In the podcast:

01:30 – Why Tyrone Shum started a podcast
05:25 – Other reasons why Tyrone decided to launch podcast
07:44 – What are the starting points in creating podcast?
16:58 – Tips on how to increase and expand your listenership in podcast in a short period of time
22:24 – How to find the right keywords to use?

I interview Tyrone Shum, who has managed to build his brand new podcast to over 100,000 downloads in as little as 6 months. He reveals some tips you can use to grow your own podcast. Don’t miss it!

Read on to this interview with Tyrone Shum who has built a brand new podcast from 0 to over 100,000 downloads in a ridiculously short amount of time and we will reveal some tips you can use to grow your own podcast.

Why Tyrone Shum started a podcast
Ilana: So although your podcast is brand new, you’re not new to the world of web marketing. So by way of I guess introduction into your expertise and your background, do you mind going through briefly some of the interesting ventures you’ve done in the past as I know you’ve done lots of interesting things.

Tyrone: I didn’t realize I was that interesting. So I started a podcast just recently about six months ago in poppy, the niche poppy. And I’ve always had a passion in poppy since quite a young age and it kind of started back from when my parents bought property and sold it and made quite a bit of money from it. I thought wow, you know if they can do it and I see that the very wealthy, the people who have an enormous amount of wealth and start on property has been the key to wealth. And I thought if I could learn from these people I think I could also replicate and do the same thing.

And what I discovered was there was a lot of great podcasts out there who were talking about profit but unfortunately I’m just talking about how to rather than just the story. Because I come from a background where I have implemented and created scripts and stories behind videos and done other podcasting different niche, I saw there was a missing niche and I decided that if no one else is done it I thought I’d do it because I was trying to scratch my own itch.

I was going through their podcast that were publicized weekly and only once a week they had it because after I work that day I was getting through the podcast within about a month and I was like, I want more podcasts. So I decided to myself, if I’m committed and I’m willing to do my best. I go out and find as many poppy investors then start interviewing them just for my own sake and wanting to learn and start sharing that and try and publish podcast that’s happening every single day. And since then it’s just been phenomenal, that’s how it started.

But going back to where I initially started, I have been in Internet marketing industry and also digital marketing industry for a last close to about 10 years and 7 out of 10 of them have been within say video marketing, podcasting, outsourcing and various forms of Search Engine Optimization as well. And I guess I’m not new really to the industry. I’ve been in the street quite a lot but I’m taking my skill set and stuff to a different niche would better. So that’s my background in the summer.

Ilana: I love that you’ve used your past experience and just applying it to a different industry and that just shows I guess the endless opportunities that when you sort of learn the basic digital marketing skills you can really apply it to a bricks and mortar business or industry like my property which is amazing, so that’s amazing. Well done.

Tyrone:Thank you! And this is the thing. I used to run at this store/agency type of business where I did consult with small businesses and help them apply and also increase their traffic to their websites through different forms such as a video marketing, podcast marketing as well and also SEO rankings as well. And just from, see all that is everything that we do, everything we have done the past, it all comes back down to fundamentals and that’s really serving finding clients pain points and really trying to address that and just try to solve their problems online. That’s really all it comes back down to when you look at the foundation of it.

Ilana: It’s pretty simple isn’t it.

Tyrone: Yeah, this is.

Ilana: Awesome! Alright, so let’s get stuck into more information about your new podcast which tell me the name again of it?

Tyrone: Sure it’s called property investor. So it’s basically two words that I have three words I actually came up with. As it’s stories about property investors, I thought why not call it property investors stories. And I thought that’s it’s gonna be a bit long. So what I discovered, when I combine property investor by adding a “Y”. Yet, it was actually a merge the word story into property history and that’s how the word came about. It’s just a play on words.

Other reasons why Tyrone decided to launch podcast

Ilana: That’s great. So I guess you’ve already touched on to one of the reasons why you decide to launch one, really for your own information and thirst for knowledge. Were there any other reasons why you decided to launch one because it’s quite a commitment.

