doing the podcast. And I will admit, I'm not brilliant at making those direct correlations.
But what I do notice is that when people tell me, I've listened to your podcast, it's It ends up being a no brainer that they absolutely want to work with me because they know me. They've heard me speaking. I've heard various different quotes. If you hear or read someone or interact with their content seven times or for seven times or for seven hours, I can't remember. But they feel like they know you and they're more likely to make a purchase from you then.
Esther
That's very interesting. And speaking of purchasing, you have a product.
Aoife
I do. I do. Yeah. And I think so for me, an award-winning product, you might say.
Esther
I should have said an award-winning product.
Aoife
So I was getting pitched so much to be on my podcast that I decided to take the bull by the horns and educate people on how to do a pitch really well, because I get a lot of crap pitches, basically, as I'm sure you do as well. You get an in-boss and you're like, and it's all me, me, me. And this is how brilliant I am. This is what I can talk about in my book. And again, on the other side, I've made that mistake when reaching out to people, talking only about the podcast as opposed to them and why I want them on the podcast. That's an important learning for us all. So it's not like you have it all figured out. But when you're on the receiving end of something like that, it just it makes it an easy no. And for me, that's a, here's my application, or sometimes it's you're an entrepreneur and your audience is entrepreneurs. This is not suited to my podcast. That's not what my podcast is about. So it's a straight no. So it's either application. And if I take the time to say no, it's a no. Or today, actually, I've replied to a couple of people, one to say, yes, get booked in. And I don't usually do this, but I'm about to go on holidays and I'm in a good mood. So let's do this. And the other one, I was actually going to say yes to them, but it was, I read it again and then it was like that seems more like a sponsorship opportunity. He wants to promote his business on my podcast. And I said, here's a link to book a call. And I'm open to discussing it being a sponsorship opportunity. But back to the product. So I wanted to educate people on, well, how do you find podcasts that are right for you? Because not every podcast is going to be a good fit. And again, you probably can relate to this. Someone who says, oh, hey, A makeup artist got in touch with me about being on my podcast and all about this amazing experience in the beauty industry. Fantastic. It has nothing to do with my podcast, and there was no reference to it. So finding the right podcast, first of all. And then what do you say when you reach out to people initially?
It's scary reaching out to someone. What I find often people do is just a copy paste. They might change the name of the podcast. They might reference a recent episode that they listened to or didn't listen to. And so figuring out what you actually need to say. I have started recommending to people, just reach out and say, what's your process? What's your process for? Are you taking guests applications? And what's your process for that? And then what do you say when you're actually on? Like, what do you say? How do you get your points across? How do you weave in all the stories? And then the last bit, which is what people ask me about all the time, is how do you promote the podcast? Like and so that's why I make it so easy for people to promote and to do what it is I want them to do. But how do you promote it in a way that promotes yourself, that promotes them and build a long term relationship with the podcaster themselves as well? So that's what the course is all about. It was born out of frustration more than anything else because I was getting all of these pitches.
And so now any time someone sends me a pitch, I will include in the response And here's a link to my award-winning program, Podcast Guesting Mastery. Yeah.
Melanie
Way to go to actually get the whole title out there. That was awesome. So how would people learn more about yourself and to find you on your podcast and indeed learn more about this product as well, Aoife?
Aoife
Yeah, okay. I mean, best place to connect with me is LinkedIn. That's where I spend most of my time. I occasionally share information about podcasting and podcast guesting, but it's not a core part of my business. So it's not often posting about that. And that's really the best place to learn about me. And then because I have a podcast, search for a Happier At Work Podcast. If it's something that is interesting to you. It's funny because I don't specifically target entrepreneurs or I don't specifically target small businesses, but they still do listen. And people say to me that they really enjoy the content and it's also relevant for them, even if it's not directly targeting them. So if you're interested in being happy at work, and I'm like, who isn't? Definitely check that out. So LinkedIn and the Happier At Work podcast.
Esther
Okay.
Melanie
Brilliant. Thank you so much for joining us, Aoife. I really appreciate that. And I just pipped you at the post there because I know you're going to steal it from me if I don't get in there before you, Esther.
Esther
You know me to well.
Melanie
Yeah, she's not in a way. Thank you again for coming on, Aoife. I hope we've helped the listener understand that as useful as it is, it's quite a job. And between me and Esther, we've still got a third person who helps us out as well. Aaron does our editing, so there's still an enormous amount of work. And then there's Aoife, who does largely most of it on her own. And whether you have started that source now.
Aoife
I would say largely... The recording part takes a while. But yeah, I definitely get help with that. But it is for someone who's thinking it's a quick win and doesn't take a lot, that's why so many podcasts stop after three to five episodes, because people are like, I didn't realize just how much the work is involved.
