Is It Better To Make A Reliable Show Format Or Mix Things Up Every Week?

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Hey, everyone. Welcome to Feed. You'd brand. I'm Tracy Hazzard and I'm temporarily going solo right now. Tom is going to join me any moment and we're going to be able to do a full episode together. But I'm going to kick things off because he is on his way in right at this moment and I don't want to waste anybody's time because we record this live just like we record the episode, we record this live in our group coaching call. So if you were a productized customer, you'd have heard this weeks and weeks and weeks before. This airs as an episode for all of our feed your brand listeners. So anyway, listeners, this week we are going to talk about creating a reliable show format. So do you want to have a reliable show format versus mixing things up? You know, that is an issue. Like, how do you start? What do you do? Is it okay to change your way your show is structured? Should you add in new segments? Like, all these questions come up. And these aren't always just setup questions, right? These are not just for newbies, Tom. They are for people who might have existing show who's worried about adding new segments and doing different things or taking away things that they might have had already. And so anyway, so let's talk about that. Really, should we have a reliable show format?

I think that listeners do like some amount of predictability. They like to have some expectations that they know when they subscribe to your show, you're going to be there for them consistently, periodically, whether that's weekly, twice a week, once every other week. I don't really recommend that. But they want to know you're going to be there consistently. And I do think that they appreciate some kind of show format, have some expectation. Now, that doesn't mean every episode has to be the same, and it doesn't.

Mean that it has to be like overstructured, right? That radio model of like, this is our moment for this. This is the moment for the news, this is the moment for that. It doesn't necessarily have to be that way unless that's what your audience really wants, right. Like, it needs to have a format that is at meeting the expectations of the audience. So I agree with you, Tom. I think consistent and constant is the most important thing that you want to have in your show format, especially if you're selling something. So if your goal is to sell your coaching, sell your masterminds, sell your courses, your books, or anything like that out of your podcast, then having a consistent and constant show format and the amount of times you show up, right, like making sure that you don't show up less than weekly, that's really critically important. The most important thing to the show format that you can provide because you're modeling how you're going to act for them as their coach or how you're going to act for them and show up for them as their mastermind leader, any of those things. They look to that and they say, oh, gosh, they can't even show up once a month on their podcast. Then how are they going to be able to serve me? That sends a message. So we want to send a message of reliability. That's why I call it reliable show format. We want to send a message of reliability as our first message. That doesn't mean, though, that it has to get boring.

No, definitely you can pivot your show. No question you can pivot it. And there are times sometimes when you want to have more than one different kind of show format. Maybe you're doing it two episodes a week and one is an interview format and one is a solo cast. Or let's say you're always doing interviews and you've been doing it the same way for 25 or 50 episodes and it's time to change it up a little bit. Maybe just you as the host, you need to remain energized and want to change it up a bit. It may not always be for the listener. It may be for you. Because if you're not showing up your best every time, energetic, excited to be there, asking those key questions, then the audience is going to feel it.

Right?

They really are.

Yeah. I like to think about the way we want to mix it up. Right. We don't necessarily want to mix it up from week to week to week and confuse people. Right. We want. They're like, I thought this was. I thought I was getting interviews. Oh, there's no interview this week and no explanation either. Right. So we also do need to tell people what we're doing when we mix it up. But we can use mixing it up like a pattern interrupt. Right. So that the show doesn't get old so that it doesn't get boring for your audience either. We can throw in a bonus episode now and again. We can throw in a test of something that we'd like to test out. A new segment, a different show style, a different intro some people throw in. Right. We want to mix it up, but we want to test it so we want to be clear with the audience that that's what we're doing.

Yeah, it could be a different segment. Now, sometimes people like to ask a very special one question or a special three questions that are short format, quick answers to each guest every episode. And if you're going to do something like that, we recommend it be later in the interview, not right up front. Something to look forward to, because if it becomes a repeating pattern in every show, a segment, people can look forward to it. And it can be something that helps keep people really listening through the whole episode. And you can tease to something like that in the very beginning. That's another thing that I like to do is when you're, you know, in the very beginning of your show, you're setting expectations for who your guest is, what's special about them, what the listener can look forward to in this episode. And you can say, and you're really going to love his answer to this question. Just wait for it. It's coming up. And you keep people on the hook to be like, oh, all right, I got to listen through and make sure I don't miss that.

