How to Go Viral: Social Media Strategies That Actually Work (According to Marcus Logan)
Want to grow your podcast (or brand) on social media without burning out? Marcus Logan has the blueprint.
Marcus Logan is the founder of Via Digital, a social media and digital marketing agency making waves in Aotearoa’s creator and podcasting landscape. With a background in brand storytelling and strategy, Marcus has worked with some of New Zealand’s biggest shows, including SportsCafe, Between Two Beers and The Dom Harvey Podcast, helping them cut through the noise online.
In this episode of Wanna Podcast?, Marcus breaks down what’s working right now on social media, how to choose content that hooks new audiences, and how to grow a thriving online community around your podcast or brand.
Repurposing Content Without Burning Out
If you’ve got a long-form podcast, you’ve already got a goldmine of content. Marcus says the key is creating a clear weekly rhythm, like:
Sunday: promotional trailer
Monday: new episode announcement graphic
Tuesday onwards: short clips, quotes, carousels, and data posts
Instead of trying to make every post perfect, focus on extracting the most compelling 30-second moments or one-liners that stand alone.
“One sentence could be a post. Thirty seconds could be a clip.”
What Makes Content Go Viral
To capture attention, Marcus suggests choosing moments that have:
Universal appeal — even people unfamiliar with your show should understand the clip
Minimal context required — don’t make people do homework
Emotional punch — funny, surprising, relatable, or powerful stories
And while analytics like likes and comments matter, “sends” and “saves” are now the most important metrics. They show the algorithm that your content is worth sharing, which means it will push it to more people.
Crafting Hooks That Stop the Scroll
Those first three seconds matter. Marcus recommends:
Writing custom hooks post-recording if needed
Using text boxes to build quick context
Highlighting bold visual moments (gestures, expressions)
Focusing on audio hooks over visual gimmicks
“We think of podcast content as micro stories. The best hooks come from what’s being said.”
Should You Follow Trends?
Short-form video is king across every platform — Reels, TikToks, Shorts, Facebook. Carousels are resurging, too, but Marcus warns not to get caught chasing trends.
“Trends are shallow. They’re gone tomorrow. Quality content builds long-term engagement.”
Instead, get crystal clear on your audience, then create consistently valuable content for them. He suggests the 80/20 rule: 80% value (entertaining, educational, inspiring), 20% promotional.
Video Is No Longer Optional
Marcus is blunt: if you want to grow, you need video.
“Video is everything on social media now… The trend towards video podcasts is huge.”
If you don’t have video, get creative with carousels, text posts and graphics, but know it’s harder to spark a connection that way. People connect with people, and seeing faces builds trust and relatability.
Building Community vs Building an Audience
Marcus distinguishes between the two:
Audience = one-way relationship
Community = two-way interaction
Platforms like private Facebook groups, Patreon, or YouTube memberships give fans space to interact with you and each other, creating deeper loyalty, higher engagement, and more opportunities to monetise.
Marcus’s Top Tips for Podcasters and Creators
Prioritise quality — you only get one shot to win new listeners
Batch and schedule — plan content in bulk to stay consistent
Refresh old content — re-release older episodes or post #ThrowbackThursday clips
Leverage paid ads — target specific audiences cost-effectively
Always include a call to action — bridge the gap from short-form to full episodes
Know your audience deeply — and create for them, not the algorithm
“Focus on creating the best content you can for your audience — then use social media to help them find it.”
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Maxene (00:05.301)
Alright.
Maxene (00:12.928)
Okay, yeah, the social media space is like, it's really noisy and it feels like this big content machine that you're like always having to feed. How do you, I mean, keep up with that consistency that you were saying without like burning out?
Marcus Logan (00:31.97)
Yeah, I think working in podcasts is a bit of a gift in terms of having enough content because typically we work in relatively long form podcasts. So a two hour podcast episode, there are so many potential bits of content that you can take from that, you know, whether it's four to five clips throughout the week, whether it's quotes that you could turn into a graphic, whether there's some data points that you could turn into a carousel.
I mean, we just approach it through the lens of we have a weekly strategy for our clients where we say, okay, on Sunday night, this promotional trailer is going to go out. Then on Monday morning, there's a graphic that's going to go out announcing the new episode. Tuesday night, there's going to be the next clip, et cetera. So we have kind of a custom strategy and content rhythm that we have for all of our clients. And I just think there's so much content.
in podcasts that there's never really any shortage. The hardest part is culling it and saying, OK, these five to six pieces of content are the strongest from this episode. And we also treat the subject material as potential new content opportunities too. Like if a certain subject has been the focus of a podcast, we can then take that subject and break down some more information about that.
Maxene (01:38.709)
Mmm.
Marcus Logan (02:01.078)
in a carousel or into a graphic or a follow-up video TikTok style that's done with a green screen with some research behind it. There's so much content available in podcasts that we never really run out of it. And I think in general, businesses or podcasters or anyone can kind of get hung up on thinking that content has to be
all encompassing that every post has to be perfect and touch on all the different points. Whereas content now, we think of it as really niche. One sentence could be a post. 30 seconds of really impactful sentence could be a clip. content is plentiful in the bottom social media environment.
Maxene (02:55.893)
So then how do you choose which bits to use?
Marcus Logan (02:59.97)
That's the hard part. That's the part where you have to think. You have to think what moments have the widest appeal to people with the least amount of context necessary. The goal for every single bit of content that we put out is if Joe Bloggs down the side street sees your clip pop up onto his algorithm.
If he doesn't know your podcast, if he doesn't know the host, if he doesn't know the guests, is he still going to be able to engage or understand that clip or that reel or that carousel? So we always aim for broadest universal understanding and appeal and the least amount of context required to get something out of it. And then it's also an understanding of your audience. know, like what's a hot topic that's going to
Maxene (03:46.647)
Hmm.
Marcus Logan (03:56.184)
drive conversation amongst your followers or amongst your niche. So with that comes a bit of a understanding of culture, understanding pop culture, understanding social media, a really thorough understanding of who your audience is to know what's going to land the best. And sometimes you don't know. Sometimes you just have to follow your gut if you think that this was really powerful.
