Ali Salihoglu is starting a podcast for the Hofstra IO Psych Student Association and he’s got questions! If you’re thinking about starting an IO psych podcast of your own, this is definitely the episode for you. We talk equipment, marketing, show length, and a lot more.
Transcript
This is an AI-translated transcript and may not be completely accurate. Please do not quote myself or any of my guests based on this transcript.
Ben Butina, Ph.D. 00:00
And welcome everyone to the DEP 12 podcast. I’m your host as always Dr. Ben Butina. I am joined today by Ali solly Olu. How are you today, Ali?
Ali Salihoglu 00:10
I’m good, how are you?
Ben Butina, Ph.D. 00:12
I’m doing just fine. So you joined us today because you are planning to start a podcast. Is that right?
Ali Salihoglu 00:20
Yes, I am. Alright, so
Ben Butina, Ph.D. 00:22
why don’t you start with a little bit of background? What is the podcast about who’s the audience that you see for this?
Ali Salihoglu 00:30
So I’m the communications chair for AI OSA which stands for the industrial organizational student psychology Association. And basically, it’s for the current students and professors to listen to. And what I really want to do is I want to kind of put it on the map. And I also realize that I Oh podcasts are high in demand, you know, You don’t see too many out there. You know, there’s your podcast department 12, which I’m a big fan of there’s work life by admin grant and other, you know, economic base podcasts that are related to IO, but there’s really not too many IO podcasts out there. So I really want to put AI ops on the map, talk about IO, get the students and professors engaged. And I’m hoping that that can happen this semester.
Ben Butina, Ph.D. 01:27
Okay. And just to clarify for the audience here at Hofstra University now, right? Yes. Okay. And you are in a master’s program in IO psych, correct. That is correct. Okay. So when you talk about putting, putting that on the map, do you mean that you want this organization to be well known outside of the Hofstra community?
Ali Salihoglu 01:51
Yeah, so I want Hofstra to be known in the IO master world, because Hofstra is a reputable Unknown school. But I feel like there’s still a lot of confusion about what IO is. So I really want to get it out there for the public.
Ben Butina, Ph.D. 02:10
Okay. So the reason that I invited Ollie onto the show is because I get requests like this fairly frequently from people who want to start a podcast and they just want some advice on, you know, how do you get started, because although there’s a lot of podcasts out there, it’s also kind of hard to know, you know, how to get started, where to host what kind of equipment to use that kind of thing. And so I figured, hey, let’s just talk about this on the air. And that way, if other people have the same kind of questions, hopefully I can help them and hopefully also, we can help create more IO psych podcasts because I think that’s desperately needed out there. There needs to be more voices. So I’m excited to hear you say, Ollie that you’re trying to put this program on the map and you’re trying to expand people’s knowledge of what IO psychology is. And then think that that is the first step that I’d recommend to anyone considering a podcast, which is to nail down who your audience is, and what you want to communicate to them. If you listen to very early episodes of this show, you’ll see me kind of floundering with that I couldn’t decide whether my audience was ordinary business people who I wanted to communicate IO ideas to, or IO people, or what the heck it was. And eventually, I found my feet. But I left those old episodes up because I hope, you know, maybe people could learn from my mistakes. So it sounds like so far, you know, you want to put IO and your particular program on the map. You want to help people understand what IO is. So your audience is undergraduate students, people who may be considering a career change. Can you help sort of flush that out a little bit more?
Ali Salihoglu 03:56
Yeah, so for undergraduate students who might be interested in joining a graduate program in IO for current and former graduate students, not just at Hofstra, but just all across the country who are interested in IO for professors or experts in the field just to tune in and hear more about what’s going on in the world. And also just people who really may maybe just stumbled upon the podcast and never heard of it before, and they end up liking it. So I think that’d be a great way to get IO on the map and to expand the knowledge of industrial organizational psychology.