Tyrone: It is. It is a huge commitment. I guess my goal for this podcast is dense by means of people firstly to invest in property and build a community behind it and from there is to be able to create a private community of people subscribe to membership program and to really collaborate and have experts come into play and obviously to monetize this in some shape or form. So there will be potentially ways for me to monetize it such a sponsorship. So just people signing up to a membership site to share content and also to network because at the end of day, property is about people. And there’s so many different ways that you can actually invest into property whether it be doing joint ventures with other people or searching for resources to be able to help invest into property.

There’s just so many different ways to look at it. And it all comes back down to the next meeting and then to find the right people to trust and to get the assistance and advice and expert help to guide you along the way and also potentially help you through some form of service.

Ilana: Yeah. I guess the opportunities really are quite endless as you’ve outlined the sponsorships and jarvis and community and some opening up a world of possibility for you.

Tyrone: Absolutely. I mean I didn’t know a lot about this stuff before coming up that I just thought you know the best way to learn is to ask. And since asking that many people I’ve had over hundred people were interviewed and I think the key thing that I’ve learnt from this is a lot of them share some really, really invaluable gems. And if you take away just a little bit of each person’s advice and expert tips that they share with you, it can really really go a long way. And yeah it’s just been phenomenal because these people who I look up to when I read that book have spoken to a lot of people in the industry. And they, they’re also my the best of the best experts. They’re just so generous with their time have been so so great. It had a lot of great influence from them. So it’s just been an absolute amazing journey for me.

What are the starting points in creating podcast?

Ilana: That’s great. So if you’ve never started a podcast before how would you go about starting one like what are the what’s the starting point for somebody who is I guess interested in potentially undertaking a similar journey like yours. How do they go about starting one?

Tyrone: Was going to say, don’t do what I do. But the reason is because you have to be committed. Because at the end of day, I run a podcast. It’s like running any other business. You’ve got to shop every time that you want to create a podcast. Be consistent and also ensure that you’ve got the passion behind it because even when you reach to say the tenth podcasts, hundredth podcasts, and you’re not getting any people listen to podcast still got to be persistent because if you want to succeed you’ve got to be able to show that there is passionate drive behind it.

Like when I first started this podcast I was getting a bit concerned when my numbers were cut low. I started off with about everything about 5000 ballots. The first part of it says not too many but as as it started growing exponentially growing the way I’ve seen it grow now it’s put a lot more motivation. It confirms everything I do because not only that I am getting a lot of great comments emails from other listeners and people even subscribing by a different type of technology through email but other forms I’m offering for them which I share with you. There’ll be later on this episode but I’m getting so much feedback that inspires me to push through because there could be days where you go gosh, because I’m tight of interview. Five or six interviews in a row. Why am I doing this? What’s the reason behind it?

So I mean I just got two interviews two hours straight of interviews just now listen to this podcast now with you. And I always go pretend I’m really doing it at the end the day for who Is this because I want to inspire them. And that same part will inspire me as well. But I’ve got to make sure that I have the right message and also the natural heart that’s involved in this and ensure that it’s doing it for them as a community. So you got to ask yourself Is this something that you definitely might do for the rest of your life or at least a medium to long term and you’ve got to ask yourself the other questions is how are you going to monetize this, because at the end of day some people can do this for passion.

But you know I feel using this full time income all you’re going to be committing this to actually grow something else. You’ve got to figure out how you can monetize a podcast like this so definitely ask these questions at the beginning in terms of starting out where to start and how to go about it. This is not my first podcast, my life is probably my podcast I’ve done in my life.

Ilana: I thought this was your first.

Tyrone: No, this is my third podcast. I’ll share with you the two previous podcasts I did. The first podcast I did was all about internet marketing and interviewing all the successful people just like what I hear a lot of other successful entrepreneurs would do out there is just you know I got into their thinking okay I can be a lot of successful business ideas. Share their story. That worked out really well. I got some really, really top bloggers and great people like Chris Brogan, Dan Ross, James Franco.

