← Podcasting Business School: Podcasting Tips for Content Entrepreneurs
Podcasting Business School: Podcasting Tips for Content Entrepreneurs
621: Simple Podcast Growth. (My weekly podcast content strategy.)
00:27:44
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- [00:00]
A
Hey there. I'm Jan Ditchfield, the host of no BS Business School. Before I started working with Adam, I was caught in the post launch frustration zone. I couldn't figure out how to make my podcast grow, and it certainly wasn't making me any sales. My business was doing well, but my podcast wasn't part of my funnel. If anything, it was more like a chore than it was something that was bringing me revenue. Within three weeks of working with Adam, I doubled my downloads and brought an additional $6,500 in revenue into my business from my podcast. Because of everything that Adam taught me and helping me get really clear on understanding the systems, the strategies, and the funnel that was gonna work for my audience, I'm now tracking to put an additional six figures into my business by the end of next year from my podcast. I am a fan of Adam's for life, and one of the best decisions I've ever made in my business was working with him. If you've been struggling to get your podcast to grow, if you're struggling to figure out how to monetize it, if you just need some guidance from somebody who really is in your corner, Adam's your guy.
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B
What's up, Pod Pals? It's your buddy Adam, and you are listening to Podcasting Business School. It's the show where I teach podcasters simple strategies to help you grow your audience and turn your podcast content into new clients. Today we are talking about one of my very favorite topics. It's one of those podcasting hills that I will die upon. The extreme advantage of releasing weekly podcast episodes. I do really thorough onboarding with all my clients that I work with, whether it's group coaching, one on one consulting, whatever. And we always kind of have this talk if they aren't at weekly content yet. I explain why it's important and how to get there. All right, and that's exactly what we're going to cover here today. Speaking of clients, if you guys could use a little help with this type of a process with your growth strategy, specifically, use the link in the show notes, hit that discovery call button, and you can hop on my calendar and we can chat about working together. So first thing first, we're gonna dive into the. Why? Why is this important? I've got four reasons. I'm gonna state my case here, Pod Pals. And you know, I'm on threads. That's my only social media platform that I'm. I'm active on. And this used to bother me, but now it doesn't so much. I See a lot of other podcast coaches out there that are kind of preaching the opposite, saying you really don't need to release weekly episodes. You just got to put out good content. And it used to bother me, and now not so much because I'm like, all right, you can go ahead and do that. While I'm out here doing, cranking out awesome weekly episodes of podcasting, business school, apples to apples comparison, people are gonna listen to my show. So I'm like, go ahead, you teach that. And I think that'll attract a certain type of person. So what we're gonna talk about today, starting off with that, that why is that weekly content is actually an audio podcast superpower. Speaking strictly audio content, like you are listening right now in your earbuds, right? Audio podcast superpower. Weekly content gets infused into your listeners routine, their life rhythm, their life routine. And what I mean by that, it's unique in terms of content consumption. People don't consume emails like this. People don't consume social media or even YouTube like this. But the advantage of an audio podcast is that our audience is doing something else. You're doing something else right now. I've said this before, I'll say it again. You're probably not sitting in a completely dark room just focusing on the words coming from my mouth hitting your eardrums right now. Unless you're a psycho. And I, I support that. All right? But, you know, most of you are not doing that. You are driving, you are walking, you are lifting weights, you are eating lunch. You're doing something else. You are multitasking. And that's a superpower. Because a lot of people get into a listening rhythm, they go, oh, Adam's new episode drops every Tuesday morning. Tuesday at lunch, I consume it. Or Tuesday when I drive home from work, I consume it. You know that for since 2015, you've been able to count on me to show up. And I show up every single week. I've never missed a week, whether it was with my health podcast or this podcast. There were like three years where I was doing both. I was putting out three episodes a week of my health podcast and two episodes a week of this show for a three year period where they, they were all going on at the same time. That was intense. So just going to one a week now, I'm like, this is. This is kindergarten. This is easy. So being able to show up for you and you take that content and put it into your life routine, I want to keep that real estate. We all know how hard it is to get A new listener to acquire that person and gain that real estate in their. Their earbuds on a weekly basis. So I want to keep that. I fought for it. I've got you here. I will be here every single week. I will show up for you, and you can show up and get some great