107: How to Audit – And then Refresh – Your Podcast
When you’re in the beginning stages of launching a podcast, especially a DIY launch, done is better than perfect, right? You can’t get too hung up on perfection, or else your show will never get launched. And that makes sense when you’re just starting out, but what about when you’re 25, 50, or 100 episodes in?
If you haven’t updated your podcast since that launch, it’s probably time to run a little audit and make sure that all of your podcast materials are still supporting the current goals of your business. So I’m walking you through the areas to look at when doing a self-audit for your podcast, why this process can be a growth opportunity for your show and your business, and the service we offer if you feel you need a little extra help with this process. Let’s dive in!
#1 | Your Podcast Description
Does your show description still align with the content you put out in your episodes each week? Even more important, does it still have the right links to point back to your business? Does it have a link at all? If the answer to any of this is “no,” this is a quick, easy, and impactful way to breathe some new life into your podcast. Plus, some podcast players now crawl descriptions when they determine search results, so adding in some key search words could help your podcast get found by new listeners!
#2 | Your Podcast Cover Art
When did you last update your cover art? How old is that photo of you on the cover? Does that even look like you anymore? When you see your podcast cover art in search results, does it grab your attention? This might not feel as important, but your cover art can be a huge help when finding new listeners and updating it is often worth the investment.
#3 | The Categories Designated on Your Podcast Hosting Platform (Libsyn, Buzzsprout, Anchor, etc)
Categories are crucial, because they tell platforms what your podcast is about and what other shows they should appear next to or play after. And if you’re showing up in the wrong search category, it’s not likely that those listeners are interested in your show or are your target audience. Doing a bit of research and making sure you have the right categories designated on your podcast hosting platform can make a world of difference.
#4 | Your Podcast Intro, Outro, & Trailer
If you have a pre-recorded intro and outro, when did you last listen through them? Do they still accurately describe your show and your business? Do they still have the correct call-to-action or website links? While you might tune out this part of your episodes, as you hear them all the time, new listeners probably won’t! And if the links are incorrect or the call-to-action is outdated, it’ll be confusing for them to find you or your business online.
#5 | Your Podcast’s Destinations
This one can often be overlooked as podcast playing apps are added and changed all the time. But, is your podcast showing up everywhere? Three or four years ago, Apple Podcasts was by far the biggest podcast player. But now, Spotify has caught up and even overtaken Apple in some measures. If your show isn’t submitted there, that’s a huge portion of your audience that is missing out! Take a look through your podcast host and make sure your show is submitted to every available destination and then see what your growth looks like after.
#6 | Your Podcast’s Larger Strategy
When did you last look at how all the pieces of your podcast and your business work together? Do the structure and content of your episodes still support the goals you have for your life and business? You don’t have to go back and redo every episode, but it might be time to rethink some of your podcast strategy going forward.
So that’s it! The 15 minute audit you can run for yourself to identify areas of your podcast that might need a little update. This can lead to new growth for your podcast and your business, so don’t overlook the importance of these smaller updates!
If you know your podcast needs an update, but are feeling overwhelmed about where to start or how to implement all the pieces, sign up for a Podcast Refresh, where we help you strategize and then implement all the great ideas we come up with together!
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The Transcript for Podcast Your Business:
107: How to Audit – And then Refresh – Your Podcast
[00:00:00] Caroline Hull If we just kind of set it and forget it and are publishing episodes without thinking about what somebody who is searching for a podcast on knitting may see when they come to your podcast, right? If you had a knitting podcast. I don't know why knitting was the first thing that came to my mind, but that's what came to my mind. What is it that they're going to see when they find your podcast? Are they going to want to click on it? Are they going to want to listen to it just based on what they see and what they read in the description?
[00:00:31] Are you ready to start a strategic podcast for your business and share your message in a way that feels wildly authentic? This is the place. Welcome to Podcast Your Business, where each week I share the strategy behind having a podcast that helps grow your business. I'm Caroline Hull, podcast manager, strategist and consultants, and I've seen the power of podcasts can have for your business. Let's get started. Hello and welcome back.
[00:01:03] So today I wanted to talk about something that the Wild Home Podcast team has kind of been noticing as we've been having a lot of conversations about this kind of thing that we're noticing, and that is the lack of keeping your podcast fresh. And so I'm going to talk about what keeping it fresh means for me and for our team, kind of what we think about that, and also how you can keep it fresh and why you should. So I wanted to dive into this today because I know that a lot of us launch our podcast and we get 25, 50 episodes in, maybe we get 100 episodes and maybe we get 200 episodes in and we don't really ever look back at the original stuff that we posted. And when I say stuff, I'm talking about like cover art description categories that your podcast is in, all of those good things.
