Welcome to episode 523. I want to talk about really easy and maybe unusual, unexpected ways to improve your podcast in the next 30 days. We’ve talked about improving your podcasts in a short span before, but I want to talk about some no effort ways to improve your podcast.
Because oftentimes I think when we think about improving our podcasts, we go right to like, “I need to completely restructure how we’re presenting show notes. We need to completely restructure how we’re marketing the show. I need to completely reformat the show. I need new graphics to promote. We need new cover. I need to book a really big guest.” I’m trying to think of other things that have been brought to us to reformat shows. When oftentimes it’s like, hey, hey, hey, hey. I have some really simple ways for us to do this. One we’re going to jump right in today, guys.
One, take some time off from recording.
Stop, stop, just stop. This does not mean you have to take time off from distributing your show. It just means you’re going to take some time off to record your show. So look at your episodes that you’ve run in the past. What are the episodes that have done really well? Do you have a challenge or a mini training that you run as a free opt-in? Run it on your podcast. Driving them to the opt-in to get whatever workbooks or additional documents or additional audios or meditations or journaling pages or whatever the thing may be that you have there.
But run the audio, run the content part on the podcast. Run it as a series. Run a three day challenge as a three week challenge. Heck, run it as a three day challenge, but add extra episodes. We’ve done this with a lot of clients. We’ve put five day challenges out Monday through Friday, we ran the episode.
If you want to sort of see this or hear this in practice, the Bold Leadership Revolution, Tara Newman, the podcast is called the Bold Money Revolution. Look at the last week of the year in 2020 or 2019, because she’s got this incredible journaling for clarity, vision and abundance five day training that she does. It’s totally free. It’s on her website. If you go to the boldleadershiprevolution.com, you can get access to the training.
But we run it the last week of the year, Monday through Friday as a podcast series, because it’s an incredibly good time to do that practice. It is probably the five days I’m most consistent journaling because I do the program along with the podcast every year, because it’s such a good reset for me. I’m off because that weekend between Christmas and New Year’s, I’m not in the office as much. But like also all of the crazy stuff we were doing before the holidays are done and where we’re hanging out. And so it’s a perfect time.
And it’s a great, super valuable bit of content and it’s a great way for her to be able to take a step back from needing to record because we already have this incredibly valuable asset that we can deliver year after year, because it’s something you can rinse and repeat. It’s something you can do over and over again. You can, in fact, I think it’s incredibly helpful to do it. I loved doing it again this year because I compared my wheel of life, which is the first day. I compared that to the year before and I saw the changes, even in 2020, the things that improved.
And so run a challenge, run your most popular episodes. We’ve got a story up on the podcast production page from one of our clients, Penny who became ill late last year and she was knocked out. She couldn’t record for like six weeks. She needed to rest and it was like, cool, we’re going to take your show that’s done, I think at that point we had recorded or she had recorded. We’d released 25-ish episodes.
Well, here’s the deal because she was a little bit ahead, we had a little time upfront and then we repurposed episodes through the end of the year. She didn’t have to record again. I think we ended up giving her eight weeks and oh, by the way, those two months that were repurposed episodes where we released episodes were two of her highest download months.
So the best thing can often be to just give yourself some space, give yourself some rest and use the content that’s already worked in the past because I guarantee you more people listen now than listened before. I guarantee you that there is somebody who heard the episode once and hears it again, and this is the time it makes an impact. This is the time they see or feel or whatever the change or an idea or a suggestion actually gets through the brick wall that is our brain. It’s incredible. So first and foremost, take some time off. Run a best of series, repurpose a challenge, whatever.
Number two thing. Repurpose, repurpose.
If you used to write blog posts, go look at your blog posts and record them as podcasts. The challenge we talked about above is a great repurposing tool. In the example, we used it in the first where you’re taking time off, you don’t have to record anything.
But let’s say you have a five day challenge where you don’t have audios because it’s five like PDFs that they get. Great. Turn those PDFs into mini episodes. Now you’ve made both people who opted to the challenge, you’ve added value to them because now they have audios to go with the PDFs and you’re driving traffic to those PDFs in a whole other way, because now you’re talking about them on the podcast in a really direct way.
You go to some Facebook lives or some Instagram. I mean, like IGTV videos you’ve done. Repurpose them. Heck, in some cases you may be able to rip the audio out of those videos and repurpose them. I love to do this with Instagram stories. If I get an Instagram story that just goes bananas, cuckoo great. I get a ton of comments. Kind of DMs were engagement, shares, whatever. Well, that needs to be a podcast episode.
So how do I make the two minute ramble on Instagram a 15, 20 minute podcast? Well, I dig deeper into the idea. I flesh it out or sometimes I’ll put that point and put some other points around it. I’ll use it as one of the three ways to improve your podcast in the next 30 days, just saying. This might’ve been an Instagram story.
I want you to look at where you already have stuff that works, and how can you integrate it into the podcast? Because here’s the deal. Everything I mentioned here takes very little effort on your part because it’s already written. It’s already created. All you have to do is do this part, record it. Have your team take care of it from there.
Speaking of, because I heard someone in the ether just now say, but I don’t have a team. Well, the third, and in my perspective, the most important and impactful way you can improve your podcast in the next 30 days.
Get some support.
If you already have support, and when I said the comment about having your team support you and you went, oh, I don’t know, then you don’t have support. I don’t care if you’re currently paying someone to produce your show, you don’t have support. You have team members, you have payroll, but you don’t have support.
Because if my clients, and really as my clients because I guarantee you there’s someone listening to this show, bring that to us. Yes, that is a great idea. And in some cases we take it to them. These are the kinds of things we talk about in our quarterly calls when we’re building our plans. Cool, what are we selling? Oh, there’s that challenge you have in front of that? That worked really well when you ran it last year, let’s do it again this year. I don’t do anything, but we do. They don’t have to do anything.
Get some real, true, supportive support. You do not have to do this alone. And it gets a heck of a lot easier to get better at it when you have help. All right. It’s quick once a day. I hope you reach out, hope you get support. Whatever that support may look like for you. I’ll talk to you soon.