Sustaining and Maintaining Content
There are a lot of obstacles that stand in the way of podcasters and creating a show that carries on episode after episode. Whether it’s having trouble generating new ideas and keeping things exciting, or it just becomes a hassle to make time every week, you are not alone. It’s a common problem to have, especially among podcasters who use podcasting as a hobby or way to grow their business, since it might not be the main source of income.
Even though it may be common, your listeners still listen to you for a reason. They desire and expect great, consistent content from you. It’s important to your brand and your podcast that you keep a consistent presence across all forms of media. But sometimes (or most of the time), sustaining content and maintaining that consistency can be difficult.
This article will break down some practical concepts to come up with new ideas and save time so that you can get to 100, 200, or even 1,000 episodes of your podcast.
Have a running Google Doc, Trello ticket, or some other idea board to which new ideas can constantly be added. Sometimes you are working on a project and a new idea pops in your mind, or you have a conversation with a listener or customer, or maybe you’re in the grocery store and genius strikes. Add it to the list. If you do this, your list of new content ideas will continually grow and you will always have a bank to go back to. Bonus: add coworkers or co hosts to the list so they can add their ideas too and you will have even more.
Listen to your users, customers, followers, listeners, etc. If enough people start to ask the same question about the podcasting process or our platform, it tells me that it’s time to write an article about that topic. The same is true for your podcast. Your listeners and followers are a great resource for generating new content ideas. They will tell you what they want to hear, you just have to ask and listen.
Leverage guests. Guests are a great way to add variety to your podcast. Not only through a different voice, but also through different perspectives and ideas. Bringing on guests related to your podcast’s topic is a great way to relieve yourself of the responsibility of creating all the content for that episode. Just come up with the questions or talking points and let them do the rest.
Make your equipment easy to access — make it easy to record. If you have to open your closet and pull out your microphone and computer and any other equipment you may use every time you want to record an episode, chances are that will get old quickly and it will make it more of a chore to record. Having your recording equipment already set up in a designated spot where you can just go and sit down and hit record will make the process smoother and therefore make it easier to keep creating.
Record batch content. One of the reasons people fade out of creating content is simply because they can’t make time in their schedule to record on a regular basis. If you can carve out one day or a few hours over the course of a couple days once a month, you can sit down and record all the episodes for that month. You can then schedule the episodes to be released every week, biweekly, or on whatever timeline you prefer. This method also helps streamline recording guest interviews because you can set them up to record all in one week, rather than trying to coordinate all month long. Recording batch content can save you time and effort, eliminating yet another obstacle that is preventing you from producing new episodes.
Use reusable content. At Auxbus, we know that creating a reusable intro, outro, and call-to-action is a really easy way to save time. The less time you have to spend creating these segments, the more time you have to focus on the main content, making it easier to record new episodes quicker. We believe in this idea so much that we made it an integral part of our software. You can go in and set up your show by recording these elements one time. Every time after that, when you go to record new episodes, those pieces are already there. Even if you don’t use Auxbus, we believe that this is a good practice for everyone to use to save time and remove some of the resistance to creating new episodes.
Sustaining and maintaining content is a difficult job and it is ever-changing. The goals of your business and the desires of your audience may change over time and it is okay to let your podcast change over time as well. Embrace your creativity. When coming up with new content ideas, don’t turn anything down right away. Test the waters and see how your listeners respond. Allow yourself to be creative and see where that might take you.
This post was written by Auxbus, the first end-to-end audio platform designed to eliminate the obstacles that stand in the way of creating a podcast. Auxbus makes audio creation fast, easy and fun. Learn more and try it for yourself by visiting Auxbus.com
