What to Know About Podcasting During the Summer [Ep. 97]

 
 

Click play to learn about podcasting during the summer:

 
 

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Here’s what to expect from this episode:

Are you thinking about taking the summer off from your podcast? You might want to reconsider. 

In the world of podcasting for educators, downloads typically increase in the summer. Because if you're talking to teachers or other types of educators, they hopefully have some time off during the summer and therefore have more mental capacity to consume things. 

However, a quick disclaimer: Not all podcasts in the education space see a summer download increase. But if you look at your data and determine that your show falls into this camp, this episode is for you. 

Because no matter how hard they try to fight it when they should be resting, teachers are probably still thinking about the upcoming school year in some way. How can they plan more efficiently? How can they improve their classroom management? How can they improve their relationships with coworkers, parents, or admin? 

Today, I wanted to help answer your questions about leveraging this increased attention and what you should do with your podcast during the summer. I'm sharing some ideas on what kind of content you could release this summer, how to connect with your listeners, and things to consider when promoting your podcast during the summer. 

And even if you've decided to take a step back or a break from your show this summer, listen to these ideas and let them sink in for next summer!

TOPICS COVERED:

  • Looking at YOUR data to identify YOUR podcast trends

  • Seasonal content ideas

  • Increasing audience engagement

  • Promoting your podcast during the summer

Resources mentioned:

Connect with Sara:

Related episodes:

  • Sara Whittaker 0:01

    Your Podcast is a powerful tool that serves your audience and your business. But how do you manage it all bring in new listeners, and convert those listeners into customers. That's what this show is all about. Welcome to podcasting for educators. I'm Sara Whitaker, classroom teacher turn podcast manager, and I'm here to help you get the most out of your show, all while making an impact on other educators. Hey there, welcome back to podcasting for educators. If this is your first time listening, my name is Sarah, I'm your host, and I am so glad that you decided to join us. If you're a returning listener, welcome back. I am always happy to have you listening. Today, I wanted to have a quick conversation about podcasting. During this summer, I get a lot of questions about what you should do with your podcast during the summer, mainly, should I continue to release episodes during the summer since people are on vacation schedules are kind of wacky, all of that. And if you've listened to the show for a while, you probably already know my answer to this. What I've seen after working with educational podcasters, over the last few years is that during the summer months, specifically June, July and August, we see downloads go up. And this is pretty much the total opposite of other niches in podcasting, whose numbers tend to go down during the summer. But for educators, it makes sense, right? If you are talking to teachers, or another type of educator, they hopefully have some time off during the summer. And this is probably the time of year that they have the most mental capacity to consume things, should they be resting and not thinking about work? Absolutely. But that's not the case. And we all know it, no matter how hard they try to fight it, they are probably still thinking about the upcoming school year in some way, how they can plan more efficiently, how they can improve their classroom management, what they can do to better their relationships with coworkers, parents, or admin. And I will stop and just give like a little disclaimer that I don't want to over generalize here, because every single podcast is different. And just because you're an educator, and this is the trend that I've seen, it doesn't mean that it's necessarily the case for you. Maybe you have a different few months, during the year where you're seeing this increase, I would really encourage you to look at your data, it's really the only way that you're going to be able to recognize these trends for your unique show. But if you do look at the data, and you see this summer increase, then let's talk about how to leverage that. And if you've only recently started your show, or you're about to start your show, and you don't really have that data yet, then I would listen to these ideas. Let them sink in, try them out if you want to and see what happens. Like I said, this is really a time where you likely have more attention than usual from your listeners. And you really first have to ask yourself, how much work am I going to put into leveraging my show this summer, because while it is a great time to try new things, and to be more intentional with your podcast is also summer. And for you that might mean that you're trying to take a step back and do a lot less for a few months. So just keep that in mind as I talk through these things. I really just want to point out two big things to consider when it comes to thinking about how you're going to use your podcast for the summer. Number one is to really sit down and think about your content. And ask yourself how can I be really intentional about my podcast content this summer? You really want to be thinking ahead here. What will your audience need during back to school season and back to school season differs big time like here, where I am in Virginia. I'm like right outside of Richmond we go back at the beginning of August, which feels really early to me. Because I know other counties in other states and even other counties in Virginia they don't go back until after Labor Day. So you're back to school content really needs to be going out in June and July possibly even may to summer is a great season to create a series of episodes that kind of all center around one topic like a back to school series, or a couple of mini series like maybe a series of three episodes about setting up your classroom and then a series is a three episodes about creating a really solid plan for your systems and routines for the year. And if you are in the podcasting for educators prep school, I do have a bonus training inside the course that's all about how to really utilize podcast series. But think, what will my audience need in the fall? What do I have coming up in my business? And how can I send her my content around these things? Another great thing to think about during the summer, if you have more undivided attention from your listeners, do you want to focus on growing your email list from your podcast, so pushing listeners to become an email subscribers? Maybe think about how you could focus on promoting or sharing about a specific lead magnet? How can you create content around that lead magnet, if you really want to focus on driving listeners to your email list during the summer months? Okay, so that's the first thing is to really sit down and brainstorm how you can be super intentional about your content. The second big thing to consider is how you can increase audience engagement during this season. For all of the reasons that we've already talked about, this is a really great time to try and connect with your listeners. If your listeners are in the schools, then during the school year, you know, they're going through the motions they're trying to get through the day. And even if they are listening to your podcast every single week, they might not have the time or the mental space to go and take the action that you've been asking them to do like to send you a message or to join your Facebook group or whatever it is. So this is a really great season to think about these things. Some ideas for you to consider would be to invite listeners on your podcast for an interview either one on one, or you could do like a roundtable kind of episode with some of your listeners, you could host a pop up Facebook group, if you don't have a Facebook group already. And you're and you really don't feel like you want to take that step and maintain a Facebook group day in and day out, then a pop up Facebook Group is a really great way to get your listeners to come and engage with you engage with each other, especially if you have any kind of launch that you're doing during the summer. A pop up Facebook Group is a really great kind of connection point there to get listeners, from the podcasts to the Facebook group. And then you can talk about your offers and how else you can support them inside of this Facebook group. And when you have a pop up Facebook group, it's a really fun time to you know, do things like a giveaway or do some lives or q&a is there's lots and lots of things that you can do in a pop up Facebook group. Summer is also a great time to try some gamification on your podcast, I would love to do a whole episode on gamification, and I will in the future. But summer is a really great time to try that out. And what I mean by that is,

