June 18, 2024

117. Crafting Human Content: Colin Gray's Approach to Engaging Audiences

In this refreshingly candid chat, I sit down with Colin Gray, founder of Alitu and The Podcast Host, as he shares how he grappled with - and overcame - a concerning decline in visibility and cut through with his content.

Despite consistently churning out valuable, personality-packed content week after week, Colin's growth hit a plateau. But rather than surrendering to panic, he was determined to adapt and conquer this challenge head-on.

Join us as Colin pulls back the curtain on his thought process with vulnerability and resilience. From exploring new platforms to repurposing content in innovative formats, and changing his mindset, he was able to reignite momentum. 

You'll gain insights into:

  • Colin's approach to objectively evaluating stagnating metrics without spiraling
  • The pivotal role community-building plays in fortifying your content ecosystem
  • How to future-proof your content strategy amidst disruptions like AI and shifting consumer behavior

Related Win the Content Game episodes you may enjoy:

From Startup Success to Balanced Life: A Founder's Journey

What's the secret to finding fulfillment after achieving massive entrepreneurial success? Find out in this conversation with the ex-President and current Board Director of $2 billion online course platform Kajabi, Jonathan Cronstedt, also known as JCron.

Why community is the key to startup success: A Founder's Perspective

This insightful conversation, Murtaza Bambot, Founder of community platform Heartbeat, gives us an insider look at these behind-the-scenes startup struggles and successes.

Resources mentioned in this episode 

🤝 Connect with Colin  here

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🦥 Join our Capsho Club here

🛒Check our Capsho’s Merch Store here

💬 Leave me a message here

❤️ Loved this episode? Leave us a review and rating here 

Connect with Deirdre: Instagram  | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | LinkedIn

00:00 - The Reality Behind Entrepreneurial Struggles

02:24 - Web Traffic and Visibility Concerns

05:29 - SEO Strategy and Content Success

09:05 - The Impact of COVID on Traffic Trends

12:53 - Managing Fluctuations in Data Analysis

18:18 - Adapting to Google's Algorithm Changes

19:22 - Building a Strong Community for Sustainability

22:28 - Navigating Challenges and Creating Action Plans

25:19 - Entrepreneurial Optimism and Problem-Solving Confidence

28:38 - Embracing Uncertainty and Possibilities

28:58 - Monetization and Engagement in the Podcast Industry

[00:00:00 - 00:01:36]Do you sometimes look at other founders and entrepreneurs and wonder how they seem to always have it together? I mean, no judgment, because I do that all the time. And then you have a real conversation with them and realize that they have their own struggles, too. Things that are holding them and their business back as well, or at least is perceived to be holding them and their business back. And that's why I love these founder chat episodes, because we get to go deep with entrepreneurs who are doing it and coming up against challenges or barriers that they themselves have to work through. And why these chats are so valuable is because winning the content game, actually winning any type of game is all about our mental fortitude and ability to adapt. And that's exactly what Colin Gray from the podcast host and Alitoo is continuing to hone. And what we'll see is that it's different every single time. My name is Deidre Tshien. I'm the CEO and co founder of Capsho the fastest way to create content that gets you more clients. And this is win the content game. Colin Gray, I am so pumped to have you on the win the content game podcast. I gave you a little bit of prep. I basically just said, hey, Colin, you're going to hop in this podcast and you're going to talk about some challenges that you are facing right now. Was that enough prep for you, Colin?

[00:01:36 - 00:01:44]Yeah, I mean, there's certainly no shortage of challenges. So how long is this podcast again? Is it like two days worth? Yeah.

[00:01:45 - 00:02:24]Well, I want to jump straight into it. And I did tell you, because this whole, this whole episode and this series of founder chats is really about helping entrepreneurs see that no matter where you are in your journey, no matter how big or small you think you are, no matter, you know, like, how big you think your audience is or small, like, we are all facing challenges in some way. And it's really how we talk about them and coach ourselves through them, that is, that makes a difference. And I know that you've probably had your fair share of challenges, Colin, but I want to talk about something that you're in right now, if you wouldn't mind. Just kick us off. What's something that you're battling with right now?

