Off-Page SEO: Use a Podcast To Build Brand Awareness w/ Whitney Surane

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Off Page SEO 101: Use a Podcast To Build Brand Awareness w/Whitney Surane

[00:00:00] Crystal Waddell: I'm so excited today guys. We have my friend Whitney Surane, who is a fellow Etsy seller and Shopify seller, and just an all around amazing person. 

And we are gonna be talking about SEO and podcasting and Shopify and all those things today. 

So welcome to the show, Whitney.

And hello Brittany. 

[00:00:21] Brittany Herzberg: Hi, welcome. 

[00:00:22] Whitney Surane: Hi. Thank you so much. 

Yeah. I'm so excited to have you here. And, I love hearing about how people's businesses start. 

And I saw that you said that you had an happy accident after a job change. And so I was wondering if you could just share with us a little bit about that.

Sure. 

I'm a mom of five, but in 2012 I had just had my fourth a little girl and while I was pregnant and I was laid off, I worked in real estate for 14 years. 

And after my daughter was born I'm originally from California, so my mom would come and visit and we decided to try our hand at quilting. 

Which, my [00:01:00] mom sewed. I sewed my grandmother did, but like we never quilted and we found a pattern on Pinterest and it was like the worst thing ever. 

We still laugh on it, but I made like a tiny little quilt to cover my infants the car seat, because Chicago winters and cold and. 

So after we made that people would, where did you get that?

Did you make it? Oh, you should start an Etsy shop. And so I did. I always wanted to be like a stay-at-home mom. I don't think I really thought about working for myself, like too seriously. I didn't think I could do that, but but yeah, 11 years and here we are. 

So super exciting. 

[00:01:35] Brittany Herzberg: Wow.

[00:01:36] Whitney Surane: It was definitely a gift. 

[00:01:37] Brittany Herzberg: That's really cool. I know I saw something on your form that I was very curious about, and it also ties in with what you just said. You have a fruitcake that's been in your freezer for how long? 

[00:01:46] Whitney Surane: Over 25 years. I don't remember exactly the number, but. One of my grandmothers would make traditional fruitcakes every Christmas.

Everyone hated them except for me, and I would help her make them, and she'd decorate them on top with the [00:02:00] dried fruit and and pecans. But she also, her house smelled like mothballs. She smelled like mothballs. It was like in everything. 

So even when I would eat the fruitcake, it was like, okay, mothballs.

But it was the last thing that she made. And I just. Saved it. My kids are like, what's that meatloaf in the freezer? But it's the fruitcake and I will never get rid of it because it's the last thing that she made for me. 

But it ties back into my business. And we're all about keepsakes and cherishing the memories that you make and at the foundation is the fruitcake for everything that we do today. So. 

[00:02:37] Brittany Herzberg: That is so sweet. 

[00:02:39] Crystal Waddell: So your main products are like linen play crowns or linen birthday crowns.

And like tooth fairy pillows or those types of keepsakes for kids, right? 

What made you say, I want to have a Shopify store in addition to my Etsy shop? 

[00:02:55] Whitney Surane: The first year I participated in 27 different local markets and[00:03:00] I just jumped right in cuz I didn't ever want to work outside the home again. 

I really wanted to continue to be with my kids. So evolved into mostly baby bedding on Etsy, and I think it was in 2015 that I decided to open a Shopify. And it's with Etsy, you go through these periods where you know, I, I. Maybe I'm gonna leave Etsy and I'm just gonna sell on my own website, but no, now I'll keep Etsy.

And 

I started with Shopify because it was convenient and seemed easy and it really was. And I've been there ever since. And while our product collection has evolved I still, I just love Shopify and Etsy's kind of a set it and forget it thing, so it's nice. 

[00:03:37] Brittany Herzberg: I love that.

So I wanna, how did you two meet? So you had your shops, but how did you two start working together? 

[00:03:42] Whitney Surane: Yeah. 

Nicole with Art to the Extreme, she actually also lives in. Indiana, but we were chatting just about, she's amazing with doing all of her own PR and getting just press, like without paying a single dime for it. 

[00:03:56] Crystal Waddell: And she's coming on the podcast too!

[00:03:58] Whitney Surane: She's awesome. We just spent a [00:04:00] couple or about a week together at at Alt Summit. But so we talked a lot about SEO and she was in that transition from Etsy to her own website and she's amazing on Etsy.

She teaches. But so we were just talking about SEO O and she mentioned you guys and Crystal helping her out. 

And so then I was like I'm all about podcasts. I'm like let me, let me start listening and. So I did and reached out, and now I subscribe to the shorts. And and I tell everybody about, you guys so that's it.

Oh, just those, you just, it's like all virtual. You just meet each other and 

[00:04:31] Brittany Herzberg: yeah. Yeah. That's so sweet. 

[00:04:33] Crystal Waddell: Can you just share a few takeaways about what you've learned about Shopify seo through that time together And like maybe some things maybe you didn't know, but now you know or understand better and think it might be beneficial to someone else to hear it.

[00:04:49] Whitney Surane: I, for me, it was like, I knew what it was, I'd heard it over and over again. But I didn't really want to know anything about it. I wanted to just hope that it was just working on its [00:05:00] own and I did everything right. 

And to me, in working with you, crystal, I'm listening to you guys. It's like a, from the customer's perspective, like a treasure map. 

So if you're, you're on Google and it just little crumbs or little, X marks the spot to lead you to exactly what you're looking for. Thinking about it in more of a big picture way how I'm able to help a potential customer find exactly what they're looking for through, SEO and, the targeted keywords and all of that.

