Hey Friend!

In today’s Quick tip Tuesday podcast episode I answer a question from Monica who asks, “Can I go from airing a new podcast episode every week to bi-weekly? Will it hurt my show?” Love this question so much!

I came up with 5 specific criteria to go through in order to evaluate scaling back your episodes. I hope this helps you decide how often to publish, based on your goals.

And, if you’d like to be featured in a Quick Tip Tuesday episode, please hop over to www.stefaniegass.com/contact and leave me a question! I’d love to answer it live.

I pray this blesses you!

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION:

(00:00):
Hey, Stef! It’s Cason. I just wanted to say that finding you has truly changed my life in such a short amount of time. I was in tears after listening to one podcast episode because I felt like finally, someone gets me, she knows what I need. So I grabbed CYC. I had a few more tears as I worked through and wrestled through.

(00:16):
God really did a work in my heart, pieces started falling into place. I gained clarity over my calling because for the past year, I’ve tried to start and create a business from leaders and teachers who were doing things the world’s way. And it left me frustrated and confused, to be honest.

(00:30):
So I really wish that I would’ve known you existed sooner, I would’ve saved me so much time and energy and money, but I know that all of those things were steps to get me where I am today to connect with you. Since I already have my podcast launched before I found you and everything, I’m jumping into P2P, I’m so excited to learn more from you. Thank you so much for this work, for sharing and for all that you do. I’m so excited.

(01:58):
Hey, Cason! That testimony just totally blessed me big, thank you so much for leaving that review for me and just giving me all of that awesome confirmation that we are doing this His way. Just being able to finally find the way in which you’re being called to build, the right coach for you, the right mentor for you. It’s like all the hallelujahs, girl. So I can’t wait to watch you keep digging in. I can’t wait to see your business just flourish and come to life. Be sure you keep us posted.

(02:27):
And hey friends, welcome to the show! Today, we are doing a quick tip Tuesday episode. And today we are answering a question from Monica Baker from Claiming Simplicity. And she is really wondering how often you should podcast. Monica currently is doing one podcast a week, but she’s wondering what that would look like to go to a biweekly airing of her show.

(02:49):
So I’m so excited to answer that question for her and PS I am recording this from a hospital. So if you’re hearing all the weird noises, sorry, not sorry. Landon had an emergency appendix removal, my youngest son last Thursday, and we are getting discharged today and I realized, oh, hot dang, I have a podcast today.

(03:11):
So they are out playing in the kids area, which is incredible. We have an amazing hospital out here, so it’s been great. He’s gonna be fine. Thank you, guys, so much for your prayers. And those of you who have been connected with me on social media, those of you that sent balloons and texts and, called, thank you so much. You have no idea how much it blessed us. And we’re just excited to be hitting home soon, quite frankly. So if you hear some weird stuff, that’s why.

(03:39):
Hi, Stef! This is Monica Baker from Claiming Simplicity. I started my podcast about a month and a half ago with one episode per week. And I’m thinking about doing it bi-weekly, but I’m really curious to hear your thoughts on about how much faster you think it’ll grow. And if you think it’s worth the extra time. Thanks for all your help and all you do. I love your show!

(04:00):
So Monica, the first thing I wanna say, I have five things we’re gonna cover real quick, but number one, the first thing I wanna ask you is what are your goals with the show? So if your goals with the show are, hey, I just simply wanna have a podcast that is for fun, or it’s a mission work or this podcast is something that I’m just gonna dabble with. And the show is something that’s kind of like, I call it part-time podcasting, that’s something to consider.

(04:30):
When you think about scaling back, the most important thing is your consistency. So whether that’s gonna be bi-weekly, whether it’s gonna be weekly, whether you’re gonna have a show a day, I don’t care, just commit. I want you super committed to whatever consistent thing that you decide on or the frequency in which you decide.

(04:51):
I want you to be so committed to that for at least six months to a year. So if your goals with the show are to be a part-time podcaster, a bi-weekly could be fine for you. It’s definitely gonna be a slower grow. But again if the goal isn’t fast growth or the goal isn’t quick monetization, I think you’re totally fine as long as you are consistent.

(05:12):
Now, in contrast to that, Monica, if you wanna grow faster, the best way to do that is actually to scale up. So you also wanna take a look at what it is your podcast currently doing, and are you happy with what it’s doing?

(05:26):
Number two, the second thing to consider here when making this decision is how much time do you have and resources? What’s your schedule look like? How is it working podcasting once a week? Is that working well for you? Is it fitting into your schedule? Obviously, probably not, the fact that you’re considering scaling it back and that’s okay because this shouldn’t be a stressor.

(05:48):
The whole point of us choosing podcasting is the way that we are gonna grow our businesses is that we wanna do it in this organic, evergreen, easy, scalable way. If it’s feeling stressful, if you’re not editing yourself and so that can get expensive and you’re doing all these extra things, I think bi-weekly is great.