Ben Butina, Ph.D. 04:41
Okay. All right. So I will say a couple of things here. Take them for whatever they’re worth. But one is, there are literally hundreds of thousands now, podcasts. So the possibility of somebody just stumbling across a podcast. For a topic that they’re not interested in and they weren’t looking for is pretty low. You know, with the exception of they see a link to it from a friend who was a guest on the show or, you know, they stumble across it in their social media life. But the idea of just putting something out there and hoping people stumbling into it, that’s probably not going to work. The second thing I would share with you is you’ve got a big broad audience topic there. So something to think about is either narrowing it down and building the show to meet the needs of a particular sort of niche or that audience. Or I guess the other alternative is to really keep in mind all the different audiences as you record episodes, because if you think about like, let’s say an undergraduate in a business or a psych program, versus a professor who’s maybe been teaching this for 20 years, they’re what they want from a show the kind of language that they use, maybe the length that’s going to be so different in a given episode. Might be hugely interesting to that professor and totally boring to the student or hugely interesting to the student totally boring to the professor. So I don’t need you to figure that out with me on the air, but it’s just something I’ve asked you to think about. So let’s start with some other questions that you have about podcasting in general. What else do you need to know to get started?
Ali Salihoglu 06:19
A, just, I guess, starting off on the technical side, what type of equipment should be included in a podcast?
Ben Butina, Ph.D. 06:29
Sure. Well, let me ask a clarifying question. Is the intent of the show to be a single voice? Or is it to be like an interview type show?
Ali Salihoglu 06:39
The plan is to be more of an interview type show.
Ben Butina, Ph.D. 06:42
Mm hmm. Okay, that helps. And do you foresee the interviews being in person or at a distance the way we’re doing this today?
Ali Salihoglu 06:51
Well, given the current climate at being not so sure about whether the semester will be in person or not, I think that This type of format is probably the best bet as of now, but hopefully down the road I’m looking to get into in person as well.
Ben Butina, Ph.D. 07:09
Okay? So let’s start out with the assumption that it’s going to be mostly at a distance. And if you’re listening to this show, you know, years or months into the future, and you’re wondering what the hell we’re talking about. We’re right now in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, so there’s not a lot of face to face interviewing happening right now. So we kind of want to gear this around, sort of distance and that does expand your options quite a bit. So we’ll start with that. So one, one piece of equipment that I’m going to recommend that you drop a little bit of money on. Doesn’t have to be a huge amount but you want a good microphone. What I recommend is a microphone called the Blue Yeti. The company name is blue. The model name is Yeti ye ti. They’re around 100 bucks. If you check for them on sale, you might be able to get them a little bit cheaper. The reason is That no matter how good your software is, no matter how good your you know, your podcast editing audio software is, you’re probably not going to be able to improve much on the quality of the audio. If the microphone stinks, and a common error that I see is people starting with, you know, a laptop microphone, or maybe their mobile phone, which is they’re getting a little better. But really, the quality of the audio is pretty important to people. So the Blue Yeti or a similar microphone, I’d recommend another piece of equipment I’d recommend and unfortunately, I’m not using it right now because I’m set up in a weird part of my house is called a pop filter. Have you ever heard of that?
Ali Salihoglu 08:40
Yeah. Okay.
Ben Butina, Ph.D. 08:42
So for the sake of the audience, a pop filter is basically just a small round screen that you place in front of the microphone. And what it protects the microphone from is direct hits from plosives and you can hear the plosives coming out right now as I’m talking Peter Piper picked a patch of pickled peppers. When you pronounce that hard p sound, it blows air out of your mouth and it hits directly into the diaphragm of that microphone. And that’s why you get that nasty sound. So a pop filter will protect you from that. Another couple of pieces of equipment to consider is a microphone mounting arm, you can usually get these I would say probably 2030 bucks off of Amazon just allows you to mount that microphone in a place that makes sense for you. Right now I have this mounted on a dresser actually so that I can record this standing up. I think that helps my recording a little bit if I’m not sitting down and fold it over in my chair. And another piece of equipment that I would recommend is a shock mount. Do you know what a shock mount is?
Ali Salihoglu 09:47
Yes, I’ve heard of a shock mount as well. Okay.
