EP 179 – Robert Ingalls – A Guide to Creating a Podcast for Your Firm
The Legal Mastermind Podcast is fast approaching 200 podcasts. By the beginning of 2023, that’ll be well over 180 conversations with business development experts, mental health gurus, negotiation experts, influencers, thought-leaders, philanthropists, philosophers…you name it. Just like the transcription you have ahead, that’s a lot of unique content, which leads me to the next point…
In 2012 when I was working in-house at a criminal defense law firm, two of the attorneys had an interesting conversation about a specific law that just made its way into Florida legislation. That conversation was roughly 40 minutes long and was among the most captivating content that I’ve heard from criminal defense lawyers in the past decade, and would have been a great kickstart to a revolutionary podcast, should they have continued.
Ten years later and what feels like ten million new podcasts later, is it too late for your law firm to have its own podcast? Has the original marketing sin of FOMO set in? It shouldn’t, because podcasting is still arguably in its infancy stage. And between your videos, blogs, articles, and pages, this could be the new form of content you’ve been waiting for.
The following interview has been transcribed for our readers from rev.com. Please excuse any discrepancies from the transcription.
Chase Williams:
And this is a very interesting sort of a meta conversation we’re going to have today because we’ve been at conferences like MTMP and had these our booths set up where we’re doing live podcasts there and so many people walk by and they say, “Hey, oh, I love what you guys are doing. I’d love for you to come help me do a podcast.” And we don’t do that at Legal Mastermind Podcast. We interview lawyers, and marketers, and influencers, and people like you, Robert. So it’s great to have somebody on the show who can help our listeners actually implement a podcast for themselves.
Robert Ingalls:
Yeah. And that was the cool part of getting into it is, especially when I got into it, there wasn’t a lot of people doing it because I stumbled into it after having practice law, and it was just something I had a lot of fun with. It was a hobby. And other people started asking me to do it for them, and I had that imposter syndrome of like, “I don’t have a marketing background. I’ve never taken a communications class. I taught myself how to use a mixer. Who am I to do that?” But as I started doing it more A, I just got much better at it. But the lack of competition, the lack of other options at the time really helped me grow much faster than I think otherwise would have.
Chase Williams:
Looks like you got into the podcast game 2016.
Robert Ingalls:
Yeah. I think I bought this mic about 30 days after I listened to my first podcast in September of 2015.
Chase Williams:
That’s like before most people started podcast as podcast for everything now. So that is awesome.
Robert Ingalls:
Yeah. Yeah. It felt late at the time, but then in hindsight, a lot of people are just starting to go, “Oh wait, this is a legitimate marketing tool.”
Chase Williams:
So I think most people are listeners and included will think like, “Hey, I’d love to be on a podcast but, man, I don’t have the time for that.” And I don’t want to give you… We don’t plug companies here. And I can say this, running a podcast ourselves, we’re in almost 200 episodes now over the past three years, but it’s not that difficult once you have the processes set up and the people to help you.
Robert Ingalls:
Right. No, you’re absolutely right and that’s the objection we get most frequently is we don’t have the time. And I think a lot of them are looking at it from all of the things that they feel like they would have to do. But then you go, you take a quick look at their webpage, and they have YouTube videos pretty active there. They’ve got blogs that they’re writing, they’re pretty active there. Having been a lawyer and created all of that content myself, I know what the time commitment is to try to put anything halfway decent out when it comes to that kind of stuff.
And that’s why I loved podcasting as a marketer in the firm when I was still there was because the amount of time, I had to invest in it, when I’d looked at the amount of content that came out the other side, because it’s not just that audio podcast, it’s the video clips that I can make from it. It’s the blog post that I can write from it. It’s the transcript I can get. It’s the full-length video I can put on YouTube, second biggest search engine in the world. And that time investment was so much greater than anything else I was using content wise with my time.
