Podcast Episode Order: Proven Successful Strategies to Make Your Show Easy-to-Listen To

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Hey everyone, Tracy Hazard here from Feed your brand Pottedize. I am here to talk about something. I got a question from a client and sometimes when we get questions in, I think, you know what, this would make a great episode. And everyone in the office said, oh, just go live, just go live. Let's share with everyone. Because it's something, when you type the answer to this, you go, that's just not enough information. I want it to be taken right. I want to be able to give the long answer. So I'm going to give you the short answer and the long answer. Does the order of your podcast matter? Yes, the order matters, but the long answer is, well, what do I do with that? How do I decide what to order? Like, it gives you a whole bunch of other questions that you're going to ask yourselves and you got to figure out, right? So that's what we're going to talk about in this little session here. So does the order matter? Yes. And here's why it matters. Because people find your podcasts, people find your video cast, your blog posts, whatever it is that you're doing and whatever the mode of delivery of your content is, the order matters because you're leading them through a journey, right? You're leading them through to get to know, like and trust you. You're leading them through to find out more about you, your information, about your company, about your mission, about your social good, whatever it is that your purpose is for doing a podcast, for doing a video cast, whatever the purpose is, you have to lead them through that. You can't just start mid sentence. You can't just start midstream. You also don't want to just start too basic either. So you've got to have that little mix up going on. So that's where we really look at this and think, okay, I really have to have a sort of methodology, a thought process that goes along with how am I going to figure out what order my episode should be? So I'm going to use an example of a podcast that I just launched. Earlier this year, I launched Product Launch Hazards and that's Hazards with two Zs like Tracy Hazard, right? And I launched product launch Hazards with some content that already existed. Interviews. So we're talking about topic based podcasts or topic based videos and interview style videos. So you have both together and I turn them into podcasts, right? So I had to really think about the order that was going to happen because I wanted to intersperse them together. Because you can't do just all straight interviews or all straight topics and then shift to interviews because now you're confusing your audience on the style that you're doing. Are you doing an interview based podcast and that's all there is to it. And everyone you do, it's going to be some kind of interview a la John Lee Dumas or any one of those kind of people out there. It's a very, very typical style of doing interviews. And now, you know, here at Brandcasters and Feed, you'd brand we're really big proponents of interviews because they provide you the proper authority transfer. The people who you are going to share their audience with you, how you're going to be associated with big names in your industry, right? Like all of those things are really important. Plus for business purposes, it may very well be networking. That's exactly how I use my Ink column and a lot of my podcasts. I use them as a way to network and get into the industry and maybe get speaking engagements or find someone who might be a partner for me. So those are things that we want to do is we want to make sure that we're fulfilling our business needs. So that's where interviews come in big time. And you should have them as a part of your podcast in some way, shape or form. Do you have to have them as your entire foundation for it? That's not the style of podcast that we're here all about. Here at Feed you'd brand we're about it being your brand. So at some point your brand has to come into it, right? So your episodes need to come into it. Your topic, your brilliant expertise needs to come into it, right? So we really want to drive all of those things and bring them into you at some point. So we don't want to just shift and go interview, interview, interview all the way at the beginning and then all of a sudden shift to topic styles after that. And then it feels very salesy like, oh, I just drove you in by associating myself with all these people. And then now from now on it's all going to be about me, right? So we don't want to do that either. So mixing them up. And making sure that you're shifting your show types amongst your catalog is really important. You want to think of it like an album. Like remember the old days when we used to have record albums and we didn't just sell songs all individually, Right. And we didn't just pick and choose and we had an album. And I guarantee you there were lots of network and executives sitting around trying to decide the perfect order for every single song on that album. Right? What order do they go in? What does it matter? How is it going to lead to the next one? Should I have a heavy rock song and then a ballad? How am I going to raise the dopamine and lower it again and ease them into what's next? And you have to be thinking about those things as you're building your catalog of podcast episodes as well. So it's your album and it's on itunes. It's just like an album. So there's no difference there. So especially if you're going to launch, as this podcast client is, they're going to launch with 25 at once. Those 25 at once may be all anyone ever consumes. They may just consume all of that and then that's it, they're done. They're going to hire you or they're done. And they said, you know, I didn't really like that. And the reason why we like 25 when people launch is because it fills a whole page on itunes. Because itunes does about 25 a page at a time. And so you're getting there. You look like you have a full catalog already from the get go. So you look more established. So that's why that's a good launching number to use. But remember, you don't have to do that. You can just launch with three. So you don't need to overdo it if you're not capable of that. We got to do what's within our means and what's within our own effort and abilities because we don't want to