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Podcast Playbook: Helping Coaches & Advisors Convert Podcast Content into Clients
5 Mistakes That Are Stunting Your Podcast Growth
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If your podcast isn't growing, there's a chance that it's not because you're bad at podcasting. It's because you're accidentally making it way harder than it needs to be. In today's episode, I'm breaking down five common growth stunters. I see podcasters doing that are making you play the game on hard mode and how to make it easier. Instead, let's get into it. Hey, welcome back. Or welcome to podcast Playbook. I'm Justin, half of the team here at SimplePod Studios where we help coaches and advisors launch, edit and grow their podcasts. Today we are talking about the five common mistakes that I see that are stunting your podcast growth. And starting out at the very beginning is taking long breaks. We could probably pair up inconsistency of publishing with this as well. But here's the thing. When you stop publishing for weeks or months, if could be a planned break, maybe it's a season break. Either way, taking a break is going to hurt your podcast growth. And that is because podcast is momentum based. If you're top of mind and then you disappear, you're going to be forgotten about. Think about podcasting as like almost your MySpace top eight. This might be dating myself and maybe some of you guys might not understand what I'm talking about, but there's a social media app called MySpace and you got to put in your top eight friends on your page. It was actually super insidious now that I think about it. Probably not a great thing to rank order your friends. But podcast listeners only have so much shelf space in order to consume podcasts. Most listeners are gonna listen to somewhere between six and eight podcast. And if you're in that top eight, things are good. You're top of mind. And when somebody wants to go and listen to a podcast, they're gonna be thinking about or go check on your feed, go check their downloaded episodes and see what you've created. But if you take a break, you're going to slowly disappear out of their mind and be forgotten and probably replaced. And podcast listening is such a habit driven activity. People are typically driving home from work or working out or making dinner. And if you break that habit, you're no longer a part of that habit. You don't automatically get put back in. But the big kicker here is there is some platform impact as well. Specifically on Apple. Apple has this 515 rule which is super interesting. If a listener skips five episodes in a row or they haven't listened to a new episode in 15 days, Apple's got to turn off the auto download and the notifications. That means if someone was subscribed to your show, they were getting your podcast downloaded straight into their downloads and getting a notification when you released a new episode. That is no longer going to happen. If you take a break for longer than 15 days, you're guaranteeing that is going to happen. That's why I'm typically not a big fan of season breaks. It is way harder to rebuild than it is to just maintain. You're not necessarily just picking up where you left off, you're actually starting over. So here's a better idea. First of all, just don't take breaks. I think this should be the default mindset. If you're a weekly show or a bi weekly show, then you stay consistent to that schedule. But I know that's not practical in all reality. So if you do need to take a break, you need some time off. Maybe you're going on vacation for an extended period of time, you you're feeling burnt out, you're going to be stepping into a busy period with your business. There are a couple of other approaches that you can take with the season break. You could batch record a bunch of episodes before taking that time off and then just schedule them all out. You could also re release top high performing episodes as maybe greatest hits. Actually listen to a podcast where every summer they take a couple of months off during the summer and they re release about four to six of their best episodes from the last year. And I don't necessarily mind that. Or another idea is to bring on a guest host. Maybe it's somebody within side your business or a trusted friend or content creator that you know that can host your show for a couple of episodes. And if you're consistently taking breaks, especially because you're feeling burnt out, this might be a sustainability issue for you. So it might be worth dialing back. If you're a weekly show or a twice weekly show, going from twice weekly to weekly or weekly to biweekly, or even considering dropping some of the work that's involved with podcasting, maybe you drop some of the underperforming promotional activities that are tied to your podcast, like posting on Instagram or cutting short videos for YouTube shorts. Maybe you make your episodes shorter, maybe you don't have guests on any any longer. There are a bunch of different things that you can do to give yourself a break or to build time back into your day while not necessarily taking a break and losing all the momentum that you're building along with some of those Default options that are provided by someone like Apple. I like to think about consistency versus intensity whenever it comes to podcasting, especially early on in your journey. Okay, the number two common growth stunter that I see is starting anywhere but the episode promise. So here's the stunter you're opening with small talk or a long intro or ads before you added any value. Think about this episode. If I first started with some small talk about how my podcast journey has been going or what's up with the business, or had this long 90 second intro that you guys have heard over and over again, or I put two minutes of ads in there, it is likely that you're going to start questioning is this an episode that I want to start listening to? But if you get straight into the promise of the episode, I already read the title. I decided this was a topic that I was interested in. I clicked on the episode, I pressed play, and what should be next is you should be delivering on that payoff. If you're not delivering on that payoff, what's going to happen is listeners are going to decide to leave quickly. If there's a mismatch between title and expectation and opening. In reality, they're also probably going to bounce. Any kind of friction that you're adding to this process, you