Author: Teresa Howard

Cast of the Week VIII

We now have a Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/ykyzHaveYourSay

Feel free to like or follow or whatever it is one does with, or to, a Facebook page.

u/Mattasher writes:

Before we get to the prizes, we have a number of shoutouts this week to those who made our week:

Shoutout to all those who joined the 100-club this week:

Clare with Brown Skin Pearls
Geraldine with fashionmusings
Janet with SnippetswithSophia
Joanie with CatGuruJoanie
Noah with Doctor Irish
Rebekah with SmartMoney

Shoutout to the two established users who booted up new microcasts this week. Joel kicked-off Wrestling with Football (about the new XFL league) and Noah crossed over into new territory with Imperfect Reviews.   

Shoutout to @ndrewSeiner for finding his groove as the microcast equivalent of dropping a tab. Always be mindful of set and setting before tuning in!

One final Shoutout to SmartMoney for launching up my new favorite channel c/dumbcriminals

And now, on to the winners.

But first, some runner’s up:
92. Chapped by Brown Skin Pearls
Perfect for this time of year, Clare goes through the basics of chapped lips and how to handle them.


52. Biscuit Lashes by Black Girl Baker
Somehow the transition from talking about grating butter to a discussion about fake lashes just… works.


104. Adulting…Easier Than a Spreadsheet by SmartMoney
Becky gives us some basic advice on how to manage money without having to plot out every cent we spend. If you have 68 seconds to spare, I recommend spending it listening to this helpful episode.


104. DO NOT NAME YOUR CAT THESE NAMES – very serious by CatGuruJoanie
This very serious episode introduces us to the many bad cat names Joanie has encountered over the years, and Gary, which is definitely the best name, not the worst.


WINNERS:
Runner up
89. The Blank Page by Life Bites Podcast
Conner’s meditation on staring on a blank page takes the runner-up spot this week. This tightly crafted episode introduces us to the enemy and leads us on to victory over the creative void.


Grand prize
93. MM’s And The U.S. Presidents by SnippetsWithSophia
This week’s grand prize winner is Sophia’s well-paced, well scripted, well-researched episode on the one box of M&Ms that recipients will want to keep around for a long time. This delightful episode alone might have been enough to bag the top prize, but Sophia complimented it with several other well researched and interesting episodes about food and the halls of power. You can find them all here:


https://ykyz.com/f/foodinhighplaces

Cast of the Week VII

CotW VII
u/Mattasher writes:

Before we get to the prizes, we have a number of shoutouts this week to those who made our week:

Shoutout to jen.again for kick-starting my new favorite channel, c/ihateitwhen. Jen’s complaint about tissue boxes may be the most gloriously relatable first world problem I’ve ever heard.

Shoutout to Black Girl Baker who’s finding a great groove with her one-two punch of baking and “tea”.

Shoutout to CatGuruJoanie who has been experimenting with YouTube-style quick edits of her audio. Though not right for everyone, this technique is working well for Joanie’s cast.

Shoutout to ThatBeardedSwede for keeping casting alive on Reddit with a dedicated channel to microcasting.

Before getting to the main event, we hereby recognize a few runners up this week:

76. Thoughts on fake pockets? by fashionmusings
Gem clearly hit a chord with this discussion of fake pockets, an endless source of complaints for my own daughter.


79. Baby Steps by Life Bites Podcast
In this thoughtful meditation on moving forward, Conner reminds us that “You can go for miles, just taking baby steps”


69. Chicken McNuggets vs Vegan Nuggets by SnippetsWithSophia
Sophia’s episode about everyone’s favorite finger snack as a kid makes us wonder how much actual chicken is in McNuggets.


And now, on to the winners!
Runner up
54. What is Chinese Astrology? by Astrocast By Diz
In this timely episode, Diz explains the Chinese system of years and animals, including the nifty trick of asking someone’s zodiac animal as a sly (but not foxy, that one’s missing) way to figure out their age.