Maxene (04:13.14)
Mm.
Marcus Logan (04:24.428)
then sometimes you're not going to know until you put it out. And that's also part of experimentation and testing lots of content, putting lots of stuff out, and then finding beats and finding patterns of posts that do work and posts that don't work and letting that inform your decision making in the future as well.
Maxene (04:42.956)
What do you think is the most important thing to be looking at in terms of analytics?
Marcus Logan (04:49.528)
The most important analytic now is a send. So if someone sends a bit of content, then that's typically what the platforms now look at as the highest form of engagement. Because these platforms, their ultimate goal is they want people to be spending as much time as possible on the app. And if they see a bit of content that is engaging people and
Maxene (04:56.962)
Mm.
Marcus Logan (05:17.592)
you're then sending it to other people who are then going to spend more time on the app. They think, brilliant. This is amazing. So Sends is a really important one and Saves. So that shows a depth of engagement of not only do I love this, but I'm going to tell my friends about this. then, I mean, you count and likes, comments. I mean, they're all important.
Maxene (05:46.292)
Mm.
Marcus Logan (05:47.288)
Some of them are called vanity metrics, but any bit of engagement that you get on a piece of content is a good thing and is going to inform the platform of how strong the content is and then therefore how much are they going to push that piece of content. So it's all important, but I think those sends and saves are really the most powerful. And if a piece of content has 50 likes, but 200 sends,
Maxene (06:06.082)
Mmm.
Marcus Logan (06:17.368)
then that's a great performing post. So yeah.
Maxene (06:20.16)
Yeah, because of what you were saying about, you know, when people engage with your content, the algorithm's more likely to push it out. Do you think it's important to engage with your own content, or is that a bit cringe?
Marcus Logan (06:36.274)
I think it's a bit cringe. Yeah, I mean, there's a way to do it that's genuine in going in and replying to comments or particularly like on a YouTube video, if you go in and post the YouTube video and then leave a comment saying, let us know what your favorite moment of this episode was or bar out what a chat this was. Thank you to so and so for coming on. That's a way of doing it that's community building and
Maxene (06:37.907)
Hahaha.
Marcus Logan (07:05.621)
nurturing. Whereas if you're liking your own posts and commenting emojis on your own posts, then that's not the best look. But there's a way of engaging with your own content with the goal of fostering a community.
Maxene (07:06.591)
Mm-hmm.
Maxene (07:17.213)
Yeah.
Maxene (07:23.646)
Yeah. So with social media, it's obviously, you know, you've got a few seconds to capture that attention and like stop their scroll. What's your piece of advice for finding a captivating hook?
Marcus Logan (07:40.206)
We always look at attention grabbing statements or big setups or building in context into those first three seconds. Because sometimes you could have a really great three seconds, but there's there's still some kind of storytelling piece that's missing from the seconds before that was said. if we.
If we have that, oftentimes will use things like a pop-up text box on the screen that will say a bit of supporting contextual information about what's happening to kind of build that in. And even sometimes we do that just to have something on screen so that people are reading and then hopefully by the time they read it, it's been three seconds and then you're through that first little engagement dip off.
Maxene (08:32.944)
Mm-hmm.
Marcus Logan (08:34.626)
We typically look for those moments that stand out on Listen Back and then bringing them straight to the top. And sometimes we've gone as far as working with clients to actually script some custom hooks after a podcast record so that we can absolutely control that first three second or first five seconds of a clip. So whether it's a
Maxene (09:00.002)
Mmm.
Marcus Logan (09:04.536)
whether it's a guest that has worked with police or gangs or has a lot of experience with crime, we'll write out five or 10 different hooks that say, you've worked with the police for 15 years and seen the craziest crimes in the history of New Zealand. How do you stay sane? Or something like that. And then we actually will get that reported and then we'll use that as the hook so we actually can control the outcome to make sure that we have that. So yeah, there's a few different.
a different things that we be used.
Maxene (09:36.8)
thought about about approaching my podcast in that way. mean like when I when I look at my podcast I kind of do the podcast standalone and then just choose clips and chuck it up you know I hadn't thought about like embedding those hooks purposefully for social media that's a really good takeaway. How important are visual hooks compared with audio hooks?
Marcus Logan (09:41.294)
in
Marcus Logan (09:49.346)
Yeah, for sure.
Marcus Logan (09:55.427)
Mm.
Marcus Logan (10:01.288)
for podcast content.
Maxene (10:04.642)
Mmm.
Marcus Logan (10:07.446)
Yeah, mean, visual hooks, there's not too much that you can really do with people having a conversation. So we typically do it like a text box popping up in the first three seconds. Or if someone has a really exaggerated hand gesture, or a emotive expression on their face, then we will use that and we'll highlight it and we'll zoom in on it.
For the most part, think the most powerful stuff comes from the audio hook. It comes from what's being said. Because it's quite a limited format a lot of the time, right? You know, it's people sitting down having a conversation. So there's not too much that you could really craft visually to, you know, stand out and smack people in the face, you know, in a way that could be done with other types of content. So, you know, we think of
Podcasts, social content is kind of micro stories, micro moments, micro narratives that we can piece together. And the best ones are typically just, those really strong stories or really funny jokes or really funny stories or powerful information. Yeah, we go more with looking at the content as the hook rather than like a visual on screen.
Maxene (11:30.018)
And then I've seen some people putting like trending audio underneath their podcast snippets. Do you think that that's a good way to go about it? or, I guess with music, you have to be quite careful way because you don't want any music that has lyrics. don't want anything to like distract from the actual content of the podcast. But do you think that is a kind of good way to go about your content?
Marcus Logan (11:56.364)
Yeah, yeah, potentially. Yeah, I think it's no harm in testing those kinds of things. And typically the platforms like you using things that are trending or particularly new as well. So like, for example, Instagram has an edits app that they've launched and people have speculated, you know, whether content that's edited using the edits app, but then posted on Instagram gets a little bump in engagement to incentivize people using that. So, I mean, I think all of those, all of those kind of
Maxene (12:00.674)
Mm.
