Speaker 0 00:00:00 In today's episode, we celebrate one year of the retried podcast along the way. We've picked up a bunch of gems and we hope to share some of those with you. If your church is interested in starting your own podcast, we hope this conversation helps your church reach more people and grow. This is the retried podcast.
Speaker 1 00:00:26 You're listening to the read-write podcast. The show dedicated to helping pastors and church leaders reach people the right way, hosted by me, Thomas Costello. And with me as always is my cohost Ian Hyatt. We're here to help your church see more visitors and grow.
Speaker 0 00:00:55 Welcome to the reach right podcast episode number 52. I am your host Thomas Costello. And with me as always is my cohost Ian Hyatt. Hey Thomas, how's it going? Big day, big day, 50 to one year deep on the <inaudible> podcast. And, uh, it's been a really fun time doing it. We were, we started off, uh, we had been talking about it for, for years, uh, doing this. And then I think we like a lot of people figured we'd give it a shot here in the pandemic, and it's been fantastic to see just the impact we've been able to make. And the, uh, just, uh, the feedback we get from people. And so we thought today is kind of a celebration thing. I think it would be a good thing for churches to hear. Uh, is we just talk about some of the lessons we've learned, uh, as we've done this podcast for one year, um, we have changed quite a bit, I think from episode one.
Speaker 0 00:01:43 Um, if you want to go back and listen to episode one, you'll see, or watch it, you'll see different backgrounds and different cameras and all kinds of stuff and audio, video issues, and just, I think even what we've learned. And we'll talk more about that, what we've learned in our own presentation styles and those kinds of things. We've learned a lot. Uh, so, uh, it's been really good, but I think this is good for churches to share this because I, like we just finished a conversation today where they talked about how they were doing a radio broadcast, that they need to turn into a podcast. And I think that there are lots of churches that have this kind of content, uh, that would actually, uh, it would be really an interesting podcast that people would listen to and it could make an impact. So I think it'll be a fun conversation for us to have, because I hope that some of the things that we've learned doing a ministry specific podcast now, obviously churches would have a different purpose from the stuff we talk about.
Speaker 0 00:02:37 But I think that we've learned a lot of things that have an audience that is mostly Christians are almost exclusively Christians. I think we have an audience that would really probably gain something from some of the lessons we've learned on this. So yeah, that's our hope is to share some of that with people today. It's good to kick us off. I will do it. Uh, number one, the first, uh, gem that we've picked up along the is don't despise humble beginnings. Uh, the, uh, the famous first that we all like, he, I always like to quote this first back when I was church planting, I always would remind people don't despise humble beginnings. Uh, the church plan stayed humble for a long time, so it was humble beginnings and middles and ends. It was all the way along. But, you know, I really think that that's one of those things about doing a podcast is that it, um, it doesn't, unless you have some kind of a ridiculous following on other social media channels, uh, it, you're not gonna have, uh, hundreds or thousands of people listening to it the day that you start, uh, it's not going to, it's not your first episode, the only people that are going to listen or watch that are going to be your mom and your dad and the people that you actually tell them, Hey, go and watch this.
Speaker 0 00:03:48 It would mean something to me. So those people that will do it. And I don't know, we just like any other podcasts had very humble beginnings and there has been a trajectory as we've done it, uh, that it's continued to grow. Uh, so it's just a good reminder, I think from scripture scripture that we need to remember that some things are going to start small and podcasting is definitely one of those things that start small. And as you continue to do it, it tends to grow. So what do you have to add to that
Speaker 2 00:04:17 Much? I mean, I think it, it's funny when you said, you know, you tell your mother to watch or listen or whatever. I then remember your mother-in-law critiquing me and telling me that I needed to change my lighting and all of that. And so that was, that was fun. And I think, yeah, I think pastors can relate. There's a lot of church planting pastors that listen in and it's this it's kinda like anything it's different. It's not like everything else, but like anything else, so to speak. Yeah, you gotta, you got to not just have, you know, too high of an expectation when you start it, you know, you gotta know what's going to take time. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:04:51 And I'm thankful that we had a humble beginning, uh, just because like it's, if we're, if we're making big mistakes, I know there were issues in some of the earlier episodes with technology that always happens or lighting and that kind of stuff. And yeah. Having only your mom see, it is kind of nice and fun to do those kinds of things. I exaggerate it. Wasn't only our moms that were watching this thing, but it's something that it was a small group. And if thousands of people were watching our mistakes, it's much more, uh, you know, I dunno, it's just, you don't want to deal with that. So it's having humble beginnings as good in a way. So hit hit. The second one for us,