[00:02:24 - 00:03:16]Oh, which to choose. Which to choose. I mean, one thing that I was talking to one person on my team today was really around web traffic. It was around visibility. It was the fact that we have always been. This whole company really is built on our website, the podcast host and the people that find that site. And it something I started back in 2010 and it's grown every single year since then until this year. This year has seen a real kind of flat lining of growth around traffic, around visibility. We've just been talking a lot about what to do about that because I think it is something that's affecting pretty much the entire industry. It's not just us. And there's all sorts of factors going into it in terms of competition, Google, AI, all sorts of things. So yeah, that's definitely one. Is that something that worth digging into? I know you're big on content as well.

[00:03:17 - 00:04:00]Yeah, and visibility, traffic. That is all. I mean, as entrepreneurs again, like, this is stuff that is so, so important for all of us. So let's maybe take us back even because you mentioned that, you know, this whole, your business is really built off the podcast host. And I'd love to even hear a little bit about that transition, like, you know, how what went into it and then the transition into alitoo and what you're doing now. And I really want to get behind the, under the hood of this particular story about now, this particular challenge of web traffic, you know, and then what has contributed to that. And then let's get into how you're thinking through it even in that conversation you had today with your team members. So I know that was a lot. Let's start from the beginning around podcast host.

[00:04:00 - 00:04:03]Yeah, yeah. When it started. Is that what you mean?

[00:04:03 - 00:04:09]Yeah. And what thought you actually put into it around the visibility side of it at that point?

[00:04:09 - 00:05:19]Do you know? In the early days I put zero thought around visibility at all. I mean, the whole site started because I was working at a university and I was asked to look into podcasting by my boss. At the time it was like I taught lecturers how to teach with tech, and podcasting came along back in the early two thousands, or mid two thousands at least. And I found around 2007 ish, looked into it and kind of promptly fell in love medium at the time and I was teaching, I ended up teaching a course on podcasting at that university for about two or three years, which was great fun. And it meant that I learned tons about that over the next couple of years, like trying to teach a whole range of people, from people that were really comfortable with tech to people that were utterly uncomfortable with any kind of technology whatsoever. But they were now being told they had to use it in their work. So it was always quite interesting. But I started the blog because I just really enjoyed learning about that stuff and I just wanted to write about my findings, my learnings. And so it was really just a hobby back then. That was 2010. Started writing maybe once every month or so. And, yeah, genuinely no thought about visibility whatsoever at that stage.

 

[00:05:19 - 00:05:29]That's crazy. And then, and you said people just started finding it, so I'm assuming you hit on some kind of co juice things without intention, like almost unintentionally, right?

[00:05:29 - 00:06:42]Yeah, I think there was definitely a right place, right time thing, maybe a bit of skill, I don't know. But it was choosing the right topics, I think was the main thing. I got quite lucky in that. Well, lucky and training, I guess, because it was all around my teaching, it was the fact that I was a teacher. And so I think then, and still now, really one of my main skills is just knowing or being able to ferret out the right questions, you know, knowing what people actually need to know, knowing what people are struggling with, and then knowing how to answer those questions as well. And the weird thing is, that's really what SEO is at the heart of it. I mean, search engine optimization really means like optimizing for search. And what is search? It's just questions. It's just, what are people searching for? What questions are they asking? So I knew what questions people were asking because I was teaching all these lecturers, and like I said, that range of skills was just. That was really advantageous too, because I worked with such complete beginners, people that just absolutely no clue about technology. And so the questions they were asking were basically the exact questions that everyone out there in the world were asking. So that was what I wrote about and that's how it got found, really, because it was just exactly what they were looking for, I think. I think that was where it came from at the time.

[00:06:42 - 00:06:57]Yeah, well, super cool. Okay, so you've then built over the last. Oh my gosh, you said 2010, right? So 1314 years you've built this audience, as you said, based on your website, and then you actually launched alitoo as well. Is there a story behind that?

