Help! I can't keep up with the release frequency

Are you struggling to keep up with the release frequency of your podcast?

You begin to start chasing your tail, become out of sync and are constantly feeling the pressure to keep up releasing but it’s just not happening.

Firstly, don’t give yourself a hard time. I understand how super hard it can be to keep coming up with episodes when you’re balancing all the other aspects of your business.

In this episode, I’m going to help you reflect and reassess the purpose of your show to motivate and give you a kick to keep producing.

When you’re feeling like you can’t find the drive, come back to your ‘why’.

Why did you start podcasting in the first place?

What were you trying to achieve?

When we forget our purpose and mission, it can be easy to stray off track and stop releasing episodes. After all, if you see the value in something, you’ll make sure it’s at the top of your priorities.

In my podcast, I know that it’s okay if I’m not releasing every week because I’ve devised specific topics for the show that aren’t impacted by frequency and are in alignment with my mission.

However, if your podcast was set up to drive traffic to your business, then you need to be consistent with it.

Podcast listenership is huge in Australia! It has gone from 5.8 million in April to 9.5 million in October/November alone. That’s a 3.7 million increase in only 5 to 6 months.

So I would strongly recommend for you to keep podcasting. It’s an amazing tool for your business.

Use this wonderful time of year to reflect on 2021 to determine the frequency of episode releases to support your strategy, overall mission and purpose.

And, above all, have fun with it!

Transcript:

00:00
Welcome to Pump Up Your Pod Oh, hello fellow podcasters, or podcasters to be, how has your week been hasn't been good. Mine has been very nice as we gear up to the end of 2021. There's a lot of fun, that gets to happen towards this time, towards the end of the year, I've been preparing our Bamby Media staff Christmas party. Oh my god, it's gonna be so fun. I'm so excited because our company Bamby Media is a completely distributed workforce. So other than myself and my partner who work within the same studio, the rest of the team work from their own houses. And in fact, a few of them that I've hired, I have never met, or I have never seen from the waist down. And I was on a call or a Zoom meeting with one of them the other day, and I said, Oh my god, I'm going to be so excited to see what the bottom half of you looks like. It's gonna be so good. Unfortunately, not everyone will be able to attend, we do have one staff member who lives down in Melbourne. So it just seems a little bit too risky, or I guess unnecessary to have him come up. So that is a bit unfortunate.

But other than that, it's looking pretty good. I'm very excited for that. And there's going to be a like award ceremony and I'm putting on a lovely dinner for everybody and drinks, there's going to be games and ringing the Nintendo Switch. And we've booked a beautiful place like it's just going to be one of those evenings that I'm really really looking forward to. And just a good opportunity to appreciate our team.

Because it can be hard, if you're not all working together in the same space, it's harder to have those connections with people because you don't have them like physically just popping in and you know, coming into your office. And I used to work as a supervisor in a very busy call centre. And I would be surrounded by people coming to me staff coming to me with questions all day long. And it was kind of nice, you know, you could have these little casual chats with people about what's going on in their life and how they're doing and that sort of stuff. And to me, that's the really important relationship building part of having a team is having those little check ins, those impromptu things just to check there, okay? Because you can't work well, unless you feel well unless you're emotionally available to work, I guess.

So anyway, it's a bit tricky in that way, but I am very aware of it. And I make a lot of effort to chat to the team via slack or on the phone and just checking in, see how they're going very regularly, and keep people motivated and that sort of thing. So it's going to be nice to have everyone there so that I can really express my gratitude and my appreciation for all the hard work that they will do. So I'm just excited. As you can probably tell. Anyway, that is not why we're here today. But that's just a little catch up as to what's coming.

