Steve welcomes Stephanie Lynn from The Highly Sensitive Club for a Tune-Up to review the foundations of organic discoverability. Listen in to the first half of our call where I reviewed tips and tricks that are guaranteed to (at least) double her downloads once she puts them into practice, like...
Adjusting and adding additional keywords
The power behind a title extension
Avoiding starting your podcast title with "The" as the first word
Not currently podcasting, but interested in launching your own successful podcast? Schedule a Brainstorm Session!
Want to learn more about Highly Sensitive People? Check out Stephanie Lynn's podcast, The Highly Sensitive Club, wherever you listen to podcasts, such as Apple and Spotify
Steve welcomes Stephanie Lynn from The Highly Sensitive Club for a Tune-Up to review the foundations of organic discoverability. Listen in to the first half of our call where I reviewed tips and tricks that are guaranteed to (at least) double her downloads once she puts them into practice, like...
Adjusting and adding additional keywords
The power behind a title extension
Avoiding starting your podcast title with "The" as the first word
Not currently podcasting, but interested in launching your own successful podcast? Schedule a Brainstorm Session!
Want to learn more about Highly Sensitive People? Check out Stephanie Lynn's podcast, The Highly Sensitive Club, wherever you listen to podcasts, such as Apple and Spotify
Steve:
Hey there, podcasting badasses. It's your host Sober Steve here with Stephanie Lynn. Hey there, Stephanie. Hi, Steve. So excited to be here.
Stephanie:
Thank you
Steve:
for having me. Yes, I am excited because I follow your podcast, the highly sensitive club. And so I've been following it and have a little idea of some ideas of things we could talk about today, but why don't you introduce your show and what it's about and why you do it for my listeners?
Stephanie:
Absolutely. I am so excited to talk about it because I love doing the podcast. I wanted to do it for a long time and every week I feel like it just gets better and better. So my podcast is called the highly sensitive club and it is for highly sensitive people, which is a trait that about 20 percent of the population has that makes our minds and our bodies more sensitive than the average person. And I found because that's my coaching niche is working with highly sensitive people. I found that a lot of HSPs, highly sensitive people don't know that they have high sensitivity and they feel like they're really alone. So I created the podcast to provide a space where HSPs could learn more about high sensitivity. So that they could feel like they're part of a community, which is a huge community, 1. 6 billion people on the planet are highly sensitive. And so that they could learn and to grow and improve their lives. So a lot of times it's talking about some coaching concepts that I think would be really helpful. Sometimes it's my experience as a highly sensitive person and how that can apply to other people. Sometimes it's my experience with my clients and what they've been learning about their high sensitivity that I think would be helpful for my listeners.
Steve:
That is excellent. I love that. And I definitely can relate to being a highly sensitive person. I know that one of the things when I was like following you or hearing is people always call me like dramatic or sensitive all the time. And I was like, okay, well, it adds up because one in five is a huge amount of the population that I can imagine a lot of people are highly sensitive and might not know that that that's the term for it or that they, you know, it's, It's a thing that they can listen to or learn about. So with that, right now, how do people find your show?
Stephanie:
Right now it is mostly referrals and word of mouth. It's just all of the people that are in my immediate network or people who know someone who might be highly sensitive, who let me gush and get so excited about it. And I'm like, listen to this episode. This is going to be so helpful for you.
Steve:
All right. And where would you like it to be or grow?
Stephanie:
Oh my gosh. I, it's very appropriate. I think that a lot of highly sensitive podcasts don't last very long because it is a big energy expenditure to create podcasts, especially weekly, or to do it consistently and regularly. And a lot of them do have pod fade, as I heard in one of your first episodes. So I would love to be one of the like top Three or five highly sensitive podcasts that are actually active right now. Like when someone looks up high sensitivity and they want to learn more about it, I would love for my name to pop up in one of the top three.
Steve:
Excellent. Well, I definitely can see you being close because playing around a little bit, depending on what you're searching, you do show up in that top, eight to 10 block that shows up where it shows up right away without you having to scroll. That's kind of where you want to be because at that point it ends up becoming a battle of the cover art. And so there are extra ways from where you are right now that we can grow because I think that in terms of the choose your own adventure of where we could be talking about today, we could be talking about organic discoverability, which is stuff that you will happen, whether you're working it or not, that if we get the organic discoverability set up and built into the structure of your podcast, that even if you take a week off from social media to do something else, that people will still be able to find your podcast because you have it built into the hardwire of what your podcast is. versus doing more strategic and effort based discoverability of the things that you would consider like doing social media or even like being guests on other podcasts. These are all great ways to grow your podcast and should be part of your plan as we go. But I think to start today with talking about the organic discoverability sound good for you.
