Spring Cleaning Tasks to Keep Your Podcast Fresh

Welcome to Profits Through Podcasting, the show for entrepreneurs with podcasts who want to monetize by generating leads and profits for their business from podcasting. I’m your host, joel Oliver, ceo of East Coast Studio, and spring cleaning is not just for around the house. It’s also a great time to revisit your podcast and see if that can be freshened up. Oftentimes with podcasting, as we’re so busy with day-to-day life and work and just making podcast episodes, we can forget to check in on some other aspects of the podcast. So I like to suggest this time of year for doing that, and, of course, we’re all different, so some people like to do it at the end of the year or on a holiday, when business is quieter. Whatever the case, you can take the things noted in this episode and create an annual reminder for your podcast whenever you’d like. So let’s get started with some things that we can look at for spring cleaning of your podcast. Number one your artwork. So your artwork may be perfectly fine, but one of the reasons it’s good to intentionally check in on this stuff periodically is that our businesses are evolving. Our podcast is evolving. We are evolving. Maybe you updated your branding but you forgot to freshen up that podcast artwork, or you had a photo shoot done recently. You’ve got a gorgeous new mugshot of yourself that could be used on your podcast artwork instead of an older one, or an animation, or maybe you don’t have a photo, things like that. Maybe you’ve got a new tagline. You don’t need to update the artwork just for the sake of it, unless it’s been with you for a really long time and you just want to spruce it up and modernize it. But don’t think that you have to make changes. Okay, and some people too, I know they might make an artwork when they launch the show. That’s kind of meant to be temporary and they are planning to improve it later. But two, three, four years in they realize they never actually updated it, and now would be a good time. Also, when assessing your artwork, you want to remember some of the best practices. That assessing your artwork you want to remember some of the best practices. That’s like ensuring the font is big enough so it can be seen, even when the image is shown small in podcast apps. You want to be able to read those words. Also, the entire artwork should demonstrate exactly what your podcast is about and appeal to the right audience. So always good to keep those things in mind whenever you’re looking at your artwork to see if it’s performing how it should be and accomplishing the goals that you have for it.

Next one up on the podcast spring cleaning list have a look at your episode titles and descriptions. Make sure your episode titles and descriptions are clear, compelling and optimized for search engines. It’s going to help attract new listeners and improve your podcast discoverability. Just make it look better as well. It’s easier to find things, easier to get those titles in front of people and capture their attention and hopefully they’ll tune in from that. While you’re looking at the titles to see, can you make any of them more concise, more attractive? Are there any keywords you could put in there that you hadn’t been using before but you are focusing on now in your business as well?

When we’re looking at the descriptions here, if you haven’t been doing proper show notes, or let’s say, you haven’t been including links to your call to action in the show notes, you want to get that in there. That’s important. Remember, not everyone is seeing the episode on your website. They could be seeing it in a podcast app like Apple Podcasts podcasts, and they scroll down and look at the episode notes. You want a link there to whatever it is that you’re promoting for your business, whether that’s a link to your newsletter sign up or a lead magnet or a webinar or something like that. That should be in the show notes. Okay, so a good time to take a look at what you have been doing, see if you need to go back and make any changes and also adjust your strategy for moving forward.

Next one the running order of your show. So you may want to revamp the running order, let go of segments that are not working anymore or add a new feature. Okay, these are great ways to add a little extra shine to your podcast you can think about is your format still working? Are there any parts that are becoming stale? Things like are you adding a teaser at the start of your episodes? That’s a pretty common thing to do these days. You don’t have to do it, but some people do and maybe it would help you. Maybe it will help hook attention and help you create more impactful content. Right, think about the latest strategies around that type of thing. Are there any you can apply to your episode in terms of the layout and the format and what you’re actually putting out there? You might even think of ways to increase engagement, like adding episode segments based on listener questions. If your audience has grown since the last time you thought about this and now you’ve got enough people regularly engaging with you that they could supply you enough questions to do a Q&A episode or a question segment in each episode, ok, spicing up how you present the content can kind of just wake up your audience, remind them how much value they’re getting from your show, can make it more impactful if you make the format better and again, here you don’t have to make any massive alterations or anything at all, but a periodic revamp or at least just assessing things can be a very good idea.

