Standing Out in the Crowd | Personal Branding as a Creator, Authentic Passion, & the Future of the Podcasting Industry

Welcome to Digital Creator. My name is Dylan Schmidt, your host, and I'm back with another podcast in the park. If you didn't catch last week's episode, I had filmed a podcast episode in my park just as a way to kind of, like, expand my creativity, think outside the box a little bit, and, I don't know, just get outside because I haven't gotten outside very much lately. And a couple things happened while I was recording that that I just have to share with you because I don't know who else to tell. And it was a series of comic events that I would say are perfect to just share before we hop into today's topics. Number 1, I'm sorry. This is, like, a little different than what I normally talk about. It's just the reality of what happened. Number 1, I'm pretty sure I saw a drug deal go down when I was recording. I'm not making any of this up, by the way. A guy was walking back and forth, like, a couple times, and this is, like, a nice area too. A guy walked back, like, a couple times, and I noticed them. He seemed just like a well clean-cut guy. Thought nothing of it. But he goes in the, like, bushes kind of by the side. I'm like, okay. Like, I don't know what's going on over there. Takes off. I don't see him. And then, maybe a minute or 2 later, a guy comes by on, like, an electric bike, goes to this random little spot in the bushes. He acts like he was gonna go to the bathroom, which was, like, even weirder at that spot in the park. Anyways, I just had to share that. I had to get it out of my brain because it's what I saw, and, I just had to share it with you. The second thing is while I was recording, you know, there would be people that would, like, kind of come by and no one was really paying attention to me, which is great, actually. But there was one lady that, like, kinda was driving by slowly. An older lady had an eye patch on, and I've had to wear an eye patch if I got, like, some type of surgery or whatever. But she was, like, looking at me kind of like, what are you doing? And then she was trying to, like, parallel park her car. And just the whole series of events was you probably couldn't even tell while I was recording it, but the whole series of events was just enough where it was like, what's going on here? This is a little weird. Anyways, how to get that out? Excited to be back in this park recording. There's also a van here that is really struggling the whole time I've been recording this so far, parallel parking. And there are a lot of white vans in this area. I'm starting to sound like I'm going crazy. That's what happens when you record a podcast in the park. You start observing people and next thing you know, you're totally off topic from what's going on at hand. Speaking of which, in this episode, I want to answer a couple topics that have come up through side conversations and whatnot. I figured those are the best places to go when there's not anything, like, crazy going on, like any big new updates with algorithms or podcasting. Side note on that. The next iOS update for Apple Podcasts, should be out. We're almost in March now. Might be March when you're listening to this, which will feature the, transcription update where they will automatically transcribe podcasts. When that's officially released, I'll make sure to talk more about that, and, I will likely make some short form videos on social media about it, just just to keep you informed about what's going on. Alright. First question is about branding, and I know there are some branding experts that listen to this podcast. I'm not a what I would consider a branding expert. I find the whole topic fascinating, but let's dive right in. What strategies can you recommend for keeping my social media brand authentic as I grow? Let's tackle this one part at a time, one word at a time. When we're talking about, social media brand, we're talking about what you're posting, the topics that you're posting, the types of content that you're posting. And what I mean by that is if you post an image where it doesn't have your face, it's just text in it, that's gonna create and connect a different relationship with your audience than if you're posting, images of your face. For example, if you were, like, an influencer where most when we think influencers, we think of, like, maybe makeup and fashion. You're not really posting text heavy posts, especially if in, like, the marketing world, we see a lot of those, like, how to like, educational things. In the whole influencer space, you're posting photos of yourself, and you're forming, like, a different relationship or reels. This works for video too. But you're forming a different relationship with your audience. And that is just gonna, be different. So I wanna, like, highlight that because it's different than posting, like, text based post. Not saying you can't form a relationship with text based content. It's just a different relationship. People are reading your words in their head and, you know, they're just developing a different relationship than if they're looking at your face. Different cues. So when we're talking about building a social media brand, I think it's important to just kind of, like, highlight what are we talking about. We're talking about, how people are connecting with you with their face or through text. Now keeping it authentic, when we're talking about authenticity, that's a word almost like branding that could mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. I think, authenticity to me means just being true, being real, being honest with yourself. And to me, that's keeping it authentic. I like to think that I have an authentic