Podcast to website conversion?
I'd like the Indie Hackers podcast to do a better job getting listeners to visit the website. In the past, all I've done is mention the website in the outro. Any clever ideas?
I'd like the Indie Hackers podcast to do a better job getting listeners to visit the website. In the past, all I've done is mention the website in the outro. Any clever ideas?
What about making a connection between the podcast and AMA. "This was all we had time for, but if you have any question for {person} you should go to indiehackers forum where {person} is doing an AMA."
I'd really like to work on some sort of permanent AMA feature, maybe in lieu of private messaging, where you can ask person or business on Indie Hackers a question, and also see what questions others are asking. This would fit into that particular feature very well, assuming I can convince my very busy podcast guests to take time out of their day to answer questions every now and then!
Instead of a Q&A, which requires a lot of effort from the interviewee at a later date, why not just ask a few more questions but exclude them from the audio and direct people to the site to read a transcription instead?
That's a great idea. I've been thinking about doing some exclusive content like that for people who create an account and are active on the forum, rather than just for podcast listeners.
+1, from a recently registered account. Pre-releasing (potentially extended) episodes for registered users is a very nice incentive to get people to register on the site. I would suggest to keep the exclusive content in audio format though, rather than forcing people to read the transcript. Listening mixes better with other tasks (commuting/working out/..) than reading.
I like this idea. However, I wonder if Courtland will be able to get people's time to answer questions after the podcast.
I think that you should have a question thread before every episode, and ask people to submit a question, their name, and their company name. Then, pick a couple to ask during the recording and name the person with the question. I think people would love to hear their name in the episode. Then, the call to action in the episode could be "Go to indiehackers.com to participate in future episodes." That would make it feel more like a community.
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Interesting.
I'd start by asking myself two questions:
Are there (a significant number of) listeners out there who find the podcast before they find the IH website?
Of those people (if they exist), what do we know they are interested in which we could offer them as a reason to visit the IH site?
For 1) :
I doubt there are, but you'll have to track/test (maybe you have already)
Where are they finding out about the podcast, if not from the website? Organic search in the podcast app? Or is there another channel they are discovering you from? Perhaps one you can influence to direct traffic to the site first, instead of the podcast directly...
For 2) :
We know they are interested in listening to the story/advice of that specific guest speaker.
We can probably assume they're also interested in the topic of indie hacking. At least somewhat.
You should give these listeners a reason to visit the forum which is tailored to them. Maybe it's an AMA with the guest speaker. Maybe a request for guest speaker/question suggestions. Maybe something a bit more growth-hacky, like a discount code for a product/service mentioned by the guest speaker.
At the same time, you probably don't want it to be so uniquely targeting these listeners that others aren't also incentivised to visit the forum.
More general feedback/points to think about:
Consider moving the shoutout to about 2-3 minutes before the end of the podcast (eg before the last big question).
Also, I'd repeat it close to the beginning (eg after the second question/intro) and again at least once mid-way through the podcast. Slightly different each time of course (don't alienate those different user groups).
Take a minute to reflect on how great the podcast/forum already is as well ;)
Louis,
I've now got to the point where I recognise your approach to a question so well I know it is you before I have finished the first sentence or looked to see who posted!
I am now going to read the post!
hahaha, exactly my thought. Oh my.
Ha.
If I ever start checking my grammar, punctuation or sentence-construction, you'll be lost!
@csallen: I fear an obsession with traffic can be a case of measuring the wrong thing because it happens to be easy to measure: the mcnamara fallacy.
An analogous situation is the newsletter: you send it out three times weekly, and see statistically more traffic to your site. Yet you do this at the cost of depth of engagement. I guarantee you, if you sent it out once weekly, many of us here would read it letter by letter. Instead because it comes so often only a cursory glance is possible . So you have higher levels of superficial engagement at the cost of severing a deep connection with your readership. It quality vs quantity: we tell you we want it once weekly but you prefer the volume.
That's a tough call, because there is also the issue of the vocal minority — the people who are the most unhappy with the current state of things will be the loudest. So there's something to be said for actually looking at the stats and verifying that there are indeed many hundreds of people reading every issue, enjoying it, and clicking links, and that ratio didn't get worse but actually improved when we started sending 3 per week.
(It was actually one of the biggest if not the biggest boosts to IH's growth, ever. I don't think the forum would've gotten nearly this big this fast if we hadn't done that.)
Of course, if that was not the case, I would certainly prefer to send one per week, because it's much less work on my part. And if there were more of me to go around, I would also put a higher priority on offering several newsletter options, because I'd have the free time to do it, and some of you feel very strongly about it.
But I can assure you I'm looking at long-term engagement and not just short-term growth. 😇
I love what you guy's are doing with IH: but you know I like to play devil's advocate with strong opinions ;)
Our discussion made me think of this quote:
I'm not saying that @csallen and @channingallen are conspiring to rob us of all our free-time, but I would guess people who have time to read the tiniest details of a newsletter three times are week, are not those making the most progress with their side projects. Could this be a variant of what @amyhoy calls "entreporn".
Now I need to heed my own advice, and get that work done I've been procastinating on... laters.
https://www.1843magazine.com/features/the-scientists-who-make-apps-addictive
https://stackingthebricks.com/entreporn/
We were actually just talking about this this morning. Members visit Indie Hackers about 11 times per month, which is more than enough imo. I have no real desire to increase that number, so long as visiting IH primarily consists of reading what others are saying.
What would be meaningful is getting more people who are struggling with their business to actually post asking for help, and to find other ways of helping them progress to the next step.
Are you familiar with the Octalysis framework? It's an comprehensive gamification framework that is a superset of the ideas you've previously mentioned from Hooked and other simpler models.