Ben Butina, Ph.D. 09:49
Well, can you explain to the audience what it is?
Ali Salihoglu 09:53
If I’m not mistaken, isn’t it? Basically, like, all the way I’m thinking about pop filter actually,
Ben Butina, Ph.D. 10:01
okay. Also a shock mount is basically just a when you have a microphone that’s just sitting on a table or on a surface or something like that it tends to pick up every sound in the background anytime anything in your your house or your dorm or wherever you’re recording moves, it picks up that sound but a shock mount does is it allows the microphone to sort of like almost like the shocks on a car, you mount the microphone on it and it allows the microphone to move a little bit without picking up the sound around it. So it’s a little like a little flexible kind of round thing with the microphone sits on. So shockmount I recommend and decent set of headphones I don’t think you need to go crazy with that a 40 $50 set of headphones probably fine. Other equipment has less to do and I do apologize for all those plosive peas that I’m shooting into the microphone right now. Other piece of equipment is less about like the physical equipment and more about the software. So I’m using a system right now to record this which which you know, I like called Zen caster. And what that allows me to do is you’re connecting in from from wherever you’re at, I’m connecting in from wherever I’m at. Zen caster is a piece of software that takes my recording, and you’re recording, it merges them together. And it also does some some noise removal and things like that. But the reason that’s important versus going for recording a Skype call, or other ways of doing it is because recording Skype calls is notoriously unreliable, and it really stinks when you have a guest on and your connection craps out halfway through. Zen caster isn’t the only option out there. It’s just the one that I found most reliable. And when I say most reliable I mean that like maybe nine times out of 10 there’s no problems at all the 10th time out of 10 it breaks your heart but I haven’t found a better alternative yet.
Ali Salihoglu 12:02
Yeah, I’ve never heard of Zen caster before. So this is new to me as well. But I like it so far. It’s working. Great.
Ben Butina, Ph.D. 12:10
Yeah, I mean, a big part of what it does is that it’s just thinking up the voices. So if I were recording this on two separate tracks and trying to edit, edit it together later, I could easily do that. But it would just be time consuming and kind of picky. So I want to save myself a little time from doing that. What other questions do you have?
Ali Salihoglu 12:31
Oh, is there any type of software that you recommend for editing purposes?
Ben Butina, Ph.D. 12:37
Sure. So there’s kind of two ways to go about this. One is cheapest free and the other is I’ve got a budget. So which one best describes you?
Ali Salihoglu 12:50
At the moment, cheapest free. Okay.
Ben Butina, Ph.D. 12:52
So I recommend software called audacity, which is free audio editing software, and it’s Free does not mean that it’s junk. It’s actually very good and very many of the top podcasts that people listen to or edited on Audacity. So there’s a learning curve there to learn how to edit audio correctly. However, you can learn almost anything that you need to know about audacity, just looking up YouTube videos for anybody in the audience who has a budget and recommend another piece of software called Adobe Audition. And it is more capable than Audacity. But it’s also a lot more expensive. A couple of points I’ll make on editing is sometimes new hosts and even guests get a little paranoid about their arms and their arms and their, you know, verbal tics and things like that. For the most part, the audience doesn’t care because they’re not listening to that nearly as much as we imagined they are. There’s another one of my arms. It sounds like Like a real person when you do that, and that’s mostly why people listen to a show like this Not for a perfectly polished kind of presentation. Editing gets easier as you get more time doing it. And you’ll also find that as you develop more skills as a host, you can guide the conversation and ways that you don’t need to do as much editing.
14:28
What other questions do you have?
Ali Salihoglu 14:32
where are some places that a podcast can be featured or published?
Ben Butina, Ph.D. 14:38
So when you say places do you mean like a host or where they can be sort of publicized?
Ali Salihoglu 14:46
both pretty much just where where can they be placed so that like, like a host site where you know, the audience can listen to and also, maybe some type of social media sites that they can be advertised on.