[00:06:57 - 00:09:05]Yeah, more questions. That's all there was genuinely. It was. We ran that site over, well, those seven years, really, to 2017 or 16, actually. I think the idea first came up and through it was around 2015. We turned it into a full time business, or I did, but I hired somebody at the time. So I kind of think of it as we then who actually created the business? Me and Matthew. I took him on the day I incorporated it from a self employed hobby almost type thing into an actual company. And then over the next couple of years, we started building education. We started building courses. We started doing production for people as well. But really the big thing we were doing throughout that time was trying to get more of those questions, try to figure out really what people needed, because the only way they'd pay for the products we were creating, the courses we were creating, as if we were creating around the biggest, most painful questions they have. And so we created a lot of content based on those questions. But the biggest, most common one really was, how can I make editing easier? I don't want to be an audio engineer. I do not care what compression means, what EQ is. All of these weird and wonderful terms like Adobe audition just looked like a complete and utter nightmare. All these buttons, it looks like an airplane cockpit. That was really what kept coming through over and over and over again. Anytime we would ask, like, what's your biggest problem just now with podcasting? And so it just became obvious that if we could build something easier, something simpler, automate as much as we could, then that might turn into something that people really wanted. And so we just kind of jumped into that, started building a prototype, took on a developer to really build a really simple first version to figure out if it was possible to automate some elements of how people make podcasts, if it was possible to create an editing platform that was just so much more streamlined than audition, audacity, whatever it is, because they're made for engineers, they're made for audio engineers, for people that need to work with 30 layers of audio and all that kind of stuff. So, yeah, and that's where it started, really. And it turned out it was possible. So that's how we ended up where we are now.

[00:09:05 - 00:10:07]Wow. And you have an amazing, amazing product that I know that you're having a bit of fun, I would say, look, building even out into moin. And it was interesting because when we had a conversation recently, the theme of, you know, you just listening to and asking the right questions kept coming through, because even when I asked you, hey, what are you excited about for this year? Or what are you working on? And literally just comes, always comes back to, well, you know, I'm just going to build what my users tell me they need through you asking the right questions, which is awesome. Okay, so I want to spin back around to this challenge that you mentioned. So it is all about visibility and traffic. So over the last 1314 years, well, let's say twelve to 13 years, you know, you've correct me if I'm wrong, but it's been like an upward trend in growth, right? At least to traffic to your website and can you just maybe either a range or percentage? Like, what has that drop been in the last. Recently when you've kind of looked at it and been like, oh, okay, we have a problem here?

[00:10:07 - 00:11:28]Yeah, I mean, yeah, it was an upward growth rate through to 2020 into 21. It was. I mean, this is the trouble. I think everyone has basically seen it. So it's not just us, it's that boom that came through. Covid, everyone had time to start their own podcast. Everyone had start to pick the time to become a creator, take on those, those projects, those dreams that they'd had for years. And there was definitely a pullback in that in the year after. So going into 22, we saw a lot of those podcasts die off because people suddenly had to go back to work. They didn't have enough time, or it was just a dream. And actually they didn't really have the kind of commitment to stick with it, whatever that might be. And so, yeah, I mean, I think around that time, traffic probably dropped down a good 2020, 5% from the peak of COVID but that was fine. I kind of thought that was kind of bringing forward traffic, but I was hoping the trend would start to continue up again. But we've definitely seen it flat pretty much since then, and even a bit of a decline, not massive 10% or so since then. But I don't know how are you seeing at the moment? I feel like at the moment, a lot of that is looking at other podcasting websites, people talking to people like yourselves as well. Dear Dre, a lot of people are saying that the podcast industry has definitely shrunk a little bit since COVID because of that boom. Is that. Is that trending with yourself as well?

 

[00:11:28 - 00:12:53]Oh, for sure. Yeah. Yeah, 100%. So I think we all know that Covid was a special period in time to a point where people, you know, had the time to actually, and probably had a bit of cabin fever as well. So it was like, instead of being able to go out, like, how do we. How were they creating communities or conversations or, you know, the things that they. The connections that they needed? And this, you know, podcasting was just a natural extension of that, I think. So that is, for sure a right assessment around declines. But I want to dig into that a little bit more as well, because for sure, you know, right time, right place, even when you started kind of wrong time, wrong place, like, in a way with COVID and, you know, hitting and stuff. But, like, even now, what. What are things that you think through around. Oh, okay, Houston we have a problem type thing. Like, how long do you take? Because I think a lot of us sometimes might be like, you know, we have a system in place and it's, it's been working. It's been working. It's been working and then it doesn't work. But then we do. We rationalize that, right? We rationalize that trend and we're like, oh, well, it's probably just, you know, it's, it's summer and people are busy doing other things. Or it's winter, it's too cold. You know, we rationalize these things. So how long do you kind of let these observations go before you're like, okay, we actually have to do something about this?