And then, learning all the things with surfer and Jasper and, all of those things again, Uber suggests that I did not want to know about. But the more that I listen to you guys and the more that I work with Crystal it's like a puzzle and it's. Like a fun challenge too, cuz when I, like on on surfer, when I see like that score go up, if I'm like writing a blog post, then it's I don't know, I'm at Chuck E. Cheese or something.

[00:05:50] Crystal Waddell: The, it's the adult arcade. Oh my gosh. I never thought about it like that. So I think I, I took your question B I didn't mean to, 

[00:05:58] Brittany Herzberg: No, you're good. 

[00:05:59] Crystal Waddell: But that was a [00:06:00] great definition of what SEO means to you. So I think that's really fantastic. 

[00:06:04] Brittany Herzberg: Exactly. You can tell she listens cuz she just worked in her definition there.

[00:06:09] Crystal Waddell: Yeah, I like it. So one other question I have though, like in terms of the actual tactical part of seo. Is there anything that you now know about, like where SEO O goes in Shopify that you didn't before? 

[00:06:23] Whitney Surane: Yes, like all the things like all the meta descriptions and even just product titles and adding in the like little snippets of customer testimonials in there and how that looks and.

Where to place the keywords and not the same keywords, but a variation. And certainly not the stuffing. No turkeys here, but yeah it's it's like just full circle. 

It's okay, I never paid attention to meta-description, so it's whatever that, that looks like, it's fine.

But really how. Valuable That is. And and also recently listening to one of your podcasts about not using like [00:07:00] link pop or Link Tree. 

And instead, considering how valuable every space is in your Instagram profile and how you should use keywords there. It's just like a full picture kind of thing that I was like, I never really thought too much about before it was, this is what we do.

Okay, I'll, put in some information and go from there. But it certainly doesn't get you results that you want cuz otherwise you're just hoping that someone will randomly find you. And I think I used to think if I just create this website and use a great theme and here are some products up that people will find me.

And it's just, it's not the case. And when I look at like most recent sales, another suggestion I think from you guys they weren't really from social as much as I thought they were. It was more, searching from Google. And that's just valuable information that again, I was I don't wanna know about it.

Had my blinders on. 

[00:07:48] Brittany Herzberg: Yeah. So on that note, with your sales, I'm so curious, like what wins have you had since working with Crystal and learning about SEO and implementing some of this stuff, whether it's monetary or emotions, like what? [00:08:00] Where are you at now with SEO O? 

[00:08:02] Whitney Surane: Still certainly evolving and I still I inundate crystal with questions all the time and she's so gracious with her thoughts and her time and everything.

But I think being able to serve the customer, in a better way. Even like anticipating what they might be what their needs might be, and not just from a product standpoint, from content and blogs and how can I, yes, I have this product here, but here's how you could use it.

Here's why you might wanna use it. And then, Back links and all those things. So I think it's just providing the customer a better experience overall or potential customer that, eventually it all goes back to serving before selling and just learning how to do it in a better way. 

[00:08:45] Brittany Herzberg: Yeah. Yeah, this is good. 

[00:08:47] Crystal Waddell: Yeah, and what she's talking about is she's diving into content and ux like user experience, which is just so critical and it's gonna be that much more critical in the future for sure.

Let's go back to [00:09:00] content because that's really one of the main things that we wanted to talk about today was like, Creating content that benefits our audience. Mm-hmm. And particularly in the form of a podcast. Mm-hmm. So let's, jump into that. What are you thinking now in terms of content?

Like how did you get to this idea of creating a podcast? 

[00:09:19] Whitney Surane: From you guys? 

[00:09:20] Brittany Herzberg: I love it. 

[00:09:22] Whitney Surane: Figuring out how to reach and serve your customer, where they're at, and I listen to podcasts, not just business focused, but podcasts of all types. And when I think about Madly Wish and how what our products are used for, if you think of birthday crowns or tooth fairy pillows and celebrating those moments I can.

I can certainly create blog posts about that, but also it's something that I can talk about and maybe serve our community that way. Like how are you creating that first birthday party? Or how do you celebrate the visit from, a tooth fairy and I. Then [00:10:00] I being able to help other small businesses or support other women in general.

How we could include other small businesses who maybe make products that would also be valuable to our customer. So talking to those business owners and then also, party planners or moms who are really amazing at creating magical experiences that don't include, huge. Party rentals and bounce houses like, serving all the, cuz I'm not that kind.

I'm not a Pinterest mom. I could not ever do all of that, but, so providing different ways to celebrate the moments that you love in, in thoughtful ways and learning from other small businesses and Sometimes it, for me, you can listen to a podcast, with whatever you're doing no matter what.

Yeah. So I, I appreciate if I'm making dinner and, listening to something and it's a little easier, I think, than always reading a blog. 

[00:10:50] Brittany Herzberg: Yeah. So what, you've got this time, like what is it that you might be curious about when it comes to running a podcast? Is there [00:11:00] anything that you're like, I wish I could ask this.

[00:11:02] Whitney Surane: I don't know how you even get started.

I'd like to know how to start that because I have a creative consultant that works with me and she's in another state. So how do start a podcast together and you're working in different locations and what your method is? 

Are you, do you plan out your podcast like a month in advance or how much time elapses between this and then actually sharing the podcast on, apple or that kind of thing.

[00:11:27] Brittany Herzberg: Oh, there's so many good different rows we could take. 

[00:11:30] Crystal Waddell: Okay. I have an idea. Let's just start right now with our setup. Okay. But what are the basic things that you need to actually physically be able to start a podcast? 

There's lots of different accessories that you can get. Just starting with a computer is all you need because there's so many different tools available online. 