are likely going to lose people. If you're seeing retention drop offs in the 70, 60, 50% range, it is likely a sign that you are not getting into the episode promise quickly enough or not delivering on it at all. So here's a better way to go. My suggestion is to align the opening with the title immediately. One of my favorite and simplest ways to do this is just to start with an episode hook, then lead into the promise of the episode, and then pay off that promise quickly. So what this means is you might hear me reinforce that we are going to be covering five common mistakes that I see podcasters make when it comes to podcast growth. Then I'm going to tell you I'm going to cover all these and I'm going to give you a better way to approach them. That's the promise. And then I'm going to quickly pay it off. Within two minutes. You heard me start to talk about this concept and start on number one. Figuring out how to deliver value within the first one to three minutes is super critical for retention and especially for converting new listeners into ongoing listeners. You should always be thinking, how can I earn the next minute? How can I keep guiding a podcast listener and getting them committed to this episode? We've talked about this a couple of times on the podcast. If you're looking to go deeper into this subject, I'd recommend checking out episode 17. My friend Joe Salsihai came on and we talked about interview mistakes that causes listeners to drop off in the first five minutes. He gives up a lot of really great examples of how to do it better. There's a lot of really good nuggets. And that and that is episode 17. All right. The third common growth stunter that I see is titling your podcast something clever or cute. Here is the stunter. If your podcast name is vague, clever branded names that require some kind of explanation. If someone asks you what your show is and you have to explain the name of the show, if there's some kind of inside jokes, made up words or abstract concepts, these are all going to be things that stunt your growth. Why is that? This is really confusing, especially for new listeners. Imagine that they just searched a topic your podcast shows up, they look at your podcast name and it can't quickly figure out what this podcast is about and is it for me, if there is any hesitation, their brain is quickly moving on to the next podcast. Second on this is if your listener if a potential listener is confused, if is likely that the platform is confused as well, and that is bad. If Spotify and Apple cannot figure out what your show is about, they will not show it to anyone. You are not going to get any organic growth from search. All you're doing is making it harder for these platforms to categorize and recommend your podcast to others. And when you hamstring yourself and lose search and discoverability opportunities as a podcast growth mechanism, then you are going to be a hundred percent reliant on your effort and your organic growth. When it comes to growing your podcast, you're essentially relying on your existing audience instead of attracting new ones. So here is a better way to approach I would suggest prioritizing clarity over cleverness Whenever it comes to your podcast name, use language that your ideal listener is already thinking in. Include words that demonstrate what the podcast is about, who it's for, and the desired outcome that your ideal listener wants. We've talked about this tip a lot on the podcast, but something that I would suggest to add further clarity is a subtitle after you've titled your podcast, give another five to seven words in your podcast name feed to further explain what it about, what the show is about, who is it for, and the desired outcome that you help listeners with in an easy way. For you to figure out if your podcast name is confusing or not is to just ask strangers or friends if they understand what your show is about by just sharing the name. All right, the fourth common podcast growth stunter that I see is covering a wide array of topics and having no clear ideal listener in mind. So here's the stunter. If you're jumping between unrelated topics, maybe you cover personal real estate one episode and then building an online business the next, and then your health and fitness the following episode. You're trying to appeal to too many different audiences all at once. And the show clearly doesn't have a defined who is this for? This hurts a lot. Similar to what we were just talking about with the podcast name. This confuses listeners. New listeners are always going to question, is this podcast for me? And if they can't find themselves, if they can't identify with the show, if they read the last five to ten episode titles and the episodes are all over the place, they're going to unsubscribe or they're not going to follow at all. If there's no consistent expectation, it's going to be really hard to build a loyal audience. And if you're trying to cover too many topics broadly, then you're always going to be competing against the specialist in every category, and you're probably going to lose. Podcasting has got incredibly niche over the last five years, and now you can find shows about subtopics, and those shows are covering those subtopics so well. And finally, if you cover a bunch of different topics, it's going to be really hard for your existing audience to clearly recommend your podcast to other people. If they can't really describe what the show is about, then they are going to struggle to tell other people about the show. So here is a better way to approach this. First, define who the podcast is for, what problem you solve, and what outcome you help your listener achieve. Then I like to draw like three circles. Think about it. A smaller circle and then a circle with inside that circle, and then a circle with inside that circle. And this is kind of your three layers of your podcast. So if we use podcast Playbook, for example, I'll start with the big layer first. In a large concept, this podcast is all about business marketing. It's how to use content to grow your business with inside that niche. I talk specifically to podcasters, people who are using podcasts to grow their business. And then finally, actually with inside that niche, I like to talk about podcast growth. How can you grow a podcast in order to grow your business? And those are the three layers that I am going to try to stick with whenever it comes to content planning and content recording. On