Is Batching Your Podcast The Next Thing? - The Podcast Report Episode #49

Is batching your podcast the next big thing? It's the Podcast report, episode number 49. Yes, 49. Show notes, links, conversation and more@the podcastreport.com 49. It's the podcast report with Paul Colligan. And here's Paul. It starts with the big idea. The right production model just might change your podcast forever. That's right. We've been, some of us, I've heard it said out there that there's one production model. Well, there aren't. There's a lot. And we're going to explore one of them here that I am fascinated with. I wanted to offer to you because maybe you haven't thought it all the way through or the implications, or maybe this will be the model that will let you launch another show. Get better with your show. Relaunch your show. I've chatted about elements of this in the past, but we're going to go deep into it today. Hey, this is the Podcast Report. My name is Paul Colligan. I'm a podcaster. I'm an author. Right now, my top selling how to podcast 2015 is doing extremely well. Having a lot of fun with that. If you're listening to this in 2016 or 2017, I have a bet the 2016, 2017, 2018 version will be coming out then. I've been in podcasting since the beginning. I love this industry. I have since day one. The avatar for the show, the listener for the show is podcasters looking to make their podcast a real business or do business because of their podcast, do more business because of their podcast, do better business because of their podcast. It's not a massive play, but it's a deep play and I'm thrilled to be doing Quick update on Patreon. I'm in the middle of the grand experiment. Patreon.com forward/Paul Colligan, thank you so much. Again, the future, it's been fascinating. I, yeah, listen to the past episode about it, what I'm doing. The report will be there. I will probably keep it open. I won't mention it every single episode when I do. But if you'd like to be part of this. Paulcolligan.com Patreon obviously have another link to this in the show notes@the podcastreport.com 49 so why this topic? And the topic is batch production. And there's a couple of, well, where did this come from? Number one, you know John Lee Dumas, seven episodes a week, daily episode. John, when I first heard that he batched all the shows Together is one of these things where it's like, well, of course you batch your shows together. I mean, if you did one every morning, it would kill you. I mean, most podcasters, if you do one every week, it kills them. And so it's a smaller version of batching, but it's an interesting version of batching. And I'm gonna put a link to my interview with John where we chat about what he does. But, boy, you know, if he had to do his daily show every day, he'd have to get more staff. He could pull it off, but the fact of the matter is, by doing them all on Monday, traditionally as he does, he's in a better place. So there's John Michael Hyatt. It was really funny. His episode 100, he announces that he is is changing the show, he's changing the format, he's changing everything. And it's a great episode. And I really recommend that you take a listen to it. I'm going to put the links up at the show. Note@thepodcastreport.com 49. Basically, he moved from weekly. That was draining him. He admitted that. To batching the show. And he went from audio to video, and he went from monologue to co host, and he went from a bunch of things. And that has got me thinking for a long time. And I think his new show is better now. A lot of us just get better when we do more and more episodes, but I think the model has produced a better show. And as I was putting together these notes just a few minutes ago, and those Patreon mastermind watched me do this. Grape Radio was a show in the early days. I don't know its current status right now, but I was always impressed just the fact that they would record a whole month of episodes just once. And so this model isn't invented by John or Hyatt. It's been around for a long time. But sometimes when we podcast, we think there's only one model. You know, I've joked about how in the past people said, well, if I can't find interviews, how do I do my show? Well, don't do an inter show. You know, keeping up weekly with the news is killing me. Well, here's the thing. Don't do weekly. Let's think bigger. Sometimes we think podcasting is a single model. And this batch podcasting, this batch production model is really, really, really interesting. So the idea here is instead of once a week, or I guess once a day or whatever, you know, even if it was a once a month, Thing, batch them, do them in a batch, line them up, outline them up, put them all together, do them in one batch. Obviously don't have one long episode, but record episode episode two, then episode three, then episode four. Now you could release them as a batch for binge watching, like, like Hyatt does or some others do, or you could just slowly drip them out after you've produced