Now. We do have podcast mics. We both got blue ice snowballs. 

[00:11:57] Brittany Herzberg: From Yeti, I think. 

[00:11:58] Crystal Waddell: Yeah. And you can't really [00:12:00] see it, but I've got a Dragon pad pop filter. Oh, over the mic. And that helps when you have like hard syllables like Bs and Ps and I drag out my s's and so it helps with cleaning up like your, I don't even know, what are those even called?

[00:12:19] Brittany Herzberg: I don't know. But it like buffers the harsh, harsher sounds. 

[00:12:22] Crystal Waddell: I had a friend who was a speech pathologist and she would know what that was called, but there's probably a specific name for it. But yeah, it just really cleans up how your. Your sound comes out.

B we recently found out something

[00:12:34] Brittany Herzberg: oh, what that was you were gonna ask me? I want to say it's called a, I don't remember if this is the one we want or that we don't want, but dynamic condenser. Microphone. I'm actually gonna look it up because we had a guest on recently.

[00:12:47] Crystal Waddell: Yeah. And by the time this podcast Yeah. Comes out, Alex Minor his episode will be out as well. So that's a good episode to go back and listen to because he's talking about video and we talked about equipment and a [00:13:00] lot of the microphone type equipment is the same whether you're doing a video show or a podcast.

So he's got some recommendations in there for specific products. 

[00:13:10] Brittany Herzberg: Yeah. And dynamic mic is the one that you want. So we have, I think a condenser mic. Which are the popular ones. Pretty much anything with Yeti. If you hear someone talk about a microphone, it's more than likely gonna be a condenser mic.

So there are affordable, dynamic mics. And I think Crystal and I might even consider looking into those this year, maybe. But again, yeah, don't let the technology. 

[00:13:33] Crystal Waddell: Hinder you. Yeah. Even if that's oh my gosh, overwhelming. And not necessarily to you Whitney, but anybody listening just back it up and use your computer. Yeah, use your computer. Okay. So physically I think that's the extent of, 

[00:13:47] Brittany Herzberg: oh, having headphones is always helpful. Cause I, 

[00:13:49] Crystal Waddell: oh yeah. 

[00:13:49] Brittany Herzberg: I think it does something for sound. So at least have some, you don't have to have the fancy headphones. I just have these from

the tether cords still that you get when you get your iPhone. So just like a cheap set [00:14:00] of headphones is totally fine. And then even just trying to find a quietish corner. I actually have a friend Shannon, who started her podcast in her closet to help cut down on the noise.

I don't think she had one of those like filters for her podcast mic. And yeah. Just definitely don't let the technology or the things or the accessories hold you back. 

[00:14:18] Whitney Surane: Okay. Because you often see here's my soundproof office. 

[00:14:22] Crystal Waddell: Yeah. 

[00:14:23] Whitney Surane: Amazing microphone, and it's is that really needed?

[00:14:25] Crystal Waddell: Yeah. And I have a great office upstairs that's carpeted. And my father-in-law built me this amazing wall with my logo as a backdrop, but my dog goes nuts if I go upstairs, and she'll start ripping up all of the papers that are up there. 

So I'm downstairs in a big open room, in those situations, a mic and some post production's gonna help a lot because obviously I don't have anything trapping the sound here.

[00:14:51] Brittany Herzberg: And I bounce around to a lot of, I'm living out of Airbnbs right now while my boyfriend and I house hunt, so I don't know what I'm gonna end up in, but I am usually just like that [00:15:00] corner. I'm gonna pick that one. 

[00:15:01] Whitney Surane: So you've always used Zoom? 

[00:15:03] Brittany Herzberg: Yeah. 

[00:15:04] Crystal Waddell: Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So we've always used Zoom, but there are definitely better alternatives to Zoom.

If you have the free version, what are you capped at? 45 minutes or 40 something? 40, yes. Yeah. And Zoom sometimes like I've noticed in post-production, it's hard for me to get rid of this and I can hear it in our podcast. We'll have these weird clicks. Every once in a while and like a weird, just a sound.

And there's something about the way that Zoom records that you get that. So there's actually a podcast recording studio type. Programs that you can use. I think Hello Audio might have something I don't know, but, 

[00:15:43] Brittany Herzberg: There's one called Riverside. I know that our Oh, river likes that one. 

[00:15:46] Crystal Waddell: Yeah.

So there's Riverside and then there's more like that. But if you're going bare bones, I'm just trying to start out and start up. Zoom has worked fine for us. Google is another option. And one thing I really like about Google is that it keeps things within the [00:16:00] ecosystem .

[00:16:00] Brittany Herzberg: We should switch.

[00:16:01] Crystal Waddell: Yeah. Especially with your love of Google Docs and everything. And then it automatically records and goes to a folder. But the process with Zoom is that you have to record it and then either download it to your computer or, you're recording it to the cloud. You have to let it process and then download it to your computer and then import it into whatever software you're using for post-production. So there's lots of, recording and then downloading and that type of thing.

[00:16:27] Brittany Herzberg: Like those little steps.

[00:16:28] Crystal Waddell: Yeah, I bet. Riverside or something that's created specifically for podcasts helps you eliminate some of those little things. 

[00:16:35] Whitney Surane: So is there a lot generally that you're doing in post-production? And also, I've never noticed the cliques before as a listener. 

[00:16:41] Crystal Waddell: Yeah. Oh, good. Now you will, now you'll be aware of it.

[00:16:44] Brittany Herzberg: As will everyone else. 

[00:16:46] Crystal Waddell: I've had a podcast before, so I, I knew some of the tools that you can use to clean things up.

