When you are past that startup stage of your show, growing from twelve to 25 episodes with a full feed, what then? How do you take your show to the next level? Tracy Hazzard has someone who is doing it in both his business and podcast. She sits down with Chris Larsen, the host of The Next-Level Income Show and Founding and Managing Partner of Next-Level Income. Tracy lets us in on her coaching session with Chris where they discuss the things you need to think about when upleveling or “next-leveling” your show—from turning down the wrong guests to make room for the right ones, to doing intros, the actual interviews, and transitions. They then talk about how you need to shift your show format to create social media growth and funnel lead generation, taking us to some content-building strategies and a whole lot more.
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Shift Your Show Format to Create Social Media Growth and Funnel Lead Generation – On-Air Podcast Coaching with Chris Larsen of The Next-Level Income Show
I am doing one of our coaching. We’re taking things to the next level. We’re literally taking things to the next level because I have the host of The Next-Level Income Show, Chris Larsen. He is a client who’s been working with us. He has a podcast show focused on investing and growing your wealth and, as he puts it, making, keeping and growing money. Chris’ show has about 45 episodes or so. He’s been doing it a little while. He’s been cranking shows out and doing lots of great interviews. His interviewing skills are good. You’ll get to listen to that when you check out The Next-Level Income Show.
Let me tell you a little bit more about Chris. He is the Founding and Managing Partner of Next-Level Income through which he helps investors become financially independent through education and investment opportunities. He’s been investing in and managing real estate for over twenty years. During his subsequent career in medical device, he expanded it into development, private lending and buying distressed debt. He’s got broad real estate and investing experience. He began syndicating deals in 2016. He has been active and involved in over $150 million of real estate acquisitions.
In addition to real estate, Chris has invested in equities, oil and gas, and small business lending, as well as being active in VentureSouth, one of the nation’s top ten Angel investing groups. He lives with his wife and two boys in Asheville, North Carolina, which is such a beautiful area. When you get your show to a certain level and you get past that startup stage, that stage of going from past the first 12 episodes, 25 episodes, now you’ve got a full feed and you’re halfway through your first year likely. You’re looking at that and thinking, “I can do this. I’ve got this. I’m good at this.” When you start to hit that one-year mark, you start to hit that, “I’ve gotten 52 episodes under my belt and I’m heading into that next segment of the show,” that’s when you start to think about upleveling, next leveling as I’m going to call it. We’re next-leveling our podcast through various different ways. Let’s talk with Chris Larsen from The Next-Level Income Show about how he wants to next-level his show.
Christopher Larsen is the founder and Managing Partner of Next-Level Income, through which he helps investors become financially independent through education and investment opportunities. Chris has been investing in and managing real estate for over 20 years. While completing his degree in Biomechanical Engineering and M.B.A. in Finance at Virginia Tech, he bought his first single-family rental at age 21. During his subsequent career in the medical device industry, Chris expanded into development, private-lending, buying distressed debt as well as commercial office, and ultimately syndicating multifamily properties. He began syndicating deals in 2016 and has been actively involved in over $150M of real estate acquisitions. In addition to real estate, Chris has invested in equities, oil & gas, and small business lending, as well as being active in Venture South, one of the nation’s Top 10 Angel Investing groups. Chris lives with his wife and two boys in Asheville, NC where he loves spending time with them in the outdoors and enjoying the food and culture that the region has to offer.
Chris, thanks for joining me. We’re going to talk next-level podcasting for Next-Level Income. I love that. You started the show some time ago. How is it going for you? Why did you start it?
We started in 2019. With Next-Level Income, our goal is to put investors first through education and opportunities to achieve financial independence. I was fielding questions via email or phone or text, and one of the investors was asking me, “How did you do it?” I was typing out these emails or I was getting on the phone and I don’t have enough time in the day to address all these questions. I realized after typing the same email for the 5th or 6th time, I wanted to curate this. I started to write blog posts, blog articles and my partner, Caleb, who was on the first half episodes up to this point of our show, he came up with the idea. He’s like, “You should start a podcast.” I’m like, “I don’t know about a podcast and time commitment.”
