How To Overcome The Challenge Of Long Delays Between Recording And Publishing?

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community at Podcasters United and podcast industry experts Tom Hazard and Tracy Hazard as they debunk all that outdated and bad advice you've been getting from the podcast gurus and find out what actually works.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, everyone. Welcome to feed you'd brand. I'm Tom Hazard along with my co host Tracy Hazard, and today we are going to talk about how to overcome the challenge of long delays between recording and publishing. I'm really glad we're talking about this today, Tracy. We have some customers that have incredibly long delays between recording and publishing.

I want to push the caveat into here is like this does not matter if you're doing topics, solo shows, or you and your co hosts are riffing together. Record out as far in advance as you want there. This is solely a guest interview model.

Problem, and boy, can it be one. In fact, Tracy, I was meeting with an existing customer yesterday who has guests scheduled out on their calendar to record for through July of 2024. That's more than one year. Wow.

Yeah. So there's a lot of problems with this. And part of it is, is that what I'm promoting today and the reason I agree to be on your show as a guest may be completely different a year from now. My business might be sold and completely different a year from now. Right. And so you may lose relevancy by doing that. Number one, you definitely use the energy of having invited them and meeting them. And so that's really what I want to focus on today, Tom. I really want to focus on this idea that there is a problem with the long amount of time if you're using your guest interview process as a relationship builder. So what it says to me, when somebody has a calendar that that's far out in advance when I'm going to go guest on it, my inclination is to say no, because what it says to me is A, you probably have a funnel, so it's they got too many people into it and they really don't care about you. They're just going to sell you something when you get on the call anyway. That's an indicator of that. It doesn't mean it's the case every time. Or B, they have a process by which they have too many people that are they've been seeking out or getting on the show. They're indiscriminate in their choices. And that means that they don't really want me. It's not really that important to me. There's 51 people in front of me, like, if you're booking a year out, so it's not really valuable. And so I usually say no.

As a guest.

As a guest. So that's the first part, is that the indicator as a guest is that you're either not making good choices in who you're inviting on your show, or you've got a funnel, which is also meaning you're pushing a bunch of people into it and you just maxed out. Somebody did a good job on your marketing and got you a bunch of guests. That's what that means. But either way, that's not a show that's going to do what I need it to do as a guest. That's not a relationship builder. That's also the other part of it. So that's the first problem that I see is from that perspective of being a guest on your show. So I know that people will do this that, like those hosts that have a lot of backlog of guest interviews planned will still squeeze in a really valuable person that they make a relationship with. But when you don't squeeze me in, when you see me go through the list and I apply out and I'm three to seven months in advance or a year in advance and you don't move me up in the list, chances are pretty good I'm going to cancel on you because now I. I don't value you either. And a year from now, I don't know if that date's going to be any good. Chances are, when there's a conflict, I'm going to go, oh, I'll just cancel that interview. I'd rather go on vacation with my family, or I'd rather go take another interview with somebody else and I'll remove it from my calendar over the course of time. So you will lose more people that way as well.

I think that is a risk of having a calendar that is so deep. And I'll tell you, this customer that I met with just yesterday, I think just really has a very popular show, a popular niche that a lot of people want to be on. And I don't think she was just taking anybody because the host of this show actually does a lot of homework on the guest and reads their book and does a lot of things, a lot of preparation work before an interview, takes it very seriously. It doesn't just phone it in. But to your point, Tracy I think the fact that you are booked out for a year can communicate the wrong things to the potential guest. Even if your show is a good one to be on, if you don't take everybody, it sort of on its face says, why on earth are you booked out a year in advance? And I'm just one of the masses. I'm one. I'm not going to be special.

Right, right. So again, it's not a relationship builder. And again, any good guest interview model should be a relationship builder. Whether you're building a relationship with authority, partners, with celebrities, with authors, with people that you would like to be your client, that's too far out. There's no energy of the I meet you, I invite you on my show. It's gone a year later, it's gone months later. So we don't want that. But the other side of what we're supposed to talk about today is the idea that you've actually interviewed them and now there's a long delay in publishing and that happens as well. So some people will take lots of interviews, do like a batch of them at once. And when you do that, then you have this extreme delay in publishing and now you're publishing out because you only want to do one a week and you're getting really far out. And now your interview and your six to nine months to a year. We have some clients who are even a year out between the date they interviewed and the date they publish. The problem again is irrelevant information. My business is different a year from now. There's no energy of the moment. Like at that point I'm like, forget it. So I guarantee you that a host that is publishing more than three months, okay, I think probably much more like a six to 12 month problem, but it's more magnified at that level. But even after a period of three months, business moves too fast, the industry moves too fast, things change too quickly. There's a risk that your interview is no longer relevant and it doesn't mean as much to the guest anymore. And I guarantee if you're 90 days out or more, then you're not going to get the promotion level you would have got if you were within the 90 days. And so they're not going to do their job of promoting it if they don't believe it to any it's as valuable anymore.

