What Happens If You Do Nothing

00:00 Welcome back to How to Get Discovered. I'm Maya And I'm Tom This is the last episode of Season 1. HTGD has been a 10-episode argument about whether podcast discoverability matters, what it actually costs and what podcasters should do about it. Today's episode is the closing argument – It's called What Happens If You Do Nothing? And I want to flag up front that this is the episode where, by prior agreement both of us have to say something we got wrong over the last nine episodes. That was your idea It was my idea! I'm holding myself to it. I'm holding myself to it too Let's get into it

00:37 I want to start with a thought experiment. She always starts with the thought experiment! I always start with a thought experiment. Imagine two podcasts, same topic, same quality, same host capability. Both have been running for three years both have about 100 episodes in the back catalog both of us small but loyal audience let's say a few thousand regulars who listen every week Two roughly identical shows. Two roughly identical shows. Today, both shows make a decision. Show A decides to invest in discoverability — they get their transcripts done properly, they put them on their own domain… They start writing show notes that aren't useless...they look at the data when they have data… They make the basic moves And Show B?

01:25 Show B decides, explicitly or implicitly not to. Maybe they're busy. Maybe they don't believe it matters. Maybe they think the show speaks for itself The audio keeps going out Nothing else changes So both shows keep making episodes? Both shows keep making episodes Same number same quality The only difference is what happens to those episodes after they go out And the question is, 12 months from now? Where are they?" Twelve months from now. That's the question and I want to spend the first part of this episode answering it honestly — not optimistically—honestly. Month 1 Both shows look identical Show A has done some setup work Transcripts going up Pages being built Structure being put in place Show B is doing what its always done

02:19 From a listener's perspective, nothing has changed for either show. And from a measurement perspective? From a measurement perspective... also basically nothing! The new transcript pages exist but nothing is happening to them yet. Search engines haven't crawled them properly… the data is too thin to see anything This is the bit I personally experienced This is the bit you personally experienced Frustrating Frustrating Month 3. The first signal For show A, some episodes are starting to show up in search results for very specific queries—single digits, small

02:59 The shape of the data is...there are query terms appearing in the analytics that the host has never deliberately optimized for. The episodes have been found by people asking specific questions. And show B? Show B is unchanged, same listener base, same week-on-week numbers — their newest episodes are doing roughly what their newest episodes always do Right. Month six, now there's a visible gap show A is getting let's say a meaningful trickle of new listeners through search not a flood a trickle but the trickle is from the back catalog episodes from year one are getting listens they weren't getting before some of those new listeners subscribe some don't The total audience is and this is the thing a little bit bigger than it was

03:50 Not because of anything they did to the new episodes, because of work they did on the old ones. And show B? Show B's audience is whatever the natural drift is. Word-Of-Mouth is still happening — Tom is right about Word Of Mouth it's a real thing — so the audience is probably growing slightly but the back catalog is doing nothing Right... Month 12 Now The Gap Is Real Show A's back catalog is, by this point, doing a meaningful share of total listening. The newest episodes are still front-loaded—most of their listens still come in the first two weeks—but the back catalog is contributing a steady tail. New listeners are finding the show through specific moments from old episodes getting hooked subscribing

04:38 The advertising, for any sponsor who's still in the audio is reaching ears that weren't there at launch. Quantify the gap I'm not going to give a number because the number depends on the show but the shape Show A, at the end of year one of investment has a back catalog that is doing work Show B has a back catalog that is doing nothing This is the thing I want to push on because I think it's important ShowBee's audience didn't get smaller. The work didn't get worse, the host didn't fail at anything They just...didn't gain something they could have gained Which is a different kind of cost It's an opportunity cost It's not a loss it's a thing that didn't happen Yes And I think one of the reasons most podcasters don't do this stuff Is that opportunity costs are invisible You can't see what you didn't get You only see what you did

05:35 And so for show B, at the end of month 12 everything looks fine. The audience is roughly stable, the downloads are roughly stable, the work is going out... There was no obvious sign of a problem. Right Whereas show A, at the end of month 12 also looks fine Slightly better but fine The host might not even notice the difference unless they're looking at the right numbers So you've got two shows that from the inside both look like they're doing okay And one of them has invisibly accumulated an asset, and the other one hasn't. That is the cost of doing nothing! That's exactly it! And it's a quiet cost which is what makes it dangerous

06:19 Which is what makes it dangerous. Because if it were a loud cost, If you could see your audience having, you'd act But this is a slow quiet cost where everything looks fine on the surface and the gap with what could have been is invisible This is the most depressing version of the argument It's also the most accurate Okay I promised I do this so I'm going to do this I'm enjoying this in advance where I was wrong over the season. Three things! Three? Three

07:01 First, in episode one I was...I think too dismissive of how much energy this stuff actually costs. I framed it as the work is already done you just need to make it findable which is true mechanically the audio exists but the work of doing the discoverability stuff well is real It's not free and I think I undersold that especially at the beginning I appreciate that one I thought you would Two Two, in episode three the AI episode I was too confident about what chatbots would surface. I gave a version of the argument that was be in the pool, be findable, be readable and you'll be in the answer and I still believe that's directionally right but the specifics of what any given chatbot does are weirder and more volatile than I made it sound there are shows that are doing everything right and not getting cited there are shows that are doing very little and get excited a lot

