Social Scrubbing For A Pristine Podcast

Today I continue my “clean up on aisle 7!” miniseries, this time diving into “social media cesspool” your grandparents are always ranting about. OK, Boomer…

My poor attempts at glomming on to a trending topic that’s at least 72 hours old aside, I do want to direct your attention to your social media. Because as a working podcaster, you’ve likely found that a large and engaged social media following, along with your being active on those social media channels, tends to help your podcast and tends to help you as a podcaster.

Quick fact: Podcasting predates every single popular social media channel today. No Twitter when we started podcasting. No YouTube. And Facebook was only available to students back then. I remember. I was there.

This is the part where you say “OK, Gen X-er”, I guess?

Social media is a powerful tool. We, as podcasters and as listeners, use social media quite a lot. I often find myself turning to social when I want more information about the people who produce or voice the shows I’m interested in.

I’m not alone in this. So what I would like for you to do -- today, if you can, and if not, by the weekend, so set yourself a to-do item if necessary -- is to clean it/them up.

Because if you are like most people, you probably haven't touched the base settings on your social media profiles in some time. Perhaps since you started. So while that picture of you from 2006 was a really, really good photo, it’s been 14 years since you looked like that. Do you really want the first things someone says to you at the next podcast conference to be “Wow, you look nothing like your picture”. Eek.

But looks are a personal thing, and I’m not here to preach embracing your age or how you should look. You do you.

What I am here to preach, with all the fire and brimstone of a boy raised in the Bible Belt can muster, is that you get no such pass on your bio.

When is the last time you read your bio, your “About” section, or whatever it’s called? Those 100 - 300 characters you wrote years ago are hugely important. Every bit as important as the things you share on that account, I reckon. Because while the people who follow you on that account probably don't go back and look at your profile, the vast majority of new people who do choose to follow you will read your bio on that profile. If only to make sure you're the right person that they wanted to follow in the first place!

Recently I went on a big following hunt, adding lots of accounts by people from the podosphere. And I was largely disappointed.

• Links to show websites often 404’d. If there was a link listed at all.
• A depressing number of bios still used the word “iTunes”.
• Most didn’t even have any mention of their involvement in podcasting.

I get that social media is 100% a personal choice. Just like with your podcast, you can do whatever you want. 

But dammit, if you’re going to have a public social presence for yourself and/or your show, you should make it a little easier on the people who might wish to follow you there. 

Take the time, today or this weekend, to clean up that bio. Make sure the info represents who you are today. Make sure the links added all work and are where you want to send people. And, please, swap out any mentions of defunct “iTunes” with “Apple Podcasts”.

Now, if you’re like me and you’ve been a bit of a social butterfly over there years, you might struggle with which of the 84 (I only wish I was kidding) properties to start with. Do it in three steps:

1. Whichever one (or two or three) you are most active on and will likely post to today
2. Whatever sites you link to in the over-stuffed signature line/paragraph on your email
3. Everything else, eventually

I’m eating my own dogfood and, right after this posts, will get on my own. I tend to (or at least I think I tend to) keep mine pretty clean always, but it never hurts to double-check. I hope you will join me and do the same.  

Now, as you know, this is my final episode of Podcast Pontifications for 2019. I’m taking a long winter's break from the program over November and December. But that doesn't mean episodes of the show will stop. 

I have a few special guests and other material lined up for people who follow/subscribe to the podcast. I won’t write extensive articles like this for those bonus episodes. They will be podcast-only exclusives until I return in January 2020. So if you haven’t yet added the show to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or whatever else you use… now is your time, as I have some amazing guests ready with pontifications of their own to bring you.

I hope you’ll also join me an ~100 others in our private Flick group. On your mobile device, go to Flick.group/PodcastPontifications and sign up. It’s free to join and I may have some special goodies from me that go out to only this small community. 

You can also follow my thoughts and pontifications on Twitter, my social channel of choice. And if you think my diatribes worthy of your support, BuyMeACoffee.com/EvoTerra is for you.

I'll be doubling down on client work while I’m off. If you are a business and you would like some strategic guidance on your podcasting efforts, get in touch with me: evo@podcastlaunch.pro or go to PodcastLaunch.pro to see how my team can help ease your burden when it comes to podcasting so you can stay focused on your business.

In January 2020, I shall be back with another Podcast Pontifications. 

Cheers!