Welcome back to Digital Creator. My name is Dylan Schmidt, your host. You know what's funny? I spent an hour plus going down a Reddit rabbit hole. If If you're like me, this is not your first time going down a Reddit rabbit hole. Place leaves you wondering what life was like before Reddit, before you had access to so much information. Now this rabbit hole was particularly relevant to this podcast where I share all sorts of stuff for creators and podcasters alike. Someone had asked a simple question in the podcast subreddit. What makes you instantly tune out of a podcast? And that struck a nerve because hundreds and hundreds of people commented before the moderators took it down for being too negative. But not before I was able to extract the data, which I'm going to share with you because I analyzed it using a simple Google Chrome extension and AI. So in this episode, I'm gonna share with you what I learned from listeners, some new, some old, but regardless, it's all kind of compiled in one place around what podcast listeners absolutely despise. The reason for me sharing this with you is so that you can make your own podcast better or identify areas where you might be able to tighten up your podcast. Having made a lot of content about podcasting the last few years, naturally, with the way the algorithm works these days, I get a lot of comments from people who aren't podcasters, but they're podcast listeners. And generally speaking, podcast listeners, even if they, I would say even if they don't listen to podcasts, it's seemingly negative that they lean towards when they comment stuff. And I don't want this just to be a negative episode. I want this to be, you know, us to be squeezing the juice from these comments and kind of flipping them into a positive because there's a reason why people are communicating of what they dislike hearing in podcasts. Everyone's podcast is different. Everyone's audience is different. The goal of me sharing all of this with you is not so that you make your podcast for everybody. It's so that you don't lose the people that you're trying to reach. It's so that you make the most of the time and money that you're investing in your show, and you just keep making little tweaks to improve it and make it the best experience you can. Simple as that. And the patterns I was looking at here right away was groups. Like, I wanted to group all of these comments and then find out, like, what the sentiment is amongst them and what seems to be, like, the top frustrations of podcast listeners. So number 1, and arguably the biggest gripes of podcast listeners, was audio issues. I would say technical quality, poor microphone quality, inconsistent volume levels, having background noise and echo. Listeners hate when there's a tinny or a muffled sound on a microphone. They also hate when there is a consistent volume and then it gets really loud for a podcast ad read. Kind of similar to commercials, which I'm sure you've heard on TV where there's like, wow, this commercial is just all of a sudden way louder. Podcast listening is an intimate experience. You have headphones a lot of the time in your ear. You're doing something. You're kind of like in this meditative state, and it can be jarring or hard to get into when there's just inconsistent audio quality and levels. Now I'll say too that if you look at, like, the top 50 podcasts on Apple or Spotify right now, you can note that they all have great audio. And great audio isn't one of those things that costs a lot of money these days. You could get a $60 USB mic from Amazon and use something like Adobe Podcast Enhance or Auphonic, and you'll have great audio. The next major frustration was content structure for podcasts. Long rambling intros, unfocused conversations, and poor storytelling. Listers noted if it took the host more than 5 minutes to get into the show, they were tuning out. And depending on how long your podcast episodes are, 5 minutes might be way too long anyways. 5 minutes might be crazy. Because if you have like a 15 or 20 minute podcast episode, that's a third of your show. And looking at the unfocused conversations or poor storytelling, a lot of that can be fixed with editing. And if you don't want to spend the time editing or direction or giving direction to your editor, then that just requires you to do the work before you press record on how you're gonna make sure this episode stays focused and has great storytelling. The third point I want to expand on here, the host's behavior. Things like forced enthusiasm and fake laughter, talking over guests, and inside jokes and exclusionary content. The forced enthusiasm and fake laughter part is either by the host or guest. The listener knows a joke didn't land, but there's still laughter anyways. Kind of reminds me of, like, late night TV show where the audience laughs and they're like, why are they laughing at that? As a podcast listener myself, I know when something is forced or not, there's like this voyeuristic kind of intimate experience with podcast listening. Like you're sitting in on a conversation and long form content at that. You know, when someone's being authentic or the host is trying to please the person he's speaking with and working on the editing side of things, the production side of podcasts, and seeing a lot of raw unedited content. It's the mark of a host who is not confident that starts picking up ticks, stutters that they didn't have before and that forced enthusiasm when they want it to be something else than what it is. It's like, just let the podcast be what it's gonna be. Let it be natural. Let it be authentic, and everything should be serving the point of that podcast episode. And looking at these three main groups here, we're really looking at listener psychology. It's interesting that there was such a response to such a simple question, like, what makes you turn off a podcast? Listeners have strong reactions, again, because the intimacy of podcast listening and the listeners wanting the host to respect their time. They don't know what was and wasn't edited out, but they know that they have pet peeves. It's funny that something as simple as tinny audio could make someone tune out of their episode. And you might have heard me talk before about, similar to a restaurant, it's not about how many people you can get through the door. It's about how many people you keep coming back. Same with your podcast. Same with any of your other content. Thinking long term for having tinny audio, if the fix is as simple as running your audio through something like Adobe Podcast Enhance before it's published, well, a 10 minute step could have more people coming back to your podcast. Knowing how to hold back and not talk over your guest might give your guests the jumping off point to lead into sharing something that they've never shared before and could help elevate your show to the next level. If you were like, Dylan, this all sounds awesome. I don't even know where to get started. Like, how do I self audit my own podcast? Here's what I would do. Focus on the things that you can control. Things like your audio quality, then move on to you as a host, then move on to your show structure. So for something like audio quality, listen back to your last 3 episodes and be honest with yourself. Does it sound comparable to what you're hearing in, like, the top 50 podcasts on Apple Podcasts and Spotify? Unless you need to listen to all those podcasts, but play a couple of them. Do you have an idea of a baseline? Can you confidently say, yes, it sounds on par with those? Then you as a host, are you talking over guests? When you listen back to episodes, are you giving your guests room? Are you telling inside jokes and stories that the audience has no backstory on? Are you forcing any enthusiasm or fake laughter or just, like, inauthentic behavior? What do you need to do differently to fix that? And then 3rd, your show structure. At a high level, when you start out an episode, are you giving the audience a clear expectation of what's gonna be in that episode and where they'll be going? Because it's easy to just look at, again, like the top 50 podcasts on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and see how they do things, But that's not useful if you're in the building phases. If you're still in the early phases of growing your audience, meaning you have under a 1000 monthly listeners, because there's a tipping point. Once you're big enough, you can get away with certain things. Once you're just starting out, it's like you have higher churn. You have more people coming in and out the door, and you wanna keep as many people as you can. So by breaking down your episode structure and looking at it from a fresh eyes of someone who's never listened to you, you can set up future episodes that keeps more people coming back. Let me know if you found this useful and I'll talk to you in the next one.