055: How to Make a Podcast Plan
Life loves to throw us curveballs. So how can you stay consistent with your podcasts, even when your schedule gets hectic?
The best cure is prevention, right? The same rule applies to your podcast! The best way to stay on top of your podcasting schedule is to create a plan well in advance. That way, when life comes screeching to a halt, your podcast will keep moving forward.
In this episode, I’m sharing my tips for making - and sticking to - a solid podcast plan. You’ll hear how I review my podcast at the end of the year, and I’ll teach you how to reflect on your relationship with your own show to make sure it’s still lighting you up and pulling its weight in your business. Plus, I’ll let you in on my process for working breaks and holidays into my podcast schedule.
What’s in this Episode:
How to know if your podcast is working for you
Reflecting on your relationship with your podcast
Reviewing your most successful episodes and why they worked
Why you should schedule your podcast breaks well in advance
How to stay consistent, even when life gets hectic
Links:
Blog Post: Do You Take Breaks?
Episode 051: How to Revive Your Podcast After a Break
See if you are ready to launch! Take my free assessment today!
Launch series
Instagram post
Have a current podcast that needs a refresh or a second set of eyes to help you take it to the next level?
Our podcast refresh service is a great way to grow and uplevel your podcast! Click here to learn more!
We want to look at what's been working and what hasn't. And what I really like to do is kind of look at the experience as a whole like, is this recording schedule working for me? Am I able to get all the pieces done? The way that I want? Is that part of it working for me? How do I feel each week when it's time to release an episode? Do kind of like a process audit, because this is the first thing that I think can cause a major burnout when you don't have the process in place or if it feels really forced.
Welcome to the Wild Home Podcast, where we talk about podcasting, life and all the wild in between. Join me, Caroline. Every week I share a peek into the world of podcasting and my wild life as well. Ready? Let's get into it.
Hello, and welcome back to another episode of the Wild Home Podcast, I'm coming at you and the early morning from my office. Always love when I can actually come and work in my office, and I've been able to do it a lot more. We redid the homeschool room, which is in the basement of our new house, and my office is right off of that. And so it's really nice because I can sit and work when they're doing independent work at their desks and we're right here next to each other. Yeah, I'm just loving the space and feeling really grateful to have it.
And just to clarify, it is not a fancy recording studio. In the past, I've really preached about how you don't necessarily need to have all the fancy things. And right now, I don't have all the fancy things. I just have my computer and my microphone and a couple of dogs playing behind me. So you may hear some noises and it works out great.
Today, I wanted to chat about planning for your podcast and as we're, you know, we're in Q4 right now when this episode comes out, and I feel like these quarters always sneak up on me. And Q4 is really a time when I like to start reviewing what happened throughout the year and what I want to make happen in the next year. And this is a really great opportunity to kind of pause and take a look at your podcast and make a plan for it moving forward and decide how you want to approach the experience of having a podcast as you move forward.
Before I dive into this content, I want to just share with you something very strange that happened to me over the weekend. I ended up that I had an earache, went to the E.R. because it was a Friday morning, and I just wanted to get it taken care of and it was really lovely. I didn't have to wait or anything. And turns out I had a really horribly inflamed case of TMJ. I think there's another acronym for it. Maybe TMD, I could be totally wrong. And it was so bad that I had pain radiating down my jaw. I actually had two knots in my jaw muscle, one like right where the the jaw joint is like right by your ear. And then I had one actually like and not on my jaw. That whole side of my face was swollen. And the strange thing about it is that since it's happened, I feel like I have lost a little bit of mobility in my face. I'm having trouble speaking as I'm recording. This is actually difficult for me to continually get words out without, you know, I'm having to really focus on enunciating, so I'm probably going to keep this episode short. I debated whether I should even record because I'm feeling very self-conscious about how I sound. But I wanted to get this out because it's already October 4th when I'm recording this, and I can't believe that it feels like time is just flying by. So I wanted to record this and get it out to you. And also, I posted on Instagram about this, and a lot of people apparently have experienced similar things and sent me amazing recommendations about who I need to see and what kind of follow up I need to do. So I really appreciate that. And just really thankful for all the people who shared their experience because I honestly was terrified that I was losing something, you know, in my face some mobility. So I'll be working on getting this looked at.