brand. I don't know how much more authentic you could get for not having, like, a non scripted podcast recording it in the park with all the imperfections that go along with it, like women with an eye oh, lady with an eye patch looking at me, trying to parallel park her car. Maybe she wanted me to parallel park her car, and then, you know, all the stuff going down in the background. I don't worry about keeping it authentic as a brand would grow. I would worry just in each piece of content that you're creating and just all the stuff that you're putting out in the world. If it feels authentic to you, if it feels like you, You know? I worked with a brand 10 plus years ago. They had a really big presence, like, millions of followers and, really engaged email, readers and a huge Twitter following at that time. And, like, everything was, like if it felt authentic. Right? If it felt right. And that's hard to gauge, especially with a a brand because this wasn't a personal brand. This was, like, a company brand, a media brand. It's hard to gauge, you know, exactly where that is on the scale. But the more you publish, the more you can kind of draw back to of, like, is this on or off of what feels on brand? Because especially with, like, a media brand, you can start to tell, you know, over time if it feels like that is on or off brand. And, you know, we could spend this whole episode talking about branding, but something I would consider a lot about just from a branding standpoint, especially on social media, is there's so many nuances and people have, you know, visual cues. Like, there's when they first come across your brand, they're gonna have one, you know, immediate takeaway. Right? But as they stick with you, they're gonna have a different takeaway. Now if you're listening to this podcast, you might have heard many episodes before. So it's different than when you first listen to this podcast. And I think that's a normal part of a brand is, like, it grows and evolves. And I think sometimes people try to force it to stuff content to be too on brand that it loses the connection at the cost of this is on brand. This has gotta be, you know, live and die by some set of rules. And I think it can get really boring and then just, like, isolate the brand from the connection that it's trying to create with the audience, if that makes sense. That is incredibly deep. I understand. I've also had a lot of caffeine. So sometimes it just feels like you're blobbling babbling in a park recording a podcast for you, beautiful listener. So strategies is really, the only strategy is everything I publish, does this feel authentically me? And if yes, boom. Hit publish and you're good to go. No need to overthink it. That doesn't mean make it perfect because you are not perfect, my friend. We're all imperfect. But luckily, branding isn't one of those, like, one shot, one opportunity things, especially on social media because I think of it like splices of information. I'm in the park right now, and there's all sorts of trees. There's colors. There's houses off to the side. We're in spring or we're approaching spring. And so the you know, there's a lot of color changes happening. And I can't take in all this information. Right? But if I focus on, like, just the tree, even with just looking at the tree, I can look at the base of the tree. I'm not really paying attention to, like, the leaves. I can't take that all in. And when I think of using this kind of same analogy with social media, I think of, you know, social media is like a piece of the bark on the tree. And oftentimes, people are like, I'm trying to cram a whole tree into my social media, where social media is like social. Right? You meet someone for the first time. You can't explain everything, but you can hopefully have them feeling, you know, better having come across something that you put out into the world than they were before then, even if it's just like a tiny little percent, whether it's inspired, some type of positive emotion. Right? So same approach, in my opinion, for branding is like, you know, they're not gonna see the whole tree yet. That's okay. You have you're way more than one social media post. But that little splice of information that you give them, you want it to have, like, a positive effect, even if it's just a little bit. That's cool. We're going for, you know, bass hits. A home run is beautiful, but just a bass hit is cool too. Next question is, in a crowded market, what are your tips for making my content truly stand out and find my niche? That's like 2 questions, I guess, in 1 in a crowded market. So just earlier this week, Monday, I did a podcast workshop in person, the next town over from where I live, and I was invited to speak at it. It was at a teen center, and there were a few kids there, aging ranges, like, around teenager age, and some adults were there too. And it was put on by this awesome man named Chris Lohse, who I've connected with through, originally, Instagram and then, actually interviewed him for a podcast I did locally in my community. And he has a nonprofit, And he is just, like, an amazing guy. And he was like, would you wanna host this podcast workshop with me? So I was in there chatting it up and, sharing everything I could. And the topic came up when, there was a kid in there sharing about, you know, oh, there's too many people doing this, idea. And that was more for YouTube of what he was talking about, but I think the same would apply here is everything is completely crowded these days. Like, everyone is trying to do everything, and that also means that we have a lot of freedom in what we're doing. Because before, like, if you're around my age, I'm 34, before it was like, you know, you could