Okay, next up on our list for podcast spring cleaning your intros and outros, and I’ll say calls to action here as well. You are probably so familiar with your intro and outro you may not even hear them anymore, and maybe if you are editing or you listen, you just skip past it, so you may not even know what it says. At this point, it shouldn’t surprise you to hear that your listeners probably feel the same way. So adding a fresh, new sound to the beginning of your podcast can kind of recapture your audience’s attention all over again. Also, make sure that what you have produced is fresh, like the music is current, that kind of thing.

Also, as I mentioned the call to actions, consider if your existing call to action is okay or should it be updated. Like are you selling a new course or a product that should get attention instead and your call to action was for something older, or is it just a mess? Too many call to actions like three or four things in your outro. That’s confusing people and stifling them from actually doing anything. So think about that. Same goes with any ads that have been running for a long time without change. So, even if your offer hasn’t changed, if you’re promoting something of your own, you might want to just take this time to freshen up the ad. Cutting down on length is something I commonly see a lot of people could do, unless your ad is already 30 seconds or so at most. I see some of these three minute ads running for years at a time. Your listeners are just going to skip past that at this point. So freshening it up, not having them hear the exact same thing every time, especially when it comes to an ad Definitely a great idea.

So think about what you’re running and if you can improve that with your theme music on your intro and outro, if it’s become something synonymous with your brand, well that’d be a potential reason not to change it up. You don’t have to change these things. But if not, if the music is not really overly meaningful to your podcast, your content, hey, feel free to explore what the options are out there. Maybe you’ll find something new, modern or different. Maybe it aligns with some recent brand changes of yours. Whatever the case, as I’ve said already, and I’ll keep saying, don’t take this stuff for you have to change everything. You have to change your music. You have to change it all. Just, we want to be looking at it once a year to make sure nothing is slipping through the cracks and getting outdated.

Next on our podcast spring cleaning list this one’s quite important. Check your website and your social profiles. Check that all the pages of your website look clean and attractive and are reflective of your brand. Are there any sections that have kind of been neglected and they might need a little TLC? Ensure that you haven’t left any placeholder text around. Check that all your links work and any embedded video or audio still looks good. Maybe you’ve got a pop-up on your site for some old lead magnet and you’ve got a new one now, but the pop-up is redirected to the old one. Or you might find new places on your website to collect email addresses for your newsletter.

You’d be surprised how often I visit websites and I see problems. Like I mentioned, placeholder text I don’t know, it was overlooked when the website was built. Links, broken videos won’t play, all kinds of stuff like that. And because of that and I’ve had this we’ve had this situation on our own website. I’ve got my own reminders set up now to periodically check in just to see maybe something broke on the site I wasn’t aware of, like a plugin update in WordPress or something, or maybe we’ve got a testimonial up there from a client who isn’t podcasting any longer. Those kinds of things. You just you don’t realize what you could be missing until you ignore your website for a year and then go back and check it and realize you should probably be looking at it more often.

And while we’re on this subject and you’re looking at your website, check your social profiles as well. Not just the links from your website, because maybe you updated your username and the link doesn’t work to your Instagram anymore, that kind of thing, but on the profiles themselves. Listen, oftentimes we have people on our team working on these things for us, like our social profiles, our websites, links, whatever, and we can end up with these things broken or outdated bios on our profiles, all kinds of things. I’ve seen that where links in social media bios are to old websites that don’t work. We’re trying so hard here to grow our businesses and our audience and our brands and get leads and generate revenue. You don’t want these silly little things coming up where someone magically appears on your Instagram profile Great success. I mean, you pull them into your podcast. They clicked on your link to something and it just goes to a 404. That’s not acceptable. So you definitely need to keep an eye on these things and your podcast. Spring cleaning is a great time to do it.

Next one a content audit. Review your episodes from the past little while, however long you want to go back, check the download statistics, but also just think about if anything really seemed to resonate with your listeners. Like you got a lot of comments on social media or emails. Can you add more of this type of content? What was it about this content that intrigued people? Are there any patterns that you see consistently performing well amongst the episodes that you publish. Right, this could be a clue to help you optimize your podcast content and what you’re publishing, because you can really see what people are loving and, conversely, what they may not be loving. Look at some of your lowest performing episodes. See what type of content that was. That can give you a sign. Hey, let’s not create that type of content anymore and focus on this good stuff. And while you’re at this stage the content audit take a look at your guests. Were there any that you had on from past shows that you have been meaning to invite back? Well, now may be a good time. Or if there’s something in the news or something that’s come up that they are an expert on, well, that could be a good opportunity as well.

