Anonyphant said:

My reason for wanting to improv it is so that more people enjoy it. I'm not sure if our lack of listeners is due to a lack of "advertising" per say or because it sucks to listen to.

If you have specific advertising questions, I may be able to help you. I own an ad agency and all I do is Internet advertising.

I don't yet know the content of your show but I'll listen to it when the site comes back up.

Anonyphant said:

site is back up

Listening to it now and writing down some notes.

I don't know if I'll post the notes today or not. It needs some time to ruminate. I'm trying to come up with questions that will help you think about your Podcast in a new way and take steps to grow it, if that's what you want.

If you'd prefer that I private message you the notes, let me know. Otherwise I'll post the notes here on the forum.

I'm a whiz at getting eyeballs pointed at websites so hopefully I'll be able to come up with something you can use.

Had to break up my response into multiple posts
------------------

How an Advertiser Gains an Audience

Time to shift into egoic advertiser mode. Time to slit some throats.

Why does your show really exist? WHY DOES YOUR SHOW REALLY EXIST?

It is to satisfy a selfish desire?

Is it to satisfy a craving for something?

Nobody cares about your Podcast or why you’re doing it.

What do people care about?

People care about what your Podcast will do for them. Will it help them solve some problem in their life? Will it make their life easier? Will it help them make money? Will it make them feel something?

What is the value to the listener? What is the benefit to the listener?

Here’s how not to get a large audience:

“I’d like to make some money on the side with my Podcast”
“I know a lot about XYZ topic, so I’ll talk about that”
“Person X’s podcast resonates with me, so I’ll imitate that resonance.”

The problem with imitating another person’s podcast is that the egoic mind cannot grasp truth. When the egoic mind imitates truth, it comes out looking like a Frankenstein monster. It is a hollow shell. It is dead. There is no resonance when the egoic mind tries to imitate resonance.

Samuel Butler said money is the “sacrament of having done for mankind that which mankind wanted.”

We might say here that the number of podcast listeners is the "sacrament of having done for mankind that which mankind wanted."

In your situation, the number of Podcast listeners you have is proportional to the number of people who find benefit in it or the number of people who resonate with it. Give people what they want. Give people what they need.

So what do people want, from an egoic perspective?

Here’s what people want:
1. Survival, enjoyment of life, life extension.
2. Enjoyment of food and beverages.
3. Freedom from fear, pain, and danger.
4. Sexual companionship.
5. Comfortable living conditions.
6. To be superior, winning, keeping up with the Joneses.
7. Care and protection of loved ones.
8. Social approval.

There are secondary desires but these are much less powerful than the eight above. Here they are:
1. To be informed.
2. Curiosity.
3. Cleanliness of body and surroundings.
4. Efficiency.
5. Convenience.
6. Dependability/quality.
7. Expression of beauty and style.
8. Economy/profit.
9. Bargains.


Advertising is almost like a broken way of imitating the resonance that comes through true art. A powerful, resonant message needs no help with spreading. It is self-propagating.

Advertising is a tool that allows for messages with no truth or resonance to be spread to vast numbers of people. Advertising is hijacking these innate resonance mechanisms for the purpose of shallow moneymaking schemes. I know where advertising is headed and it’s a place that’s beautiful beyond imagination, but that’s a topic for another post.

If you find your art isn’t resonating and your egoic mind wants more people to listen to it, then you may find yourself walking the dark road of advertising.

Again, is there a need in the marketplace for your Podcast?

Great art has a message that resonates. What is the message of your Podcast?

If you want an exercise to do, try writing down all of the messages that are delivered by your Podcast. Analyze not only what you’re saying, but what your appearance says, what the text on your co-host’s t-shirt says, what the visible posters on the wall say, what the tonality of your voice says, etc… EVERYTHING.

The sentences should be short. Don’t get too verbose. Write down all the messages that your Podcast conveys. Once you’ve exhausted yourself and you think you have them all, come up with a SINGLE SENTENCE that covers the whole thing. What is the core message of the Podcast? What is the singular message that is being conveyed when you take the summation of all the messages in the Podcast?

