What To Do During Your Podcast's Season Break

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I am a huge fan of breaking your podcasting efforts into seasons. And to be clear, I’m also a fan of taking long breaks between seasons. Not all of my fellow podcasting pundits agree. Many adopt the position that podcasting is akin to blogging and that new episodes should keep coming out on schedule. To them, I say: Hey, you do you.

Me? I like breaks.

This is less of a choice for the many podcasters who directly tie income to the release of new episodes. For those podcasters making a good living running ads or working under sponsorship arrangements, they lack the flexibility of choosing when to take a vacation from podcasting.

But for the rest of us, we can take breaks. Some of us -- like the guy behind this podcast -- are a little too good at lying on the couch all day and binging obscure foreign television shows when we don’t have anything pressing. Fac et aliquid operis, ut semper te diabolus inveniat occupatum, doncha know.

So if you’re like me and are looking for a little guidance to direct some of your chill-time activities, I have just the thing. Or ten things, rather.

10 Ways To Not Waste Your Podcast’s Season Break

These are in no particular order. And if they seem a little Evo-centric, there’s a reason for that. You’ll see at the end.

1. Cleanup your podcast feed.

I recently talked about advanced RSS feed management for podcasts. That’s the perfect project to tackle while you’re not putting out new episodes. I could use some downtime make my main feed more attractive (and less overwhelming) to new potential listeners.

2. Put the final touches on your website.

If you also hastily assembled a website at the beginning of the year at the same time as you were putting out lots of podcast content, you might have cut a few corners. Yes, you got the fundamentals right. But there are extra bells and whistles you chose to skip. A break is a great time to refocus on just your website.

3. Spend some quality time with Google Search Console.

Without opening the SEO can of worms, I think Google Search Console is one of the most undervalued “SEO for normal people” tools. Having a better understanding of how the pages of your site appear in search is critical to your ongoing success.

4. Hire a professional to help with the branding of your show.

I’m a big fan of tools like Canva that enable me to pretend I’m a designer, but I’m no designer. But with +310 episodes under my belt, my brand has a certain sound and style to it. Now is the time to bring in a professional designer to make sure the visual aspects accurately represent that.

5. Replenish the content well.

This what most producers say they are doing on the break. Your job is to make sure you do it. So break out a brand new scratchpad -- digital or physical -- and start collecting ideas for topics, angles, guests, or whatever it is you need to make a rich library to pull from when you start your next season.

6. Put out bonus episodes.

The world doesn’t stop because you’re on a season break. Chances are, compelling news or some other topic worthy of timely discussion will happen during your hiatus. Don’t fret! Thanks to our friends at Apple Podcasts, we can tag episodes as “Bonus” episodes and release them as needed. No need to hold the info until you come back, or rush your return to capitalize on changes to your industry.

7. Lock-in guest appearances for yourself.

When you're producing a daily show like mine that takes 3.5 hours each day, it's hard to make the time to promote yourself or your show. But when you don’t have that commitment because you’re on break, you can easily afford the effort to reach out to see if you can be a guest on other shows. Your show and its episodes are still listed on the podcast directories, so new people discover you or your show from those appearances can still subscribe, right?

8. Upgrade your equipment.

If you've been making it work for some time now, but you also know you could do better, a break is a great time to evaluate your podcast equipment chain. Maybe it’s time to ditch that noisy mixer you don’t need for a super-quiet and simple interface. Maybe you need a better video camera if you giving fans behind-the-scenes access to your recording process. Maybe you need better sound conditioning in the area of your home you’ve carved out for a studio.

9. Upgrade your software.

If you’ve been using the same free audio software for a very long time, a break is a good time to use the free trials provided by professional DAWs (digital audio workstations.) Without the constant pressure to create new content, you’ll have plenty of time to get through the learning curve that’s kept you in your current rut. Or perhaps you picked up a really cool plugin bundle on sale and you haven't had the time to dig into all the great things it can do for your sound. A podcast break is a great time to re-invest in your engineering process.

10. Gain some perspective and relax.

We all take breaks for different reasons. For me, a big one is to just do nothing. So don’t forget to do that while you’re layering in all the other activities I laid out for you. Mental health is important to me and taking regular breaks from my daily podcasting activities helps me maintain my calm.

How practical is this list? Uber practical. So much, in fact, that I’m calling an end to Season 2 of Podcast Pontifications. Effective right now, I’m on break. Woot!

Season 3 of Podcast Pontifications will begin sometime after my birthday, which is in June. I had planned on taking a break the entire month of June, but decided to advance those plans. The ideas I listed out seemed too compelling not to start right away.

So keep your eyes on PodcastPontifications.com. Lots of back-episodes and articles if this is your first introduction to my show. I have 310 episodes to keep you full of ideas. Lots of changes coming to the site in the next few weeks that I’m excited to get started.

In the meantime, be safe, stay well, and I shall be back soon with season three of Podcast Pontifications.

Cheers!

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PP310 - What To Do During Your Podcast's Season Break

Evo Terra: [00:00:00] Taking a break from podcasting can be good for your health, but how well will you spend your downtime? Here are 10 smart on break activities that should make your next season even stronger.

[00:00:20] Hello, and welcome to another podcast. Pontifications with me, Evo. Tara. I am a huge fan of making your podcasting into seasons and also taking season breaks. Big, big fan of that. Now, not all of my fellow podcasting pundants agree. Many thank you. Should just go and keep going and Hey, you do you. But I like breaks.

[00:00:50] And also I should mention that many podcasters. Especially those that can directly trace revenue to their output. Like most of those are getting advertising or some sort of sponsorship deals, and they're only paid when they make episodes. That's hard for them to take a break. I get it. But for the rest of us, those that are not tied directly to revenues, meaning when we put out episodes, we don't get a paycheck.