Grand Prize
86. Attachment by CatGuruJoanie
Joanie, with a hit tip to Violaceous C, brings the receipts for what many a cat owner has long suspected. Namely, their cats actually do love them, they’re just chill in how they show it. With well researched and tightly delivered episodes, we’re quickly becoming “Securely attached” to Joanie’s excellent microcast.

Community Ideas on Ways to Promote

There are many different ways to promote yourself and your microcast. What works for one person might not work for another. It’s about trial and error to see what works for your individual brand. We would like to make this post an ongoing, ever-evolving directory of sorts that we as a community can share ideas and/or tips on how we are promoting; what has worked, what has not.

Social Media

One of the greatest tools you have at your disposal when it comes to gaining more exposure is social media platforms. Using places like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, or even YouTube can help you reach a large audience. If done correctly, this is where you could gain a lot of new followers/listeners. There is a blog post about how to promote on Twitter.

Podcast Directories

Uploading to podcast directories is another huge way to get your microcast out there. There are a ton of different directories. There are blog posts that explain how to upload to several of these directories already. I hope to keep adding to those as time goes on.

A few directories you could try (if there is an issue with uploading to a directory, please let us know):
Itunes
Google Play (U.S. and Canada)
Spotify
Stitcher
Podchaser
TuneIn
Ipodder
Listen Notes

Joining Podcasting Communities

Joining podcasting communities is another great tip. This can help you to not only network but gain insight into how others are promoting their podcasts. There are probably a fair bit of dedicated forums, Facebook groups, or even subreddits that are dedicated to this very thing. Feel free to let us know any of your favorites.

If you have anything you would like to add, feel free to leave a comment.

Cast of the Week VI

CotW VI
You’ll find all the nominees for this week at https://ykyz.com/c/na?faveOf=cotwvi

u/Mattasher writes:
Before we get to the winners of Cast of the Week VI, I’d like to send some shoutouts to folks who made our week this week:

Shoutout to Conner u/lifebitespodcast who brought in Paul Sating, our very first AmA guest. For more information about our AmA program, send us an email.

Shoutout to Joanie, who opened up a second microcast under the name CriminalCreatures, to help answer the age-old question of when should pigs be hanged for their wrongdoings.

Shoutout to Violaceous Curiosity, who took the bait from last week’s edition and seeded the definitively NSFW channel, MFK. A reminder to everyone that you can start new channels anytime you like, on the fly. Just type in the channel name at the end of the URL and go.

And now, on to the winners. But first, the runner’s up.

Ep 44 How a Gemini Takes A Compliment- Skit by Astrocast By Diz
In this fun mini-skit, Diz does her best to peg Gemini’s, and asks that other age-old question, “What grown man wears Sketchers?” I’d also recommend Diz’s other astrological one-act episodes.


EP 62 Drug Smuggling on a cruise by Dancing Bartender
In this episode, the Dancing Bartender tells the story of some Canadians who smuggled more than a little cocaine into an Aussie port of call, wherein their party comes to an abrupt halt.


EP92 IKEA by ThatbeardedSwede
When Fredrik started his microcast, I expected it would take no more than a week to get to the main event, IKEA, and soon after that I expected our favorite Swede to go off-road and leave behind his Nordic Kingdom as a topic. Instead, Fredrik found nearly a hundred fascinating episodes about life in Sweden before hitting his informative IKEA ringer and shows no signs of deviating from a topic that’s proved to be much richer than I ever expected.


And now, on to the winners:
Second Prize
Ep52 Twinings Tea – Drink Like A Royal by SnippetsWithSophia
 In this well researched, perfectly scripted episode, Sophia takes us on a historical journey into the origins of British tea and tells us how to drink like a Royal, so long as we’re willing to part with a few Pounds and put up with the pungent smell of Earl Grey blend.  