Stephanie:
I think that would be perfect. And when you said that, that people could just like find it organically and in their sleep, I thought, Oh, that's beautiful. That's what I want. That would be amazing.
Steve:
Yeah. Cause it's, it's huge to have both of them and people will spin their wheels and spend their lives getting so obsessed with social media. And the number one thing that I had took a long time for me to realize is that my followers and my listeners are sometimes the same, but a lot of times they're different that I can get a thousand people following me on social media. But I know for a fact that not all of them are listening to the podcast. Most of them aren't, they just like my content about it, but it's hard to get people to always transfer over. So I love the idea. And I've learned a lot of very effective ways to making sure that from the get go people can find it. So number one thing for search engine optimization is in the title of your podcast. And you have a very great base with the highly sensitive club I find because you have highly sensitive in the title so you have right away what it is. And then you have like the club, which kind of gives that idea that like, you're not alone, that we're in this together, that they're joining something by being able to listen to it, that they're kind of getting access. So I love that. The problem that I found with that when searching other iterations or versions is that it seems like you add the word people or person, you drop out from that top 12 that you show up. And if you just search highly sensitive, you show up in that perfect niche that you're looking to be in. But if you add words, it's when you fall off, so I don't know if you've noticed that we're played around with what you search, but putting it around as someone who I know listens to podcasts. If you were to be searching for a podcast about high sensitivity, what are other words that you would search in your search bar besides this? Highly sensitive.
Stephanie:
There are probably two variations and I'm so glad you brought that up because I find when I do my search that the tends to like offset search engines. Like if I don't put a the in, then it's like, no, we can't find you. So this is a good point. Yeah, and you're right about the highly sensitive person. So I would say the other two variations are either highly sensitive person or high sensitivity.
Steve:
So, and what I love about the idea and concept of a title extension, which is something that I have on my podcast, podcasting VAs, as well as gay a as well. When I talk about my shows, I'll just call them Podcasting VAs, or I call them gay a, and that's what my listeners call them as well. But if you look at the writing on either of those shows in the podcasting players, there's an extension afterwards of what it actually is in the title. All those words I put into my podcast title, not because it's the name of the podcast in terms of how I talk about it, but those are other words that people are going to be putting into their search bar to find my podcast. And so something that I would consider for you is to figure out using other versions of your keywords. how to add a hyphen it afterwards with your title extension, where it could be, using words like the different verbiage of high sensitivity and person included in it, as well as dropping the the in your podcast title, the beginning is always great. There's so many podcasts that start with the name the that you're right, that like, it almost messes it up for search engines, And so calling it the highly sensitive club, calling it highly sensitive club without the the in front of it or switching up somehow that feels right for you. But definitely think of like if it's called highly sensitive club, the podcast for high sensitivity people or, persons with high sensitivity, but include the different way that you can say it so that whether someone's searching for highly sensitive or whether they're searching for high sensitivity, whether they're searching for people or a person. No matter what you're going to have in your title, the words that they are searching for, so you're going to show up higher in the search bar.
Stephanie:
Oh my God, Steve, you're a genius. Cause I literally, I listened to like a bajillion podcasts and I went to your app and I was like, like, I've never noticed that title extension before. And that is genius. I can totally figure that out.
Steve:
Yeah, and I'm sure you'll find is, and love is if you look at a lot of the podcasts that you listen to right now, the number of them that you listen to that have a title extension, maybe somewhere you'll be like, oh, I didn't even realize that all these different podcasts had title extensions, because it's not what you're talking about when you're talking about the show. It's just the way that you're making it so that people can find you. So you definitely want to work on that so that you show up in those bars, whatever people are searching for. If it's a keyword related to high sensitivity, you're going to have it in your title. And then you want to make sure that your cover art is just on point and perfect. How do you feel about your cover art right now?
Stephanie:
I like it. I like it. I feel seven out of 10 about the cover art
Steve:
because
Stephanie:
I made it myself because I was like, I'm not willing to get held up by the cover art. I just have to, I have to get it out there. I have to start doing my thing. I like the picture. I think the font is kind of hard to read. Like I just put it together in Canva and it doesn't allow a lot of flexibility for individual episode cover art.
