A Fool-Proof Formula for Easily Replaying Your Podcast Episodes

Get off the marketing roller coaster and get on the automated fast track to digitally market your brand everywhere. Now join podcast producer Tom Hazard and Inc. Columnist Tracy Hazard as they share easy content building formulas and smart cut secrets proven to fuel hundreds of blogs, podcasts and brands with bingeable original content. Join the conversation on how to get your message out to the world. Be original, be heard, promote with power and purpose. Feed your.

Hi, welcome back to Feed your Brand. This is Tom and Tracy. And you know, with the holidays here all around us, Tracy and I decided we wanted to talk about a subject that is a question we get asked often about podcasters, especially new podcasters. And that's what to do around the.

Holidays or when you take a vacation.

Right, Right. I mean, should you run a replay or do you always want to run a new episode? And it's a good question and there's really no right or wrong answer, but we're going to discuss it today.

Right. And I think it's like changed over time because we're in this world of bingeable listening, right. Or bingeable watching if, you know, viewing, if you're talking about Netflix or whatever. And so there's no setting that says only download things like we have on our box, our dvr, we have a thing that says only download ones that are new. Right. There isn't that setting in a podcast player per se? If you repost them as a replay because they have a new date, they have a new number, they become new automatically, even if the content's old, and even if you mark in big bold letters replay. And so what we found is that listeners get a little annoyed.

We tried it. Yeah. I mean, we've in over 500 episodes. We tried, you know, running a few replays at times, especially because I think.

We might have run more than a few. We tried it for a couple of months.

Well, we tried for a couple months, but the reality is once you get over 300 episodes, the old ones drop off itunes. And so new listeners weren't seeing the old ones.

Right. So we thought this would be a good way to bring them up. But our fans didn't love it and sent us many, many emails saying, please stop it. And so what we did was we put them into archives so that they're in their own volume now. And so you can go back and you can listen to the original episodes. And so that's kind of where we want to set people up, that that's the way to do it. You can mention them, you could talk about them, but the best way to do it is to just maybe if it is something that really needs to be brought up again. And we have done this once, which I thought was really the best way to handle it. So we had a company that came to us on our 3D print podcast, and it was right after all the hurricanes. And it's a company called FieldReady. And FieldReady goes into disaster zones and basically 3D prints replacement parts.

And so they were on site where as long as you have a generator and can power the machine, they can print, you know, pretty much anything out of certain materials that are needed in that disaster situation.

Right. And we had interviewed the founder almost like a year earlier, and he was a great interview. He was really interesting. But it was one of these things where a year later there's all these hurricanes happening. They need more funds because they're all donation based. And they were out in the field and couldn't do another interview.

Yeah, they were in Puerto Rico, I think, helping people, which was a power challenge and a resource challenge, and they needed exposure and we were happy to give it to them. And so Tracy and I recorded a new introduction with some new information about what was happening currently, and then ran that past interview, which would have been done in a past episode, and created sort of a hybrid episode out of it.

Right. And that way fans who had remembered the original episode didn't have to listen after the first introduction, but they got the new information and those that hadn't heard it before or forgot about it could listen to it again right there. So we thought that was a really good way and that might be a solution to what you can do with the holidays to keep your consistent posting going on. And you can do it in a little bit different way, which is the idea of maybe compiling excerpts from a couple of episodes. So if you've got episodes that are grouped around a particular subject that were really great, maybe you want to do an intro and then select the episode sections that you think would be the most useful to replay. And then of course, you're going to send people back to it. Now, the only caution I want to make there is do not put the transcript of that section back in that post because it would be duplicate content. So either make the whole post a no follow in Google, if you understand what that is, WordPress, make it a no follow and no index and no index. Or don't put those transcript sections, just put the link to the original episode.

