Is Grounding Your Podcast Episodes In Time The Best Choice?

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community at Podcasters United and podcast industry experts Tom Hazard and Tracy Hazard as they debunk all that outdated and bad advice you've been getting from the podcast gurus and find out what actually works Today.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, everybody. Welcome to Feed you'd brand. I'm Tom Hazard, your host for today. And, you know, I want to share with you some thoughts on a subject that we get a lot of questions about sometimes here at Brandcasters and Potitize, and that is should I ground my podcast episodes in time or how many references should I make in my podcast to what the date is I'm recording it? Is that a good thing or a bad thing? I want to break down sort of the pros and cons, and it's not that there is a right or wrong answer in this, but there are a lot of things to consider. And I'm sure whether it's a good fit for you and for your show is a individual decision each of us has to make for our own show. Does it make sense or does it not? And, you know, if it does make sense, what can you do to take advantage of that? And if it does not make sense, what do you do to try to avoid grounding your podcast in time? So that's, that's what I want to discuss today, especially because, and as I'm recording this, there's, you know, just a little news going on in our country. And so I'm sure there are a lot of podcasters out there that are talking about current events and will be and actually a lot that always do. And is that appropriate? Does it make sense? So I'm going to give you an example of a couple examples, too, of shows that do this, that ground their things in time, ground their topics in time, and then maybe some examples of where that might not be the best idea.

So, first of all, all of us podcasters, some of you are newer podcasters than others, and just in case we have some real newbies here, one of the great things about podcasts is people listen to them on their time schedule. It's not like a radio show where, hey, like, you know, I'm, I'm getting on broadcasting live at a certain time of day on the same day of the week every week or on, you know, maybe every day of every week. It's just the medium, while you can stream it live, especially to social media, if you want to. And there are definitely advantages for that that are probably a good discussion point for a future episode. But podcasts, the whole podcast ecosystem is one that you actually cannot easily stream a live podcast to all the different podcast apps, in fact, most of them, it's impossible. You can't do it. There's very, very few apps that have very limited reach that very few people take advantage of because you can only go live to a very small subset of people. And again, the whole issue of somebody has to be there at that time and place in order to listen to the episode. And it's very inconvenient for most people. Podcast listeners overall really love the on demand nature of listening where they want to, when they want to, and it doesn't matter when it was recorded, it's been published, it's available to me. I can stream it or I can download it, I can watch it offline. When I'm flying on a plane or I'm driving in a car through the desert and just listen to a bunch of episodes. That's one of my favorite times to listen to, to binge. A lot of podcast episodes is when I'm driving from Southern California to Las Vegas through the desert. It's like a good 3 1/2 plus 4 hour drive. I can get through a lot of podcasts in that time. And I'm just, I'm not answering the phone. I'm just focusing on, you know, learning or being entertained. And so a lot of podcast listeners like that. But just because podcast themselves and the entire delivery system is really optimized for non live distribution, okay? Recorded, prerecorded distribution of content doesn't mean that if we're doing a weekly show or we're doing a twice a week show that we can't speak about things that are happening in our current news cycle or things that are going on culturally in our country or maybe our local community, our state. We certainly can and many people do. We have a podcast that we produce called the Clip Out. Actually it is right over. Let's see if I can get this right. Right over my ear. Right there, that cover art. If you're watching the video, you can see this. If you're watching the audio, I'm sorry, but you can go to the blog, post it FeedYourBrand Co and then you can watch the video and see the COVID art I'm talking about. But the show is called the Clip out and it is a podcast all about the Peloton, you know, piece of exercise equipment. And if you're not familiar with that, you know, I know many people are. Cause it's been kind of all the rage, especially during this year, 2020, when so many people are at home. The clip out has actually been very popular because the peloton itself is very popular. A lot of people have been buying them to, to stay fit as they're at home, haven't been working in an office as much as they used to. So they often, for this episode, their format is they usually interview somebody related to the peloton community or ecosystem. But then toward the end of the episode, they have a five, ten minute segment that is current events going on in the peloton community. And they actually, while they prerecord all those interviews many weeks in advance, the live port or live is wrong word. The more timely portion is actually recorded just in time. It is provided to us at Pottiti's 48 hours before it publishes. And then we edit it and add it to the whole episode in the right place as a segment. And so there's a component of the show that's very timely and is more current and more grounded in time, and they want it to be that way. Now, it's not the whole show, but a segment of the show that while I think the listeners really appreciate it because there are lots of things that happen and change in the world of peloton. And it's like people who are into this are fanatical. I mean, the peloton users who get on that bike and they participate in classes, they love it and they want to know what's happening, what other classes are there I can take on my peloton. And actually I should probably describe for those of you that don't know it, I mean, it's an exercise bike, but has a screen on it. And you actually can live be in classes participating with other people, but you're in your own home, you're in the comfort of your own home. You're not in a sweaty gym full of people. And right now, gyms are one of the places that are particularly risky right now with the coronavirus. So, you know, it has become a whole lot more popular this year and it was already very popular before this year. So it makes sense for that community of people who want to listen to what, you know, not only have a great general subject topic, you know, guest, learn something new, see a different perspective, but also to get a little bit of current events in the industry now. So that's the plus side for the listener, you know, I think listeners often do like podcasts that are grounded in time. I like listening to the daily. It's one of them from the New York Times or that's also up first from npr that are a daily podcast. And it's in the morning, I'm like fixing breakfast for the kids, getting them ready for school. And I'm listening for 10 or 15 minutes to, hey, what are the headlines going on today? Great, I can listen over my Alexa, I'm free, hands free, going around the kitchen, doing whatever. And, you know, I understand what's happened in the world today. And I'm off. You know, those types of things are. And not all of us have shows like that. We're not journalistic organizations, right? Especially a lot of us independent podcasters. But still, there are often timely news things we talk about. In fact, on a recent episode here, I talked about some current events when Google all of a sudden eliminated Google Play as an app for listening to podcasts in favor of Google podcasts. Now, we knew this was coming for years, but there was an event where it happened. And there was also an event where Google filed was the government filed a antitrust lawsuit against Google. And I talked about both of those in one episode. So that is a bit grounded in time, even though the episode wouldn't publish till a week or two or more later after that became news. So our advantages of having podcasts grounded in time is it makes a podcast in some ways very real for the listener, especially the listener who's already subscribed to your show and and is getting their downloads as soon as they can possibly get your show, they're getting it.