Right. So when we're testing models. So like the binge factor show, right, the one that I host, that is from successful podcasters. And diving deep into those questions, one of the segments I did early on, when it was still a part of feed you'd brand before I even spun it off into its own thing, I was asking the question about bingeable listeners and did they know they had binge listeners and what did they think the binge factor was for themselves? And that in and of itself turned out to be such a popular question. People were engaging back with me and saying things, and afterwards the guest would say to me, wow, I never thought about that before. Thank you for raising that awareness about bingeable listeners and the value of them and what my X Factor is. I'd never thought about my show that way before, and that was when I knew I was onto something and why. I then made it its own thing that actually took over the show. And we spun it off because it was crowding feature brand, to be honest with you, and we wanted to give it its own Space. Those kinds of things can happen, Right. That you find something that tests out so wonderfully that you actually. It becomes its own entity. Right. I mean, podcasting was that for us, it became its own entity. It became its own business for us. Right. Which we hadn't expected. So there are various things that you want to test out. Now, this is what most people don't do. They go in and they say, hey, we're doing this new thing. And now the expectation is that you're going to do it every week. And you didn't realize how unsustainable it might be. Right. Like that I thought I could feature a new product every single week. And whoa, not so easy to find a product that's good or find a tool or a tip. It was hard to do that. So one of the shows that I interviewed. The podcast, right?

Yep. Love that show. A podcast about dogs has a tip about dogs. And it's the most interesting and funny thing, at the beginning, I was like, I had no idea that, you know, dogs paws, sweat or whatever it might be. I don't even know if that's true. I just made that one up. But, you know, it's like funny tips and things that you never heard about about your dog. And I'd love to, like, occasionally listen to it and then, like, you know, drop it to my daughters later. Like, I'm a really smart mom, right. And, you know, so it's a. It's a great segment that she's got there, but she also found a source for that information that's endless. So she's going to have all the tips, all the fun facts she could find. She's got them already out there. And that's really where you want to have a segment that is sustainable for you. So if people really like it, you want to continue it. So that's one way, when you introduce a new segment, you say, hey, we're trying out this new segment. So that you're also not setting the expectation that you must keep doing it in case it really doesn't work out for you or for your audience.

Another thing that you can do that is a test and could become a part of your show format or could become a different type of episode. Is soliciting your listeners to ask a question in providing a means for them to do it, a way for them to ask it. It could be they ask it in a recorded way that you could use and edit into the episode to hear the listener ask it and then you answer it. Or you could just get a question in writing, you read it and then answer it for them. And that's something that can be one thing that could be a part of your show, a segment of your show. But we in one of our podcasts made episodes strictly out of answering questions that were additional bonus type episodes, shorter format. So that's another example.

They can become their own thing later, if you think that that will work for you. But, you know, thinking about segments where you can create an audience participation model, even though listening is passive. Right. Your podcast listeners are not, you know, maybe sometimes they're laughing and yelling at the. At the phone. I certainly. I was hysterically laughing recently, listening to the clip out, because they had the top 10 ways that peloton, because it's a peloton show, that Peloton and pornhub are similar. And I laughed my head off. It was so funny. And not in a crass way. It was funny in a fun way. And how often do you do that? And I immediately want to go, bravo. And clapped at the end of it. So maybe you have some active listeners out there who are now ready to engage because you got them to laugh, to clap, to talk back to you. And then they realize, wow, there's no one at the other end of this podcast. I really need to connect with them. So we want to invite that in. And if we can find a way to do that, those people who are that excited about your show are going to do that. So what ways can we do that? I think that most people make the error of doing it too soon in the show. If we do it right at the beginning, before we've served them, then we haven't actually given them a reason to get back to us yet. We're assuming they listened to the previous episode or the previous hundred or whatever that is. We're assuming that they're our binge listener. But maybe they aren't. Maybe they're just brand new. And this happens to be the first episode that they've joined in on. And now you're asking them to do something that they're not yet prepared to do. So moving segments that require audience participation to. I like it 2/3 of the way through rather than at the end, because the end you kind of. The listeners kind of checked out. Are you ready for the next episode? I like it right before, you know, two thirds of the way through it. So thinking about maybe having that segment in, setting the model of your show ahead of time. So when you're setting that setup, startup, set a spot where new segments might be perfect. And a segment especially where you can create an audience participation. Tom mentioned the one about asking questions. But there could also be one where you read a review from your audience and you invite them to review your show. So those might be other segments that you want to do. And finding a place about 2/3 of the way through it. I like the natural spot right after the interview. How about you, Tom?