them. And that's the model that I think more and more are going to take. Although the, the batch consumption model is interesting. And for any of you been podcasting for, for an amount of time, you know, you see this funny thing where you go in and you could tell, you know, 1, 2, 3, 4 people have started episode one of your show and kind of binge watched or bing anyway, it might be something you want to do, but. But why would you do this? Well, there's some things you don't get otherwise, and I want to speak to that. But that's kind of the top of the model. Yes, it's like Netflix, but. But more so. But even like Netflix, you know, the first thing is, you know, if you notice in Netflix, and I don't want to get too nerdy on you, but there's been some shows, you know, Unbreakable, Kimmy Schmidt, Daredevil, there's been some TV shows that they've done that have been better than television that we see today. And it's largely because, well, House of Cards for sure. What has happened is, is they've gotten the order to produce and they produce the 12 episodes, the 13 episodes, whatever episodes, they let them out, they get to tell the whole story. The stars, you know, the people who make this, they're the ones who get to produce and they don't have to listen to panels, they don't have to listen to, you know, higher level producers, mucky mucks in the organization, tell them what to do and they know exactly how many episodes they have, so, so they spin it out. And you know, one example I've got of this is Battlestar Galactica. Yes, A nerd show. And if this is the type of show you'd watch, great. It's, it's probably my favorite show of all time. But the reason I, and the new one, not the 70s one, the reason I say probably is because the finale was terrible. Basically, he'd introduced all these ideas over the seasons and then he realized he had to close them up and then he realized that he really didn't have a closing and the closing was just really bad. And I remember the finale Just being kind of empty. And I'd gone on this journey with the show and these characters, and then to have the finale just fizzle out was just disappointing. And, you know, if he'd gone and created the show, I know I have this many episodes and I get to write them all before I start producing, that wouldn't have happened. Let's get out of sci Fi nerd stuff. NPR right now, you know, public radio is doing tremendously well in podcasting, and they're killing it right now. And then you look at shows like Startup or Rewind or some of the other shows that are being done by the ex. NPR guys, of course, Serial, you know, they think in terms of the story arc, they think in terms of how this whole thing works, and the content is just a lot more better, you know, then when you get things. When you do this, you can get things out on schedule without having to worry about them. I've got a link to my. My YouTube podcast in the show notes. And, you know, I recorded the YouTube podcast right before I grew my beard. And then I released it over, I think. I think I released like an episode every four weeks. So it took almost like a year. And so there are people like, well, Paul, when did you shave off your beard? And I just forgotten that the release was happening. And the podcast has done well and it's gotten a lot of downloads and it's really helped position me as a pod podcast expert, as a YouTube expert, possibly even better than my books have. And it just made it incredibly easy because I went in one day, I recorded all the videos, and then I had my editor go and chop them up, put them out over schedule. Hyatt in the Hyatt episode, you know, freedom comes from this. He was really frustrated with the weekly task of having to get a podcast out the door and knowing that he record, you know, 8, 9, 12, whatever seasons are over the course of the weekend, then he only had to do this once a quarter. And freedom comes in a tremendous way. Another thing you might think about in batching your podcasts is a lot of us outsource a lot of us like that. We outsource a lot of us with the schedule that we do. We tend to have a thing where we're recording the show just really quickly right before. And so we need the transcripts immediately. Some of the people that we produce podcasts for, I mean, I'm getting recordings at two o' clock in the morning that need to go out the next day. And, you know, rush fees are never cheap. You know, there's the old, you know, fast, cheap, good. Pick two. It can be fast and cheap. It ain't going to be good. Be fast and good, but it ain't going to be cheap. And the thing is, if you put together a batch, you could have someone produce all the transcripts, all the editing, and take the time needed to do it. I mean, even if episode one was fast, you know, after that, it would get much cheaper. And that's an angle you might not have thought about. I spoke to Evergreen in the last episode, and Evergreen podcasts are extremely powerful. And if you missed that one, go ahead and listen to