The Question Behind the Query

00:00 Hello, and welcome back to How To Get Discovered. I'm Maya. And I'm Tom. This is episode 7, and it's called The Question Behind the Query. Last week, Tom got a whole episode of easy wins, show notes as pitches rather than receipts, and he's been unbearably calm ever since. I feel restored. It won't last. When we planned the season, I had this one down as a technical episode. It turned out to be the most philosophical thing we've recorded. It's about what people actually mean when they type something into a search box, what it takes to become the show journalists and researchers quote, and whether you and I have spent six weeks arguing about the wrong thing.

00:43 That last bit's the only reason I agreed to come in. You'll have to sit through some search queries first. I've brought a pen to mock them with. Three searches. Real shape, nothing identifying. All from roughly the same corner of the world. Freelancing. For each one, tell me who typed it. Go on. How do I negotiate my freelance rate without sounding desperate? Somebody with a call booked. Probably Thursday. They've rehearsed it in the shower and they still sound like they're apologising. They don't want a podcast. They want a sentence they can say out loud. Second, best podcast for freelancers UK.

01:25 Completely different animal. Nobody's in a hurry there. They've decided they'd like some company on the commute, and they're going to scroll a list, try a couple, and keep whichever one doesn't annoy them. Third, should I be a sole trader or limited company? Side project, under 30k. That person has a spreadsheet open in the other tab. They've done the sums. They want someone to look at their exact situation and tell them what to do. You haven't mocked any of them yet. I was promised mocking. I was going to have a go at under 30k, but honestly, it's the most useful bit. That's someone telling you their whole situation in three words. The rate one's the same.

02:07 Without sounding desperate is the real question. The rate is just the excuse. Roughly one subject. Three completely different people. Meaning, whatever turns up for each of them has to be a different thing entirely. Which is the whole episode, really. You could go home. You said that in episode one, and I'm still here. Most of the search advice podcasters get treats the listener as a sort of average person with a keyword. Pick the phrase, put it in the title, wait. And you think that's wrong? I think it's lazy. Nobody's average. Every query is one particular person at one particular moment, and the words they chose tell you what they need.

02:50 Take the rate one. That freelancer doesn't want 40 minutes. At most, they want three. The bit where your guest says, here's the exact line I use when a client pushes back. So they listen to a clip, get the line, and leave. Probably. They won't subscribe off the back of it. But if the moment's good, they remember the name. Maybe they send it to a mate who's got the same call next week. That listener wants a moment, and that's a perfectly respectable thing to want. Fine. The best podcast one isn't after a moment, though. No, that one wants a relationship. They're going to judge you across several episodes. Do they like your voice? Do you have taste?

03:32 Do you turn up every week? Does the back catalogue feel like somewhere worth spending time? No single episode wins that listener. The whole show does. Which is my sort of listener, for the record. Oh, I know. You've been describing them since episode one. And the third one. The spreadsheet. Wants an authority. Someone whose judgment they trust on one specific question. They'll listen to a whole episode, maybe two, and they might never subscribe. But if you're good, they'll go away and actually act on what you said. They'd have liked your tax episode. That person is precisely who found my tax episode.

04:14 The one with my accountant that I recorded in a panic when a guest cancelled, which has quietly kept finding new listeners for years without anybody touching it. The episode that won't die. Three years on and counting. It's a good reminder that the third kind of listener often isn't looking for a podcast at all. They're looking for an answer, and a podcast happened to have it. So, a moment, a relationship, and an authority. And the same show could be the right answer to all three, but only if it can turn up in three different shapes. A moment someone can land on, a show someone can try, and a page someone can trust.

04:54 Most shows only have one shape. A feed. Here are our episodes. Newest first, take it or leave it. There's nowhere for the moment to live, and nothing that says, we're the people who know about this. Hmm. This is where I think the plumbing we've been on about for six weeks finally earns its keep. Transcripts, chapters, proper episode pages, clips, your own domain. I've been selling them as ways to get found. I think they're really ways for the show to be the right shape for whoever finds it. That's a better pitch than the one you've been making. I know. It annoyed me how late I got to it.

05:33 I want to stay with the authority listener for a bit, because I think that's where podcasters leave the most on the table. Meaning money? Sometimes. Mostly influence and the quality of the audience you end up with. There's a kind of show that never troubles the charts but gets quoted. Journalists mention it. Researchers put it in footnotes. Other podcasters say, as so-and-so put it. If someone's writing a piece about freelance tax, that show's in the piece. I know a few of those. They're the shows I'm slightly jealous of. What have they got in common? Age, mostly. They've been going a long time and they've gone deep on one subject.

06:14 So there's an episode you can point at for almost any question in their area. And, I didn't want to say this, you can find them. When you go looking for the question, they're there. Why the reluctance? Because I can see where you're going. The journalist isn't some special creature with a private line to the good shows. She's typing a question into the same box as everyone else. Exactly. Often with the identical words, too. She just wants something different at the end. The freelancer wants to decide. The journalist wants someone to quote. What does she do with what she finds, though? She's not going to sit through an hour of two people chatting to find one quotable sentence.

