Welcome to another edition of Voics Voices. This newsletter helps you launch, grow and monetise your podcast. In this edition, I’ll break down exactly how you can get listeners to hit play on your podcast.

Getting users to hit play can be the biggest hurdle to overcome for podcast hosts. Before you learn how to get a user to hit play, you need to understand why.

Introducing triggers.

Trigger are an event that drives a user to take action. For a trigger to be effective, the cost of inaction must be greater than taking action. The factors that contribute to triggers include:

• Relevancy
• Relatability
• Curiosity
• Emotion

Your episodes need to hit at least two triggers.

Hit three triggers, you’re onto a winner.

Hit all four. It’s going to be special.

Triggers are important because they draw fresh eyes to your episodes and make episodes irresistible.

For example, a podcast about an ordinary guy who went from nothing to millions and retired his parents triggers these factors.

Why?

• YOU want the thing he has
• YOU can relate to the struggle
• YOU are curious to learn more
• YOU find it relevant to your journey
• YOU feel an emotional reaction to his story

With that out of the way, let’s break down the components of getting users to hit play:

1. Title

There are many ways to write titles for sure. I’ve found that the most effective titles are simple actions that are short and concise. The longer the title, the more room there is for confusion.

If your title is too long, it overruns and you can’t even see it on the screen. That doesn’t trigger me to click on it, it makes me want to drop off.

On audio, I like to lead titles with an episode increment followed by the guest. The episode number establishes trust and the guest name shows relevancy. If listeners don’t know the guest, the title comes into play.

Here are some examples that really popped off:

• From Addiction to $1.5 Million Per Year
• Sacrifice Now For Decades of Freedom
• How To Thrive in Any Job Market
• The Psychology of High Performers

2. Design

The first podcast I ever listened to was Tim Ferriss. It was 6AM; I was sitting in a rundown university apartment waiting for the gym to open and all I could think about was,

“What does the guest look like?”

It used to piss me off. I’m quite a visual learner and needed to see what was going on.

I wanted to change that with podcasts. Each episode has a unique image that draws in the user and connects with them because they even hit play.

3. Descriptions & Timestamps

I have to admit; I used to be terrible at descriptions. After editing a podcast, I got super lazy and scribbled anything down in the descriptions.

I’ve learned that descriptions act as an important SEO element to drive your content to broader audiences on Google and YouTube.

Also, it allows users to understand who the guest is and what they will get from this episode.

Yet, the most important element here are timestamps.

Timestamps allow users to jump around your episodes to the section they enjoy most. Triggering them to hit play and improving the retention of episodes. I like to keep my timestamps short and actionable.

I hope you enjoyed this edition of Voics Voices. See you next week, internet friends.



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