In some ways. For people who find your podcasts months from now, a year from now, a lot of time when people find a podcast that they like, they're going to listen to the most recent few episodes, and if they like it, they're going to go back and listen from the beginning. I would argue that's still going to happen with a podcast like the clip out that has a news component, but a whole lot more to offer. But something like the Daily or Up first from npr, I don't think people are going to listen to that a week from now, let alone a month or months or a year from now. It's just not going to happen. Some of those podcasts are really one and done, and if you miss it, if another one has published that's newer, you're probably going to skip and just listen to the new one. And so this now brings me to one of the sort of cons of, or the difficulties of recording a podcast that is grounded in time. If it's really grounded in current events. In order to publish on a regular, consistent basis, you've got to do it. Like, if you're doing a weekly show and you're doing it something that has to do with current events, industry news, you've got to make sure you do it, and you do it not too far in advance when you're going to publish it. So you have a regular schedule. You have to keep up recording. For most podcasters that we encounter, that's really not ideal for their lifestyle or for their lifestyle or their business planning and executing of their business. They're podcasting to serve a community and to serve their business, but it needs to be one thing to do for their business, not be something that is, you know, that is very demanding of their time and they have to do very often on a regular basis. They don't want it to get in the way of their business priorities. And so most people like to batch record. I'm going to sit down on a day and record three episodes, four episodes, or do it in one afternoon a month or one whole day a month, I'm going to carve out of my calendar, and that's what I'm going to record. So in that case, it's very hard to do any kind of current events or timely, you know, timely news type of information, current events, something that is more grounded in time. Now, there's nothing wrong with recording episodes that reference something that's happening in our current culture or in the. In the news cycle. As long as there's sort of a bigger picture to the subject you're talking about that goes beyond just the timeliness of that information, you know, to have, hey, we're going to talk about, you know, a certain kind of business marketing, and that's the subject for the show. And you're going to use a reference that was in the media as an example to talk about. But it's not as much about that event being, you know, the main point or the news as it is an example that then you use as a departure point to talk about your subject. That kind of grounding in time or in, you know, in our current, you know, culture, what's going on in our country or in the world is a really good thing to do because it does make the podcast really real for people. And even if it's something they listen to six months from now, you know, when you mention whatever that current event is. That's a departure point. People usually remember that. Oh, yeah. And that's very familiar to them. And. And of course, familiarity is very comforting for people. And so, you know, they get into this place in their head where, yep, they remember that event. That makes sense. Okay, so now what are you sharing with me relative to that? And it just makes sense. But so, you know, pros and cons of grounding something in time. Obviously, the cons of grounding your episode topics in time is you can't get too far ahead. Like I was saying, you got to do it more just in time and not batch record as much. But the advantage is for your listeners, hey, they know they're listening to something that's pretty recent and not months old. And sometimes people like that with certain podcasts. But in general, one of the other cons of grounding something in time is it might get dated. Now, there's a difference between referencing something in history and using it in a way that will work no matter when someone listens to it, or actually having a very dated episode that's not going to be timeless. Because I'll tell you, one of my earliest podcasts that I ever did on 3D, printing, as geeky a term as a subject matter as that seems, started it in 2015. And that podcast still today gets 10,000 unique plays a month on its oldest episodes. So people find it and listen to it because a lot of that content was evergreen. Now, I'll admit not all of it was because there are companies that created 3D printers that we reviewed and talked about that are out of business today, five years later. Right. That just. It's not going to help people as much. And so some of that old content, maybe we should delete some of those episodes, but we haven't done that, quite honestly. People are still listening to them all.