    Sara Whittaker 8:16

    how can you engage your listeners by gamifying something so creating a bingo board or doing like a virtual podcast, scavenger hunt. There's so many different ways that you can gamify things. But an example of this is back I think it was for my 50th Episode I did a to celebrate my 50th episode, I created this bingo board. And on the bingo board were things that you all could do and cross off. And I tried to keep things really simple like screenshotting an episode and adding it to your Instagram Stories, writing a review on Apple podcasts listening to a specific episode. So creating these little simple, I highly encourage you to keep things simple when you're gamifying, especially for your podcast. But how can you create these simple little tasks that listeners can do in order to enter some sort of giveaway. And I always encourage you to make one of those things reaching out to you somehow. So that that can really bridge that gap and really allow you to see the face behind these listeners. And if there's any good time of year to do this, I would say summer is a great time to try it out. Continuing on this theme of engagement and hearing from your listeners talking to your listeners, summer is a good time to try out some sort of like listener feedback listener messages. So you could use an app like SpeakPipe they have a free plan that you can use where listeners can actually send in messages to you and it could be for your ears only and then you could read what they sent in or you can actually feature their messages inside of your podcasts. episodes. And, again, this could be a whole episode of all the different ways that you could use SpeakPipe. So if you're interested in hearing some ways that you can use SpeakPipe, send me a message, let me know. And I can do an episode on it. But some examples would be like, asking a really simple question and having them send in their answer via voice message on SpeakPipe. So it could be, what are your favorite books to use during the back to school season? Or what is one piece of advice that you have for new school counselors, as they begin their first year as a counselor, and then you can feature their messages inside of an episode. So you would do a whole episode where you featured their answers. So it's a really cool way to again, hear from your listeners, let them know that you want to hear from them and showcase their voices on your show. My little, not little, my biggest piece of advice that I have for you with SpeakPipe is just like with everything, it's an experiment, try it out and see how it goes. For some audiences, it's going to work really, really well. For some audiences, it's not going to work well. You really want to simplify this, if you're asking a question, make it really simple so that people don't feel intimidated to send in their voice message we are as podcasters used to getting behind a mic and talking, most of your audience probably isn't that way. So this might feel intimidating to them. So make sure that you let them know that they can like first of all, it doesn't have to be long, it can be 30 seconds, they can script it out and just read from their script, when they do their message, try it out, see what kind of responses you get, you really have to do promotion for this kind of thing, you really have to make that call to action to get these messages many, many times. And just see how it goes. For some of you, your audience, it might be better to just put out a question via email or Instagram stories, or in your Facebook group. And people will just you know, write down their responses, and then you can read them on your episode. So you're still getting that engagement through your audience. It's just in a different way. And then another strategy for summertime would be to do double podcast episodes. So maybe right now you have weekly episodes, you could go to two episodes a week, or maybe you only do an episode every other week right now. So you could move to weekly episodes for a couple of months. Really, the idea with that is, again, you have more attention than usual, most likely, and so why not really leverage that real estate and leverage that time and put out more content. Again, this is going to totally depend on your schedule and how much time you have. But I know I've talked to some of you who have consider doing double episodes, you've been curious about it, this would be a good time to try it out. And it doesn't have to be forever, you could just do it short term and then go back to your regular schedule. And then lastly, I