Ben Butina, Ph.D. 14:58
Sure. So the hosts that I recommend right now, and I’ve been through a few of them over the years, the host that I recommend is a company called pine cast p i n e, CA St. And the reason I recommend them is that they are easy to use. pretty inexpensive, I think you’re looking at maybe five bucks a month, maybe 10 bucks a month, if it’s really big, or you want multiple shows. And for the kind of audience that you’re describing, it’s going to be more than sufficient. Really like shows that have hundreds of thousands of downloads per episode and might be you know, might want to spend more and go to a different company. Pyne cast is really I think, pretty good. podcasts will also if you don’t have a separate website for your show, we’ll also create one for you kind of an automatically created site. So if you’re not going to build up like a blog or a bunch of other things on the website, as sort of a around the show the way I have it’s really just Gonna be a place for people to go to listen to the show, then podcasts will take care of that for you. If you want to create your own page, and have the podcast, just be a part of that, because you also have articles and other media, then you’d probably want to, you know, go to a web hosting company like siteground or someone like that and create something in WordPress or similar content management system. But I think that’s a whole other show probably, as far as ways that you can publicize it, definitely getting on social media in as many channels as you can. For a show like what you’ve described, obviously, I think Twitter, Instagram, possibly LinkedIn, you know, it’s a little more work oriented. So LinkedIn has some some folks out there that might be looking out for that. And I don’t have a page or a company page for my show on LinkedIn at this point in time because it seems like more effort than that. Worth, but I will say that the response when I just share links to episodes out on LinkedIn has been pretty good. But again, it kind of comes back to nailing down who your audience niches and where they hang out. All right? Yeah, like professors, for example, for the most part aren’t hanging out on LinkedIn. Some of them do and maybe more in Iowa than other fields, but you’re generally not running into too many of them out there. younger students generally aren’t going to be on Facebook as much as they’re going to be on Twitter and other places, but you’re probably better in tune to that than I am.
Ali Salihoglu 17:33
Yeah, what do you think of YouTube? Have you put any of your podcasts on YouTube by any chance?
Ben Butina, Ph.D. 17:40
I have not. I know that there are shows that do that. I think it’s perfectly fine way to go about it. I guess the disadvantage I would see with YouTube is that, you know, a lot of people that listen to podcasts, listen to a lot of podcasts, and so they want something on their podcast aggregator app. They can subscribe to. And you usually can’t do that with a YouTube channel. So still going through the podcast or something like that to host the audio of the show makes sense. If you’re really trying to drive costs down, though, it’d be hard to beat YouTube or SoundCloud, just because you can create audio files, put them up there for free. And if you see your audience’s being fairly small, that might be just fine.
Ali Salihoglu 18:28
So what are the differences? Because we’re doing like an audio podcast right now, but I’ve seen podcasts that also do video with audio. So are there any major differences between the two?
Ben Butina, Ph.D. 18:42
Well, yeah, I mean in terms of equipment, mostly what you see with the video enabled podcast is people using the the webcam that’s built into their laptop or whatever they’re using your maybe their camera on their phone, but you’re into You’re into a level of making sure you get your lighting, your backgrounds not distracting. And that kind of thing. The reason I haven’t done that, frankly, on my show is just that. I don’t know that watching me talking to a microphone adds a whole lot of value to the show. I know that’s exactly what, you know, the Joe Rogan’s of the world do, but I don’t think I’m as compelling a figure as he is. And asking my guests who wouldn’t might otherwise be comfortable engaging in audio, to make sure they’re presentable and working with their cameras seems like there’s probably some guests I wouldn’t have if it was a video based, let’s just put it that way. But, you know, if you want to get very sophisticated with it, and you want to add more visuals in, there’s always a possibility of doing that with specialty editing software. Yeah, so I guess give that a think and if you go that route, then YouTube probably makes more sense. And then a podcast aggregate Most of them will handle video. But most people who are listening to a strict podcasts are doing that while they’re at the gym or they’re on their commute. They’re not looking at a video while they’re doing it. So.
Ali Salihoglu 20:12
Right, that makes a lot of sense. And have you ever used zoom at all for recording any audio or video? Not just for podcast, but maybe just in general? Have you ever tried using the zoom? And I heard that they actually you can take audio and video bits from zoom. If I’m not mistaken, and edit it.