Grand Prize
Ep23 Black Tax by Asi Voluptuous Voyager
In this episode, Asi discusses the tricky dynamic when family ties are turned against children who manage to escape from poverty, and now-grown-up kids are morally blackmailed into paying a “tax” of financial gifts to those left behind.

Asi’s episode is wonderfully specific in its details, yet universally understandable in terms of the emotional dynamics it sets up, and, as I know from personal experience, this is a phenomenon that extends well beyond the black communities of South Africa.

Cast of the Week V

CotW V winners
You can find all of the nominees for this period at: https://ykyz.com/c/na?faveOf=cotwV

u/Mattasher writes:

Before we get to the winners, some shoutouts to people who made our week this week:

Shoutout to Violacious Curiosity for kick-starting my current favorite channel WhichIsWorse. Takes me back to the many hours I spent playing this exact game with friends. Now who’s going to start a channel for that more adult, three option game, let’s just call it MFK? 🙂

Shoutout to Mia for the cool stickers and offer to help others with their custom art.

Shoutout to the Microcasting sub-reddit, founded by our favorite Swede Fredrik.

Shoutout to Joel for the awesome video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aO_G_t-jSbE&feature=youtu.be


And now, on to the winners. But first, a handful of honorable mentions.

E34- Romantic Movies by Asexual Asa
Asa rolls her eyes and expresses her discontent with the literary shortcuts taken by so many romantic movies.


Ep9 African pride by Asi Voluptuous Voyager
In this fascinating episode, Asi tells us about the African tradition of fattening rooms for female fiancées. Who knew?


Ep.54 – The People You Meet off Craigslist by Life Bites Podcast
In this tightly narrated episode, Conner takes us through the various steps that make up the single serving transaction of buying something from someone on Craigslist.


EP56 Fcat or Fiction – Crossing One’s Path by CatGuruJoanie
How did black cats become the stuff of nightmares? Joanie gives us a brief history lesson, complete with spooky music. This one might have taken the top spot if it had more details about how black cats came to be associated with witches and bad luck.  


And now, on to the winners.

Second Place:
Ep93 Where’s The Drummer? by Music and Peace
Another well researched, info packed, interesting episode from Addie. In this episode, we learn how The Beatles pioneered the drummer as a properly spotlighted member of the band by putting Ringo up on a raised platform, a tradition that continues until today, and, I might add, has been taken up to 11 by modern drummers like Tommy Lee.


Grand Prize:
EP76 The Era of VHS by The Broken Down Starship
This pure nostalgia play about the days of VHS rental touched a nerve with many of us. Packed with details, James brings you right back into the days that inspired Clerks. Careful though. As James puts it himself, Nostalgia is a heck of drug.

Cast of the Week IV

CotW IV winners!
You can find all of the nominees for this period at: https://ykyz.com/c/na?faveOf=cotwiv

u/mattasher writes:
And now, without further ado, here are the winners of CotW IV.

But first, some shoutouts:

Shoutout to Doctor Irish, our Rookie of the Week. The good Doctor blasted through his first level requirements with dozens of high-quality episodes and great community engagement. We were prepared to offer a Rookie Referral bonus to whoever got the doc to pay us a house call, but it turns out he found our job ad directly.

Shoutout to the Dancing Bartender, who was lost at sea for over a week. Good to see him back and contributing more tales of tall ships and life at the corners of the map labeled “Here be monsters”.

Shoutout to CatGuruJoanie for our new favorite intro/outro. You make us purr with delight, and meow like little kittens.

And now on to the CotW winners.

But first, a suggestion. If you are having trouble remembering the best episodes of the last week to nominate, we recommend using the “favorite” feature to Heart your top episodes each week. That makes it easy to review what you liked best, just go to https://ykyz.com/f/YourUsername to look back over your faves.

And now on to the CotW winners.

But first, here are the runner’s up:

EP44 protest dressing by fashionmusings
A follow up to last week’s winning entry about fashion police, this one might have taken a top prize again if she’d included some nice juicy examples of specific protest wear.


