Four Tips When Taking a Hiatus on Your Podcast

In today’s episode, Steve, the Podcast Guy, shares four essential tips for taking a break from your podcasting routine without losing your audience or risking podfade. Drawing from his personal experience during Hurricane Milton, he dives into strategies that help you plan for breaks, keep your listeners engaged, and ensure a successful return. Whether you're facing unexpected events or planning some time off, Steve's insights will guide you through maintaining your podcast's momentum.

Key Takeaways:

• Plan Ahead and Batch Content: Steve emphasizes the importance of recording episodes in advance. By batching your content, you can schedule releases during your break, ensuring your audience continues to receive consistent value even when you're away. This proactive approach helps prevent listener drop-off and keeps your podcast top of mind.
• Re-release Valuable Past Episodes: If creating new content isn't feasible, Steve suggests re-releasing older episodes with a fresh 1-2 minute introduction. This strategy not only revitalizes valuable content that newer listeners may have missed but also keeps your feed active without the heavy lifting of producing new episodes.
• Communicate with Your Audience: Open communication is key. Steve discusses how announcing your break across your podcast episodes and social media platforms builds trust and keeps your audience informed. Whether you have the foresight to announce in advance or need to make a quick update, keeping listeners in the loop ensures they know you’ll be back.
• Set a Clear Return Date and Stick to It: Holding yourself accountable by setting a specific return date is crucial. Steve highlights how committing to a comeback date not only motivates you but also reassures your listeners. Sticking to this date helps prevent podfade and shows your audience that you're dedicated to providing them with ongoing value.

What's Next?

Visit www.sobersteve.com for more information on Steve’s Podcast Launch Program and his Branding and Business Bootcamp for Badasses.

Stay tuned for upcoming episodes where Steve will coach four aspiring podcasters through brainstorming sessions—offering insights that you can apply to launch or enhance your own show. Keep on podcasting!