06:57 No, and that's the other half of being citable. She needs to land on the bit, check it's what you actually said, and be able to point her readers at it. A time-stamped transcript and a chapter called Soul Trader or Limited Company will do that. An audio file called Episode 63 won't. You're never letting that title go. Not a chance. So, findable and quotable. Miss Eva and she moves on. Straight to whoever made it easy. Not because they were better, because they were there. I had a journalist quote me once, years ago, for a piece about freelancers going limited.

07:37 I'd love to tell you she was a longtime listener. She wasn't. She'd never heard of me. She'd searched for the question, and my episode was the thing that answered it. Right. This is the bit that cuts against me, so let me say it properly before you do. I've spent six weeks arguing the real game is making a show loyal listeners love. I still think that. But the grown-up version of that game, being the canonical voice on your subject, the show people cite. Hmm. That needs you to be findable too. The person who cites you has to find you first. So findability isn't just for people chasing downloads. It's for exactly the kind of success I've been saying I care about.

08:22 I'm going to say nothing at all. Very wise. I got there on my own, and I'm not thrilled about it. Can I do the thing I've wanted to do since episode one? You're going to anyway. I think loyalty and acquisition aren't opposites. I think we've been arguing past each other all season, and each of us is about half right. Make the case. Loyalty isn't the alternative to acquisition. It's what acquisition turns into given time. Every loyal listener you've got was once a total stranger. They came in through some door. A friend, a search, a clip in a group chat, you being a guest on someone else's show.

09:03 Then they liked what they found, and they stayed. Agreed so far. So should I focus on loyalty or on new listeners is a bad question. All your loyal listeners were new once. The real questions are whether people can get in and whether what they find keeps them. I'll push on one bit. You make it sound as if all the doors are the same, and they're really not. Someone who comes in because a friend said, you have to hear this, arrives half-converted. They've borrowed the friend's trust. Someone off a search arrives with nothing but a question. Granted, that one's better. Thank you. But it's not the only one that works.

09:44 Someone comes in off a search, gets their answer, likes the host, plays the rest of the episode. They can end up just as loyal. They simply start further back. Then let me add the bit. bit I've been trying to say since the loyalty episode. The one where you got me to admit a shared answer actually serves the regulars. Or was that the week after? No, that was it. You were very gracious about it. For you. I think I can put it better now, anyway. The best acquisition isn't the one that brings in the most people. It's the one that brings in the people who are still there in three months. So you can't judge it by the visit. You have to judge it by who stays. Yes, completely.

10:26 And the search industry, not you, the industry, measures the visit. The impression, the click, the first listen. Nothing about what happens after. That's a proper critique, and I'll take it. The visits are means. It is. So what I'd want is being findable for the people likely to stay, not the ones likely to bounce. Which takes us straight back to the three searches. The best podcast for freelancers person arrives wanting to subscribe. They're likely stayers before you've said a word. The rate negotiation person is likely to leave after three minutes, but they might share the moment on their way out.

11:05 Both worth having. They just need judging differently. And the mistake is lumping them together. Adding up all the visits when what you care about is whether they were the right ones. Here's my practical problem. You can guess what a query means. You can't actually ask the person who typed it. Sometimes you nearly can. Remember the Ask the Archive idea from the ChatGPT episode, where a listener asks your archive a question in plain words and gets an answer that plays the exact moment. The one that turned up again in my loyalty episode, yes. Think about what people type into a thing like that.

11:44 It's not freelance rates. It's, my client says my rate's too high. What did your guest say to do? That's the question behind the query, in their own words, about your show. Which is a lot more honest than a keyword. Miles. On Grow the Herd and Lead the Herd, the show's owner can see the questions people type in to ask the archive. You'd learn which old episodes people are still reaching for, what they wanted that you've never covered, and how they'd phrase it if they were naming the episode. Then you feed that straight into what you make next. So the listeners, write your next running order.

12:20 Some of it. Not all. Because that's my worry. You end up a show that only answers frequently asked questions, and nobody ever says anything they weren't asked. Which would be awful. And it's the same warning you gave in episode one. The questions tell you what people need. They don't tell you how to make it interesting. That bit's still your job. Good. I'd hate to be made redundant by a search box. You're safe. And even without Ask the Archive, your email inbox and your comments are full of the same thing. People tell you what they're actually asking. Most of us just don't write it down. I have a folder called Listener Stuff. It's mostly unopened.

13:04 Tom. Fine. I'll go through it this week. And, annoyingly, I think this might be the most useful conversation we've had all season. I'm having that cut into a clip. Next week then. Under the hood. The technical one, where Maya explains what a search engine actually sees when it looks at a podcast page. Metadata, structured transcripts, domains, the lot. And I've set a rule. No jargon. Every time she says a word a normal person wouldn't use, she has to stop and explain it in plain English. That's going to be a very long episode. I'm counting on it. Thanks for listening to How To Get Discovered. See you next week. Bye.