Ep 49: How to Turn Your Podcast Listeners into Superfans – Podcast Marketing Series Pt 2

[00:00:00] Verity Sangan: Welcome to the Lazy Girls Guide to Podcast Day.

[00:00:02] Verity Sangan: If you want effective and actionable tips to simplify the overwhelm of launching and managing your podcast, then this is the podcast for you.
[00:00:09] Verity Sangan: I’m your host, Verity Song, podcast manager, launch, Strategist, and host of a top 100 podcast.
[00:00:15] Verity Sangan: I’m really excited to have you here.
[00:00:16] Verity Sangan: So without further ado, let’s dive into the episode.

[00:00:20] Discussing the Thought Process of Quitting Podcasting

[00:00:20] Verity Sangan: Hello there and welcome back to another episode of the Lazy Girl’s Guide to Casting.
[00:00:25] Verity Sangan: As ever, it is great to have you here.
[00:00:28] Verity Sangan: If it’s your first episode, it’s, as I said, great to have you here.
[00:00:31] Verity Sangan: I’m Verity and on this podcast, this YouTube channel, I like to talk about pretty much everything podcasting related.
[00:00:39] Verity Sangan: If you are not new, then welcome back.
[00:00:43] Verity Sangan: As ever, it’s great to have you here.
[00:00:44] Verity Sangan: Now, those of you who have listened to the podcast or watched the podcast on YouTube before, I should say you will notice I’ve got headphones in for this particular episode.
[00:00:54] Verity Sangan: I don’t normally bother with headphones, but the kids across the street, it’s a lovely, lovely balmy evening in August that I’m recording this.
[00:01:02] Verity Sangan: So the kids across the street are playing.
[00:01:04] Verity Sangan: And whilst I’m pretty confident it’s not going to get picked up on the microphone otherwise, that’s going to be a lot of editing on my part.
[00:01:10] Verity Sangan: I just needed to have the headphones on so I could kind of like blot out the noise.
[00:01:13] Verity Sangan: But I kind of realized it’s scrapes all my hair back and I can see myself on the computer.
[00:01:18] Verity Sangan: I don’t think it’s the best look.
[00:01:22] Verity Sangan: I always get really jealous when you see musicians.
[00:01:24] Verity Sangan: They put their headphones on and they’re in recording booths and stuff and they just look so cool and I just look like I’ve got no hair all of a sudden.
[00:01:31] Verity Sangan: Very strange.
[00:01:31] Verity Sangan: But anyway, this episode we are going to be talking about should I quit my podcast?
[00:01:39] Verity Sangan: Because this is something which I feel at least once podcast go through this phase of thinking, should I quit my podcast?
[00:01:48] Verity Sangan: Should I just give up on it for a whole variety of reasons.
[00:01:51] Verity Sangan: And I feel like there’s not enough conversation around this.
[00:01:56] Verity Sangan: So in this episode, I just really wanted to bring light to that conversation and just unpick this thought process of should I quit my podcast.
[00:02:06] Verity Sangan: I realize this is a bit of an odd topic to cover as somebody who promotes people getting into podcasting and I talk so much about launching podcasts and how to grow your podcast, all the rest of it.
[00:02:17] Verity Sangan: I realize this is a little bit of an ironic or juxtaposition topic for me to be talking about, but I’m excited to dive into it kind of regardless, I think it’s going to be an interesting one.

[00:02:28] Addressing the Dilemma of Quitting Your Podcast

[00:02:28] Verity Sangan: So the first thing I want to address if you are thinking of quitting your podcast is, first of all, get rid of that sense of failure.
[00:02:37] Verity Sangan: Because if you do have a sense of failure, you need to get rid of it because you have taken an idea for a podcast and actually created a podcast.
[00:02:48] Verity Sangan: You were already 100 steps ahead of somebody who has just sat for ages with the idea of the podcast.
[00:02:54] Verity Sangan: You have gone out, you’ve researched your or I’m assuming anyway, you’ve researched your equipment, your tech, you’ve figured out how to do all the editing, hosting, platforms, directories, all the rest of it and you have got a podcast up and going.
[00:03:09] Verity Sangan: So first of all, if you do have a sense of failure, you need to get rid of that because you have already created a podcast.
[00:03:15] Verity Sangan: You’ve been running a podcast no matter how long it’s been going for and that is huge.
[00:03:19] Verity Sangan: So you need to give yourself the credit there.
[00:03:23] Verity Sangan: But the next thing I want you to do is really consider why it is that you want to quit the podcast or your podcast in the first place.

