*The Damaging Long-Term Impact of Podcast Replay Statistics on Listener Engagement

This is Feed you'd Brand with hosts.

Tom Hazard and Tracy Hazard.

Hey, everyone. Welcome to Feed you'd Brand. I'm Tracy Hazzard, and along with my co host, Tom Hazzard, we are going to talk about podcast replay stats, not just podcast replays. Cause we've talked about that in the past. But we're gonna talk about the stats behind it because I pulled some recently. And what we want to know is do reruns or replays, depending on what you call it, result in listener loss?

This is a really great topic to talk about because we do see people often. I'm not often. Let me. Let me rephrase that. I mean, often we see some shows doing it usually in the summer when they take a break, but they want to keep publishing, so they're going to do reruns or another time of year when they take a break. And I've seen some of our customers like, oh, I thought they were taking a break, but they're still publishing weekly. And then we look and we're like, oh, these are old episodes. They're replaying well.

And so here's the problem with pulling the stats. So I this came about because I got an email message from someone at Brigham Young University Radio, and he was asking me, he said, I've seen your episode about replays. Because Tom and I are like, don't do it. Like, we usually do it at Christmas this time, like it's right around the holidays. We always do an episode that has something to do with don't do replays. And all the things you could do instead is what we usually cover. That's what we did last time. So there's an episode for you to watch about that. So we'll share that in the blog post for this episode@podcasters united.org but he reached out and he said, do you have any data behind it? Because I'm a part of a network and a part of a radio station, and I want to know if there's actual numbers behind. And I said, hmm, this is going to be challenging to pull the stats because it's not like most people just reshare it. They actually republish a new episode, and nine times out of ten, they fail to market as a replay or a rerun. And that, I find, is probably the key to the number one cause of. Of listener loss. But it makes it hard for us to pull the stats because you can't just search on the word replay or rerun. So well.

So the point is, you did some research and you went and pulled some really quite illuminating data, you know, when you analyzed it, as to whether replays work well and listeners don't mind or they don't work well and might have some long term detriment to your show. And I'm fascinated for you to share this with us, Tracy, but I do want to just. We were talking a little bit before recording this and you alluded to a little bit whether you want to call them replays or reruns. Reruns is kind of an old school term, and I didn't realize how much of an old school term it was until quite recently because we have a couple of younger kids, a teenager and a preteen, and reruns came up recently. And our 11 year old, I'm talking with her and she's like, what's a rerun? And I realized in this modern age of streaming, because, I mean, let's face it, we don't actually have a cable TV service, We don't have a satellite TV service, which we used to have a decade ago and more. And people these days, especially younger generations, watching something live is kind of rare. Like on TV when it's on the channel right then. And Obviously we had DVRs, we could watch things whenever we want. But most of the time now we really are watching very few things live. I mean, I like Major League Baseball and so I watch my favorite baseball team. Okay, I like to watch that live. I don't like to watch it recorded. That sporting events are one of the big exceptions, but it's why the ad.

Dollars are so high still there, and.

Because they know they're going to have captive audience who will sit through the commercials and not speed through it. Right? But anyway, so to our 11 year old, what's a rerun? And explaining the concept of what a rerun was, it was really hard for her to grasp it because it meant you had to also really understand what a lot of us grew up with. You watched something on television live or you missed it and you know, maybe you could watch a rerun later or why were reruns happening? Well, because in the summer they don't record and publish new episodes of a show. They rerun old ones well.

