It's the website 101 podcast. We are back. This is the podcast for anyone who builds websites or manages them on a regular basis. If that's you, this is the show for you. I am one of your host Mike Mele. With me is Sean Smith. And with us is not Amanda Lutz. Amanda

is not with us today. She's on vacation, right, Sean? Yes, she's on vacation. We're disappointed she's not here. But we're recording a special episode because myself and Mike were able to attend a conference this past weekend called

Pod camp Toronto. It's for podcasters. It was interesting, fun, good people, and we wanted to report back with what we learned at this conference and how it could apply to you as web developers or small business

owners because there's some things universally applicable. It's not just for podcasters. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, so it's a bit of a departure from our normal format. Yeah, it's about podcasting, but hopefully you can...

and get something out of it anyway, whatever you do. It's kind of meta, but we're gonna keep it short. That's right. So, Saturday morning, the first session that we went to was called The Care and Feeding of an Audience.

Yes. And what this session was is how to, how podcasters can grow their audience. And the key takeaway that we took, and we think that you as business owners or self-employed developers can do. is to ask your target audience specific questions

and get answers from them. Now, the presenter went through and we took notes on about nine or 10 questions. Yeah, Tom Webster is the name of the speaker. Yes, Tom, and he was really good. Great.

Now, we could put together a survey with nine or 10 questions, but that's a lot to ask anybody to go through and provide answers. So what we did is we put our own little twist on it. is we're gonna have a new page on our website.

You go to slash feedback or click the link which will be in the show notes. And you go to slash feedback and the question is gonna appear and there's gonna be a text area. You type your answer, you submit, it's done.

Couldn't be easier. Anonymous, you don't need your name, you don't need your email. If you wanna answer all of our questions, submit it again because every page load is a random question. So it's only one question.

It's not difficult. If you listen to this show ever. and get something out of it, or you don't, or if anything at all you wanna say to us, go to that link, website101podcast.com slash feedback, and just answer that one question,

we'd really appreciate it, because we're trying to collect some information from our audience. Yeah, and you can do the same thing with your website, either, I'm sure if you got a WordPress theme,

you can find a way to do that, or you can get a developer to help you out, create some open-ended questions that will help you grow your audience or grow your business. Yeah, this was a great talk,

and we really learned a lot from it. from Tom. Yeah, so Mike, what did we see on the second episode or second session? So the second one was the one we went to was called podcast networks and how to

pitch your show to them and this was presented by Michael Mongeardi. It was pretty good. He worked for a podcast network, I think it was called Sonar, was that correct? Yes, Sonar. And they have a bunch of different podcasts in their

umbrella and he was talking about if you're running a podcast, how would you, you know, pitch a show to networks? so you can get more reach and that kind of thing. It was very interesting. You know, his company's not Gimlet or, you know,

iHeartRadio or something huge, which he admitted. So it's a little more of a niche network. But it was really interesting. Learn what he has to say. I like that talk. Yeah. Yeah, I thought it was good as well.

And then what do we go to around noon? That was our next one. Well, we split up instead of sticking together. Yes. So that's right. I went to the one about analytics. what numbers do you need to look at.

And this was interesting, but the speaker spent most of his time talking about Spotify and Apple podcasts, and yes, I do have an account for both of those, but I've never looked at their stats. So I've kind of decided that maybe I'm going to take a look at it

and think about what he said. The key takeaway for listeners, look at your analytics, find out what's important for you and your industry. Yeah. I mean, it makes plenty of sense, of course. It's a little bit of a black box figuring out

how some of these analytics work and that, but yeah, definitely worth it. Right, and I believe, Mike, you went to see the one behind the scenes with CBC podcasts. Yeah, that's right. The team, there were three folks who handle

a lot of the production for CBC's podcasts, which apparently I learned that I listened to a lot of CBC podcasts, because they had them all up on the screen there and I said, oh, I know all those.

Anyway, that was very interesting. It's, I mean, CBC is just a different beat. as far as podcasting goes, they have budget and producers and executive producers and all that. So it's interesting to learn how they go about it.

I don't know how much it applied to our specific podcast, but it was cool to say for sure. Yeah, yeah. I'm looking at the two o'clock listing and I don't remember which one we went to after lunch.