Well, it depends on the format of your show. A lot of people, the interview is the entire episode. So after the interview is, I think, too late sometimes, because if the audience, the listener senses that the interview is over, okay, I've heard the outro music before, I don't need to hear it. And they switch it off before they get to that last thing. Now, if they know the show format, like a lot of our shows, Tracy, where we have an interview and then you and I have a discussion about the interview after they know there's something more coming, and then after the interview is a perfect spot to do it for sure, right?

And see, because we set that simple show format up ahead of time that we keep, that is reliable, right? That is consistent and constant. When we throw something in between there, it's a great little pattern interrupt that they pay attention to. So if we're asking them to take action, we've got their attention to do it. It's also a perfect place to run a promotion or an ad if that's what we choose to do. We usually rarely do that, but we could choose to do that instead. So you've created that naturalness. And so I want to mention this as some people have gone in. So some of you out there haven't started your show yet. Like it's just going to be. You haven't started your show yet. So let's look at our show start in the most simple way possible. But like its core, we want to look at the core of it. But keep it with these flexible moments where we can bring something in as we're ready. Because if we start with the overly complex and plan it all out like this high production value, like a talk show, a late night talk show or something, with all these different, like I've got my monologue and then I've got like this bit and then I've got that bit and then I've got a promo and then I've got, you know, then I've got interview 1, 2, 3. And you know, you've complicated your planning process and your starting process and you don't even know if this is resonating with your audience. Yet. So I'm a fan of that simpler start, but you keep a structure that's flexible enough to start adding in some pieces as you go along and you find some new things that you'd like to test out. And then I'm also a fan of if you hit on something really great, spin it off into a bonus. Spin it off into a second short episode as Tom was referring to, giving it its own place where then people can binge on that one thing all the way through and get all of your tips or all of your great questions answered. That's a really great, awesome model as well, because it gives them a place to go, an episode they know they can count on. And so if they're short on time and they can't listen to the full fledged, full blown interview episode, but they could get the tip part, then they want to get that separate. They can.

That's a great tip, Tracy. I like that. Reality is there. Some people like to have shows that have more different segments to them. I find a lot of people that do that had more experience in radio. Yeah. Where you took or TV and you took an hour of time and you broke it up into four segments because you had to break it up with commercial breaks. You know, that's. We often find that happening with people moving from.

I'm not suggesting it has to be that perfectly, like scripted, reliable, like planned out, like. And Tom and I are not a fan of watching the clock. So if you've got. I've got three segments in my show, that's great. But it doesn't have to be 8 minutes, 20 minutes. 8 minutes. You don't have to do it that perfectly. You're like, I'm going to do that piece till it's done. Then I'm going to do the interview till it feels right. And it's going to be somewhere 30 minutes plus, don't know when it will end, but it's going to be right around there. And then I'm going to have a close. And my close might be one minute, it might be five minutes. It depends on how much I want to say in that close. And I'm going to just wing that. And the timing doesn't matter. It matters based on the content.

Yeah. We did this yesterday, Tracy. We interviewed somebody on our 3D printing podcast. And I know for those of you new people, you may be like, what? You have a 3D printing? It was our first show, but we do. And we interviewed this great architect who has a new furniture company that they've started that makes furniture that has a lot of 3D printed components within it.

Made to order.

Made to order. You know, manufacture on demand here in the United States. A lot of fascinating things. We had no idea how long that interview was going to go. Tracy and I didn't even talk about it between ourselves. We each had checked out the website, watched some videos about it, did our homework on it, not too long, Made.

A couple of bullet point notes about things I didn't want to forget to ask or mention about him and his company just because I wanted to make sure I had the facts right. But other than that, it was a fascinating subject for us. We thought our audience would be fascinated by it. We knew we've done over 625 episodes, so we certainly know what to ask by now. So we let it go. And it went about 45 minutes, I think.