content and you can count on that. So that is a superpower that I do not want to give up. So that is one of the. And so if I took a break, guess what you guys are going to do? You're going to listen to something else. I've had a couple of my favorite podcasts I've been listening to for years and years and years now. They're getting all out of whack. Like, one goes, okay, now I'm gonna do every other week. And guess what happens when they start throttling back? It's been every other week for about two months. No episode. So it's really easy to lose your routine. Back when I owned my gym, one of the things I really got preachy about was I said the most important exercise that you have to do every week is walk through this door and plug in, plug into my energy, all right? And just that single focus point of just get in the gym, that help people, right? Same thing for content creation. I just got to hit record. I got to hit record. Every single week Tuesday morning I do this. I've done this for over a decade. So this is a part of my routine that I must do. All right? So that's how this superpower is infused into our audience members life routines. That's the first why of why you should try to get to weekly episodes. The second one is something that not a lot of people really realize is happening. This was first brought up on the show by Rob Walsh, formerly of Lipson. Now he's with Captivate FM. We talked about this in an interview back in 2025. It's the Apple 515 rule. And if everything else that I say when I'm talking about weekly episodes doesn't convince you, this single principle should, this single thing. Apple Podcast still the area, the place where most audio podcast content is consumed. All right. Still more than Spotify, more than YouTube. It's the biggest. And I guarantee the other platforms have something similar to this because Apple is kind of the standard that they built their platform upon. That's kind of the template Apple 515 rule. So somebody hits follow used to be called subscribe. Now it's called follow because Apple does those sorts of annoying things. Somebody hits follow on your show if they do not listen to either five consecutive episodes or they don't listen to an episode over a 15 day period, they no longer have those episodes getting automatically downloaded to their phone and they no longer get push notifications on their phone. All right, this is a big deal. All right? So we think about weekly episodes, all right? We. I just, I just know I have to crank out a weekly episode because that 15 day rule, like if you don't release an episode for three weeks, you've basically lost the advantage of having people follow your show or subscribe to your show because they're not going to have those episodes automatically downloaded their phone and they're not going to get notification that that episode is on their phone. That's a problem. That's a big deal. Now, looking at, you know, some other ways that this could happen is like, you know, your audience members go on vacation for a week or something like that. Like, that's where this rule comes into account. Now some of you are doing the opposite. You're doing daily, right? You're like, okay, I release Monday through Friday. That's where that 5 episode really comes in for, for that situation. What if somebody does go on vacation for a week or they're sick for a week and they don't listen to your daily podcast? They've now missed five episodes in one week and this rule comes into effect. So it can go the other way too. But if your audience. So again, if your audience doesn't listen to five, one of five consecutive episodes, if they miss five episodes in a row or they do not listen to your show for 15 days, we're screwed. Like, this is a hu. Like not having that episode show up on their phone. Not getting that push notification is a huge freaking deal. All right? So that's another reason why weekly content is a sweet spot that's going to really take care of us on, on both of those little checkboxes to make sure that the Apple 515 rule is not getting us. Now these last two are some more things that are more about those of you that are creating content to get clients, all right? Especially this next one. So expert positioning, the more episodes you put out, the easier it is to develop expert positioning. If you're doing solo episodes, if you're doing coaching episodes, especially this is when my competitors are out there going, yeah, I release an episode whenever I want. I'm going to take an eight week break. In between seasons, I'm like, go ahead. I'm going to be doing solo episodes and teaching the hell out of My audience and I'm building expert positioning while you're taking a break from releasing content. Go ahead, my friends. And you guys should think about that in your content niche. Like, go ahead, take, take a break. In between seasons, I am going to continue to crank out episodes because I'm building up expert positioning faster than you are. It's, it's just a fact. So if somebody searches podcasting tips, they start listening to someone else's show first. That person takes a five week break in between seasons. They're used to listening to podcasting tips on whatever day of the week. Maybe they search it again, they go, oh, look at this. Every single week, podcasting business school. 