Ep.5 What is an American? by Alba of The Culture Mix
This brief but thoughtful episode asks the question in its title and gives a few ways to look at it.


Ep 14 Horoscopes vs Astrology by Astrocast By Diz
Diz gets us up to speed with a detailed definition of Astrology and Horoscopes in this content rich, well recorded microcast episode.


And now, on to the CotW winners:
Second prize:
In “Song Reco”, Music and Peace tells the tale behind one of the most famous folk/blues songs of all time. Packed with detail but not overwhelming, Addie’s recommendation takes us back to song’s origins in the 30’s, then forward to the 60s when it became a monster hit for The Animals. Don’t spend your lives in sin and misery, tune in to Addie’s Music and Peace microcast instead.


Grand prize:
There wasn’t much debate about which episode deserved the top spot this past week. Our favorite Millennial Jonathan nailed it with his creative, high effort, perfectly executed episode titled “Grocery”. In just 90 seconds, Jonathan takes us on an epic coffee run that goes from home to the grocery to the annoying self-checkout lane, complete with sound effects and mega stuff Oreos. His checkout total for coffee plus extras may have hurt his wallet, but he’s going to be just fine after taking home this week’s Grand prize.


Thanks for another great week of episodes at ykyz!

Cast of the Week III

CotW III winners

Before we get to the winners, some general notes:
• All microcasters, paid or unpaid, are eligible, except for Prospectors (see https://ykyz.com/blog/index.php/microcaster-levels/)
• To be considered for a prize, you must have proper episode titles and have set your email and avatar. Unfortunately this week we had to exclude some wonderful nominations on that basis.
• When choosing winners, we first narrow down the field by removing casts with poor audio quality or a topic that has connection to your microcast theme.

You will find all of the nominees for this period at: https://ykyz.com/f/cotwiii

Because this was an extra long period, we’ve added more winners and runner’s up than usual. We had lots of great nominations, but a handful of them really shined.

Here’s u/mattasher with descriptions of this week’s winners. We begin with the runner’s up:

EP. 32 Skincare Emergencies by Brown Skin Pearls. This tightly crafted, interesting episode introduces us to new uses for feminine wash.


Ep. 45 Side Hustle by IAmMillennial. Jonathan perfectly captures the moment many of us find ourselves in, where trends in tech and economics have led so many of us to become gig workers of one kind or another.


EP53 VR Gaming by NerdyOldGuy. Joel drew half-a-dozen responses for his personal take on virtual reality gaming and motion sickness.


Finally, a shoutout to ykyz’s own Teresa (ThatOneGirl) for her excellent four-part series A Place called Ohio).

And now, on to the winners! Because this was a longer period, we’ve picked two second prize winners.

Second prize
EP59 The right of public access by ThatbeardedSwede. Here’s another lovely slice of life episode from or favorite Swede. This episode discusses the tradition and laws related to public access on private property, including the right to pick berries and mushrooms. We also highly recommend ThatbeardedSwedes’ other nominated episodes on Fika and The Stockholm Syndrome.


Ep13.Spicy Food by staplezz1301. This episode mixes the author’s personal relationship to spice with a view of spiciness as a metaphor for Mexico in general. As staplezz1301’s asks, “What’s life without a little bit of spice”.


Grand prize
EP06 a ruler by fashionmusings. This well researched, high effort episode focuses on a fascinating intersection of fashion, politics, and history. Who knew there used to be cops wandering around South Korea armed with scissors to give hippy scofflaws an on-the-spot trim?


Congratulations to fashionmusings and all the other winners and runners up. Keep your eye out for great episodes for next week’s contest!

Cast of the Week II

Cast of the Week (CotW) winners

All CotW entrants are nominated by you, and chosen by ykyz founder u/mattasher.