Transcript

Steve: 0:00

Hey there everyone. And welcome to a brand new episode of podcasting. Bad-ass I'm your host, a server, Steve, the podcast guy. And today we're going to be going over four tips and tricks. That you want to make sure you do when you're taking a pod break. Or a break in your podcasting routine and schedule. So it's an important lesson that I had to put into practice more recently, and we'll get into that. And it's something to make sure that you don't pod fake when you go away. Because that's the biggest thing that we risk when we take a break isn't necessarily that we'll lose some listeners because we will lose some listeners. It's just a matter of the fact, if someone's used to showing up for your show week after week, And then you go away for a couple of weeks. People are going to fill their time with something else. It's just natural. But the biggest problem that podcasts face is that they don't actually come back or they come back. But not as into it, as they did before. And then when the listeners don't skyrocket back up to where they were right away, that's when they give up. But either way, the biggest thing, when you take a break is that's the number one sign that you are at risk for potentially pod fading. And we want to avoid pod fading or just stopping your podcast without any sort of ending or notice, but all costs. So here's how you can avoid that. The first bit of personal stories, I'll give you as an update. If you've been listening to why this is a topic that's close to home is because we recently in Florida where I live in Sarasota, we're in direct line of hurricane Milton and the trickle effect of what happens after hurricane, because it's not just necessarily the night of the storm, but. The devastation afterwards and recovering from that, I've learned that can be really difficult. And trying that led to me having to take a few weeks off from my normal podcasting routine, it was a option of either sacrificing a couple episodes of this. Or sacrificing my client's content and that was not an option for me. So I did take a few weeks off. I did post about it. I did do my best with the little post here and we'll get into kind of what I did in the moment as well as also just celebrating the fact that I came back because I would not leave you all hanging, but we also have another great handful of episodes on the way. So when you are having something happen, like catastrophe happens, life happens and you are no longer able to show up for your podcast. The best case scenario is that you are able to see it coming in advance and, That there's a month or two weeks or three weeks or however long, if, A couple of months in advance that you need to, or want to take this break. You can work up to it by avoiding it altogether for your listeners. Thanks to the ability to create content in advance, batch it. Like I go over with my clients. Record through your four or five episodes, all in one or two sittings, schedule it all out for release, and you can kinda keep on releasing that content while you are on your break. You can even nowadays schedule all the social media content. I know some people will say that the auto schedulers will hurt you, but if it's either use an auto scheduler to take a break or don't take a break at all, the answer is use that auto scheduler. So using those tools, you should be able to take a week or two weeks off. Easily without your listeners noticing if you have the ability and the foresight and the planning to be able to make sure that you can have that content batched and ready to go. I quite regularly take a week off for my shows where no one will notice because I am still having the content come out and I'm still liking and commenting as things happen. But the actual posting editing, writing, creating, processing, all of that's already done well in advance. It's podcasting. And magic that you can use to if you're able to plan in advance. So step one, obviously try and plan for your breaks so that they're not breaks for your audience, the way that their brakes for you. However, occasionally that can happen like a hurricane. You can only plan so much in advance with a couple of days in advance and then having to recover afterwards. So in a situation like that, You also have the option to rerelease old content. If you have more than 25 to 50 episodes, especially once you hit over a hundred episodes. It takes a very dedicated listener to find your show over a hundred episodes in and. Have listened to all of the episodes. I love to imagine that's what happens. And there are days where I know someone finds the show because they will download. All 200 something episodes of one of my shows. But that is rare and few and far in between compared to people that will find your show wherever you are releasing, and then just stick with you week after week without ever going back. And so when that happens, a great way that you can take these breaks, if you don't have time to. Create brand new content. Just take existing content. Throw an introduction at the beginning, saying why you chose this piece of content, why you're revisiting it, why it still matters today and is relevant. And there you get a one or two minute introduction that you have to record the rest of it's old material that you're going to reintroduce to your audience in a new, exciting way. And then you also got the chance to then again, where it's a very small amount of work you're putting up front to be able to then take the break. While you're doing either of these methods. You also want to make sure with tip number three, no matter how you're taking the break. And even in a situation like mine, where I wasn't able to plan. And it was a newer podcast, this show specifically. So I wasn't able to dive into my vaults for episodes like I did for my queer and sober one that had over 200 episodes. That was very easy for me because I just took the two. Vault episodes. I created mixed them all together and had old content become new content. But what I did make sure I did was let you know my listeners as soon as I knew. So what I mean by that is that if A month in advance that you're going to be taking a month off or two weeks off, let your listeners know, build it into the format of your episodes. Leading up to it in the beginning of the show, as well as the end of the show and announcing that there's going to be a break. That way as people are listening week after week, if they're used to waking up every Tuesday morning to your show, and it's not there on Tuesday morning. If you let them know one, two, even three weeks up in advance. As they listened to the episodes that you're going to be taking that vacation or that trip or that things happening, they're going to feel like they're on the insider's club for knowing what happened already, because they're already listening and they won't worry about you and they'll know you're coming back. So it's a win-win situation when you're able to let your listeners know in advance when the break is happening, I recommend kind of the ratio is a one-to-one. If you are taking a one week break, Let them know at least one episode or an advanced. If you're taking a two week break, try and spend two episodes leading up to it, mentioning that you're going to be taking a break. If it's a month long break four episodes, hopefully by this point, you get how a one-to-one ratio works. Having that ratio or letting your listeners know in advance multiple times. Hey, I'm going to be gone for a little bit. It's okay. I'm okay. We're okay. The podcast will be back. I promise. Makes them feel safe, makes them aware of it and makes them more likely to return to you when you come back. All things you want. So don't just go away and just figure eh, then no one will notice anyway, because my numbers, aren't what I dream of them being one day. So why let the people listening now know where I went. That's not a great mindset to have for the people that already know and love you. You want to make sure you're letting them know what's going on with your podcasting. So announcing your break to the audience. One thing, if you can't do it with the buildup in this case with the hurricane, again, I didn't have that chance to let you all know in advance that I would be having this hiatus. But what I did do at that point, As soon as I realized that I was going to be gone for a couple of weeks, I did get behind the microphone and spend all of one minute to a minute and a half explaining the situation that I was taking a hiatus uploaded it as an episode. So people who are already subscribed and following got the episode. If you listen to it, you already know what I mean. And if you didn't listen to it and you're like, where is it now? It's because you found me after this all happened. And so what I did was I did that episode and I am deleting that episode when I upload this episode, because that was a message for my listeners who were already listening to my show. That I was taking a break. I don't need to keep that one and a half minute long episode. In my feed so that people six months, eight months, one month, five years down the road, we'll go back and hear it. So at that point, that's when you do the episodes a placeholder, a be right back like I did. And then when you are back deleted, so that's like a never happened. That's another great way of making sure that you're letting the people who matter know without making it in your podcasting history, resume forever and ever. I want to make sure that you are using your communication skills to be able to announce the break to your audience. Not only in the podcasting app, but also on your social media. Make sure that they also know on social media and you post about it on social media, let them know. And finally, you want to make sure that you have a clear return date. And that you stick with it. Yes. That is the most important part about taking a break. As I mentioned at the top of the show, is that it is just a break that you're not pod fading away. Because most people don't say, Hey, I'm going to disappear into oblivion. They say, I'm going to take a quick break. I'll be right back. And then they don't come back. So don't be those people know when you are taking a break. Even for an emergency that you're taking a X number of weeks or days break and then stick to it. Plan forward. And hold yourself accountable, let your listeners know, let your followers know, let your friends and family know that we have that date happens and you're not coming back. Everyone's gonna be like what's going on. You have to get back into the studio. You have to get back into the content. You have to hit record because you have people waiting for you and you don't want to fade away into oblivion and you want to hold yourself accountable and be there for them. Because when you tell them I will be back at this state. There'll be waiting for you and you don't want to let them down. So you were creating for yourself a situation where you will win. They will win, and your podcast will win because it will keep going because you have that clear return date and you're going to stick to it. So with that, if you are able to make sure best case scenario, you batch the content. Backup plan is using old content and polishing up it's new content. Combine those with your clear return date and all the other tips I embedded into this episode. And when you take a break, you will come back and most of your listeners will hopefully be back Ray, waiting for you with beta breath and open arms. So that is my episode for today. We are back with four brainstorming sessions in the works. I'm so excited for all four of these episodes. You've got four exciting potential podcasters getting ready to get behind the mic and share what their future podcasts might look like a while I get to coach them through how you might be able to apply their. Tools and tips and tricks into making your own shows, launch or grow even better. Keep on podcasting.