621 episodes. That's a lot. I can binge on that. They find my show and I've got my hooks in them. You're not going to get them back. Right? So building expert positioning faster. The last point of the why of the weekly episodes is just getting better, faster. My first hundred episodes of this show sucked. The last 521 decent. Pretty good. The last 100 really good. In my humble opinion. My maybe not so humble opinion, but you have to get reps in. And if you're, if this isn't every once in a while thing, it just extends that process. And the further we extend that learning curve out, the increased likelihood there is that you quit because you aren't getting results. Cause your content isn't that great and your audience isn't growing because you're releasing episodes, you know, whenever instead of having a real locked in cadence. All right, so those are the four reasons why we need to consider getting to weekly podcast episodes. Number one, it's a content superpower. Number two, the Apple 515 rule. Number three, you develop expert positioning faster. And number four, you just flat out get better at podcasting faster. Now the really handy stuff. I've got six ideas on how to get to weekly episodes. Like how to get there. Let's say you're releasing whenever you want. Or maybe every other week or one a month. Let me just say this, let me just acknowledge. I know you're doing the best that you can, all right? I know it. A lot of you, you have a full time business or even a 9 to 5. And you got kids, and your kids are playing 12 sports. And you got dirty dishes, you got laundry, you got your own workouts to do. You got things you know that you're working on. And this is getting tucked into the nooks and crannies of your schedule. And you're Doing the best that you can. I acknowledge that. All right, but, you know, if you want to keep things in hobby Mode, that is 100% fine. And I support that. Like, podcasting can be a super cool hobby. But for those of you that have a dream, like I did in 2015, to make something of this and earn meaningful income, all right, for those of you that that is 100% true for, we have to shift out of hobby mode. It's time to put on our big boy and big girl work pants and get to work. And we have to find a way you can make progress. You can make excuses. You cannot do both. All right, so here are six ideas for how to get to a weekly cadence. All right, number one, you got to commit to a set content creation schedule. Like, my Tuesday morning is locked in. All right, so maybe you have an hour on a Wednesday or a 90 minute period or 45 minute, 30 minute, whatever it is, find a spot on your schedule, block it off, Put a freaking electric fence around that baby, and don't let anything else in there. That is your content creation time. And I just put up a post on threads. Tuesday morning is my content creation time, and the world conspires against me. Like, my neighbor right now is mowing his lawn. My neighbors like to do wood chippers on Tuesday mornings. They like to run chainsaws on Tuesday mornings. You know, heavy construction equipment, cement mixer. Like, it's like the most random things that happen that are super noisy on Tuesday mornings. But that's why I go into script and I use that little studio sound thing, and it helps. All right, so setting a commitment on your calendar to creating content on a specific day at a specific time, and that is locked in for content creation. This will allow us to batch record. This is how we get ahead and can create weekly content. For me, the only thing that saves me and has saved me for this weekly content cadence is having a buffer. I'm always two weeks ahead. And so initially, I had to work a little bit extra hard and get a couple of weeks of extra content. And now I just do one or two episodes a week, and I'm always ahead. All right? But having that set routine, that's the first thing. If you don't have a set routine, you have a hobby. 100. I will call you out on that. All right? So you can't, you know, be out there pretending that. That this is a business. I'm taking this super seriously. But I recorded whenever the hell I can figure out some time to record it. Like, lock it in. All right, you can do this. The second thing is going to help. Second tip, Second strategy is start doing solo episodes. My God, people, I can record four solo episodes in the time it takes you to record one interview. Like, today's a solo episode. We're gonna end up around 20 minutes, maybe 25 minutes. Who knows? I might get crazy talk for 30 minutes. I can at least do two of these in the same time you do an interview. All right, and these can be are really easy to batch record because I don't have to schedule anybody else. I can sit and go, okay, I'm gonna knock out three solo episodes this week and get ahead. These are great for, like, break the glass in case of emergency episodes as well. Oh, got a gap in my calendar. Not I, you know, something fell through on an interview. Still got to get an episode out this week. I haven't batch recorded. Boom. I got this solo episode in the tank. Here we go. Bam. Slide it right on in there. And keep my weekly cadence going. Third strategy, coaching episodes. These are also super easy to do. You pull an audience member or a client onto the show. You coach them as if they were paying you for 15, 20, maybe 25, maybe 30 minutes. And it's so low lift. It's so low prep. It's not like an interview prep. It's you show up and you coach them. All right? Again, can be batch recorded. I've had clients in the past that will block off one hour per month, and they do four 15 minute coaching episode recordings back to back to back