Should I take a break from podcasting over Christmas

Dec 9

Should you take a break from podcasting over the Christmas holiday period

As we approach the Christmas and New Year holiday season and we start thinking about taking some time off, it's also important to think about whether your podcast should take some time off.

Listenership really drops from as early as the 12th of December. There's a little spike around those few days between the 27th - 29th of December, but then drops way down again after that.

So with that in mind, if you were thinking about taking some time off - December is the time to do it and feel okay about it. Be back to releasing though by the 5th of January or thereafter because podcast listenership goes WAY UP from there. It stays consistently higher than usual up until the school holidays are over.

For the November - December period the big winners are Education, Leisure and Music related podcasts. Makes sense right? When you're not in your normal routine - you want to be learning something new, or listening to something fun.

This should help you make some decisions about your release schedule for December. If you are going to take a break, this is a perfect time to PROMOTE PREVIOUS PODCAST EPISODES.

Have a look back through your statistics and see what episodes have been the most downloaded, and share those ones again. Why do you re-share what was already popular? Because if it's popular once, there is a HIGH probability that it will be popular the second or even third time around.

It's also an opportunity to look at what episodes perhaps you didn't get a chance to even really promote the first time.

Transcript:

00:00
Welcome to Pump Up Your Pod so we are fast approaching the end of 2021. And I don't know about you, but I am looking forward to a decent bit of time off. It has been a while since I've been able to take a solid break. And it's just so necessary. So we're taking about four, or I think almost five weeks off, which is going to be great, the whole team won't be taking all of that time off. But I certainly plan to do very little work in that time, if not nothing at all, because it has been such a big 2021. Although that's been fantastic, really, really good. The business has grown a lot, I think I've hired three staff, three or four staff this year, you know, we've got so many clients now, I don't know the percentage rate of increase, I should work that out, and I will before the end of the year, but it has grown so much.

Our reputation is obviously you know, something that people are really getting to know. And we are one of the leaders, I would say in the industry in Australia, I certainly have not seen anything like us, in Australia that work with such a vast array of clients, different podcasts, and have a certain level as well, you know, so that's been really, really cool this year to have all that stuff happen is is awesome. The industry in Australia is really just taking off. And it's an exciting place to be working in this space is expanding so much.And I'm really looking forward to a lot of the strategy talk that I will be diving into with clients and people that want to reach out into 2022. Because there is a lot that can be done to really grow your influence and your reach your business through the power of podcasting. It's pretty flippin cool. Look forward to more chats about that in the new year.

02:15
What I'm chatting about today is should you take a break from podcasting over Christmas, when it gets to this time of the year, it is common to just feel pretty flat out. And I don't want to add to your flat out nervous by making you release a bunch of episodes over that period. If the statistics showed me that you should, then I would be saying yes, you need to don't stop, please keep going. You need to release. That's what I will be saying. But the statistics don't paint that picture. Which is good news for you. Because the short answer to this question is, yes, you can take a break over Christmas. When you look at the statistics. Now I don't have the most recent stats. They haven't been updated. But even from the 2019 holidays, and I would imagine the stats will just have grown in the same way. But when you look at the statistics that pod track has released and this is a US based podcast tracking, growth, indication, statistic service. When you look at their statistics, it shows that podcast listenership goes down by as much as 50% During the Christmas holiday period, which is really good news, it means Yeah, you can take a break because 50% Less listening is happening. And that's quite a large number. Knowing that from around the 16th or so of December, the ship really really tanks. You don't have a huge number of people listening at that point. And nor would you expect to, because that's around the time when people are doing their Christmas shopping, they're catching up with their family with their friends, there's lots of events, there's lots of going out, they're not in their normal routines. They might not even be exercising as much. They're not commuting, they're not working. It doesn't make sense to have listenership go up at that period because everyone's got a lot else that they're doing. So that's fine.