Think it can create problems now. Are there any exceptions to that, Tracy, that you know of?

I think the only exception is if you both planned on it. So like I have a book launch and the book launch isn't happening for four months. And so you've timed it perfectly for the book launch. That's different. You've both pre agreed on this date and it has to do with the timing of something that matters to you. Then you're going to do a good job of promoting it. But if this is your regularly scheduled way, you're losing the momentum. Now, I want to say this because most of our clients and most of the people who start podcasting didn't realize that this was going to be the biggest value to the podcast. And that is what we call the guest interview model. Right? The model where your guests become your best referral partners and or your best clients.

Right?

That's what happens. So I interview somebody on the binge factor. They happen to be a producer, they love what we're doing. It dovetails really nicely with them. The next thing you know, their partner and they're sending us dozens of clients. And so we've created that from the interview. But imagine if I interviewed them and then there was no follow up for four months. I'm now going to touch base with them that they're going to have completely forgotten.

I mean, yeah, out of sight, out of mind, really.

I feel super bad about this, but I did a bunch of batch of interviews before I was traveling in May because I was going to be gone for three weeks. And so I did twice as many interviews in April than I normally do, and one just published this week. And when the guest emailed me, I was like, did I interview that guy? When did I interview that guy? Because that was a month and a half ago and I still had to remember what his show was and look it up. And I interviewed him and it was a great interview. And I remember it now once I got that, like, keyed into my brain who he was, but I was like, that's too far for you to remember. Imagine how it feels for the guest.

Oh, my goodness. I completely understand. I struggle enough when I would do an interview episode. And after that interview is done, I didn't have the time to immediately record my little intro and my final thoughts takeaways, because I do three different little segments, one for the beginning, one for the end where the guest is not there. And if I don't do it right, then when it's fresh in my mind and I have to come back to it days later or a week later and I'm having to listen to the whole interview all over again to remember what are the things that I really want to mention about that guest or about that interview to complete my whole show. And I know this isn't the same thing we're talking about here, but it's just again an idea that the further in time that you get removed from that interview, the worse it's going to be for you and the guest when it comes to promotion.

Yeah, you've got loss of energy, loss of interest, loss of relevancy, all of those things start to be a factor. So what can you do about it? That's one of the things that I do want to address with us today. So I was preparing a whole model for guest email templates and the whole process and I realized, and that's why this episode came up today, I realized that my strategies for doing this is an extra touch point that a lot of people don't plan in the process. And so there really is no reason, when you've got raw video and the way that things work today with all the AI tools and everything, there's really no reason that you cannot do a social promotion. Post an email message to the guest in an interim point if you're going out 90 days. So at the six week mark, send them an email with a video meme and post something on social media. Just not that difficult for you to put something in the point because you could take a little 30 second clip from something, it doesn't need to be heavily edited for that, but you just put a little promo and tease the episode that's coming in six weeks and give them an email saying you did this on social with a link to what you did on social so that they can go share that and say, oh, I'm really excited this is coming up. And it reminds them of your interview and it shows that you're providing value and it's a preview to the value you're going to provide six weeks later when the episode finally airs. So you're giving them a touch point in between that I think is really critically important. And if you're not going to. As my second alternative to it is basically, if you've gotten yourself into where you're so far in advance, post twice as many episodes, publish more. Like, use them to your advantage. It's going to help everything if you compress them in. And so whenever I get too far ahead, we'll do a couple of weeks where we do double sets of episodes. Your regular listeners are like bonus, they just don't care. Your subscribers love it, but you have really adjusted your schedule for yourself and not kept up the sort of ongoing problem of where you're in a sticking point and you don't know what to do about it.

It's easy to do that if you've already recorded them, but there's a difference between which ones you've recorded and how many guests you've just lined up and scheduled. Those are two different things. And, and if you put a lot of preparation in for every interview, like you have to read the guest book every time. If there is a book that can be hard to squeeze two in, I.