I find it hard to say no to a lot of things so I can focus on the right things. After thinking about it, I thought, “We should start a podcast.” The podcast was designed to curate information and it’s to help people make more money, keep more money and ultimately grow their money. Whether you’re in college or coming out of college and looking to optimize your job search, whether you are a high-income earner that’s looking for a tax strategy so you can keep more of your money. You’re somebody that’s looking for ways to ask and grow your money, we have guests that can help you. Originally it was there to curate the information when we started, Tracy.
Most of your episodes are interviews, they’re not solo shows. You’re not talking about topics. Is that on purpose?
At this point, yes, it is on purpose that we have guests on every show. As we roll into 2021, we’re going to be launching a coaching feature with Next-Level Income. As we do that, we’re looking to potentially have some shows that are dedicated specifically towards strategies where I may be doing almost like a coaching call for the audience in general.
We’ll model that here and see if we can get through something that works for you. How has it been? Do you feel like the podcast has achieved the initial goals you set out for it?
I will say it has. It was certainly very modest. When you learn things, I forget what the statistic is, but most podcasts don’t get the tenth episode or so. It’s a small number. When I heard that statistic, I’m like, “We’re 36, so I guess we’re doing okay.” We are better than average. Everybody wants to be better than average. I want to be a little bit better than that. We had modest goals initially, and it was to cater towards our audience. We have about 2,000 subscribers now that goes out every 1 or 2 weeks that we’re sending content out. It was modest goals, but I’ve learned a ton as we’ve expanded the show.
Transitions give people a sense of timing. Eventually, they also give you a nice breaking point for some promotions and ads. Click To TweetYou’ve got new goals and new outcomes. What would you like to achieve next with the show?
As we’ve recorded more episodes, as we’ve had more content, I’ve learned about things like marketing on LinkedIn, putting stuff on social media. I didn’t have an Instagram account before I came up with this, but when I realized you can use the content they produced to share that on a regular basis to show people. That’s how I’ve seen podcasts pop up on a feed like in LinkedIn or somewhere that was four years old. I was thankful that I heard those. Our goal number one is education. If I can take something that’s been out for a couple of years and republish that, and it might catch someone at the right time and help them at the right time of their life get to where they want, that’s goal number one. That’s something that I’ve learned. Going forward into 2021, the goal is to expand. We’ve done a lot of networking through the podcast universe and help make the podcast part of what we’ve now built out to be a marketing funnel.
What are your biggest challenges in that?
The biggest challenge is keeping up with relevant content. We want to have high-quality guests that are coming on the show. It’s a challenge to always be looking for the right guests that are going to fill a listener’s needs or a listener’s interest. I found it’s easy to go out and for instance, find a bunch of other people that focus on multifamily syndication, which is a big focus for us. I could have twelve guests that focus on that. It would be very easy. People reach out to me every day and say, “Have you considered having this person on your show?” The biggest challenge is saying no to the guests that are not wrong, but it’s not a good fit at the time, and continuing to find guests that are a great fit for the audience and continue to build out the value for them.
What would you like to accomplish in our session here? What can I help you the most with?
Anything that you found has been successful on a repeatable basis from show format, for instance. Something that I have not been doing. I record the intro, I record the show and everything all at once. I would love to look at potentially having a separate intro and outro.
Think about it like open and close. I’m opening my show because it’s like that opening monologue on The Late Show or something like that. That’s your role because somebody else is introducing you. That’s your official intro, outro, or your bumpers as some people refer to them in the industry. Think about it like your opening and your closing. You’re setting up your show and you’re wrapping it up. That’s your curation process. That’s the best role for you as a host. When I listen to your show, Chris, the couple of things that I missed the most was I didn’t get a lot of you, but you’re the gatekeeper here. I want to get some more about you. I go to your website and I see your About You. It’s a nice little paragraph and you’ve got experience, but you don’t still have enough about you. Why are you doing this? Why is this topic important now?
You’re not getting to those things because you’re not putting yourself at the forefront of that. You’re serving your audience almost too much here. Often, it’s usually the other way around. I’m presenting that to you as a thought to start thinking about how you can bring more of you into the show and that open and close are the perfect time to do it because you’re not taking away from that interview, which from the way that you interview, you’re very sensitive to your guests, making sure that their expertise shine and that you ask them the right questions. All of that works well. You have great interviews, but if we could set them up differently and close them out differently with your thoughts on it, your audience would like that. They chose the show because they do like you, they do like the curation that you’ve created. Let’s do more of that.