[00:03:34] Understanding Podcasting Success and Burnout

[00:03:34] Verity Sangan: So let’s dive into that a little bit of why do people quit podcasting or quit their podcast.
[00:03:41] Verity Sangan: And to me I feel that the main reason why people kind of give up or quit use whatever terminology you want is because they are not seeing the success or the results that they want to immediately, whatever that success or results might be, they’re not seeing it quickly enough.
[00:03:57] Verity Sangan: Now, podcasting is a slow game.
[00:04:00] Verity Sangan: It really, really is.
[00:04:01] Verity Sangan: It takes time to build traction and it takes time to get that kind of momentum with the listeners, with downloads and promotion and all the rest of it.
[00:04:11] Verity Sangan: So should you quit just because you’re not seeing the traction that you want?
[00:04:15] Verity Sangan: Well, I think that kind of depends.
[00:04:17] Verity Sangan: I mean, if you’re hell bent on quitting, fine.
[00:04:20] Verity Sangan: But I think that if you are just not seeing the success that you want quickly enough, I think you first of all need to really think to yourself, well, how do I define success in the first place?
[00:04:33] Verity Sangan: Do I have a strategy for meeting whatever that tub of success is?
[00:04:39] Verity Sangan: So I guess that then ties nicely into the second question of when should you quit a podcast?
[00:04:44] Verity Sangan: And to me I think you should quit your podcast when you’re no longer passionate about the topic.
[00:04:50] Verity Sangan: If you’ve just lost passion for the topic that you’re talking about, your episodes are going to end up mediocre at best and that’s going to show and that’s going to switch off listeners as well.
[00:05:00] Verity Sangan: I mean, to me it’s really obvious when a host has lost passion for their topic and is just producing episodes for the sake of content creation.
[00:05:08] Verity Sangan: So I think that if you feel like you’ve got to a point where you are just creating content for the sake of it, that’s probably a sign that you should possibly be looking at quitting your podcast.

[00:05:19] Understanding Podcast Attrition Rates with Verity Sangan

[00:05:19] Verity Sangan: So how many people do quit a podcast?
[00:05:23] Verity Sangan: Well, on average most people will quit their podcast before episode eight.
[00:05:28] Verity Sangan: So if you’ve made it to eight episodes or more, congratulations, you’ve already beaten a statistic in the odds.
[00:05:34] Verity Sangan: It’s estimated that around 44% of podcasts have three or fewer episodes.
[00:05:40] Verity Sangan: So if you’ve got to 20 episodes, you’ve been doing this for six months on a weekly basis and you’re thinking, this is not for me anymore.
[00:05:46] Verity Sangan: You’ve already done bloody well.
[00:05:48] Verity Sangan: You really, really have.
[00:05:49] Verity Sangan: And as I’ve already said, a lot of it is because people don’t see the immediate success.
[00:05:55] Verity Sangan: But then I think also there’s a group of people who don’t necessarily envisage the amount of time that podcasting takes up in terms of recording, researching, editing, promoting.
[00:06:10] Verity Sangan: They say I don’t know who they are.
[00:06:11] Verity Sangan: People in the podcasting world say that you should be spending about 80% of the time of a podcast episode actually promoting it.
[00:06:22] Verity Sangan: So when you look at a podcast episode as a whole, you should only spend 20% of your time actually researching and recording and editing it.
[00:06:29] Verity Sangan: The other 80% of time you need to be promoting that.

[00:06:33] When is the Right Time to Quit Your Podcast?