stay in the know on everything. Right? Oh, what's the latest band in the rock genre or the rap genre? Like, you would know. These days, like, yeah, there's a few, like, huge names. But to give you an example, and I don't know if you know who she is, but Emma Chamberlain. Emma Chamberlain has a really popular podcast. She's a really popular YouTube YouTuber. She's younger than I am. I I would imagine she's, like, mid to low twenties, I would guess, if I had to guess. And that room of teenagers didn't know who she was. I was I'm still kind of shocked by it. I asked, hey. Like, do we have any Emma Chamberlain fans in here? Because there were, like, some younger girls that if I had to guess, they would have been fans of her. Nope. Nobody had any idea who she was, and she has millions and millions of followers. She's been on the cover of magazines. She started her own coffee, you know, drink thing that's for sale at, like, Walmart and stuff. Absolutely popular. Probably was in, like, a Super Bowl commercial. I don't know. But big on the socials, big on YouTube, big on podcasting, and these teenagers didn't know. Now that's a small sample size, but still shocked. And I had asked them, like, 2 or 3 times, like, Emma Chamberlain? No? Emma Chamberlain? And they had no idea. But that further proves this point of which I'm trying to make is that, you know, you could be so big these days and people still won't know who you are and the audience has become more and more segmented. So back in the day, which was just a few years ago, you know, everyone kind of could be in the pulse of everything, And now it's just so segmented that you have people doing content in all these different styles, and it's so unique. And there's an opportunity for a big audience to be there. So when we talk about crowded markets, there's not really such thing as a crowded market these days because the markets are so specific and so unique into, your audience. Like, you are the market. You are the unique market. You're not too crowded. You might feel crowded with, the things that you wanna bring forth through your content. But if you actually authentically bring forth the things that are interesting to you, your passions, your interests, like, that's what will light the audience up. And to further prove this point, I am not the biggest, like, Joe Rogan listener. I listen to him few and far between, but I actually was just listening to one of his episodes. And he was talking about how he really liked this I think it was a YouTuber, this guy that would make, like, these, tools that were for, like, planning, not not airplanes, but, like, planning, like, planning a field. And Joe was just like, oh, I love this guy's stuff. And the guy he was interviewing is like, who is in the market for that stuff? And Joe is like, me. I'm that guy. And he's like, I don't care what someone is talking about. If they're interested in that thing, I will be interested in it with them. And Joe was saying, like, he's not that interested in planing tools, but because this guy was interested in planning tools, he's now following this guy, and he had been following him for a while. And he knew his name, and he knew all about him, the whole process, the whole thing. I'm the same way. Like, I watched an hour long documentary on a failed American Idol attraction that was in Disney World. The YouTube channel is called Defunctland, which they do, like, little expose documentary style YouTube pieces on amusement parks. I was so into this American Idol experience. I don't care for American Idol. I've never watched an episode of it in all the years that it's been on, but I watched an hour plus whatever thing on this American Idol thing only because the person making it was so into it. They're so passionate about the thing that they're talking about and the all the history, and they put together all the stuff. So that translated over to what I was interested in. And we like to think of, like, oh, we talk around this, like, one topic and maybe that is, you know, the topic that you talk about. But I think it gets boring after a while for the creator to, like, only keep it focused around one topic. And the best creators don't even, you know, they don't even have you feeling like they're talking about something that's not on what they normally would talk about. For example, in the Defunct Clan, example, with American Idol, you know, it didn't feel like, oh, I'm watching a documentary on this American Idol thing. I'm, like, absorbed into it because of the passion of the creator. And I think that's important for all of us to take note of, when we're creating, you know, that passion is translated. And so standing out is all about passion. It's about making something that you really believe in, that you wanna see more of in the world. Last question I wanna tackle today, where do you see the podcasting industry heading in the next few years and how can I prepare my podcast for those changes? I think, honestly, we're gonna see less AI driven content in the podcasting space. I think, like, the things I've been highlighting in this episode, around branding and authenticity, I think the same thing is gonna be true for podcasting. We're gonna want more authentic content. And if you're like me, you know, I kind of tune out if I know something is obviously written with AI. Not that, like, I tune out because it's written with AI. It's because I don't feel, like, a certain oomph behind it. I don't feel, like, a certain pizzazz, if you will, that keeps me into it because I don't know that the person making it was that passionate in the first place. And I, you know, feel like it's very obviously AI then. So I think AI will still, you know, have its place, but it will just