08:02 The system is noisier than I implied. I was neater than the reality." That's a useful concession! Three, and this is the one that I've been thinking about since we did episode 7...I think I have over the years sometimes optimized for the wrong thing. Specifically, I have made episode titling choices that prioritized search over voice and I think the show was—for a stretch—less interesting because of it Tom's point in episode 6, write for the stranger but don't let the descriptive bit eat the voice. That's a point I needed to hear. I had let the voice get a bit thin. Hmm... I'm slightly admitting that the strawman version of me that you sometimes argue against has at times been the actual version of me. That's a real concession! It is. Okay my turn Your turn Where I was wrong

09:01 Also three. Three? First, in episode one I said, I've had transcripts for years and it changed nothing which was by now understand technically true and substantively wrong. I had transcripts they didn't change anything but the version of transcripts i had wasn't the version we spent 10 episodes talking about And I knew that even at the time somewhere in the back my head. I'd used I tried it To mean, I shouldn't try it. Which is a thing I do generally. I have used the failure of an early version of A Thing to dismiss the entire category That is...generally a thing It's generally a thing. I'll try and do less 2. The Loyalty Episode

09:51 I argued, and made the argument well—I'm not going to apologize for the argument—that loyalty matters more than acquisition. And I still think loyalty matters more than acquisition… but I made it sound like they were opposed...and the synthesis episode—episode 7—made it pretty clear they're NOT opposed! Every loyal listener was once a stranger. I knew that. I should have started from there. Yes. Three, and this is the most embarrassing one I have spent some portion of the last decade rolling my eyes at people who talked about SEO for podcasts. And, I think a lot of that eye-rolling was right There was and is a lot bad advice People selling things, people applying article writing tactics to a medium that didn't fit them But the eye-rolling was a defensive move I was protecting myself from the possibility that some of it might actually matter

10:49 Because if it did, I'd have to do something about it. Right And the version of me from three years ago would've hated the version of me at the end of this season Which is... uncomfortable That's… The most honest you've been It's the closing episode. I'm allowed to be honest Okay, last segment. I want to land the season's actual argument cleanly without hedging. Go! Most podcasters underrate the work they've already done. They think of their back catalog as last week's news or as something behind them or as an archive and the entire point of this season has been that it isn't The back catalog is the asset The conversations are still good The information is still relevant

11:39 The questions are still being asked. The only thing that's broken is that the work is invisible." Right... This isn't about gaming an algorithm, it isn't about chasing TikTok trends It isn't about turning yourself into a content marketer. It's about respecting the work you already did—the episodes you spent hours making—the conversations you actually had The fact that those conversations could still matter to somebody, if they could find them. That's the pitch? That's the pitch! And I think the version of this argument that makes podcasters most uncomfortable is your back catalog is doing nothing and the reason it's doing nothing is that nobody made it findable—not the listeners, not the platforms…nobody made it findable

12:32 And the only person who can make it findable is you. And the cost of not doing it, is what we talked about in segment one The opportunity cost The invisible cost The invisible cost...the cost you don't see because there's nothing to see…The thing that didn't happen because you didn't do the thing Okay I'm gonna land somewhere now Land somewhere I came into this season convinced that the way podcasts grow is through loyalty and word of mouth and depth. And I still believe that, that part hasn't changed. Right

13:10 What has changed is I think loyalty and word of mouth and depth are necessary but not sufficient. They get you a real audience, they don't get you a discoverable one And the gap between those two things is bigger than I realized at the start of this season. And the cost of that gap is bigger than I realized Which is partly why I signed up to PodHerd three weeks ago on the begrudging tier To find out for myself Right And I want to flag something for the listener, who might be fairly wondering whether this whole season has been an extended advert. Yes It has not! We have argued about this off the air on the air. I have been skeptical of Maya's enthusiasm for a tool I had not used

13:59 And the reason I signed up was not because Maya asked me to. It was because nine episodes of arguing about this stuff with her had, frankly, left me unable to keep the position that this didn't matter." That's a real thing? It is. So the way I'm going to land this season is, I am upgrading my account. Oh! I have been on the starter tier for three weeks slightly disappointed by my own data as I admitted last episode and I want to see what actually happening on my domain and only way to do that is the Search Console integration which is in higher tier Right... I also going set up the CNAME on my own domain

14:42 Because the thing I have come around to over 10 episodes is the bit that I most resisted at the start. The argument about whose house you're building. I have spent ten years building somebody else's house, and I'm not going to spend the next ten doing the same thing." That's it! That's the pitch? That is the entire pitch of this season… And YOU just made it... Not me I just made it. I'm going to enjoy this for the rest of my life! Please don't... I'm going to! I want to say one more thing Go To the listener, if you have made it through 10 episodes of this You have probably been thinking some version of should I be doing this for MY show?

15:29 And I want to say, the answer is probably yes. But the version of yes that matters isn't go and pick a tool today It's stop assuming the work you've already done is over Because once you start thinking that way The rest is mechanical The tools are out there Podherd is one of them it's the one we've talked about because Maya uses it and now I do but there are others The question isn't which tool The question is whether you can see your back catalog as something that can still earn for you. That's the closing line of the season! Is it? It is! I'll allow it. That's the end of Season 1 of How to Get Discovered, 10 episodes of me and Tom arguing about podcast growth, search, discoverability and the unglamorous mechanics of getting found if you've listened all the way through... genuinely

16:30 Thank you. It's a strange thing to make. It is a strange thing to make We're gonna take a break, at some point I don't know when we're not making promises We're not making promises If there are topics you want us to come back to or arguments You think we got wrong Or questions you wish we'd answered get in touch probably through the website Which is on our own domain obviously Obviously Thanks for listening to how to get discovered We'll see you whenever we see you. See you whenever we see you!