So I enjoy doing that. We've had a podcast editor. That we got on Fiver. He's probably listing right now, so Heylin, [00:17:00] I, I had some free time and I enjoy doing it. And it also helps when you have great tools, which I'll talk about in just a minute. There's different ways you can do it.

You can record the podcast and then, give the editor the link and let them combine it for you, and that will run you anywhere from 25 to $75 in episode, depending on who you're using. 

[00:17:19] Brittany Herzberg: Yeah. 

[00:17:20] Whitney Surane: Okay. And what about the planning? Do you guys try to plan things at a month in advance and figure out the topics that you are 

interested in and then search for the guest or what do you, or is it just 

we'll just see what comes our way?

Should I take this one? 

[00:17:36] Crystal Waddell: Yeah, take it.

[00:17:37] Brittany Herzberg: We thought about planning and for me, I am always someone that you hear about like batching content, right? And like even if it's like an Instagram reel and I'm like, yeah, I can do this every single time I try, I'm like, this is not my jam.

And we, again, even with the podcast, I was like, should we have some kind of this is our theme for this month, this is our theme for this quarter. And we [00:18:00] talked about it and we just like rolling with what comes in with the guests. 

Frankly, it's been like, I joke about this, but truly it's like I have this client, I have this mentor, I have this friend, I have this person.

Most of the time it's Hey, you wanna meet Crystal? Oh, and do you wanna record something and show your smarts online? And I've had a blast doing that. That's all. I like my perspective, but it's been so fun. 

Really just getting to showcase the people in my life. And like going back to post-production just for a hot second, if Crystal didn't know the tech stuff that she knew, if she hadn't had a podcast before us, like this one.

I, I, that was a huge selling point. I was like, Maybe we could do this podcast idea. I only wanna do it with Crystal, cuz I knew that she knew the steps. I knew that she knew the stuff. I knew that she loves learning. 

She's really great at all this stuff. I'm gonna make her cry. This is wonderful. She's gonna forget her question, but truly, there's no one else that I would've wanted to do this with.

It's been a blast. But yeah, no, to answer your question, no, we don't really have a structure. It's just what's going on sometimes. 

There will be a hot topic like chat, g p t [00:19:00] we just talked about GA four, the update with Google Analytics. So there were some timely things that we tried to jump on, but for the most part we just roll with it.

What do you think?

[00:19:08] Crystal Waddell: Okay, hold on. Let me get my air over here. Thank you for the compliments. 

Yeah the other part of this is, working with a partner, I wasn't sure how that was gonna go, because I'm very, flighty and I'm gonna do this right now, but maybe I'll not do it the same time tomorrow or whatever.

You know what I mean? So when you're working alone in your business, it takes a little bit of oh. A little bit of pre-planning because you're working with someone else and you're working with two different schedules or whatnot. 

But working with B'S been amazing because. I can send her an idea and say, Hey, ooh, I just got this idea.

Because the ideas come and then they go, so as soon as they come, I shoot it to B and I'm like, Hey, I've got this idea. And she'll either add it to the list or massage it a little bit and, figure out where it might fit somewhere else. 

But that's the beauty of a podcast and kind of like a weekly content thing is that you can it's not so overwhelming that we can't record it every week. Like [00:20:00] today we happen to be recording two episodes, but, it's a little bit more stressful when you're recording the week that it's gonna come out. We've done that before. Yeah. And that's not fun.

No. But know, we try to keep a list of ideas going so it's like maybe we don't know exactly. Like a format for a monthly theme or a quarterly theme or anything like that. But we have an idea of some topics that we'd like to cover. And then we run into somebody and it's oh my gosh, this person would be perfect.

Like when you said you wanted to start a podcast, my first thought was, you should come on the podcast. So we could talk about this. And I think it's really great B said, it gives us a chance to showcase other business owners, other people that we've met. That really, have amazing ideas or things to share or whatever.

So that's been our approach to it. And we still have a long list of ideas. 

[00:20:46] Brittany Herzberg: Oh yeah. 

[00:20:47] Crystal Waddell: We haven't yet, put into podcast form. 

[00:20:50] Brittany Herzberg: Yeah, I just wanna add to like subtle, not so subtle plug. If you have a question, if you're listening, talking to you, if you have a topic, a question, an idea, anything, [00:21:00] please let us know.

You can for sure. Find us on Instagram and we have our links and stuff in the show notes. Also, if you have learned anything from listening to the show, I'm gonna make another subtle plug to please leave a review. That really helps inform our next steps and.

Whitney, this is something that we haven't been the best at with asking for reviews, but that definitely helps us make really smart next choices that the listeners will enjoy.

[00:21:25] Crystal Waddell: We are making this podcast for, not only to document our own journeys and to just, share the conversations that b and I have had together. That was the whole point, yeah. 

We were like, we are having some amazing conversations and it felt good to be able to share it with someone.

Yeah. So that was our number one goal, was to be able to share these conversations with people and invite them to come in and have the conversation as well, so that loneliness of entrepreneurship is eased a little bit. 

What I don't care about is, how people feel like I talk or Yeah.

Anything like that. Not about that. Yeah, not about that life. 

[00:21:58] Brittany Herzberg: You can keep that to yourself. Yeah.[00:22:00] 

[00:22:00] Crystal Waddell: As B said, it does help us reach more people. But my focus is not the reviews. My focus is just on sharing ideas and sharing information.

And so I know that's, that can be scary when you're putting yourself out there and then now people get to have an opinion about it. So you are gonna have to think about that's true. How do I wanna handle that? But for me personally, I'm like, you know what? I'm not looking at those reviews, which is very weird because as an Etsy seller and a Shopify seller, we live and die by our reviews. 