Marcus Logan (12:26.35)
trending formats and new features are really good to experiment with and play around with. I don't think that they would be game changes. I don't think that a clip without a trending audio that's got an incredibly powerful story versus a clip with trending audio that's the same. I don't think that you would see that huge of a difference in performance.
Maxene (12:52.962)
Mm.
Marcus Logan (12:55.306)
I would focus more on how do we get the absolute best out of our guests? How do we set them up to have an amazing story, an amazing moment, and capture that in the most concise, clear, engaging way possible, rather than focusing on the smaller stuff. It's not small. It's important.
But I think most more important is that kind of high level focus on the content.
Maxene (13:27.362)
Do Do you think there's more of a focus on like chasing genuinely, engaging content that's quality and consistently of a high standard rather than just like chasing trends?
Marcus Logan (13:44.238)
Yeah, 100%. 100%. That's going to drive you with the long-term engagement and long-term brand building and long-term audience cultivation, because getting caught up in chasing trends or trying to always hop on the latest trends, they're shallow. They've They're gone tomorrow after being relevant for a couple of weeks. There's always going to be something new, but none of them really have that long of a lifeline.
Maxene (14:13.954)
Mm.
Marcus Logan (14:15.032)
focusing more on the the stuff that you can control, that foundational stuff is going to flow over into content performance.
Maxene (14:23.074)
Yeah. And then I guess as well, the algorithms are constantly kind of changing and keeping you on your toes. And so it can probably become a bit tiring and like, um, draining. What's the word I'm trying to think of? Like you could, you can get a bit burnt out, I guess, if you're constantly trying to chase the trends rather than just focusing on doing your job and doing it well.
Marcus Logan (14:52.206)
Yeah, 100%. And I mean, if there is a trend that pops up that makes sense for you and your brand and your podcast to do, then absolutely do it. But stressing over them and worrying, you see this happening for this brand or this podcast, and then trying to recreate something and stressing out and spending hours doing it is not worth doing. That time is better spent crafting a deeper.
Maxene (15:16.202)
Mm.
Marcus Logan (15:21.994)
strategy to just produce better content at a high level.
Maxene (15:25.396)
Yeah. Yeah. I know, for me and for a lot of my clients, social media is kind of the thing that sometimes gets dropped off. You know, when you're busy with your client work, you're busy trying to run your business, you're busy with your podcast and trying to, you know, get that, to a high standard and, you know, continue on with that. And so when you, when you get, have things on, and you're busy and you're getting a bit burnt out social media,
can easily be the first thing that kind of drops off. Do you have any sort of tips or advice on how you can kind of keep the momentum going in those moments?
Marcus Logan (16:07.512)
Yeah, I think having a strategy can help a lot. You know, taking the time to lay out a blueprint or a foundational approach to how you're going to create content for social can help so much. Like I said, there's no shortage of content opportunities these days, so I think finding formats that are easily adaptable.
and easy to create content in bulk can help a ton. AI is great for that, although you don't want your content to just be AI. as a research assistant or as a think of it as a marketing assistant, it can help you come up with 100 different post ideas in 30 seconds. then you can take the ones that make sense and add your unique perspective to those and then bin the rest of them.
Yeah, think it's just about finding format and then finding the consistency that you want. You don't necessarily need to be posting every day. If you decide on an output that's two or three posts a week, then that's perfectly fine. And you can still grow and you can still create real impact from that. So yeah, I think it's about having a strategy, figuring out what your realistic output is going to be.
finding the formats of what those could be and then sitting down and creating them in bulk and then scheduling them out or mapping them out.
Maxene (17:42.242)
So what kind of content is performing the best at the moment? I know I've seen algorithms on platforms like Instagram in particular. kind of, I mean correct me if I'm wrong, I've seen this on Instagram. I kind of starting to veer away from reels and more towards carousels.
Marcus Logan (17:58.69)
Hahaha
Marcus Logan (18:05.742)
Yeah, mean carousels perform really well. But I think reels are the dominant content format and you know short form video is the dominant content format. If we're talking about all of social media. You know Facebook are really pushing reels and the Facebook algorithm has changed quite a lot recently. TikTok obviously YouTube shorts. I mean, I think short form video is the content.
Maxene (18:14.217)
Yeah.
Marcus Logan (18:35.438)
format to really be focusing on. mean carousels are great because if somebody sees your carousel and scrolls past it, oftentimes Instagram will have that carousel reappear but on the second slide or on the third slide so it does create multiple more opportunities to catch people back on that post. But I mean I love video content and I love short form video. I just think that
you just have this canvas to tell a story or capture a moment or share a joke. It provides such a depth of connection for people. And just considering how fast-spread short-form video content is going across all the platforms now, I think that is the focus and that will continue being the style of content moving forward.
Maxene (19:35.554)
Do you think it's important to have a variety of different content types or if you had a strategy that was just Reels would that be fine too?
Marcus Logan (19:46.732)
I mean, I think it would be fine to just have reels, but yeah, I think it's good to have variety. The one thing you don't want is people opening their newsfeed and seeing some of your content and then they just scroll past it because they think, know, seen it before or same old, same old. So having variety is definitely important. So yeah, breaking it up with images, with text posts, graphics, quotes, carousels. The variety is really important. But then again,
Maxene (19:52.962)
Yep.
Marcus Logan (20:15.392)
If you're creating really strong reels, then I think that's great too. And there's no real disadvantage of it as long as the reels are quality.
Maxene (20:26.06)
What would you suggest for podcasters that don't currently video their podcasts?
Marcus Logan (20:32.568)
start videoing? I mean, it's tough. It's tough to make really engaging content for podcasts that is not video. Honestly, you know, there's ways to do it. Like you could take the audio and match it to a graphic with subtitles on or you could take the audio and
Maxene (20:47.01)
Mm.
Marcus Logan (21:03.07)
create some AI video to match, or you could just focus on text carousels with content from the episodes. But it's so much harder. Video is everything on social media now. And the trend towards video podcasts now is huge. YouTube is now the number one podcast consumption platform on the planet. Spotify has embedded video.
