Today I’m going to tell you three podcasting mistakes to avoid with your show.

First one, pretty straightforward.  Avoid the word “podcast” in your show title.   Two reasons.One, if someone is consuming your show, they already KNOW it’s a podcast.   Two: SEO.  According to James Cridland and PodNews, there are 700,000 podcasts that include the word “podcast” in their title – 16% of all shows currently listed.  How the heck is your show going to stand out in search, if it’s using the same words as a sixth of all PODCASTS?

Next mistake – assuming listeners skip ads.  Sure, we’ve all skipped ads from time to time when listening to a pod.  But a new study from Sounds Profitable shows 68% of listeners, more than two thirds, have listened to at least SOME ads in podcasts.Now maybe they’re multitasking and can’t reach the skip button, or maybe the ads are well executed.  But either way, in a world where it’s harder and harder to grab someone’s attention, don’t write off podcast ads.  Also, they don’t have to actually BE ads.  They can be promos, announcements about your show, calls to action.The possibilities are endless.

OK, final mistake to avoid.And bear with me because there’s some nuance here.   Spotify recently opened up video to ALL podcasts, not just the ones hosted ON Spotify.  So if you’re more invested in video views than audio downloads, great.  But if your show is audio first, and you use audio downloads and streams as your most important metric, DON’T put your video on Spotify.  Back to James Cridland and PodNews – who say if someone consumes your video content on Spotify, it won’t count as an audio download with your host.   And you’ll lose those numbers.  So if audio downloads are most important to you, leave your show on Spotify as audio only, just like you have been, and just like I’m doing.  Lata!

Find jag on social media @JAGinDetroit or online at JAGinDetroit.com