How Podcast Consistency Leads To A Successful Podcast

Want your podcast and videocast to be seen, heard, found and rewarded in this noisy digital world, you are not alone. Join the nonprofit community at Podcasters United and podcast industry experts Tom Hazard and Tracy Hazard as they debunk all that outdated and bad advice you've been getting from the podcast gurus and find out what actually works. Today, get ready to finish Feed your brand with smart cut tactics proven to cast your original voice to the world.

Hey there. Welcome back to Feed you'd Brand. I'm Tom Hazard, your host, and today I want to talk about a very important subject every podcaster needs to be aware of. This doesn't matter if you're preparing to launch a podcast or you've just launched a podcast, or if you've been podcasting for many years. This holds true for everyone. I want to talk about consistency in publishing episodes. This is the single most important issue and aspect of your show you have control of as the host that is going to help grow and or maintain your listening audience in the short term and the long term. It always surprises me how many people think it's no big deal. Hey, I can skip here or there or I can take a long break. Now, don't get me wrong. You've been podcasting for years and you want to pivot your strategy, either with your show as a whole or you want to pivot whether you're going to podcast or not, or you're making a big change in your business and you just don't have the time to do it anymore and you're going to stop. I mean, by all means, take a break or stop. However, I'm here to tell you that the most successful podcasts show up consistently for their listeners, whatever their normal cadence is of publishing. If it's consistent, it will serve you best. It will serve your listeners best. Their expectation of you showing up for them on a regular basis is maintained. But if you don't show up consistently, and I'm going to give you several examples here because I've experienced this with a lot of podcasters when I meet them and do an audit of their show and they wonder why they're not getting more out of their podcast and I look well, you haven't published an episode in almost three months. And others maybe they did publish the last few weeks, but I look back at the history of the last six months and they published a total of eight episodes and when I look at the timing of them, they're not consistent at all. What I want everyone to understand is how important consistency is. Hopefully all of you who are already podcasting know this. And those that are researching and considering launching a show. You need to understand what's wonderful about podcasting. You do it on your time. This is not radio. You don't have to show up at 3pm every Thursday because that's your slot. And if you don't show up live, no one's going to hear you. It's absolutely not that. I love podcasting because, well, to an extent, it's on demand listening. Listeners will listen when they want to listen, regardless of when you publish. But if somebody has subscribed to your show and they've said, all right, I choose you, I see you've been publishing episodes for a long time, once a week, they have the expectation you're going to show up for them once a week on their app that day. Whether your day is Monday, Thursday, Wednesday, Thursday does not matter. I actually have, after thousands of shows supporting thousands of shows, don't believe there's really any better day to publish an episode. I really don't. People are going to listen when they want to listen, but pick your day, and that's your day, and show up consistently. Because when you stop showing up consistently, if you publish randomly here and there, you're not giving your listener anything to expect. They feel that you're flaky, you're inconsistent, you're not showing up for them on a regular basis. So whatever your cadence is, and I do recommend to really grow and maintain an audience the best way possible, I believe you need to show up at minimum weekly for your guest. I believe you should publish once a week. Now, there are those that say, that's too much for me. I can't do that. Okay, every other week, whatever it is, show up consistently. I have one show that publishes the second and fourth Tuesday of every month, and that's a little weird because some months there's five Tuesdays, some months there's two Tuesdays. I don't really like that so much, but that's what they've been doing even before they were working with us. So that's what they do. It does create some inconsistency. I mean, yeah, you get two episodes a month, but sometimes there might be two weeks between an episode, and other times there might be three weeks between an episode because of the length of the month and where that day of the week that you publish falls within the context of the whole month. But consistency, I truly believe a weekly show is what podcast listeners on the whole are looking for and wanting. And you don't have to do it every week. You can binge record. You can set up one day a month and record six episodes and schedule them to publish each of the next six weeks and get your breathing room. So this is one thing you do to reach your audience, to provide them content. It's one thing you might do if it's a context of a part of your business. It's not the dominant thing you're having to do in your business. Most podcast hosts who are in business, they have some expertise and something they do to make money, and you need to spend the lion's share of your time doing that. Podcasting is one thing you do to support your community or lead, generate or raise awareness of who you are for your business. It doesn't have to be all that you do. But what is important if you want to actually have podcast listeners choose you more than show them through the history of your show that you've showed up consistently.