Yeah, about. And then after that interview, we say goodbye to the guest. And by the way, during that interview, there were a couple of, you know, things I became curious about based on how he answered an earlier question. So I had some questions just came to me off top of my head as we're talking to him, and I asked and made for a very dynamic conversation. But then we said goodbye to the guest. When we're done, he leaves. You know, we use zoom. So he leaves zoom. And then we turn the recording back on and Tracy and I record the introduction to that guest. Because now we have the experience of having interviewed him and we know a couple things we could tease to or mention that gets our audience in the right frame of mind and like, oh, all right, that's great, let's hear this interview. And then we pause and record again some final thoughts we had at the end. What our takeaways were, what we each thought was really fun about the interview or exciting about what they're doing. And that was shorter in that episode than a lot of them are because.

I think we covered so much during. Because we had a more collaborative conversation with the. Because we have a lot of experience in the furniture industry. So we had a lot of collaborative conversations. So we didn't need as much post because we were doing it during, but we had a little bit of post after. And it was real, it was nice and short and that worked out great. But we had. Our three segments are still planned so that little things could go in between should we need it. And we do have advertiser on that particular show, so we do have to have the spot for that as well. So it's already naturally planned into our Format.

And what I also think was important, Tracy, although on this one, the interview was the lion's share of the episode. It was the longest segment. Our audience is used to us having that little introduction we throw to the interview. Then we. We cut in the interview. And then that little post discussion that you and I have. The dialogue that they love, that they expect that they expect that. So even though it was short, probably wasn't even five minutes or more, we still provided that and showed up for our listeners in that way because they had that expectation.

Right.

And show that we've pivoted our format multiple times over six plus years.

Right. And that's kind of what I want to mention here is like that's our reliable format. Right. And it always was a format. It never changed. When we started this show, we did five days a week. So we had five different styles of episodes. We actually did. We had one day a week. That was always an interview. And that this was always our interview format was to have it be in three segments. We would have a Q and A. As Tom mentioned before, we had a Q and A on that show. We might have a tech talk where we talked about tech stuff. We had ideas we'd throw out on Fridays. It was like a project challenge thing. So we had tried different things because we wanted to do it daily. But we were careful about the formats of the different dailies. And eventually we narrowed it down to two a week because that was what we felt was working. And so we narrowed it down to two types of episodes a week. And then eventually, now we're just in the one whenever we feel like it to keep our audience updated because we've done. We have such a huge Library. There's over 600 shows here that we didn't feel like it's necessary to do something until something really new captures our attention. So our subscribers never unsubscribed. They're just waiting for us to drop in an episode now and again. And we do that. But we earn the right to do that by giving them.

Well, we showed up for many years.

Six years and 600 shows. We showed up for them. So. So that's a big difference in how you can do things, is that you can mix it up. That's what I want to mention to you. If you're getting feeling like your model of your show just isn't quite working for you, things need to change. Finding an entry point for that change. Some people do three, four episodes and then nix it up already. That's too soon. Give it an opportunity, give it a chance. I like to give them 20, 25 episodes of a chance of something. Now, if a segment really isn't working like I tried it, I did two weeks in a row and then I couldn't get the product or I couldn't get what I expected, the tips that I needed and I couldn't do that. Drop that, that's fine. Go ahead and shift on that immediately. But if you're thinking about making a shift in your show, make it one thing at a time, change, give it 10 episodes in between, then make the next change. Give it enough time for people to absorb that, respond to it. For you to feel this is working for me and this is comfortable. You make too many changes at once and people kind of, your listeners kind of flip and listen, sit back and go, now I'm evaluating your show again, as I was in the beginning. Am I going to keep subscribing to it? Am I going to keep listening? Are you going to mix this up on me so much that it's now no longer the show I started listening to from the beginning?

Yeah, I think it's a really good point, Tracy, about when you're starting out. Because for those of you that are new listening to this podcast, you will be shocked. Because I think all of us newbie podcasters were shocked the first time we realized how personally listeners react to things that you do in your show or do differently. They get really attached to you and comfortable. They believe they know you even though they've never met you in person. And if you really flip something on them in a way that shocks them, surprises them, or in any way is not pleasant to them or comfortable, they're going to let you know, you're going to hear it. I mean, boy, the one time we needed to take a little break because of something we had to do for a month or more and we decided to run some old episodes as reruns. Oh my gosh, did they let us have it? They just did not like that. And we would have been better off to just let them know, hey, guys, we have to take a hiatus. We'll be back on this date with the next episode. They would have been happier with that, right?

