The Working Experience: Growing our Brand by Using our Data
Matty Kerr is co-creator with John Brancaccio of The Working Experience. Listen to our podcast on iTunes and Spotify and visit our website: theworkingexperience.com for videos, merchandise and more. You can also find us on Facebook, Linked In, Instagram, and Twitter.
Our podcast audience is growing. No doubt about it. We have more downloads and more unique listeners than we did three months ago.
The primary reason for this is that we have made each episode more focused.
Our numbers were dropping off significantly for episodes that lasted more than 40 minutes. John and I were rambling for way too long about unrelated topics and apparentky people found this tedious.
We know that because we look at our data.
So, we decided to:
- Tighten up the long form episodes to no more than 30 minutes and make sure we jump right into the topic and stay focused.
- Try some 10–15 minute episodes that we call The Master Class which consist of 5–6 bullet points of advice on topics such as:
How to Spot a Liar
How to Spot a Narcissist
Why Businesses Fail
How to Deal with an Unreasonable Boss
The numbers for these Master Classes are great, better than we have ever done. John and I are frankly rather surprised at how well they are doing.
And this fact is supports two key points:
1. It is essential to make decisions based on feedback
According to Bloomberg, 8 out of 10 businesses fail in the first 18 months and one of the primary reasons for this is that they do not respond to feedback; they do not look at their data.
Our decision to do the Master Classes and to shorten the regualr episodes overall was in direct response to looking at our numbers.
You have got to see what works and adjust accordingly.
2. It is essential to try new ideas.
We did Thank God It’s Monday episodes which bombed.
We did Thank God It’s Friday episodes which bombed even worse.
We have tried a number of other formats and gimmicks which have bombed.
But we keep trying new things.
Many businesses fail because they do not stand out from other businesses. They also do not make adjustments when business falls off; they do not respond to the times, new needs, new audiences.
Adapt or die, as they say.
Maintaining a consistent core identity keeps an audience coming back.
According to statistics, people tend to order the same dish when they go to a restaurant. According to one of our guests who owns an ice cream shop, 80% of her customers order the same flavor every time.
Trying new things does not mean changing our core identity. We are The Working Experience which means we discuss issues related to work. We may talk about filmmaking, sports, politics, newscasting or writing but it all within the context of work. Our guests come from many different professions: authors, economists, witchcraft, acting, filmmaking, real estate etc. No matter what the profession, we discuss the work and how they do it.
Our guest episodes do quite and we have found, again, based on the data, that even if those run longer people still stay listening. That is most likely due to the fact that if, for example, I am interviewing a guest, it more natural to stick to the topic at hand because we don’t know each other. And our audience wants to listen to different guests on different topics rather than just John and I all the time.
What we need to maintain is the common link of discussing how they do their work, the process by which they do their work and how they see their work in a broad societal context.
We always want to stick with that.
It can seem contradictory: trying new things but remaining consistent. It is delicate balancing act and it can be hard to know when to keep going with an idea in order to give it time to catch on or scrap it because it doesn’t work.
I don’t think anyone knows the answer to that dilemma. But I can say that the more shots you take, the more likely one will go in.
Be patient.