OK, so let's dive in the planning and let's talk about this for a second. So the first thing you want to do is kind of do a review of your podcast, right? And when I talk about planning specifically, I want to talk about your podcast and how it's working for you. And then we're going to talk about planning the content. So we're going to start with a review, right? We want to look at what's been working and what hasn't. And what I really like to do is kind of look at the experience as a whole, like, is this recording schedule working for me? Am I able to get all the pieces done the way that I want? Is that part of the working for me? How do I feel each week when it's time to release an episode? Do kind of like a process audit, because this is the first thing that I think can cause a major burnout when you don't have the process in place or if it feels really forced. And so we want to make sure that we clean up that part of it first, because in order to move forward with it and to record more episodes, we kind of have to have this together. And so some of the things in your system, I want you to look at, like I said, recording schedule. But also, is it time to bring in support or help with some aspects of the podcast? Would it make it easier for you to get it out if you have somebody helping you show notes or editing that kind of thing? Take a look at it as a whole and do kind of a check in with yourself, like how are you feeling about it? Because feeling confident and excited to sit down and record is really important. Does it? Feel good or is it feeling like drudgery every week trying to get these episodes out? And if it is feeling like drudgery, what can you change that can make it feel lighter and more exciting and something that you're ready to do every week, right? So that's where I want you to start is looking at the systems and the processes.
The second thing I want you to do is go into whatever you're using, Libsyn, Anchor or whatever it is and take a look at your stats. What episodes really seem to resonate with your listeners? I actually just did this a few minutes ago before I started recording because I'm working on my schedule. And it was really interesting to look at what things were popular and what things were not which got the most downloads and which didn't end. Think about why they got more downloads. Was it because of the content? Was it how you had the title? Maybe the title was really attention grabbing and sounded exciting. Or maybe it was a specific guest you had on that. Maybe they shared about it a lot, and that can really play into the downloads. Maybe it's a topic that you sourced on Instagram. Like you said, what do you want me to talk about in the podcast? Somebody mentioned it. You recorded it. And it's one of your most popular episodes. Look at the episodes and figure out what factors kind of played into that episode. Having those downloads and then see if you can build off of the ones that did have higher downloads. Can you take that topic and dissect it more? Can you break it down into even more episodes, or maybe you can build on it? Maybe in that episode you only kind of touched the surface, and so maybe you can do another episode that builds on it and link back to that episode. One of my most popular episodes to date is an episode that I did on creating a vision for your podcast. And so I'm really thinking about, OK, how can I take that and build it and make it more? And that's something that I'm hoping to do pretty soon. The cool thing about that episode is I have a download associated with it, and so that may be why that episode has done really well, because it's interactive, because it gives the listener something to do after they listen. So I'm definitely going to be taking a look at that and seeing if that's something I may want to do more of in the future.
Now we're going to kind of get into more of setting this schedule. And so this is something that a lot of people don't do until they get to it and it's in and then it's like a scramble to figure out what to do. I want you to sit down with the calendar and map out your holidays. I want you to build in podcast breaks and plan your content around these breaks and holidays. I find that when I am recording on the fly and just doing my podcast when I have time, that often a break is the last thing I think of. And so if I don't sit down and actually map out my episodes and say, OK, I'm going to take off here and take off here, I find myself either scrambling to rerelease an older episode or scrambling to record something that has to do with the holiday. Oh, that's the worst. I don't like recording on the fly like that, especially when I'm trying to get ready for a break. And I will be honest, I am actually recording this episode right now. I wasn't planning on doing it this morning, but I realize that this is like the only time I have in my schedule during this crazy week to do it. I was actually going to wait another day or two just to see if my jaw would feel better. That way, I wasn't like tripping over my words. And yeah, I had to just kind of fit it in. And so it doesn't feel quite as natural as it would have if I had taken the time to sit down and plan and looked at my week and said, You know, this is happening this week, I should probably record ahead and get ahead on my podcast episodes. And so kind of thinking about that even put in like your kids stuff, so your kids activities, maybe they have a big piano recital and all the families coming in towns, you're not necessarily taking a break, but you're going to be super busy that week, and it would be really nice to be ahead on your episodes. These are the kind of things you want to build in and plan it, because another factor here is when we don't build in these breaks and plan for them.