Ben Butina, Ph.D. 20:35
Yeah, I’m sure that you can. To answer your question directly. No, I haven’t. The reason that I haven’t considered that is one. You know, before zoom was the behemoth that it is now I was already using Zen caster or similar service and I didn’t feel the need to is, anytime there’s a web conferencing software like zoom, it’s compressing The audio quite a bit. So that’s a little hard to explain a little easier to understand. So anyone that’s listening to this show right now is hearing my voice in a fairly realistic way, because it’s picking up the full range of frequencies and broadcasting that they’re probably hearing your voice a little less clearly, it’s gonna sound a little more like it’s coming from a telephone because your microphone probably isn’t as good. Zen caster might be compressing the audio a little bit. Zoom does that even more because it’s a platform designed to host many, many, many people connected to the same through the same firehose, so to speak. So it’s compressing all of that audio down to the smallest possible file format, and you’ll lose a lot of realism. And a lot of like, it’s going to sound a little cheesy, but kind of the intimacy of it. When I’m talking and I move a little closer to the microphone, you know, that conveys a sense of presence in a way that you can’t get when you have that really compressed audio.
Ali Salihoglu 21:59
Right and I I think people are kind of sick of zoom anyways on zoom on zoom fatigue for sure. So I’m not complaining about that. But another question I had, in your opinion, how long should a podcast episode be on average?
Ben Butina, Ph.D. 22:17
Yeah. So it really goes back to that initial scoping question that I asked at the beginning of the show, which is, who’s your audience? And what’s your message I found for my show. We’re right now in this episode, probably outside of what I normally record, only someone who really cares about starting a podcast has even gotten this far with us. Everybody else has probably dropped off in the first five minutes or so. Because they just discovered that this, this wasn’t for them. Imagine for a moment that you’ve got an episode about what is IO psychology? And you are an undergraduate student who’s thinking about what am I going to do for graduate school or am I going to go to go At graduate school, that being the case, like they probably want as much content as you could possibly give them, you know, they’ll probably listen for an hour, hour and a half if you had something like that. Meanwhile, that Professor that you’re also trying to reach, he or she wants to listen to that for maybe a maximum of 10 minutes like, this is their life every day. They don’t want you know, they’d rather go listen to, you know, some other podcasts on the topic other than I was psychology with all that time. So another reason that I encourage you to kind of nail down your audience. As far as general advice on length of episodes, I’d say it really depends on what you’re trying to communicate who your guest is. I don’t really have a good rule of thumb. I guess I can only tell you what works for my show, which is, I’ve got a lot of people who are IO psych nerds who listen to this, and they live and breathe IO stuff every day. So it’s kind of cool for them to listen to a podcast but they don’t necessary. Want to listen to it for longer than, say 15 or 20 minutes? And that’s just based on, you know, the metrics that I see.
Ali Salihoglu 24:07
Right? So it pretty much can vary depending on the audience is basically what you’re saying and also maybe on the content that you’re delivering.
Ben Butina, Ph.D. 24:14
Yeah, that’s a much more concise way of saying.
Ali Salihoglu 24:20
And that kind of brings me to my next point. How often should a new episode be published? Is it like a weekly thing for you a monthly thing, or does it just depend? That’s everyone’s favorite answer for I Oh,
Ben Butina, Ph.D. 24:35
yeah, I’m out. I’ll say, you know, I probably averaged about a new episode a month and that’s driven more by my work and family schedule than you know my desire to make episodes. I would say for a new show, whether it’s weekly or monthly. The important thing is to have a regular recording and release schedule. I mentioned And earlier that there are hundreds of thousands of podcasts out there 90% of them make one or two shows and then never released another one again. And when people see that when they’re searching for podcasts, and they see that it hasn’t been updated in, you know, the last month or the last year or whatever, they just keep scrolling because nobody wants to listen to one of these, you know, calm like orphan shows, where it’s, you know, maybe every six months, I’ll get around to recording something, but I don’t care enough about the audience to do it more. So if you want to build up a dedicated audience, a regular release schedule, whether that’s weekly, bi weekly or monthly is what I’d recommend, and make sure that you let them know hey, expect to that you know, this is there’s going to be another episode in a couple of weeks or another one in a month or so. So they don’t just remove you from their from their pod list.