[00:12:53 - 00:14:34]Yeah, I would like to say there's probably two parts of me here. I would like to say I'm always the logical, rational part of myself that knows that there's always fluctuations, there's always, there's holidays, like you say, there's the summer, winter, there's special occasions, whatever there is, that do make things go up and down. And I used to, I had a really good mentor actually, a few years back who was from much more traditional industry, and I found that really interesting actually, because I would be looking at stats like every few days. Id be looking at numbers up and down, up and down. And im like panicking when somethings down 5%. Im deliberating when its up five. And hes like we only looked at our stats once every quarter. Thats the management reports we got back then. And that was good actually, because it meant you were buffered from the horrible ups and downs that dont actually mean anything. Whereas in reality, ill look at our income, our revenue, and ill see that our free hour free trial sign ups have been down half what they normally are for three days in a row or something. And ill suddenly start panicking for a whole day and spend a day looking at whats broken and something must be broken. And then obviously the next day its back up to normal or more and then its back to the other normal trend line. And its just the fact that when were working with numbers that arent in the, if we had a few hundred people signing up for free trials every day, then we probably wouldnt see that kind of fluctuation. When you're working in the dozens of people a day, you know, you can easily go from ten to 30 to 20 to five to ten to 20. And that's just normal randomization. So that's what I have to try and remember. But I'm very bad at actually sticking to it. Are you any better than I said about that?

 

[00:14:34 - 00:15:04]I probably don't do. We definitely have gone away from being too frequent, so we're trying weekly right now. But I do want to be able to get to a point where we can go maybe even monthly or like just seeing that. Because I think the thing is that we do have to stay on top of the numbers, but not to the point of panicking and freaking ourselves out, but just to inform trends, right? Like if it is a downward trend for consecutive weeks, then okay, there is something going on versus to your point, on a daily basis. There is probably that fluctuation that's going to happen for sure.

[00:15:05 - 00:15:30]I think that's the problem, isn't it? Like in our area, you can have a checkout glitch that does actually that you can cut your sign ups to zero for a few days if you don't notice it, or even just a percentage, which is even worse. Like, if it's a small glitch that only affects a certain amount of people, you lose like 20%. And it's kind of harder to notice stuff like that. It's just slightly scary.

[00:15:30 - 00:15:47]But let's talk about the traffic, the visibility part of it. So you had a chat with your team member. You said today even. What was that to kind of, was it just an awareness chat or was it a hey, let's do something about it and let's start thinking through what it is that we can do type of chat?

[00:15:47 - 00:17:21]It was more today. I think it was more than an acknowledgement that this is definitely a trend, as opposed to something that's just temporary. And the trouble is, we're always kind of working on the right things. So we have, Matthew still manages our content. We have two or three great writers. We're lucky to work with some really good people there. So we're always putting out two, three, four blog posts a week and putting out videos, putting out podcast episodes. We're always updating our old articles like we've been doing what should be the right things for years. So it's not that we can suddenly change massively, is the trouble presuming it's not about publishing more, which I don't think it is, I don't think we should be publishing more. I think it's more about thinking about whether we expand what we write about, or whether we work with different people to publish our stuff elsewhere, syndicate our content, or whether it is we actually create a new brand and actually tackle a different area. Maybe we saturated the area. We're in. I think that's where it was. We started talking about the fact that we probably have to have a bigger strategy chat around our content. That's really thinking more than just what can we do this week? But this is like, I think we need to make a new plan for the next year, two years, five years, presuming our site is still going to be around in ten years time. Like, what's that going to be like? So we have a big planning session coming up next week actually, where that is exactly what I think we're going to talk about and really put out some, probably some crazy ideas to some normal ones and then see what is it worth investing in over the next few months.

