Again, training. That's a that's a big one. You know, there's a lot of little systems that you get. You know, you gotta train them on the phone system. You gotta train them on, you know, proprietary software or whatever. And having videos available via a private podcast is one of the better ways of doing it. And there's no chance that those videos are gonna escape the system because of the security built in. You're listening to Podcast Insider, a weekly podcast bringing insights, advice, and insider tips and tricks to help you start, grow, and thrive through podcasting with the support of your team here at Blueberry Podcasting. Welcome. Let's dive in. This is Todd Cochran, CEO and cofounder of Blueberry. And I'm Mike Dell, VP of customer relations here at Blueberry. Today, we are going to discuss private podcasting and premium podcasting. We'll go over the use cases for each and help you decide if it's right for your show. So, Mike, private podcasting, it's a topic that comes up a lot. Yeah. We've been getting a lot more premium podcasting. So I figured we'd, go over the pros and cons of of these. And, of course, we offer parts of both services. Yeah. I think though it's important to look at the difference between private and premium, which they're kind of the same, but they're different in their own rights. And one thing that we did specifically when we introduced our private internal podcasting product, we focused on security. So from our perspective, private podcasting offers a highly, highly secure method for communicating with your team members effectively and often used, you know, by a variety of companies and use cases. Oftentimes, it might be a place for a where proprietary business information is shared, where they do training, or maybe HR, onboarding, or sometimes even SEC style news information that goes out to the company before it's being announced to the public. Of course, potentially, employee communications instead of memos. Maybe it's the head of sales wants to send a message out to sales team and guarantee consumption of that. Or or even this is this private podcasting can be used by by clubs and organizations to share information about events and so forth. But one of the biggest use cases of private podcasting that we've seen is training and not limited to audio. It could be video. So other information, again, I mentioned onboarding. There's hundreds of use cases depending on what your business is trying to do. And if you have a dispersed workforce or you have team members in other states, there's lots and lots of of options there. Yeah. It's getting more important for, you know, teams that are remote. Like, you know, we're completely remote here now. And, you know, without some form of communication, you know, in these bigger organizations, you're not gonna have time to talk to a thousand employees one on one. So this is a a way to get, you know, messages out. Again, training, that's a that's a big one. You know, there's a lot of little systems that you get, you know, gotta train them on the phone system. You gotta train them on, you know, proprietary software or whatever. And having videos available via a private podcast is one of the better ways of doing it, and there's no chance that those videos are gonna escape the system because of the security built in. You know, and the security that we put in place with our private internal podcasting is really authentication via SSO or OAuth. Most companies that are using our product authenticate their employees that way. But it really is truly about security and and we have four different levels of security for our our product. And depending on the security level that the client chooses on a show basis, they may be able to, allow content to be consumed just like a normal podcast on their device through, you know, Apple Podcasts and other apps that allow that. But if they as they step up in security, then they may be restricted to the dedicated app that we provide or a dedicated private web app for listening and viewing a content. And also it's, again, complete control over who listens and the ability if the client so chooses to opt in for tracking because there is this ability within private podcasting because the listener is being authenticated that you will know if they've listened once, twice, three times, or halfway through specific content. And in some cases, it's also part of a security deterrent in that they can see if someone has watched ten times and may question why was this content listened to one time? Did someone share credentials? So it's really designed to give the the end client really total control. And matter of fact, at our highest highest security level for the product, it no longer is a podcast. It's streamed. It no longer the media never ever resides on the device. So Yeah. You know, that that is for good super security. Right. You have to be in, you know, in sort of a wifi bubble to, to consume that. So it loses its advantage as a podcast. So, you know, you can't jump on an airplane and true and listen, but, you know, for really sensitive stuff, it's probably a good thing. And there is definitely a con to it. There is a higher cost. And the inability at in what we would term in our internal process, security levels two, three, four, the inability to subscribe in normal podcast apps. Really, at the only at the lowest level would they have the ability to subscribe in normal podcast apps and not through an authentication system would have to be through a simple login. So, again, there are pros and cons to this. And, again, this fits depending on the business model. And, you know, one of the examples that I've talked about a lot is during COVID, there was the need for ongoing training for medical employees or medical personnel in Europe, where they would normally have to go and sit in a symposium for eight to ten hours a couple of times a year to get ongoing training because that was not possible. They already get that training via private podcasting because of the ability to track that they've actually listened or watched to the content that they were required to do to maintain their their medical, licensing. Yeah. You know, the verification part really helps in that scenario because, you know, the the people that are giving out the credits for, you know, for continuing education can verify that, this person listened to this. Yeah. That checks the box for them so that they know that this was, training was actually done. And the same thing goes from sales teams and so forth like that. They want to make sure that they have the check-in the blocks to be able to get the annual training, whether it be HR or whatever the type of training it was. Don't hate it when you send out a memo and, and then half the people you talk to say, hey, I never saw that. Well, this way it's verifiable. So