So for more on my podcast and that took off really well that’s where I learnt the art of interfering. I never realized that the feeling was is a skill that you had to learn. And for me, my personality is more like I would rather just sit there and listen and learn rather than actually talk in a podcast for a whole hour. That’s the reason why I tend it towards the lean towards interviewing people and actually getting their knowledge because they’re providing context and I guess that’s where I get the skill of the to ask the right questions and to create the right story lines behind it.

Then as time of balls I got better and better then I got myself into a little bit about video. I think that’s where I start learning a lot about writing stories and scripts and try to engage the audience in some shape or form because there’s so many ideas out there like I had I had this literally hundred minutes worth of 200 hours worth of video uploaded every minute supply that’s a ridiculous amount and you’ve got to be able to captivate your audience. So from that skill set, I’ve learned I launched another podcast which was focused on video marketing and that one did really well as well too that took off. So writing in the top space of video magazine.

But I realized after a period of time doing that when I kind of lost their passion because you go take it, you talk about the basics of video. You talk about next. So that kind of fizzled out. But I did take away a lot of great skills from that and applying that knowledge to this podcast he was able to help me to get to where I am right now. So to really ask the question is why you should start a podcast and how you should go about it is to really ask what is really going to be a passion for the long term. That’s what I say has been a chief factor. And to see if if you want to be behind the mike and talk about the topic that you’re passionate about or interview people or you can have a hybrid of both and see what works best for you. Let’s go from there. That’s really the best recommendation I can give you from personal experience.

Ilana: So your past two podcasts that you were just talking about are they still going or you’ve stopped doing them.

Tyrone:Yeah, I stopped it on them a while ago because I think I’ll focus my time when I was actually running those businesses as well on actually servicing and providing services for my clients which are small business owners. And that took up a lot of time because obviously if have running a business and managing kinds of stuff like that does take me a lot more energy out of you. And yeah I think where the dollars were coming in we are monetized obviously through some service based business and the high cost wasn’t monetizing as much as I thought it was.

So I guess I put that on hold and then yeah lo and behold in running in our podcast discussion about I know this time around with a clear strategy based on how to monetize it. So it must be like over the time that all these last years. Yeah this is kind of the end product or not really end, but the next product is my luck.

Ilana: I like it. So how do you go about getting guests on to your show? Is it a challenge?

Tyrone: It is a challenge it’s persistence. So this is what I initially did because I knew a few of the guests or actually I should say experts in the industry because I’ve read their books and I’ve seen them in magazines and stuff like that and knowingly I try my best to try and reach out to them which you know everyone tries to do and that when they’re starting out. But the thing is there’s not much credibility behind what I was doing. So a lot of them basically said no. And I guess from the start I had to sort of build those relationships up.

So luckily I had some previous contacts when I was a mentoring through program called Results Mentoring which was also initially owned by Steve McKnight which is a very well known expert who wrote the book zero hundred thirty eight and a half years out. And that was an amazing story and I suppose mentoring-coaching and through period time because he knows me and I’ve met him many times we’re together or he agreed to do an interview but I won’t talk about three months. They actually get him on the call back. But he was more than willing to come on.

You see it’s always been so we’ll have a chat and share his knowledge. So by having him agree and say I’m coming on the podcast it kind of put a bit of credibility but knowing that I also did have a few other people like Kelly who also was a mentor working with him. But he also runs the business results. Jon Lieberman is a market researcher. He also knows Brendan so just through this whole network unexpanded. And I just really like my feeling. Yeah, memento I can’t get my name into to these people but obviously to get all these experts on takes a bit of time.

So what I did was I thought I’d reach out to smaller people and I decide okay, there are a few publications in this industry such as Australian popular magazine in your investment magazine. And I think back then that you have Smart Poppy Investment but they close that publication down because obviously publications right now print a quite costly to run.