Oh, we went to, yeah, but how do you manage a podcast 2023 edition, I believe? Oh, right. That was the one that he spent the. talking about various project management tools like Trello and Basecamp and things like that.

Yeah, Jacob McCourt was the name of the presenter. He did a good job. And yeah, he talked about the actual management side of setting up spreadsheets to manage your episodes, all that kind of thing. Yeah, so for us, it wasn't that helpful because we're very familiar with this,

and we actually have one or two episodes that I'll link to in the share notes about project management. Yeah, and if you would like a newer fresher episode on that topic, again, hit us up on the contact form.

website 101podcast.com slash contact. That's right. 3 p.m. Did we split up again for this one? Oh no, okay. So we went to an initial talk called interviewing without all the prep, but we decided pretty close in that it just was not for us.

So there's a rule at this conference by the way they called it the rule of two feet, meaning you have two feet. If you don't like what you're hearing, get up and leave politely and go to a different talk.

So they encourage that if you're not getting. anything out of it. So in this one, we left that one and instead went to don't fear the mic how to host a successful podcast, which is a panel, right? Remember that one?

I thought we did defy podcast hacks. I don't think so. I think we went to that because I remember the hosts of this one. Oh, you're right. You're right. We went to the host one. Yeah. It was a panel hosted by kind of comedians who run podcasts and stuff. I don't know. That

one actually wasn't that great either, to be honest, as far as I'm concerned, that our block was a little bit of a yeah, I think that hour was a throwaway. Yeah. And that's nothing against the host of these.

particular sessions, it just didn't work for us. We were not their target audience. That's right. That's right. But the 4PM one was pretty good. That was called Stories from the podcast Trenches. Do you remember that? Which was also a panel and they talked about

good and bad things, experiences, and yeah, I really enjoyed this one. Yeah, and there was a lot of really great, you know, we learned about that, what's that nursing podcast, maybe we'll link to it if we can dig it up. These two nurses have a podcast.

and they've grown it into something really successful. Yeah, it was Sarah Fung and Amy Archibald Virely. Right. They were really, really interesting. And I was hoping to hit them up at the after party,

but I didn't see them there. And I didn't see them today. I had a specific question I wanted to talk to them about. Oh, yeah. I really liked what they had to say. Yeah, it was interesting finding out

how they run their business. It was really cool. So then we had an after party, which was kind of cool. We schmoozed a little bit with some of the people that evening. And that's right. met some folks there, that was cool.

Yeah, yeah, we met a student who is visiting, or living in Mississauga, but he's originally from India, and then there was another two guys that were sat at our table and we spent some time talking to them.

Lots of fun. Yeah, yeah, a lot from them too. Yeah, yeah, yeah, a lot from them too. Okay, so here we are at the after party, for pod camp, Sean, comments. thoughts. I think this was a good event to go, learn some things. I still think

session number one where questions about how to talk learn things about your audience, that was the killer session. Yeah so far that was probably the the real home run. We got another day tomorrow, we'll see what comes from that

maybe to be really awesome too. And hopefully we'll do some mingling tonight at the party here. Yeah exactly. And then the next day we had the the remaining presentations of the conference. The first one we went to was a good one. It was

called How to Make a Huge Impression with a Neesh podcast. We consider ourselves somewhat Neesh, I guess. I guess we're Neesh. I would say that we are Indian-Neesh and small. Yeah. But we would like to be Indian-Neesh and large.

That's right. This guy is a, what's his name again? He's a lawyer who has a, his name is Hussein Pangeu and he has a podcast called Lawyer, I believe, and it's about Canadian law and, you know, the...

that they deal with that kind of thing. Yeah, and he was an excellent speaker. He was engaging, he was funny. And yeah, if you get a chance to see him, I would recommend it. He was really, really good.