Ali Salihoglu 25:51
Another question I had was, and this is interesting, because your podcast name is department 12, which I think is really creative. But then there’s other podcasts were just like the Joe Schmo show. So how important really is a podcast name like it? Should you get creative with it? Or should it just be like the I ops of podcast something simple.
Ben Butina, Ph.D. 26:15
So here’s the thing. You’re talking about the I ops of podcasts. And as you use that term with me, I’m just taking a wild guess as to what that abbreviation actually is i o p s. EA IO. PSA. Like, if I wanted to look that up on iTunes or wherever I find my podcast, I’d have a hard time doing that. And you want to make it as easy as you possibly can. So short answer, yes, a creative name is important. Department 12 is a name that I picked because I can kind of own department 12 and do with it as I wish and it’s easy to remember. And if you hear department, well, you’re gonna remember to look it up. And if you don’t, the subtitle is an IO psych podcast. So if anybody searches for it, to psych, it’s going to show up probably at the top. Using the, the abbreviation for your organization is great for the people who are already in your organization or know much know a lot about it. No one else is going to remember that To be blunt. So finding a name that is like, I don’t know, something memorable, like, you know, work psychology or what the hell is IO psychology, you know, something that if you had a conversation with someone and you told them about your podcast, they’d actually be able to remember the name of it five minutes later when they looked at their phone.
Ali Salihoglu 27:33
Yeah, and just just for the listeners, I definitely don’t want to make an iota podcast. I think that’s pretty boring. So I’m hoping to make it something more creative. but only time will tell what that will be.
Ben Butina, Ph.D. 27:45
Yeah, you know, it’s either gonna be you know, the way I found that a good name works and then just looking at the shows that are most popular is it’s either very creative, and everybody can relate Remember it or it’s a word or almost like a brand that you can own. Cereal is a good example. It’s the most popular podcast in the history of podcasting, as far as I know, s er, l. And they own that word. I know why they picked it, it makes sense. But they own that word, and they own that brand. Now, there’s nothing particularly catchy or clever about it. But it’s really, really successful. Another hugely popular show is, you know, the Joe Rogan podcast. That’s pretty boring name, but it’s also Joe Rogan. So it really doesn’t matter whether it’s boring or not. People know who he is, people know his name, and they’ll look it up. building that up without some kind of celebrity status, I think, a lot more difficult.
Ali Salihoglu 28:46
Yes, I definitely agree with that. And just another question I had was, what are some, some places one of some of the best places that you can record like
29:00
Like physically
Ali Salihoglu 29:01
yeah physically
Ben Butina, Ph.D. 29:02
really good question. So generally you want a room that is the quietest room in your house and that it has the least amount of echo. And unfortunately the only way you’re going to figure that out is by dragging that microphone and your laptop or whatever you’re recording on in every room and running some tests. So right now I’m I’m living a little bit dangerously because my microphones narrow window and if a motorcycle drives by my house, everybody’s gonna hear it. I don’t have I don’t have better options right now with COVID-19. The place I usually record is full of people right now. But generally you want a room that’s not going to have a lot of echo. It’s not going to have a lot of exterior noise. A little bit of that people will forgive No one expects like radio quality perfection, but it definitely try that out. I have one episode that I’m really proud of the content but the audio quality really stinks. It’s about a guy Who goes live on an ashram. And it’s a fascinating story, but I recorded it on my porch of all things. So it’s cut, like everything that’s happening in my neighborhood in the background. So check out different rooms of your house. Most people find that a bedroom is more suited for recording. In addition to getting the best acoustics you also need a place where you actually feel comfortable enough to spend a bunch of time if you can mount your microphone in a way that allows you to stand while you record I found that that’s pretty helpful. You get a better quality delivery that way
Ali Salihoglu 30:38
Yeah, I actually have the AC on in my room so I’m hoping that it’s not making too much noise right now but once you know I get better equipment I’m hoping at a place to record I’m hoping that the audio quality will be much better. Yeah.