be to strengthen the creator and it will almost, like, have this hidden, if you will, role in the creation process, not so forefront. Like, right now, people are trying to get AI to do all of these, creative things, which, hey. Maybe it will be absolutely better than humans. But, like, at this point in time, I don't see, you know, Joe Rogan, for example, being a better podcast if he is a cop just drove by here at the park, which is great Great. It would have been last week for that, you know, drug dealer to get stopped. Also, they looked at me like, what is this guy doing recording? But I don't see the Joe Rogan podcast being any better if it was AI generated. Right? Like, do you wanna listen to an AI generated, Joe Rogan podcast? Probably not. Right? I don't know anybody who would. And so, yeah, I think we're gonna see AI continue to be part of a content creator's repertoire of tools, but not so at the forefront, which right now, I think it is. And I think, people are overreliant on this tool when it comes to naming episodes, when it comes to writing the description, when it comes to, like, really being creative. And I think the more authentic the content is, the more people will relate. And so I think as podcasting evolves over the next couple years, I think people are just gonna be following that passion. That's undeniably interesting when someone is passionate about something. Some things that I would put on my wish list when we talk about the podcasting industry over the next couple years because it's one thing to, you know, make some predictions, but it's also like, hey. Can I just make a little wish list as well? I would like to see, continued diversity in podcasting as I've done, like, my own historical kinda deep dives into podcasting. There is, like, a certain type of man that does podcasting, and the numbers don't lie. Like, there's a low level of diversity in podcasting, whether it's women, whether it's people of color, whatever, it's not that well represented. And that could just be a numbers thing, but, like, if you look back, you know, this isn't some history lesson here, but, like, it's like a man in their, like, late forties, fifties, which is cool. A white man in his late forties or fifties, whatever. But, yeah, that would be one wish is like, hey. Let's get some more diversity because that would keep things, interesting. And then, also, I would just like to see more people sticking with it. I think so many people, get into podcasting and then they give it up because, they get bummed out about the numbers. And I think, you know, the podcasting industry could do a better job at highlighting shows. We still have a bit of a screwy discovery system, but I liken it to music, which, you know, the good stuff rises to the top. But with podcasts, I don't know. Like, I don't know that the good stuff rises to the top. I also don't know, you know, how many good podcasts give up and never rise to the top because they just get weighed down by the, process of it and the discovery tools that they don't have available. Right now, podcasters are trying to do all of these different things, and it's really overwhelming for a lot of them. Like, they're trying to market on social media, multiple platforms. They're trying to do the email. They're trying to figure out how to make money from this thing. Brand deals. Do I sell my own thing? And that's partly why I have the creator club is to, like, glue a lot of this together. But I think the podcasting industry could do a better job at lessening the confusion for creators and just making it, easier to do. So empowering the creators. I would really like to see that. We're kind of blurring predictions and wish lists here, but I would also like to see YouTube better integrate podcasts. They're doing that this year, you know, integrating RSS feeds, but I would I would like to see a better job at that. And let's be honest, like, YouTube Music, which is where you can find some podcasts, it kinda sucks. Like, I see a lot of complaints about it. I have access to it. I don't use it just because the interface size is not as good as Apple Music or Spotify. So I would like to see just that better integrated because YouTube is so popular. At the same time, like, when it comes to, like, monetizing podcasts through something like YouTube, yes, it would be nice. Like, it would be cool if podcasting had its own type of creator fund, but podcasting is decentralized through the use of RSS feeds. So it makes sense why it's, like, not, but, you know, a lot of these I don't know. I feel like there should be some different metrics on how we weigh and measure a podcast success. I will make this prediction as well, which we're already seeing this trend, so this will be just more and more accurate. We're gonna see more accurate measurements of, you know, podcasting analytics. Advertisers, they wanna put their dollars where they trust the analytics behind what they're putting the money in. Right? So if a podcast can claim like, oh, we got x number of downloads per month, The advertising company can take your word for it. They can, like, look into some of their own, charts and things like that. They just want better analytics. Like, that's gonna draw more advertisers to doing it when they can weigh and measure, how their ad dollars are spent so they could track that ROAS, that return on ad spend. So I think we're just gonna see more transparency through podcasting analytics, and I think we're going to also see better analytical tools for podcasts. That's my hope and wish, but I'm I feel pretty confident on that one. Okay. I hope you're doing great where you are. I hope it's a nice day out like it is over here at the park and, I'll catch you in the next one.