And so here's the case, and this is exactly what I want to point out to you, because we have a whole generation who doesn't even understand reruns, don't care about them. They use it as if you play a rerun, it is a signal to them to go stream the thing without commercials. So if Your goal was to make money off of commercials from it. So if you were on one of these, like movie channels or, you know, NBC, abc, whatever the channel is, and you decide to rerun, they're just going to go to Netflix, they're just going to go to Paramount, they're just going to go to whatever app it is and watch it with no commercials. So it gives them the idea that they could watch it because you played it, but it's just triggering to go to the app and watch it and stream it. So if your purpose was to get ad dollars for it, it's not working today. And that's what it got me thinking about, Tom, was this idea that because you're putting it back into your podcast feed again, if you're playing commercials, that is the only reason, if you are running programmatic ads, that is the only reason to run replays. Because you need to keep your revenue coming and flowing when you don't want to record something new if you're not. We'll talk about some of those situations in which you don't want to go more than 30 days with no publishing of an episode. But for the amount of effort it took to replay those episodes, you could have done a 15 minute bonus episode and covered that like, it's just, it's a lot of work to like republish anyway. You could have just recorded something like off the cuff for 10 minutes and covered yourself and hit that 30 day mark so that you don't run into, no, not publishing and not getting the episodes and the subscriber push that you normally would get. Right? So there's so many better ways to do it than a replay. But the only reason to do it is if you're making programmatic ad dollars or ad dollars in some way shape or form off your own ads. Right. That's the only reason. But here's what I wanted to look at. I wanted to look at if that short term financial gain was going to turn into a long term financial loss.

Well, and I also wonder, Tracy, is the short term financial gain going to be equal to what it was when you aired a new episode or are less people going to watch the replay and therefore you're not going to make as much money on the ads anyway, Right? I mean, you're going to make some, I'm sure, yes. But I bet it would be, you know, less than you would make on a new episode.

So old school. Our download numbers used to be counted differently than they're counted today. So you cannot do what we used to do a decade ago, five years ago, even three years ago, you can't do it because just playing an episode doesn't make it downloaded to the device which it used to count in our counts. That doesn't happen on Apple anymore. It just doesn't count that way. You have to have an actual play click through download. You have to have it in your active list. Right. So there's a whole different way of counting statistics that changes the dynamic slightly. We used to be able to replay and we'd automatically get 100% of all the subscribers we have be counted as a download.

Well, certainly as Apple changed their system of what they report as a download and what they don't, or more importantly, really, it was more a change of them not automatically downloading to every device who was subscribed. Now, if you haven't actually listened to an episode fairly recently, then they're going to suspend automatic downloads until you request downloading them again. So the whole point is to really more measure actual listeners than it is subscribers.

Right. And so this automatic download shift changes the statistics over time. So just keep that in mind as you're doing this. It's like the mentality of running replays is now slightly old school. Right. Because now if I'm not automatically downloading, if I'm not subscribed and listening all the time, I'm not even going to see it. It's not going to push to me anyway. I'm not going to notice that I'm going to have to actively go into your show and see that you've got episodes that I don't have and download it. Right. And reinitiate it. So that's a little bit different than it used to be when it would just automatically download to my device. Right.

You know, the podcast ecosystem, though I think we need to be clear about this, is that the podcast ecosystem, the publishing system, does not know that you're republishing an old episode. It considers it a new episode to the world and to any subscribers, they're going to get an alert that there's a new episode of your show available.

But what are your listeners going to think and are they going to realize it's a replay? And that depends on a few things. But, Tracy, if I'm correct, all the data that you pulled and analyzed has been about replays that have occurred after Apple's change in what, you know, their delivery of episodes to subscribers or followers of shows. Is that right?

I checked both.

You did? Okay.

Yeah, I ran different shows that ran at different Times and checked both and it's consistent either way. It's just a different level of numbers. So nothing shifted in total the overall. So I'm going to run the math here for you and so that I'm going to be transparent about the math because I believe that we all ought to. Well, first off, even though I'm a designer, I need to understand the math. But I also think that you should understand the methodology to what we're looking at and what we're seeing here. So first things first is that I, I can't measure it if it's not marked replay or rerun or something where it tells me that it was happening again. So this is what you're doing to your listener. And I want you to think about this carefully because I believe that this is the key to why many shows are seeing a decline in listeners because of this algorithmic change to automatic downloads. That means that if I'm listening to feed your brand here, and I'm an active listener coming week over week, getting an episode downloaded to my phone and you want to replay and don't mark it as a replay, it's automatically downloaded to me, I start listening and go, I'm a loyal listener. This is crap. I listened to this before. Like, I already heard this thing. This is familiar. I'm going to get annoyed. I'm also going to question whether or not you're going to stick around for me.