Also, if you’re listening to some of the shows that I’ve heard, it is nice to hear this is something about the guests. If you do it, you can do it after the show as well, if I’m hearing you correctly. You can talk about what to listen for to prepare the mind of the listener, if you will, to be fertile to get those seeds that are coming in.
For instance, here, I’ve brought you in. We came straight in. I actually will do your introduction afterward because there’s an excitement level of having finished up with you. Now I know a little bit more about you. When I introduce you, there’s genuine energy to that as well. Not only did you know what to highlight that you got out of it, but you have that energy level of now you know someone, so there’s an intimacy there.
Create Social Media Growth: The biggest challenge is saying no to the guests that are not wrong, but it’s not a good fit at the time, and continuing to find guests that are a great fit for the audience and continue to build out the value for them.
Is this an appropriate time to talk about the mechanics? Do you have separate audio files and how does that work out logistically?
I’m a fan of separated audio files. Lots of people don’t. I have some people who pause the recording, say goodbye to their guest, and then unpause and keep going. I’m a big fan of separating it because I need more organization in my mind. I’m like, “I did the open, I did the close.” It happened that I have been at the end of these coaching because of the way that they go. I tend to close them out with you on the air because I want to give you your final thought. I want to give you your action items. I usually now close them. It’s an interview plus close. I panicked when I went to load up my episodes one time because there were only six files, not eight. I was like, “There’s something wrong.” I’m comfortable with this because I do video and audio. If you’ve got all the files going for yourself, that’s an interesting way to do that. I like the energy of being able to have like, “I’m doing this section, then I’m doing that section.” That’s also something that I try to do as well.
For a close, I make bullet points, so I might give action items. I might give bullet points. I have something that I’m making notes on the side for myself so that when I do that close, I’m comfortable with it in case I have to run off to something. I also don’t want to forget what I wanted to say. I do keep notes on that. Logistically, turn the audio on, turn it off and make a separate file. You have production editing, so moving them together is easy. Transitions give people a sense of timing. Eventually, they also give you a nice breaking point for some promotions and ads. You have this breaking point between the introduction and your interview and you also have the breaking point between the interview and your closing thoughts. People will come back for your closing thoughts where they might skip your outro. They will come back for your closing thoughts because they know it’s valuable.
That makes a lot of sense because with the partners that we work with, we do have sponsors for each show. I would love to dive into best practices on all that.
Some of the things that we should do in the best practices are you’ve got their bio. With a lot of people, you need to read it. You’re not going to memorize it for each person. You’re going to have it on your phone or have it printed out or whatever you have that you’re going to do that with. The best practice though is to highlight something that you get excited about like, “This is a great title for a book. It’s intrigued me. It’s right in line with what we’re going to talk about.” Picking something out of the bio as you’re giving the bio to highlight what you then talk about, that’s always a great way to tie the two things together and make it not so pedantic like you’re reading it.
You get that, “I’m a broadcaster reading the prompter,” attitude. You mix it up by adding that little piece in it. That’s what I usually do. I usually pick one thing that I want to highlight that they don’t want to miss, probably the most important thing. Usually, that comes to something that’s in their expertise. If I can tie their expertise to something that they’re going to say on the show, then I bring the two together, “You’re not going to want to miss this. Definitely, you’re going to want to go back and read this book afterward too.” That makes them feel good because you gave them kudos for their background or highlighted what they’re selling right at this moment, whether it’s a course or a book or program.
Do you do a break to do your sponsor for the show?
In our system, we mix those in. You don’t need a break. It’s going to naturally happen. If you want to, if you were going to, if you’re someone out there who’s recording these and you need to record them live. If you’re going to record them in a series to make sure that you have your file and you don’t have to do any editing. If that’s how you’re going to record it, you’re going to turn your recording on, you’re going to record your intro. You’re going to pause, do your ad, then you’re going to have to add it to your interview. In our Podetize system, you can mix those things easily. You don’t have to worry about that. If we’re editing for you, you don’t have to worry about it at all.
Keeping those clips separate. Separate ads, I like relevant ads. Not even mentioning, not even doing the transition to the ad at the point of your opening, it gives you more time and you don’t have to worry about anything. When you record the promotion or the ad, because you know this ad is going to go before an interview or this ad is going to go before my close, you always say, “We’ll be back in a moment with this interview. First, I want to mention how great our sponsor is.” You are giving that break, “We’ll be back with the interview in a moment.”