[00:22:26] Brittany Herzberg: I'm looking at it from like my SEO and copywriting perspective of oh, cool. What can we pull out? What could we use in any kind of If we ever do get smart with marketing materials, what can we use? But yeah that's an interesting perspective and I hadn't thought about that.

And it can be scary, but at the same time, like you said, we were just like, Hey, we're having some great conversations. Let's record it and put it out on the internet. And so reviews haven't really been a thing, and that's probably why we don't talk about them or ask for them very often. 

[00:22:51] Crystal Waddell: Yeah. And we're fortunate, like we get a lot of like dms and conversations.

Yeah. And how many times have you and I talked Whitney about something you said that you heard on the [00:23:00] podcast? And I'm like, oh my gosh, that was great. That's all the positive reinforcement that I need.

[00:23:04] Brittany Herzberg: And that people like it. We weren't even sure. Yeah. 

[00:23:07] Whitney Surane: Yeah. I think that, like for me, I don't enjoy social media as much. It's difficult for, I don't use it personally, so it's difficult to continue to show up there and feel like I'm providing value. I feel like it's easier to do that or might be for me in, in a podcast that you can really have a conversation and you're not limited to.

90 seconds. Or also just being able to communicate with other people at the same time and not just, you and your phone kind of thing. 

[00:23:36] Crystal Waddell: Yeah. Yeah. And I was gonna say, I first realized this with Clubhouse. I. It's different when somebody's, posting a static graphic or something on social media.

They may come across as an expert and they may just be parroting something that they've seen somebody else post. Yeah. But the minute you hear them start talking about the thing, That's when you can really start to understand and make an [00:24:00] informed decision about whether or not you can trust that person or if they know what they're talking about.

Because you can't fake it with the like video and recording, like audio like this, you just can't fake it if you don't have the knowledge. And b and I have always been of the mindset like, look, if we don't know, we're gonna say we don't know. And then we're gonna go find the answer.

But I think that podcasting, it is an excellent way to build authority because people, and then also build relationships because people feel like they know you, they hear your voice, you're familiar to them. And so you're that much more likely for them to either, do business with you or like you were talking about just building up other business owners and building a network of like-minded people. Cause they have a chance to get to know you. 

[00:24:41] Brittany Herzberg: And even like Crystal's dad, apparently were besties and I don't, I've never met him. I haven't even said, hi dad. Hi. But that's kinda cool, right? There's just, there's things that I think we anticipated we would enjoy and that we would get to do, but I think there were also a lot of things where it's been like a happy benefit that we didn't plan for it, didn't [00:25:00] think of.

[00:25:00] Whitney Surane: I think that's, I don't know that just that's why I'm here, because you do provide so much value and then the little snippets, on Instagram or whatever, it just, it's oh, I missed it today. I didn't listen yet, and then it reminds me, go back and listen to the podcast.

I need to hear this today, or whatever. 

[00:25:14] Brittany Herzberg: So that's a great point because I had just messaged Crystal oh, our messaging or our marketing plan. We really haven't done the best with talking about it on social media.

I think we're both pretty good most of the time with talking about it on Instagram stories. But truly we have done like next to know marketing. It's been word of mouth. It's been the podcast episodes, the podcast title, everything is very searchable. We should come back and talk about that, but Email, like we write emails, and that's been it.

So also if you know you, for you Whitney, or anyone listening, you don't have to have this big robust marketing plan. Is that good? Totally is. They're still merit to it. Absolutely. But again, don't let that hold you back. Do you know one thing that maybe feels [00:26:00] good to you, but also. This even goes back to when we came up with the title for our podcast.

We wanted it to get found because guess what? We're always thinking about keywords. We're always thinking about what are our people looking for? And that's the beauty and the brilliance of seo. So I did a little bit of keyword research. I did a little bit of market research. What do you guys want to know?

What are you interested in? And I think I came to Crystal with I don't know, five or eight or 10. Ideas and we picked the simple and smart SEO O show. That has been huge. Crystal writes the show notes. I think that has been really huge for getting us found as well. And then also, and I don't know what conversations you guys have had about this, but I'll get messages from people and they're like, oh, I searched blah, blah, blah.

Like I know one person last week was like, I searched SEO visibility and your podcast came up. I'm like, sweet. Writing that down. 

[00:26:48] Crystal Waddell: Yeah. So that reminds me of another like tactical thing. You have to have a host for your podcast. So that your podcast has somewhere to go and then can be searchable and be [00:27:00] found.

We use Buzzsprout. 

[00:27:02] Brittany Herzberg: Love them. 

[00:27:02] Crystal Waddell: What happens with Buzz Sprout and in probably very similar to other, podcasts, hosting networks, is you, fill out your show information, all that type of stuff.

And then each time you have an episode, you upload that edited episode into buzz Sprout, and then it gives you an opportunity to type in the title and then the show notes, and then you get to choose when you want it to go live. You can schedule it. 

Or you can let it immediately go live. It's very similar, like to a blog post, because after you write the blog post, you get to choose what day it's gonna be published. So it's very similar to that. And then there's opportunity for you to add in like keywords at the bottom. 

Once you upload the podcast and save it, there'll be an opportunity to upload your transcript. And this was something that we went back and forth about because, we were like, oh I didn't wanna go through the transcript and edit it every single time, because that is very time consuming.

But it's still helpful [00:28:00] for people. Even if, like from a disability perspective, these couple of people said it's better to have a transcript that's not perfect than no transcript at all. We went ahead and have been uploading the transcript and we put, look, 

this is machine generated.