So what I did was I first went over to the library actually of all places to get all the back issues of the extreme poppy best of magazine and that we’re still going through finding amazing stories succeed in investing and just don’t know the names down. I just did the research online and basically reached out to them because they weren’t multimedia. Yes it’s good. They worked very hard to get quite a lot of investors who you know they’re not experts but they’ve got some amazing stories to share. So that kind of is where I started.

And then I also jumped out to other podcasts sort of you could say. So what are the stories that don’t start reaching out to them say hey I saw you and so and so it’s on my podcast and lunch read and that’s where it started. And just from that built up this huge list of guests on the show and now about two or three months ahead it’s genuine. It’s been fantastic. So I don’t have to really go out to find as many guests I used to but still, yeah. So just trying to get there.

Ilana: Maybe soon people started preaching you to appear on your show.

Tyrone: I say it has. That’s what’s been happening. I want to manage this as best as I can. I’ve had numerous people contact and I’ve just had to say that it’s at least two or three weeks why to get out of me for the next interview. I think right in that sense.

Tips on how to increase and expand your listenership in podcast in a short period of time

Ilana: Yeah, amazing. So I guess the question that I think a lot of people would be wondering about now is how he built it up in such as you know, to so many downloads and in a listenership in such a short space of time. He got kind of any tips or tricks or strategies you could give somebody who let’s say has a podcast and they’re really trying to increase and expand their listenership. How they could get some momentum with that?

Tyrone: For sure. I think there’s been a number of factors. I think the major major two contributing factors that I can definitely say is the first one is to build those relationships with your guests especially the experts in the industry because they have quite a substantial influence on the market and also potentially has by a number of subscribers. The spirit of the email lists and also on the social media and because what I did was the first night that I released where actually expert interviews of well-known people in the industry I asked them to see if they’d be willing to support the campaign to see promoted to that list.

So that’s kind of where it helped launch the podcast initially offering I have out there they just want a post. So a few days consistently I think it what I did was, I did one every day for about four weeks or so and then I switch the schedule up to do it every second day since then. But by doing that, that drove that momentum to drive the initial downloads down because obviously you need to get it spread out in and try to get as many people to listen in order for this to actually start to grow and it impacts a lot more people. So that’s really how it started.

But to be honest you’ve just also got to put things in perspective because the other question about ask yourself experts will probably ask this, why should I promote you know your podcast to my list. You’ve got to give them a strong enough reason why. And it’s not because of self promotion but also to that your podcast is unique compared to the rest. And the reason why my podcast to the rest of the market is because it’s very much well narrated and also it got something that’s really different. So I want to sort of give why exactly how my podcast sounds upon you know have a listen to it and you sort of get a better idea to what i did. Experience it for yourself what the difference is between just a normal interview that we have out there.

So that’s probably one of the major key factors that drove the success of the downloads. But nearly to that there was consistency of hosting continuously with more and more interviews and sharing those stories with as many people as possible. And over time as you start posting more iTunes picks it up. It starts pushing erratic and then that leads onto my next part which basically means that you’ve just got to make sure that when you’re actually posting your content out there that’s how we optimize for iTunes. And when I say optimize, trying to target is the keywords are people are searching for because you can put it out of very great catchy headline.

But at the headline it has no keyword which relates to the topic. People never find it because it’s very old school. It’s not like iTunes is nowhere near like how Google is. Where Google could have sort of have predictive words that they can go okay. Maybe let’s just take for example I was talking about property how to do renovations on your next house. If you just type it property, no one is going to be there on that particular topic because it’s related to renovations, whereas Google suggests that searches like renovation property, renovation your house stuff like that.

So you’ve just got to be very clear with what you put into your tiles and your lights and has specific keywords and on top of that your podcast needs to show that has very specific keywords into it. So if you saw my podcast, you just probably think that my podcast has a lot of keywords in it. It’s intentional for that reason and not just by putting the actual title of my podcasts was properly invested. So I’ve got like for example australian property investor has keywords, I’ve got some property investment is not keyword but rent vesting is my keyword in my title. And those who actually help boost my rankings up into iTunes in order for people to find it.