overwhelm ourselves and quit. So because it's so ongoing and long term organic traffic generating, we want to make sure that we can sustain it. So if this is not for you, that's okay. But the order still matters. So thinking about which one you're going to air, when and how you're going to do it. Now, a lot of you fly by the seat of your pants and you just record whatever comes to you live stream, just like I'm doing right now. But that doesn't mean that this episode has to live in the exact spot I launch it in. You get to mix it up later. Did you know you can change your episode number? You can change the date that it aired. You can do that. So you can restructure your catalog if it's not working for you. So we have a couple of podcasts that have hundreds of episodes, right? We have one that has 560 episodes, and we were just talking today about actually restructuring some of it so that some of those really early episodes, even though they're in volume one and whatever, they're still so relevant today that we ought to bring them back in, that we ought to just move them around into the catalog. Now, we're not going to re air them like a replay because that's a terrible idea. We tried that and people flipped out, did not like it. Got lots of nasty messages on Facebook and emails. They didn't love that because you push it back up into their feed as new and they don't love that. But changing the date once you've aired something and moving it around within the catalog is perfectly okay for you to stay within it as long as you're not replaying it and putting it back in as new. It's not going to come up in someone who subscribed to you and who's a fan and who's already listened to that episode. It's not going to show up. But you can reorganize underneath that, and that is what I recommend to you as well. So if you're unhappy with your first 25 episodes and you don't think they're the best representative of you, then go ahead and restructure them. Go ahead and reorder them into a different order. I've done that. I've also taken out episodes. Now, here's something that I want you to think about when you take remove things. Yes, it's going to change the number of episodes and you got to really be cognizant of that. Because if you're airing and you're going, hey, we have a hundred episodes, and really you have 98 because you removed two of them. People are going to go, your number's off. Like, you can't add. Be aware of that. We don't like to number episodes. There's a whole podcast about that. We don't like to number episodes just for this reason, because you have a lot more flexibility if you don't number them. And also because sometimes the numbering gets messed up and it doesn't match the number on what itunes says is your number. Or if you're looking at them in reverse order, it really messes everything up. Because whatever the current number is, if you're on 99 and yet it says episode number one because you're displaying it in reverse order because you want new people who find you to start from number one, they're like, that seems disjointed. And so we like to not number at all. We think it's also a waste of character count. So there's many, many reasons why we do that. But flexibility is the number one reason. And so if you haven't got numbering going on, you don't have to worry about this at all. But when you go to restructure, you'll be thinking about what represents me the most, what's the most entertaining, the most educating, the most variety I can show. Of the different styles of shows I have, do I need to record my number one episode again? I highly recommend you do that. If your show really changed, record a new number one and you can shift it around so that your old number one, you just move it or you just make it disappear. And that's the tip that I want to give you. What you do is you essentially delist the podcast episode. Don't delist the blog, though. Leave the blog up and running so that if somebody finds it on search, they can absolutely find it. They can listen to it right there in the blog. It exists, but you just delist it from what is in your feed, so it's not showing up there. And you move a different episode to that number one position. And so that way you're kind of recovering your number one show. These are like, pro and advanced tips on things that you can do. We like to restructure and help our clients manage those shows. Like, these are strategies we put in place, and these are things that we can talk about. If you're one of our clients already and you're listening to this and you're going, yeah, you know, I have a hundreds episode, and I just feel like the beginnings week, like, it got way better over time. And Tom and I felt that way about our first show as well. It was like our intros and outros. The way we were handling interviews was really rookie in the beginning, and they just kind of like make you cringe. But afterwards, it's not that big a deal to just go ahead and restructure that or spin them off, put them in an old volume, and have just your most current ones be there for you. Because once somebody subscribes to you, they're only getting served up the new. If they've already listened to those old ones, it doesn't really matter to them at all. It's really for the new people who are coming in and finding you. You want to put your best foot forward. You want to put your best catalog, your best album out, right? So why can't you have a Best of Always as your first 25 episodes? You absolutely can, and you should. So that's just really what I wanted to bring you guys today is to really be thinking about how much that order really does matter and how it's not set in stone. I mean, this is a feed. It refreshes all the time. You can force a refresh at itunes if you need to. I mean, yes, it exists and it's out there. If you've got your blog post going. If you really need to remove something, you really got to totally remove it. But for the most part, you have a lot of flexibility for how you present yourself. You are in complete control of your brand. You are in complete control of your feed. So use it. Use it to your advantage to make sure that you are presenting yourself and your brand in the best order possible. Thanks so much for listening. This has been Tracy Hazzard, and I'll be back with another episode of Feeder Brand pretty soon.

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