Ben Butina, Ph.D. 30:51
So where I’m at now I turned off the fans there’s no AC on. There is you know software in Audacity for Example, you can do noise removal. So it removes some of that stuff from the background. But as a good rule of thumb, you want the quality of the audio going in to be as good as you can get it because the more of that playing around you have to do one, it obviously adds time to. Anytime you have to remove something from a recording, it’s also going to remove some of the frequencies that you wanted to keep. So some frequencies of your voice are going to get pulled out while they pull out the air conditioning, if that makes sense. So more
Ali Salihoglu 31:29
on kind of the marketing side of things. How important are podcast trailers, for example, or like a theme song and intro song, maybe a logo? How does that play a part? Sure,
Ben Butina, Ph.D. 31:42
I think a logo and a show image is important for every show. So the best way I can tell you to think about this is to go and look at your favorite shows and see what that image looks like. It’s almost like your album cover. What a lot of new shows do that they make a mistake of not having the text in large enough font size, to be able to see it on a small screen, you have to put yourself in the position of somebody looking at, you know, a podcast app on an iPhone or an Android. And they need to be able to look at that square, whatever size it’s rendered as and be able to tell instantly that that’s your show, you know, cereal, you can tell right away my show, hopefully you can tell right away. It’s the one with the weird black and white guy and it’s got, you know, the words large enough to read on it. A lot of shows. They just picked some, you know, strange image or, you know, picture of the host or a picture of a microphone or headphones. I never understood that like, yeah, obviously, it’s a podcast. So we don’t need you to tell us that there’s a microphone and headphones involved. You know, you want to pick something that you can really see and instantly know that, hey, this is my show. And that should serve also as the basis for your logo for your social media accounts so that you’re reinforcing Seeing those images. So, you know, my account for you know, Twitter, which is where I primarily promote shows, it looks like the cover image of the show. So that it’s reinforcing that in the mind of the listener who might be listening to a dozen or more shows. And I can’t expect them to want to know about like a whole art catalog of different things I’m interested in. As far as trailers go, I’ve had many mixed success with them. Ultimately, I haven’t found for my show that it’s worth putting a lot of effort into that simply because it’s a niche audience. The people who listen, listen very regularly. So it’s not a huge audience, but it’s a very loyal and dedicated audience. So I don’t need to tease them and say, oh, listen to this. It’s going to be a super interesting episode. Mostly they’re listening to all the episodes. But I don’t know that that’s the case for everybody. I’m trying to think of Yeah, that answer your question.
Ali Salihoglu 33:58
Yeah. Yeah, that was That was very thorough. Thank you. I guess one more question I had was, do you have any just tips or advice on how to keep the listeners entertained and engaged? Like do you do any, anything special for some podcast to really bring in the listeners?
Ben Butina, Ph.D. 34:25
Yeah, so every once in a while, I’ll do a show that’s like, it’s really just me sharing some links that I think are useful. And so I’ll usually build a theme around that so it’ll be around Halloween. So we’ll have like, you know, cheesy Halloween sound effects or music in the background or something like that. On the whole, I have found that putting in entrance music exit music transition music. My audience just doesn’t want that. It’s just not that kind of show, or they feel like they need to be entertained. That way, the main value that they get from my show is listening to smart people talk and I’m talking about the guests, not me, as a host, you got to leave behind this idea that you’re a smart person, you’ve got to be able to play dumb convincingly, so that the other person that you’re talking to your guest has that stage to be smart, and talk about what they’re really good at. So that’s another tip. But mostly what people listen to my show for is Hey, the guest has something interesting to say it’s about IO psych. And I’m interested in IO psych. Anything that detracts from that music at the beginning or the end, breaking up signposting, which is when you say coming up next, we’re going to talk about these three things. I’ve just found that those are great for general interest shows where you’re trying to capture hundreds of thousands of people. A niche audience doesn’t care about that. They just want to hear the content and they don’t need you to hold their hand very much. So it really depends on who your audience is again, and what kind of show you’re trying to reach But putting in the time I think to create something fun, like my little Halloween episodes, you know, you’ll develop some real audio editing skills and doing that. And that’s not something that is so naturally interesting that it doesn’t need a little lightening up like me just talking about, hey, here’s three things to listen to. It’s not a very good show. But adding a little bit of show business in there and having some fun with it can help.