that's private. Now premium is really truly private, but at the same time, it caters to those seeking to monetize their shows by offering exclusive content for purchase by the public for providing clubs and group members with special access to unique material. It still maintains everything that private podcasting offers, but at the same time, then you as the creator have the ability then to charge a fee for that content and really decide then, okay. What where do I need to be? And I know that a lot of premium podcasters choose to go with the lowest security level because at that point, they're really looking for an easy way for their members to be able to consume the content through a simple username, password, log in with the the ability then to, again, be able to consume it on normal podcasting apps or even the PWA and or the the private podcasting app. But, again, monetize a show that's popular, that's an option. You can offer ad free versions of your show to subscribers. You can have an early access for subscribers, and you can publish bonus content for your free podcast. Now some of this is available via the Apple Podcasts premium offering. Yeah. I was just gonna mention, you know, there's way different ways of doing this. And if, you know, a lot of them are exclusive. So if you do Apple Podcasts subscriptions, then it's only available on Apple, but it's really easy to manage. So there's a trade off there. You know, it's not as widely available, but you get the, you get the benefit of, you know, Apple's it just works thing. And at the same point, if you have a big enough base, maybe you can have both. Yes. Yeah. Now you allow those that wanna use the Apple Podcasts premium route or those that wanna come in on your side. So really is a the ability to have the best of of both worlds. And, again, it's about either publishing bonus content, early access for those who are subscribing, ad free versions of your show, whatever the use case may be. Maybe it's just a series of content again. Could be you're gonna do ten special episodes and and sell that as a, a little package. But there are some pros to that. Some can you go through some of the pros, Mike, on, doing the premium? Yeah. So it's definitely less costly than private in most cases. You get the ability to subscribe at all of the podcast apps that are normal RSS based apps. Now you're not gonna get it into Spotify and and a few others like that because they're, you know, music apps and proprietary how they deliver. But, and and it can be done on your own domain. That's, one, one of the most we deal with. PowerPress, our plugin for WordPress does work with most of the membership plugins, and it kinda gives you more control over the look and the feel. And, you know, you run your own payment system, you know, which is also built into plug ins sorta like member member press or some of the others. But what's nice about this is it's it's a little more you're in in a little more control, but the authentication is not as secure. So if somebody does listen to your podcast, they could share that with people. And depending on what sort of system you use, you may also end up, you know, some people sharing a password and a login. Well, Netflix is dealing with that. So that's, that's a bigger problem than just, podcasting. And it's definitely, in some instances, harder to manage. Yeah. A little bit. Yeah. And it depends on how you implement it too. If you're using our private internal podcasting product and just collecting money and managing users, maybe that's not so hard. But one thing it does require for using WordPress, it does require another plugin, and you have to set that up. So the you know, there's two or three, maybe even four ways to slice this. And, you know, again, if you're looking for the ability just to collect money, in other words, maybe set up a PayPal account and they pay for a subscription via PayPal, you could use our private internal podcasting at the lowest security level. Yes. That that does work. And, like I said, it's not not hard to manage. Of course, we have Apple premium or Apple subscription service, is integrated with Blueberry. So if you have a Blueberry show already and you wanna start a premium at Apple, all the tools are right there. One thing to think about though, if you do offer, say, bonus episodes, bonus content, and you got some people paying for it, you gotta think about whether or not are you going to be able to sustain those extra episodes? Because if they're paying, you know, is that something you want to sign on to? It's always easier to get started by doing an early release of an episode, which really is not enabling you to have do a whole bunch of new, additional work for just a few subscribers. But, you know, both are great solutions, navigating an online relationship with listeners. It's, necessary really in this remote world that we have become with, more people working from home now, in many cases than in the office. So a couple of great options for you. Of course, the you know, one thing we always tell all of you is if you're considering this and are scratching your head just a little bit, you know, you come over to talk to the team and we'd be happy to consult with you on the best way to implement this at blueberry dot com forward slash support. Just tell us, hey, I'm thinking about doing a private or premium podcast. Can you talk me through the options? And we'd be happy to do so. And I think that's really, really the key here is that you have a team here at Blueberry Podcasting that has been through all iterations of this and understand the consequences. And we'll give you our best advice. We're not gonna try to sell you a product, but we are going to give you the best options we think will fit for you and your technical expertise that may be needed if you're going to implement something on your own WordPress site and the billing and all that. So, just don't be afraid to give us a shout out just to ask questions. Again, we'd love to have you use the product, but we're gonna give you the advice for the best solutions we think will work best for you. Yeah. There's there's just so many different ways people wanna do this, and we're pretty flexible in finding a way to do it the way you want to. But, you know, of course, there are some technical things that, may or may not work, but, I'd be happy to talk to you about it. We've had lots of experience setting up all kinds different scenarios here. So happy to talk you through that for sure. Thanks for joining us. Let's meet up next week. And in the meantime, for more information, to subscribe, share, or follow, check out the show notes at podcast insider dot com. To check out our latest suite of services and how Blueberry can help you leverage your podcast, visit blueberry dot com. That's Blueberry without the
