Make Your Good Podcast Great With Syndicated Content

Advances at podcasting’s back-end are providing unique opportunities for collaboration via syndication. No, not the last letter in RSS. Here’s how true syndication can make your episodes better.

February 8, 2021

Article

Podcasting is weird. Since its inception, it’s been a place where staunch independents seek out tight collaboration. We podcasters want to do our own thing, but we also like working with other podcasters when we can.

But it’s not easy. With most of the blame aimed squarely at our independent mindset, collaboration often turns out to be quite a chore. Your production schedule is not my production schedule. Nor is your production process anything at all like mine. That makes it really hard for more collaboration to happen throughout podcasting.

But there’s a better way forward if we embrace the notion of syndicated content.

This Is Really Simple, But It’s Not RSS

By syndicated content, I don’t mean the fact that every podcaster syndicates their episodes to various apps and directories with an RSS feed. Yes, the last letter in that acronym does, in fact, stand for syndication. But that’s not the definition of syndicated content of which I speak.

I mean syndicated content the way you’ve probably encountered syndicated content in other mediums. Using this definition, you can use syndicated content to inject fresh and relevant content into your podcast’s episodes, both enhancing your episodes and making them more enjoyable for your listeners. All without requiring you to create a lick of new content.

And here’s the fun part: Done properly, with technology available to podcasters today, the syndicated content in your podcast can make your timeless content timely, pegged to the time of download. No stale content. Ever. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Syndication Ideas That Could Make Your Podcast Better

There are lots of ways you might use syndicated content to enhance your episodes. Producers of health-related podcasts could stay focused on building timeless content for their main segment, then use syndicated content to provide today’s health news. Or maybe inject a single tip for living a more healthy life? Sure, the producers could create those segments on their own. But that may not be a core competency.

Would a show made for higher-ed academics be better if a syndicated segment were included that covers the latest grants available? Or maybe relevant legislation of interest just to the show’s audience?

One of my new clients is producing a golf show. How cool would it be if they brought in syndicated content on each episode—content that was fresh at the time of download, not production—that gave the PGA leaderboard or some other short tournament coverage?

Hosts of travel shows would love to let their audience know about get-it-right-now travel deals, but that’s not possible for shows that are produced weeks ahead of publishing. But they could syndicate in that content, with assurance that the deals mentioned in the show are pegged to the time of download.

How great would it be if you could give your podcast listeners relevant news, but still keep producing timeless episodes? Or maybe include an “advice” column that’s refreshed day after day? Or something even more simple, like a “quote of the day” or a short segment of inspirational content?

Meditation and wellness shows are seeing huge gains in Spotify. How about syndicating in a short clip to bring that to your show? You may not have time to create it, but someone else may. What about including a “new music” segment on your show? Licensing and fair use issues aside, a lifestyle-focused show might benefit from that kind of an arrangement.

Syndicated content would be much better than the stale, baked-in “promo swaps” we’ve been doing since the birth of podcasting. Imagine how much better those would be if, rather than running what is ostensibly a commercial, you ran quick, distilled-down, featured content from other podcasts in your network, using syndication to rotate in fresh bits from multiple shows?

For instance, I could take episodes of Podcast Pontifications and boil each down to a 60-second nugget of goodness and produce the audio, maybe under a related name. Maybe I’d call it a Minute of Pod Zen. I could then allow other podcasters to use this Minute of Pod Zen inside of their episodes. That would be pretty cool for the myriad PAPs—podcasts about podcasting—out there (and possibly some tech-focused shows as well) to enhance their episodes. Don’t you think?

Syndication Isn’t New, But Podcasting Can Use It Better

Other forms of media have used syndication for a long, long time. That advice column your stepmom still reads in her local paper? Millions of stepmoms are reading that same column in their local paper around the country. The investment update your rich uncle listens to at the top of the hour on his local finance-focused radio station is pulled off a satellite. And I hate to break it to you, but your local CBS affiliate isn’t where Star Trek: Discovery was taped.