Yeah. Good information there. And then after 11 o'clock, what did we do here? 10 things I wish I knew before I started my podcast. Now, ironically, myself and Mike were planning on doing five things I knew before I started

my podcast. And right when we were ready to submit our abstract, this one went up. So they stole our idea. However, the guy who, the presenter, his name. Marco Timpano literally wrote the book because he has a book called 25 Things I

Wish I Knew Before I Started My Podcast. So we thought well we will let him let him handle this topic. So we had that up. It was his presentation was really interesting. He was an engaging speaker, was lots of fun, and we could have still

done ours because our things were different than his thing. Yeah, there was really a bit of a different angle that he took rather than than what we were going to do. So yeah, it's too bad, but maybe next year we'll be in there.

when Amanda said. Yeah, so today there was no lunch and we went right into the next one, which was the AI caster using AI to start or enhance and boost your podcast. Now, we, both myself and Mike have played around with AI

so we didn't really learn a lot from it. But what we'd like to say is that you can use AI to help you with your business or your web development or whatever it is. The key takeaway if you're going to be using AI is to not just copy and paste, use it to generate ideas and then write them yourselves because the presenter, and I forget his name, informed us that there is some SEO penalty when Google or whoever determines that your content was written by AI.

So you'll want to take that content that was provided to you. and change it up with your own words and voice. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's great as I... Basically, don't plagiarize. Yeah. Remember what you learned in high school.

Don't plagiarize even from an AI generator. Yeah. Yeah, it was cool. It's good advice. And then finally, the last presentation we went to was really great, I think, how to pitch yourself to sponsors.

Because we are considering, we don't have any sponsors on this show as we kind of joke about once in a while, but we're considering exploring that option. And we spoke to or... we listen to, a presenter who has a very niche podcast

about traveling like tourism, but what would you call it? Like environmentally friendly tourist options, things like that. She she built herself as an influencer on Instagram and TikTok. And then she has her podcast.

She presented a lot of excellent information. And what I would encourage listeners to do is you may not be looking for a sponsor. on your podcast because maybe you have one or you don't, but you may want advertising on your

website or you may want to look at becoming a sponsor for somebody who is doing a podcast or a YouTube channel in your business's niche or market. Yeah. Her name is Erin Elizabeth Hines and yeah, she does have relationships with promoters and

that kind of thing. You have sponsored episodes and that and she gave a lot of advice if you wanted to go that route. Yeah, it's interesting. Yeah. So I want to give like, I have some thoughts about the presentations in general,

and I'm not going to name names because I want to draw on some things that we've talked on in the podcast in the past. One of the things that we often talk about is accessibility. And I had an issue with at least two

the presenters that their slides were not easily read because they didn't have good contrast. Like the one that I'm thinking. of the background was a like a light medium green with white text or a yellow headline.

And I couldn't read it at all. It was really hard to focus on them. Yeah. I had one talk where they mentioned this to you Sean. They did that thing where they would have some funny animated GIF on a slide to represent

the thought that they're trying to convey at that moment, which is funny for the first five seconds when you see it loop and then as they're talking over that slide for the next five minutes, it's just loop.

after loop of that same animated GIF. And it's very distracting when you're supposed to be focusing what they're saying. So not that great. The other thing that I would say to speakers at conferences,

and please remember, I used to teach public speaking, so I'm speaking from experience as a teacher and somebody who attends a lot of conferences, don't whisper when you talk really quietly. Nobody can hear you.

Yeah. You need to project if you don't have a microphone because the venue doesn't have one. You need to speak loudly. That's not yelling. It's projecting deep breaths speak from your diaphragm Yeah, I there's three or four presenters that I had I struggled listening to them

And I was not necessarily sitting in the back of the room. I was in the middle of the room most of the time Yeah, please speak loudly. Yeah, this conference is I mean, it's not the most, you know, high-budget conference

It's a free conference you pay what you want and There were very few microphones like the panels sometimes had mics if they're seated at a table there, but most speakers did not have a microphone, so they had to just speak

to the room. Yeah, overall, this was a great conference. I am planning to attend next year. Podcamp Toronto has been around for 15 years or so. This is my first time going. Really liked it. If you're in the area or a close drive away or you want to fly in, check it out.

It is worth going to. Podcamp Toronto. Hopefully next year we will have a session at the get it in time and not have a duplicate that's already in there. or whatever. You could meet us. That's right. Come out and check us out. And Amanda will

hopefully be with us that time. She couldn't make it this time because she had a previously planned vacation. Yeah. She flew out on Saturday morning, conference started Saturday morning. Anyways, thank you for listening to this episode of the website 101 podcast. We'll see you on the

next one. Bye. Bye. The website 101 podcast is hosted by me, Amanda Lutz. You can also find me online at amandalutz.com.