Ethics of Podcasting

Transcript

building an indie business in the center of venture capital i am alex edmonds also known as supreme rumham on the internet and this is a building any business podcast all right so uh today i'm gonna be discussing ethics and podcasting i'm gonna go over some general things i'm gonna be talking about each thing that a podcaster can do to promote their podcast and how not to break ethical boundaries and then i'm going to be talking about ethics in terms of a community and running the community all right first i want to mention my book my book about podcasting what's the deal with podcasting um a link to it is in the show notes um you can use the promo code or discount code baib to get it for free as a listener of the podcast because the book would not exist without you um so you get to read it for free and it has extra content in it so these are things i didn't think about before i was writing the episode and so i added them into the book okay um all right let's get started all right so the general um things about ethics for podcasting are don't steal others other people's content if you hear something um from an article or on another podcast um just reference it put a link to it in the show notes okay um don't steal music without our don't put music in your podcast without having the owner's permission so don't put anything as your your intro music your outro music um a way to avoid this is just spend the money buying your own um intro music or outro music you can get something for like five bucks i know of a website that sells songs for 15 and it's a very small investment to avoiding a larger headache because um they might be able to sue you okay um don't rig your stats so don't pump up your stats your your download numbers to uh to try to get people to listen to your podcast or or use those rig stats to celebrate milestones so that people will see that oh you've ten thousand lessons uh maybe i should listen to it some people might think that way okay um don't use five dollar growth hackers okay so there are these people on some websites that will offer to pump up your podcast stats um for five dollars and it's very simple oh no what they're trying to do is they say hey i can get you in the top 200 chart for apple podcast for five dollars and so what they do is all they do is they create um apple accounts apple itunes accounts and then they subscribe to your podcast and they do this 30 30 40 50 times and that will get you in the top 200 and so that way anyone looking at the top 200 on apple um might see your podcast yeah and then the reason why you don't want to do this is because apple might take off your podcast from their directory and then it'd be hard to get back on okay um the next general uh tip i have or thing about ethics i have is don't trick people into listening to your podcast and what i mean by this is don't do a bait and switch don't say hey i have this guest and then you're just talking about that guest or something like that it uh it makes you look bad and uh people won't recommend your podcast after that and when you trick someone to listen to listening to your podcast um you're not getting a listener you're just someone listening to your podcast but they probably won't listen to it again and so you burn that bridge okay um the next thing i the last general tip i have is uh don't spread fake news and so what i mean by this is check your sources make sure you what you're talking about is true because someone might spread that news around and uh yeah it's uh it's unfortunate yeah okay there's already enough fake news don't you don't need to add to it that's what i'm saying okay so now for interviewing um the ethical thing with interviewing is cut out anything a guess asked to be cut and you want to do this because that builds trust um when someone else when someone asks a previous guest to about their experience interviewing with you as a host they can say something positive if you didn't if you cut out everything they ask um and that way you'll get more guests instead of burning bridges again and just for one little thing that a guest mention that you really want people to hear um okay so for surveys um don't go overboard and what i mean by this is don't take advantage of uh the people filling out your survey and ask them like 50 questions they'll get annoyed and they for they might stop listing your podcast because you overstepped a boundary with them and then also don't ask personal questions or like two personal questions don't ask for their social security number don't ask you know what i mean don't don't like ask them about their childhood um it gets to be too much at some point you should only really be talking about the podcast and asking them questions about the podcast yeah okay so for social media one thing to keep in mind with social media is don't spam and what i mean by this is one okay um so for social media when don't spam so what i mean by this is that um when people just because people post about content related to your podcast doesn't mean you have to promote your podcast um on that post you know what i mean so like if someone mentions um independent businesses i don't have to go plug my podcast every time someone does that um this is spamming it's not cool it can get you banned on some social media platforms or probably all of them i don't know i'm not a big fan of social media obviously so i don't really know um and it