And then the statistics show that the listenership still just continues to kind of just be down until around the fifth of January. And then after the fifth of January, it really starts to ramp up. Now if you think about that, it makes sense, even just from the way you kind of operate perhaps around that period. So you've got your Christmas period, all the stuff happening there. Then you've got New Year's, those sorts of things, holidays, all that sort of stuff. And then around the fifth after the New Year break kind of finishes and you're you're back into the swing Have things that's when your normal routines start to come back, or it's not your normal routine. And you've got some time finally to yourself because the Christmas and New Year kind of mad rush is over. And you actually have some time where you're still on holidays, and you're wanting to catch up on a bunch of things that you have been missing out on or not doing. That is why listenership goes up. And it goes up as much as 40 to 50%, around the fifth to the seventh of January, and that's from normal listenership. So up around that kind of realm, they're around that period, because people have more time to be doing what they want to do. They're exercising, they're having more time by themselves, perhaps they're doing a bit of cooking, they're in the house in the kitchen. Maybe they're doing a bit of cleaning house duties, building Lego in my case. So they're putting something on and really listening to a show.

So if you are going to take a break, know that it's cool, it's fine. Absolutely no problem to do especially around that 16th of December period, where you know that people aren't going to be tuning in as much, take a couple of weeks if you want, but come back, come back by the fifth sixth seventh of January, because that is when the listenership really starts to ramp up.

Now, the hole or the mistake that I see people do, and I've seen it in previous years is that they say I'm going to take a break, and then they end up taking an extended break. So instead of just taking three weeks, they get caught up in whatever else is going on, and they haven't batched and that sort of thing. And then that turns out that the three week break that they were going to have turns into more like six weeks or eight weeks before they actually get back into it. And the problem with that is that they then lose a mass amount of listenership because that is a long time to not be releasing an episode. And in that period, you think about, if they haven't been hearing from you, they're gonna go to someone else. And they may find another podcast that is in a similar niche. And because you're not in their face, they'll listen to something else. And maybe heaven forbid, they like it more, and that would suck.

So when you take a break, make it a short break. And in that break, period, think about and plan what you're going to do into the next year, who do you want to interview? What kind of solo episodes do you want to do? Start writing down some topics again, and having a bit of thought into what you want to release for that year. It doesn't have to be for the whole year, maybe 20 episodes or something like that. But really start to think about it so that when you do come back from a break, it's not like, Oh, what was I going to do again, or haven't lined up these interviews or anything like that. And then that's how it gets spread out. So during the break, do a bit of planning, reach out to some guests, and actually book some things in for when you want to come back so that you get that momentum back. And the break that you are going to have doesn't turn into a lot longer break than you expected.

The other thing that I will say about this topic is if you're going to take a break, use that time and schedule it in again, that little bit of planning takes maybe 15-20 minutes, not a long time to think about and look through your stats and look at the episodes that you've released in the last year or six months. And see the ones that went really well. Where were the statistics highest? Where was the download numbers the highest? Did you promote them really well. If you did great, if you didn't give them another go, definitely promote them again, on your socials, you could do a carousel like on Instagram going hey, here's some of my favourite episodes from 2021. I'd love for you to go back and have a listen, maybe you miss some of these that kind of thing and just share some little graphics. If you're a client of ours reshare your social snippets of some of your favourites, just to get in people's ears again and make them aware that yes, you have taken a break. But there are episodes that they may not have listened to. And why you target the episodes that have been the most popular is because if they were popular once they're going to be popular again, it's obviously something that has connected with a lot of people or more than most. So it's good to promote those episodes because you know that they have a good hit rate in saying that if they're if you know, there are some episodes that you actually just didn't even get time to really promote this is the time to go back and give them a solid promotion, give them the time of day that you didn't have time to.

The other thing that you could do is actually reach out to those guests that you had on the shows if they're guest episodes and say hey, I was just looking back through my sets and I can see that your particular episode was really popular. And I'm gonna re promote it here over the Christmas period because I feel like it needs a second life and I'd love to have more people listening, I'd love for you to share again, if you want. Here's the social snippets again, here's the graphic, here's the tail, give them sort of a prompt, and then you'll find that it's likely they will then reshare it again as well, it's so important to repurpose your content. This is why you do it, create the one piece of content, create the podcast, and then have some repurposing capabilities for it so that you can reshare stuff and take a break every now and again.