Obviously, you’re not going to say the person’s name because you’re not going to create custom ads for every single show, but you can create that transition, “We’ll be right back. First, I want to share this with you.” Tom likes to do it this way. He goes, “Before we get to that,” it doesn’t matter what it is. That way, it’s breaking in whatever that was you’re breaking into, “Before we get into that, let’s talk about our sponsor,” or something like that. He’ll do it that way. If I’m going to do it before the close and say, “Before I get to my closing thoughts on the interview,” I do it a little bit more seriously. “I’ll be right back with those closing thoughts. First, I want to tell you about it.”
The more you can allow the planning and review part of the process, the better off your podcast will be. Click To TweetCreating that little bit of transition into that ad promo part makes it easy, but even still, many people are used to straight commercial interruption. When you close an interview and you say, “Thank you so much for being on the show,” there’s a natural pause in it. A little bit of transition music is all you need there. It doesn’t need to be as structured as radio. Your listeners are comfortable with that and they’re happy for your sponsors because it means you’ll stick around for more episodes for them. This is what we hear again and again from our clients and from our listeners, binge listeners especially out there. They’re happy when you get a sponsor. They try to use them if they can because of that exact fact that you’ve been giving them and serving them, and now they want to serve you back.
A little bit of mechanics there on that. It’s super simple. It’s going to be a great addition to your show in a way to get you in without having to do solo shows if that’s not what you want to do. Another thought for you, Chris, that I have is thinking about having an editorial calendar and plan. What you said at the beginning was you were answering these FAQ questions, and you were answering them again and again. Are you sure you’ve addressed that list of FAQ questions? Are you still sending the emails anyway? If that’s the case, then maybe we need topic-based shows so that the topic is right up at the beginning of it. If it’s multifamily syndication, as you mentioned before, maybe you could have a panel of experts on and that allows you to get multiple people sharing your show for you. It gets you more assets out there of what to share, but it allows the show to be focused on one particular area. That can do a great service to your audience.
I come up with a list that I keep of topics that I want to have and I space them out so they have a reasonable cadence to them. I definitely have the topics, although if I do get a very interesting guest, I may consider being a little more opportunistic.
You absolutely should because your listener base doesn’t want you to miss a great interview. If you’ve got something that would pique their curiosity, you definitely want that. Having the flexibility in what you need to do, you also have to serve partners sometimes than others, like advertisers, things that interest them or would drive the right listenership so that those partners are served as well. Having a topic list is great, but how are you using that topic list throughout everything? Are you using it as what we call focus keywords for our blog posts? Are you using it as hashtags on social media? Let’s have a more concerted strategy coming up and see if we can create that.
When you come up with that topic and it might be like we said, multifamily syndication is easy because it’s a long tail focus keyword. You could say and have a word on the front of it. Think about it just like profitable multifamily syndication. What is the difference between how you’re going to talk about this subject and how everybody else is talking about that subject? We want to add that word in there to one side or the other, to the beginning of the phrase or to the end of the phrase. We would want to keep multifamily syndication in its entirety because it is a searchable term. Keeping your edge on things matters. What is the perspective you want to bring on it? That in and of itself should help you pick your right guests. I’m sure it’s the way that you’re already deciding. Are they talking about the same old thing that everybody else is doing or are they talking about it at a higher next-level success?
Having that strategy then having a hashtag strategy will especially help you on Instagram, which you said is new for you. It also will help you on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is using hashtags more and more. Those two places will help you with how you do it. With LinkedIn, you put three hashtags at the end of your posts. Don’t put them at the beginning, don’t mix them in as you do on Twitter. You put your three hashtags at the end, and don’t bother to use your name as a hashtag or their show name as a hashtag or podcasting as a hashtag. If you use podcasting as a hashtag, it gets people who are interested in learning about podcasting, not people who are interested in your world. What I like to do is pick the one that’s my focus keyword.
I have a list of 10 or 12 that I rotate through because I don’t like to use the same one every time I post. It can hurt you on Instagram actually to be posting the same hashtag every single day. If you repeat it, your viewers get lower and lower. Rotating amongst these hashtags, I don’t do that. I don’t do it like, “It’s Monday. These hashtags go.” It’s just a list. You use the next ones down on the list. My social team will go to the next ones. If they’re inappropriate, they’ll skip them. In your case, you might have one, #RealEstateInvesting or #WealthBuilding. You might have those hashtags that you’re using but real estate may not relate to the topic. You would skip it and go to the next one on the list. Always having that list of very relevant hashtags. What I suggest you do is have someone or you do this where you search in LinkedIn search and Instagram, and see what the trending ones are and use those for the everyone but the focus keyword one.