Next thing, while we are doing our podcast spring cleaning, have a look at old or outdated episodes, and podcast episodes typically are a snapshot in time, so generally, once we publish these, they’re out there, and some of them are even evergreen content. They’re perfectly fine to stay there for a long time, but you still may want to revisit older content periodically. Kind of depends on your situation and the type of content that you’re doing, what you’re talking about, but really just to see if there’s anything that you may want to remove for one reason or another. Maybe the quality doesn’t quite meet the standards you have today, or some content really became outdated or your opinion changed things like that. You’re going to have to decide if you feel anything should be removed. You don’t necessarily have to. Some people are strongly against that. All I’m saying here is just to consider at this time, reflect and see if it is something that does make sense for you or it’s something that you want to do, and you may even get inspired by some older episodes that you’ll leave in place, but you have a fresh, new take on them now, or there’s some new data out, things like that. So review your old episodes and you may not want to do anything there. You might want to just leave them in place. That’s totally fine. But even just digging back a little will at least give you some insight to how you feel about that and if you want to take any action there, all right.

Moving on and getting towards the end of our podcast spring cleaning checklist, next one will be a technical checkup and we might forget, since it’s designed for us to use so easily. But there is a lot of technology at the heart of our podcast, a lot of moving pieces, different apps and softwares talking to each other. So it’s good to check in and see is everything working properly? Take a look at the different podcast apps like Apple Podcasts, spotify, youtube, amazon. Do your episodes play OK? Does your artwork look all right? Do the links to these platforms from your website work properly? And say, if you go to those podcast apps and you click the link to the episode, does that work properly? I find problems with this stuff all the time and you’re not really thinking, hey, let me check this every day. I’m going to go on all the platforms and check all the links and all that kind of stuff. So that’s why it’s good to make this reminder once a year to check in on these things and try to catch anything that could be going wrong as well.

Not just are the current platforms and the technology functioning, but are you missing any potential platforms that you could be on? If you’ve got a smart TV or a smart speaker, you’re at a friend’s house or something, or you’ve got a connected entertainment system in your vehicle, see how easy it is to play your podcast If you just voice prompted or try to type it in, does it come up? There may be a directory that that device pulls from that your podcast never made it into and you can go take care of that now. So the technical aspect very important, quite easy to overlook. I would wager a guess that there are quite a few podcasters that don’t even listen to their own episodes. Maybe they don’t like hearing their own voice or don’t have time. And if you actually went and looked you might find, well, oh, something’s not sounding right in my episodes or something’s broken. So we definitely want to have that scheduled. I would recommend doing this more than once a year, but at the very least once a year because if there are any issues, you want to get them taken care of as soon as possible.

And the final item on our podcast spring cleaning checklist would be future planning Set goals and plan out your content strategy here for the coming months. This is going to help you stay focused and organized as you continue to grow your podcast. Consider the systems that you’ve got in place. Is your guest outreach and follow up running smoothly? Are you struggling to think of new topics? Have you been getting your recordings done on time or has it been down to the wire every week?

Take a broad look at the podcast, see what’s working and what isn’t. Think back Are there any issues that had popped up or a lot of questions that you’re getting from your guests about when is my episode airing? Things like that, anything that can kind of give you an indication of areas that might need some extra attention. A great idea as well if you’ve got an assistant or a team. You might even check in with them for some input, as they offer a different perspective and they’re likely doing some work for you on the podcast. Whatever capacity that may be. They may uncover some things that you hadn’t thought of. There may be issues in the workflow that they’re encountering every week with every episode, but you had no idea and they would love for you to ask their input and see how you can improve and rectify those problems. So that would be the final one on the list here.

Just look towards the future, any areas you can improve on and getting strategies and content ideas in place, moving forward to keep your momentum high with your podcast and continue on for another great year of success.

So there you go, Some important things that you want to check in on once a year is okay with your podcast, whether it is during spring or another time. I suggest putting these into an annual reminder in your calendar. Doesn’t have to be during spring, as I said, people have different opinions or whatever works for them in terms of schedule but once a year and this is going to help your podcast stay looking and sounding fresh and ensure that you are producing quality, engaging content that you can be proud of and that will keep your audience coming back for more. Join us again next time on Profits Through Podcasting, for more tips on how to turn your podcast into a lead and revenue generation machine for your business. And if you’re ready to let a team of professionals handle your entire podcast production workflow so you can focus on the most important tasks in your business, visit eastcoaststudiocom. Slash apply.