 

[00:17:21 - 00:18:18]Yeah, I love that. But what I actually really, really appreciate about what you said was that I think when a lot of us might go into panic mode, it's like, okay, well, we have to do more of the thing, right? We have to do, okay, this isn't working. Let's just go to daily blog posts or intraday blog posts and let's just keep pumping up. But you're like, no, that's not, we don't need to publish more, we don't need to create more content. We just need to think about it differently, which is a really, really important lesson, I think, for any of us to do this. It's not always about more. And that's kind of in a way very aligned to what it is that we try to do around being intelligently lazy. It is very much about, hey, it's not always sometimes more. It's how do we get smarter at doing certain things? And it sounds like that's the path that you're going down, which, you know, some examples you rattled off around. Is it syndication of it? Is that it is a different, it's a smarter way of thinking about the problem rather than just defaulting to, we just got to get more stuff out there.

[00:18:18 - 00:19:22]Yeah, exactly. And there's even just, I mean, there's huge external factors just now around Google is just, I've seen so many reports that the results have been as erratic in the last few months as they have been ever, just because Google is having such a battle with AI generated content just now, AI blog posts and the like. And how do we stay relevant in a world where even if people still use Google to search, they might not. What if they actually just everything, all of the search traffic moves towards LLMs and AI and stuff and maybe people will never do that anymore and they want attribute potentially, or even if they do they've got a good enough answer? So why bother going to the attribution? So there's a whole, yeah, there's a whole set of big questions. I think right now that there always is, isn't there? You always kind of feel like today is the worst thats ever been in terms of your challenges and all that kind of stuff. But I feel like right now there is more big picture questions, more potential threats to the content industry than there ever has been. So, yeah, a lot of big chance to have.

[00:19:22 - 00:20:17]Yeah, I mean, I think one thing that you have done well and that you do have in your corner is youve been able to build quite a decent community off the back. This traffic that youve, that you've received. And because I always think about, you know, the dangers of lying on things like, quote unquote, the algorithms, whether that's on search or whether it's on social media and stuff, is that to your point? Things change, things break, you know, new things come up. And at the end of the day, it's like if we don't have our community there in some form, whether that's even just on email, like an email list, or whether that is in a landing place, then we are way more exposed. So what are your thoughts on that around? I know it's always good to get more and more traffic. Of course, with all this, the changing, how do we almost go back and look at the people who've already engaged with us or given us money, and how do we use that to our advantage?

 

[00:20:17 - 00:21:45]Yeah, you're absolutely right. Yeah, I thought about that all the time. That's been a big job for our last decade, has been turning that transient traffic into fans of what we do that come back again and again, and we can control that communication as well. Like, email has always been a huge part of our marketing. We've always run a mailing list. I've not always taken the best advantage of it, as in, we've had times where we've not been great at sending out a newsletter every single week. But in recent years we have. And we've done a lot more with it in recent years too. As I realized that we need to even more lean into that than we used to. We started building a community, like you said a few years ago, an actual community using circle, and we call it indie pod. And it's just for independent podcasters, totally free to join. It's just good conversations and trying to nurture those relationships. So yeah, I think it's really, really important. I mean, it goes into the content as well, doesn't it? I always feel like that's where podcasting and video, to an extent, really come into the mix because people read our blog posts, but then we often link out to a podcast episode or a recording of some sort that kind of expands on that or at least tells some stories around Diggs enhances it with the personality of the person speaking. So that's when people really get to know us and get to trust us and hopefully stay in our ecosystem from then on. So. Yeah, absolutely. It's always been a huge part of what we work on.

[00:21:45 - 00:22:28]Yeah, I'm going to be really, really curious to think about how, like, in terms of when you've identified this particular challenge, which is that traffic has really dropped and things started going through your mind about, okay, maybe the paddock set in a little bit, but then it's like, okay, take a deep breath, step back, and let's actually try to think through this in a way where we can actually problem solve. And so through that process, talk how you felt during that. Like, what were those emotions? And I know, I feel like I might have put some into your mouth already, but you can definitely expand on that. And how are you feeling now about the potential plan that you have that you've put in place?