So those are so low key tips that I’ve learnt out of the way throughout my journey because it’s not just about creating content and I see and praying hoping that so I need a rank, you actually need to do some serious work behind the scenes to actually get it.

Tips on how to increase and expand your listenership in podcast in a short period of time

Ilana: So not the spray and pray method. So going back to the keyword selection issue like let’s say you’ve got I mean how do you go about discovering what keywords to use?

Tyrone: Good question. And this is something I pondered over for quite some time. So for the people out there this will probably be an awesome tip because they’ll say the hours of work and research in iTunes if you going to have a look at it if you say comparing your competitors or partners on iTunes depending on which nature. So my property I did is probably search for that particular keyword in a lot of different podcast came up and so I’ll give you some examples just like smart poppy western or the poppy couch or rent vesting or everyday poppy vesting, they have been on the market and postings.

Posting and showing the audience since like 2014th I remember, 2004-2015. So it’s been a good rate for years and you see over time they’ve built up a lot of content. So what I did was I hopped into all of the episodes and start to see what kind of titles they used to get stuff for me and get some ideas from them. So that’s one way of trying to find out what kind of keywords they’re using because more than likely you’ll see that a lot of these podcast are ranking. So iTunes definitely coming from these top guys.

Ilana: A quick question on that part. Are you saying that the keywords at an episode level are different to the keywords for your podcast?

Tyrone: Yes that’s right. So if you look at all the episodes that they’ve published, you’ll start to see these titles in there and in your starts lines of keyword was quite common like on the rent vesting podcast, they commonly use the word rent vesting. So it’s obviously heavily searched keyword term that’s been used on iTunes. And if you put that somewhere within your episodes in your titles of your podcast there’s a good chance you could rank for that.

So that that’s how I kind of found some of the keywords and the other way to do is, this is usually when you’re logging onto your desktop and you log in to iTunes when you go into iTunes store specifically under the podcast section, there is a search bar on the top right hand corner. I don’t know if they’re going to change that location but you know for the current day in 2017 the search bar is always on the top right hand corner. And what you do is you just type in a search bar a particular topic that is related to your niche.

So you could type in renovations for example and what will happen is that they’ll have a suggested amount of searches listed straight below just like Google. When you go to Google and type in renovations they’ll show potential words that relate to renovations iTunes has that option in their search bar. And if you have a drop down you know renovations for homes they are your potential to keywords because those are the keywords that people are searching on iTunes and that’s been one another powerful way to find out what keywords people are using in how to rank for them too.

Ilana: Amazing. So would you say that you need a minimum number of episodes before you launch like I guess, you know a lot of people talk about getting in the new and noteworthy section, we’re sort of mindful of how many episodes you wanted to have ready to go live at launch.

Tyrone: I did and I read a lot of success stories online on podcasting. There was a few from Nathan Latka. There was also one from Jim Carrey is such a last name but another guy called Jim who wrote a very detailed post about how they succeeded and downloaded. I got on new and noteworthy post, so that it had reached me downloads in a very short period of time. Now that can’t stop. And I do sort of see how they would actually long shot podcast because I was in that place and they sort of mobbeled off them. But to be honest it’s not really I mean a perfect number because that’s what I’ve discovered. I decide to follow what Nathan did which was to watch my episodes on the first day just to see if I can get along or leverage downloads or stuff like that and that did work to a certain extent and it sort of leveraged off from there.