It hasn't been edited for errors just to manage the expectation of that transcript. So our initial start was, Hey, let's put a lot of keywords in the show note. In the show description, but I think having the transcript also helps because if you'll notice whenever you search in like Apple podcast, if you search for a particular keyword, a lot of times the reason why it finds a podcast is because that word showed up in the transcript.

And then the other thing that Buzz Sprout will walk you through is how to send your podcast out to all of the podcast players.

So in, in one click, they'll give you what's called an RSS s feed. They'll say, okay, if you wanna be indexed on Apple Podcasts, click here and they'll walk you through the instructions on how to submit. For [00:29:00] most podcasts, there's just one button that you have to click and it will send it out to everybody.

But again, those things that, that's the most technical, I think, of the process and within that ecosystem of Buzz Sprout their platform, they take care of it. So pretty cool. 

[00:29:17] Whitney Surane: Yeah, definitely keeping it simple and easy, especially starting out, I think is well, is definitely key for me, but I could see how it can be intimidating. Yeah. 

And then you all you're sharing them on YouTube though also, right? Have you always done that like from the beginning or? 

[00:29:35] Crystal Waddell: Our YouTube situation isn't very consistent. It's not consistent because first we I was sharing it to my personal, like Crystal Waddell YouTube channel because we didn't have a simple and smart SEO channel.

And then it was like one day we thought, we should have a. YouTube channel for the show, but again, being solopreneurs and each having our own business or businesses, that's a lot to manage.

Yeah. [00:30:00] So there was a what's that? Headliner app? 

[00:30:02] Brittany Herzberg: Headliner app? Yeah. 

[00:30:03] Crystal Waddell: So Headliner app is something that B uses. What I was using it for was to automatically send the episode in text form. 

 So what it does is it makes a kinetic text video that is just captions rolling across the screen or whatnot, and it automatically posts to a channel.

So that's just like a one click integration where it's do you wanna upload this to YouTube? And yeah, I do. What's your YouTube channel? Here's your YouTube channel. And then it does it automatically. 

But since we switched to the simple and smart seo actually having a YouTube channel. I haven't clicked that button, so thank you for the reminder.

I need to go back and do that. 

[00:30:40] Brittany Herzberg: Yeah. And that's in place of we are recording this. We do have the video. All of our guests are like, is the video gonna go live? And we're like, maybe possibly one day if we ever like Crystal said, I mean we both have two businesses. She has a family. I have stuff going on.

There's a lot and. That's been part of it too, is like figuring out, like managing our capacity. But before I go [00:31:00] down that road Headliner app, I actually heard out, heard from shout out to Erin Ollila because I was like, how do I make these things for our podcast guests? 

So that's one of the things that I tackle is actually getting some, I just called them assets.

I saw that one time when I was a podcast guest and someone's here's your assets. And I was like, cool, that sounds really smart. I'm just gonna use that. So I gave them this Kind of canned email template. I swap out a few key elements with each one, but it's like an email that they could then take and send to their audience.

It's super short to the point. And they can always take it and make it way better, but sometimes there's just days where we don't feel have the, bandwidth to make things. 

And so it's just here, pop this in. It's like easy. But they get that email swipe copy. They get an audiogram, so a sound bite for Pinterest, they get a sound bite for Instagram, they get a static pin for Pinterest and they get a static image for Instagram. 

And that's where headliner app was super helpful because I go in, I create the thing once. It's actually been [00:32:00] really easy. With Crystal finding those like beginning snippets.

A lot of times I'll just go with that. I might make a note when we're recording and I'm like, oh, I really wanna pull this thing. 

But a lot of times having that thing at the beginning and I haven't actually shared that with you, so thank you for doing that. 

[00:32:13] Crystal Waddell: Oh, you're welcome.

[00:32:14] Brittany Herzberg: And a lot of times those clips are anywhere from 15 to 30 seconds I think, and it's just like that lead in that peaks curiosity, so someone wants to actually go find the link and listen. But yeah, that's been incredibly helpful. I can't think of anything else with that, but yeah. 

[00:32:29] Crystal Waddell: And I was just gonna say, you'll have access to that as a podcast guest.

B took this to another level. Okay. Because I'll be honest with you, if it was me, I'd be like are you available at nine o'clock on this day? Yeah. Cool. Okay. Here's a Zoom invite. 

You know what I mean? 

But B took it like next level because there's information that you need if you're gonna have a podcast guest.

And B, recognized that very early. It's you need. The person's name, some background information, a little bit about their business just like their links, that type of thing. [00:33:00] So it's good to have some kind of intake form and we use HoneyBook for that. And be, she handles like the front side and like the onboarding and that type of thing.

If you're just doing this on your own, Or just with a partner, it might not be as necessary, but if you're gonna have guests at some point, you're going to want to automate some of that process so that you get everything that you need without having to go back and forth with a podcast guest. 

[00:33:27] Whitney Surane: Okay. Now, when I was filling out the forms, I took screenshots of every single.

[00:33:32] Brittany Herzberg: I was gonna say, let us know if you need anything, because that was. For me, that's what I did once, once we were like, oh, we're gonna do this thing. I was like, oh, what processes have I gone through? So I went back to the shows that I had been on and asked Crystal and we've built the plane as we're flying it and pulling people on board.

So it's just, it's an ever-evolving thing. And when. Thing I wanted to mention is that like the systems that we have, the processes that we have, we're still figuring those out. I think we finally got to a point where, [00:34:00] you know again, like Crystal said, I love Google Docs, Google Drive. I live over there with my client work.