[00:22:28 - 00:25:19]I mean, it's tough. It's tough feeling with creep in. It's like you feel. There's definitely points where I've felt a little bit like all the work you've put in over the last. I've put in over the last 14 years, it's like, is that not going to pay off? Is it all going to go away? Oh, my gosh, is this line going to suddenly drop off? And it's. Yeah, I mean, it's just, there's definitely moments I went through that. I think I'm generally not too bad at wallowing and I'm happy to experience that. Not, not happy to. That's the bad word for it. I'm willing to acknowledge that you need to experience that and then kind of work through it, but I usually tackle it by making plans and taking action and doing something about it, like you just suggested there as well. So every time that kind of kicks in and it does kick in, for sure, absolutely get that. A little bit of panic, a little bit of, you know, I am down about that direction. All that work is not paying off yet. I mean, I'm feeling quite, I think we've got a bunch of plans, a bunch of ideas around what we could do to tackle it. Over the next year, the next two years. And I think there's something as well around. I've got a little bit of optimism as well, that our personality, the humanity that people we have behind our writing, our brand, we put quite a lot of humour and silliness into our articles. They're definitely not just how to, and I'm sure not everyone likes that. I'm sure we've put readers off because of that. But I like to think, and I hope we've had feedback to this, to this degree, that the people that do like it, which is most like us more because of it. So we'll stick around and tend to always come to our site rather than just searching on guy or something similar. So that's part of the hope that we keep doing that, we keep writing that human content that'll pay off for us. But also I do think we need to make sure we're keeping with the trend. Like there's so many shifting trends in content just now and we have plans around that. We've got a lot of plans around doing much more video focused content. Definitely not moving away from audio only, but enhancing it with video. Certainly there's definitely a trend there. Tying it in with video on YouTube as well, tying it in with short form, because all the podcasters we work with, they don't, there's not many of them only do a podcast. Most of the podcasters we work with, maybe that's the central key to their content work, but they'll often do other things as well because anyone that likes to create, likes to create just about anything. And so we all play around with lots of different stuff. So I think that's part of it is we're going to expand our content a bit in that way. That is definitely one of the tactics. But yeah, we've got a range of other things as well we want to try. And I always like talking through with, especially that member of a team earlier that I was talking to. He's always got some great kind of crazy out there ideas as well. So between us, we'll come up with a good plan for the next twelve months that we're planning to play on and then yeah, even some bigger picture stuff for the next few years.

[00:25:19 - 00:25:53]Yes. This is why I love talking to other entrepreneurs, because there's just this innate sense of not just optimism, but like belief in ourselves that we have to have. I guess if we didn't fundamentally believe in our ability to get out of whatever challenge it is that we find ourselves in or facing, then I mean, the whole thing just falls apart. And that's what I'm hearing really loud and strong coming from you. It's like, yeah, it's gonna be fine. Like, yeah, this is a challenge and, you know, but it will be good. We just put a plan in place and then just execute on that.

[00:25:53 - 00:26:18]I think it's about, yeah, I'm sure you're the same. Like, you'll have solved dozens of problems over here, your time creating capsule and creating what you do. So the more of them you solve and the more that you kind of come through the other end, the more confidence I think you have that you can pretty much figure out most things for sure. And if it's big enough to defeat you, then it probably deserves to. And you'll be like, fair enough, I'll move on. It's fine. I'll figure that out instead.

[00:26:19 - 00:26:33]Okay, well, I want to talk a little bit more about Alitoo and some of the really cool things that you have coming up. So can you share with us that basically, first of all, what is Alatu for anyone who doesn't know what it is? And then what are some really exciting things that you and the team are working on?

