Jim James: 0:00

Hello, and welcome to this episode of The Unnoticed Show. Today, I'm going to ask you the question, how would you know which podcast to pitch to? Well, that's a topic that's coming up more and more for us in the PR world, because podcasts are taking over more and more space for getting our clients noticed. They're doing that because some publishers have podcasts, but also more and more companies. I think about launching podcasts and so could you. Because as I'm finding it's a very low cost and engaging way to get your message out. But it does have some work to be done. I want to share with you today about a tool called 'Listen Notes'. Now, Listen Notes is a great platform you've to do research into podcasts and also to make sure that if you've got a podcast that you post and list yours there.

Jim James (2): 0:50

So let me just talk to you today about Listen Notes and how you can find out which podcast platform you should be on. Now, Listen Notes which is at listennotes.com, all in one word, cited by called WenBing Over in America . This has listed over 123 million episodes on that platform. And it is for listeners, for podcasters, and for businesses. Now, let's just take us through that, first of all. Now, if you are a listener, Listen Notes will give you the ability to curate a list. But you might be saying, 'Well, why would I want to do that?' because it's by category. So normally if you look at, for example, Spotify or Apple podcasts, you can get the basic level information. But on Listen Notes you can search the whole directory. It's much quicker and more efficient than doing it on the, on the app, on your phone or on your desktop. But what it also does is it starts to give you a couple of metrics and this is where it gets kind of exciting. What the Listen Notes does is it gives you two metrics, two key ones. One is a listener score, and the second is a global rank. Now the listener score is a metric that shows the estimated popularity of a podcast compared to other RSS based public podcasts. That's a really simple syndication in the world. So, on a scale of one to 100, it will tell you which one is going to be most popular with zero, obviously being the least popular and 100 being the most. The global rank is showing how this podcasts is positioned out of all podcasts worldwide. It currently has a listed 2,755,000 podcast shows out there and listener score ranks these. Now why this is important is because if you're a podcaster yourself, as I am, you can see where you are ranked. Just so you know, I have a, a global, listener score of 32 and a global ranking in the top 5%. So I'm quite happy with that. But also, if you are looking at doing PR for you or for a client, But especially if it's for you. You can go into listener score and you can find out which of those podcasts that you like are going to be most relevant for you and have the greatest reach. Now I've just done this recently for a Telco client and I found the top 100 Telco podcasts, which is very useful. One of the things I found was that almost all of them come from America, one from the UK, and some Spanish language from Spain and then also a Portuguese one. So I found over a hundred podcasts, but actually if I then apply the filters, which are anybody that's had a podcast in the last month, and as over 10 episodes and has been publishing podcast for more than 12 months, that number gets down to about 40. Then I just chose the top 25 because I want to pitch just the best of those. Now one I can see by looking, and in this case, at the top 25 Telecom podcasts on Listen Notes. So now if I look at this, I can see that the Telco list I've got in front of me, the top ranking is why there's got a global rank of in the top 3% with a listener score of 36 and they've got some 291 episodes. Now, bear in mind, even my own show, The UnNoticed Entrepreneurs one you're listening to, as I listened to score of 32 and I've issued out some 400 episodes and I'm in the top 5%. Now, and in John Talk telecom that top 5% listeners score 32, like me. And they are talking about all things Telco but they've only got 30 episodes. The Telecoms.com P ublishing out of London has a 5% global rank, listener score of 34, and there's 219. Now I can go on for you, but what it shows you and shows me is a couple of things. One is that being highly ranked like why, for example, they have a good listener score and a good episode, but it's also not strictly speaking Telco. So you can almost write that out of the equation because they are dealing with all things, tech and culture. But if I look for example, at telecoms.com, which is out of London and published by uh, the group Informer, which is a publishing group. They've got 219 episodes and they've got to listener score 34 and the top 5%. So actually that's going to be one of the podcasts that I want to go for. Now, Coffee with Craig and James also in 5% listener score 3210. Telecom Reseller is in the global 10%, but listening score of 28 and 444 episodes. So what this shows us is that there's not a direct