Maxene (21:13.707)
Mm.
Marcus Logan (21:32.054)
And they're pushing that really hard right now. I'm sure Apple will do something to enter the video space as well. So I think, I think, you know, five, 10 years ago, audio only podcasts were, were the format, but it's just, it's changed so much. I mean, I still think there's space for them, you know, like a series based podcast or true crime podcasts, but even them, I think if they had video, then they would probably perform better.
as well. So I mean, yeah, I just think it's it's crucial.
Maxene (22:02.805)
Mmm.
Maxene (22:06.786)
Yeah, I agree. And 44 % of podcast discoverability happens through YouTube as well. And while you can like post a static with your audiogram underneath, it's really not going to engage people. Like if you've got an hour long podcast, people aren't just going to sit there and stare at a picture for an hour, you know? So yeah, I think, although what I do say to my clients is like, if you
Marcus Logan (22:12.717)
Yeah.
Maxene (22:35.316)
stressed out about video or if that's gonna be like a block for you, you know, you can just kind of push through with just audio only and maybe think about doing video later when you're feeling a bit more comfortable because if it's gonna prevent you from doing it then you know you don't have to have it. So if people really don't have video, they really don't feel comfortable having video, what do you think is the best way for them to like go about their content?
Marcus Logan (23:08.61)
Yeah, good question. I still would take the same ideology and philosophy of creating micro stories and micro moments and micro narratives, but getting creative with how you visually represent those, whether it's mapping out a story with
Maxene (23:22.882)
Mm.
Marcus Logan (23:33.374)
know, text and images or graphics across a 10 frame carousel. Telling a guest's back story, you know, their 10 greatest moments or or listening information or data that may have been covered in the podcast. In text based posts, carousels. But it's significantly harder. think there's no way around that, you know.
Maxene (23:58.923)
Mmm.
Marcus Logan (24:03.01)
People use social media to see other people, to connect. We're curious animals. We wanna see other people. We wanna see other people like us and not like us. We wanna hear their stories. We wanna see their emotions. We wanna feel something. And it's much harder to convey that through just text.
Maxene (24:24.694)
Yeah, yeah, I agree. And also going back to something that you said earlier about, you know, we've got an hour, sometimes two hours of content in your podcast. You're already doing the thing anyway. It's not that much more work to actually just add the video element and there's tools like Riverside, like ZenCaster, like Squadcast that make it so easy these days to edit both the audio and video. I kind of feel like
You might as well, you know.
Marcus Logan (24:55.96)
Yeah, 100%. And I mean, it's already an intimidating thing to do an audio podcast, right? You still have to put yourself out there. You still have to express your opinions, your thoughts, your stories. So just putting your face to that doesn't seem like a huge step, but I mean, I can understand people's trepidations at the same time. But I think if you really, you know, gung ho on it and you really want it to work well, then
Maxene (25:03.522)
Yeah.
Marcus Logan (25:23.702)
you are limiting the potential reach that you could access through visual content on social media.
Maxene (25:29.44)
Yeah, I agree. And I think also just in terms of relatability, like you were saying just then, you know, people relate to people. If they can see you and see your guests and engage with you on that visual level, you're just inviting them into the conversation even more so and inviting them to engage with you.
Marcus Logan (25:48.014)
Oh, 100%. Yeah, exactly. It provides you a, it unlocks a whole nother level of connection. And you know, the top creators in the world, you know, their fans almost have like parasocial relationships with the creators. And that wouldn't be able to happen on the same level as just through audio. So yeah, 100 % agreed and 100 % right.
Maxene (25:54.818)
Mmm.
Maxene (26:15.554)
With YouTube, do you think that just uploading your full episode as it is, is like, you know, do you think that's the way to go? Or do you think there's kind of more opportunities with YouTube?
Marcus Logan (26:31.34)
I think there's more opportunities with YouTube. mean, it's a pretty hard ask to get someone to watch a podcast with just two people talking. It's not the most visually engaging or interesting medium. So I think any potential opportunities to make that more visually interesting or exciting, I think it's a missed opportunity for a lot of podcasters right now, actually. Like if you watch Diary of a CEO,
the industry leaders in all things podcasting and all things content. They have so much visually happening throughout their episodes. Like they have a timeline and different chapters that are animated on the bottom of their videos. They bring up stats on the long form video, you know, animated on screen. They cut away to B-rolls in the actual episode, which I haven't seen anyone else doing that. And I mean, their YouTube is just exploding. They've got, you know, 12 million subscribers and growing incredibly.
quickly because I think they have realized that, you know, if you're asking people to sit down and watch a two hour podcast episode, that's a big ask, you know, and people will do that if the guest is really interesting or if the, you know, if the story is really powerful, but a lot of the time they're not going to, you know, so giving people, giving people like rewards in a way for wanting to watch the episode by added.
Maxene (27:33.419)
Mm.
Maxene (27:40.214)
Yeah.
Marcus Logan (27:59.522)
context, information, entertainment, and exciting things happening on the screen. The more of that you could do, better. And even having a really visually interesting background or any opportunities to do that, I think, are great. And I think we'll see a lot more of that in the future as well.
Maxene (28:02.529)
Mm.
Yeah.
Maxene (28:17.908)
Yeah. And I hear what you're saying and this is, it takes me back to like at uni when I was studying film and television and you know, we were making all these exciting graphics and you know, but the thing that is making me kind of like nervous about that, I guess, is just the amount of work that goes into that. Especially like the longer your podcast, the more work that is going to be. And it's kind of already like,
Marcus Logan (28:40.153)
for sure. Yeah.
Maxene (28:47.682)
quite a grind for a lot of people like this relentless weekly episode, especially if their podcast is not making them money or if it's like a passion project or side hustle type thing, or if it's a marketing arm to their business, it can feel like a lot of work to then go in and edit the whole thing and add all these graphics. But I get what you're saying though, because that would make it so much more engaging. And I think that's
Marcus Logan (29:05.164)
Arthur Shaw.
