I mean, Ahrefs is a pretty established name in the SEO industry, and most of our pipelines are in the millions:
So when we hit the 10k milestone, I was both happy and upset that the numbers were so low. It’s kind of like “3rd Place Celebration Meme” situation (which I thought would be perfect to recreate for this occasion) LinkedIn):
My main takeaway is this: Getting a podcast off the ground is very, very difficult.
It’s not as complex as SEO, and the “Zoom interview” format doesn’t perform well on YouTube.
So if you’re thinking about launching a podcast, I can give you 10 compelling reasons why you shouldn’t:
I’ve noticed that too many people think of podcasting as “simple content” – take a call, record, publish. complete!
Well… for us at Ahrefs, the actual interview is probably 40% of the workload.
Invite guests, schedule time with them, do decent research, create an engaging intro, design thumbnails for YouTube, transcribe, add timecodes, write titles and descriptions, upload to a bunch of podcast platforms, cut out clips for promotion, Those snippets of writing copy for YouTube…
Running a podcast takes a lot of work (if you want to produce a high-quality show, of course).
I can’t imagine doing the Ahrefs Podcast alone. It was a team effort of many people:
- Michelle (Our Community Manager) does most of the heavy lifting in terms of researching guests, editing recordings, and managing the entire process end-to-end.
- george And Nikita is the one who makes those cool intros.
- Sergey Designing thumbnails for YouTube.
- Helen Helping upload.
Yes, you can take shortcuts here and there. But you may run the risk of quality deterioration. A low-quality exhibition will greatly reduce the effectiveness of all your promotional efforts.
Before starting the podcast on Ahrefs I’ve probably done over a hundred interviews on other people’s podcasts. I can tell you that being a host is a lot of Even harder than being a guest. The pressure to make the interview interesting is entirely on you, not the guest.
Guests are mostly in “response” mode – they just need to answer any questions thrown at you. But the interviewer is ultimately responsible for the success of the interview. You have to stay sharp throughout, ask interesting questions, and know where to dig deeper (and when to change the subject).
Too many podcast hosts like to cut corners here and just default to asking every guest the same generic set of questions without trying to dig deeper into the answers they get.
I like Ryan Holiday describes it:
“They’ll ask you a question, you’ll give an answer, and then you can almost hear their eyes scanning the paper in front of them before moving on to the next question on the list.
It’s disrespectful to guests, but that’s not my real issue. My problem is that it produces very boring audio. Who wants to hear someone actually call in? Why do you want to listen to a conversation that the host has never heard?
You may disagree with me on this, because there are definitely some good short podcasts out there.
But when I tried interviewing my guests for an hour, I realized it wasn’t enough to just squeeze some really good information out of them. Especially if your guest is very talkative and likes to go off on tangents, this can easily derail your entire interview plan.
But getting people to commit to talking to you for two hours is a big ask. Unless your podcast is really famous, a lot of big names won’t bite you.
Once you do have someone spend two hours with you, staying sharp and alert for an extended period of time without taking a break can sometimes be very challenging.
Some people think their podcast can be successful simply by having a big name, which automatically guarantees views. no, I can not.
If you search on YouTube you will find many podcasts interviewing all the big names in digital marketing. Yet the viewing numbers for these episodes are mostly in double digits.
But my biggest complaint is with people who ask their guests to help them promote the interview. After the episode is released, they follow up with a guest and ask them “Please share this with your audience.”
Sorry, no.
I did five podcast interviews this month and they were all pretty much the same. If I shared every one of these on my social channels, I would just piss off my audience. Additionally, most social networks don’t really like you posting links, so the engagement and impact of such posts is very low.
If your only promotion strategy for your podcast is “My guests will help spread the word”——I have bad news for you. They won’t.
Take any “big” guests you have in mind and search for their existing podcast interviews. They may have made dozens this year alone. So why would anyone be interested in your interview with that person?
There are only two reasons:
- You are an interesting person yourself So even if it’s a personal podcast, people will listen to you.
- you are good at selling (More on that later).
Judging from my own habits, 80% of the podcast interviews I listen to are hosted by hosts I already know and respect: Nathan Barry, Xiao Jiawei, Dave Gerhart, Kip Bodnar and Kieran Flanagan, etc.
Podcasts are a very ineffective way to grow your own audience and visibility. But, instead, it’s a great way to leverage your existing audience and popularity.
I guess your ultimate goal is to grow your business. This means you need to increase your sales. This means you have to pursue a marketing strategy with the highest conversion rate.
Excellent… Podcasting is not one of them.
During my two-hour conversation with the guest, there was virtually no opportunity to insert some sort of Ahrefs sales pitch. I try to mention relevant use cases that fit the conversation, but there are quite a few episodes where our product doesn’t get any praise at all.
Podcasts are a great tool for brand promotion and building trust with your target audience. But I don’t expect any sales from the episodes we’ve released so far.
If you need sales, you’d better sponsor some podcasts related to your niche (but even then, We tried it but didn’t see much sales). This is a great way to increase awareness, but it won’t generate any sales right away.
Each episode should focus on your guests and their business. I mean… you didn’t invite some famous person to call in and talk about yourself for hours, right?
Furthermore, if you want this episode to air, you have to focus on making your guests look good. Your audience is here to learn from your guests, and you have to make sure they learn a lot.
In my own interviews, I try to dig deeper into my guests’ businesses and careers. I’m really interested in what they do, why they do it, and how they do it. The whole conversation is everything about them.
Therefore, my guests have plenty of room to promote themselves and their business without feeling salesy. That’s one of the main reasons they agreed to be interviewed: they wanted to reach my audience and promote their stuff.
So if your goal is to promote your own stuff –You need to be a podcast guestnot a podcast host.
Compare podcasting to SEO. An article you published 10 years ago can still bring you traffic (and sales) today. But once you stop posting new episodes of your podcast… Everyone will forget about it.
We just passed a measly 10,000 downloads. It took us 3 months, 10 episodes and a lot of promotion to get there. Ahrefs already has a sizable audience. If I were starting from scratch, I would still have barely reached 1,000 downloads.
Why is promotion so difficult? Well, we basically discussed most of the reasons above:
- SEO doesn’t work for podcasts.
- “Zoom interviews” don’t work on YouTube.
- Your guests will rarely be enthusiastic about helping you promote it.
- Podcasting platforms don’t have a good “discovery engine.”
In other words, without an existing audience, it would take you more than three months to reach 10,000 downloads.
So that’s it.
“But Tim…if podcasting is so much trouble, why are you doing it?”
Well…I didn’t say podcasts were completely Useless and completely unworthy. I’m just sharing 10 reasons why you should think twice before you start.
There is obviously another side of the coin. Once we hit the 50,000 milestone, I’ll share 10 reasons why you should start a podcast. stay tuned! 😉