correlation between the global rank, the listener score, and the episode count. So we want to then be looking at these lists and deciding which criteria are most important. Now remember that I've just exported the top 25% of shows that's got a show in the last 12 months, has done over 10 episodes, and shared in the last 30 days. So this gives me a really good way of trying to shortlist the podcast that I might want to talk to for either myself or in this case for Telco, for my client. Now, when I work on Listen Notes, it's free to sign up. But if I want to export the data that I have found, I can do that and I can pay actually according to dataset, which is fantastic. Now in order to pay what you need to do is you need to pay and there is a two day membership that you can have, and it's just like $10 a day. But if you join, for example, for two days, you can then export the data set that you need, and that that's what I've done. So I had already made now a couple of requests. So I have exported Telco for a top 25 and also a top 100 and I've downloaded those. And what's very cool is when you do data fields you can choose basic fields on the podcast and the episode, like title and publisher and description. But also then you can start to pay for value added fields. For example, like the email, the Twitter, the Facebook, the Spotify. And then you have more data fields and ID fields as well. Why is that important? Because if you're trying to rank these podcasts, that's one thing. But actually you want to be able to then follow them and also then to reach out to them. So what I've done is I've purchased for some $15, in addition to my $10 a day membership the 25 top Telecom media podcasts, and I have got their email addresses. And I can see their Twitter handles, and their Facebook, and if they're on Instagram or LinkedIn or Spotify, and I can find them. So, this is very, very useful because now I've in effect, got myself a media list. And as I've mentioned, with Listen Notes they've got literally millions of podcasts online. So you can search by category, for example, you can search by region, by language, by total number of episodes, by the hosting service, by the latest episode publishing date. You can sort in no particular order by the latest publishing date or the total episodes or the listener score. One of the aspects that I really like about this is that if you buy one dataset and download it, you can then have the same, if you like data set, data criteria, but you can exclude the podcast that you've already downloaded, so you don't get charged twice. It's a really nice feature, very considerate, I think. So you can then create playlist and then you can export those playlists, and you can also choose to export them through, for example, through to an IDS, through the iTunes IDs. So the great thing about listen notes is that it's enabling people like you or me to find in a very quick and profile way the data from over 2,755,904 precisely podcasts at this moment. And all the data fields that they import when they load and distribute their shows like mine. So from a practical point of view, this is going to be really, really helpful. And I can tell you, I'm already using it. So when I exported my data, I was charged between tender $40. And it tells you in real time, how much you're going to be charged when you made that dataset and choose the fields and updates to pricing in real time. And then you get a CSV file that you can download from your browser or you can upload from your email. So Listen Notes is one of the best, I think, directories for finding podcasts that you might want to either listen to. Or if you're like me and looking to pitch podcasts for clients, or I'm also going to be using this to pitch my upcoming book, the Listen Notes platform is fantastic. So listennotes.com, I can really recommend this as a tool. Very quick, very easy and very flexible. You can, for example, subscribe for two days, get the data that you need and then unsubscribe, if I had even has an auto date set, so you don't have to worry about going into find how to unsubscribe. And I really appreciate that how the team over there have really managed the ease of use. And also the way that you can load and download your information. So this is when Ben who's the founder and CEO of Listen Notes who even has some guidance for anyone who's a podcaster on how to improve their positioning. So if you're looking at podcasts for your own business, then I would say that is absolutely something to think about to use Listen Notes to do some research. But if you're looking at it for a client, then absolutely this is a resource for you to find the information that you need. Download it. You can then import that into your CRM, for example, and then direct mail all of those podcasters at once or you can choose them one at a time. So, as you know, on this show, I love to find tools and tips that are very useful for everybody to use that can help you to get noticed. This particular case, it's a podcast focused one. Thank you so much for listening.