You’ve spent so much time planning your podcast and learning the ins and outs of recording, podcast equipment, and promoting podcasts.
Now, you’re faced with a big question: How often should you release your podcast? If you haven’t given this much thought yet, now is the time to make a plan. Keep these thoughts in mind when scheduling your episodes.
What Is Your Subject?
Do you talk about something that is up-to-the-minute, like the latest news, celebrity gossip, or technology? If so, you may want to consider releasing an episode each day.
Do you talk about something that’s a little more evergreen, like dog grooming tips, building a business, or parenting?
A daily episode may be a bit much (unless your episodes are five minutes or less), but you could probably find enough relevant content to release an episode once or twice a week, every other week, or monthly.
What if your subject waxes and wanes with different seasons? Maybe you have a parenting podcast, and back-to-school season will provide more content topics than usual. Maybe you discuss prime time TV shows, and the new fall lineup will give you many extra episodes of content. You can release your episodes more frequently during these timely seasons.
How Much Information Do You Have?
How much content does your topic afford you? Sit down and brainstorm episode ideas. Now, how many of those episode ideas are reasonable to produce this year?
Count up your number of ideas, and analyze how often you can publish an episode with those ideas. If you have 50 solid ideas, a once-a-week podcast sounds about right. 100? You may be able to do two each week.
When doing your brainstorm, make sure you think about how long your episodes will be. If one topic can be talked about for four hours, that doesn’t mean you should put all four hours into a monthly episode. People will see the length of the episode and get listeners’ fatigue before they even press play. Instead, break it down to four 1-hour episodes or eight 30-minute episodes.
What Is Your Schedule Like?
What can you realistically handle? Take the time to add up how long it takes you to put together an episode. Consider all aspects: from the brainstorming, research, and querying of guests to the recording, editing, and promoting of your episode.
If your process is a 5-to-10-hour process and you work 50 hours a week, you probably won’t have time to produce two episodes per week. Be realistic in the time you have available before jumping into more than you can handle.
Schedule in a Break
Just like your favorite TV show, your podcast can benefit from taking a break during certain seasons. Maybe you want to travel or spend more time with your kids during the summer. Take some time away from your podcast to do so. Take a break during the holidays or any other natural time that works for you.
But do this strategically!
Don’t just disappear. Plan ahead for your break, and let your listeners know it’s coming up. Be sure to let them know when you plan to return, as well.
Why do this?
Well, for starters, stepping away will help you recenter and come up with fresh content. But it will also make your listeners miss you! When you come back (and you can do a lot on your social media to drum up suspense for your return), your listeners will be eager to hear the new things you have to say.
Quality Over Quantity
More isn’t always better.
Sure, frequent episodes will show Google that you’re active. And it’s possible that this could help your SEO.
But if your listeners can’t keep up with your episodes, or if your quality struggles because your frequency is too high, you won’t get as many downloads. You won’t keep a steady following. And you won’t end up with good SEO in the end.
No matter what, your focus should be on quality episodes. This may mean that you’ll have to publish less frequently, but if your content is bringing people back again and again, it’s worth it.