Are you going to come back with new ones?

And I'm going to start looking for a new show. So you just invited three ways in which I'm questioning sticking with your show as a loyal listener. And those are the people that make you money. Those are the people that buy your stuff. Those are the people that refer you. Those are the people that didn't miss a single episode, binge on everything you have.

So that is where you're going to lose the most. And that is the mentality I went into checking these numbers with, thinking that especially those that don't market, they're going to be higher and worse than the numbers for those of us that do market. Because those of us that do market are letting you know, hey, it's a replay and you don't need to listen to it. So we're, we're saying it up front. And then usually I always put into the description the first sentence about why we're replaying it in the episode description so they see it immediately. That's just my methodology to how we did replays. So we talk about some of those things on the end of this as well, like ways to make it work if you need to make a replay. And then also don't forget Tom and I just told you about the episode that we played at the end of the year which talked about don't do replays. But here's how you can do some things right. And so the methodology to the math is simply this. I looked at the six months prior, average episode, downloads, streams, whatever it was, the measurements were right. So I looked at the average. So I created and said it's like you know, 200 per episode or 2,000 per episode, whatever it was, an average per episode, I use that as my baseline. So I have an expectation that I should be able to do that.

You have a good basis of what listenership is for a show prior to running reruns.

Right. And I also did check it at the beginning and at the end of the six month period because some shows can have a higher growth factor. So you could be in your early days, you could be on a really good growth trajectory growing like 10 to 20% month over month or even more than that. Sometimes with the promo, cast, ad program, we see 15 to 25% growth month over month. So when you see something like that, I wanted to make sure we also were ending. So I might have also made, made an adjustment for that number and said, okay, the average was 2000, but I'm going to make a 10% adjustment because that's the growth trajectory. So I can expect 10% growth over month, over month. So I'm, I'm going to be at a, you know, at 2200. And so that was the number that I chose as my, this was just my benchmark number. It's not like anything I was doing. I was saying like if I launch a new episode, I should be able to do 2200 downloads. Like that was my mindset for thinking that was the benchmark number I was using per show.

Okay.

Then I took the exact episode that was its original number, its original download number. And so I took the exact episode.

That was replayed, the one that was replayed. And you took its actual number of downloads per month or average downloads per month or period.

I took its initial and it's total. I took both numbers. Okay. So I took its initial and its total. And I looked at that and remember I also had a date, so I needed to know how aged. Because even though I was only looking at the six month period, some of those replay episodes might have been years earlier. So their initial number is not actually Accurate. It's kind of more accurate to look at their total number that they've achieved over time coming back to them. Because if it was a valuable enough topic to garner interest today and still get current plays, then it may make sense that you're replaying it. Right. Like it may make sense as to why you chose to replay it, because it's still getting plays today. And then I compared it to the replay episode and what it did.

Okay.

And I compared it from the day or the week that it launched to its total six months after.

So really you had enough data over a long enough period of time to be able to understand the six months prior to airing a replay and the six months following airing a replay, is that correct?

Yeah, and I took whatever the replay period was. So if you replayed 20 episodes and it was a month, or replayed, you know, eight episodes and it was two months, I took that period as well and looked at it in its own. So how did the replays do during those eight weeks that you were not running any new episodes? And then when you return to new episodes, I looked at the six month. So I looked at totals like what should be that average mean download. And then what was it before and after in the six months prior to replays and the six months after replays.

Oh, I'm dying to hear what you found. Let's have some of the results.