Ryan Klein:
So one thing you mentioned, it happens with content is of course the subject matter, the topics, and I think that people may look at content and the website in the form of blogs as like maybe that’s easy to come up with those topics, but for some reason the podcast, it’s like there’s a creativity block out of nowhere. And it’s like is there a different thought process or is there a different approach to coming up with those kinds of topics?
Robert Ingalls:
I think it’s a very similar approach and that’s another one is what will I talk about, which is bananas to me, because I’ll get PI attorneys ask me, people that are spending 30 grand a month on SEO, ask me what will I talk about. Well, why don’t we take a quick look at all of your SEO articles, and we can start there because that’s really like… I know you have PI attorneys that listen, and we work with a lot of them and that’s very much FAQ.
People are on your website because something bad happened to them or someone they care about. And they want to feel more comfortable. They want answers to the questions they have, you know what questions they have. You know because you talk to them every day and they ask you. But you also know because you understand your search engine strategy, you know what people showed up wanting to know. That’s your episodes. We talk about what’s the first thing that you need to do. We talk about whether you should see a chiropractor, everything that the people want to know, we’re making an episode specifically to that. And when we approach it from that angle, we will never run out of content.
Chase Williams:
This is one of their SEO angle there and benefit if you’re transcribing your podcasts after the fact.
Robert Ingalls:
Were you asking me that question?
Chase Williams:
I’m making a statement.
Robert Ingalls:
Oh, okay.
Chase Williams:
I definitely know your opinion on it.
Robert Ingalls:
Yeah. Well, so I’d very much stay in my lane when it comes to SEO but thankfully being in this game, I am very closely acquainted with a lot of SEO companies like real masters in the game. And the way we create content, we’re very thoughtful about that. We use transcripts, we’re linking out those transcripts when we use them on the page, we’re going through the transcript and looking for every mention of something where we can link to internal content, external content and using that on the page.
And then to take that a step further from the SEO perspective, one of the strategies we use with SEO companies is we’ll find content on your website that’s ranking well and boost that with podcast content. And let’s say you’re the 12th result and we want to try to boost that because it’s doing well but it needs a bump. We’ll record a podcast about that specific episode, and we’ll take the audio, and we’ll take the show notes and put that on the podcast page. But we’ll take the video, and we’ll take the transcript and we’ll put that on the existing page to then try to boost that existing content on the page. So there’s a lot of fun stuff you can do when it comes to the SEO side.
Ryan Klein:
So if you’re taking another approach with the SEO and you know that the end goal was increasing visibility, getting more opportunities to get in front of people that have legal questions, what’s the length of some of these podcasts? When you’re doing a page or a blog, SEOs and content writers always have some word length in mind. So is there a intentional time range where you just let it be a little freeform when it comes to the podcasting?
Robert Ingalls:
I think a little more freeform. It’s what the professor told us in school. A man’s kilt long enough to cover the subject short enough to be interesting. And I think that that very much applies here is you have to think about your strategy. Who is this for? Is this for somebody who showed up wanting to know an answer to a specific question? If it is, get to the point. Let them know who you are. Big part of it’s your personality, little bit of banter and personalize it, but at the end of the day, they’re not there for you. They’re there for them.
And so deliver on the promise you made when you wrote the headline that drove them to even click. And so get to the point and then also say at the end, “Hey, we have another episode about X, Y, Z that you can listen to here. There’s a link in the show notes that you can go right to that or find all of our episodes about all your questions here.” And if it’s an interview with an expert, and that’s an expert that people really want to understand the topic. You release just longer because that’s something that you’re bringing somebody in who knows about specific areas that’s going to matter to this person, to the listener. And talk about it. Flesh those issues out, make sure that you’re giving them appropriate time. And yeah, so the lawyer answer, it depends.
Chase Williams:
So let’s talk about gear for a second and what someone actually needs because we’ve been on podcast before and people show up and it’s just like, “I’ve got my AirPods.” And sometimes it sounds decent sometimes, but then there’s background noise. But let’s talk a little bit about the environment, the equipment, and what kind of set up someone actually needs to have a successful podcast.
