What Podcaster's Can Learn from Johnny Manzel
I live in Cleveland, Ohio. Out sports teams are not good. We have tremendously talented people like LeBron James and Johnny Manzel, but still we can't win. Last year out football team the Cleveland Browns draft Johnny Manzel with their first round pick. Johnny rubbed his fingers together in a way to say, "I'm going to get paid." It became his signature. It appeared in Johnny's mind that he had achieved his goal. He had maid it to the NFL. The bad news is that is not THE goal of a football player. THE GOAL is to win the Super Bowl.
Johnny had a reputation as being a person who was more interested in parties than play books. He always seemed a bit unprepared. This was his first year, but Johnny was now a professional football player. In this league you either carry your weight, or you are traded. As more and more stories of Johnny (more or less) goofing off came to the surface (welcome to being famous), it really appeared that this kid had his priorities out of whack.
Paul Colligan has an episode where he said, "Starting A Podcast To Hit iTunes “New And Notable” Is Like Launching A Business To Get Into The Phone Book." This is a classic, and it ties into this analogy. The goal of a podcaster is not to be in New Noteworthy, the goal is to impact your audience. Your goal is to bring value. For some, the goal is to create revenue streams that help supplement their income. When I wrote my book "More Podcast Money" getting it into Amazon was not the goal, the goal was to help people set realistic financial goals with their podcast. Amazon is a tool to help me do that.
In the book Podcast Launch (by John Lee Dumas) a very unfortunate paragraph states that you "Have a mere 8 weeks to be featured within the best podcast advertising real estate on the planet." This needs tweaked. It should read, "You can only be considered NEW for 8 weeks, you can be considered Noteworthy any time." Because of this unfortunate paragraph people are spending all their and effort focusing on getting into New and Noteworthy. This is very much like Johnny Manzel focusing on getting into the NFL. It's not the goal, it's a milestone. In the same way that being drafted into the NFL equals success (as many people get cut, and many first round draft picks never measure up to their potential).
You can get into iTunes (I outline the 27 steps here), and to get into New and Noteworthy you pretty much need a pulse.
When I was growing up my sister gave too much information to a guy she met on the bus. The next thing I know, is she is getting really creepy phone calls. We eventually had to work with the phone company and the local police (and his mother) to get him to stop calling. It was creepy
Let's not get to tied