You’ll likely have to rewrite the message dozens of times. It’s a lot of work but eventually you’ll settle on a single message that you feel best sums up what the Podcast is trying to do.

The message may be good or it may not. If the message is true and has integrity, then perhaps your show is not being presented in the right way.

Are you bringing through a new, original message that has resonance or are you imitating someone else’s resonance? Imitated resonance falls flat. It’s like a corpse.

If you want another exercise, try doing the same thing but with your favorite movies, music, podcasts, etc... What is the message that is being conveyed to you? Why does it resonate and why does it make you want to share that resonance?

Resonant messages inspire us. I heard you mention on the show that you’re losing your inspiration. That sentence hit me like an arrow to the forehead when you said it.

Is “more listeners” really your goal here?

P.S. Sorry for the long post but one of the things I've learned in advertising is that long copy always outsells short copy. :-)

@YOU wow very well said! I love it when someone articulates ideas that I have also thought about so well. Your post reminded me of a quote by Jim Jarmusch

“Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery - celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from - it’s where you take them to.”

I like to break out that quote whenever anyone starts ranting about sampling in music or what not, but that's another discussion altogether.

You also pin pointed the reason I despise advertising so much. I would like to hear your thoughts on where you think advertising is headed in the future.

@YOU hah fair enough. Look forward to it.

KwaiChangCaine said:

@you. Who said ad folks were all douches. The fact that you took the time to articulate all that speaks volumes. Out of interest, what was your route to your current job? I would also be interested in becoming a client in the future, cost permitting etc etc. PM me a link to your business if you wish.
Namaste

I'm not currently accepting any new clients but if you want some tips on things like Facebook advertising, I'd be happy to share. I'm a very small fish in the Internet advertising world but I know a lot about how to advertise successfully on Facebook and some other Internet-based traffic sources.


My mindset about advertising when I first got into it and what my mindset is now are different, but I got into advertising for two reasons:

Big Money

and

I wanted to understand how people really work, on a large scale. I wanted to understand how things go mega-viral. Why are people so easily tricked by advertising? Marshall McLuhan's writings on advertising were probably the thing that kicked me over the edge. What is advertising doing to us, really?

When you realize that far more effort, time, money, care and thought goes into the creation of large-scale advertisements than goes into actual content on a website (editorials, articles, etc...), it alters your perception of the world. I'm speaking of large-scale ads here remember. Things seen by millions or billions of people.

I used to hack computers for a living. To understand the vulnerabilities of a system and how to exploit them is to really understand how it works. After a while, hacking computers gets boring. Hacking people seemed more fun at the time and that's what advertising really is. Finding vulnerabilities in people and exploiting them. My attitude has now shifted away from this exploitative mindset, but that desire to really understand people at their core is still a driving factor in why I'm an advertiser.


Here's one of my favorite quotes that elucidates this connection in a better way than I can:
"Regarding language as an apparatus of symbols for the conveyance of thought, we may say that, as in a mechanical apparatus, the more simple and the better arranged its parts, the greater will be the effect produced. In either case, whatever force is absorbed by the machine is deducted from the result. A reader or listener has at each moment but a limited amount of mental power available. To recognize and interpret the symbols presented to him requires part of this power; to arrange and combine the images suggested requires a further part; and only that part that remains can be used for realizing the thought conveyed. Hence, the more time and attention it takes to receive and understand each sentence, the less time and attention can be given to the contained idea; and the less vividly will that idea be conceived." - Herbert Spencer

My goal with advertising now is to understand how to send messages to the largest number of people. Could the message of enlightenment be delivered in an ad campaign that goes mega-viral to the population of the entire planet? How do we use the egoic mind against itself? How can we trick people into waking up? My present thinking is that we have to gamify understanding. Increasing our understanding and interconnectedness must become the most fun and addictive thing a person can do. You can now see things like this emerging. Reddit Karma is a very simple form of gamification. And look how addicted people get to it.

I seek informational consonance (understanding) that sounds the most beautiful, harmonious chord you can imagine. The sound will resonate out through the cosmos and inward to the core of our being. Fractal all the way up and all the way down.