(06:04):
So we have to keep it at this like really happy medium of it’s stretching us and we’re showing up for this thing and we’re growing and we’re coming up with content we’re serving, but we’re not feeling overwhelmed and really super stressed out by podcasting.

(06:21):
The third thing I want you to consider is does faster growth matter to you? So I know we all wanna grow our shows, I know we all want all the downloads. We all want to have a way to monetize. We all want to have clients come in from the show and leads, but does it truly really matter? Is making money from this podcast faster, important to you?

(06:46):
Because maybe making money from the podcast is important, but it’s not something urgent. And you’re willing to grow into that, you’re willing to grow slow to grow big so that if the answer to number three is, oh, not really, go bi-weekly. If the answer is I absolutely must grow fast, I must make money from this sooner, rather than later, I really have the calling to make this into like my ultimate business model, I’m going Stef Gass on this thing, then you definitely would not wanna scale back.

(07:12):
Number four is to try and tweak. So the only way that know how our audience will respond to something is to actually try it. Now, we don’t wanna give people whiplash. We don’t wanna try, oh, I’m gonna do three a week and now I’m gonna do one. And then I’m gonna go bi-weekly. That is not consistent. And people get super tired of that super fast.

(07:32):
What we want is we want to commit to the consistency that we are sharing with our audience. And we wanna be really open and honest and let people know what’s going on. And then we wanna try it for long enough so that we can actually watch the statistics.

(07:48):
And then if something is not working or the audience is not connecting with it, we need to tweak. So for example, there was a time when I stopped publishing my shows at like 5:05 in the morning, and I moved it to like 8:00 in the morning because I thought if I was the last one to post my show, it would be at the top of people’s refresh feed on their little podcast app.

(08:11):
I got blown up with people who were like, I’m so mad, where’s the episode? I gotta listen to this on my commute. And so I had to change it back, but I wouldn’t have known that if I didn’t try it. So it’s okay to try stuff. It’s okay to tweak stuff and just pay attention to what your audience is loving, pay attention, which brings me to number five.

(08:31):
The final thing is 90 day evaluations. So the best thing that you can do to know if you need to go back to what you had before to know if bi-weekly is working for your audience is to take a look every 90 days at your analytics and 30 days is it’s really not a good amount of data because podcasts really roll on a 30 day period. So what we wanna do is take a snapshot in time.

(08:55):
So let’s say that you take January 1st or January 31st or whatever, and you take all the information down. Monica, you take down your podcast download numbers, you take down whatever, the number of reviews that you have, how’s your super fan number looking, all of that, episode 199.

(09:12):
And then 90 days later after you’ve changed it to bi-weekly, what does all that data look like? Did your downloads just crumble? Now, granted they’re gonna fall, right? Because there’s less to listen to. So you need to take that into consideration.

(09:26):
What’s happening with the reviews? Did you hear from anyone? Were people emailing? You post a couple polls in your Facebook group, post on the show and ask them to email you. Hey, did you miss? Are we okay going biweekly? Like just talk to your audience. They’re here with you. They’re real people on the other end of that speaker. And often they’re totally willing to give you feedback.

(09:47):
So here you go, Monica, should you scale back your podcast from one episode a week to bi-weekly? The five criteria to make that decision: one, what are your goals with the show? Two, how much time do you have? What does your schedule look like? Number three, does faster growth actually matter to you?

(10:05):
Number four, try and tweak and number five 90 day evaluations. And again, remember guys at the end of the day, there are no rules in podcasting. You can do whatever the heck you wanna do. You can make this show, whatever you wanna make it.

(10:20):
You can have long episodes or short episodes or podcast once a month if you want to, just make sure it’s in line with your heart, your goals, what God’s calling you to do, how He’s calling you to show up and what your people are asking of you.

(10:33):
And hey, if you wanna be featured on a quick tip Tuesday episode, just like this head to stefaniegass.com, scroll down on the homepage. Leave me a question on the SpeakPipe button. You can also go to stefaniegass.com/contact. The SpeakPipe button is there as well. Leave me a question. We only have two questions in the queue, guys.

(10:54):
So if I don’t get any more questions, quick tip Tuesday will be retired. But you’re not gonna let that happen, cuz you’re gonna go right now and you’re gonna leave me a super juicy question about growing your business, starting your podcast, getting clarity, monetization, keywords, balancing life and business, growing in your faith, whatever the thing is that I can help you answer.

(11:16):
Get on over there, girl, and leave me a review. God bless you. I can’t wait to see you guys back here on Thursday, recording from my own home, out of this hospital, praise the Lord with my healthy baby boy by my side. See you guys soon. God bless.