Robert Ingalls:
Sure. Most important thing’s the microphone, and it’s easy, it really is. When we start working with a client, we set them up with a microphone. And one reason we do that is because we got tired of telling them what to buy and then having them buy the wrong thing intentionally because they’re like, “Oh, I like yours, but I saw another one and I did some research, I think it’s better.” No, no, no, we’re done with that. You will get the thing we say you get.
But there’s really very budget friendly mics that sound great, relatively indistinguishable from the mic I’m talking into that isn’t super budget friendly. And you plug it USB cord right into your computer, you put on some headphones and you’re podcasting. It really is that simple. And then you can grow with it. If my mic and your mic require more gear, you have the SM7B there. That’s running into some kind of either interface or mixer in order to make that work, which is nice and fun but not something that somebody who’s just getting started needs.
Most of my clients have just a mic they can set on their desk that they can use a USB cord to plug right into their computer so they can take it anywhere. One of my clients travels a lot and he’s basically the marketing arm of the firm now instead of a practicing lawyer. And so he’s always in a hotel room, and he just brings his mike with him, and he podcasts from wherever he happens to be at that moment.
Chase Williams:
Funny story real quick. I remember traveling once with my podcast Mike and I had to stand and it legit looked like a gun. And so going through the metal detectors and the X-rays, they pulled me aside and I was like, “What’s going on?” And they’re like, “What’s in the bag?” And I’m like, “Podcast stuff.” And they’re like two people around me. But yeah, just folded up, it looked just like it. So just beware when you’re picking up that microphone stand as you’re traveling.
Robert Ingalls:
Yeah. I’ve had podcast gear pulled aside in airports as well just because it’s a lot of metal pieces in my bag and stuff and they’re like, “What’s going on in here?”
Ryan Klein:
It’s hilarious. I haven’t heard you tell that story. That’s good stuff. I want to talk a little bit about commitment. So that’s one of the things about podcasts, it is a time commitment unless you maybe want to make it a limited series. I don’t know if people go into it all the time saying we’re going to do 25 and that’s it, or it’s going to be an ongoing thing for possibly forever. So when you’re working with people, what’s the expectations and how do you encourage them to continue? Because podcasts don’t get downloads the first time. You’re not going to get a hundred downloads on your first episode. So what’s that experience been like?
Robert Ingalls:
To answer the question about how frequently should you be doing it, I think weekly is the best cadence because this is content marketing. At the end of the day, it’s audio but it’s content marketing. We’re trying to create consistent regular content that is going to be engaging to prospects. And doing that on a weekly basis is going to show the best results. And it’s not nearly the time commitment that most people think it’s going to be because you’re not sitting down once a week in recording. At least that’s not what we’re going to recommend at all. You’re sitting down once a month for maybe two hours and you’re cranking out your episodes like, “Here’s four topics we’re going to talk about.” And boom, boom, boom, boom and you’re done. And that’s it. And even in the beginning, if you do that maybe twice a month, now you’ve got 8, 12 episodes in the can. So then your trial comes up. You’re good, you’re covered, you’re not in any stress to try to get your episodes out.
And the real beauty from those is every episode isn’t just that podcast. It’s the episode on your website with the show notes, with a transcript, with a full-length video that’s on your website, but it’s also on YouTube, second biggest search engine in the world. And then you’ve got every episode can be turned into pieces of micro content. You cut that piece of content up into a 60-second video with branding and captions. People are actually going to engage with that content because they’re actually going to see that content. And after you’ve been doing this for two or three months, the amount of content that you’re getting from it, that’s actually good content, that’s engaging content that’s driving traffic is incredible and a lot of this stuff is evergreen. So you’re able to use it and then repackage it just in perpetuity.
