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I typed my own brand, Podknows Podcasting,
into Google, spelled wrong completely on

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purpose because transcription services
keep hearing Podknows and delivering

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Podnose, as in the thing on your face.

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So I thought, right, let's go and
see what's living at that address.

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And yeah, sure enough, something
is living at that address.

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A whole podcast network, 14 or
so odd shows, says it's been

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going since 2013, and my first
thought was, well, no you haven't.

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This is Podmastery: Podcasting Insights.

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I'm Neal Veglio, 25 years in radio
and audio, and about a decade now

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helping independent podcasters like
you to figure out why the thing

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that they're building may not be
reaching the people it's building for.

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All right, so some more context here.

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When I started Podknows Podcasting,
I came up with the idea by

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a swimming pool in Mexico.

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I checked the name was available.

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Obviously, I checked the name
was available because you

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check a name's available.

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I searched it.

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I looked for anyone trading
as anything close to it.

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I made sure I wasn't about to
spend the next several years

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accidentally being someone else's
tribute act, and there was nothing.

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It was completely clear.

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So off I went. When I'm now later sat
there looking at a network claiming

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a 2013 heritage and I've never heard
of them, and I definitely checked,

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you can see where my head went.

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Somebody's noticed the transcript error.

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Somebody's now parked on
that transcript error.

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Somebody's backdating their own founding
to look established thanks to finding an

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opportunity based on that transcript error.

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And believe me, I was already
in the mood for writing the

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LinkedIn post ranting about this.

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I even had the first line written
down, and then I did the thing I

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keep telling other people to do,
which is check before you hit.

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They're real.

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They're properly real.

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There's a show on there that's been
running since about 2015, hosted by a

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writer called Tim Worthington, where he
gets guests on to talk about things they

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remember that nobody else remembers.

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There's a film show called Cinema Limbo
that's been going for years as well,

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and there's one with 270-odd episodes.

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There's a network that runs on
donations, an actual fundraiser

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to keep those shows free.

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That is not the behaviour of a man
cashing in on my brand equity.

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That's a bloke who's liked podcasts and in
2013 called his thing Podnose because pod

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and nose is, I guess, quite funny, and
he spent 12 years just getting on with it.

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He's probably never even heard of me.

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He probably has no idea that I exist.

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And for a good few minutes back there,
I was the villain in this story.

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Yeah, I said it, and that's the
really useful part in all of this.

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Here's what I got wrong,
and it isn't the accusation.

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The accusation was just ego
pain resulting from a search.

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What I got wrong was much earlier
and frankly a bit more boring, and

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I suspect a lot of people within the
sound of my voice have made exactly the

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same mistake without ever finding out.

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I checked my name.

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I did not check my sound. Because
your brand actually has two names.

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There's the one you spell, the one
that's on the artwork, on the website,

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on any correspondence you send, and
then there's the one the machines hear.

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Descript hears it.

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Riverside hears it.

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Castmagic hears it.

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YouTube's auto captions hears it.

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Apple's built-in transcription hears it.

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Siri hears it.

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Your listener's Alexa when they
shout your show's name at it

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from across the kitchen hears it,

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and that second name is a real address.

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Somebody may already be there.

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Now, if it's just a transcription wobble
in your own show description, well, fine.

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Who cares?

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But follow it a bit further because
this is where it stops being trivial.

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Think about how people actually get
told about podcasts, not how we imagine

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that, not somebody carefully clicking a
tracked link from a beautifully designed

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Instagram carousel or a LinkedIn post.

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Think about how it really happens.

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Somebody's in the car.

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Their mate says, "You'd like
this show. It's called…"

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And then they say your name, your
podcast's show title out loud once at

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sixty miles an hour with the fan on.

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Or they hear you get name-checked
on somebody else's episode.

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Or maybe they catch it in a voice
note or from a bloke at a barbecue in

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Fareham who's had two ciders and is very
keen that you know about this podcast.

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They don't see your name.

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They hear it.

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And then at some point later that evening,
they type in what they thought they heard.

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And if what they heard belongs to
somebody else, well, that's it.