You have a team that does that for you. You have a social media team.
I have my own internal social media team. We don’t do this in the company for others. We don’t post for others, but what we do is create all the assets. We create audiograms, quote graphics, Ego Bait™, which is the ones for the guests. We can create a full suite of graphics and video clips and all of those things for anyone. At the end of the day, you have to post it because you are the expert in what you do. Getting an assistant to do that, finding someone who’s a strategist for you, that’s what I recommend. That’s why we refuse to do service even though people ask us all the time.
I talked to somebody to work on doing that for me.
Create Social Media Growth: At the end of the day, you want your subscribers to stay connected. You want them to not quit your show and to recommend you to other people who are exactly like them.
You need to guide the strategy. What I found is too often is if you leave it up to them, they’ll use the trendiest things that are out there and that doesn’t always dial in and help the relevance with your audience. Always thinking about like, “Is my audience typing in, ‘Passive income real estate or passive income investing?’” It may be not your thing. It may not be quite right for your audience, but because it’s a high-trending keyword in the category, they try to use it and it draws the wrong people to your show.
At the end of the day, you have 2,000 subscribers or more and for those subscribers, you want them to stay connected. You want them to not quit your show. You want them to recommend to other people who are exactly like them. I’d rather have a low number of active subscribers than I would have a high number of people who are not going to come and do business with me. I want them to benefit from my show. The relevance factor is more important than popularity.
A strategy for content-building and a strategy for what works out there in social media because that’s your end goal now. You have a more outcome-driven of creating the community and building the word of mouth around you through a social strategy. Having those things go hand-in-hand is important. Getting your social team involved early on can be helpful. I’m going to share with you how I do it here but there are lots of other ways to do it as well. From what I do here is from the moment that the host notification from our internal team says your episode is ready to review, which is usually for me about 2 to 3 weeks at minimum, usually a month ahead of actually publishing because of how I record.
That gives me plenty of time. The host notification comes to me to review the episode. They know that it’s coming up in a few weeks, and so they can start planning it into their calendar schedule. That way, if Thanksgiving is happening on top of an episode launching on the day before, they could shift things and move it around and make things work within what’s going on in the world at that moment in time so they can work with the schedule. That’s helpful for them to plan, plus all the links to all the assets are there. The only thing they have to wait for is those things to be live to post them. They can already see what they look for. It helps them write posts.
It helps them come back and ask me questions. Especially on LinkedIn, I care about how I sound. I care about how that reads. If they are uncomfortable with it and they’re like, “I didn’t get this show. I don’t know what it’s about. I don’t understand. It was way over my head. Can you give me some insights? Did I write something for you that is relevant?” “Here are the three hashtags I’m thinking, are they okay?” They can reach out to me. There’s plenty of time to ask that, especially in the early days when you’re working with someone new who doesn’t know you yet, who doesn’t know your business yet or they’re learning it. If you’re working with an agency or even someone independent, you’ve got to give it some time.
They’re going to make some mistakes. They’re not going to get you. The more you can allow the planning part of the process and the review part, the better off you are. Expect them to read your mind is not going to happen here. They are not going to be you. You have years and years of experience knowing what’s important in your interview, knowing what’s important in what your audience wants to hear as well. That has to come through in an educational way of a feedback loop that you’re giving them. That’s what I found works well. What we do is we also then take those things and put them into a rotation. We use a tool called MeetEdgar.
We used to use Buffer, but we use MeetEdgar now. The reason we use MeetEdgar is that it has an evergreen tool. Once we’ve posted something, it drops into the evergreen, which is where we’re able to do what you noted, bring up old episodes and bring them back up because they’re relevant. We can actually search in the evergreen and say, “We need something that’s focused on distressed notes because it’s in the news again. What episodes did I do on distressed notes?” You can find them and say, “We’re going to bring these episodes and share them again on social media.” Every year on a specific date, I write an article about a woman who is an educator about space. Every day on May 4th, may the fourth be with you, I share her article.
