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Thank You
Welcome to Stuff I Learned Yesterday. My name is Mark Des Cotes, I’m recording this way too late on Tuesday, or should I say way too early on Wednesday, and I believe if you aren’t learning, you aren’t living. In today’s episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday I thank you for your support.
I’m hoping for some great contributions for this week’s Friday Forum. Have you sent in your stories yet? If not, just head on over to https://www.goldenspiralmedia.com/feedback where you can either typy-typy your message, use the speakpipe widget to record something or attach your own audio file. If you prefer go old school you can call our voice feedback line at 304-837-2278. We’d love to hear from you.
Today’s Fun Fact of the Day: Did you know that there are 293 ways to make change for a dollar? Well, at least there used to be for me and my fellow Canadians, but not any more. It’s been over a year now since the penny was discontinued in Canada. All cash transactions are now rounded to the nearest nickel.
Here’s What I leaned yesterday.
As I said in my intro, I’m recording this way later than normal. The reason being that yesterday, Tuesday, April 14, 2015, the 10th annual Podcast Awards were held, and I wanted to wait for the results so I could announce them to you.
As you’ll recall, Golden Spiral Media had three shows nominated for awards this year. Arrow Squad, The Blacklist Exposed, and of course this show, Stuff I Learned Yesterday. Now I wont keep you in suspense, we didn’t take home any hardware at this year’s presentation. It would have been nice for GSM to win in at least one of the three categories but, as the old saying goes, them’s the breaks.
But you know something. I’m ok with that.
The Podcast Awards are and always have been a popularity contest, and I personally, would much rather be good than popular. How do I know we’re good? It’s because of you, our listeners. It was you, thank you very much, that got us nominated in the first place.
Let me explain. If you remember, when we asked you to nominate our shows we told you that you could only submit your nomination once, so to be very sure of your choices before you did.
I read somewhere that over 6,000 individual podcasts were nominated. Out of that bunch 203 different shows were chosen as finalist. That’s 20 categories of 10 podcasts each, plus three shows nominated for Best Produced that were not nominated in another category, including Arrow Squad. So, 203 out of 6000. That means that less than 3.5% of all nominated shows made it as finalists, and three of them were ours. That’s amazing!
Now I wont go into numbers, but I know how many listeners each of our three GSM shows average per episode. I also know that some of the other nominees we were up against have listener bases much, much larger than our three shows combined. Heck, some of them average more listeners than all GSM shows combined. And what that tells me is that for us to become finalists, the majority of you, our listeners had to have submitted a nomination. And that humbles me. Because for that to happen, you guys, and gals, had to believe in us enough to take time out of your day to visit the awards website and put our names down as your nomination choice. Yes, we asked you to do it, but I know, that you never would have done so if the shows we produce weren’t good. And for that, on behalf of all three shows, I can’t thank you enough.
So for all of us, being nominated for a Podcast Award was a win in itself. We’re extremely proud to call ourselves Podcast Award Finalists because it means we have an audience that believes in what we are doing.
Sure, winning would have been nice. But if we want to be realistic, once the voting started, it all came down numbers, the podcast with the most listeners wins. It’s hard to compete with that.
What did I learn?
The truth of the matter is, being nominated for a Podcast Award has changed us. We’re grateful and humbled. You believe in us enough to give back when we ask for your support. It probably seems like an insignificant gesture on your part but it means the world to us. Thank you.
Our nomination has brought us exposure we couldn’t have dreamed of. I’m actually shocked and amazed at the attention we’ve received since the finalists were announced.
I sent in a quick note to my local newspapers about the nomination just to see what would happen. That same day I was contacted by both my weekly and daily papers. They each did a story on me and to my surprise the daily paper featured the story on the front page. The front page. The title read in big black letters “Big Honour for Podcaster” with a photo of me taking up half the space. I never expected that.
Since then I’ve received congratulations from old coworkers, college and high school friends, and many people I hadn’t heard from in years. Strangers and people I barely know recognize me from the article and stop to talk to me. Best of all, everyone is asking me about podcasting. I wont lie, I’m enjoying my 15 minutes of fame. I even received a certificate from the government of Ontario congratulating me on my achievement. I actually shook my head and laughed at that one when I saw it.
Then look at Darrell. Not only did he have a story appear in his paper but he also did a video piece for a news channel.
Our nominations has helped us spread the word about Golden Spiral Media, and podcasting in general more than we could have ever hoped. And that thrills us. After all, who doesn’t want to spread the word on what they’re passionate about. And we have you to thank for it.
So in the end, we didn’t end up with a fancy piece of acrylic to put on our shelf. No, we have something even more valuable. We have amazing listeners like you.
I’m Mark Des Cotes and this has been stuff I learned yesterday.
You can Follow Golden Spiral Media on Twitter at GSMPodcasts and Facebook.com/GoldenSpiralMedia. If you’ve enjoyed this episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday, I would be grateful if you’d leave a review in iTunes.
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