makes people not like you and um they're less likely to listen to your podcast and so you're losing you're losing potential listeners okay um email um the one thing that i would keep in mind in terms of ethics is respect the inbox already get a lot of email you don't need to email them constantly every update about your podcast or your business it gets annoying they will unsubscribe they might mark you start to mark your spam which hurts your your email list um yeah so respect your inbox respect your subscribers inboxes yeah all right so for writing don't keyword stuff your articles and so what keyword stuffing is um so when i think of keyword stuffing it's having images in your your blog post and then you create an alt tag um that stuffs keywords in your your image and so for those of you that don't know what an alt tag is it's an alternative tag and uh the alt tag is for screen readers and screen readers are for people that need to adapt adaptive technology to use the computer so it's for blind people and for people that can't hear as well and so when you use a screen reader it reads everything on the screen because you can't see it so instead of an image it's a caption for the image an alt tag is a caption for the image and so some people they will stuff keywords based on their article in that image and it'll be an image of like someone walking up the steps and they want to put like um like if i were to do for let's say i had an article about live streaming actually i do it's on the blog um not the point right now so let's say i had an image of someone um going up the steps or like a video game image of a on on a computer so i have an image of a video game on a computer and i have like for the outside i would have live stream in a podcast um live stream to grow your audience yeah that's keyword stuffing and you shouldn't do that because that's not what the image is you want to be inclusive and help people out that need some assistance on the computer and two you don't want to do this because it hurts your seo google will acknowledge the fact that you are keyword stuffing and uh it'll google will automatically lower your rank in the search results okay so for video um so when you're creating a video for your podcast um the thing to keep in mind in terms of ethics is to um not mislead people to watch your videos so this is very similar to the thing i talked about when i said oh don't trick people into listening to your podcast it's the same thing don't do a bait and switch for videos don't say oh i'm uh comedian bill burr will be on my in my video and then you only talk about billbear yeah that's the example i should have used in uh podcasting but okay um all right so the next one live events um so for live events i would say don't harass people at an event if they don't want your sticker or whatever you're handing to them don't follow them around and try to get them to take your sticker uh for two reasons not only two there's so many reasons why you shouldn't do that but i'm gonna mention a few reasons um all right so the first reason why you shouldn't do this is because um that makes you look bad it your your real life spamming someone basically and then this is a real life event like you could run into that person at the supermarket or at another event and then they're gonna be whispering about you they're gonna say hey um alex that guy over there he uh he harassed me at an event previously and he kept trying to make me take a sticker for his podcast and i was like dude i don't want to listen and the entire time he um he kept following me around trying to take a sticker even though i didn't want it super annoying guy don't talk to him and then no one will uh will want to take your sticker or talk to you at the event and everyone else sorry everyone else will be whispering about you and then that could snowball yeah um yeah that's why you don't want to harass people at events okay so for streaming um in terms of ethics you don't want to you shouldn't miscategorize your streams you should keep your streams to be as specific as possible in your category and the reason why you want to do this is because that is a form of tricking people when you miscategorize on purpose to get more views you're not getting actual viewers or loyal listeners um yeah and uh the streaming platforms might ban your account because you're not creating a good experience for their viewers and they care about the viewers more than the streamers yes um that goes for pretty much any platform by the way i should should have said that before okay um person on person promotions all i really have to say about that is honor your commitment to your p2p partner so in that episode i mention the fact that your p2p partner you have to trust them that they will put your show in their rss feed and um there's a chance that they might not do that don't be that guy who doesn't do that honor your commitments when you say you're gonna do something do it um okay in terms of monetization and i'm going to talk about this on both sides so don't lie about metrics your advertisers don't say you get a thousand downloads per episode when you don't and this is because they will find out very easily and here's how they will find out so they expect a certain number of clicks to their website when you announce when you advertise their their unnecessary product on your podcast um your their underwear subscription service all right i'll just say