So it was an, it was a seamless transition for me, but figuring out, Our brains work slightly differently. Yeah. We have different strengths. We have different components that we're like responsible for when it comes to the podcast. So it's like, what do you need to make you successful, crystal, and what do I need to make me successful, Brittany?

And then how do we then bring the guests on board and make sure that we're hitting all of the things out of the park for the listeners. So it's, it can feel overwhelming if you sit and think about it, but just start, and then you'll figure out the things that, that you need to have in place too.

[00:34:37] Crystal Waddell: Yeah, and we've went back and forth with people like how do you organize all of this information? 

And there's tools out there there's notion and notion's really cool, it's fun to set up a spreadsheet or whatever. 

You could do an Excel spreadsheet that has like the date, the episode, the guest or, and then the topic, and then maybe a link to the actual audio or video or whatever.

But one thing we found [00:35:00] was that just using Google Docs and just putting everything in a Google Doc was the easiest for us. 

Once I figured out that there was like a separate Google account, because I'm like, I. Getting these shared documents.

[00:35:11] Brittany Herzberg: That was on me. No, but me because I was sending her like one thing at a time and she was seeing these individual things, not realizing there was a whole ecosystem in a Google Drive.

So that was absolutely like all on me. And Crystal was like, what? This thing exists. This is me. Yeah. I was 

[00:35:25] Crystal Waddell: like, this is amazing. She built this like document City and I didn't even know that it was on the map. But she did an amazing job with that. But just, using Google Drive has been very easy for us.

Just have a folder for, 

[00:35:36] Brittany Herzberg: and it's free 

[00:35:37] Crystal Waddell: the guest. Yeah. Yeah, so no need to get fancy unless you want to, unless you're comfortable with one of those other product management systems. But at the end of the day, Google Docs was just the easiest for us. 

[00:35:48] Whitney Surane: What about like your intro and music 

[00:35:52] Crystal Waddell: and, oh wow, you've taken us way back.

[00:35:54] Brittany Herzberg: Yeah. I gotta, hold on. I gotta do research. Please hold. 

[00:35:57] Crystal Waddell: B wrote our intro and we're actually going to [00:36:00] rewrite it because our job description, 

[00:36:02] Brittany Herzberg: as we've grown up 

[00:36:03] Crystal Waddell: Yeah, have changed a little bit since then and we figured out a little bit more about what we wanna do. But, we recorded it, I think in Zoom.

And B went to, what was the website that you got the music from? 

[00:36:16] Brittany Herzberg: I just looked it up. It's called Story Blocks. Yeah, you can listen. They have a whole bunch of things, but we went there specifically for the audio, for the music. And I think I poked around on it for free.

And you can download the snippets. Like it's not the whole song, but you can download a snippet. And then I think what we did, this is way back, it hasn't even been a year. What is wrong with our brains? But I think I put it in a folder and I said, Hey, crystal, will you go listen to these?

It might have been 10. We narrowed that down to five and then. In trying to build anticipation, we asked our Instagram audiences like, okay, which one do you like vote? And both of our audiences voted. And that is the song that's on there now, huh? Yeah. So we did go back and pay for, I think we paid for three cuz you paid [00:37:00] for.

I wanna say it's 10 bucks a month, or it was 10 bucks a month. But who knows? With inflation it might be like $50 a month. I have no idea. But you get three downloads of the audio the mp3 s or whatever. So we did go with our top three just in case we ever wanted to switch it up. But yeah, I'm excited to rerecord it.

[00:37:17] Whitney Surane: Yeah. I don't know how you guys put all that together. With, yeah. Your other businesses and just all of the backend stuff. 

[00:37:25] Crystal Waddell: I think, like B said, it's like we were building the plane as we were flying it, and then it just figured itself out because people were interested in what we were talking about, and I think everybody just had an interest in that, and then they wanted to help us build it, 

[00:37:40] Brittany Herzberg: yeah. Yeah, we've had some great people for sure. Help us. Yeah. 

[00:37:43] Whitney Surane: So if you were to start over today, is there anything that you'd do differently?

[00:37:47] Brittany Herzberg: I don't think so. 

[00:37:49] Crystal Waddell: I would. we talked a little bit about post-production. One thing that I would do is I would spend a little bit more time kind of researching post-production opportunities, but I wanna give you two[00:38:00] three, three things that I use because I may not be using these the most efficiently.

So I do wanna say that. Okay. The first one that I wish I would've known about sooner is something called descript. D e s c r i p t. And I attended a webinar, just a couple months ago. 

You drag the audio file into Descript and it will transcribe it. Automatically it'll define speakers. So let's say you have three different speakers. It'll say, Hey, we detected three different speakers. You can then provide the labels. Like it'll play a clip of one of the speakers, and you can put, oh, this was Whitney, this is Crystal, this is Brittany.

And then it fills it in as best as it can through the whole transcript. So even though we're not editing the transcript, It already has provided so much more helpful information than we had in the earlier episodes because it also does timestamps. It's real easy to find things in there.

And then, you can delete all of the ums [00:39:00] and ahs. So if you have any of those types of tendencies, You can edit those out. And then it has something called Studio Sound. So when we were talking about that post-production if you've got, sound quality issues or let's say all three of our sound probably is a little bit different,

[00:39:16] Brittany Herzberg: yeah.

[00:39:17] Crystal Waddell: From one to the other, studio sound kind of equalizes that. Or whatever the word is. And so everything's just a little bit more smooth and cohesive and, just sounds a little bit more professional.

So once you do that, then you can export your transcript and have a transcript that you can just copy and paste into Buzzsprout, and then you can export your audio file. And now it's ready to upload to Buzzsprout. 