Maxene (29:12.854)
the difference between diary of the CEO having like these humongous teams and budgets as well.
Marcus Logan (29:18.126)
100%. I mean, it's not realistic for 99.9 % of podcasters on the planet to be doing it on the level of direct Zio. Absolutely not. But I think what everyone can learn from that is, you know, they are going the extra mile to add something that is inherently visual to a content format that has been primarily audio because we are living in this really visual
Maxene (29:44.29)
Mmm.
Marcus Logan (29:47.576)
focused world. yeah, mean, lower budget versions of that are harder to do, but they also, I mean, yeah, there's other ways that you could kind of achieve those things, whether it's through more creative types of edits or more creative environments to record in or, yeah, I mean, this is something that Rick Salitso of Sports Cafe always talks about, like,
He can't understand that people watch a podcast. So he's always thinking like, how do we make this a YouTube product? Because it's an audio product. So in the latest season of Sports Cafe, he's basically been doing a TV show that then gets, it's called a podcast and it's uploaded to YouTube and Spotify and Apple, but it's really a TV show. And we saw really huge numbers on YouTube.
Maxene (30:18.971)
Yeah.
Maxene (30:26.421)
Mm.
Maxene (30:40.331)
Mm.
Marcus Logan (30:44.424)
because of that because it's so different to everything else that's happening.
Maxene (30:48.032)
Yeah, and I think we're seeing a lot more of these bigger budget podcasts, know, podcasts with celebrities hosting and, you know, influencers and, you know, all those big budget podcasts, they are kind of treating it more like a TV show that then gets, it's more like video first and then gets transferred into audio, just pull the audio out, which I think is, you know, it is, it is something to be mindful of, I guess, as podcasting becomes.
Because it is still a relatively new platform, even it's still growing and there's still quite a significant opportunity for growth. And it's interesting to see just how, you know, on a global scale at the higher end of things, how it's evolving to be more like that. I've also, I've also think that with YouTube, maybe a way to make your video more engaging is to just cut it up into like,
is to just cut it up into bite-sized clips. So we talked for maybe five minutes about going viral. Maybe that could be one clip and then just cut your episodes up for that YouTube platform to make it kind of more bite-sized.
Marcus Logan (32:01.166)
Yep, 100%. That's another way to go about it. It takes much less buy-in to watch a five-minute clip than it does to watch a three-and-a-half-hour episode. So yeah, that's a strategy that a lot of channels do. They'll have their full episodes on one channel, then they'll have a clip channel where they just do five to 15-minute grabs, or something that we're increasingly doing for clients too is just taking 10-minute...
bytes and putting that up as a standalone YouTube video. And even injecting ones from a year ago or six months ago, injecting 10 minute grabs from the full length archives as well. yeah, I mean, content has a really long shelf life on YouTube, much different to the other social media platforms. So sometimes timeliness is not as much of a factor.
Maxene (32:36.63)
Mm.
Maxene (32:41.109)
Yeah, totally.
Maxene (32:56.82)
Yeah. And I think as well, that idea of bringing back some of the old episodes and kind of giving them new life with, you know, turning them into snippets and posting them at a later date is a really great idea, especially if, you know, I've just been thinking about we're approaching Christmas and summertime and what are some of my clients going to do with their podcasts over that period? Are they going to take a break? A great way that if you do want to take a break, you can keep your podcast kind of alive is to do these sort of like
bite-sized snippets from older episodes or like a best of kind of series.
Marcus Logan (33:32.494)
Yeah, 100%. That's something that Between 2 Beers do, like we do a lot of. We do re-release episodes from, you know, two years ago. Because also as your audio podcast platforms grow and you get more followers, people aren't necessarily going to have gone through all of your old episodes into the archive, especially if you're doing weekly episodes. So doing those kind of things really help.
Maxene (33:56.482)
Mm.
Marcus Logan (34:00.236)
Like we don't see any drop off in terms of numbers really from a re-released episode versus a new episode. So if you've got a big back catalog, definitely put that to use. And it's a content source as well. You know, like we're talking about having enough content and not getting burnt out. Every Thursday you could have a clip from a previous episode that goes up as a Throwback Thursday clip, you know. Social media content shelf life is very small. People have a very short term memory there. So
Maxene (34:22.498)
Mm.
Marcus Logan (34:28.482)
posting old stuff that may have already been posted can still work really well.
Maxene (34:32.268)
Totally. And then you can link to it, like in the show notes or whatever and say full episode here and hopefully get a bit more engagement in those older episodes, especially if, you know, cause it's really good to start your podcast off strong and like launch with some really good episodes. But then if your podcast has grown over time, you've got these amazing episodes that half your audience hasn't even listened to cause they're so far back in your back catalog. It's really good to like give them some.
new life and freshen them up.
Marcus Logan (35:02.914)
Yep, exactly. And reduces your workload as well. Helps you with scheduling and all the logistics as well. There's a bit of a breather. So yeah, I think it's a great tactic.
Maxene (35:05.708)
Totally.
Maxene (35:13.044)
If someone was starting fresh and had no pre-existing audience to tap into, what would be your advice for building an engaged audience?
Marcus Logan (35:24.014)
I think being really clear about who your audience is and what subject matter you're going to focus on and having that will allow you to frame the way that you build a show, frame the way that you market, frame the way that you approach social media and social media content. I think having that is crucial now because
It is busy and it is noisy. So having a clear point of difference is really important. And then in terms of building from the ground up, think being aggressive with your social media marketing, even running paid advertisements on social media for your podcast. So whether that's taking one clip that's about a really specific topic and then boosting it on
Facebook and Instagram and TikTok to a specifically targeted audience that likes fishing and lives in Taupo and Rotorua and age between 25 and 29. you can be really specific with how you run paid targeted content on social media. So I think that would be the best way to do it. Obviously it requires a little bit of budget, although you can run ads pretty...
cost-effectively. I think, yeah, I think that would be the way to go about it. And then I think it's making sure your content is really high quality because you only really have one shot at converting a listener or an audience member. Like if you do manage to get someone to click play or click listen on your podcast, it's a very intentional form of media. It's so different to TV or radio, right? So.