to back. They are done recording for the month. Think about that. That's their content. That's it. Four 15 minute episodes where they coach listeners, build expert positioning, and convert listeners into clients and their audience. The thing about coaching episode is that when I pull one of you onto the show, that experience and the questions that you have, it represents the demographic that's like rabid listeners of the show. Right? Like, the questions and the problems and pain points that you have are the same questions that the majority of my listeners have. And as I coach you on how to solve those things and reach that next goal, it's really applicable to everybody listening. So it's really, really good content and it's really easy to create. All right, now, this isn't an episode about how to do coaching episodes. I've done other ones about that. So there are some ins and outs of doing a coaching episode. But just know, know that this is a strategy you can use to start filling in gaps. Like if you've Got a primarily interview based show. What if you. And you're going every other week. Let's say that that's, that's a pretty common cadence. Every other week, interviews. Okay, how about the opposite weeks? You do solo episodes or you release one solo, one coaching. What if you just start recording some of these and you've got that buffer built up and you can slide them into the gaps in between your interview schedule. Think about that. All right, fourth strategy. Use my one to one podcast editing ratio. I post about this on threads and it, it just explodes people's minds. They don't understand it. So here's the rule. This. However long it takes me to record this episode, I'm guessing it's gonna be about 25 minutes. I get 25 minutes to edit it. Now here's, here's the thing that breaks people's brain. I get these comments. So don't you listen back to the episode. Don't you listen back to it and like how, how can you edit it in 25 minutes if you have to listen back to it for 25 minutes? Let's talk about this. First things first, if you're listening back to your episodes, like put it at 1.5 speed or something like that. But here's the other thing. I edit it as soon as I'm done recording it. So I just freaking lived this thing, you know, like I just said it, I just recorded it. I'm gonna go in and edit it right then and there. And honestly, this one's gonna take me less than five minutes. If something is weird or the neighbor starts running the weed whacker right by my window here in my office or something like that, I'm gonna have to dive in and edit, buy use description. I throw it in there, I hit the studio sound button. It cleans it up. I can bulk remove uhs and ums. I usually don't. And I'm good to go. Here's the other thing. I've recorded like one 400 and something episodes as a podcaster, so I'm pretty good at like the one take thing. If you're newer, it's gonna take a little bit longer, but for damn sure, you shouldn't be doing six hours of editing on a, on a 15 minute episode. I know some of you are doing that. Just got called out by the big guy over here, all right? You can't be, you know, doing a 60 minute interview and editing it for freaking hours and hours and hours. This, this is the problem. All right? I think if you can fix this one thing and just realize that people talk like humans. You say every once in a while your person may not have the best audio and they might smack their lips a couple of times. Your people will not hit unsubscribe because. Oh, lip smack. Damn it, there's another lep smack. I'm out of this thing, so don't stress out about that. Now. If you are like a member of Over Editors Anonymous, all right, I'm starting a help group, Over Editors Anonymous. And you're really spending a ton of time. You're gonna have to whittle things down to get to this one to one ratio. The other thing is, I know some of you really enjoy this process. Like that's a part of the hobby factor of you love the tech, you love you. Like that's a part of the process that you really enjoy. Then you do you. But if you just feel like you are getting punched in the face every second that you have to edit your show, then let's shim it up a little bit. Let's thin that editing time out a little bit. All right? Shoot for the one to one ratio. See how it goes. And I think you will realize that you are probably over editing your show. And it's even better in that less edited version. All right, Fifth strategy for getting to weekly episodes is if you do a primarily interview based show again like that every other week. Cadence, an easy thing. I've done this with so many clients. I go, okay, you do an interview week one, the week, the next week in the cadence. In week two, I want you to do a quick thought solo episode where you unpack some thoughts, some key takeaways, some action steps, strategies, and it can be 5, 10 minutes, not a big deal. All right, and that's the next episode. And you go interview. And then another unpacking quick thought episode. Here's the. The roadblock that this person throws up. But Adam, my audience is used to these 60 minute interviews. If I throw these five minute episodes at them, they're going to unsubscribe. What, what? These are the crazy things that you guys are telling yourselves. So instead of like having no episode, you're basically saying that you give them five minutes. That's going to enhance what they learned in the. The longer episode that they're going to be mad about that and unsubscribe.