[00:01:54] When I'm working with lunch clients, a lot of times, you know, they'll kind of get to this, this point where they get hung up on the fact that, you know, can I make changes down the road if something happens, if I change, if my business changes, you know, all those things. And of course, they always say yes. And and part of this is because I think when you're in the launch process, if you get hung up on perfectionism and having everything exactly the way it needs to be, it won't get launched. And so, you know, I really encourage people like we want to start somewhere for sure, but know that you can change it and you may need to change it because here's the deal. You are going to evolve as a person, as a business owner, as a podcaster. There's no way around it. You're going to change how you feel about certain things. You're going to grow. You're going to be more confident in your voice, in your ability to share your message on your podcast. All of these things are going to change and grow with you as you go through your podcasting and your business journey, right?
[00:02:55] And so the cover art that you use a year ago may not be reflective of who you are today. Your description may not be reflective of who you are today. Hack Your intro and outro may not fully be in alignment with your business and what you need those things to do for you. So just checking over your description, like start there because a lot of times people put their descriptions up and they never get updated. These are just little things that may need to change and grow and evolve with your podcast in your business. And here's the thing too. If you are not updating these things, they may not be working for you. So when I first started podcasting years ago, there was nothing that was crawling like your description or anything like that. It didn't need to be eco friendly and that's really changed. And so having a description that has key words and phrases and things that people may search for when they're looking for your podcast is really important. The other thing I want that description to do is convey to people why they need to listen. These are just in starting places and some reasonings behind keeping it fresh. We want to make sure I've talked about this a million bajillion times and our podcast is working for our businesses.
[00:04:12] And if we just kind of set it and forget it and are publishing episodes without thinking about what somebody who is searching for a podcast on knitting may see when they come to your podcast, right? If you had a knitting podcast, I don't know why knitting was the first thing that came to my mind, but that's what came to my mind. What is it that they're going to see when they find your podcast? Are they going to want to click on it or are they going to want to listen to it just based on what they see and what they read in the description? What about your trailer? How are people going to feel when they listen to your trailer? Are they going to be enticed to listen for more, or does your trailer not necessarily reflect what you talk about in the podcast anymore? All of these things are really, really important. And when you do kind of make shifts in your business and in your content, it's important that these things get updated as. Well, because it's going to shift. Who listens to your podcast? So if your description says one thing, but your episodes say another, they're not working together to find new listeners, right? So this is why I wanted to talk about keeping it fresh and why it is important to keep it fresh and not forget about these things.
[00:05:17] And so let's talk about how you can do a self audit. So let's say you're listening to this and you're like, Oh, I think I need to kind of look at things. What do I need to look at? And I'm going to give you kind of a few things that I think are really important to take a look at. Obviously, like I've just been talking about cover art and description for ever. So those are like the two places I would definitely start. When was the last time you updated your cover art? When was the last time you update your description? When was the last time you updated the picture of yourself on your cover? Art? Do you still look like that? I need to update my really bad people. I need pictures done really bad. My hair isn't even that blond anymore. So start there. Start at your description. Start at your cover art. Think about is this appealing to my ideal listener when they come to my podcast? Are they going to see and read what they need to see and read to want to listen to more?
[00:06:10] The second thing I want you to look at is your categories. When you first set up your podcast, you may have chosen some categories that you thought really fit your podcast or where your ideal listener may be. See if that is still the case. What comes up when you search for your podcast or search for a topic that is similar? The other thing you which to keep in mind and this is something that you know, I like to do this periodically, which is just look at the categories because they're changing a lot. It feels like every other month there's some updates being made on whatever app and the categories are being shifted and changed. In fact, I logged into Lipson the other day and noticed that I can now only choose two categories in the classic. Libsyn So there's just always something changing and evolving. The podcasting world is new, it's growing, so there's just always some adjusting that needs to be made. And I think categories is a really great place to start.