[00:06:33] Verity Sangan: I think it’s also important to touch on what the average lifespan of a podcast is as well.
[00:06:38] Verity Sangan: And I had to do quite a bit of digging to actually find this statistic, but I found some stats that suggested that the approximation or the average life of a podcast is 174 days, which is approximately six months.
[00:06:53] Verity Sangan: So I think six months or to get to the six month mark to try something out and figure out, hey, this isn’t for me.
[00:06:59] Verity Sangan: I think that’s a good time period.
[00:07:01] Verity Sangan: I mean, most people will have probation periods at work which will last about three to six months.
[00:07:07] Verity Sangan: So I think six months is a good time for you to kind of start analyzing and thinking to yourself, is this really what I want to be doing?
[00:07:14] Verity Sangan: Is podcasting right for me there?
[00:07:18] Verity Sangan: But on that note, I have got six signs that it probably is time to quit your podcast.
[00:07:24] Verity Sangan: The first one is you’re no longer passionate.
[00:07:26] Verity Sangan: I’ve already covered that.
[00:07:26] Verity Sangan: So that if you’re not passionate about what you are talking about, then you’re just not going to produce the quality content.
[00:07:33] Verity Sangan: So on that note, you run out of quality content and you just feel like you are just producing content for the sake of it.
[00:07:41] Verity Sangan: Number three, you just don’t enjoy creating podcast content anymore.
[00:07:45] Verity Sangan: And that’s absolutely fine.
[00:07:46] Verity Sangan: We all go into something, we try it out, we get fed up of it, we move on.
[00:07:50] Verity Sangan: If you are fed up and don’t enjoy creating content for your podcast anymore, that’s absolutely fine.
[00:07:55] Verity Sangan: Number four is if your podcast just doesn’t fit in with your lifestyle anymore.
[00:08:00] Verity Sangan: And again, I think this is something that doesn’t get mentioned an awful lot because life changes and things happen and family life happens and work life happens and we get sick and we get better again and stuff happens.
[00:08:12] Verity Sangan: In the wider world.
[00:08:13] Verity Sangan: I get it.
[00:08:14] Verity Sangan: Life does not stay the same and our lives change.
[00:08:18] Verity Sangan: And sometimes you could just get to a point where podcasting just isn’t fitting in with your life anymore.
[00:08:23] Verity Sangan: Number five is when you start to feel so overwhelmed by everything.
[00:08:28] Verity Sangan: Now, this one doesn’t mean that you should necessarily quit straight away.
[00:08:31] Verity Sangan: It could be that you need to take a bit of a pause and you need to look at your workflow and potentially cut things out of your workflow or make sure that your workflow is more aligned.
[00:08:41] Verity Sangan: Look at batch creating and what have you.
[00:08:43] Verity Sangan: But if you are getting to the point where the podcast is owning you as opposed to you owning the podcast, I would say that that is time to pause, take a think, step back and consider whether or not you want to consider whether or not you want to still invest your time and energy into your podcast.
[00:09:02] Verity Sangan: And number six is that your gut is just telling you that it is time to move on with something else.
[00:09:07] Verity Sangan: And as I said, that is absolutely fine.
[00:09:09] Verity Sangan: We all try things, decide it’s not for us, and then move on.
[00:09:13] Verity Sangan: And there is nothing wrong with deciding that podcasting was not for you or you did it as a project and now you just want to move on to something else.

[00:09:20] Should I Quit My Podcast or Just Take a Break?

