Do you ever watch a great show that ends on a cliffhanger with the three annoying words: “to be continued…” Imagine that show never coming on again. Leaving you hanging.
In a nutshell, that is podfading. You are leaving your listeners, your passion, your content, and purpose in the dust. Don’t let this happen to you.
It can get overwhelming with audio production, marketing, planning, and even setting those pesky milestones. Don’t let your podcast sink into oblivion. It began with passion right?
How do you prevent podfading? Are you finding yourself in the realm of questioning to leave your podcast? How do you maintain commitment and motivation to continue something that begins to flatline? With these simple steps, you will begin to see your podcast go from the brink of the podfading oblivion to a podcast full of passion and purpose.
Retrace Your Steps
Remember when you started your podcast? That exhilarating moment when your podcast trailer went out, your first episode released, or when you had your first ever download? Ah, yes, the glory days. You can have those back with that same all-in passion it took to begin your podcast.
No one ever said it was an easy process, but that is what makes it worth the thrill.
Brainstorming is the best way to retrace your steps. Write out and note down why you want to inform, entertain, and intrigue your audience. What are ways you can achieve this? How will your audience benefit from listening to your podcast? Just begin to write, to brainstorm, and to note all of the ways you are able to impact your audience. Soon, your passion will unravel as well as your purpose.
Creativity is Key
Routine becomes routine. This is both good and bad. For you as the podcaster, this is good to get on a schedule to get your podcast out there on a timely basis. However, this also plays a negative role for your listeners. This routine will turn them away and run toward another podcast: boredom.
If your podcast strictly addresses the same key elements without any further insight, your listeners will run like the wind.
Being creative is the key element from podfading. It provides two amplifying elements that enhance your listeners’ experience as well as your ability to lead a great podcast.
- Preview the New-New
- Play Cat and Mouse for your ideas, milestones, and purpose
Implementing these two elements of creativity will keep not only your audience on their toes, but you as a podcaster as well.
Introducing new guests, new music, or a new introduction will continually bring your audience to the energetic diversity within each episode with the preview of the new-new.
Secondly, play cat and mouse with your ideas, milestones, and purpose to keep the energy and thrill of the chase in each episode.
Look it Up
What is the data? How are you marketing efficiently? Who is your audience? Has it changed? How can you get back on the map? These are the questions that will give you insight to the numbers behind the work.
If what you are producing is not reaching the audience you want nor the amount of listens, change your tune. Continuing this only leads to coercion and eventually, podfading. Be on the lookout for the data and be flexible. Practicing these traits enhance your experience as well as your listeners’.
Repurpose your Purpose
You began this journey with a mission: to inform, to persuade, or to enlighten your listeners on a topic of your passion. Do not let off the gas pedal! Press forward with a sense of urgency.
What was your purpose? Why is this important to you? Why should others listen? Boom, repurposed in a new state of awareness. This step also refers to a new session of brainstorming because it leads to further insight in yourself as well as creativity.
Permission to Podfade?
Sometimes, you have to let go of the things you love. Each step that helps you save your podcast contains one element: passion for purpose.
If you lose sight of this, then your podcast is bound to fail. Without a purpose or a passion to inform, you lose the meaning and pizzazz behind the microphone–which will be carried into your episode. If this is a venture you entered on a whim and have now lost passion as well as purpose, then do not revive something that is already dead. Move on and move up in your life.
If you are feeling overwhelmed and two steps behind, don’t. This feeling of urgency should motivate you to rediscover your purpose for your podcast. You will begin to enter unmarked territory–only heightening the thrill and excitement! Taking these easy five steps will steer you back to your podcast’s purpose. Brainstorming is the key element to creative thinking that will change your podcast for the good. Shake up your listeners’ expectations by implementing new and exciting material. If you are finding yourself bored, without purpose, and dreading to record your next episode, then it is time to fade out and into the next phase of life. The question remains: Permission to Podfade? That answer is the only one you can come up with.
Photo by Jason Rosewell on Unsplash
