This is a transcript of episode 29 of the OMGrowth podcast, published June 2, 2021

This is the last episode to the first season of the OMGrowth! podcast and I have some OMGrowth moments and takeaways to share as to how I produce my content, what set-up I’m using to track the return-on-investment for my podcast traffic, and how I’m building next season’s strategy.

THE PURPOSE

I want to be more lazy. There, I’ve said it.

The goal with this podcast was to be repurposed to Holy Trinity and the Seven Wonders of the World… but! It didn’t quite go down like that.

So if we go back to the future of fall 2020, I was ready to double- and triple-down on content creation. “Clear the calendar because this was the priority” is the mode I was going into this with, and I wanted that content 1) to be “findable” and 2) to be repurposed.

The “findable” part meant I had to get intentional with my keyword use so I used a challenge being run by Meg Casebolt from @loveatfirstsearch called SEOctober as my starting point. I also upgraded to some of her other resources as I worked out my strategy, but this was how I determined which keywords I wanted to prioritize in the content that I would be creating.

Throughout this challenge and the additional resources, I generated a library of keyword-heavy blog titles that now make up what is season 1 of the OMGrowth! podcast.

Which brings us to the repurposed element because, yes, this content is used as both blog posts and podcast episodes. I actually intended these to also be YouTube episodes and – long story long – but I choked hard on that part of it.

Look, I’m not the most comfortable with video. I’m not UNcomfortable with it, but I do doubt myself plenty. Like, I’m the person who will start a flipping Instagram Story over again 3 or 4 times before I get the one I feel comfortable with… and those are only 15 seconds! Putting together a 12-15 minute video was an exercise in frustration and “not enough”-ness.

Because here’s the other thing: I’ve also never hosted or produced a podcast before this, either. That was its own learning curve I also had to navigate so I took the advice I so-often dish out and asked myself what the “moving forward” approach would be to the quicksand feeling I was experiencing.

The answer was to cut out the visual element and invest my focus on generating the audio content, at least for the time being.

I told myself that I can do more in Season 2… but I would have to actually start and finish Season 1 if I ever wanted to have a Season 2.

And I’m so glad I took this approach because being able to focus on the audio element meant I was actually able to make improvements during Season 1.

I listen to a lot of podcasts but even with short, punchy episodes like mine, I sometimes find my brain drifts off. I noticed one podcast, though, that used sound effects and it lassoed my ears and brain back into the conversation.

I debated integrating these right away but again, I didn’t want to overwhelm myself to the point of NOT getting the episodes recorded. This is why I waited until episode 7 – because by that time, I had some basic understanding and experience of what went into producing a podcast – and THEN I integrated the sound effects.

Now, does this make my episodes more time-intensive to produce? Heck yeah, it basically doubles my production time. But based on the feedback I’ve received – and my belief that it gives my goofy personality the opportunity to show itself a little bit – I feel that it’s worth the effort.

If I had to manage the video component of YouTube in producing these, there’s no way I’d have given myself permission to “up” my production with sound effects. However, they now feel like they’re a part of my brand and when I do include YouTube in my content strategy, you bet your ding-ding-ding there will be sound effects included. It’s one of those “happy little mistakes”.

THE SET-UP

By now, you know I’m not going to implement a strategy without a way to track it, right? Of course not!

And here’s how I did it:

Tracking the traffic and return-on-investment on my podcast was as simple as setting up a landing page that acts as a menu for all the things I talk about in my episodes.

This landing page lives at omgrowth.com and it uses tagged links that redirects visitors to wherever that content lives.

When I say “tagged links”, I am talking about UTM parameters – which we covered in Tracking your campaigns like they owe you money (and they totally do!) using UTM PARAMETERS

Actually, this makes for a great example: when you go to omgrowth.com and you click-through on the button that says “need help tracking your campaigns?”, you will be re-directed to a page on lanielamarre.com with all of those resources. However, this link will also have UTM parameters that tells my analytics “this person found this page because they heard about it on your podcast”.

This makes it easy for me to see what sales came directly from podcast promotions or how many new subscribers I attracted or even how much interest there is in each topic I’m promoting.

It also means I don’t have to create a whole separate site for my podcast and my home site is still getting all the SEO – or search engine optimization – from the blog posts and podcast episodes I’m publishing.

Tracking your individual campaigns efforts doesn’t have to be complicated. For me, it’s as simple as one-page website.

Mine are formatted as simple as yourdomain.com/blog-post?utm_source=podcast-name&utm_medium=podcast (and you would change the bolded areas to use these in your own tracking strategies).

This approach also makes it easy for me to add content I’m promoting without having to create a new link or page or resource; everything redirects to where those resources actually live on my home site and I just have to add a link and maybe an image to make it easy for listeners to access them while also making it easy for me to track how they found that resource.

THE GLOW-UP

There’s still a lot of room for improvement, though. One key area is the blog posts themselves: at the time of recording this, they don’t actually have the content upgrades embedded into them.

For the uninitiated, “content upgrades” are when you have a piece of content like a blog post and you embed a related free or paid offer to that piece of content that readers can subscribe to.

These are great for moving people from that “A” phase of Attracting audiences and awareness towards the “B” phase of Building your list and relationship with people who are interested in what you have to say and offer.

I’ll be taking the sabbatical between seasons to not only implement these into past episodes, but to also adjust my podcast scheduling process to include content upgrades as soon as they’re published.

I’ve also noticed a much higher level of feedback and higher download numbers coming from Behind The Scenes episodes. This makes sense to me because while I love numbers, I totally “get” wanting to hear the backstory and strategy as to how those numbers came to be so expect way more of that in Season 2.

As a result, another thing to expect more of in Season 2 is feedback from subject matter experts – or what the cool kids call SMEs – because, look, I don’t know it all! And I practice what I preach when it comes to shortening your learning curve by consulting with subject matter experts, so we’re going to do a lot more of that.

Right now, I’m in a phase of business I would describe as “pulling back the slingshot”. I used to feel like I always had to push, always had to be promoting, always had to be offering… but I’m digging this vibe of slowing down to really examine what’s working – for my bottom line, for the people I’m serving and for how I want to spend my time.

It feels as though by pulling back on #allthethings, I’m finally able to build the proper momentum for how I want to show up and how much value I’m actually bringing.

OMGrowth moments aren’t all built on the back of hustle and launching and ad spend; there is huge opportunity for impact in pulling back and evaluating.

I hope this season of the OMGrowth! podcast has provided you with that opportunity, and you can bet your profit margin it’ll be something I’m keeping in mind for Season 2 so if you aren’t already – subscribe, rate and review, please! Tell your biz besties and tell ME about what YOU’RE working on to bring more OMGrowth moments into YOUR business because, boss, I’m making the dang content so it may as well work (and work hard!) for you, amirite?

I appreciate you. I hope you enjoy your summer and we will see you in a few months with Season 2 of the OMGrowth podcast. Baiiieeeee!