Now I'm going to share a little trick with you. On Tracy's show, the Binge factor in 2022, Tracy got quite busy and didn't really consistently show up every week. And she saw a drop off in listenership and said, all right, I'm going to fix this and I need to practice what I preach. Because Tracy and I talk about this, whether it's in this episode or just with anyone we talk to about podcasting, we talk about how important consistency is. So what Tracy's been doing is publishing more episodes new, like literally two week, three weeks, some weeks on the binge factor and publishing them new now so that her audience gets that content. They'd be getting more content lately. But then a week after those episodes of publish, she's taking one of those two that week and backdating it to fill in a gap in the past so everybody new subscribing gets it right away. But then she's moving it. And some of those weeks where she didn't have one that was published in 2022, one of those episodes is being moved back to fill that gap. And the reason is so that after a couple of months of catching up, if people look back at the binge factor, they're going to see there's not a week in 2022 that there wasn't an episode. And that's to make the impression to show new listeners finding the show when they look back at the history, oh, wow. She's published every week on this day. She's been very consistent and it sets the expectation that she's going to keep showing up every week going forward, which is her intent. And so I can't tell you how critical it is. People come to me and it's like, well, I don't have many people listening to my podcast. And I asked, well, let's look at your show. And they published six episodes and they published them all on one day last year sometime. And they're kind of wondering why nobody is listening to their show. Well, you're not really continuing to publish. You're not continuing to show up. I mean, this is not Netflix. And I really think that the vast majority of shows, with very few exceptions, and there are some exceptions, I'm not really going to go into detail on that now, where having a show that you record a limited set of episodes and drop it in a bunch all at once may make sense. But if you're intending to be successful in podcasting in the long run, I very, very strongly recommend you do not do that. One of the most successful shows that we've ever supported is called Passive Real Estate Investing with Marco Santarelli. He's the host, publishes one episode a week. He's only done one episode a week, but his show is always a top ranked show on Apple. It's because he's been doing it for like seven or eight years, showing up every week, and is a very popular subject matter. But my point in sharing with you about his show is not to say you need to show up in the top charts on Apple, too. I really don't. I mean, there's too many shows, everybody can't be there. But it's to say that the shows that continue to show up weekly, week after week, month after month, year after year, get the most traction, have the most loyal listeners, people are coming back and listening, and your show will eventually, if you do that, achieve great success within your niche and be rewarded, is what I'm saying. Your show will be rewarded with larger listenership, with more people going to your website for your show, reaching out to you, engaging with you. You show up consistently. It's important. So what I'm trying to say is you don't have to do five episodes a week, or three episodes a week, or two episodes a week in order to achieve some of those goals, in order to rise in the charts. You don't. You can do one episode a week, but you're just going to have to do it for a longer period of time.