occasion, there might be an episode that kind of slips out of year three. If you get excited and you want to talk about email marketing with a friend or something other than podcasting, I think that's totally okay. But if you're doing that every single episode, it is going to be very hard for you to actually find an audience that is looking for the specific things that you talk about, because they might come for one episode, but they're not going to come for the next episode. And if you're having to attract a new listener every time that you put out a new episode, it is going to get really hard to grow your podcast. If at some point in time you really cover a lot of the addressable market, you can't. You can always expand later. At some point in time, it'd be awesome if Podcast Playbook really turned into a business marketing show. But right now I love talking about podcasting and helping podcasters grow their podcast specifically. On that note, though, I think niching down can be a really tough exercise. I've helped a lot of clients with this and I've struggled with it on my own shows from time to time especially. It's really hard to read the label whenever you're inside the jar. So if you need a recommendation, you want some help or support to get a little bit more niche, go check out episode four of Podcast Playbook. It's titled you keep hearing you need to Niche youe show, but how? I give some specific recommendations, some questions, an exercise that you can go through to build and get a little bit more of a niche show. All right, our last podcast, Growth Stunter that we're going to talk about number five is not studying what's working. Here's the stunter. You publish, you move on, and then you repeat. There's no reflection or iteration period. You and you treat pretty much every episode like a fresh guess. This is going to hurt you tremendously because you're going to miss patterns, signals, opportunities that are hidden within inside your analytics. You're going to keep repeating mistakes or make new mistakes, and you're not going to compound what's working well for you right now in your show. And with that, growth has got to stay linear or flat instead of accelerating because you're doubling down on what's working well. So here's a better idea or a better approach to this, and that is to build a simple feedback loop. I don't know if I would do this after Every single episode. Me personally, I like to do it once a month. At the very end of the month, I like to reflect back on all the episodes that I published. I'll go into my hosting platform, I'll go into Spotify for podcasters, I'll go into Apple Podcast Connect, and I'll look at the top performing episodes. I'll look at it by downloads, I'll look at it by retention and completion rates. I'll also think about where did I get listener feedback, if that was comments or DMs or replies. I'll start to collect all of this data and then I'll ask myself what topics hit like, what were the topics that really drove a lot of new listeners? What titles worked? What was I really surprised about from a titling standpoint? And where did people drop off? Did I have a great episode with a lot of downloads, and then all of a sudden I lost a bunch of listeners early on? Maybe there's a misconnect in my content or maybe I drug a little bit long at the beginning. I'll be asking myself each one of these questions after I review analytics at the end of the month and I'll take that information and I'll apply it to next month's content planning. I'll double down on winners. If there's a episode or a topic that hit really well, I'll try it again. Actually, one of our clients did this. They covered a topic that we weren't sure how it was going to perform. It was a pretty niche topic. It was all about S blocks, their financial planner, and it did really well. There must have been a gap in content. People are looking for this, but content creators aren't providing a lot of information about this. So they tried it again and sure enough, the second episode also rose to a top five episode in their catalog. So now we're probably gonna cover that topic every two to three months. At this point in time, if they didn't reflect back, look at their analytics, double down and try and experiment and work again, they might have missed that opportunity. But after they published that second episode, they actually got a listener reach out and said, hey, I started with this episode, then I went to this episode. Now I have some questions and I'm interested in working with you. It was really fun that we could work backwards and we saw where they where they entered the mix and how some intentional planning around content really helps serve growing their podcast and attracting a new audience. Anyway, if analytics scare you, if you haven't spent a lot of time reviewing your analytics, you're not sure what to look at. You don't know where to access this information. I highly recommend that you check out episode seven. That is, these metrics will tell you if your podcast is failing. That's our number one most downloaded episode. Lots of people have been liking that episode, so I highly encourage you to go check out episode seven if you haven't already. So those are the five common mistakes I see podcasters making that stunt their growth. And if you've slipped into any of these, maybe I was talking and you're like, yep, that is a mistake that I've made. No worries, you don't need to overhaul your entire show. I I don't even think you have to make immediate changes to your show. But most of these are actually pretty easy to fix once you're aware of them. So remove the friction and podcasting is going to be a lot easier. And as you're building your show, pay attention to these patterns and keep adjusting and improving over time. If you're ever struggling or you just want a second set of eyes in your podcast, feel free to reach out to me. My email is justinsimplepodstudios.com or you can always reply to me in our email newsletter as well. I read email each and every one of those replies and I really love hearing from you guys. What's resonating with inside the newsletter, which Speaking of, if you want more breakdowns like this, plus resources to make podcasting easier or updates on upcoming events we're hosting for podcasters, you can join our newsletter@simplepodstudios.com newsletter or you can also just use the link in the show Notes. All right, that is it for today's episode, and thanks for tuning into Podcast Playbook.