Speaker 2 00:05:28 NC is king. And it's kind of funny on a day, like today in all transparency where I haven't felt the best and really easy to say, oh, you know, I just don't want to do it again today. Or, you know, we can take a day off, you know? And I think a lot of people think about this just in all other areas of ministry, but when it comes to a podcast, you know, being consistent is a big deal because you're constantly putting the content out there. And, you know, you can't, it's, it's like taking a break from a blog, right. If you're trying to build a following on your blog, you can't just post it once a month or something like that. I mean, we've done this and thankfully we've been able to do it for 52 weeks straight. So we, and we have we've, we've consistently done it each week. And yeah. So it's been a good
Speaker 0 00:06:20 Thing. I think at Christmas time we recorded a handful of episodes, uh, kind of at Christmas and new year's to kind of make that easier for us. But we released one on every single Thursday and Friday, uh, you know, depending on video or audio, we released it every single weekend that we were, you know, it was something that it wasn't easy there's days like today where, you know, you're not feeling well and it would be easier to mail it in. And here's the temptation as you start to think, well, come on, like in the beginning, there's like, there's like 50 people that listen to this. If it doesn't happen today, it's not the end of the world. And you're right. You know, it's probably not the end of the world. We'll do that, but I'll tell you who do, who, what this is kind of strange to say, but the algorithms notice.
Speaker 0 00:06:59 And so if you skip a week here or there, they start to notice, well, this isn't a weekly podcast. This is something that's, that's different from that. And it starts to, it'll start to cost you in those areas. So I'm not saying you have to do a weekly podcast. We decided to do that. If your church wants to start out doing a monthly podcast. So be it, if you are a gutsy and want to do a daily podcast where you do some kind of a daily word of encouragement, more power to you, that's, that'd be awesome. And there's a place for those kinds of things. But yeah, we have seen that even when we didn't feel like it, or even when it fell on a holiday doing something consistently over and over again, on that same day, it was healthy for us to build the rhythm.
Speaker 0 00:07:37 And I think it really helped us into start to build some snowballing and momentum with this indeed. Yep. Third one I'll hit that is consider both audio and video formats. And this is kind of a no brainer for us. We, out of the gate, we decided that if we were going to go through the work of building an outline and spending the time to think through these things and record something, it didn't make sense just to do one format or the other. Um, I don't, I don't know for me personally, most of the podcasts I engage with, I do them audio. Uh, but there are, you know, sometimes I'll just be sitting around and, and have some busy work and I'll have a YouTube podcast on or something like that too. But it's one of those things that if you're doing all of the hard work, putting it on two different formats, is it really, isn't really that tough to do because what we do right now, just kind of to give some, uh, uh, show people how the cheese is made with this.
Speaker 0 00:08:31 Here is we are doing something through zoom. We're doing a call through zoom. We're also recording it on OBS software. Uh, so that our, we have our own cameras because it's not the quality of a video we want in just the zoom camera, the zoom side of things there. So we recorded on OBS and then we strip out those audio, that audio work on our microphones and things there. So it really, if you're doing video, you've already done audio too. So you might as well do both formats. I find so, yeah. Yeah. Kind of like a sermon,
Speaker 2 00:09:03 Just it's what, you know, most, most churches now are doing video sermons. I remember there was a time years ago when you and I were helping churches with media and website stuff that, you know, it was very common to only have just audio messages on there. Video is a tough thing, but now it's affordable. And like you said, we're already doing videos, so why not make it available with audio? Everyone has a smartphone or an iPhone they're watching video from every day and they pop in their air bud or whatever, and they could watch it. Like you said, sometimes I listen. Sometimes I watch may as well, make it available to however people want to it's on demand culture now. Right? So
Speaker 0 00:09:46 That's a, that's a good, that's a good point again. I think for sermons, that's a good lesson for churches is if you're doing all the hard work on a video, you should put it into some kind of a syndicated, if you call it a podcast or not, that's neither here nor there, but you should syndicate it. You should put it out there. And I'll tell you just from our numbers, that there is a large audio only audience that I think would be pretty similar on sermons there. So if you're doing the video already, you should put it into audio only format and put it on the appropriate channels. So yeah, that's good
Speaker 2 00:10:18 Stuff. Yeah. Someone might want to actually listen to it on a bike ride after they'd been watching it every other week, but they're just making it convenient. So let's tackle the next one is don't ignore SEO. So that's one of the things we've learned from this is that we want to make this visible and you have to, there are certain things for you to do with your podcast and the way that you title it and all of that, that will make it more visible because yeah, it's, it's not, uh, like we say, with web development, it's not a, you build, if you build it, they will come. It's how you, it, how visible you make it online. So this could be something easily missed. I think that if someone gets the podcast going, this could be one step easily missed because they're like, okay, I got to go. And I got all the equipment I'm staying consistent now. And then you forget about this very important detail that that probably is behind the scenes and a lot of people's minds.