just wanted to make a few notes about what to consider when you are sharing about your podcast during the summer marketing your podcast during the summer. Again, this is where I really want you to consider your summer schedule, and how much work you want to be doing. If you can't do it all personally, I would put more focus on creating really intentional content, and engaging with my audience in the ways like I described a couple of minutes ago. If you want to focus on growing your podcast and bringing in new listeners this summer, the things that are going to give you the biggest bang for your buck quickly. AKA not spending your whole summer on social media would be to guests on other podcasts. I talk about this all the time, I'll probably never stop talking about it. I have a whole mini course on how to be a great podcast guest and land podcast interviews that I will link in the show notes for you. You can get through it in a weekend. If you are new to podcasting, and you're just not really sure where to start, check that out. So that's going to be a good way to really move the needle in terms of your podcast growth this summer, as well as something that we've talked a lot about in this episode, which is creating great content, because that's going to be content that your audience will be more likely to share with others and in turn, bring in new listeners to your show. So I would focus on those things engaging with your audience creating really great content. And if growth is a focus for you this summer, been to try some podcast guesting personally I have decided to take summer off from Instagram. I will not be on there for the months of June and July. However, I will be focusing on my podcast and on my email. So stay tuned on how that goes. I will report back but I know for me something has to get This summer, and for me, that's going to be Instagram. Hopefully all of these things give you some ideas to think about when it comes to planning your summer content. If you want to hear more on this topic, some episodes that would be good for you to check out would be Episode 22, which is called proactive podcast planning Summer Edition, Episode 55, which is called Are you missing these opportunities to promote your podcasts on autopilot, which is if you have a busy summer coming up, that's definitely gonna be a good one to listen to. And Episode 88, which is a more recent episode called Summer launch secrets, how to leverage podcasting for maximum impact with Melanie that Esteli. That's going to be a good one, if you are planning to launch anything this summer. And you really want to put a focus on your podcast to drive people to that offer. We talked a lot about being really intentional with your content. And this is something that I teach you how to do inside of my audio course podcasts like you mean it. Doors are currently closed, at least at the time of this recording. But you can get on the waitlist so that you will get an email when doors open next, and you can join that at podcasting for educators.com/waitlist. All right, thanks so much for listening. I hope that you are getting excited about summer. If you have any creative ideas that you're really excited about in terms of how you're going to use your podcast this summer. I would love to hear them. Send me a message on Instagram, send me an email. I always love hearing from you. And I always love just seeing the cool things that you're doing with your podcasts. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. To keep this conversation going connect with me on Instagram at podcasting for educators. I'm always looking for an excuse to talk about podcasting. If you're looking for support and launching, managing or growing your podcast, check out my online course the podcasting for educators prep school at podcasting for educators.com/prep school. I'll see you here next time.

More about Podcasting for Educators:

Podcasting for Educators is the podcast for TpT authors and other online educators. It's a show that will help you get your podcast in front of those who need it most - teachers, counselors, literacy specialists, SLPs, parents, and more! Each week, Sara Whittaker and her guests will share top tips and actionable strategies that you will need in order to launch, manage, and grow your podcast. You’ll learn how to leverage your show to build long-lasting relationships with your audience and promote your TpT resources, courses, and memberships, all while providing valuable and accessible content!

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Sara Whittaker