Behind the Scenes #14: It’s a marathon, not a sprint
Behind the Scenes #14: It’s a marathon, not a sprint
Exhausted and overwhelmed… how much longer can I continue? Learning about ads and experimenting with episode experiments.
👠 What is Statement Mondays? It’s a podcast for college and early-career women about being bold and authentic in the workplace. I interview career-minded women with strong identities who give examples, advice, and tools that inspire listeners to bring more of who they are into what they do.
👩🏼🎨 Since last time:
I launched episode two new episodes:
I ran an ad campaign on Instagram this past Friday-Sunday and spent ~$220 of Fb ad credit (a monthly perk of working at Facebook!)... see learnings for results
I submitted a formal “Promotion Request” to Apple Podcasts to ask them to promote Statement Mondays in honor of Women’s History Month. Shouldn’t get my hopes up…
I participated in a “Radio Race” aka 24hr podcast hackathon with a team of 3 as part of the On Deck fellowship -- we created a 5 min podcast for the theme “Looking Forward”
I’m considering a new logo that uses a pic of me! Apparently a more interesting & engaging logo improves chances of getting featured, among other things. Curious what you think of these?
Logo options: Striped arrow with host name, solid arrow with "be bold" border, or existing logo
🧠 #1 thing on my mind: Sticking to my goals and experimenting
Stress and time constraints these past two weeks were a great forcing function for me to rethink my episode style and experiment & get creative with the content I push out. I sought a lot of advice from both peers and experts about whether I should 1. Move to launching biweekly, 2. Take a break and call the current episodes “season 1,” or 3. Try out a less work-intensive episode format. Ultimately I chose option 3 for two reasons: a main goal with this podcast is to stay consistent, and I could also use this episode instead as an opportunity to engage more with listeners.
My other primary goal is to actually succeed in reaching and inspiring other young women -- so how can I do that if I am not publishing anything? For context, in episode 8 I pose a challenge for listeners (start an adrenaline journal!), read a few comments about Statement Mondays from listeners, and generally try to kick off listeners’ mornings with a bang. Even if this episode flunks I will learn a lot about what content and formats do or don’t work -- and at least I will have tried it out! If I’m in this podcasting business for the long run, I can’t be afraid to try things out.
Don’t ask your brother to edit an episode and then publish without double-checking what it sounds like… which I almost did... here’s what he sent back instead of episode 8:
Episode 8 -- nice try Martin.mp3
Recognize my voice and the jingle? Honestly I wouldn't even have been mad if I published this one haha...
🤓 Learnings:
Fake it ‘till you make it is a necessity. I was hoping more listeners would “organically” come to me with stories of how the podcast or specific episodes resonated with them… wishful thinking. For experimental ep. 8 I reached out on LinkedIn to two women who had attended FB recruitment panels I spoke on and they were thrilled to tell me how Statement Mondays inspires them! Amazing quotes I wouldn’t have gotten had I not proactively engaged with individual listeners.
Paid advertising: $220 with 5 different ad creatives got me 57k impressions (WOW) of which 227 converted to link clicks from the CTA to Spotify. Actual conversions are hard to calculate since it’s impossible to track where listeners come from, but from peering at my download charts it looks like that turned into ~20 new listens! $10 per new listener? Pretty expensive especially if they’re not guaranteed to come back weekly, plus the metrics show the ads performed below average... time to learn ad optimization!
Facebook Ads manager! I still have PTSD from working on this product my first year at Fb...
🙌 Shoutouts:
Shoutout to Martin for doing a quick audio edit pass of episode 8!
Thank you Karen for coming up with the title for my experimental segment: “Statement Extra”
Thank you to Nina for sharing Statement Mondays word-of-mouth and sharing reactions from more women excited about the podcast!
🍪 Asks:
What do you think of the new logo options above? Do you prefer the current simple circle or do you like the new photo version?
Listen to episode 8 “Statement Extra” and share your honest thoughts with me. It’s very different from the rest!
If you know anyone who’d like to receive this biweekly updates, send me their emails! We’re 52 and growing.
Thanks for reading! And if you need a reason to be bold today, here it is -- today is Statement Monday.
Natalie Muenster
Founder | Statement Mondays