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False.
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This is false. All right, so just a quick follow up solo five minutes. The perfect episode length is you say whatever needs to be said and then you're done recording. It's not like you guys realize that I'm maybe. Some episodes are 12 minutes, some are 25, some are 45, some are an hour, some are 17. I pay 0 attention to that. I teach what I need to teach, I say what I need to say, I deliver the content that I feel needs to be delivered, and then I'm done. Who cares how long it is? Said the podcaster. With 1.2, almost 1.3 million downloads. All right, so keep that in mind. Last strategy to get to weekly episodes is this. Focus on audio only until you can get to weekly content and then add video. A lot of you are really struggling with the video component. Editing video is a totally different animal than editing audio, says the audio only podcaster. All right, that's why this is why I'm an audio only podcaster, because I would rather have a three day work week. Like, I don't make any extra money from having video content. I figured this out, like two years ago. I'm like, I make $0 from video content, so why am I creating video content? It just takes extra time. I just felt like it was a thing that I had to do until I just disabused myself of that thought. So focus on if you're at that random cadence and you're doing a ton of video editing. Just a thought. Try doing audio only episodes until you can get into a weekly cadence. You build up a buffer. Like, all right, now I'm releasing weekly episodes. I've got two weeks of buffer content. Let's try to fold video back into the mix. This is smart. This is gonna be a great play for many, many, many of you. But it's gonna be really hard for you to let go. So just think about this. For those of you that are releasing random content with a lot of video time editing, I. You know, if you've got 12 downloads per episode, what is this actually accomplishing? What if we could get you to an audio only cadence of every single week? Your show starts to grow, you're building expert positioning, you might be getting clients at this point. We can add in video content, but, you know, if we're gonna add in something like video content, there has to be roi, you know what I'm saying? Like, you have to go like, okay, I'm growing because of this, or I'm getting clients because of this, not just because you think that's what podcasting is. Podcasting can be audio only. I'm living proof. All right, so just keep that in mind. All right, so those are six strategies to help you get to weekly content again. Let me just finish with this again. I acknowledge how hard you're all working. I am not like beating you down or shaming you. I'm not ringing the bell of shame for not having weekly content. I'm trying to inspire you to get there, show you your path to getting there. Because I truly believe you'll get better results. All right, that's. That's the purpose of this episode. It's not to make you feel bad about having kind of random content. Maybe this is the wake up call that some of you need to switch out of hobby mode.
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All right?
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Because if you want to do something meaningful with your content, if you want to build a group coaching program, if you just want to impact as many people as possible, weekly content is a really big deal. It's a huge advantage. So I've made my case. Hopefully this has helped you out. If you need help mapping out this type of a content strategy, like Adam, I just have no idea how to get there. I can help. This is something I love helping people with. This is something I'm great at helping people with. So if that's the case, you want to chat about working together, hop on that discovery call, link in the episode show notes or head to the website www.podcastingbusiness.school and smash that discovery call button Pod pals. And with that, at 26ish minutes, as predicted, I'm gonna send you out into the world wishing you health, happiness and many downloads. I will see you on the next episode. If you need a little bit of help with your podcast launch, growth or monetization strategy, head on over to my website www.podcastingbusiness.school and get signed up for a free podcast Profit potential Discovery Call. During this free 20 minute discovery call session, I'm going to analyze your podcasting brand and tell you where I think you're missing on an opportunity for profits. Next, I'm going to tell you exactly what I suggest that you do as your next step. If I've got an offer that would help you accelerate the process, we can discuss working together as well. So head on over to my website, www.podcastingbusiness.school and click on the Discovery Call button to schedule your free podcast Profit Potential Discovery Call.