 

[00:26:34 - 00:28:38]Yeah, well, I mean, like I said earlier, it started out with that kind of desire to make editing easier. So originally it was just an editing app that was focused solely on podcasters. Makes it much easier to make your podcast. And it evolved over the years so that now we've got call recording built in, we've got slow recording, audio cleanup. So it makes noise reduction leveling, all that kind of stuff makes you sound good. It's got transcription built in, so you can edit via the transcript with the text or, and I think you can do both. Adjust with the audio waveform or edit that way if you like, and then hosting as well on the other end too. So it's really, it's designed to just make it as easy as possible to make a podcast from start to finish. And then over the next few years, I mean, we've just come out with video in the call recording rooms. We were always audio only first, and then we've added in ums and has removal, like fuller word removal and stuff as well. So they were the two big things we've been working towards over the last twelve months. And next really is bringing in being able to do something with that video. So a lot of podcasts trend is a little bit, whether rightly or wrongly, trend is moving towards a bit more video podcasting, certainly. So people want to use that they want to move the, use the video, repurpose it for shorts, for promotion and stuff does work quite well for some shows. So having that in there is a focus over the next few months and then beyond that, you know, right now we're kind of at an exciting place where weve got about 510 different ideas and directions of where we could take alitoo and potentially even some quite niche ones, maybe even creating some use cases for some quite niche particular industries. That kind of stuff got some really interesting ideas that we could do with it, rather than continuing to go down a completely general podcasting app route and maybe even do both in parallel potential to build both, too. So we're going to be deciding on that in a few weeks time, actually at a big strategy meeting that we're having. But yeah, I've got a few nice ideas there, certainly. So, yeah, I'll be excited to figure that out for the rest of this year and then into the next.

[00:28:38 - 00:28:58]This is such a fun stage that you're in around like, well, the world is kind of our oyster right now. We have a blank canvas and we can take whatever. I mean, it's fun. It can also be scary because I'm sure there's a part of you, Colin, that, but I think there's actually no wrong path that you can take because every. I'm firm believer that every path leads you to the right one.

[00:28:58 - 00:30:07]Yeah, ultimately. So I like the one that I kind of most. I think there's a few things the podcast industry tell me if you think this is right, Deirdre, but I think that's kind of one of the things that most people are concentrating on is obviously the monetization aspect, like how do you get help people make more money with podcasting? Because I suppose if you solve that, you generally will make, if you help people make money, there's more chance you'll make money in your app. But one of the aspects that I always hear people talking about is the engagement side of things, like how do I get more engagement with my audience? How do I get more? It's more of a two way conversation, as opposed to you just broadcasting out to the world. Get more feedback, get more comments, get your audience to talk to each other as well. There's something in that that I'd really like to tackle, and there's elements of the podcasting 2.0 framework that tie into that, being able to do cross platform comments and things like that cross platform community, or being able to bring in more listener feedback, more listener opinions into your content things like that. There's a lot in there I think could be a really powerful direction for us in future

[00:30:08 - 00:30:25]Well, if you want a totally random stranger coming to your strategy meeting, talking, I love this stuff. I love coming up with the ideas and seeing and just projecting the future and stuff. But, yeah, the offer's there. Colin's all I'm saying.

[00:30:25 - 00:30:29]Oh, happy to. Let's do it.

[00:30:29 - 00:30:35]All right. We'll have a strategy. Maybe we'll record a podcast episode out of it. We'll record a podcast episode out of a strategy. Strategy, catch up.

[00:30:35 - 00:30:38]That's a good idea. Yeah, we'll publish it.

[00:30:38 - 00:30:38]Yes.

[00:30:38 - 00:30:41]Redacted. Lots of redacted stuff. Perhaps.

[00:30:41 - 00:30:45]Where can people, if they want to try alitu, where should they go?

[00:30:45 - 00:30:51]They can go over to. They can find it over@alitu.com and they'll find it there.

[00:30:51 - 00:30:54]Amazing. Awesome. You know where you can get those links?

[00:30:54 - 00:30:54]Yep.

[00:30:54 - 00:31:15]They're right there in the notes below. And if you want to hang out with other entrepreneurs just like you who are creating content to get them more clients, then you want to join our free community on Facebook, aptly named, get more clients with your content. I've left the link for that below as well. Thanks so much for joining us. My name is Deidre Tshien. Stay intelligently lazy.

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Colin Gray

Software & education for Podcasters and content creators > ThePodcastHost.com for teaching > Alitu.com for recording, editing & hosting. Speaks on podcast success, content marketing, entrepreneurship & creative business.