that and uh so when you don't reach that number then they will stop advertising on your podcast all right yeah so let's say you have a thousand downloads no let's say you say that you have a thousand downloads per episode so they're expecting maybe one percent maybe two percent so two percent of your listeners to go to their website that's 10 people yeah 10 to 20 people all right a low number and so when only five people show up to click on their service to their website they'll know that you don't have the numbers you say you do first of all they'll stop advertising immediately on your podcast stop paying you and then um in the future when you actually do hit those numbers um they might the new advertiser might want to contact an old advertiser to get an idea of what the experience is working with you and then those underwear guys have to say oh he's lying about his subscription numbers and then um that new company might not want to work with you yeah so that sucks don't do it okay for um listener donations i forget what i called it oh listeners pay the listener listeners pay model sorry i'm a little out of it today um honor your commitments to donors and so when you say you're going to do a q a or you're going to send every donor a t-shirt do that it looks bad when you don't um people are giving you money they're hard-earned money um and they they choose to give you their money when they can give it to someone else um so don't be don't yeah just just do what you you're gonna do do what you're gonna say especially to your donors because that sucks when when they don't when a someone doesn't fulfill their commitments even when that the other party doesn't even ask for them to no one asks you for a t-shirt okay um speaking of products don't sell bad products that sucks uh if you're gonna write a book hey um don't know don't sell uh a book for 35 and then it's only five pages um that makes you look bad when you go to sell a real product maybe like a sas or an actual book um people will not want to buy it because they had a bad experience buying your last product and they won't want to be burned again okay all right so um the final thing i want to say is that when it comes to ethics um i think about um a certain area that has a lot of venture capital money i won't say which one and uh in this area they believe that everything is a winner take all um market and it's not there can be two um competitors there can be 20 competitors um yeah that that idea of a winner take all market is a venture capitalist idea and it sucks it's horrible so in the case of podcasting this relates to the fact that people can listen to other people's podcasts there's not only one podcast that they can listen to so yeah there's no there's not one maker's podcast there's dozens and they can listen to all of them and mine not at the same time but still um there's room for everyone you don't need to steal someone's listeners you don't need to hack someone's rss feed and add your own podcast to that rss feed i'm not even sure if that's possible but you can hack their account and then delete change out your episodes for their episodes you don't need to do that i'm sorry i shouldn't even have brought that up but uh yeah you don't need to do that just keep that in mind please okay in terms of communities um for open podcasts there are at least a million podcasts out there right now and that means i have the opportunity to have um a million people join open podcast um i don't need that i i'm totally fine if 10 000 people want to join yeah and no one else wants to join um there are multiple communities though podcasting communities um these podcasters they can join multiple communities again it's not a winner take all market so if they want to join i don't know podcast open community they can come join open podcast community too um yeah um i'm okay if not everyone else yeah okay so i'm okay if not every podcaster wants to join open podcast but uh that doesn't mean i have to support the other podcast communities yeah i'm not gonna steal their members though i have my members they have their members it's fine we might mix it's totally fine yeah i say this because i keep getting invited to podcasting communities and i'm like no dude i have my own i have open podcasts leave me alone okay um final thing to keep in terms of um what am i going to say uh in terms of uh members and communities don't sell your community members data that sucks you can use their data to like you know use it yourself to improve the service and get more people to the community but don't sell it to other people that sucks um if you can't support yourself with like a hundred thousand members and you need to sell their data you suck um you can any dude it's so easy to have a hundred thousand users or members and support yourself write a book ask for donations if you can't do that then you suck and you shouldn't have your own community um okay that's all i have thank you for listening um if you want to host your own uh podcast episode you can check out um come to open podcast i mean um we'll talk talk to me about wanting to host an episode and i'll set that up all you need to do send me the audio and send me what you want in the show notes and then if you want to guest host or guest post on the blog the open podcast blog blog.openpodcast.xyz um same thing reach out to me and i will give you um author access okay thank you for listening again have a nice day bye