Congratulations! You have successfully gotten your podcast off the ground and have started recording, and now you are confronted with the next problem all podcasters face. What should your schedule be?
“Am I dropping too much?” “Is it too little” “How many times in a week should I publish my podcast”… these are the common fears of podcast hosts, especially when you’re just starting, and the reason is not farfetched.
You are worried that if you don’t put enough content out there, your listeners might not take you seriously and eventually forget about your podcast and worry about overloading them with content.
If this is your situation and you are desperately in need of an answer to that burning question that keeps you up at night, don’t worry, you’ve come to the right place.
I will help you through the process of drawing up the best possible schedule for the frequency of your podcast episodes in a bid to keep your listeners interested and wanting more.
Table of Contents
How Often Should You Publish Your Podcast Episode?
Before you answer that question based on your assumption of what you think your listeners want or don’t want, ask this question first.
How Often Can You Make Good, Quality Content?
Can you keep it up is a fundamental question, and it’s a common mistake many podcasters make. They are so overwhelmed with trying to figure out the frequency of their publishing, and they completely neglect or underestimate the work that goes into producing good content.
When newbies start in podcasting, they immediately begin publishing their podcasts as often as possible. It is usually due to their enthusiasm initially, or they feel it’s the best way to get and hold their listener’s attention. Whatever case it may be, it almost always ends up in two ways. Either they end up giving their audience “listener fatigue” or max out and don’t have the same enthusiasm they had initially. Then they have to struggle to keep up with the standard they have already set for themselves.
Burn out is the numero uno culprit behind most podcast channels’ death, which is why you first need to answer the question on your frequency to produce quality content.
When you’ve successfully answered that, you can now go into figuring out how often you should drop your content.
Think of Your Target Audience
The key is to put out just enough content in a particular sequence that will linger in your listener’s minds for a while. It will make them ponder and want more, but by the time they have digested it and starting to come around your previous content, you have already dropped another.
Getting just the right frequency is dependent on first, the quality of the content, which I have already talked about, and second, your listener analytics.
You need to know your listeners and try to guesstimate what time of the week they will listen to your podcast, this is based, largely in part, on what your podcast is all about.
For example, suppose your podcast is finance, economics, or investment-based. In that case, your listeners are most likely investment bankers and wall street employees who wake up early on Monday mornings to try to predict the market and will try to look anywhere for finance news.
Since that’s your target audience, it makes more sense to publish an episode on a Monday morning. So those of them that prefer listening to podcasts while they commute to work will come across your content, and since you’ve worked on the quality of your content, keeping them glued and interested will not be difficult.
You can also drop another one on Friday evenings as the market is rounding up, and your listeners will want to know how the market was generally through the week and what they should expect the coming week.
That way, you are not just releasing your podcast episodes for the sake of it. It is strategic publishing targeted at an audience that relates more to what you are putting out, and at the same time, you are giving yourself enough time to make quality content.
This strategy applies to all niche of the podcast ecosystem. Whatever your content is about, put yourself in the shoes of who you think your listeners are, and develop the best schedule for both parties: you and your audience.
In The End
The frequency of your podcast episode publishing is dependent on how long it takes you to make quality content and who your listeners are.