Ali Salihoglu 36:25
Yeah, and I’m sure a lot of it’s also just trial and error, right? You know, you kind of learn, you experience some mistakes, and then you try to fix it. You see what the listeners might want, get feedback, and then you kind of go from there.
Ben Butina, Ph.D. 36:39
Yeah, absolutely. And I think you need to ask for that feedback. Because for every hundred people that will listen to an episode, maybe one of them will bother to give you any feedback on it. I’m not even talking about like, star ratings or reviews or anything on iTunes, but even just to send you an email or reach out to you on social media and say yeah, Yeah, that was good. Or here’s what I think you can do better. So you need to ask them like, hey, especially at the beginning, hey, what do you like? What can I be doing better? And taking that advice on board?
Ali Salihoglu 37:13
Yeah. So that’s, that’s pretty much all the questions I have on my end. I thought that it was extremely informative. I learned a lot. So I definitely appreciate, you know, your, your input and recommendations.
Ben Butina, Ph.D. 37:26
No problem. I’ll leave you with a couple more tips that you didn’t ask for. But I’ll just throw them at you anyway. Because you’re talking, you’re going to end up talking to probably a lot of academics and interviewing them is a special beast all in its own. First, do not send them a list of questions ahead of time to prepare. Everybody asks me, will you send me a list of questions to prepare and say, Now, I won’t do that. I’ll give you some topics and say I’m going to ask you questions around these topics. But if you give somebody a list of questions, the chances are good that they’re going When you prepare canned answers to those questions, and you are going to end up with an episode that sounds a little bit like someone talking to an academic conference, which, that’s fine. If you are in an academic conference, nobody wants to hear that in the podcast. So giving people a list of topics so that they don’t feel like you’re ambushing them is helpful, but don’t give them a list of questions. The second thing I’d ask you to keep in mind when you’re interviewing people is think about your audience and why they would care to the person you’re interviewing. Obviously, they think whatever they’re talking about is important and interesting. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be talking about it. You as the host thing, it’s important or interesting. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have asked him to be on the show. But put yourself in the place of an audience member who may not be as naturally interested in that topic, as you say, why would I care about this, sort of what’s the hook or what’s the angle? Is there a story that I can tell is there some humor that I can inject into this, just sort of start with the basis or start with the assumption that This isn’t the most naturally interesting topic in the world, to the audience and try to find an angle to make it more. So a good example of that might be, you know, you have a guest or two on to talk about what is IO psychology? Now you and I, that’s a really interesting topic. I’m sure we could talk about it for a long time. But think about that person you’re trying to reach who’s never heard of it before? What is it that might make them interested in it? A good story about a time that your guest was invited to consult with a client and they got there and they found out the client was doing this crazy stuff. And here’s what they had to do to get around that and help them realize like that is already pulling you into a story of interest versus IO. Psychology is the scientific study of the you know, think about it, but from the point of view of a board listener, and that’s really all I would offer. So I’m guessing that anybody listening to the show, I hope That you got something from this as well. I think Ali for great questions and for being on the show. I can’t wait to hear the show that you come up with Ali. And I can’t wait to hear more IO psych shows from people who who are listening this and thinking about starting their own best advice I can give you is do it. I know I’ve hit you have a lot of information. But even if you can’t do all this stuff, just get started and do it. And you’ll learn and you’ll build momentum and we need to hear your voice.
Ali Salihoglu 40:26
Thanks. All Thank you. This was you know, super informative. I’m really excited to get the podcast going and thank you again.
