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The How To Podcast Series - Podcast Co-Hosts, Practical Podcast Tips, and Podcast Community
E590 - Podcast Systems and Sustainability - The Podcaster’s Path, 24 Steps from Beginner to Pro
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Okay, we're rolling. Hey, welcome back to the how to Podcast series. It's Dave with you. Hope you're doing well. We're making progress. We're getting there, right? We're on this path together, the path from beginner to pro. 24 steps together, you and me. And it's good to have you along with us. We want to talk about podcast systems and sustainability for our show. Now that we're doing this, we're creating content, we're getting out there, we're doing our thing. How do we maintain this, and how do we keep this thing going and stay motivated at the same time? So I want to talk about systems and sustainability for you as an ongoing podcaster. This one's for you. Let's go. When we start a podcast, it's exhilarating. It's really, really fun. When we first start, ideas are flowing, episodes stack up, listeners trickle in. But without a system, that spark turns into burnout real quick. Sustainability isn't sexy. It's not a topic that everybody's running to hear about at conferences. No, they want to learn about the quickest way to make money or AI, right? But it's the difference between a 10 episode flash in the pan and a show that lasts long term. The big problem here under round sustainability and the leveraging systems to stay sustainable is the whole burnout trap that can happen in podcasting. Picture a season where you're churning out episodes weekly, but life piles on some family commitments that you weren't expecting in the moment. Your day job and gives you extra deadlines that you need to meet. And endless tweaks to your setup put you behind. Because you're always kind of just touching one more thing and just tweaking one more little piece of your podcast. You're recording at midnight, editing at lunch breaks, promoting when you should be sleeping. Excitement begins to fade and it's replaced by exhaustion over time. That's where podcasters have landed in the past. They run multiple shows like I do. I have nine. And they promise consistency. But it's hard to keep up. One missed week can snowball into silence for your listeners. And listeners start to drift away from podcasts that pod fade. They just stop creating content. And the guilt strung here, it can really grow and turn into fatigue over time. So what can pull you back? A single system. Batching your episodes around a single content calendar and then reacting to executing your plan. Is this going to help you a lot that this shift has proved to help as far as giving us the tools and the freedom for Us as creators. To juggle real life and podcasting, we all need to lean into what we would call relatable workflows and templates. We talk about sustainable podcasting, we run into repeatable workflows, something that we can set up and then follow into the future. We can break down our production into categories, for example, planning template. What's your episode brief? What's your hook? What's your key points? What's your action item, your call to action. And create a one pager for your episode that might work for you, Maybe a recording checklist, your mic checks, your backup app running quiet space confirmed, phones on silent, shutting off all notifications and closing multiple tabs and things that just we. We compile over time that we've run into problems with, and it's time now to adjust and fix. So make a checklist. What about your editing routine, how you approach editing your show and what's different and what stays the same, how you trim out your silences, how you normalize your podcast, how you do your intros and outros. The same sequence on repeat makes things a lot easier. And then maybe publishing a playbook, how to upload, how to do your show notes, how to do your show teasers, how to make sure your podcast is playing on all the apps. These aren't. This isn't like busy work that we're talking about with these steps. They're out there to help you cut down on your decision. Fatigue, standing there, trying to figure out what to wear in the morning. That piece, right? Should I wear the blue one or the red one? Red one or the blue one? We want to get past that in podcasting and just focus on creating great stories, connecting with our audience. So content calendars can help us to get past the endless treadmill that we're on in podcasting. So there's podcasters who just record one episode at a time. They give their episodes very little thought until it's like the day before they jump on the mic, record an episode, push it out, and we're done. There's. There's no planning. There's no. There's no concept of how episode five is going to relate to episode 25. There's no story arc. There's no beginning, middle, and end. It's just random chapters of a book thrown together. And it doesn't always make sense and it always doesn't add up. So we want to have some kind of content calendar that directs us and points us in the direction of where we want