Yeah, so here's the really, I mean, I think interesting results. So for the most part, with a few very, I'm going to say like hyper popular episodes. Okay. Where maybe. And I think that what may have happened was that whoever the guest was or whatever the subject was picked it up and re put it out on social media and stuff again. So it got a little boost. But with very few exceptions, everyone had a loss of place. Everyone had less place. So I studied what was about 30 episodes on one show, 20 to 25 on a couple of other shows that I studied, and there was really maybe two to three episodes that exceeded the number of original plays and they only exceeded it by less than 3% on average. But almost every single other episode lost traffic and its average listener loss was 13.26%, almost 13 and a half percent. But we had some episodes that lost as much as 92% and others that lost as much as, you know, 25%. So it was usually somewhere around 20 to 25% on most episodes. But then we had those few that grew offsetted it.

So on average though, across all episodes over a period of time, you're saying a 13% percent loss in listenership.

And this is just the initial downloads number. Right. If you think about that. So during the time period that these replays were happening, that's what we saw. So comparing them to when they aired the original.

Yeah. So less listenership during the week an episode aired or if it's, you know, it's like you said, a month of episodes. Over that period of time, as reruns are being run, average of 13% less downloads and listeners.

Yeah, almost 13 and a half percent.

Okay. Yep. Great, great. That's significant.

Yeah. So then I took the six months prior average and theoretically. Okay, this is what should happen. You should be on a growth trajectory with your show. Right.

If you're publishing consistently, I would agree.

Even if it's like as low as 5% growth per month over month, but you're always seeing a growth. You shouldn't see a dip. That usually comes when you slow down in publishing. Let's just very consistently we see that it's a very rare show that has a dip for any other reason. Like usually it's an anomaly. Like, you know, somebody went, you know, had some bad business dealings and lost all their subscribers. We've seen some of that.

We have seen that.

We've seen that. Yeah. So Tom and I have seen a lot here. It just over the years. Yeah. If you want to know some stats on certain types of shows, we can tell you it. So you should consistently be growing. And so in the six months prior, I took the average just because I wanted to straight out say, what is the average that I should see? And then I took the total of the six months after the replay period, not including the replay period.

All right, so after. So you've resumed publishing new episodes six months after running replays. What did you find?

I found a 10% drop in listenership.

Wow.

Actually almost 11%. It's 10.65%.

That should be raising alarm bells with anybody who has taken a break or is contemplating taking a break and running reruns. Now there's different. I mean, obviously if you take a break and don't publish everything, that's one thing. But if you're gonna contemplating running reruns rather than some of the other recommendations of tactics we've talked about in other episodes for what else you can do so that you keep publishing new episodes and try to keep your audience engaged at some level at least to not lose them. What this says is if you're gonna run replays, you've got a long term negative impact of 10% listener loss, is that right?

Yeah.

Wow. That would make me reconsider running replays, that's for sure. I mean, you and I have experienced it on a few different shows in the past. We felt we needed to do it, we tried to make it work, and times were a little bit different. Back then, it was probably different. But today, boy, if you're going to run replays and you understand this negative impact, I would think that would make people reconsider and maybe come up with.

A different strategy with a different approach. Exactly. Because. And reality is, this doesn't capture at all the fact that if you lost your binge listeners, if you lost your most loyal listeners, the ones who showed up at programs for you, signed up for your masterminds, bought your books, like, did all of that, and you lost them, that they were a part of that. They were a higher percentage of that 10%, which is likely because you. You're not going to lose a listener you don't have today. Right. Who's not active because they aren't going to see the replay. It's just not going to happen. So if that's what is apart. And so that 11% I lost overall is all from my most valuable listeners, that effect is big. 10% loss of your best customers.

I agree. I mean, I guess we don't really know are they the most active or the people that stayed more active, but certainly the people that left were unhappy, perhaps annoyed or frustrated, and.

You lost them. And so therefore, you're right, they're not going to be hearing about your next virtual speaking event or your next book or whatever it is that you have to offer them. They're certainly not. They're probably unsubscribing from your newsletter if you have one too, things like this. So that's. To me, it's alarming.

