Morgan Franklin: I want to make you one promise in this episode,
and it is that this isn't a political episode. It is an
episode about politics. I know that there are a lot of raw
feelings right now, and you know that is rightfully so. I said
this before in previous episodes, but discussing my own
political opinion is not relevant in any way to this
podcast. However, in the wake of the results of the 2024
election, I think that it would be foolish to discount the
significance that podcasting played in this election and in
politics. Moving forward in this episode, we're going to dissect
the use of podcasts by both candidates talk about what
worked, what didn't, and how we can use the lessons of both
campaigns to grow our own podcasts and shape our brands
through podcasting. Hello and welcome to podcast for profit.
My name is Morgan Franklin. I'm a Podcast Producer, strategist
and educator. This podcast will help you create and grow a
podcast that cuts through the noise of social media and speaks
directly to your target audience. If you're ready to
create a podcast that will align you with the experts in your
industry, position yourself as a trusted leader and create
another source of revenue for your business, you're in the
right place. I want to provide you this information as unbiased
and fairly as possible, because not only am I a volunteer
election worker, but also I'm someone that believes in the
will of the people through our vote, we all have an equal
voice, and I respect that right, no matter what party is being
discussed, whether you're satisfied or dissatisfied with
the results of this election, it is clear that one candidate was
using podcasts to share their message and reach new audiences
in a way that we have never seen before in a political race, and
this was never clearer to me than on the actual election day.
On Tuesday, as I said, I work as a volunteer election worker, and
this is my fourth presidential election, working at the polls.
Like every year, people are excited. Election day is such an
exciting day, and you would be hard pressed to find anyone at
the polls on election day that is not excited to be there. And
you know, I was having a conversation before the polls
opened, with a fellow volunteer that was there, and we were just
talking. She asked me what I did. I said that I was a Podcast
Producer, and before she could even take a breath to ask me
anything else, she just says, Oh my gosh, my son just turned 18.
He's voting for the first time, and he's listened to every
single podcast episode with Donald Trump. He loves podcasts,
and I was intrigued to hear this, because, you know, you're
thinking about first time voters, the youth vote rallied
by podcasts with Donald Trump. Just really interesting. The
candidate that would technically be our oldest candidate ever
elected as president at the time of his inauguration, was
reaching Gen Z voters through podcasting like How was that
possible? Right? Well, let's take a look. So here's a list of
every podcast that Donald Trump guested on during his campaign
for president during the 2024 election, and I'm gonna go in
chronological order, because there are quite a few of them,
from June 2024 to october 2024 with just a brief summary of
topics covered and the length of that episode. First is impulsive
with Logan Paul in June of 2024 So Donald Trump made his
podcasting debut with Logan Paul, who is a social media
influencer and professional wrestler, on the impulsive
podcast, and during this episode, he discussed topics
like AI and even how he uses AI in his own speech. Writing this
interview was 53 minutes long, fast forwarding two months
later, guesting on the this past weekend with Theo von podcast in
August of 2024 they're kind of talking about a little bit more
personal topics, like Donald Trump's decision to abstain from
alcohol and smoking, and how his life of sobriety has been
influenced by his brothers Fred struggles, who died of substance
abuse at only 42 this episode was about one hour long. Next in
September of 2024 Donald Trump was featured on the LEX Friedman
podcast where he discussed his views on things like medical
marijuana losing the 2020 election. China, Joe Rogan and a
variety of other very current topics. This episode was one
hour and three minutes long in early October 2024 Donald Trump
goes on the flagrant podcast with Andrew Schultz, where he
talks about abortion and reiterating his stance the
decisions on abortion rights should be left to the states.
This episode was about an hour and 30 minutes long. On october
14, full send podcast host Donald Trump for a discussion on
Elon Musk world war three. His message to first time voters and
if he's going to be on the Joe Rogan podcast or not, which I
thought was pretty interesting. This episode was 38 minutes
long. Next Bus him with the boys in mid October of 2024 Trump
appears on bus him with the boys, which is a podcast by the
media company Barstool Sports, where, during the interview, he
discussed his motivations for entering politics, including his
concerns about border security and trade deals. This episode
was two hours and 15 minutes long. On october 17, Donald
Trump joins PBD podcast with Patrick bet David On this
episode, he discusses domestic enemies and expresses his own
concerns for Kamala Harris political stances. This episode
is one hour and 26 minutes long. On october 21 Donald Trump talks
pro wrestling an election with six feet under with Mark
Calloway, aka the undertaker. He's famously the most tenured
wrestler in WWE history. And lastly, I'm sorry, I know this
list is long, of course, the now infamous episode of The Joe
Rogan experience in late October 2024 Donald Trump appeared on
Joe Rogan's podcast, engaging in a wide variety of discussions
that included topics like Robert E Lee's military strategy and
speculation about life on Mars. This episode was two minutes shy
of being three hours long. And the totally crazy thing to think
about is combined for all of these episodes, these podcasters
have delivered a watch total of over 50 million views on YouTube
alone. So that's not even podcast downloads in the
traditional way that we think of them. That's not streams, that's
not anything else, that's just views on YouTube. And that is
absolutely insane to me, and this might be obvious from their
introductions, but all of the hosts are male and carry a
consistently male centered audience. And while I've
listened to clips from all these podcasters, I do not claim to be
fully equipped to speak on their audiences any more than just to
say, I do believe they are targeted at young to middle aged
men, and they are doing an excellent job like it is all
executed flawlessly. Also, I want to acknowledge that there
were many other live Twitch events and streaming and radio
shows, and I did not include them here. I was trying to keep
it strictly podcast oriented, but Donald Trump was staying
very busy on podcasts and streaming circuits. No one can
say he was not putting in the time there on podcasts, because
Absolutely he was. So let's take a look at Kamala Harris and how