Now. Remember I said that I do things a little bit slow, slower, and this may not be the most efficient because Leah told us you could make a template, so I'm pretty sure that I could add in our intro and our outro to Descript and then just do it all in descript. 

But I don't know how to do that yet, and I haven't taken the [00:40:00] time to learn. 

So what I then do is I do it in Garage Band on my Mac. Huh. Because I do have in garage band, I have the intro and the outro, so I'll just pull in the audio of, Of that podcast episode and just adjust the front to go in front of that episode, put the intro in front of that episode and then align the exit at the back of the episode.

Then I'll export it again so that could be it. 

You could upload the Buzz sprout, but then sometimes I do one more thing because this is how I learned to smooth the audio originally: 

there's another website called APH Phonic, and it's a U P H. O N I C and Descript is like 30 bucks a month, I think, for the pro plan that I have.

But auphonic is free for up to two hours a month. So what you can do is you can upload that audio into auphonic, then flattens out the audio again and just makes it even better. I [00:41:00] feel like our audio of the last few episodes has just been fire. 

[00:41:02] Brittany Herzberg: Yeah, it's been amazing. I don't know any of this stuff.

So like I said, if Crystal wasn't here, I don't know. It would probably just sound however we're recording it right now. Yeah. 

[00:41:12] Crystal Waddell: And that's fine. But I think it's fun to just see how pretty I can make the audio, 

[00:41:16] Brittany Herzberg: recovering perfectionist loves it. Yeah. It's great. 

[00:41:19] Crystal Waddell: So that's how I put it all together because the reason why I put it through a phonic at the end is because I took it out of D script and put it in garage band.

And so the beginning intro and the exit music might be at a different level. And so I want all of it to be smooth from the intro to the episode through the exit to the end. And so that's why I do that.

[00:41:44] Brittany Herzberg: I love that.

[00:41:46] Crystal Waddell: Yeah. 

[00:41:46] Brittany Herzberg: I never knew any of this stuff. Thanks for asking Whitney. 

[00:41:49] Whitney Surane: Yeah, thanks for sharing.

Wow. 

[00:41:51] Crystal Waddell: Yeah, but again, it doesn't have to be like that, and there's some times, I'm sure we both wanted to cry a little bit just because we've been busy and it's oh, [00:42:00] it's one more thing. But that's something else to consider. It's like, how often do you wanna publish?

Nobody said you'd have to do it once a week. 

[00:42:06] Brittany Herzberg: Yeah, even with ours, I think that there was a week where I was like, I just, I don't have the bandwidth. And Chris was like, I don't either. So we just went on the next, do it next week.

Yeah. Yeah. And you have to like you really need to honor that because your listeners I'm sure you didn't even notice, right? 

Like you just have to listen to yourself and figure out what you need. And especially if you have a co-host too, what do they need? 

And that's something that we're, I feel like we're both really good about.

I try to check in with Crystal. She checks in with me. And we also we've been friends since 2018, so we know a little bit more about each other. 

It's I think something's going on here. Yeah. You sure you're okay? Yeah. 

[00:42:41] Whitney Surane: Yeah. Wow. Once again, this has just been invaluable.

Thank you so much for sharing and. I'm excited to get started. A little nervous, but I've got lots of amazing notes and I don't know. Thank you. 

[00:42:53] Crystal Waddell: We had Leah Bryant on the podcast and she was talking about SEO for podcasts.

And she [00:43:00] has a really great freebie, like how to get started with a podcast, like a little checklist or whatever. So we'll link that here. It's accessible on her website and she's the podcast guru, so she breaks it down, really in just like that very simple way, like this is how you get started.

So that's another great resource. 

[00:43:18] Brittany Herzberg: Yeah, and I was gonna mention that I did actually, I had someone reach out and say, what is it like to co-host a podcast like, I'm considering doing this? So I wrote a blog, so I'm gonna make sure that we have that in the show notes as well.

But yeah we try to be open book about everything and, honest and. I'm glad that you were on so we could revisit this. This is really cool. 

[00:43:38] Crystal Waddell: Yeah, it's We did do a lot of stuff. 

[00:43:40] Brittany Herzberg: Yeah. Check us, out. 

[00:43:41] Whitney Surane: No, it's incredible. Thank you. 

[00:43:45] Crystal Waddell: Yeah,

[00:43:45] Brittany Herzberg: thank you. 

[00:43:46] Crystal Waddell: But the greatest news though is now you don't have to feel alone as you go through it.

You've got a couple people you can check in with on the way. 

[00:43:52] Brittany Herzberg: Yeah. 

[00:43:52] Crystal Waddell: And we'll be happy to talk through any roadblocks you hit. 

[00:43:56] Whitney Surane: No. I'll be, sending you messages on Voxer or DM or [00:44:00] whatever, because just, you're amazing. And this is my first podcast, so lots of excitement.

Thank you. Yay. 

[00:44:05] Crystal Waddell: Yeah, you did great. 

[00:44:06] Brittany Herzberg: Where can people find you? 

[00:44:08] Whitney Surane: You can find me at MadlyWish.com, Madly Wish on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, all the things. And I'll be there. 

[00:44:16] Brittany Herzberg: Yay. Thanks for being here. This was really fun. 

[00:44:19] Whitney Surane: Thank you. Thank you for being here. You guys are just giving so much out to small businesses, and I just, I appreciate you.

Yay. 

[00:44:26] Brittany Herzberg: We appreciate you 

[00:44:28] Crystal Waddell: love fest. Woo. 

[00:44:29] Brittany Herzberg: Love fest all the heart eyes. Thanks for tuning in and we will catch you next time. 

Yep. Bye bye. Bye.