Yeah, I mean, we didn't measure any of that because most of the shows, I don't have access to it. Right. I don't have access to their dollars or to their subscribers on their, like, regular newsletters or other things. We never ran one on our show. So I am going to share with you. For those of you who go to the blog post for this episode of podcasters united.org I can't share client numbers because that would be, you know, I don't know. It would be unethical, I think, even if I did it in an anonymized way. But I am actually going to share with you the numbers that I first ran to see if it was even worth Doing which was on our show, WTFF. So on our 3D print show where we did this experiment, discovered that we not only did we lose listeners, which is magnified by the numbers here. I never ran the numbers back then. I just knew in my gut that we were losing listeners because they were vocal about it. They complained to us, and those were the people who came back week over week over week. So we were like, okay, stop this, like don't do it again. And so this is where we had come up with this idea. And this was before we started Potter Dies. So we didn't have any of anyone else to influence but ourselves in understanding what we were doing here. But it has been our policy to not recommend the replays or reruns because of our experience doing this at that time. And at that time we were running five days a week of a show. So we weren't just running one a week, which has. So it, it had a kind of magnified effect even though it was a couple of month period of time and that was it.

You know, I think at those days when we were publishing five days a week, the impact had to be even greater because we went from serving people every single weekday to really not serving them with new content at all for two months. It's like a huge letdown if you're a regular listener for, you know, your daily episode every week. I could see that would be bad.

So I did a quick check, a math check on this. So a couple of years later, we were taking a break because our daughter was getting married. And we actually told all of our subscribers that we were taking this break and that we would do a couple of updates. And so we did a monthly kind of little like checkpoint, like showed them a 3D print we were working on, did a little check in and then kept getting emails going like, are you coming back? Are you coming back? As we were preparing up and recording the new season because we always like to get ahead before we launched. And so it was like a three month break and we did not lose more than a few percentage of listeners.

Over that time period because we were having touch points and being transparent about what we were doing in advance because.

We were having touch points, we didn't annoy them. Like you have to think that there's a mindset here that we did not alienate as many people. There were a few people who left and probably found another 3D print show that they were getting served new content with and went and found them. But for us, we did not lose our listenership we did not see a significant drop more than a couple of percent. And that could have just been like people. Natural attrition that we just weren't noticing because we weren't publishing during that time.

And we, at that point, we didn't publish regularly, but we published a periodic update that was new. Is that right? So we weren't doing reruns.

Yeah, we didn't do replays or reruns at all. What we did was. And we had only done a weekly show at that point, up until the time we took a break. Yeah, not a daily like we had done in the. In what is the report that you all read? So we had done that, but we only had. It was like a 1.7% loss.

Oh, that's pretty good. So that does speak to a more proactive strategy and raising awareness of whatever kind of change is going to take place for whatever period of time. And then continuing to plan some touch points, although not at the same rate. Publishing some new episodes, even if shorter, even if less frequent during that time, can help preserve and retain your audience. And I would say that tracks with me just psychologically and behaviorally, even with my own interests, not only in podcasts, but even in some of the TV shows. Like I was saying, I do still watch some live stuff, sports. But I also tend to watch a couple of the late night TV shows which are not live, but they're recorded that same day and published. And I hate it when they're off for a few weeks and don't run anything. And they also don't tell you. So I arrive, like on a Monday night, hoping there's going to be a new show. And then it plays. I'm like, that sounds familiar. Is this a rerun? And I'll go look up the. What date did this first air? Because it'll say if it was recorded today or if Sunday previously. And I'm seriously let down, like, damn it, how long do I have to have this happen before I get new ones?

You are very vocal about the complaint.

I really am. I get annoyed. Yeah.