[00:09:20] Verity Sangan: The other thing that I want you to consider when it comes to you thinking about quitting your podcast is actually flipping the question round a little bit and rather, should I quit my podcast is actually, should I take a break?
[00:09:32] Verity Sangan: Because sometimes taking the break gives you time to analyze where you’re at and really actually give you the thought processes that you can’t really have when you’re in the thick of a project.
[00:09:44] Verity Sangan: So I’m going to give you the example of my other podcast, which is The Confident CEO Podcast.
[00:09:48] Verity Sangan: I’m just going to look at the calendar on the other side of the room.
[00:09:51] Verity Sangan: But I have not actually put out a new episode for that podcast since the beginning of July and I’m now recording this.
[00:09:57] Verity Sangan: Well, we’re like three days off starting September.
[00:10:00] Verity Sangan: So I have not put out a new episode for that podcast in quite a while.
[00:10:05] Verity Sangan: And the reason for that is because the Confidence CEO Podcast, we were continually putting out new content for a good 15 months.
[00:10:12] Verity Sangan: It was amazing.
[00:10:13] Verity Sangan: We got to thousands of downloads in the podcasting charts.
[00:10:17] Verity Sangan: Absolutely fantastic.
[00:10:19] Verity Sangan: I still have people even though we haven’t put out new content for that podcast in what, two months now.
[00:10:24] Verity Sangan: I still have pretty much on the daily people contact me asking to guest on that show, which is absolutely amazing and incredibly humbling.
[00:10:32] Verity Sangan: But I kind of got to the point after producing pretty much weekly content for that for 15 months and I felt like I’d covered a lot of the topics that could be covered on that podcast.
[00:10:44] Verity Sangan: And instead of continuing to put out content, what I’ve decided to do is take the summer off from it and just not think about the Confident CEO podcast at all.
[00:10:55] Verity Sangan: And then when September October comes around, actually reevaluate, have a look back over the catalog of the episodes that are currently there and decide what new, fresh conversations I can bring to that podcast, what kind of guests I want to bring in whether I want to switch up the format a little bit, or whether or not I just completely walk away from that podcast.
[00:11:16] Verity Sangan: It doesn’t mean I’m quitting it.
[00:11:18] Verity Sangan: What it means is that I’ve just kind of got to a point where I was like, I need to have a break from it because I can’t currently see the wood for the trees.
[00:11:25] Verity Sangan: I have continually created podcast content for that podcast for a solid 15 months.
[00:11:32] Verity Sangan: And I was also, unlike this podcast, where I tend to batch record a lot of things.
[00:11:36] Verity Sangan: So, like, I haven’t recorded an episode for Lazy Girl’s Guide to Podcasting in about five weeks because of how I batch content my episodes.
[00:11:45] Verity Sangan: I wasn’t doing that for the Confident CEO podcast.
[00:11:48] Verity Sangan: I was pretty much recording and then putting out, and then recording and then publishing.
[00:11:54] Verity Sangan: So being on that cycle, I just found it a little bit challenging for me, hence why I’m having that break and also hence why I’ve got a completely different format for creating content for this particular podcast.
[00:12:07] Verity Sangan: But to kind of summarize what we’ve gone through in this episode, what I really want to get across is if you are thinking of quitting your podcast, is there is no shame in that and that is absolutely fine.
[00:12:18] Verity Sangan: It’s your podcast at the end of the day.
[00:12:20] Verity Sangan: If you want to quit your podcast, that’s fine.
[00:12:24] Verity Sangan: But what I would really suggest you do is rather than deciding outright, I’m quitting, I’ve had enough, I’ve walked away.
[00:12:33] Verity Sangan: Unless your circumstances kind of take that decision out of your control, I would actually really urge you to take a step back and just consider to yourself, do I need a break from this?
[00:12:44] Verity Sangan: Do I need to do something else for a couple of weeks or a couple of months and then come back to it?
[00:12:49] Verity Sangan: And there is nothing wrong with taking a break and you can still involve your audience, let them know on social media that you’re taking a break and all the rest of it.
[00:12:58] Verity Sangan: Engage with your community because they might have feedback for you as well.
[00:13:02] Verity Sangan: They might be saying, oh yeah, do you know what?
[00:13:04] Verity Sangan: I was actually feeling that the last few episodes weren’t as amazing as your earlier ones.
[00:13:08] Verity Sangan: And that could be giving you the indication that you do need to take a bit of a break or you do need to relook at your content strategy equally.
[00:13:16] Verity Sangan: Somebody might turn around to you and say, oh, I really thought that you’d be great doing a podcast on XYZ.
[00:13:21] Verity Sangan: Or do you know what you might just think after you’ve taken that break, yeah, I’m so full of passion again, I actually want to go back to creating content for my podcast.
[00:13:30] Verity Sangan: Or you’re like, no, actually, I’ve enjoyed the break and I want to completely walk away.
[00:13:34] Verity Sangan: But regardless of what your decision is, as long as it’s the right decision for you as an individual, I’m going to give you permission to quit your podcast if you want to.
[00:13:43] Verity Sangan: Which, as I said right at the beginning of this episode, might sound incredibly strange because, yeah, I’m all about launching podcasts and helping people create more for their podcast, but sometimes we need permission to do things.
[00:13:57] Verity Sangan: So if you want to quit your podcast or you want to take a break from your podcast, I am giving you the permission to do that.

[00:14:05] The Impact of Taking a Break from Podcasting

[00:14:05] Verity Sangan: So, on that note, are you thinking of taking a break from your Pod cast?
[00:14:10] Verity Sangan: Have you taken a break from your podcast?
[00:14:12] Verity Sangan: And what was the result of that?
[00:14:13] Verity Sangan: I would love to know.
[00:14:14] Verity Sangan: If you’re watching on YouTube, let me know in the comments below.
[00:14:18] Verity Sangan: If you’re listening via the podcast, then you can contact me at Verity Sangan on Twitter.
[00:14:22] Verity Sangan: That is where I hang out the most at the moment.
[00:14:25] Verity Sangan: Love to know what your thoughts are on this episode, and otherwise I will see you next episode.
[00:14:32] Verity Sangan: Happy podcasting.