[00:01:16] At the end of the day, we can take breaks and I strongly feel that we should take breaks. However, I also strongly feel that some of us, like this guy, needs some guidance and need some activities to do so that they're not just, you know, laying on the couch, bingeing, the latest random show they've discovered on television while they're not putting out episodes.

[00:01:40] Got it. So I thought to help figure that out, I would list out for you 10 ideas of things you can do when you put your show on break. Here we go. In no particular order. Number one. That feed cleanup that I mentioned on, I believe it was last week's, one of last week's episodes, where instead of having 310 episodes in one long feed, that doesn't get displayed in most directories that way.

[00:02:07] Breaking it up into multiple feeds. There'll be a link to the episode in the INAP details as well as on the article posted on the website. That would be a really good idea. A good thing to do during your downtime is just cleaned it up so that new people, when they encounter the feed, aren't overwhelmed by too many choices.

[00:02:26] The second thing you could do is finish shoring up your website. If you're anything like me, and you hastily assembled a website at the beginning of the year while you were putting out content, and it's mostly good, but not perfect. Now is a great time to go do all of the things you didn't do. Yeah. You got the fundamentals right.

[00:02:47] What about the extra bits and pieces that you need to put on there? That's great to focus on during your break on the topic of the website. Number three, spending some quality time with Google search console. Also known as Google webmaster tools is a very smart thing to do. I'm not getting into SEO. I've talked about SEO on several episodes, but Google search console is, I think, the most undervalued SEO tool in your arsenal, and you don't have to be an SEO wizard to use it because it just shows you what Google, Google search is sending to your podcast website right now.

[00:03:26] So spending some time with that is a really good idea. Number four, you might hire a professional. A professional to help you with the branding of your show. Again, if you're like me and you've used tools like Canva, which enable you to pretend you're a designer, it might be a good idea during your break to contract with someone who is a professional.

[00:03:53] Now that you've got your show under your belt, maybe you've got 310 episodes out and you know the direction. Maybe it's time to bring somebody into the fold who really understands how they can take that concept that you've refined over the last two years and make some visually compelling pieces of it.

[00:04:09] Number five, it's a really good time to replenish the well. And by that I mean the well of topics, ideas, guests, whatever it is you need to do during your downtime. Keep a list of all the things you think about doing an episode with Ben. Start doing an episode, but, but just write down the title. Just write down the title and the topic and the angle, any notes that you need so you're ready to go when your season break comes up.

[00:04:36] On the flip side of that is maybe that is such a compelling news and information that comes out while you're on break. That you should put out some bonus content episodes. Go ahead. Go ahead. Thanks to Apple, we now have those bonus tags so you can announce to the people that you're doing a season break, but then you can drop a handful of episodes here and there during that break if that's really important.

[00:04:57] You can also, number seven, I believe guests appear on a lot of podcasts. You know, if you're doing a daily show like mine and you're already spending three and a half, four hours doing a show, it's hard to promote yourself in your show because you don't get on the, you get behind the microphone for your show, but not other shows.

[00:05:14] Well, when you're not putting out the effort to make new content, put out the effort to reach out to other shows and get on those shows and start guesting building your audience that way because your show is still there, right? People can still subscribe to the police thing while you're on break. Number eight would be upgrading your equipment.

[00:05:32] You've been doing it a long time. You've probably been making a lot of things work, but maybe you thought, you know, the sound could be better. You know, maybe the video camera, if in fact you were videoing yourself and using that another area as much as I do here on LinkedIn live, maybe that's an upgrade you should do.

[00:05:48] Maybe you need some better sound conditioning. You know, what's your equipment like? How could you make it better? If you take a little bit of break and think about it, what are the pieces that you actually need. Number nine, same thing for your software. If you're using the same tool you've been using for a very long time, maybe it's time to look at some of the professional Daws that are out there.

[00:06:12] Not having episodes to produce on a regular basis means you've got a little more time to get past that learning curve. So maybe it's a good time to upgrade your software or maybe just explore your software. Maybe like me, you got some real cool plugin bundles for super cheap the other day and you haven't really figured out the best way to utilize some of those.

[00:06:33] Well, again, not doing an episode all the time means you've got some time to go explore and make sure you're making the best possible product. And finally, number 10. It's a great time for you to gain some perspective, you know, just take that break, just relax, sit back, not think about it on a regular basis.

[00:06:58] Yeah. Do all the nine things I mentioned, but also just relax. Just chill out and not focus on everything for awhile. Back to my importance of the health thing. Mental health is also really important. Speaking of all of that, guess what? I'm putting the show on break. This is the official end of season two of podcast.

[00:07:24] Pontifications season three will begin sometime after my birthday. My birthday is in June, so it will be sometime after that. I will re, well, I won't relaunch. I will just simply start putting out. Episodes of season three of the podcast. So this is your official warning. No, I didn't know I was going to do it this way.

[00:07:43] It didn't even really plan on when I was going to do it, but it seemed like a good time to make the transition. So that's what's happening now. So stay subscribed. Obviously we'll still be here. I do have some bonus content that I already have in the well that I need to get pushed out, but I'll be doing everything that I just mentioned.

[00:08:01] For the next few weeks as I take the show podcast pontifications on break prepping for season three. So with that, I remind you, go to podcast pontifications.com we've got 310 episodes.

[00:08:14] You're

[00:08:15] Evo Terra: [00:08:15] going to see lots of changes to that site over the coming weeks and lots more great things coming out. Be safe, stay well, and I shall be back soon with season three of podcast pontifications cheers.

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