Right. You know, I think that is a good idea. I mean, look, let's be honest here. I mean, think the reality is your audience is always going to want to hear new content from you. And the best practice is to be ahead, recording and to always have new episodes that are going out. I mean, we have clients through this holiday season, on Thanksgiving, on Christmas, on New Year's Day, publishing new episodes. And I think that's the best idea because you have more listeners with more free time during those holidays. You do, and they want to listen to new content. So that's always the best practice, provide new content always. But for you, the podcast host, if you've just been really busy and you've been a little behind and you're not able to keep up with that pace, there are a couple of here tips and tricks we're trying to give you for how you can recycle some content maybe, but still make it somewhat current and relevant to give yourself a little break during some of these times.

Right. And we understand some people like to do it in seasons. And so they actually do a season and then take some weeks off and then they do another season. And that's a process. We don't like that because it's not consistent enough for Google Ranking. We want Google ranking wants something every single week. But what we recommend though is taking your podcast description. So the main body text you have that describes what your podcast is about and at the very beginning of that description because only a short amount of it shows on some of the players you write on holiday or vacation break being taken, returning on such and such a date and just put it right up there in the very top of the description temporarily. And when you're back in, you return, you know, you take it right back. But it's a good idea to do it so that people don't think, oh, you're not posting anymore, you're gone. And they unsubscribe you.

Yeah, you don't want to do that. But one thing about those podcast descriptions, you know, some of our clients have us do it for them and some of them, you know, they pretty much all have access to their own descriptions. If you change your description at your podcast host level, that changes on itunes. Stitcher, all the different podcast players, pretty much in real time, it does goes very quickly.

It sometimes might take an hour to refresh, but it depends. But within an hour it should refresh anywhere on any directory. So itunes, Stitcher, Tunein, Google Play. But you should note that pretty much it doesn't have to be hosted with us. If you were doing Libsyn or Soundcloud they all work the same way they do. You have to edit your main description. You do not have to go into itunes and edit it. In fact, you can't.

You can't. You have to do it at the podcast hosting level, which is great because you only have to do it in one place. And then it pushes out that same information to everywhere that your podcast is syndicated.

Think of it like an out of office vacation reply. Right.

Right. Now, a new tip and recommendation we have is if you do need to take a break, especially if the majority of your listeners are through itunes or Apple podcasts, which still the lion's share of actual podcast listeners are listening still on that channel, as opposed to Google Play or Tunein or some of the others. And with the change in iOS 11, if you don't have a new episode for a few weeks and someone's not able to listen or doesn't listen to a show from you for a few weeks, that podcast player will pause downloading new episodes and they have to go in and actually intentionally say, hey, yeah, I want to keep listening to this one. And then it'll download them for them. So the recommendation is to the extent that you have an email list, a newsletter that you put out about your show, or on your social media channels, LinkedIn or Facebook, whatever your preferred channels are, wherever you are communicating with your audience, you also want to be putting out notifications. Hey guys, our next episode won't be publishing until such such a date. Make sure you come back to your podcast player and resume downloading. You know, if you're an I, especially If you're an iOS listener. So you might want to commute, make some other communications like that to make sure that as soon as your new content is out, your audience is going to be able to get it as fast as possible.

Yeah. And if you're a host that's doing multiple episodes per week, there is no crime in going in recording what would be two weeks of the month, let's say in December you're going to get work for two and you're going to have two weeks off on vacation and not post at all. And you normally posted two episodes a week. Go ahead and take them out. Instead of doing two episodes in the beginning week, do one a week because it keeps that subscription level live and it keeps it active. There's nothing wrong with that. Just make sure that you mention it on your episode that you're doing that, that for the month of December, you're taking it a little slower because you're going to Take some time off. And you're only going to post once a week for the month of December or whatever month it might be. August. August is always a good month to take off. It's where our listeners drop off the most. Actually.

Actually, it is during the summer. Yeah. You know, Tracy, that was a great. I like that for those people that are doing more than one episode a week, when you need to just dial it back to one a week and keep a slower flow but at least a constant flow of content going out. That's a really good suggestion.