Mean, that's a totally different topic. Like we're. Our topic today is about the long delay between recording and publishing, not between booking and recording. Right. Like, that's a totally different topic. So that's. I do don't disagree with you. Like, you may need that kind of prep time. But I think there's also the case to say, I think that there's probably half of those that are not going to be great guests and you're going to spend your time reading that book and realize, gosh, I wish I didn't have to interview them. It used to happen to us when we would do our 3D print podcast and we would get some guests because once we got really popular, they would apply and I would put them in the long calendar because we weren't going to do more than one interview a week because it wasn't our day job and it wasn't a part of our business. We didn't really care about the interviews. It was important to them, but not important to us. And that's what always happens. It becomes unimportant on one side or the other and they can recognize it or they won't. Right. And so what would happen is occasionally we'd get a guest in there and we'd be like, oh my God, that was horrible. Like, I can't even believe we did that interview. I wish we didn't waste our time. And so that's really. If you're doing that much prep work, then you maybe need a better screening process that filters them through with a pre production meeting with somebody else. Doesn't need to be you, but maybe a member of your staff where they meet, you discuss and really make sure it's a fit. And that way there is a touch point at some point over the year in advance that happens. So you book on it, they book their spot so you don't lose it, so you get the closest spot you can. But then you have a pre production meeting and that way somebody could say, you know, wow, this is really valuable. And I think this person's going to be an excellent client for you or referral partner or whatever. I'm going to move them up in the schedule and so you can create a couple of openings that you could just slot people in, like an emergency opening. Right. So when that pre production meeting happens, that's what can occur there now, enough time for you to still prep, but not so far in advance that they have to then wait a year. Now they feel special now they're not going to cancel on you for sure. They're going to feel like you did them a favor and they're going to do a better job of promoting, even if it's still six months out instead of a year. So you improve the process by doing that. I would be more discerning. That's just my view on it, certainly.

And you know what, I had a question from a customer and who has this kind of problem where they've already recorded episodes out through October and here we are in June, okay, mid June. So. And at the time of recording this. So you're talking about four months ahead, a solid four months ahead that they've recorded and then still scheduled more people out through summer of 2024, which is sort of the problem we're talking about the difference between when you're recording and when it would publish. And it seems like for this podcast, that length of time is only going to get to be more. So the question came up is if somebody wants to be inserted in the schedule sooner, interrupt the schedule and publish what maybe we might call a bonus episode or something like that inserted in the schedule, would it be a good idea to see if their guests, their potential new guests who want to publish sooner, would be willing to pay an actual fee to jump the line of everybody else? That's all. What. How do you feel about that?

So I think a rush fee to jump the line is fine. Like, I don't think that's paying to play, which I'm not a fan of, as everybody probably knows because I've said it so many times here. But yeah, I think that's totally fine if you want to pay to rush because it costs you money to publish more, it costs you more sooner, it.

Costs your time, especially if you're putting the time in to read their book or do your homework on them. And you know, maybe you have a budget, you're producing a weekly episode, but now you're going to do two episodes in that week that there's an actual real either cost of your time or what you're paying a production company to do that additional episode in the same period of time.

If you're going to do that in the booking process, which is where I recommend that you do it, is offer it right then and there. So as you're booking up and they say a year, if you'd like to jump the line, here's how close you can get. Like, you still can't get closer than two months out. Because I can't because of our publishing schedule and our interview schedule. Right. So that it can't be any closer than that. So that they're aware they can't have it in a week. It's not something that you can just go ahead and do the interview and, you know, and they can get a different. Essentially somebody will contact them and give them a new calendar date and all of that. So you still make them book and pay right then and there. Like I make them pay right then and there. Right. As a part of it. Put it right into your calendar program and do it right then and there. For that. For a rushing to book for everyone who's booked up in this case, because they've recorded already through October, I suggest it's a time to move them to two a week. But send a mass email to all of those that have been guested and been completely recorded. Send an email, all of them saying, hey, we decided we're going to move our schedule to two a week. However, we really can't afford it. We really need some help with affording this. So. Or, you know, some kind of message around that. That we're looking for anyone who's interested in moving their promotion up with this marketing opportunity. You know, use it like an opportunity.

And you mean offering them to pay at that time to be published sooner? You're going to be published out four months. But if you'd like to be more in the.

Yeah, I can offer you this date. But it's $200.

Right, right.

Whatever that is.

I think it's a reasonable, fair thing to do. I really do. And you're giving them the option of, hey, if it's important enough to you to not have so much time, have to take place before you're published, here's an opportunity for you to move it forward. But I can only afford to do that for those that are willing to pay.

Right. And I only have. Because of. I'm only going to crunch it for two months or something like that. I only have eight spots.