Yeah. So I have this coming up and thinking about how you might handle that. I'm going to take a break on the Binge Factor because we're launching a new show and some other things are happening. I'm going to take a one month to six week break on the Binge Factor and I was thinking about bringing in some guest hosts. So I thought that might be really fun. But I was thinking I've got to find a way to bring them in. If you think about how they would test out new late night talk show hosts. So Johnny Carson would have Jay Leno. I'm really dating myself here. Johnny Carson would have Jay Leno and a bunch of other people and he used to have Joan Rivers and other people guest for him and they would do a one night, but he didn't get the full time gig day. Leno didn't get that full time gig till he had done enough of those and the audience had responded to them. So I was thinking, so I maybe have to find a way before, as I'm prepping up to take this break to make sure that I bring those people on, maybe I do a segment with just them and get their take on the binge factor of somebody's show before I let them go ahead and guest host for me. And do I have one guest host for the whole six weeks? Do I mix it up and have a different guest host each day? There's lots of choices and ideas that I could do here. But the most important thing is that I've got to let my listeners know ahead of time, prepare them, get them ready for it. And that way when it happens, it's not shocking, it's expected and it has an end date also in this particular case, because it may not be what they want.

Yeah, because I got to be honest with you, I understand why our listeners got so upset when we ran reruns. Because if you think about it, in contrast to what Johnny Carson did on the Tonight show back in the 80s and what was it, early 90s, I think, before he retired when he had a guest host. The thing is, the audience had a reliable new show five nights a week and it very rarely was off air. But now look what happens with the Tonight show with Jimmy Fallon, with Late Night with Stephen Colbert, with any of these late night hosts today when they take a break like this week being in the US the fourth of July, as we're recording this, it's a holiday week and everybody was off on Monday. And I wondered, gee, on Tuesday night, are we going to get a new one of, you know, the Tonight Show? And no, we didn't. They are off this weekend. They're running reruns. And you and I get to that. We're like, ah, it's a rerun. We've seen this one before.

Right. And it's an opportunity for somebody to try out somebody else's show, and that might be the last thing you want. So we want to keep our audience, so we've got to keep them engaged and find ways to show up for them. Doesn't mean you can't take a break. You just got to find a way to shift that and make that break useful to them. So that's really well.

And also to continue to serve them in a new way in that reliable.

Format of what they're expecting. So you're showing up for them consistently and constantly in some way, shape or form with something that you deem valuable for them. They're going to check that out because they've received a lot of value from her already. If I say I'm bringing on Tom as my guest host this week, they're going to be like, she's talked about him in so many episodes. Of course he's going to be someone I want to take a listen to. Right. So that's going to be really useful and helpful to you to prep that up and get that going. So start slow, start simple. Keep your core. Keep that core structure that can be consistent and constant and give your audience the comfort level with what you're giving them and what you're bringing them and how you show up in the world. And then do mix things up to keep it exciting for you, to keep it interesting for your audience, and to really keep the momentum going so you can go past hundreds of episodes.

That sounds like some great advice, Tracy, and lots of things to think about. And you know what? I think that if you have any thoughts on this or suggestions as a listener for different kinds of show formats, different ways to mix it up, if you've tried pivoting and had a great success or a great failure, we'd love to hear about it. So reach out to us. You can reach out anywhere on social media, edyourbrand. Or you can also go to poditize.com and we have a contact form you can fill out. We'd love to hear from you.

And I also want to remind everybody that you can reach out at Potatise everywhere as well, not just at feed your brand, which is probably a little easier to find because there's somewhere where we're social media. It's feed underscore your underscore brand. Like, so we simplify things. So Odditize gives you everything for feed your brand everywhere on social media.

Thanks, Tracy. I forgot about that.

Yeah, I know. You know, the social media side is a little more my thing.

It's not really my thing.

Absolutely not. Well, anyway, everyone, thanks so much for joining us today for this episode of Feed your Brand. We will be back next time with some interesting new topics to keep the momentum of your show going.

All right, thanks, everybody. Till next time, it's been Tom and Traci on feed.

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