Jolt Country

We need to get this going again.

We should come up with a guide to success for promoting projects. While some of it can be left up to chance, I think there's definitely a list of actions that can be followed to ensure at least mild success in building a listener base.

Step one is, love it or hate it, you have to be a part of social media. To me this means (at a minimum) Facebook and Twitter. The theory's the same for both, I think. Set up accounts for your show and post funny things. Then hope people share them, which spreads the word of your show to a new audience. You can also tie the show directly to them. For YDKF on Facebook, I announce the show's topic early and also when I release the show I announce it there first. That gives people a reason to Like the page. I share my Twitter account across several projects but the idea's the same. Ideally I should make another Twitter account for the show -- I just don't feel like managing a fourth one at this point.

Step two is, consistency of releases. Once you miss a couple of episodes people quit coming back. In the early days of YDKF when I was only releasing a few episodes each year I couldn't buy a listener. Now that I'm doing it weekly, the audience has multiplied astronomically. Before I was happy to get 100 downloads for an episode, now some of them have 10,000 downloads.

Step three is, put out a good product. The DR Show has excelled in this. The shows are funny and the recording quality is great. The sound board is a nice, professional-sounding touch. Being able to Skype people in (and the occasionally goof-ups that brings) is another plus. People won't return for crappy quality recordings. I had a couple of episodes with crackling and popping mic sounds and I lost a lot of people during that time.

I think the hardest thing to do in the world would be to build the number of live listeners. That's tough, and it's tougher if you're not consistent with your show dates and times. Broadcast television is struggling to get people to watch shows live these days with everybody using DVRs these days, so I think getting people to tune in to a podcast would be infinitely more difficult. I'd shoot for the podcast market first. I had a lot of people tell me flat out if the show wasn't on iTunes, they wouldn't listen to it. I had others tell me that about Stitcher. I have my show replicating to half a dozen places now. The good news is, once you get that stuff set up it runs itself -- there's no manual involvement in replicating the show out. Between the social media posts and the show aggregates, word will get out little by little.

That's what I'm doing anyway, and it seems to be working. Whatever you decide to do I hope it involves putting out new episodes. I think the general consensus is that we miss the show.

We have to get Ben to want to do this on a regular basis. Everything else is secondary; the ambition is all!

So what's it gonna take?


THE
OPTIONS
AARDVARK

AArdvark wrote:We have to get Ben to want to do this on a regular basis. Everything else is secondary; the ambition is all!

So what's it gonna take?

Desire. If you want something like this to succeed, you gotta want it, bad, I did a web comic for a while, then other things got in the way and basically after about 3 iissues I gave up on it, basically because doing an actual comic is a lot of fucking work, as I noticed in the comic itself, upwards of 2 hours per panel. Plus, like Don Rogers, I killed myself in the series.

I mean, since I had to build all of the "sets" and backgrounds from scratch I didn't have pre-done materials so it takes a while. After a few weeks it probably would have taken a lot less time since the backgrounds would have been set and wouldn't need to be done over, but it was still a lot of work in the interim.

Especially since nobody is making any money off this; money causes a lot more enthusiasm.

AArdvark wrote:So what's it gonna take?

A pizza and a hooker.

See, that's just a matter of a couple phone calls. We could even arrange for the pizza from here. I've heard of it being done before.

THE
THIRTY MINUTES
HOT AND FAST
AARDVARK

Don, how about your throw out a date for a new one?

We have a few topics. We could talk about the poor sales for Bundle in a Box.

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote:We have a few topics. We could talk about the poor sales for Bundle in a Box.

I just retweeted that. I was hoping my posts would triple your sales but it appears to have had little affect.

Wouldn't it be great if Don Rogers did a Masters Week golf show!

I know it's not pizza and hookers but what's it gonna take?


THE
ALWAYS HOPEFUL
AARDVARK

It's in Ben's hands now.

How about a two hour show where Don Rogers just watches the Masters tournament on TV and simply describes what is happening and opines.

And just ad-lib during the commercials.


THE
MUST BE GETTING
FUCKING DESPERATE
AARDVARK

Hey, that might actually be fun. A live Don Rogers Masters cast.

It'd be on Saturday. Would anyone be around to listen?

There!

There!

Saturday just got good again.

So when will Don Rogers be crawling out of teh crypt?

he should do more 'live remotes!'

That was good! I'm working on more news.


THE
AP/UPI
AARDVARK