I have another one that I share of the people who actually helped produce the 3D imaging for the film. I’ll share those two articles on that day because those days are relevant. They’re already preset to be shared on those dates. You can control that evergreen content, making sure that you don’t miss these opportunities to be relevant or miss these things that are trending and happening. You’re easy to search through them and reshare them. You don’t have to remember, “What episode was it? Which one do I want to share?” They don’t have to figure it out for you. MeetEdgar has a free level and a more advanced level.
What I use right now, I do a spreadsheet and I drop my new content in the spreadsheet in a rotating schedule. My assistant can pull the quote. She could get the link and she can post it through HootSuite. It sounds like you use a little more targeted technique.
This is all set up within the tool that’s going to do the sharing for you. It’s as if HootSuite had your spreadsheet built into it. You still have to drop in your new episodes, but everything else when you want to reshare and all that is there. Have your team make sure that they understand how to use it. This is not something like I can go into it and look at stuff. Beyond that, I don’t mess with the schedules. I don’t mess with the calendar. I let them handle all of that. It’s super simple for me to review something, but that’s it. The other thing is thinking about what types of content you’re sharing. The podcast is in audio format but you’re recording video too, I believe. You have a video as well. Video clips do well on LinkedIn. They do well on Instagram TV. I’m treating quote image, message, that’s a story on Instagram.
Putting the title with the person's name after it lets the topic lead, not the person. Click To TweetYou want to have multimedia share assets from your show. Video, audio, quotes, header and visual images. I like to have a quote of what you say and a quote of what your guest says. Do both. Yours is like a tip. There’s this testimonial because that’s how they’re going to share it. That’s what a good Ego Bait™ is. Having these different formats also allow you to play with what’s working with your audience. Are you comprised of a lot of video watchers or is your audience comprised of a lot of readers? Because I was a writer for Inc. Magazine for a long time, my initial audience was a lot of readers. They were reading my column and they were my LinkedIn network.
Eventually, the podcast came in and I got a lot of audio-only listeners. Eventually, I added my YouTube and now I have a good mix of all of those, blog readers and video, but people have different media they consume at different times and different places too. What we see a lot right now because of the pandemic is we see a lot of people consuming audiograms or videos with the audio turned off, so anytime they can see the captioning. You can imagine that playing the audio of your show, not that you can do that on social media without a video. You have to do it that way. They wouldn’t turn the sound on immediately because otherwise, when you’re scrolling in public with your family all around or with everyone, with your office all around you, that would be noisy. People don’t do that often anymore. While the video images catch their eye, it is the captioning that’s working right now. Even though I capture video this way, I also take it and turn it into an audiogram.
I use the video clip and the audiogram, and I use them in two different separate posts because that way you’re getting different types of things that might attract different types of people. Some people want to see a person and other people are happy with the words. If you assumed all of your audience was the same, you’d be making a mistake. This is interesting. I am a numbers person. I am a serious reader, but obviously a podcast listener. I listen to hundreds of podcasts, but because I listen to many podcasts as a part of my job, when I’m consuming news or anything like that, I’m like, “A video? An audio? Just give me the article. I want to read it.”
I get frustrated with the news nowadays because they’re trying to do quick news. You click on it and there’s a great title. You’re like, “I want to know about that,” and it’s a video clip. I’m like, “I don’t want to do that.” That’s one of the great reasons why sharing your blog posts is valuable for you because you’ve got the video, the audio, the blog all in one place. It means that I can go and consume exactly the way I want to at my moment. Number one thing is even though you’re sharing all of those different assets in different ways, at the end of the day, your share link is still that blog episode link because that gives them the most flexibility.
You have a lot to absorb, but planning, if you take your effort that you’ve been doing keeping the spreadsheet and instead of thinking hard about those keywords and about the topics you want to cover, and then finding guests that are perfect for that, that is someone you want to be associated with. This is the next leveling for you. If you want to be associated with a particular topic in the investment community, maybe it’s a new product in your services that you offer, find someone who offers it as well who’s an expert in it. Bring them on and have a debate or discussion about it. You can have less of an interview and more of a let’s discuss this as industry experts together. That could be a nice interplay for you.
The panel, maybe the debate style, a little bit more pushing back and forth. That’s also interesting from a listener’s perspective.