Websites also make heavy use of syndicated content, but often in recognizably terrible ways that do nothing to enhance the user experience. I’m thinking of all of those crappy “suggested content” pieces that live at the bottom of articles that no one intentionally clicks on. At least not more than once. Gross. Let’s not do that.

Instead, let’s do something better. It’s not terribly complicated, but it is quite new. While the technology exists to power all the ideas I gave you and also whatever brilliant notion came to you as you were reading, the syndicated content may not be there just yet.

But some of us are trying. Today’s episode of the podcast version of Sounds Profitable includes two syndicated segments. The first is from James Cridland of Podnews. No matter when you download the file—today, tomorrow, or 6 months from now—you’ll hear James voicing a 1-minute highlight of that day’s most important podcasting news. At the end of Bryan’s episode, you’ll hear my voice giving you a Minute of Pod Zen. Just like with James’ content, the content I’m voicing will change depending on when you download the overall episode. Neat!

Your Minute of Pod Zen

I spent the better part of Friday and Saturday of last week making my Minute of Pod Zen a reality so that you too can incorporate my syndicated content on your podcast. Here’s how the segment sounds:

If you want it, you can have it. For free and I’ll even help you walk through the tech to make it happen! Details on the above link.

Oh, and I’m also syndicating the Minute of Pod Zen to Alexa as a Flash Briefing. Because why not?

Which podcaster would you like to collaborate with in a similar style? What producer makes the kind of content that you’d love to find a way to feature, perhaps in a more distilled format, on your show? Use this episode of Podcast Pontifications as an ice breaker and see what sort of ideas come from it.

Bryan has a full write-up on how he’s made syndication tech for podcasts work if you want to see what you’re getting yourself into. But as I said, it’s quite straightforward.

If you love this idea, great! Go to BuyMeACoffee.com/evoterra and show your love with little virtual coffee.

I shall be back tomorrow with yet another Podcast Pontifications.

Cheers!