Ryan Klein:
We love hearing repurposing content. There’s absolutely no reason that committing the time to create an high quality content coming directly from a lawyer. We’re going to repurpose that every which way that it’s eaten remotely possible. So yeah, it’s a fantastic way to get rolling with that approach to content marketing.
Robert Ingalls:
We call it maximizing the mileage of your content.
Chase Williams:
And some of our best episodes are like best of, it’s like best of the quarter or themed where we take little clips from a bunch of episodes and put them together just to almost like little micro episodes into one with little recaps in between each episode. So that’s another way to repurpose your podcast content for a podcast.
Robert Ingalls:
Well and when you’re having these candid conversations like we’re having, you’re asking me questions that I don’t know every question you’re going to ask me. And I’m going to say something probably a little differently than I’ve ever said it before. And that’s where the real gold comes from is it we’re not sitting down and having a super scripted thing where I’m just regurgitating information. Sometimes we’re discovering new ideas and new things and that it’s just a powerful way to create that content that can be so novel.
Ryan Klein:
And it’s great what you’re saying too is because sometimes when people think solely about the success or the value of what they’re doing, it only equate it to the downloads, which may take some time, then you’re equating it to YouTube views or webpage visits and there are many other metrics that are impacted when you are able to repurpose it and apply it to many other things.
Robert Ingalls:
Well, and one question I ask people, they say, “Well, our downloads aren’t going up.” And what does the download mean to you? What’s the goal? Who is the listener? What are we trying to give that listener? I have these conversations with people who have their own podcast a lot and they will so frequently have never thought about any of that.
The primary metric they’re concerned about is getting from 100 downloads an episode to 500 downloads an episode with zero thought process as to what those downloads mean. Will 500 actually even get you the thing that you would hope you would want to get, which you haven’t even articulated yet? And I have one of my biggest clients, very big firm. They get about consistently. They get about 60 downloads an episode. And it’s been like that basically since day one. They will never stop podcasting if they consistently get 60 because that is success to them. And if I told another, because firms will ask me, “What? How many downloads should I get?” And I say, it depends because this show knows that every one of those listens, no one’s listening to that specific show unless they are very high value. These are issues that to the common person would make zero sense.
As a lawyer myself who practiced, I had to spend a couple of hours understanding the subject matter so I could even try to articulate a strategy for them around what this was and how we were going to write the copy and things like that because it was such a niche focus. And so success to them is so different than what to success to somebody else might be. So focusing solely on increasing your downloads is usually not a great metric, especially for a business show because you very well may cap out. There is a size of your market. Everybody can’t be Joe Rogan where everyone’s a potential listener. You might have a size of a market, this is probably where you’re going to get no matter what. And that could be outstanding for you.
Chase Williams:
Something to touch on really quick, Robert. There’s different formats for podcasts. So there’s like that I’m the lawyer who’s going to be talking to the audience and just giving your articulation or explanation of a certain issue or blog topics or however the strategy is behind that. There’s also another format of interview style like our podcast. In your experience, I mean, it sounds like it might be easier… Okay, edit this out. I want to re-ask the question because I found a better question. Yes, maybe shouldn’t do this out because this will teach what a podcast is.
Robert Ingalls:
I love it. Leave it all in. Leave it in.
Chase Williams:
So when you’re recording your podcast as a podcaster, there’s really two different ways to go about it. One would be the interview style similar to the Legal Mastermind Podcast. And then there’s the alternative version, which it sounds like more what you do, Robert, is you find a topic and the lawyer explains a topic to the audience. It sounds like that might be a little bit more labor intensive where you’d have to have the research versus the interview style where, as long as you know the topic, you can speak freely like we are today. Is that true?
Robert Ingalls:
So I think that starts with why as well. It’s why are we doing it? What’s the purpose? Who is the intended listener? Because right now we know that the people listening to this show, this is something that could be valuable for them. So you bring on me, I will call myself an expert. And because the bar doesn’t keep me from calling myself a podcast expert, I don’t need approval for that. And this is something that we understand is valuable. We’re going to talk about something that we think is going to be valuable for the listener. So if that’s the situation that is valuable for your listener, I think there’s a lot of power in that. But to the question of which is harder, it can be a little more difficult to create content speaking about a specific issue, but lawyers tend to find that not very difficult because it’s an issue they understand back and forth.