episode 48. You can go to the podcastreport.com 48 or you can go to theodcastreport.com 49 and I'll have a link back to that. Another thing that's interesting, two things that have just realized me or that I've just realized that are going to put me more in this position is podcasts that I possibly could not have produced otherwise. I have an old college buddy that I did a radio show with, and the magic was there and it was fun. And the problem is just with our schedules and our lives and it just happens. There's no way we could get together weekly to do a podcast, even, you know, over Skype or something like that. And sometimes the magic just happens when you're in the room together. Well, now with Aaron, I've got this possibility. Take a day, take a weekend, come out, knock out a bunch of episodes, and then just slowly release those. I think it'd be fun. And then finally, the last thing is, you know, about my transmedia and multimedia options. You know, you could get the book out of the transcript before you ever release the show and the show notes and all these things and your run and Amazon and your run and in marketing, the book could promote the show as opposed to being also run. It's just kind of an interesting thought. So, you know, again, just to hit those, there's some stuff you can. Otherwise, yes, it's night Netflix, but it's more. You can do a better advanced strategy, a show arc know where you're going. A lot of people are doing it right now anyway. It lets you get things out on a schedule much easier. There's a bunch of freedom that comes from it outsourcing, you know, the show notes and the editing. Everything's cheaper. It forces you to produce evergreen content, which I think is better content anyway. It lets you do podcasts that you possibly could not have produced any other way and it lets you get a book out. I mean, this is pretty cool. So what am I doing with it? Well, I'm pondering it now. I'm going to produce at least one other batched podcast in 2015. The YouTube podcast was another one. And I will link to the YouTube podcast so you can see that I'm definitely doing it. It might become my new model. You know, I've been kind of hinting that a podcast report 50 we've got some things to talk about. So yeah, what you can do. I want you to consider this as a strategy. I want you to consider this in a model for maybe this is the next show that you've always wanted to do. Maybe this is the rebo of your existing show or maybe this is the show with the friend. Maybe you have your own Aaron that you'd like to do this kind of thing with. But just consider it as a strategy and you can even do it right now with your existing show without missing a beat. I guess just record next time you record, record two episodes, record three episodes, record four episodes. Just ponder implementing this into it. It might make your life easier, it might make for a better show, it might make for a lot of things and it's at the very least worth examining. Thank you so much. Let's definitely do that. Hey, word social thepodcastreport.com Twitter the podcastreport.com Facebook the podcastreport.com Google+ you can comment away at the blog the podcastreport.com 49 for this episode. If you'd like to get the mind map and a transcript of this episode, go ahead. Text hashtag ep4nine to 503897, 1290. If you'd like to leave a voicemail message for that, you can there the links at episode 49. I've got a link to my podcast book. I've got a link to Patreon. I've got a link to the interview with John Lee about his batching process. A link out to Hyatt for his episode where he chatted about what he did last week's evergreen episode and the YouTube podcast. I will do links to those as well. Thank you for listening to the show. If you listened as the result of a play button somewhere, thank you. But definitely consider subscribing to the show or following the show. There's a lot of options right now. There's itunes and stitcher and pocket cast and tunein and Spreaker and iHeartRadio. There's just an article today about iHeartRadio's got a lot of registered people. Well, the podcastreport.com iTunes the podcastreport.com Stitcher the podcastreport.com pocketcast tunein speaker iHeartRadio overcast that will take you to all the different subscribe follow options. And what that means is when I release a new episode you'll get updated automatically and you don't have to visit my website, you don't have to remember. It makes things a lot easier. Again, love to follow up with you on social media thepodcastreport.com Twitter or the podcastreport.com Facebook seem to be the most popular ways to do that. If you'd like to drop in good old fashioned email, that's the podcast report outlook.com and if you're one of those fans who feels like you want to give me a review, I love them. Itunes is probably the best place for a review at this point. If you'd like to do one out at Stitcher, that would work as well. Thank you so much. Consider the batch podcast chat with you next week. Bye.