Maxene (36:51.746)
Mm.
Marcus Logan (37:19.384)
then people's time is so valuable. Everyone's so time poor. Everyone's so busy. So if someone does go out of their way to say, hey, I'm going to check this out, it better be good because otherwise there's no real chance of getting them back. But if it is really good, then you've potentially built a long-term audience member. And then if you are consistently creating content that's of that quality, that's going to bring some kind of value to them.
Maxene (37:33.065)
Mmm.
Marcus Logan (37:50.26)
and you don't stop doing it, you're going to build an audience.
Maxene (37:55.042)
Yeah. And then I guess that's where word of mouth would really pick up as well. You know, I was just listening to this podcast. I think you'd really like it and that sort of thing. I think something that I have really noticed and obviously, you know, through my work, this is something that I talk about a lot with my clients, but through all of my podcast interviews that I've done and all of my guests I've spoken to, there's been a real emphasis on understanding your audience.
I think that is just so crucial. And then especially when it comes to those real targeted paid ads, you can get so specific about interests and hobbies and, you know, things that align with your podcast and the topic of your podcast that's not directly, you know, let's just say you've got a parenting podcast, I want to talk to mums.
Okay, but who are the mums? What do they like? What do they do? Where do they spend their time? I think that is so crucial. And yeah, as you say, it's really important for, you know, so that you can really target these people specifically, but also in terms of knowing what kind of content they like, what kind of content they're gonna stick around and listen to, like what their habits are.
Marcus Logan (38:51.0)
Yeah.
Maxene (39:13.056)
what length your episode should be, what platforms you should be marketing on. Yeah, I think that's really crucial for everything.
Marcus Logan (39:24.246)
Yeah. And I mean, the great thing about social media too is you've got the whole database of all social media content at your fingertips too. So if you go to TikTok and search, know, parenting podcast for Australian moms that like, you know, that focus on literacy, you're going to find all of the content that matches that. And then you're able to see, you know, the stuff that performs well and the format that that's in and the tone that that's in and the subtitles that they use.
the color palettes that they have and the clips that get the most engagement, what topics are people talking about? You know, there's so much data available. It's incredible. So yeah, yeah, you're 100 % right. It's like as a marketer, knowing your audience and understanding people and their behaviors is just absolutely everything. And the same is true of a podcaster, you know, being able to understand that on a deep level. But now it's easier than ever to do that because we have all this technology and we have all of this data that's out there.
a huge opportunity.
Maxene (40:26.37)
Yeah, absolutely. What do you think is the difference between building an audience and building a community?
Marcus Logan (40:38.454)
I think building an audience is almost like a one way relationship. They are listening to you, whereas a community, it's a two way interaction. Your audience gets the chance to interact with you and you speak to your audience and then your audience can speak to each other. I think one thing that's really been
trending a lot is these community spaces for the audience of a particular show to come together and discuss amongst each other and discuss with hosts. Things like Patreon, things like YouTube members, things like Facebook community groups are really big right now. And that's creating the digital spaces to turn an audience into a community.
Maxene (41:22.698)
Mm.
Marcus Logan (41:37.708)
because it does give you such a deeper level of engagement with your podcast or your brand to be able to activate those people, to engage them, to understand them more, to give them more what they're looking for, for them to get a feel-good payoff interacting with you in such a deep level that they get to hear back from you. Yeah, it's massively powerful, massively valuable if you do it right.
Maxene (42:00.834)
Mmm.
Marcus Logan (42:06.702)
The morning shift, if you're aware of them, they have this huge Facebook group that's got, they must have 70, 75,000 members in it. And there's just people in there talking back and forth amongst themselves all day, every day. The hosts are active in there. And what they do is, you know, if they have a live event coming up, they post a ticket link in the community group first. They don't post it on their public platforms anywhere.
they have new merch, post it straight to the community group. They've fostered this huge community of diehard fans that they're able to then monetize off that and then just build this really raving fan base that they're actively a part of and they understand really deeply. Yeah, it's incredibly powerful if you do it right.
Maxene (42:42.498)
Mmm.
Maxene (42:58.612)
Yeah, absolutely. Gosh, that's astounding. 75,000 people in one Facebook group. How do you do it right?
Marcus Logan (43:04.983)
Yeah.
Marcus Logan (43:11.328)
I think it's about.
understanding and recognizing that people's time is really valuable and the fact that people would go out of the way to consume your content is amazing. If you think about all of the other media options that people have now, it's so much more than ever before in human history. You're not competing with people down the road, you're competing with the Joe Rogan's, you're competing with the Call of Daddies. So I think
the people that get it right understand how amazing that is that they're engaging with you and then reward them with that and recognize that and see that and make a concerned effort to speak to them and to engage with them. So I think if you have a digital community like that, then it just becomes another one of the platforms that you're using and engaging with if you're posting your content on TikTok and YouTube and Instagram and Facebook.
Maxene (43:49.762)
Mm.
Marcus Logan (44:12.974)
And if you also have a private Facebook group, you know, with people around your podcast, that's also treated as, you know, another platform and another, another one of your channels. But yeah, I mean, it takes time and, dedication and it's really hard to build something like that, like to the level of the morning shift. so, so yeah, I mean, it's a million dollar question how you do it correctly.
Maxene (44:25.254)
Maxene (44:34.091)
Hmm.
Maxene (44:39.522)
How do you decide what kind of content is like, you know, kind of free access, Instagram, TikTok sort of content, and then what sort of content you might post in these exclusive groups or even paid communities?
Marcus Logan (44:59.47)
I think it goes back to that context, that point around building content with as much context as possible to the outward facing world. Because that's how you're going to reach more people that don't know about you and grow. Whereas if you're talking directly to your community, then people already have all of the context. That's how you can build in inside jokes or.
behind the scenes type stuff, things that people already know about you and about your brand and who you are. So you can be much more casual and free and not as strategic with how you communicate. And then I think it's just about.
Maxene (45:42.594)
Mm.