Yeah. And so this mindset is exactly what's going on here. So we didn't trip into this. But I do want to let everyone know. So we had kind of stopped publishing on WTFF in 2018. We had just kind of done 600 episodes. And we were like, done. Like, I'm not 625 or something. And we were like, that's enough. We're done. And then we ended up with a deal with Hewlett. Packard to come and do a season. And what they asked us to do, because they wanted the keyword and the first page of Google Value that we had already obtained, they wanted us to replay 12 episodes and then do 12 new ones with them. And so we did a 25 episode series. But what we didn't do was exactly replay and re air the same episode. Instead, you and I recorded a special update at the beginning so that our loyal listeners who may have heard it the first time, got a payout of what's new and then they could tune out when the rest of the episode played. We created a transition to when the rest of episode played. And we did edit the episode for, you know, timeliness things, things that were out of date. Right. So we did actually edit it and then played that. But because we were publishing the whole thing in a big 25 episode series and Hewlett Packard was pushing it out, the whole thing got its own audience. So the updates for our loyal listeners did not alienate them in the process, but the whole series got a whole new audience who didn't know us. And because of those replays, it made them want to go back into our archive. And so still today we get a few thousand listeners a week.

Yeah, we do. It attracts between 8,000 and 10,000 plays a month. And for a show that hasn't published anything since 2020, that's staggering to me.

It's staggering. But so that type of replay, so the kind where you just do this touchpoint episode instead of a replay, is one strategy to use. And I think it's a really great strategy and it works really well. Just never go more than what Tom and I always say, like, try to publish every three weeks because then you won't miss it. You won't get into this algorithm where on some of the apps it stops serving them updates if they had already set it to be downloaded. Right. You don't trip into going beyond it. And they say, oh, the show's archived, it's not playing anymore. And they remove them from the active part of the app. So that happens on some apps. So we don't want to trip into that. The second thing that you can do is do what we said, which is the update model, where you're really giving a valuable update on what's going on. Tom and I once replayed an episode in the middle of it. It wasn't in these replays. We replayed an episode on drone use in a disaster zone because a disaster happened and the owner of the company, the 3D Print Drone Company couldn't come on air because he was dealing with the disaster. So we did a push out forum talking about what they were working on. They gave us a press release and an update so we could have all the information. We gave that out and then replayed the episode and asked for donations for them. And so that's a really good way to utilize an existing episode, but give something current that is valuable and information to what's going on now. I mean, how many times have you like watched a show that maybe was a live show, like some kind of contest show or something like Shark Tank And Shark Tank's really great. And they'll say, where are they now? Like, what happened after. After the Tank? Those types of updates are really good. And it's great to then replay the original episode to remind everybody what they are. So coming up with a structure like that is way better than just a straight replay. And it's the only thing that I can say to you is if you're going to insist on doing replays because you want those ad dollars no matter what, then go ahead and mark them. Do your loyal listeners a service so they don't do what Tom did on Monday nights and get on and go, what the heck? It's a replay. Like, I heard this before, you know, it.

Maybe it's only certain types of people, the certain personalities get so really upset with that, but I really do. It bugs me. I wish that I would know in advance because my mindset is I'm looking forward to something new and it's nothing new. It's kind of like when a baseball game gets rained out. It's like, damn it, I got no game to watch today. You know?

And I think there is a mindset like that, Tom, but there's also the mindset that I'm tuning into your show because I need something and I needed you and you didn't show up for me. And I know everybody needs a break. Like, I get that, but you got to find a way to serve them. And we've also had some people who did things like had guest hosts. I think be careful of that. Like, I've seen them do it with like other podcasters. I was like, you could still lose your listeners because they'll be like, well, that person's over doing their show and they're actively promoting it. So I'm gonna go listen over there and you lose your listeners anyway. So I think there's caution in some of those other options out there, but I think you can get a little creative in how you think about this. But here's what I'm saying. It's like, look, I said I was gonna do the math before and the math is this. If you are making $100 a month and I'm doing 100 just because it's easy, I really hope you don't sell out your show for $100. It's not worth it. But if you made $100 a month and during the month you ran replays, you lost 13%. Now you make $87 that month, but every month after that when you return, you're only making $89.