Transcript

Advances at podcasting's backend are providing unique opportunities for collaboration via syndication. No, not the last letter in RSS. Here's how true syndication can make your podcast's episodes better.
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Hello, and welcome to another Podcast Pontifications with me, Evo Terra.
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Podcasting is a weird mix-up of staunch independence and tight collaboration. It's been that way since the beginning. We podcasters want to do our own thing. We also really like working with other podcasters when it's appropriate. But it's perhaps because of that first part that collaboration with others often turns out to be a chore because production schedules don't line up and certainly processes don't line up whatsoever.
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So it makes it really hard to collaborate as much as we would like to in podcasting. Or is it? There's a better way! That better way's through syndication of content.
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Now, again, I don't mean the second S in Really Simple Syndication. Technically yes, every podcast that has an RSS feed, which is what's required, is syndicated through RSS, but that's syndicating your entire podcast. And I don't mean that. What I'm talking about is actual syndication where you, the podcaster, augment your episodes with short content that has been produced by someone else, but more importantly, syndicated to you.
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You make room in your episodes for syndicated content. Again, produced by somebody else, but airing on your show. And here's the key part, always up-to-date. Regardless of when someone downloads the episode, it will always contain the freshest stuff.
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Now, I'm going to tell you about this in just a moment. Let me give you - just imagine for a second here. Let's say you do a show that's health-related somehow. What if you were going to syndicate some content into your show that was healthy news, or maybe just a one single tip for healthy living. Yes, you could create those on your own, but what if you didn't have to?
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What if you stayed focused on your show about health and let that other syndicated content come into your show? Maybe you do a show for a higher ed, academics in the higher ed space, right? Maybe a segment that covers the latest grants possibly, or maybe relevant legislation. If in fact that impacts your particular show, great syndicate that content in.
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Maybe you've got a show about golf like one of my new clients does, well bring in the latest news from whatever tournament is happening right now in live, at least at the time of that was downloaded. If you do a travel show, maybe bring in a segment on travel deals that are super time-sensitive to when the files were downloaded.
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You can do all that by syndicating content into your program. Yes, you can bring in news so that no matter when someone downloads an episode, you might've produced months ago, the latest news will actually play. Drop an advice column into your podcast. Sure. You can totally do that with again, the latest one would be the one that plays in your show.
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Quote of the day or inspirational content - those are always cool things to have in there, but again, they can get stale and that's a lot of work for you. But what if you brought that in? You know, meditation and wellness content is exploding right now in podcasting, you may not have time to create that, but you could syndicate that kind of content into your episodes, just making space for those.
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You can even do music. I mean, yes, we have licensing restrictions that apply, but getting around that is doable. You could play the latest music or some fresh music, at least, on your show. Again, syndicated by someone else.
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Now also, I think this is way better for promos. Podcasters still love to run promos for other podcasts. Those are fine, but if you're in a network, it gets even better. If you think about using that content as syndicated elements that go into your show, right? I mean, if everyone, or at least some of the people in your network, distilled down their latest episode into a sixty second spot, and you rotated that in to your show - this is what else is happening on the network - boom.
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Again, it's not a promo, it's not an ad. It's a piece of content that has been syndicated in. Like what if I was to take Podcast Pontifications and turn it into something, oh, I don't know, let's call it a Minute of Pod Zen. If you had a pap - podcast about podcasting - or other podcasts like technology-type news, you could embed that sixty secondsish or so, that Minute of Pod Zen into your podcast, fresh every single time someone downloaded it.
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Other medium have done this for a long time. Newspaper. That advice column you read? Somebody sitting at the paper didn't write that. Radio. A lot of radio you hear is syndicated. TV, obviously is syndicated. Your local affiliate is not the one that's producing the vast majority of the content. Even magazines have a lot of affiliated or syndicated content in them.
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Websites do it too, but in a crappy way, quite often. Those ads that clutter the bottom of the page - relevant stories and things, sponsored content. Gross. But nonetheless, that's still syndicated content. They're just not doing a great job.
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I think that with us in podcasting, it's a lot easier for us. I know I just said something's easy you're not doing, but it is. I think this is actually an easier thing to do. And I think we can do it better than a lot of those other mediums, certainly than a lot of the webpages are.
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Now the question becomes, how do you do all of this? How do you do all this? Well, Bryan has a complete and total, Bryan Barletta, I should say from Sounds Profitable, his entire article today - I know, because I edited it - is going to be about his use of syndicated content on his podcast episode. Yeah. And the two people he has syndicating content for is me, that Minute of Pod Zen I mentioned, it plays at the end of this week's episode of Sounds Profitable, and also he has some from James Cridland, Podnews, a place at the top of the show.
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I've actually made that Minute of Pod Zen so you too can use it on your show. If you would like to, you certainly can, there'll be a link in the episode details. But I have made Minute of Pod Zen something available that anybody, as long as they clear it with me first, can utilize and drop into their podcast.
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So if you want to try that, give it a shot. There's even a place you can say - well, the website itself, the webpage I'm going to send you to there's a player so you can hear what that sounds like. So again, check the link in the episode details.
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So who would you like to collaborate with in this particular way? What show makes the kind of content that you would like to have in perhaps a more distilled form, or perhaps in the exact form it is right now? Who would do that for you?
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Here's my suggestion to you, share this episode of Podcast Pontifications with them and see if it sparks an idea. Maybe it will. Maybe they'll work to collaborate. And again, you can go to Bryan's article on Sounds Profitable to get all the fancy details about that.
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Now, if you love this idea, great. Go to buymeacoffee.com/evoterra and show your love with a little virtual coffee. Would ya? Thanks.
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That's it. I shall be back tomorrow with yet another Podcast Pontifications.
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Cheers!

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