Most of us, when we're podcasting, are trying to come up with what we would call evergreen content, something that is going to be just as relevant next week, a month from now, a year from now, as it is when you first publish it. You know, today that's ideal. But at the same time, that doesn't mean we want to sort of shy away from being transparent about when we're recording an episode. I have another show I'm involved in. It's not really my show, but I participate in it. That's a language and communication show and helps people. Actually, we're hoping a lot of people listen to it soon because, among other things, you know, we talk about how you can have safe conversations with people you disagree with. I think that might be relevant to a few people, you know, these days. But, you know, we do end up talking about certain current events. But again, it's more of a departure point. And while we try not to get too far ahead, we, when we record to when we publish, we're about a week and a half at most, two weeks ahead on a regular basis, because we don't want those departure points to seem very, very old. The reality is, even if somebody's going to listen to them six months from now, they'll probably remember the current event reference. And the lesson we talk about still applies and applies to many more things. So it still is evergreen content. So lots of things to think about when you're creating a new podcast. Or maybe you're thinking about pivoting your format of your podcast now that you've maybe established an audience for a while, providing great evergreen content, maybe your industry, your niche. There would be some value in including.

A segment that's a little more timely, a little more grounded in time of some kind of current event or something like that. And there's nothing wrong with that, certainly. And in some ways, current events can yield a lot of good search results. When people are searching in Google or searching in their podcast app on some of those current events, a lot of times it can attract more people to listen and also attracts people who are searching, who didn't know about your show, who give it a try, and then might become new listeners. So from an SEO perspective and you being found more timely content, current events, if you structure the titles properly and the descriptions of the episodes properly, can attract new listeners and, you know, grow your reach, grow your audience, which I think all of us podcasting would always love to be, helping more people, reaching more people, impacting more lives. So, anyway, just a few things to think about regarding timeliness of topics, grounding things in time. I thought, you know, I would share with you today because I've had a few questions about that from customers recently, and especially with, you know, just a little bit of news going on in our world right now in, you know, 2020, the end of 2020, I thought it was maybe a good time to talk about that. Okay, so hey, don't forget, you can go to the blog post@feedyourbrand.co if you're listening to the podcast. You can go there to see the video or see graphics, get any, you know, links to anything that was referenced today to get information on the clip out the podcast that I referenced it's all there@feedyourbrand.co. and of course you can find us anywhere on social media feedyourbrand. So thanks so much everybody. I'll be back next time. Until then, it's Tom Hazard signing off.

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