Speaker 0 00:11:15 Yeah. I think that just in general in ministry, we, we don't give a lot of attention to this, but this has it. And this sounds so strange to even say, but in my time pastoring churches and our audience knows I've led churches. Uh, and that was really a lot of our secret sauce. Like I, you know, we, I had a great team around me and good people that were there and, you know, I was I'm able to preach and we had good worship and things, but we saw lots of visitors because we got good at SEO. Like we really got good at making sure that our content got found, even though we were smaller or medium sized churches, we were able get our content found out there. And so the same thing goes for putting together a podcast. I think if I gave one there's lots of things to SEO, right?
Speaker 0 00:12:00 We could do a whole podcast about podcasts, SEO strategies. But if there was one thing I would say, get your titles, right. Uh, and if you, if you don't use keywords that people are searching for in your titles, then your podcast will not be found when people are looking for that content. Uh, you know, you're going to grow socially. People will share it. You'll kind of pick up momentum that way, but people will also find it by searching. So even this podcast, for instance, it's called what we have learned hosting a ministry podcast or hosting a ministry podcast. That's the keywords that we're targeting on this particular post here. And that was very intentional when I had, when we initially had written out the outline, it was called something like, Hey, celebrating one year of the retried podcast. And then we thought to ourselves, Hey, nobody's searching for celebrating one year of a pie.
Speaker 0 00:12:52 That's not a search term. So we changed it to hosting a ministry podcast, being the keywords, and we're going to start to target those kinds of things. So that's a little bit more about how the cheese is made and how we do that stuff here. And, uh, but take that stuff seriously. Be intentional about SEO. That's good. Uh, next one is, uh, preparation is key. Preparation is key. If you think you can just go out here and, and wing something like this while you're a better man than I, uh, because, uh, we really, um, and, and I'm not saying what we spend hours and hours or, you know, weeks of research on every episode, but you know, part of this, as we talk about what we know about, uh, and, uh, doing our, our jobs at retried, helping churches reach more people online with digital marketing, this is stuff that we eat, breathe and sleep all the time.
Speaker 0 00:13:38 Uh, but on top of that, we still spend the time to, to build out outlines, think through content, find stats. Uh, we basically write the entire, we don't, we don't script every word that we're saying obviously, but we have a really clear outline that we kind of jump off of. And I think that ha it adds to the quality of the content. I will say, this is an area that we, we didn't do as much preparation when we started, uh, and we've grown in our preparation on things. And I think the quality of our content has really gotten a lot better, but you guys are the judge of that. What do you have to add to that easily?
Speaker 2 00:14:11 Well, it's like preparing for your message as a pastor, right? Preparing a sermon, the best preachers out there, or who are considered to be some of the best, you know, preachers and pastors out there and teachers, if you will, um, they prepare, they do. They, they prepare quite a bit. Um, so I'm sure there's days you can wing it and you know, the holy spirit can just download a message to you or something like that very possible happens. But, uh, I think we've seen over the years that it's a similar thing. Similar concept, the more you prepare, the more you will be prepared and the better you'll deliver.
Speaker 0 00:14:50 Yup. That's exactly right. I think, uh, yeah. Preparation is, is vital with that. That's well said about, uh, with sermons. I I've never been that guy that could just get up there. And I didn't think of my sermon on the way to church on Sunday mornings. That wasn't me, those guys that can do that well are one in a million. Uh, so God bless you. If that's you, maybe you should be doing a broadcast.
Speaker 2 00:15:12 And you're brave if you're thinking of mattered on the way so good. And the next one I'll tackle here is always be yourself. So when you, you know, it's funny when we started this podcast, you know, we, we started, you know, listening to other podcasts, which is good. You know, it's good. You want to gleam from others and learn some of the things, but, you know, there was no way we were going to go out and be, oh, there's Joe Rogan. Right. We know that there's all sorts of big names with it. You know, you'll mention a few others, but, you know, be yourself. And I think that, you know, that was one thing I think we, we did fairly well out of the gate was that we knew that, Hey, we were going to be ourselves on this and, you know, we're just going to, and that takes a lot of pressure off too. For me personally, I went into it just saying, Hey, I'm going to be myself. I'm not going to try to do something or be someone else.