And here’s a mix of the two that a lot of my clients will do, and I’ll see a lot of legal podcasts do well is it’ll be two people from the firm talking to each other instead of just sitting down and monologuing, which I think there is a ton of value in, but is absolutely harder. It’s absolutely harder for me to sit down, turn on my mic and just start talking in a way that the listener is going to find compelling for a period of time. A lot of people aren’t as great that trial lawyers tend to be better because it’s what we do. We monologue at people who can’t talk back to us.
But what I see work really well is one of the partners in the farm bringing another partner in and they’ll interview each other kind of. “Well, Stan, tell me about this. Tell what happens when somebody is injured on the premises of somebody else and they think that maybe they should have known better, whatever.” And so they’re having a conversation about an issue, well, that educates the consumer. The consumer has that question. And now one of the attorneys will start to interview the other one, which makes it a lot easier for them. They can show up very unprepared to a podcast like that. One of my clients in the PI space, they show up to a recording session and they’ll just pitch, “Hey, what do you want to talk about today?” Boom, boom, boom, boom. “All right. We’ll talk about these four things.”
And then the attorney will just start talking zero prep. They’ll just start talking and start, “Hey, Stan, tell me about this.” And he is the expert. So he just gets to talking and he explains the issue and then they move on to the next one. And so yeah, it tends to be a lot less prep work when you’re doing more of a Q and A type of thing. But I do think that there’s value in having some monologue episodes that speaks directly in a very intimate way directly to the listener, speaks to their pain points, lets you lets them know who you are because that’s a part of it. It’s like our voice is going right into their ears.
It’s kind of intimate by itself and just having a conversation with them, letting them connect with us, start that no-like trust that we’re looking to do with the podcast to get them past that friction point because that’s what we want to do. We want them to feel comfortable enough with us that they will then pick up the phone. And then when they talk to us, they’re going to feel like they already know us. They’re going to be much more primed to sign that contract before they walk out the door.
Ryan Klein:
I completely agree. And sometimes as compelling or as talented as a copywriter can be a creative writer for website, sometimes it doesn’t come across, hear it in someone’s voice and you can hear that the genuineness of them saying that they can relate to them, they understand that their legal issue or their pain. Yeah. I completely agree with that.
So Chase have mentioned earlier about a podcast that we did a topic the best of. And so I think one of the reasons those kinds of podcasts do well is because maybe our listener says, “Oh, they’ve curated snippets from the best and maybe all them going to get a lot of great nuggets all in one place. So that’s been really good for us.” I’m curious to be able to share with our listeners maybe some topics that have really excelled or really stood out from the batch on your experience like the-
Robert Ingalls:
It’s really going to go across the different shows because every show has a different listenership. Family law show is not going to have the same listenership is somebody who wants to listen to a tax podcast. And I wish I had a better answer as, “Hey, this is the thing that performs well.” But most of the things that perform well are the things that are getting the most search traffic. Especially if we’re doing a show that’s very reliant on that SEO FAQ angle, those are always the ones that perform better. The top things that people want to know, and we know what they are. When they land on your website, you know what page that you want to try to drive them to, you know what pages, you want to use to try to drive results on Google by itself. Those are always the top performing episodes.
Chase Williams:
So if our listeners aren’t necessarily ready to hire a company like LawPods, what’s the easiest way for them to get started? Is there a crash course or a crash kit they could purchase and just see like, “Hey, I’m not ready to hire somebody, but I want to try it out and see how I do and see where it goes.”