Steve:
Yes. Well, I mean, I will give you compliments and credit where credits do like a, first of all, you are right. Like doing the thing and worrying about like the art and the specifics. And if it's perfect, that's the way to do it because you've already done more episodes with your podcast now than more than half of the podcasters who start podcasts. So you're a podcasting badass already, whether you're getting the downloads that you want yet or not, but ways that we can improve that so that when people search. And they show up with all the art. What you want to make sure is like, when you look at all those different arts, that there's something about your box that is pops out and makes you want to click your box because once you like are searching for highly sensitive people and you search and you see the top 10 that pop up you're going to click on the one that like draws your eye and if it sounds good you'll hit play if you love it great if you don't love it it's very rare that you'll go back and scroll down and down And down, you're just at that point going to be like, all right, I'm going to find something else instead of high sensitivity to begin with. So you really want to make sure that your cover art is going to draw people's eyes to it. And I definitely feel like as a coach, having your picture is important. It's a beautiful picture of you on there. So I definitely think like the picture, the size, All of that is great, but you are correct and you called yourself out on the font part because you want to make sure that it's very easy to read. One thing I noticed is that, the, your background image it transitions, it's not a solid block of color and I love for cover art. I find it's a lot more eye catching when you have a solid background color. Especially if it's something like white or black, or if it's something that is your favorite color, then working your favorite color into it, if it's going to be part of your brand. But having a simple background makes it so that when you then use fonts, that they pop and they can be bold and bright and stick out on the art that you're using. So I think that having the ability to have the name, like the highly sensitive club, be like big and bold. So like highly sensitive, you can see from those little podcast squares, you know, when you're looking at your phone, six feet from your, I don't know how many feet are, but like three or four feet from your face. You want to make sure that if You're a little squiggly with your name. you want to make sure that instead of it being a squiggly, which has a beautiful cursive, but who's going to be able to read cursive from that far away with a 10 point font from that far in the screen, you want to make it like bold and very easy to read and your title needs to be, I would say at least a third of your screen, like if not more in terms of the size and space it's coming up, because that's what, if people are searching for high sensitivity, they're going to click on when they see. High sensitivity or highly sensitive, you know, and then like, if it's between two ones with a very big font where it's very clear, they'll pick the pretty girl. But, you know, you want to make sure that they see that high sensitivity, that the thing that they're searching for, that they see right away, and it pops in your art so that you can see it nice and bright and bold.
Stephanie:
Well, thank you for the compliments. First of all, because I'm very receptive to compliments and that makes a lot of sense. And I feel like you kind of gave me permission to do it because I'm seeing this like a lot of the people that I have just have a plain solid background and I tried it and I was like, I don't like it. It looks too fake. I had all the head drama about it, but I do have a favorite color, which is the color in the font of the highly sensitive club. And I wanted something that was a little bit more dynamic, but if I tried something and it didn't work and it turns out that it's more eye catching and it's easier for my audience to find it because there's less. visual stimulation, which is a hallmark of high sensitivity. Yes,
Steve:
highly sensitive people. I'm sure we'll really appreciate having like a very simple, here's the title. Here's the pretty girl. Here's her name. I'm ready to go. Like I'll click, I'll click that and then, you know, sign me up, follow, subscribe, I'm a new listener, but it starts with being able to have the, and you're not alone. When you looked at, when I look at all those different highly sensitive podcasts that show up, like there was only one that I was like, I would click that one. Like, and it was because it was simple and bold and like had the highly sensitive right in the middle. And it was like, very clear. Other than that, though, like most of them had the same sort of vibe that yours had, where that's what we're drawn to. That's what my podcast was at first. At first, I thought with Gay A being that it was like, you know, part of it was queerness, like having a rainbow background would be great. But like the issue with a rainbow background is it's really hard to put any color on top of it because it's going to blend with some part of that picture. So like at the end, Cute idea, like great concept when I made my cover art, but you have to kind of shift because the way that we search and select podcasts is almost closer to the way that we pick out Netflix TV shows today than it is the way that we would search for a library book or a radio show on the Google. So you really have to kind of be considering it like almost like that's what you're looking for.
Stephanie:
Oh, that's a really good point because now that I'm thinking back to a lot of the Netflix shows that I've picked up recently, they have been very simple. Like you can't tell often what it is. Until you go in and you look at the banner and you look at the title and, and at least with podcasts, you have someone's face. So you have a little bit more of a benefit, but that's a great point. I feel like I got a couple bonus tips in addition, just like some ideas and some things to kind of keep in my back pocket. But I feel like these are steps are a good place to start. And I think, well, I'll report back to you. I'll let you know how my organic traffic is gone.
Steve:
Excellent. Sounds good. Well, thank you so much then Stephanie. And how can people find your podcast and where can they find it?
Stephanie:
It's on Spotify, apple Podcasts. All of the skimmers, like my podcasting app is overcast, so I know it grabs it a few hours later. It's on Audible, it's on YouTube. You can find it on all of the major outlets
Steve:
everywhere you listen to podcasting. That as you can find the Highly Sensitive Club. And I will link over to a couple of the places you could find in the show notes as well for people. Awesome. All right, well thank you so much, Stephanie.
Stephanie:
Thank you Steve. This was awesome. I can't wait to report back and let you know how it goes.