Speaker 0 00:16:02 Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah. I think that for a lot of us that are our audience, they probably have experienced preaching and they're already public speakers, but I know, and maybe this change did due to the pandemic, but I know for me, I had very little experience talking to a camera. Right. So that was something that was unique to me. Uh, I, I actually felt really uncomfortable. I think when we first started doing it, because I, I don't know, just talking to a camera is different from talking to an actual person. And to this day, you know, what we do when we film this is we, we put a really small version of our screen right below the camera. So we're kind of like talking to each other, but it kind of feels like we're talking right to the camera there. So I'm looking at you in the eyes when I do it, because it helps me be myself for when I do those kinds of things.
Speaker 0 00:16:47 But I think that when I go back and look at some of our earlier episodes, I see the way that I was, uh, you know, I was a little bit less myself in some ways. And I think as we've become more comfortable, I think it's just improved the quality of this. So, uh, yeah, you're exactly right there already as a Joe Rogan, they're already, as a, I know I listened to Carrie new Hoff podcast, Brady shear, and some of these guys that are in the same vein as us. And so I think that they're already, those already exist. Don't try to do those things, be who you are. And yeah, that's the kind of podcast that's needed out there. It's good stuff. Cool. Next one is, share it everywhere. Share your podcast everywhere. Uh, this means, put it out on social media channels. Uh, get it out on all the podcasts providers out there.
Speaker 0 00:17:34 Uh, put it out anywhere. You can put a podcast, because again, this is back to that same principle. You do the hard work of writing, filming, editing, all that work is the same work and just, there's almost no work. It uploading it to different channels. So the ones we've chosen to focus on, uh, is for audio formats. We're on apple podcasts, Google podcasts, Spotify SoundCloud, those big ones there. So we get everything onto there. And then we eat, it submitted to lots of other channels that are out there as well, but we created accounts and really work on those. And then for video, we focused on YouTube and Facebook and getting our content out in those two places. So the amount of time that it takes for us to get it out to all of those channels, there was some work in the beginning. Like, so setting up the accounts, getting, you know, getting everything all dialed in on Spotify and SoundCloud and everything, but now it takes the same amount of time to get out to all of those channels on audio format. And then it's just uploading a similar file to both YouTube and Facebook. There's a slight edit, a few little differences between the two, but, uh, uploading those two. I mean, it's the time that it takes to upload. Uh, so that's how long it actually, that's the difference in this here. So yeah, I think if you're going through the work of making it, you might as well put it everywhere. Absolutely. If
Speaker 2 00:18:52 You're staying consistent, you're doing all the other things we're saying that's yeah. Why not get it out there? That's good stuff. So the next one I'll tackle here. It's invest a little bit, not too much. So after all this stuff we've been sharing so far in this episode, someone might be thinking, well, that's my gosh equipment. What I need to do. We, you shared a little bit earlier about, you know, OBS software and, um, you know, investing in a good camera. You know, it really is not as much as probably what people think. And I think we're coming out of we're coming out of the pandemic where we've seen churches just invest thousands and well overall millions of dollars on production stuff. And that's all great. Um, so, you know, that's kind of in people's minds with, there was a lot of investing in production and video stuff, but this really doesn't take, um, you know, a whole lot and, you know, we didn't have to invest, you know, just buck boatloads of money. Yeah,
Speaker 0 00:19:50 No, I think we're under a thousand bucks probably we had computers and those kinds of things. And so it's stuff we already, we live in that world there. And a lot of this stuff with were things we already had, but yeah, I think that the things you need to think about is you probably want a, you want more than just what comes on your laptop. I think that's, that's important. Uh, so, and that means probably a different camera, probably a different microphone. Uh, those are two things you probably want to look into, uh, and you probably want some other source of lighting or finding a room in your palace that has really good natural lighting coming in on your face. I know you're just in your room right in front of a window. Uh, I have a, uh, El Gato key light. That's up above my camera here.