Probably the single biggest takeaway I got from reading Yukai's Actionable Gamification was that very data-driven models inevitably lead to blackhat techniques (e.g. scarcity, skinner-box randomness, loss avoidance, etc), while often damaging the more durable core drives like meaning, empowerment and accomplishment. It's a path most associated with sleazy marketers, and Zynga-type gaming companies, but it's becoming more frequently associated with web apps and online communities too, just as users are getting less tolerant of the behavior. Aggressive email lists still work but the channel is clearly getting less effective.
I'm not saying that data-driven growth strategies won't work. I'm just saying that they'll probably make the brand a bit less liked unless there's also some thought put into the user's wants as well as their actions. If the frequency someone visits the site exceeds the frequency they want to be visiting for too long, they'll start to avoid it entirely, just as many have done with LinkedIn or even Facebook.
The reason I write this mini-essay is that aside from a deep interest in growth, and gamification, is that I think the podcast is amazing and if anything, you'd be doing yourself a favor to send people in the other direction—from the site to the podcast!
Is 3x weekly more effective (by your measure) because people read it 3 times a week, or is the effectiveness down to catching people who miss it first or second time round?
I ask out of genuine curiosity?
I would be interested in knowing which mail-list tool you use?
I always though that tracking reading metrics and time on email was error prone, what are your experiences with this?
It's a combination of both — people who read once a week now read 2-3x a week. People who read once a month now read 2-3x a month. Of course, it's quite possible that all the people who don't like three emails/week are the ones who simply unsubscribed, and what we're left with are the people who don't mind, but that seems to be most people.
We're using ConvertKit, which keeps good track of stats, but doesn't let you do anything with them programmatically. We pipe some info into Amplitude, which is much better. Hoping to do more of that soon.
Just one voice, but I found the podcast first based on a friend's recommendation. They were a co-founder and into indie hacking, but we really found it just because we wanted some development inspiration. It feels like there's a drought of these kinds of thoughtful conversations with developers as podcasts.
I didn't really check out the site until I followed @csallen on Twitter after being inspired by some of the shows.
If you can promote a guest via the site, I think that might drive some traffic. Courtland is an awesome host, but we're listening to the podcast for the guests' knowledge share, so if we like them and want to find out more I'd expect to be told I can find it here.
Smart way to break it down. AMAs are a solid idea. As is talking about the site more during the episode instead of right at the end. Would be really cool to get guests involved in the forum before they come on the show, then work that into the discussion naturally… 😝
When you do research before each interview, you can ask the community via forum if anyone has specific questions for your next guest. It might make your job a little easier, while also reducing the separation between IH's podcast and IH's forum. You can then naturally weave mentions of the forum into your episode, and then also direct listeners to that post/thread at the end of your episode. It makes it a less formal AMA, but the guest can then answer a few additional questions and stay engaged with their audience a little more too.
Maybe a pdf book of top interviews would be a good way to draw people to your site.
For more reviews, having the short link helps and perhaps offering an incentive (ticket to group chat with well-known founder?)
I see you have YouTube covered (just checked).
Are there other people operating in a similar space to you where you could cross-fertilise each other?
Are there techie bloggers out there who may not even have considered an entrepreneurial approach to their skills who would welcome a weekly podcast link as part of adding to their content?
Are there entrrepeneurial sites out there who have never considered a technological outlet to complement their business skills? Again, this could be a take on entrepreneurship which would be of interest to them and where you could provide regular content.
Similarly, can you cross-fertilise the other way? I see a lot of techie people here who ask the most basic questions about business. Is there some common ground here between you and others who all have slightly different takes on what it means to be an indie, to be an entrepreneur and to be a technologist?
In other words, are there people out there who are not really competitors at all but complementors?*
Ooh-er matron?
Am I right in thinking you are actually a Brit who just happens to be living in Switzerland?
My parents are British and I grew up mainly in the UK. Have been feeling progressively less British since June '16 though.
So have I but - I suspect - for very different reasons.
That's intriguing. Let's just say I'm not a fan of David Davies and leave it at that.
I haven't lived in the UK for over a decade, if that's what you thought I was alluding to.
No. I assumed you were referring to the referendum. But, yes, we should leave it at that.
Mention a popular post/discussion during the podcast episode
Maybe offer a Q/A segment prior to each podcast where people can bring up stuff to discuss in the Q/A.
Or maybe like a forumer of the week thing where a hot topic is picked and discussed in the podcast with a small panel of experts!
Check out Podclipper!
https://www.podclipper.com
It wouldn't get them to the website directly from listening... but would utilize great clips from the podcast to get listeners to the website from various social channels.
p.s. love the IH podcast!
But why do you want to bring people back to website?
Website is a content distribution channel of the Indie Hackers platform. Podcast is another content distribution channel. In the future, you may add other channels (e.g., YouTube, Telegram, FB group, ...). Every channel caters to slightly different audience. You can turn the same content into different formats and distribute through different channels.
For example, BuzzFeed doesn't focus on page views of website. Actually website only accounts for a small portion of impressions of BuzzFeed's contents. There are YouTube videos, FB posts, Tweets, ...
Primarily because the website is more interactive and therefore more helpful in getting people to reach their goals. For example, you can make a feedback post like this one I just made, and get advice on your growing your business. Or you can search through interviews to find the stories relevant to yours. ETc.
Would be cool to have some sort of audio/podcast content other than just interviews. For example, some sort of commentary on the top news, forum posts, or just talking about some of the latest written interviews.
I think this was a huge driver back in the day for Digg.com. They had a podcast show called Diggnation, and on that show, they would sit on a couch and chat about the top stories on Digg.com. I have no proof, but I feel like that podcast was a big driver of growth for Digg. At least for me, I found the podcast and through listening every week, I eventually became an avid Digg user.
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