Marcus Logan (45:47.884)
Yeah, it's about speaking one to one versus one to many. You your public facing social media platforms is your access to the entire world. So you have to be talking broad and wide and giving people context, whereas, yeah, the communities, it's people, you know who they are, they know who you are. So it's much more personal.
Maxene (46:09.954)
Can you talk to me about the golden ratio of social media?
Marcus Logan (46:15.724)
Yeah, so is this the 80-20 rule? Yeah, so the golden ratio is kind of the idea of your social media channels, you want them to be primarily giving people value, right? So value could be entertainment, education, and inspiration. And the golden ratio is that that should be 80 % of your output on social media.
Maxene (46:20.308)
Yeah.
Marcus Logan (46:44.428)
And then 20 % of the time you want to be overtly promotional or salesy or asking for something. So you want to be focused on giving as much as you can so that when it is time to ask something, you've built up enough goodwill and enough value and enough respect from your audience that they're actually going to listen. I think most businesses have that backwards. They will fill up their...
Maxene (47:05.41)
Okay.
Marcus Logan (47:11.592)
social media feeds with information about their products and their services and product photos and product launches, but it doesn't typically get much cut through because people don't use social media to be sold to. They don't use social media for brands or for businesses. They use it for people and they want to get some kind of value exchange out of it. that's typically how we talk about the value rules come up here.
Maxene (47:34.092)
Mm-hmm.
Marcus Logan (47:40.822)
ratio, the 80-20.
Maxene (47:42.53)
Yeah, so 80 % value giving or inspirational or like educational, entertaining and then 20 % right, give me all your money.
Marcus Logan (47:53.87)
Correct, correct. even the larger the difference, the better. So mean, 90-10, 95-5, I mean, I think 80-20 makes sense for businesses. But most of the time, the more you give away for free without asking anything, the more goodwill you're able to build up with an audience.
Maxene (48:01.003)
Yeah.
Maxene (48:07.084)
Mm-hmm.
Maxene (48:18.434)
Yeah, absolutely. And then with those sort of ratios, do you think content pillars are still like a vibe or is that more like 2019 sort of thing?
Marcus Logan (48:32.972)
No, I think content pillars help a lot. You know, it's something that we still construct for clients. I mean, I think they're great because they give you the building blocks of what your content is going to be and they help you frame it and they help you make sense if an idea is actually right for your brand or for your business or for your podcast. So we still use them a lot.
Maxene (48:35.702)
Mm-hmm.
Marcus Logan (49:02.312)
And typically we would just have one pillar that is that sales, the promotional pillar where you have room to talk about your products and your services. So, so yeah, a hundred percent. We still use content pillars, but we, but we craft them with the lens that we want to be educating, entertaining and inspiring people as much as possible. But still leaving room for products and services because you still ultimately you're still on social media with the goal of
converting somebody to do something that you want them to do. So obviously it's still really important. Yeah, but the less you do it, the more powerful it can be.
Maxene (49:37.218)
Mm.
Maxene (49:41.186)
So even if all of your posts are value adding and you're really leaning heavy on that and less on the sales, do you think it's still important to have a call to action on every post?
Marcus Logan (49:57.194)
It It depends who you are and what you're doing. I think if you're a podcaster, I think having a call to action is important because so much attention is lost on the short form, on a clip, on social media. So wherever possible, you want to try to bridge that gap from the short form to the long form. That's kind of the missing link for a lot of podcasters. You know, like how do you actually get people to the episode, not just a clip
Maxene (50:10.412)
Mm-hmm.
Marcus Logan (50:27.19)
watcher . So the more prompts that you can give them on where to find the full episode, the better. And if your clip or if your content is crafted in a way that it's really valuable, then it's less of a sales versus more of helping hand like, hey, you like this? Go watch the full episode because there's an hour and a half more of this kind of chat.
Maxene (50:36.322)
Mm.
Marcus Logan (50:57.154)
But we typically use call to actions in most of our posts or podcast clients. Sometimes that's an end screen. Sometimes we'll take the subtitles off the last five seconds and just have burned into the screen. Watch or listen to the full episode. Some podcasters are using the kind of mini chat automation where leave the comment Marcus and I'll send you a full link to the episode. For other clients, we kind of just say, search for
Maxene (51:17.058)
Mm-hmm.
Marcus Logan (51:27.15)
Maxine London's podcast, wherever you get your podcasts to watch or listen to the new episode. So we always try to instruct people where to get the full episode so that the attention doesn't just die on Instagram or else.
Maxene (51:40.322)
I think the morning shifts sort of end screen is another example of knowing your audience and doing it well. really love their, it's like, look at you just watching. And every time I get to the end of the video, I'm like, I just love that. Yeah. And it is a good example again though of knowing your audience because that wouldn't work on every audience, right? And so.
Marcus Logan (51:57.88)
So good, so good, yeah, they're masters.
Maxene (52:08.02)
Yeah, I think with your calls to action, understanding who your audience is will really help you understand what kind of call to action to use. I want to talk about those bot, the mini chat like replies, because I've seen a little bit of debate around whether we should be using them or whether we should be like, you know, is it really that hard to send the link yourself? I guess in my perspective, it's more
how big your audience is, because if you have like 500 comments, you're not going to be responding to every single one of those yourself. Whereas if you've got a really small but engaged audience, you know, maybe it is better to build that sort of engagement and relationship yourself. What's your take on that?
Marcus Logan (52:57.985)
I mean, I think it's just a time saver, right? Like it's one of these handy AI automations that just save time. think if that's what you want to be doing, if that's the method to try to convert people to leave a comment, I think it's a no brainer to use it because God, it was so time poor. If it can save
Maxene (53:01.334)
Mm.
Maxene (53:23.01)
Mmm.
Marcus Logan (53:24.992)
It saves you 10 minutes every week. Like, hey, that's 10 minutes back of your life that technology can comfortably handle for you. And then if people want to have a back and forth or reply after that automation and say something about the episode, that's awesome. That's great. That's the door to potentially having conversation and nurturing that person into a community member.
But yeah, I think we have to take advantage of some of these tools where we can save some time. And I think MiniChat's a pretty good system.
