5 Boring Ways To Keep Your Podcast Fresh

Podcasting is a great creative exercise. But with more shows than ever, a smart podcaster finds time to do the less exciting things required to keep their show fresh and attract new listeners.

Hello, and welcome to another Podcast Pontifications with me, Evo Terra.

How much fun is it to plan, to record, to edit, and then publish your podcast? Okay, maybe you don't like all of those things, but chances are, because you're a working podcaster, you love some of those more than anything else. It's a blast to do that kind of work. And there was a time, not all that long ago, well, that's all you had to do. That's it. Do that. Get your show out there. Publish it. And it would find its own audience. But that's been awhile since that has happened.

I get a lot of people reaching out to me saying, how can you help me grow my show? And let me just state, I do not do one-off marketing efforts for clients. I don't. We incorporate a lot of that in the work that we do. But in all their cases, that's where they're at. They love the aspect of podcasting, now they just want to go find more people to listen to it, which makes perfect sense.

Except that's not how it works anymore because we have millions of podcasts now. I can finally say it. We have millions of podcasts now. And so in order for you to stand out, for me to stand out, for anybody who wants to do this to stand out amongst the millions of choices people have when they go to choose a podcast to listen to, we have to do the boring things. Boring things are required. Sorry. We have to do some not very fun things. Or maybe you can make them fun. I don't know. It's up to you. But there's more to what I just said before.

So let's talk about some boring things you need to do to make sure that your show is going to stand out. Now, I could make a laundry list of dozens of these, but I'm not going to do that. I'm going to focus on five, just five things that I think you should be thinking about, you should be making room for. And these are boring things, I'm sorry, but you need to. So again, just five, so bear with me. Okay, here they go. Here we go.

#1: In-app episode details. Oh, what a shocker, Evo talking about show notes. Yeah, I know I talk about it a lot, but it's super important. The brand new peeps really appreciate good episode details. I'm working with one client right now, we've been through five revisions of their in-app episode details. That's how important they really can be. So again, I know it's boring. I don't even want to do it. I know you want to slam out a paragraph, put up a couple of links, and be done with it, but spend a little bit more time thinking through your episode details. Okay? That'd be very helpful.

#2: Find time to experiment and try out new services. Look, if you're using the same exact processes you used ten years ago - and why should you change? Because they're not broken, you say. I totally get it, but there may be some new services, some new software, some new ways of doing things that you are unaware of that will make your life better.

I mean, if you're still using Skype to record interviews with people, in the event that you do interviews on your shows - really? Does it work? Sure. Is it reliable? Ehhh. Are there better ways? Absolutely. There are loads of better ways to do that. I'm not just dissing on Microsoft to dis on Microsoft. But really a lot has changed in podcasting since I got involved back in 2004. So plenty of time for new things to grow.

So find time, make time, and make boring time, if you will, to experiment and try out new services. I think that's kind of fun, but you may feel differently about it.

Boring thing #3: Clean up your website. I don't mean revamp your website like I just did recently. Just a cleanup, just a review of all of the text. Maybe not your episode detail pages, but all the other things around it. Your about page, your contact page, your homepage, just a review. Just go through and read that text and go, does that still say what I want it to say?

What about the base functionality that you have on your website? Remember, your website is where most brand new people to you will find your show. They'll wind up on your website. So if you still have the links to iTunes, we have a problem. Make sure your base functionality is clear and clean, that your website overall is good. It's good. Just clean up that text, make sure the functionality works.

Thing #4: Competitive review. Oh, I hated doing these when I worked in an agency. For my clients or for us at the agency, right? But you need to do it. You need to do it because chances are, there are other people out there podcasting about the exact same thing you are or very close to that thing. So yes, review. That means listen to their podcast. That means subscribe to their show or follow their show on social channels and see exactly what the competition is doing. You need to understand what other choices are out there to make sure you continue to keep your show differentiated from the others.

But you're not done with the competition review because the competition review isn't just in your genre stuff. Your competition review needs to go beyond that because people will judge your podcast the way they judge every podcast they listen to, not just the ones that are similar to that. That's how they're comparing you. That's how consumers compare things all the time.

So if you still claim it's a badge of honor that you've never listened to some particular big podcast out there, your audience might think of that as ignorance and less a badge of honor. So do yourself a favor, make time to review what's going on and keep apprised of the big ones out there.

Now the final one I will give you - number five. See, I said only five things to do. Five things.

Thing #5: Continuing education. Again, I've been at this a long time. You may have been at this a long time. Even if you haven't, things change pretty quickly. You need to understand what's up and changing in the podcast world today. That means subscribe to some good podcast newsletters. Take workshops to fill up, to augment the skills you may not have.

You want to jump into story and narrative-style podcasting? Take a workshop. Attend conferences. Maybe we can attend conferences in real life, but now most conferences have gone to a virtual offering. I'm going to Podcast Movement 2021 virtually, I've decided. I'll be here in Phoenix, but I'll be attending it all of those days.

Continuing education is so important because, man, is this space moving fast. It's adapting every single day and the skills I had in 2004 are not adequate to where we are today. So I've constantly up-leveled them. You need to up-level your skills all the time, as well.

So those were five things. Here's what I want you to do. I just want you to pick three. Just pick three of those. So you can throw two away. If two sounded really hard or really boring, you don't want to do 'em, that's fine. Get rid of those two. Just focus on three and commit to doing them in 30 days time. I'm recording this at the end of month. So in another month is perfect. But whenever you listened to it, when you make your decision, commit to three, put it on the calendar, put a deadline.

And I want to hear how you did. I want to hear what you found out about that. You can email me evo@simpler.media. But I also want you to get an accountabili-buddy. Yeah. I want you to find another working podcaster who you interface with on a regular basis. Share this episode with them. You each select your three boring things you're going to do in the next 30 days. And I want you to hold each other accountable. Simple as that.

Does that sound like a good idea? If so, please go to buymeacoffee.com/evoterra, and slide a virtual coffee my way. That's always nice.

That's it. I shall be back tomorrow with yet another Podcast Pontifications.

Cheers!