Another thing that can happen is we can just decide not to release episode one week, and then we find that that was really easy. So we just decided to not release an episode another week. And next thing you know, you're creating inconsistency. When we start to create inconsistency, we start to create inconsistent listeners. And so it's really important to have a plan. And that way you can communicate that plan to your listeners. So, for example, I'm probably going to take a couple of weeks off around Christmas this year, and that's something that I will let my listeners know like, Hey, we're going to be on break for the next however many weeks, and I may decide to share some older episodes during that time. And letting people know that is really important, and I do talk a lot about podcasts breaks. I think I've done an IGTV video on that and a podcast episode, and we'll link to those in the show notes. But there is a strategy around that. And so you can think about those things down the road, but. Right now, I'm just mainly talking about the calendar and getting it, getting it together, right.
The other benefit, I think that really comes from sitting down and working on a schedule and planning ahead, especially if you have guests. So I entered this season thinking I was going to have interviews and guests, and it just has not formulated yet because of my schedule and things that have been going on and the fact that because life has been so crazy and hectic, my podcast has been kind of a last minute situation. And so that hasn't allowed me time to like, actually schedule out interviews and decide who I want to have on the podcast. When you can sit down and make a plan, you can actually incorporate these things and make a plan to invite guests on and decide what times and days are you going to be available to record those interviews? And that's really key as well. So once you kind of sat down and looked at all these things, the next thing to do is to put it into a system that's going to work for you so you can actually start to do the thing. So I use a combination of airtable and Asana. I like a table for the planning fact and then I use Asana. That way, my team can get involved and help out with tasks. And even if you do not have episode titles or topics yet, going ahead and mapping them out and scheduling out the tasks, knowing that on these days you need to record is going to be so important for creating a system and a habit of being able to get these podcast episodes out on time. And so doing all the planning and all the introspective work doesn't really matter if you're not going to sit down and put it out into a system.
And so as you're looking at. So we're in Q4. So let's say that you're planning for Q1, Q2 of your podcast content. Go ahead and map it out in your system and have it ready to go. So that way, when you do have the topic idea, come to your brain, you can simply put it in and schedule it and get ready to record and get it out into the world. You know, a little bit of planning and a little bit of of time spent on this can make the world of difference in the consistency of your podcast. And so it's really important to take the time to do this. And even if you are a fly by the seat of your pants kind of podcaster, which I've decided is totally OK this year, my my opinion on batching has definitely changed. Just given my life circumstances, I would definitely batch if I could, but I simply just do not have the time right now. And so the way that I get these episodes out has changed a lot. But I will say when I don't have the episodes mapped out in my schedule so that I can see that I need to sit down and record and do the things they are less likely to get done. And you know, I will say it 10 times, probably five hundred times. But consistency is is really important and whatever your schedule is being consistent. And if you're going to be inconsistent, communicating that to your listeners is really important. And so making sure that even if you are a fly by the seat of your pants podcaster, maybe we can come up with a better word, even if you are a last minute podcaster making sure that you have your schedule set up. So you know that if I am going to sit down and riff whatever comes to mind, but I need to do it on Monday, that is going to be key to your success moving forward. I really do feel like if it's not in the schedule, it's not going to happen. And so make sure that you're creating a system for you so you can move forward with your podcast. But also that way it works for you and your business and isn't just an afterthought. I hope that makes sense.
So before I go, I want to remind you all that I am a speaker for the Boardroom League Live event, and I would love for you to come join me. I'm going to be speaking about sharing your message and growing your business with the podcast. I'm really excited about it. I'm going to be having a workbook that goes along with my talk. And in addition to that, there is going to be a special option for people who attend a really cool audio series that I'm putting together. So you want to be sure to sign up and then put the link in the show notes. It's not just me who's had this event. There is going to be a lot of amazing speakers and this is a really great event if you are wanting to step into that CEO role and grow your business. And so I really encourage you to check it out and attend again. The link will be in the show notes, and I hope to see you there. Thank you so much for listening to the podcast. I am hoping to be back next week with a better working job and I appreciate you sticking with me. Figure out this episode and I will see you next week.
Thank you so much for listening to the podcast. To stay in the know, head to WildHomePodcasting.com and be sure to connect with me on Instagram @wildhomepodcasting. See you next week!