But what I felt that was really well was the subsequent days and in subsequent weeks because it’s not the first day of launch. It’s actually a few weeks after that’s when you start seeing the numbers in place. A lot of people out there talk about what with those three episodes and you can do that. But I personally went with it and that seemed to work for me. But what I was trying to do as well and I thought that this strategy would work was to try and get as many downloads to try and get list on the new and noteworthy but after discovering that the new and noteworthy is not based on how many download tab it’s based on people picking like actual people from iTunes inside Apple. Or see your podcast and pick it and put it in. That actually gets ranked. So it’s then, pick now those not actually driven by a form or anything like that and really to get onto that thing you just have to contact that which I’ve done at least three times by sending an email to them and they give me a list of questions and answer them correctly but still I’m in new and noteworthy So it will quite picky on how it goes about and did it launched on the new and noteworthy. I still have to stone crack that one to be honest. Maybe I’ll probably revisit that shortly and have a crack at it again. See it happens.

Ilana: Because I suspect this won’t be your last podcast there either.

Tyrone: Maybe, I don’t know

Ilana: We makes up speculation.

Tyrone:Not right though.

Ilana: All right. So let’s wrap up I think I’ve taken up already plenty of your time. I am mindful of your time so I guess a handful of action steps for people who are looking to increase their listenership, you mentioned building the relationships. But I guess what would be your number one tip for people who are really trying to grow their podcast to a level like you’ve got in such a short period of time.

Tyrone: I think what’s been key for me is definitely in relationships as I mentioned but also building up that email database as well and try and get people to subscribe to that because what’s key is to actually drive their subscribers back in to iTunes subscribe because what happens is in order for this to rank really well is, iTunes looked at not only the number of downloads but they also look at the number of subscribers in the first 90 days. I don’t quite know exactly the details on that but I did hear on another podcast based on libsyn they share the specifics that’s in the actual form behind how that works.

But one’s key and that’s crucial is to show that you get a lot of subscribers within the first 90 days to actually get your podcast just quite high. So my recommendation to you is to have very strong court actions in your podcast to get people firstly to subscribe to your database whether it be on your website or whether they get on a phone which is what I’ve actually been doing I’ve been promoting a number that they can sms too and sent their emails and that’s been working. And yeah. People did, people just what’s the word for it’s a time constraint because they’re always busy. And not everyone remembers exactly what happened to the website at the podcast coz more than likely people either going on the run with their mobile in the car listening on the drive or busy moving and it doesn’t necessarily mean that they have time to just hop onto the website so most people I see text quite frequently.

So if you can provide them an easy number for them to text like a memorable number it’s quite easy to just open up messenger and just text and then basically just add that to your list. Now that’s been working today for me so far. And yeah just very strong code actions at the middle of the episodes which is what I’ve been doing all at the end and that’s been very powerful to actually get people to take some action. And then from there it provide as much great content as you can because it’s the offer that’s going to help you to actually drive back to your website that’s much important from that be, to nurture them, engage with them and then replied as many as you can because most podcast and have a lot of people acquiring it. I guess it’s a built engagement. And when they buy great feedback you surely ask them to try and maybe a deal as well. Yeah it kind of flows. Basically it’s just a roll on effect and just keeps opting it, really that’s the way I’ve done it.

Ilana: Interesting. Well where can people find out more about this amazing podcast that you’re doing?

Tyrone: Thank you. Like I said, I did is just simply got a property investory. So just the word property in an investor with a letter “Y” at the end I just got a copy investory.com. You feel free to subscribe to the free trade so that we give away there. And also you can subscribe to us on iTunes or Android devices or anywhere where you want to download. We’re pretty much on every single platform that’s available so you should be able to find us quite easily and then take it, reach us. We just turn it off if you don’t want to actually contact me by mobile. We are direct mobile here 04998810

Ilna: Nice. Well thank you so much for taking time out of your very busy day to come and talk to me. I really appreciate it and you’ve provided a ton of value for our listeners. Thank you. And we’ll chat next time.

Tyrone: You’re welcome. Thank you so much Ilana. It’s been a pleasure to be on your podcast.

Ilana: Awesome thanks so much. So that concludes today’s episode with Tyrone Shum. I really hope you enjoy it. Tyronne provided a lot of valuable information that you can use if you have your own podcast and I’m sure if you don’t have one it’s definitely got you thinking about starting your own podcast.