Podcasters: Please Interrupt Your Guest
Okay, this advice is going to be controversial, but I don’t care.
If you’re running a podcast, you get 60 minutes with a guest and no more. Maybe less.
For most guests, your podcast is not their first one. For some, it’s not even in their first 50 or 100 podcasts.
That’s why they have canned answers that they spit out automatically, without even thinking about it. The problem is, 4 times out of 5 those canned answers are dull and BORING. And many times they don’t even answer your question.
Do you really want them to talk about the exact same things they talked about on the last 10 podcasts they were on? Or the same things they’ve already blogged about?
No way.
Before the interview, ask them this question:
“If I get crazy curious about something you say, is it alright if I interrupt you?”
They will very nearly always answer yes.
Then when they are droning on about their first paper route (again!) or how the secret to making money online is selling stuff (no kidding!) you can interrupt if you’ve got a great question.
There is a flip side to this: You’ve got to be genuinely curious. It’s your curiosity that will provide the interesting question and the even more intriguing answer.
Them: “My first business was a paper route. Getting up at 5 am every morning taught me the importance of…” (Your audience is yawning at this point)
You: “Wait, what did you do when customers refused to pay you for the paper and slammed the door in your face?”
Or… “What’s the weirdest thing that happened to you on your route that you never told your parents?”
Them: “The secret to making money online is simply that you’ve got to sell something. Until you sell something, no money is made. You could sell products or advertising space or leads or…”
You: “Awesome! So, what’s the easiest thing for a brand-new online marketer to sell, and how do they sell it?”
You will never get another chance to ask, so go ahead and interrupt when appropriate.
And if your audience tells you not to interrupt your guests, tell them your #1 priority is getting your listeners the inside information most guests don’t easily divulge without a little prompting.
Can Visitors READ Your Site?
That might sound like a silly question – of course they can read your site.
Unless…
Unless you’ve got ‘helpful’ stuff on the screen that is getting in the way.
Take a look at this screen shot:
On the left you see a tab for reviews with no way to get rid of the tab.
Bottom left is chat box that again, cannot be clicked away.
Bottom right is a heart which had me baffled at first. Click on it and it tells you to log in so that you can save this page to your wish list.
NONE of these things were helpful to me, and all of them were in the way of trying to read the article.
Yet I’m sure the site owner thinks these things are the bees’ knees. And I’m sure they would be, too, if they weren’t so @#$%& obtrusive.
What handy dandy little gizmos have you added to your site that are getting in the way of your visitors reading your content?
If you want to do your own screen grab, it’s here:
https://www.freshroastedcoffee.com/blogs/news/yerba-mate-health-benefits
How to Get MASSIVE Free Publicity, BK Style
In January 2019,, the Burger King Twitter account started liking people’s tweets from almost 10 years ago.
Out of the blue, Twitter users were getting notifications that Burger King had liked some of their tweets from 2010.
For the most part, these Twitter users had millions of followers.
Baffled, confused and intrigued, many of these Twitter users made posts about the incident, wanting to know why Burger King was doing this.
They tweeted things like:
Why is Burger King liking my 8 year old tweets?
— Casey Neistat (@CaseyNeistat) January 24, 2019,
Wait why is Burger King going through my tweets from 2010?
— Brant Daugherty (@brantdaugherty) January 23, 2019,
You’re about 9 years late. ????
— 100T Nadeshot (@Nadeshot) January 23, 2019,
As you’ve already guessed, this story went viral.
Then several news websites picked up the story and wrote articles about it, alerting YouTube creators who made videos about it.
All the while, thousands of people on Twitter were tweeting about it.
It was a mystery to be solved, and everybody wanted to know just why Burger King was liking everybody’s old Tweets.
Eventually, when the time was right, Burger King gave everyone the answer they were looking for with this tweet:
Some things from 2010 are worth revisiting—like your old tweets. And funnel cake fries. Get them now for a limited time.
— Burger King (@BurgerKing) January 24, 2019,
Yup, that’s right.
Burger King liked everyone’s old Tweets to mystify people and create buzz.
And when enough people were talking about it, Burger King revealed they were liking Tweets from 2010 to advertise that they were bringing back funnel cake fries…
…which were first introduced in—you guessed it—2010.
You might say that Burger King tricked the internet into advertising their funnel cake fries to millions of people for free.
Or you might simply say somebody at Burger King had an excellent idea of how to get massive publicity for absolutely no cost whatsoever.
And it worked like gangbusters.
It was so simple that anyone could have thought of it.
And yet, until this campaign, I don’t know of anyone who had ever done it.
Guaranteed, there is a way to generate massive buzz for your next campaign that will cost you almost nothing.
All you need is one great idea, and then the gumption to execute that idea and make your fortune.
Irving