So people often say, well, I record a bunch of episodes and when I have three or four done, I just have someone put them up and I don't know how they do it. They just put them them up. And I see this, I see this as a pattern in shows. I'll evaluate a show. And in October, yeah, they published four episodes, but they were all on the same day. And then in November they published three episodes, but again, they were all on the same day. There's a real inconsistency of not only how many episodes that are published, but how often they're published. And people don't always think about this. And it kind of shocks me how many shows I find like this. And that's why I'm spending the time today helping to share this with you and recommend you do not do it. Please pick a day of the week. Or if it's not going to be every week, every other week, pick a day of the week and show up and publish. Show up on their phone. It's not so much about you. I understand. Hey, we all get busy. We want to take a break during the holidays, not have to worry about publishing. That's great. I got news for you. I do that too. But I've recorded and banked up half a dozen episodes before I get to the holidays so that I can keep publishing one a week and show up for my listener. It's really less about you when it comes to listeners. It's all about them. What's in it for them. And if you stop showing up consistently for them, they're going to go find someone else to listen to. They're going to go find another show and subscribe to that show. It's really very similar to what we see happening in television. I mean, I know all of you may not be television watchers, but I'm sure some of you are. I like to listen to some of the late night comedy or watch, I guess, some of the late night comedy shows that come on at usually 11:30 or depending on your time zone, maybe 10:30 at night. And nothing frustrates me more than getting ready to watch and I go show up and turn it on. And you know what? This week they're not publishing. They're rerunning an episode. I hate reruns. I almost wish they wouldn't put the show on at all because it doesn't lead me to believe there's going to be a new one tonight because it's going to air, but it's an old one. I really wish they would even pre record some to run during that week. They're going to be off. Everybody needs a break, but that doesn't happen. In television, it's much more expensive to put out a television show, so I get that. But in podcasting, it's not that hard for us as podcasters to prerecord episodes, bank up enough of them that we can take whatever kind of break we want. We can check out and not think about recording episodes for weeks or a month or more, but we can still show up for our listeners. And if you want a loyal audience, that's what you need to do. That's my strong opinion. I'm a big believer in it. And there are other benefits to it also, beyond just podcast listenership through the apps. There's benefits to showing up in social media with clips from that episode or quote graphics, or maybe a video meme if you do yours as video as well, that you can schedule ahead of time. There are tools that let you schedule social media posts ahead of time. And so you're showing up there on social media, so your presence is still there. And there's also benefits for your own website if you're putting a blog for each episode out there. Google. The consistency and the authority you get for your website through Google for continuing to publish a new blog every week is also invaluable. And this is a marathon, folks. Podcasting is a marathon. It's not a sprint. I'm going to tell you one other little thing I experienced in the last week from recording this that was really jaw dropping for me. I'm always meeting new prospects of podcasters and especially authors. Authors that are going to publish a book and they've purchased a service from a company to help them with either publishing and launching their book, or they've just decided to publish a book a different way and they're working with a PR agency to help raise awareness of the book in advance of it publishing and then when it's first released. So I had this experience in the last week, someone that came to know us through a referral and organization we're a part of, and they scheduled a call with me and their PR agency and the PR agency had sold this person on. A great way to market your book is to launch a podcast. Now, so far, I wouldn't necessarily disagree with that. I may disagree on the timing. I think you should launch the podcast way in advance of the book coming out so you actually have time to build a listening audience before you try to raise awareness of that book. Because if the book's already out and you launch a podcast, you don't have any listeners at first. So, I mean, that's not Going to set the world on fire with raising awareness of your book. But anyway, I'll move on because that's an aside point. The main point is this PR agency said, oh, we'll help you launch a podcast. We know how to do that. And you need to record just six episodes. That's all. Just six. And we'll drop all those six just about when the book launches and you're a podcast host and an author and that's going to help you. And I'm like, really? That's going to help you? I mean, you're going to get a little bit of organic play and awareness through the listening apps. If you put out a six episode series or six episodes of a podcast and you drop them all at once. But if you're not going to come back and keep producing any new content, that podcast is not going to set the world on fire. I don't care how good those episodes are or who you are. Podcast is a long game. Podcasting is a long game. It is a marathon, not a sprint. It's not a quick hit. You're not going to get a shot of adrenaline for much just by putting six episodes out and never doing any more. I mean, unless you're somebody incredibly famous and people are going to know about them because you're already well known. But that's not what most of us are doing with podcasting. We're usually not already well known. We are using podcasting to raise awareness of who we are, to elevate our level of authority as a center of influence in our niche, in our area of expertise, and to be found by more of our ideal listeners, potential customers, and many, many more sort of facets of that. But by showing up and serving first is how you build it, and you've got to do it consistently.

Okay, so I'm not going to belabor that point anymore. I think I've made my point or expressed my opinion. I'm sticking to it. I highly recommend all of you show up consistently. Publish regularly for your listeners, show up for them, you'll be rewarded for it. Anything else you're podcasting, probably, I guess more for other reasons than what I would say are the best reasons. And it's just not going to achieve your goals at the end of the day if you don't do that. All right, so there you go. I hope you find value in this. We have a lot of other great episodes and topics at our website. For feed your brand, which is potatoes.com you go to pottertize.com right at the top there is a menu item for podcasts you can click on Feed your Brand, click into any of the episode blogs, and then there's this great search feature. So if you have a question about anything regarding podcasting, type in that search. It's going to bring up our history of all of our episodes and topics we've covered. And hopefully we've covered the topic that you need support with. And if we haven't, reach out to us on social media anywhere, at Feed your Brand or as a contact form on politize.com make a suggestion, love to hear from you, and address a subject that you need support on in a future episode. All right. Until then, this is Tom signing off for Feed your Brand. I look forward to seeing you on the next episode.

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