to go. We want to map out our titles and our recording dates and any major themes up front. Why? Why? Seasons. This is where people pick seasons. This is where people decide to go this route because they want to have a clear title topic that runs for a specific amount of time, and then once that's done, they move to a new one. So seasons can work for that. I personally don't use seasons for any of my shows. I just keep recording as we go. That's how I do it. But I like to create miniseries. Like this series I'm doing right now is something that I like to do because it's a group of like, episodes that are put together with a purpose of being connected to each other and is not a standalone episode. That's just random. So I like to do this. But there's times where I'm going to come back to a series and add to it with new knowledge, new information in the future. And that's another beauty of having a playlist, because then I can add anything I want, remove what I don't want. Super simple. So playlist for the win. Yes. I think we get momentum when we start batching out and recording more than one episode at a time. This really helps a lot. So really helped me focus and helped me to edit over multiple days instead. And giving me the opportunity not just to batch the recording, but batch my socials, batch my editing, batch my guest intake, batch my emails. Like all of these things can be batched. I think this kind of approach beats having like an endless sprint that we're on. Having a treadmill keeps you running it forever. And seasons have endings and new beginnings. Your audience loves the rhythm of a podcast and you reclaim your weekends because you have this down pat. Leverage the power of a calendar. What's our action step as podcasters? I want you to go back to that notebook again. You know, the same one we've talked about before, or a Google Doc, whatever you got. And I want you to build a simple four to eight week content calendar. I want you to list your episode titles in advance. Episode one. And I want you to have your first hook as well. For each episode, list out your episode titles and then I want you to assign rough recording dates to these. I'm going to batch record this group January 20th to the 21st, for example. And then block out one hour to review and tweak your episodes. I want you to do this now before your next episode. It'll feel like training wheels. At first it's gonna feel awkward, but soon you'll ride free from these training Wheels. Soon you'll break free because you've set up the routine that can be copied and multiplied. So put a little effort in at the beginning. Build out that calendar. And another little tip, depending on your content, look at the calendar and pick out dates that fit your content and your audience and work around those dates and make those dates your priority. So we have Black History Month, for example, so you should be focused on that. We have International Women's Day, we have Grandparents Day, Mother's Day, Father's Day, we have New Year's, Christmas holidays, if you celebrate Christmas, we have Easter. We have all of these seasonal events that people would anticipate. You can put your content ideas in there right away and theme them around what's happening on the calendar, especially if it matches with your audience. So plan that out in advance, and then all you have to do is fill in the gaps, fill in the weeks where there's no special event, and that's where you can create that content. So keep that in mind. Create a content calendar. If you have any questions you want to go through your calendar together, happy to help. Happy to be a resource. HowToPodcast CA if you're looking for more information about podcasting and you're looking for a community around podcasting, come check out howtopodcast ca. It's my website where everything we do around podcasting, the show, our community or meetup resources, there's a lot of great stuff there for you. A whole list of free tools that you can use as a podcaster to save yourself some money. That's based on my website, podcastforfree.com which just leads you back to my regular website. And if you want any more information as well, there's a calendar link on my website where you and I can meet anytime. It's always there. It's always available. Whatever you see available on your end. I'm ready to talk podcasting with anybody. I'd love to help you no matter what your questions are. We can grab a virtual coffee and we can talk through what your big idea is. Maybe some of your struggles in podcasting, maybe some motivational things, maybe some growth things. Happy to help you over at howtopodcast ca. Come check out the website. Let's connect. Stick around because we have a bunch more episodes here on The Podcaster's Path. 24 episodes here in a row. That's meant to be kind of your starting point for your journey as a podcaster or if you're going to start a new show or you want to refresh your journey and catch up on maybe some of the things you might have missed. That's what this show's about. I'm glad you're here. My name is Dave. Love to help you reach out anytime. HowtoPodcast ca. Take care. Talk soon.