This week, we had something that doesn't happen often outside of the Super Bowl—lots of Americans watched the same thing at the same time. Today, I thought we could look at WHY and what podcasters can learn to add those winning ingredients to their podcasts.
Audience Survey
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Takeaways:
- Building anticipation for your content is crucial; promoting months in advance can lead to significant engagement.
- Making your content easily accessible across various platforms maximizes audience reach and convenience.
- Tying your content to emotions or nostalgia can significantly enhance audience connection and engagement.
- Creating unique content that can't be found elsewhere is a powerful way to attract viewers.
- Ensure the consumption process of your content is smooth; technical issues can drive audiences away.
- Monetizing an audience, rather than just the podcast, is key to long-term success.
I will share some insight you’ve heard me say before. So why am I repeating some things? To Show consistency. We had a very popular program, and we are going to pick apart why a program was so popular that it broke Netflix.
Netflix reported that 60 million households globally tuned in to watch the fight. The viewership peaked at 65 million concurrent streams during the main event.
Plenty of Notification
The fight was announced in March and was supposed to happen in July. That was four months. In the end, it happened in November when Mike had a physical issue. So it had 8 months of promotion. The event had lots of play on social media and on mainstream media. This kind of exposure would be hard to deliver as a podcaster, but you should start the build-up at least a few months and tease the audience so that they feel like they HAVE to consume the content or feel left out once it arrives.
Ease of Content:
By offering the event live on its platform at no additional cost to subscribers, Netflix made the fight easily accessible to a vast global audience, contributing to the high viewership numbers. I subscribed.
So for podcasters you show should be in all the apps. Apple, Spotify, Amazon, iHeart. Why? Because there are people who listen to content on those apps. I think we’ve seen when podcasts go exclusive on a platform, it dosn’t work in the long run. You need to meet your audience where they are. The beauty of podcasting is it’s an open format. Meaning the power of choice is in the audience’s hands.
Information You Can’t Get Any Place Else
It had been 19 years since Mike Tyson had been in an official boxing match. So this was something you can’t get anywhere else. He did an exhibition match in 2020.
Emotional Edge to the Story
Mike Tyson is known as the baddest man on the planet, and those who loved him were excited to see him get in the ring. Jake Paul is a known “problem child” and a bit full of himself, so all the 50-year-old men wanted to see if Mike could do it.
The WHN Effect
What happens next? This is Mike Tyson, who famously bit part of a Man’s ear off. At the weigh-in, Tyson smacked Logan in the face. Mike is HIGHLY unpredictable. Even when it was obvious that Mike was not going to win, I remember when Mike was in trouble, and with one punch, he would just level someone.
A Well-Thought Out Ending
Jake had somewhat of a no-win situation. If he knocked out Mike, he would’ve beaten up a much older man who is an icon. Many (including me) felt Jake could’ve knocked him out. In the last seconds of the last round, he put up his arms in a “We’re not worthy” motion and politely bowed to Tyson. This was a classy move, and gave people something to talk about. This again pulls on the heartstrings.
Other Lessons
Netflix had problems streaming it causing the broadcast to buffer over and over. When consuming the content is frustrating, people won’t do it. For example, if your audio level varies greatly from person to person, many people will press delete instead of riding the volume knob. Hopefully, they don’t press unfollow.
Paul said at a press conference that he would make 40 million, and it has been estimated that Tyson Made 20 million. Neither of these income numbers has been confirmed.
So, with months of promotion, an event couldn’t get any place else, that you knew people were going to be talking about, had an interesting story, pulled on your heart strings, pulled on nostalgia, and had you wondering what was going to happen.
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