the Harris campaign use podcasting to help share their
message and draw in those voters that might not have known the
vice president very well up until this point, on september
30, Kamala Harris joined Alex Cooper on call her daddy, which
is Spotify, second most popular podcast in the United States and
also has about 1 million subscribers on YouTube. During
this episode, Kamala Harris spoke about the grit that it
takes for a woman to seek public office, the toughness that her
mother instilled in her, and the importance of reproductive
rights in this election. This episode was roughly 40 minutes
long again, airing on september 30, Kamala Harris joined all the
smoke with NBA champions Steven Jackson and Matt Barnes to
discuss the Harris plan to boost the economy and her perspective
on America's progress on social justice. Next on october 28
Kamala Harris joined Brene Brown on unlocking us with Brene Brown
for conversation on the strength and fragility of democracy, the
power of strong coalitions, and how to commit to justice and
fairness that can both ground us and drive action. That interview
was one hour long and a lot like Donald Trump, Kamala Harris did
appear on a variety of radio shows and other media like The
Howard Stern Show, the Steve Harvey Morning Show and The
Breakfast Club. When we look at the overall listener audience of
the Harris features, it shows a much more diverse story than
Donald Trump and where he was featured. But. But a far less
consistent one. And again, I've listened to clips from the
podcasts, and I do not claim to know the full analysis of their
audience, but when I'm looking at these three podcasts
specifically, and we see their target audiences are young
women, young to middle aged men and middle aged women, you're
casting a wide net, but not really driving home the message
to any specific person. Here's my perspective on why podcasting
really worked for Donald Trump in this election cycle, and it
didn't for Kamala Harris. What do I always say about
podcasting? Know your audience, know your audience. Both these
candidates do know their audience, but they are speaking
to them in totally different ways. And in all fairness,
Kamala Harris had a much broader area to cover, seeing as the
country was just getting to know her in about 100 days, that's a
lot of work to do. That's a lot of people to speak to. However,
it does not mean that your message is reaching the targeted
audience. In the upcoming weeks and months, you're going to hear
a lot about the significance of paid, owned and earned media,
and for the reasons that I've discussed in this episode, let's
take a look at each one of these and talk about what they really
mean, let's start with paid media. You pay for it, so that
can be anything from a Facebook ad to a billboard, anything you
pay for that is getting your message out there. Next is owned
media. And owned media is anything that you create, for
example, a Tiktok video that you made, or a blog post, you wrote
your own podcast, any content or media that you create and post
and own yourself is owned media. Lastly, is earned media. Earned
media is the trickiest, but I would argue the most important
media for gaining consumer or voter trust in the digital age.
People are smart. They don't trust ads. Yeah, they don't
trust ads anywhere, and they don't trust you. Audiences are
very wary, and do you blame them? This is why earned media
is so important, and whether you like it or not, Donald Trump did
a spectacular job of capitalizing on earned media.
I've heard some speculation around that his youngest son,
Barron Trump, is a big fan of podcasting, and some of the
podcasts that he went on, but regardless, he knew who his
audience was, and he was able to use that earned media that he
got to speak directly to this audience. Donald Trump is
amazing at this and he has been for most of his life, and
whether it's magazines or TV or any kind of media that he can
shape and mold to his narrative, he is very hands on with the
media. Does he hate them? Yeah, most of the time, but also it is
his secret weapon, because he can use that earned media to
accomplish the things that he is trying to do. Looking at the
Harris campaign and how Kamala Harris used podcasting, I'm not
100% sure it was used in the best way, even for the small
amount that she utilized the platform. If I could give some
constructive criticism and my own thoughts, it would be this,
get in character, get in the environment. When I watched the
caller daddy interview, it was unlike any of the other episodes
of that podcast that I had ever watched, but not necessarily in
a good way. It felt very buttoned up, which I'm not
saying is a bad thing. I'm not saying that if your podcast is
buttoned up, that that's bad. I'm saying that it wasn't the
call her daddy brand. It felt very disingenuous to the
experience of listening or watching that particular
podcast. And I know that they were hosting the Vice President
of the United States, right? You got to be a little bit more
professional, but maybe it was either that that was the wrong
show for Kamala Harris, or her team should have worked with the
podcast to create a little bit more laid back environment for
everyone. It felt forced, in a way, and especially for this to
be one of the only long form pieces of media that the Kamala
Harris campaign put out that wasn't a prime time interview, I
think it could have been optimized to yield better
results. All right, so we've covered the good and the bad. I
am grateful to these campaigns for using podcasting as part of
their election strategy. I think that was incredibly smart. I
made this joke on Tiktok last week that sometimes, as a
podcaster, that podcasting can feel like the coolest and lamest
thing about you. And I think that is really true. What I want
you to take away from this episode. Code an election is
that podcasting is legitimate. As cliche as it might be for me
to say people don't trust media. People trust people. People
trust connections. And no matter how many millions or billions a
campaign spends on ads, it can't create the same connection as
sitting down with another person and talking about how you really
feel, what's really going on. How do we as a country actually
get through this? Whether you have a podcast that you want to
make more attractive to high profile guests, or you're a
podcaster that wants to be featured on other podcasts as a
guest, I'd be happy to help you create the strategy and help you
win in whatever you are doing. I'll have a link for my hourly
consulting in the episode descriptions. You can also reach
out to me at Morgan, at morganfranklin dot media. So
that's Morgan at morganfranklin dot media. I also have my
digital product shop. Those are templates that I have created
that I use every day as a podcaster, that I use for my
podcasting clients that will be linked below, or you can go to
podcastforprofit.com and as always, I can't wait to listen
to your podcast. Hey, thank you so much for joining me on this
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