So the math does say that you're only going to lose $79 over time. That my math says that you'll lose 66 bucks over the six months after.

Well, or to me, the way that I thought about it, as you're just describing what the income would be after the reruns are done, you come back to me. What it said is, well, if you're looking at it like a business, this is a losing strategy. Because if you do this and you're hearing this episode before you do this, before you run any replays, if you want a business strategy to reduce your revenue, this is a really good one. Now, I don't know who in business wants a strategy to reduce their revenue. Most of us don't. As costs are going up, inflation's going up, and things happening in, you know, the general economy, growth is critical. So if you want to have a negative growth strategy, and I don't really know who would intend and really want to do that, then this is your plan. So I think we're really showing that this is a good example of what not to do. Right.

But here's the thing. This question was asked to me from a network, right? And the network would rather make $87 than nothing. So they don't care about your losing show because they're making their ad dollars on whatever's playing at the time. What they can afford is for you to not be publishing because then their revenue drops for sure. So I can see a network encouraging you to replay at the detriment of your show and your long term listener loss because they don't want to see any hiccup in loss in their revenue from ad dollars because theirs is on volume only.

Yeah.

Not on quality, not on return, on investment, not on anything else. So be really careful if that network is asking you to participate in this model.

And you know, I'd like to share one more thing that I don't Remember if we touched on in one of the episodes where we talked about not running replays. But we've seen a few shows who they need to take a break as hosts. They need to re energize themselves. And I agree with that. I am not and I don't think you either, Tracy, are suggesting that podcast hosts would might not need a break. We're not saying you shouldn't take a break. All we're saying is you there are ways to take a break and still show up on at least a periodic basis, if not a regular consistent basis for the listeners. And where I hear this with podcasters is, you know, ones that strictly do interviews every episode, have interviews, have discussions with other people. You know what takes some preparation, takes time to find those guests and to line them up. Although we have customers that have guests lined up for over a year and those are the people I'm telling, well, you need to publish more frequently because you guess are going to be very dissatisfied that their episode won't come out for like a year. So that's a whole nother thing. But when you know you're going to take a break and you're an interview exclusive episode, what a few podcasters have done, following our suggestions, is okay, I'm going to bank up and batch record a bunch of episodes that are just me doing a solo cast, me speaking on something that's related to why listeners are listening. I don't have to coordinate an interview with somebody. And all I need to do is maybe I normally publish a 45 minute interview episode, but I could publish a 15 or 20 minute solo cast and I can record six or eight of those on a Saturday afternoon and bank them up. And then you continue to show up regularly. And what those shows have found, and I don't have the analytics on this the way you have provided some, Tracy, you were analyzing some specific things, but we've had podcasters who do that tell us, you know, what the solo episodes are. Some of my most popular episodes, people want to hear more from me and then they adopt that strategy. They go back to doing interviews, but not all the time.

Well, I think what you're saying, Thomas, and what we do see happen is that when someone takes a break and they do a thoughtful end like we were talking about doing right before we had our daughter's wedding and got really busy, right? People understood that. They have empathy for that and they're looking forward to us coming back. It's like, woohoo. Yeah, we're looking forward to it. And so when you don't show up back, that's when you have the problem. Right. So you got to come back for them. But the other side of that is, is that when you do it and it has an uncertain return.

That'S when they go looking elsewhere.

You're not managing your listeners expectations. And that to me is the critical mistake that a lot of podcasters make.

Yeah. And I'm not telling you to promise them that you'll show up every three weeks and just, just do it as a little surprise. Hey, it's me. I wanted to check in, let you know what I was doing for the last three weeks and how I'm feeling and what's going on in my mind and I'm thinking about these things and then touch points again. But what we do see is like the ones who drop seasons, and this is where we really see it. The ones who drop seasons have to work so hard to get their audience back. Because when it ends in a season, it's like not open ended. Think about it like that. They're like, I told you I was going to give you 12 episodes. And podcast listeners are so used to the podcast host abandoning them that they already are like, okay, well now I gotta find something new.

