Building Reflecting Time Into Your Podcast

Everyone leads busy lives, and the smart podcaster doesn't waste their audience's time. But in your quest to tighten things up, don't forget to build in reflecting time to let your audience, well, reflect as they listen.

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

A few episodes ago, I talked about five ways to serve the changing needs of your audience because the needs of audiences are changing. Their needs are changing with every single new podcast they follow, with every new newsletter they subscribe to, and honestly, with every new source added to their media diet. Now, smart podcasters will change to fit those changing needs.

Specifically, I talked briefly about how your audience may want you to go deeper. But you've been investing in longer episodes, which isn't quite the same thing. Or maybe you've been investing in more frequent content, either with more episodes, maybe increasing your normal output, like putting out bonus content, perhaps. Or even launching an additional show that covers a slightly different angle on the exact same topic.

Now on the surface, each of those moves sure sounds like you're going to be going deeper onto a topic, and perhaps you are. Sure, I'll grant you that, but at the cost of more time. That's a cost your audience has to pay to get the depth they really desire.

But that's not really depth you're giving, that's breadth. Breadth is important for sure. Breadth is required, if you will, on your journey to understand the topic of your show, developing a mere encyclopedic knowledge of your domain will make you a much better podcaster and a much more valuable podcaster in the eyes, or maybe the ears or the brains, of your audience because they get to reap the benefits of the breadth of your knowledge without having to acquire that same breadth.

What they really want you to do, or what they likely will want you to do, is get to the point faster by distilling your breadth of knowledge down to the depth that they desire. It's not easy for people with vast amounts of knowledge in their brains in one particular area to deliver a concise, tight presentation on any given aspect of their knowledge. And no, I'm not talking from an egotistical point of view right now, I promise.

Listen, that's a reality you've probably experienced at least once in your lifetime. Maybe a rambling speech someone gave. A novella-sized email you received. Or a podcast episode that just drones on and on without a point to stop.

And that's right, podcasters, we're no exception to this. So rather than refining our scripts or being relentless in what content we edit out of our episodes, we look for filler content that's easy for us to cut. We think making those cuts are helping, and oftentimes they are, but they may not be. We're employing tools to quickly cut out all of those filler words from our episodes automatically, without even listening to the context where sometimes those filler words really help make our point.

We're replacing our long, rambly questions - lord knows I do that when I interview people - with much shorter ones in post-editing. That'll save us, like, fifteen seconds for each time we ask a question. But then we're leaving in the guest's long, rambly, five-minute answer in our episode.

We relentlessly look to tighten up every single pause to make our episodes snappy. We narrow all of the gaps between sections to get to our next point faster, oftentimes while our audience is still contemplating the point we just made. We do those things because we're trying to shove more information in less time.

But when audiences are looked at as a whole, they seem to be asking for something different, not more, but better, deeper, more valuable. Part of deeper is giving your audience time to reflect. Not after your episode is over, they're already on to the next episode in their queue when that happens, but as you are delivering your episodes.

Remember that your audience isn't sitting quietly with eyes closed as they listen intently to what it is you have to say. No! They're doing the dishes. They're driving to an appointment. Or working out. Standing in line at the post office. They may not realize the big buildup you're working towards as you come to the point you're about to make. So it's up to you to sculpt that point, use silence, bed music, repetition of words, or other ways to ensure the clarity of your message and that you delivered what you were trying to deliver.

If you're going to go deep, you have to also deliver on clarity. So yes, of course, tighten up where you can. Yes, chop up your questions, summarize your guest's responses, and re-ask your questions if you need to. But also leave room in your audio for reflection.

Let some of those silences border on uncomfortable. Let the bed music continue after you've made your point for much longer than maybe you think that it should. Let your audience hear those few seconds while your guest was really thinking of how to best answer your question. The parts of your episode where no one is talking are the parts where your audience's brains do the talking.

That's how they get deeper into your episodes. That's how they feel like you're letting them be a part of the conversation.

With that, I shall be back directly with yet another Podcast Pontifications.

Cheers!

Podcast Pontifications is written and narrated by Evo Terra. He's on a mission to make podcasting better. Links to everything mentioned in today's episode are in the notes section of your podcast listening app. A written-to-be-read article based on today's episode is available at podcastpontifications.com where you'll also find a video version and a corrected transcript, both created by Allie Press. Podcast Pontifications is a production of Simpler Media. Find out more at Simpler.Media.