Robert Ingalls:
There’s a lot of information on the internet right this second for free to figure out how to make your podcast. The number one thing I think you need to do is ask yourself why you’re doing it. I think that really is step one. Why am I doing it? Who’s the listener? What do they want? How is this going? What do we want to see come out of this? What’s our end goal for having this?
Because if you’re a random act of marketing, you’re like, “Man, it’d be real. I love podcasts. We should have a podcast.” I think that it’s going to end up feeling like you’re spinning your wheels and wondering where the ROI is eventually going to come from. But when you’ve gotten through that process and you’re like, Okay, now we’ve got an idea of what we want to do. Buy a USB microphone. If you want to budget USB microphone, buy a Samson Q2U. You can get it on Amazon for maybe 60 bucks. It’s a very good microphone. It plugs right into your computer and from there you can find free editing software.
There’s editing software Audacity, that’s the one. It’s Mac, it’s PC, it’s free. It’s relatively easy to use and you can go in, make some real quick cuts. It doesn’t take a genius. I learned how to be a pretty good editor myself with no background. So it’s really not that difficult. You make some quick cuts, maybe drop a soundtrack at the beginning of the end, add that professional flair to it.
And then Anchor is a free place to host right now. This is another conversation. I don’t love Anchor because I think they’re trying to take the YouTube model to podcasting, and I like that podcasting is available everywhere, but if you’re really looking to get in on a budget, it’s free. But most hosting platforms are usually maybe 10, $20 tops a month. You host it, you submit it to Apple, Spotify, TuneIn all these places and the hosting platforms make it really easy to submit. A lot of them are one click from right inside the hosting platform.
And now there you are like you got a podcast on the internet. It’s not nearly as much work as it was when I first got into it. And then I encourage you to have it on your website. I think if you’re not driving… Everything should be pointing back to your website. That’s where we want people. We want people showing up at the storefront and engaging with your other content, picking up the phone and calling you. So that’s something that I did myself at my law firm when I was just learning, and it was a lot harder back then than it is now.
Chase Williams:
Well, thanks so much for your time today, Robert. Are there any parting words that you have for listeners?
Robert Ingalls:
I have so many words all the time. I’m better at them when you say, “Hey, specifically what do you want to know?” When it comes to podcasting, I’ll say, it might sound self-serving when I say this, but I mean it. And that’s the reason I went all in on it. Not because I was trying to sell something that I didn’t think the marketplace wanted. I wanted to sell something that I could tell the marketplace needed.
And we’re in that moment in time where people went from, “Oh, that’s nice, but we don’t need that.” Now we’re in that moment of, “Okay. It does seem like it’s something that we should have, but I don’t know, maybe not for us.” And then we’re getting towards, “Okay. Everybody’s doing it now. It’s too late.” I’m starting to hear that. “Well, everybody has a podcast. Why would I have a podcast? Already has one.” That’s like saying, “Oh, well, the PI firm across town has a website.” Why would I have a website? They’ve already got the website game nailed down, right? No, it’s your podcast.
And so this isn’t a bright, shiny object that I think is going, the utility of it isn’t going to fade. I think until Elon can start beaming information directly into our brain, I think audio is going to be what we’re really going to consume most because it does what no other form of marketing can do. It sells you time. It doesn’t say stop and read. It doesn’t say stop and watch. It says, “What are you about to do? Oh, I’ll come with you.” You don’t have to stop what you’re doing. You can go to the gym or drive to work or walk the dog or whatever and consume either entertainment or information. So I’m all in on audio. I think that it really is the future. I love it. I think that any firm that’s interested in bumping up their marketing game would do really well to take a really good look at podcasting.
Chase Williams:
And Robert, for listeners that want to get in contact with LawPods, what’s the best way to reach out?
Robert Ingalls:
You type in LawPods anywhere and I did pretty good at the beginning of getting the .com and getting all the social media domains. So you just type in LawPods. Also lawpods.com, you can find us there. And then anybody who wants to contact me directly, always, I’m pretty responsive on email, robert@lawpods.com.