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That's the end of that road.

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They land somewhere quite plausible.

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It's got podcasts on it.

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It looks fine.

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And they think, "Oh,
this must be Podknows."

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And then they just get on with their
lives, all the while thinking that

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other potentially crap podcast is yours.

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And they're never gonna have the heart
to tell you that they listened for three

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seconds, and they never listened again
because they think it was your podcast,

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and they don't want to offend you.

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They don't want to upset you.

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Why would they?

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Nobody sits there thinking, "Hmm, I
wonder if this is a homophone situation."

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They found a podcast.

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It looked exactly how they would
imagine your podcast to look and sound.

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Job done.

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And you will never know that happened.

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There's no line on your dashboard
for the person who tried to find

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you but ended up somewhere else.

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Captivate can't measure that.

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Spotify can't measure that.

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There's no graph anywhere in podcasting
that shows your near misses, the people

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who heard about you, went looking
for you, and arrived somewhere else.

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That number could be zero.

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It could be 400.

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You have precisely no way of finding
out, and the only reason I found mine

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is that I happened to be annoyed about
a spellcheck, which means for however

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long this has been the case, and it
may well have been for years, I've been

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lovingly publishing what I'd like to
think is quality content and doing all

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the sensible things, tightening up the
audio, sharpening my titles, and all

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the while, there's been a perfectly nice
comedy podcast network secretly absorbing

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anybody who, when they heard Podknows,
heard Podnose instead of reading it. Not

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stealing, just being there, existing.

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Which, do you know what?

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Is somehow worse because
there's nobody to be angry with.

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Right, so now that we've established
that, what do you actually do about it?

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Well, the first thing, and it's completely
free, find out what your sound is.

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I'll come back to that in a minute
because it's the one thing I

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want you to actually go and do as
soon as you finish this episode.

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Secondly, once you know, say the
spelling out loud in your episodes.

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Not every 10 seconds like a personal
branding expert with Tourette's.

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Once in the outro.

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So for example, I always say, "That's
Podknows, P-O-D-K-N-O-W-S." It takes

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me two seconds, and it converts every
single person who's only ever heard me.

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Thirdly, if the phonetic version
is going spare, the domain, the

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handle, whatever it is, take it.

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It's usually about a tenner,
and it's the cheapest insurance

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in this entire industry.

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And fourth, since it'd be dumb not to
mention it, yes, you can trademark.

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And if your brand is carrying real money
right now, maybe clients, a product, a

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business that would genuinely be hurt
if someone parked next to it, then

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get proper advice and do it properly.

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But be clear-eyed about what it buys you.

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It is a few hundred quid.

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It takes months to come through.

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And in my case, it would have protected
me from a crime that nobody committed.

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A trademark stops bad actors.

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It does absolutely nothing
about the accidental ones.

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And the accidental ones are the ones
probably costing most of you listeners.

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After this short break, I'd love to
play you a podcast trailer from one

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of our Podmastery Community Members.

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We're gonna be opening the
doors to the public soon.

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If you'd like to join the founding
members list, go to podmastery.co/waitlist.

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Well, there you go.

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That's the sort of show that
deserves to be found by the

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people looking for it, doesn't it?

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Which brings me neatly to the one thing
I want you to go and do right now.

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Open the voice recorder on
your phone or in your notes

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app with a little microphone,
whatever dictates on your phone.

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Say the name of your show out loud
in a normal voice the way you'd

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say it to a mate, and then look
up what it typed and Google that.

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It'll take you about 90 seconds, and at
the end of it, you either find nothing

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and get on with your day, or you find out
you've got a phonetic twin and you've just

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discovered something about your own show's
discoverability that no analytics data

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on Earth would ever be able to tell you.

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I'd never have known any of this
if I hadn't typed my brand's name

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in wrong on a Thursday evening.

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Go and type yours in wrong.

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See who's there.

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I'm Neal Veglio.

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That's Podmastery: Podcasting Insights.

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Everything's at podmastery.co,
and good luck with your continuing

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journey towards podmastery.