Often, we’ve still got to get through the story part of people like, “Why did you do this? What’s your story? Who are you?” For some of us, we’re wanting to consume something and learn something new. How can I do that quickly while in that type of topic area? You can do a nice twenty-minute-long debate show on a topic or a twenty-minute-long topic in-depth discussion. Those could be interesting. They can be shorter, easier for people to consume. You may find them spiking, which gives you a hint that those episodes, people are skipping some of the interview ones and going straight to those when they don’t have a lot of time, which is a great understanding of your listenership.
Sometimes we have listeners who stay subscribed to us, but they’re not listening to our next episodes. That’s where we see we maybe have certain episodes that spike up to our 2,000 and then we have some that had an art level around 1,000. That means about half of our listeners are not listening to every single episode. When that happens, it usually is a sense that they’re busy or they’ve got a lot going on. They’re skipping to the thing that they believe is the most relevant, which is why it’s good you did your strategy. When Chris came to us to help him produce his blogs and the other things, we shifted the titling of his episodes. You can see a distinct difference.
You can see the cut difference because before, you used to have the person’s name and it said interview at the beginning of every single title that you utilized. Now it says a title and it says with and the person’s name after it. That shifting lets the topic lead, not the person. If you had Elon Musk on your show, we would change the title. We’d say, “Elon Musk advises us on,” or whatever it is. That’s what we’re doing, change the title. When you don’t have someone who has that type of name recognition, putting them at the end.
First off, their name is in there so they’re searchable, but you’re letting the topic of discussion lead, so I know who this person is and what they’re about. It is leading now. That’s working for you. It will take a little bit of time to flow through, but I guarantee you that’s helping you more with getting more listeners on more shows. I gave you a ton of stuff here, so we’re going to see next leveling. How does that feel? Does it feel like that’s not overwhelming though? It’s like, “I can tackle this area and these things are technical and they will get done,” or does it feel too overwhelming still?
Create Social Media Growth: A one-on-one discussion debate could be easy enough during interviews because a panel requires you to get multiple schedules together.
Right now it’s a little overwhelming, but it’s like when you sit down and you look at a big steak and like, “I know I can digest it, but it’s going to take me a minute.”
Here’s the thing. You are a client so you have the benefit. First off after this, I’m going to send you the video before everybody else gets it. You’re going to get it right away. You also have the ability to call your client success manager and your team, the team here to say, “Tracy said I need a better asset strategy. What’s available to me? What can I do? Can I start to think about what I’m producing right now and shift it up?” You have the ability to decide, “I want audiograms, I want video clips or I want this.” There are add-ons, but not even with spending more money, you don’t have to spend more money.
You can shift what you’re using to make it more useful for your purposes of LinkedIn and Instagram. We can dial into those. We sometimes create five different sizes of things because we don’t know what a client is going to use. Instead of making different sizes, we could create a couple of different graphics, but targeted at the exact size for Instagram or the exact size for LinkedIn. You have the ability to sit down and go, “What does this look like? How do I make this work for me now that I’d like to level up to that?” When you get a social media person all set in your system, we also have resources. There are masterclasses on social media. We’re going to be doing more. You’re allowed to have your assistants invited into our groups so they can attend our coaching calls. They can ask questions there. You are allowed to have your team be a part of our team as well. You’ve just got to add their email address on and you’re good to go. It works.
We don’t want the technical part to overwhelm the content part. The part I want you concentrating on, Chris, is saying, “I’m going to change my show format slightly. I’m going to test out a couple of these models.” The panel might be too hard to handle, but the one-on-one discussion debate could be easy enough because a panel requires you to get multiple schedules together. It could get too cumbersome for you.
Finding one that works for you, that’s why I gave you a few suggestions is you test it out and go, “That one is easy. I can do that one.” Chris, I’m glad Alexandra served you up as being a great new show to come onto and talk about our coaching here so that you could get a sense of how strategic thinking works. It’s not just something you do when you set up your show, but it’s something that you get to do and pivot as your show grows because new things are coming up for you like your new expansion into social media.
I’m grateful for this time.
You’re welcome. Thank you, Chris. The Next-Level Income Show for those of you reading out there, especially if you’re in looking into that next level investment area and you want to make money, keep money and grow money, then you’re going to need to listen to Chris’ show. Chris Larsen of The Next-Level Income Show, thank you again.
Don’t miss Tracy Hazzard’s Authority Magazine article about Chris Larsen too!
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