What I want to chat to you about today is something that is going to be pretty quick to go through. But it's kind of just a reminder for you, sometimes I understand that keeping up with the frequency that you set out with can feel super hard. So if you have kind of got out of your normal rhythm, maybe you're not batching anymore, because you kind of now chasing your tail or everything else is happening in life and you haven't been able to do what you wanted to do. And you're really feeling the pressure to keep up your frequency and it's not happening. I just want to kind of let you know that it's okay. Like don't beat yourself up about it if you feel like you can't keep up with what you originally set out to do. But also, it's kind of a kick up the ass to say what is the purpose of your show. And now I did a little Insta story on this earlier in the week. And if your purpose has kind of drifted, or you forgotten what your purpose is, then it's much easier to get yourself off track and to stop releasing episodes because you've forgotten what your overall mission is, and what the purpose of the podcast is. It's like any other marketing strategy that you have in place. If you can't keep up with it, or if you you forget about why you're doing it, then you'll stop doing the strategy because you've forgotten the purpose of it. If you don't have anyone keeping you accountable if you don't have a cheerleader, if you don't have a person that's saying Hey, where's the episode? Like, get it out? Come on, keep going.

Remember the purpose. And I'm not saying you need to have that person or that company or that agency or whatever, this is not a plug for my services, our services at all, it's telling you have a look at your frequency, if you feel like you're not keeping up, just like That's okay, don't beat yourself up about it. But take some time to reflect on why it is perhaps that you aren't keeping up. And probably because you've forgotten the real purpose of the podcast, and who you're trying to connect with. Because if you really see the value in it, like anything, if you really see the value in it, then you won't drop the ball on it.

The only thing I would say on that is like, if you have a podcast that is released this like twice a week, we have quite a few clients that release twice a week. And sometimes they can't keep up with that. And that's okay, like, that's actually not as huge of a deal as going from like, you know, once a week, or once a fortnight to dropping off to once a month, or that sort of thing. So if you're releasing twice a week or more, and you feel like it's a bit busy in some other areas of your business, and you need to go back to one a week for a while, that is completely fine, it is going to transfer into less download numbers. So if the strategy that you have in place is to get those download numbers nice and high, because you're wanting to be in the charts consistently, because people do look at charts. And then if you're in the charts more than it's kind of more of a searchable thing, they can see you easier because you are higher in those charts. But if your strategy isn't to have a whole bunch of episodes out, and that your download numbers are less of a deal, then yeah, it doesn't matter if you're kind of dropping off a little bit. Or if you're feeling like you need to take a little bit of a break. That is completely fine.

And in fact, I do that with Pump Up Your Pod, I have a specific strategy for this show. That means that it's okay if it's not every week, or if it's just once a fortnight or if it's every week for a while. And then it's once a fortnight and that sort of thing, because I've got specific reasons for the show. And so it doesn't matter if it is a little bit less frequent. And I know the purpose of that, and I'm okay with that. But for most podcasts when you're supporting your business, and the point of the podcast is to drive traffic to your business or service or product, then you need to be consistent with it and take some time to maybe this is the point where you need to reassess specially at the end of the year like this, a lot of people will take time off their podcast and in fact, I will do a podcast episode specifically on what should happen or what you can do over the Christmas period. But this is a good time to actually take a break or reflect on what the overall purpose of the podcast is. Look at what you have been doing over the last six months or however long you've been running the show, or however long you've changed the strategy to something else. Look at what has worked, look at what hasn't worked, and then reassess how to take it into 2022 the podcasting industry is absolutely exploding.

So I wouldn't advise to stop podcasting. If you kind of feeling like you know, it's a bit it's a bit hard. I would advise not to do that. Because podcast listenership in Australia Holy crap, like the jump that we have had even from April. So from April, we had about 5.8 million people listening to podcasts on a regular basis. And then when it was looked at again, just recently, October November, that listenership had jumped from 5.8 million to 9.5 million absolutely huge increase in podcast listenership in what is a relatively short space of time. It's important to keep going with it, but it is also important to keep assessing what the purpose is of it. Has that purpose changed? And what frequency is going to support your overall mission? It's okay, if your frequency has suffered, knowing that once you have your purpose in place, then your frequency will match what it is that you're trying to achieve.