Eight spots or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because you do also have to live up to the four you committed to Being published in the next month. Right. So you can't change them.

They waited, right? They waited.

They already waited.

You can't bump them anymore. Right?

Yeah, that's not fair to them. So you can only go like to the ones in the second half of the schedule. So. Yeah, but that's what I would do. I mean I would increase it if you need to cover your costs and cover your costs. I wouldn't generate it as a profit center. It looks a little slimy, like that's what you intended. And what will happen is when somebody says, well, how was your experience on that show? Was really good. Should I guess on that show? I would say no. And so you don't want to have that be the feeling and the outcome that it felt like you were scammed all along the way or pushed. Pay more and pay more. Nickeled and dimed is what I would say. It starts to feel like when you get those requests.

I think with the right messaging that can be handled.

Yeah, you just got to be careful with it.

Right. And you know what, if your show is that popular as this one is that I met with yesterday, then by all means, I mean, look, and it's a high volume show doing a lot of episodes, but there is a real cost to it and moving it up. That makes a lot of sense. Although even when you change episodes in your schedule, that can be complicated. You got to make sure you remember to change everything schedule wise that you may have planned in your calendar.

Yeah. Your social has to change, your audio, your video. Like everything has to change. So make sure you're getting good support there to make that happen every day.

Another reason to make it worth your while and make sure someone pays so they get value. You get value and cover your costs of increase your frequency. But ultimately of course that's going to increase the number of listens per month if you have any paid third party sponsors. Because you're publishing more episodes in the given month, right?

Yeah, absolutely. If you're already taking and making money off of ad dollars, more episodes is better. You don't understand how that works. It not only increases your popularity, your downloads, your listens, but it increases your ad revenue if that's what you're already operating within.

Correct. And not every show is doing that, but those that are would make a lot of sense.

Yeah. So anyway, I'm not a fan of the long delays between recording and publishing, so try not to get yourself into the situation to begin with. But there are ways out of it. Touch points, fees, rushing and doing double Sets of episodes. Like, that's what you gotta do. But keep this. My optimum level for the time to record to the time to publish is no more than two months. I'm somewhere between four and six weeks is really ideal. Like, there's still a great amount of energy in that four to six week model. As you start to get to the end of the eight weeks, it gets a little bit outside of the energy level that you want to have from a promotion standpoint or from a relevant standpoint, you're at a little riskier timeframe, but right in there, that's a perfect window to keep it at it gets you enough ahead so that you're not like behind the eight ball, you know, trying to like, oh, gosh, I. I gotta get a recording in so I have an episode for next week. You're not behind on recording.

Yep. No, that is the sweet spot. I agree. You don't want to be behind and under the gun. Oh, my gosh, I gotta be a slave to my podcast. Record something because it's gotta publish next week. You want to be four to six weeks ahead. I think that's ideal.

Yeah. There's only two times a year that I'm. I go out to the eight, and that's at the holidays in. Right in. Usually May is like a giant travel month. Lots of events. So it'll be kind of like May to June or something. Like right in there. I might get about two weeks ahead and I'm on the outside edge of my schedule. Those are the only two times a year that that happens.

All right, well, that sounds like some sound advice from long, hard experience, Tracy.

It definitely is. What am I in, like over 3,000 interviews now?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I can tell you there's an energy to it, right? There's an energy to interviewing, there's an energy to follow up, there's an energy to promotion. And sometimes it can be way, way harder to reignite that. And we want to avoid that.

We do. There is an energy, and I would think also we've demonstrated today a practical reality to it, logistics and costs and other things. So lots to consider. But, gosh, isn't this a good problem to have with a show that. I mean, rather that than some people that aren't publishing because they're struggling to find the right guests or don't have the right support or who knows what I mean? To me, this is, wow, what a wonderful problem to have. Too many people want to be guests on your show and the show that I was talking about like yours has a selection process. There is pre screening and all that like you have for the bench factor. So.

Well. And I have to say that I still think that anyone who has the opposite problem, the problem of not having enough guests on their show are either not working hard enough on their show or there's a fundamental flaw in their show, likely the name of the show, the premise for the show, or something like that. So it is usually a technical or a workload problem.

All right, well, it sounds great. Okay, well, thank you everybody for listening to this episode of Feed you'd Brand. You can find the blog post for this episode@potatize.com and if you want to reach out, there's certainly a contact form there, even a phone number on our website if you need to call for something. And you can reach out to us anywhere on social media. Edyourbrand or Podotize.

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