Maxene (53:58.272)
Yeah, good point. Especially after what we were talking about before about social media sometimes being the thing that falls off when you're feeling a bit burnt out or under pressure. And also I think, you know, it's also instantaneous, those responses. And when you're trying to like convert someone, you don't want obstacles getting in the way. So if you can instantaneously send them the link, they've probably got a more higher chance of at least clicking on it or, you know,
Marcus Logan (54:04.344)
Yeah.
Maxene (54:27.89)
saving the episode for later.
Marcus Logan (54:30.466)
Yeah, 100%. I mean, in sales, there's some crazy statistic about the speed of your reply increases the chance of that deal happening by some crazy percentage. So yeah, exactly. It's instantaneous. You don't have to think about it. Let the technology help you out.
Maxene (54:46.402)
So if you could give one piece of advice to independent podcasters to grow their audiences and build community, what would it be?
Marcus Logan (55:00.237)
I think.
really focus on creating the best content that you possibly can for your specific audience and then use all of the incredible technology we have like social media to help that audience find your content in a nutshell.
Maxene (55:22.504)
Yeah, totally. That's great. So what kind of tools do you recommend using?
Marcus Logan (55:30.478)
Um, so, mean, obviously chat GPT is changing the world. Um, I think transcription tools, um, like we use, uh, a tool called TurboScribe that we just upload episodes to. We feed it to chat GPT just to help with kind of ideation processes. Um, we have, we have trained GPTs for each of our clients that understand the tone of voice, the audience.
the kind of content that's worked well before. So we use that to help us come up with episode titles and SEO optimized YouTube descriptions and audio podcast descriptions. I'm trying to use more and more kind of time-saving tools. But then, I mean, we just aggressively use social media for our clients and that's just...
been such a game changer for a lot of them. And I think some of the podcasts that have really dominated in the past couple of years are the ones that have aggressively used social media more so than some of the others. So yeah, mean, AI is going to disrupt a ton more in this space and in this industry. So there's going to be more and more that come out.
Maxene (56:31.394)
Mm.
Maxene (56:56.45)
you
Marcus Logan (56:58.178)
But yeah, mean, the technology that I am really the evangelist for is the social media platforms because they can just help make everyone's dreams come true, you know, if it's done the right way.
Maxene (57:13.898)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And then would you recommend like having like a personal brand account or do you think it's important to have like a dedicated podcast account and like separate to if that's your business or your personal brand or you know, whatever it is.
Marcus Logan (57:38.178)
I think it depends. mean, it kind of depends who you are and what you do and how much content you'd be wanting to put out from your personal brand. I think social media has become really cluttered. So I think wherever possible, making things really clear does help. So in that instance, having a dedicated podcast account helps a lot because if someone follows that, they know what to expect.
they're obviously going to engage with you at a higher level. But if you have a personal account where you kind of don't have much other stuff going up, then it's also fine to be posting content from there. So it depends, really. But I do err on the side of make things simple, make pathways simple, because people get confused really easily. People don't have time. People don't have energy. It's really clear.
This is the podcast content goes here. Here's where you watch the full episodes. Like that's great. So I mean that's a good approach to take.
Maxene (58:42.334)
Mm. Yeah, I tend to agree. And I mean, there's room then for some cross promotion between accounts if, if where it's relevant or, you know, but yeah, I keep, think no one is as close to your account as you are, you know, so no one's going to be looking at your account and going, didn't she already do that? You know, or, you know, as, I'm just, I
can't think of what I'm trying to say.
Marcus Logan (59:13.94)
I don't know exactly what you mean. Like people are too personally attached or overthinking about their approach when no one else is worried about it. They've already forgotten. They don't really understand what you were doing anyway. yeah, 100%.
Maxene (59:22.402)
Mm.
Maxene (59:31.174)
Yeah. Yeah, totally. Yeah. And I think that's where if you can like keep things simple, like you were saying, and have, you know, a dedicated account so that people, so that their expectations are clear, you know, so like, this is the podcast account, this is where you can find the podcast stuff. And if you don't want that, then you don't have to go there. You can just go to the business account or, know, whatever it is. And then it keeps those expectations clear and, and your audience.
knows what to expect and knows where to find stuff and then you can, you know, link to your other accounts in your bio and if people want to know more it's easy for them to find and all of that kind of stuff.
Marcus Logan (01:00:09.774)
Yep, yep, 100%. I think matching people's expectations is another topic, but it's also super important with the presentation of your podcast and your marketing as well. Two of the metrics that are most important on YouTube is click-through rate and then watch time. And if you have a really high click-through rate, a lot of people are clicking on your content, but then they're only watching for a couple of minutes because it didn't meet the expectations that were set in the thumbnail of the title. Then YouTube is going to punish your video massively. And the same with the other platforms too.
Maxene (01:00:19.209)
Mm, totally.
Maxene (01:00:25.814)
Mm.
Maxene (01:00:36.738)
Mmm.
Marcus Logan (01:00:39.66)
meeting audience expectations is important in all realms of your approach.
Maxene (01:00:45.588)
Yeah, totally agree. Well, thank you so much for your time today, Marcus. It's been a really valuable chat. I've definitely learned a lot. Where can people find you in Via Digital if they want to learn more?
Marcus Logan (01:00:58.466)
We've got our website via digital.co.nz. LinkedIn is probably the platform I'm most active on, just Marcus Logan. And then on Instagram, Marcus Logan NZ.
Maxene (01:01:10.274)
I'll chuck those links in the show notes as well so that they're easy for you to find. How good was that? Thank you again, Marcus. Again, this has been such a valuable chat. I've definitely got some stuff that I've got to work on for my own social media game as well. It's definitely been something that has fallen off the radar for me a bit recently and I need to get back on track. So you've inspired me to get back into it.
Marcus Logan (01:01:33.09)
That's amazing.
Maxene (01:01:36.346)
If you found this episode helpful, drop a review. I'd love to hear from you and about what you're enjoying so that I can make more stuff that's relevant for you. And thank you again for listening. I'll catch you next week on Wanna Podcast.