Yeah. I've never been a fan as a listener of seasons, and I haven't really been a fan of it as a podcaster either. It's a relatively newer, I think, trend.

Oh, I don't think it's new at all, Tom. I think it's old school. I think it's TV and radio model and.

But I see a lot of new podcasters talking about their shows in seasons and if they do that, it's kind of like they feel they have.

How do I say that? Taking that break between seasons and not public, everything is acceptable. Well, because I publish my show in seasons and that's just the way it is. And you know, just because they feel that way. I hope what this episode has helped people understand is listeners don't really see it that way.

Listeners don't. Right. They're there for a reason. They're there when they need you, not when you need them. Right. So you have to be able to be around for them. The only time that I have seen it be acceptable to have a season is typically in sports where when you're on the field playing and you're. This is, you know, the quarterback or whatever and you're on the field and you don't have time to do your show, you have other touch points. You have that weekly Touch point when they're watching your game live so you're not out of touch with them. They know what you're doing, and then you come back in the off season and do your show. I've seen that happen. But look, look at the Kelsey's. They kept doing their show even during the season. They didn't skip, which is why they make big bank on their show, which.

Is really giving audience what they want. They're giving the listeners what they want to keep showing up. It makes perfect sense that they're doing that. And, you know, that is what successful shows do in reality is continue to show up consistently. Now, obviously, there are exceptions or extreme circumstances, and hopefully we're giving you some recommendations for how to manage that and mitigate the potential audience loss. Right?

Yep. So I hope these stats are helpful to you. Podcast replay stats, not in your favor. There's a listener loss, and I think the bigger your show is, the more magnified that is. But the smaller your show is, the more impactful it is and the more likely you are to then quit your show. That's because you really, you know, when you only have 100 listeners and you lose 13 of them, you're in trouble.

Significant. Yep. All right, well, you know what? I want to give a shout out for any of you that want to listen to a very successful show. Tracy and I were guests on the 1000th episode of the Note Closer show. We'll have a link to that in the blog post for this episode@podcast United.com and it's really not related to. To this topic, except that it is one of the most successful podcast shows that has been consistent for many, many years. And he certainly knows how to show up a thousand episodes.

A thousand episodes is exceptional in the marketplace, in the podcast ecosystem. Exceptional.

Yep. So Scott Carson, no closure show. Check that out. And, you know, obviously we'll have the data that Tracy promised you'll be able to get from the blog post. Also, for this episode of podcastreaguesunited.com, when it publishes as a podcast, those of you watching it live are going to have to wait a few weeks for that to be there.

But those of you that are on Zoom, I'm going to give it to you as soon as we close out the live stream. And so you guys will get it right now, next week. We are not going to be live. We are going to be simulcast because we are away. But I have a special treat I moved up is something that I had been planning and working on for you, which is my social media plan. This is the 10 steps to putting together a social media plan. This is not social media advice. I just want to be clear with this. This is the 10 steps to actually just putting the plan together, whether you're launching, relaunching. I'm in the middle of a complete revamp. These are the 10 steps we used internally. The 10 steps you can use with a new virtual assistant or a new assistant of any kind, a team that you're using. I'm going to give it to you. That's why we're recording it, because it's a very masterclass style. It's not really as good in our normal conversational mode. But I'm going to give that to you next week because Tom and I are going to be away.

Yep. And this is just a personal thing. Have a relative visiting California who's never out here, and it's only on that day that we can see him. So we're taking the day off and going to see him. But we're going to show up for you with a new episode still. It's just going to be prerecorded.

All right, thanks in the livestream world. We'll see you next week. Heard something valuable today but didn't get a chance to write it down. No worries, We've got you covered. We partnered up with podcasters united.org where podcast hosts like you can get free resources, free masterclasses, the largest podcast tip library assembled, and free promotion opportunities. While you're there, don't forget to follow us on YouTube and on social unitedwepod so you can get feed your brand live. Until next time, keep podcasting.