Yeah. So, I mean, I think we're becoming, as a society, rerun resistant. Like, we don't like reruns. We just don't like them anymore. We don't need them. We've got DVRs, we've got plenty of other things. And we show hop. And so the last thing you want to do is send somebody to someone else's show and then they don't come back to you. So if there's any way you can do that by not annoying them by putting up replays or by posting, hosting every single week, just at a lower pace, anything you can do to keep that going and keep the consistent and constant content in some way, shape or form, you're going to be better off as a host.

And of course, the ultimate best practice that I think we've touched on in past episodes is really to be very organized and plan way ahead with.

Thank your episodes.

Yeah. Record those episodes way ahead so that you do have some breathing room. This can be done. It's not rocket science, but it does take a little discipline. And you know what? If you're a client of ours, just reach out for some help. Because this is. We help you with these things. We help set you up with systems that make it manageable.

Right. And as you can hear, my voice is a little rough. It's because I've done nonstop interviews. I've just been run down and we didn't have a choice. We got to keep to our schedule. So excuse it if it's a little rough for you guys or a little bit different than normally is. But hopefully next time you hear me, I'll be back up and in full power again.

You know, it seems no matter how rough your voice is, your hands are always still moving and talking and hitting.

The microphone once in a while. Thanks, Tom. Yeah.

No, you know, I don't think many people would noticed about your voice if you hadn't said anything. But you know what? It happens. That's another good reason why Your schedule may need to shift a little bit and all it happens with guests, too. You could get thrown a curve ball. It's through no fault of your own that you have a guest that is sick or something happens and they can't keep to the scheduled time they were going to be interviewed by you. So that's another good reason to get ahead. We always plan more episodes in a recording session than we absolutely need for the upcoming month or whatever that time period is. So you have a little float room, right, to shift things.

Yeah, we always plan a buffer guest. So we do five guests if we're only recording four guest shows. And then we do, of course, our topics, but we do plan a fifth guest because it helps you bank that up. But it also helps you when you end up with the dropout.

And then the other thing that happens, and it's happened to us too, where despite our best efforts, you know what? There's not enough guests and there's not a show there. But you know what I'll do? Then I look into my. I'm not. I almost used the word Rolodex. I go in through my contact list and. All right, all right. Who is a really good guests in the past? Who do I know well enough that I could call and maybe just catch them free and just quickly have another interview or have a discussion with Kid Eric, an update. And you know what? Often I can. And we've done that and I don't even really let the audience know that that was the case, especially it ends up being a really good episode.

But you think about this like the Tonight show or any of those shows, they always had like the guests that would recur because they were local and in town and available and they could call them up at last minute when a guest didn't show. They always have backup.

You know what? Jay Leno always did that. Jay Leno did that. You could tell when had the local zoologist or zookeeper in that was showing some new animals, you know, somebody canceled that day or somebody fell out of favor, you know, or was, you know, taboo to interview now on your hot list. Yeah, having somebody sort of on call as maybe a recurring but good guest that you could slot in rather quickly is not a bad idea either.

Yeah. And you know, that could be partners, joint venture partners, things like that. People that you do business with but maybe aren't your normal level of gu. But it's always an interesting episode and that we find people really like that. So that's a good way to slot one in especially around the holidays, people cancel. We have that happen. So anyway, we hope this helps everybody. I do also want to mention that we've been doing some more Facebook lives.

Yes.

Which we are turning into podcasts. So you'll hear them, but you might want to see them. So go to our Facebook page at FeedYourBrand and go to FeedYourBrand Co for more information and links to anything that we've talked about in the episode. And we'd love to hear from you. Love to hear what you guys want us to talk about in the new year. We're sort of gearing up our calendar so let us know what you're interested in and how we can help and what types of top level things you guys want to talk about. Challenge us.

We'd love it. Yeah, reach out to us any questions you may have. We'll be happy to address some in a future episode. So as Tracy said, you can reach out to us on social media or you could email us@hellorandcastingyou.com and we'll also get that message there.

So thanks again for listening and have great holidays.

Yeah, absolutely. Have a great holiday season. We'll talk to you next time. This has been Tom and Traci on feed.

You'd brand.

It.