10:32
If you are going to be continuing to release over this period, which again, if you do, that's fantastic, it's not a problem to not take a break. Even if you continue to release over that period, knowing that listenership is down by 50%. When the people come back that haven't been listening, because they've been doing stuff, there's going to be a bunch of episodes from you that they haven't seen yet, or they haven't listened to yet, because you've still been releasing so they can binge you because they can see some episodes that they haven't listened to. And then that's going to boost you in the download numbers in the charts because they are bingeing on a bunch of episodes that you've still been continuing to release that people weren't listening to over that period. So it is a smart move to still release over that period. But it's also completely fine to take a break.

Do you love how I've just answered your question was saying, both things are fine. That I've given you, no real advice? No, look, I think I've done pretty well, you understand, both sides have their positives. If you're going to continue to release during the period, the episodes that I would say play really well during this period are the Year in Review type episodes, the ones where you take a look back at your financial results, or your personal results, or your business growth or things like that, and you talk about these things. What did you learn in the last year? What are you going to do differently? What are the fun things that you got to do? Did you have no fun? Did you start a new hobby, those sorts of things, people love those episodes. And if you call it my year in review, or 2021, a snapshot or something like that, you'll see that people will click on that above the others because it's a personal reflection on something. People eat that up, definitely do that sort of stuff. Wellbeing episodes are great during this time as well how you're looking after yourself how you've neglected yourself. They are great topics for this time of year. Even if you're taking a break, I would say to do an episode like that around the beginning of January, that's when you've got all the new year's resolution people, the res O's as I like to call them, who are you know, trying to commit to new things. And if there are episodes that are around wellbeing, feeling good, and the changes you're going to make that's going to promote good health and well being for those people listening as well. Even if it's not part of your normal content lineup. If you feel like perhaps it doesn't make sense for your industry to do it, still do it. People love this kind of episode and if your personal every now and again. So that's a really good thing.

‘The things that people don't want to hear during this period, stuff that is too formal, or too strategy based tactics or tools or things like that. The way people listen is slightly different around this period as well. For the November December period, the big winners are education, leisure and music related podcasts. So if you are in one of those categories, that's great. That's a good time to be releasing stuff because that's the content that people want to connect with. During that time. There is a lot less listenership for like business podcasts, even you know, government related podcast, politics, science, TV and tech, those sorts of things. They all go down up to 10 20% listenership, just because people don't want to listen to that sort of stuff during that period. They want to be entertained. They want to be listening to something kind of fun, or something that they can learn about, but isn't to do with their job, or music, arts, you know, those sorts of things.

That is a pretty freakin good wrap up of what to do during this Christmas period. You should have taken a lot away from this episode. And if you have not been writing it down, I would suggest jumping into the pod lovers.com That is our online free community where I share this stuff. I curate a bunch of information all the people in the pod lovers and the our clients have had this information for weeks if not months already, so they have already planned things out. If you are not in there, the pod lovers.com Get in there join. It's not a big deal. It's completely free. And it's where I curate information where I give you the stuff that you want, where you can ask questions, and I answer them, or you can ask the community, there's quite a few members in there. And you know, they don't interact heaps with each other. But I can see that there's activity in there, people are going in there looking at the articles that I'm writing. And they're putting little comments on them. And it's obviously really helpful for people. I really enjoy doing it. And I recommend that you jump in there and join that free community so that you feel like you've got one place where you can get podcasting information without having to go through a whole bunch of other stuff and the noise of it all and even following me on Instagram, you'll see some podcasting information. But you'll also see a lot of just my general day to day and my Insta Stories and things like that, which I don't touch on a lot of podcasting stuff in there.

The pod lovers is where I really give the information because it's curated for a particular audience that I know wants that information. So jump in there and you'll feel really supported. That's it from me. I hope you really enjoyed this episode. I hope you have some quality time. Set aside for yourself during this time. Spend time with your family, your loved ones, eat some food, sleep, do some hobbies, do things that make you feel really good and recharge your batteries because the best creative thinking happens when you are resting. And that's what I intend to do as well.