You can always find the most recent nominees at:
ykyz.com/f/castoftheweek

u/mattasher writes:

We had lots of great microcast episodes this past week! But before we get to the winners, I want to highlight a few non-microcast Bleats. The most interesting conversation starter of the week was Amandalotta’s “iPhone for littles?” which drew lots of strong opinions about kids owning expensive cellphones. Feel free to check it out for yourself.

Amandalotta also asked the vital question, Where do you find a dog with no legs? See the answer for yourself.

Special mention also goes to ThatOneGirl for her 4-bleat series on “The Demon Midwife”, a fascinating story that just missed the deadline for last week’s Cast contest.

Runner’s up for CotW:

Ep.4 Life Bites – Story Idea by Life Bites Podcast
Conner presents an interesting dilemma, Do you wake up a sleeper only to tell them that the world is about to end?

EP4 Travel Skincare by Brown Skin Pearls
Clare provides practical, specific advice about skincare and travel. Solid, informative, interesting.

Ep. 19 YouTube by IAmMillennial
IAmMillennial swears he doesn’t fall down YouTube rabbit holes, then takes us down his most recent YouTube rabbit hole, babies sneezing. Who knew that was a thing?

Second place:

EP35.Homeschool vs Public School by ILoveEveryone
ILoveEveryone presents a single strong, well researched argument related to equity and state funding of public school, vs the lack of support for home school students.

First place:

Ep29 Music and Peace by Music and Peace
Addie gives an impassioned, yet calm and thoughtful meditation on gatekeeping in music. Perfectly scripted and well recorded, Addie’s plea for opening up the musical garden to all those who want to admire it, is worth listening to at least twice.

Some final thoughts this week about the microcast. Some of you are beginning to get the hang of the format, and to dominate it. As you go about producing your episodes, keep in mind the distinction between microcast episodes and Bleats generally. General Bleats are about conversation. Microcast episodes present information and perspective. They may ask for feedback, but they aren’t just topic starters to kick off a conversation. Note in particular how The Broken Down Starship’s outstanding “Biggest Disappointment” episode introduces a topic, then does much more by going into details about the topic generally, and outlining a specific case of disappointment with well-thought-out context.

Cast of the Week I

Winners of the “Cast of the Week” contest

Today marks the end of the first contest for the best microcast of the week. Thank you to everyone for nominating episodes!

You can always find all most recent nominees:

ykyz.com/f/castoftheweek

Note there are two pages of nominations. We created this list using the new ykyz favorites feature. See if you can figure out how to favorite Bleats and view your list of favorites.

Before we get to the winners, here are the runner’s up from last week:

EP9 Guilty Pleasures by Life, Love, & Vibes:
This fun episode goes through the top three guilty pleasures of microcaster Life, Love, & Vibes.


EP5 On Fandoms by The Broken Down Starship:
In just one minute, this insightful episode captures the complicated dynamic between fandoms and their shows. 


EP21-Gingerbread by ThatbeardedSwede: 
This lovely, mouth watering episode by ThatBeardedSwede hit all of our senses, and left us with a warm glow of nostalgia.


Ep12 Music and Peace by Music and Peace:
In this tightly scripted, densely informative episode, Addie gives us a great introduction to the intersection of music and peace in the 60’s.

And now, on to the winners!

Second prize goes to:

Ep 1.8 Hygge by 60 Second Shalom:
This delightful microcast episode gives a rich description of a Scandinavian term that means “the pursuit of everyday happiness”. Well recorded and perfectly paced, this sixty-second slice gave us lovely introduction to an idea that resonated with many other ykyz’ers.

First prize goes to:

Ep. 7 Introvert Nation by IAmMillennial:
In this episode, IAmMillennial nails the microcast format with a perfect mini-intro, high quality audio, and a well scripted text. The episode is fun, engaging, and despite the short length takes us on a mini-journey that captures a slice of IAmMillennial inner life, and of the times we live in.


Congratulations to 60 Second Shalom and IAmMillennial. Your prizes will be sent out today!

Keep your eye out for great episodes this coming week, and let us know if you referred any of the winners or runner’s up.