[00:07:07] The other thing about categories too, is it's good to evaluate if you're in the right category anyways. Even if you're not worried about keeping things fresh, you're just kind of looking at growth. I always like to kind of revisit and make sure that the categories are working for me. So description and cover art categories. And then I want you to think about your intro outro, and your trailer. Are those working for you? Do they accurately describe your podcast? The trailer should be kind of a preview of your podcast episodes, and it can be a really short one, but it needs to be a really good preview. Is it a good trailer for you right now? Does your music still feel right? You know, the music needs to fit as well. Does it still make sense, the music that you're using for your intro? Is it short, sweet and to the point, or is it super long? And it gives a whole bunch of chaos, which probably isn't necessary. And then in your outro, if you're recording an outro with every episode, that's one thing. If you have an answer that you're using over and over again, does it have a strong CTA? Does it tell people what they're supposed to do after they listen to your podcast? Is it clear? Is it short again? Does the music make sense? These are fun things to look at, right? And these are things that you can refresh. It's no big deal. You don't have to go back and change all of your episodes. You can just change those moving forward, right? So this is where I would start. If you're thinking about doing kind of a self audit of your podcast, this is the first place I would start.
[00:08:37] Okay. So we've just kind of talked about like structural things and like visibility things like when people come to your podcast. The other thing you really want to look at is am I in all the places? Is my podcast showing up where it needs to be? Is it showing up correctly? Now this can get dicey because sitting down and searching on every platform known to man looking for your podcast is not the most fun in the world. But are you on all the major players? Are you showing correctly, showing up correctly? Is your information being displayed correctly? Right. And so that's another really important piece of kind of this audit process, because again, we'll submit to Apple, we'll forget about it. And then while you were forgetting about it, Spotify became huge. And so you need to make sure you're on Spotify. Do Android users have proper access to your show as well? So making sure that you're on apps and places where they need to be. And so this is something that you can do and doesn't take a lot of time and you can make these updates really easy in your RSS feed. Host And I highly recommend doing this periodically, going in and taking a look. Making sure that everything is up to date in how it should be. Making sure that your keys are all in alignment and correct. That's really important, right? Because we want to make sure the worsening people to the right place.
[00:09:51] So I want to take this just a little bit a step further and think about what if we're kind of approaching this as. A moment of growth and up leveling for our podcast. So now it's not just about refreshing the podcast for the sake of staying fresh and making sure that it's showing up well for people and that kind of thing. But we also want to use this as an opportunity to grow our podcast into app level. A few things that can help facilitate that growth. And this is where I like getting some help maybe necessary, because sometimes you need another set of eyes on things, another set of ears. In the podcasting world. We need another set of ears on things. And there are some other things that you can look at as well. Like what are your long term goals for your podcast and is what you're doing right now going to help you reach those goals? Are you using the proper episode structures for your business? Are you growing in the right direction? Can you look back at old episodes and see what has done well for you? What maybe you need to improve upon, right?
[00:10:53] So you can really kind of dive in and even go deeper as you do this kind of audit and see where there are opportunities for improvement to facilitate growth. And this is something that we have started doing at Wild Home Podcast a couple years ago. And it's one thing that I kind of realized that we were doing advertently, right, just helping our clients kind of make decisions moving forward about their podcast. And I really wanted to kind of put this all together into one thing. So that way podcasters who are established and already have a podcast and are wanting to go through this process can get some support. And so we now have a refreshed package that is all about this. This is exactly what we do. We do an audit, we're going to update everything. We're going to create a plan for strategy and growth and just make sure that you're doing all the things that you need to be doing to grow your podcast, but also make sure that it's working for your business. And so, again, you can totally do a lot of these things on your own by doing a podcast audit yourself like I've talked about and just really, you know, having a critical eye and a critical ear and thinking about the ways that you can facilitate improvement and growth for yourself and your podcast.
[00:12:11] And if you decide that you need a little bit of help with this, you can handle wild home podcasting dot com slash services and you can scroll down and you will see the podcast refresh there. And I'm really excited about this. I think this is just as the podcast industry is changing, growing and evolving, we also have to do that right? And we are doing it because we're business owners, We're constantly working on growth and improvement. And so I wanted this to be something that you could do for yourself today. And so literally, like after this episode is over, I want you to go to your RSS host, look at everything, see if anything needs to be updated right now. What can you freshen up right this minute that can help you, that can move forward. And then, of course, if you want to take an even deeper dive, our team would love to help you with that. I hope you have a wonderful day. If you are on Instagram, please come help me up with any kind of topics that you would like me to cover on this podcast. I want to make sure that I am meeting you where you are at and helping you with things that you need help with right now. So you can go follow me at Wild Home Podcast and send me a dime. Let me know what you would love to hear. And I will be back next week with a new episode. Thank you for listening to podcast Your business. For more podcasting tips, follow us on Instagram @wildhomepodcast. If you're ready to launch up level or grow your podcast, head to wildhomepodcasting.com to get started today.