Speaker 0 00:20:34 Um, I know you're using a really high-end web cam, uh, for me, I'm using a Canon M 50, uh, camera. So it's a, it's a digital camera, DSL DSLR camera. Um, and so that's, that's what we're using here for microphones. We're both using blue Yeti microphones. They're not usually in the screen, but here they are. Anybody that's interested with that kind of stuff there. So make sure it's facing the right way. That's a lesson we learned early beginning, make sure you're talking to the right side of the microphone and things there. But again, so these microphones are about a hundred dollars a piece, uh, between cameras and lights were probably seven or $800 into the whole thing. When it's all said and done, uh, it's mostly free software that we use for, uh, the recording. Uh, we have someone on our team here that already used a Adobe premiere and is doing the editing and those kinds of things in there.
Speaker 0 00:21:28 We use, uh, Adobe software, uh, audition to do the audio. So I don't have to get too into the details, but all that to say, you don't need to invest 20 grand. You also probably ought to invest more than 50 bucks to pull something like this off. So find the find that happy medium for your church. But again, it really comes down to creating good content is really the king of this here. So good. So let me wrap this up. I'll wrap us up with the last one is you'll get what you put into it. Uh, so, uh, if you are willing to invest the time, it's just kind of a summation of everything. We're talking about a little bit of resources, a chunk of time to do it consistently to share it everywhere, to focus on the, all the stuff we talked about. Uh, if you're willing to do that, I believe that there are results out there to be had.
Speaker 0 00:22:14 And I know it seems like everybody in their brother is podcasting now. Um, I think that there's lots and lots of podcasts that go for two weeks and then they don't ever happen again. Uh, or, you know, they, they happen once every, uh, every nine weeks, but if you're willing to get out there and actually do something with us, I think there are results to be had for churches. Um, I think that we have the, the most important and the best message in the history of humanity that we carry with us there. And podcasting is a format that I think is really great for delivering stories, delivering testimonies to that's really what stories are, they're their testimonies talking about the goodness of what God's done, but really just having conversations. I don't know what the theme is. Maybe it's really practical for your church. Maybe you have a theology podcast that you want to talk about.
Speaker 0 00:23:03 Maybe you're going to talk about church and culture. There's so many different ideas. We talk about church and digital marketing. That's what we do here. Uh, but every church, I think there is an opportunity. Now, all that being said, it's a, another warning to count the cost because it's something that if you just think that it's easy to do, I'm just going to go out there and do a podcast. You will not get any results. There's nothing it's just going to be throwing your time away to do something like that. We went into this going in that this was not going to be a, try it for a month and see if it sticks kind of an approach we will knowing we're going to do this for the long haul, because we know that this kind of stuff will snowball. And if we put in the effort, we believe that, uh, uh, we'd start to build an audience and that is happened. It seems like. So. Yeah,
Speaker 2 00:23:48 No, not much. I, I think that you summed it up really well. I think the counting, the cost thing is, you know, it's the same thing. If you're starting a blog, it's the same thing. If you're starting a, a new ministry within the church, right. You have to say, Hey, if we're not going to do this right. And consistently, then we shouldn't do it at all. Right. We're saying do it. We're not saying don't do it at all, but be committed and see it through. So
Speaker 0 00:24:12 Yeah. That's good. Yeah. Yeah. We'll leave you with that. Do do it. I think that if it's something you've had kind of a niche or a tickle to go for it, I really want to encourage you. It has been fun. Ian, I've enjoyed doing all of these with you obviously and all of our fans. And, uh, I don't know if you'd call them fans, but people that we have a few that are fans, I would say, I want to celebrate those guys. We have few people that are out there and actual fans, but all the people that are in our audience and part of our retried family, uh, we, I want to take this chance just to thank you guys. We do that at the end of every episode, but really having done it for a year. Uh, and uh, everybody that's been with us from the beginning.
Speaker 0 00:24:46 So that means mom. Yeah, thank you and everything. But everybody that's been with us after that and it's been coming and all of our people that have watched this, it really does mean so much to us that, uh, you make us a part of your week or as often as you do listen to this podcast or watch this podcast. So we're thankful. And we just see it as a blessing from God to be able to come into, uh, into your life and be able to engage with people that way. So we hope it's been helpful to you guys, if it has been, uh, as you, as it continues to be helpful, it means a lot to us when you rate and review and subscribe and share and comment and let us know that you're out there, give us the thumbs up and doing all those things. Uh, we just thank you guys so much for being part of our retried family and, uh, makes for one year. And we'll, uh, we'll hope to catch you next week.
Speaker 1 00:25:34 Thanks for listening to the reach right podcast. We hope this episode will help you reach people the right way, looking for more resources for your church. Check us out
[email protected]. If this episode has been helpful to you, it would mean the world to us. If you would rate, review and subscribe on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks again for listening. And we'll see you next week.
