Ep 88: How to Get Multiple Episodes from 1 Podcast Interview

Hello there and welcome back to another episode of the Podcasting with me, Verity. I am feeling very lazy, very apt for the podcast title because I'm actually lying down on the floor recording this episode, but If you listened to two episodes ago, I explained to you my new podcasting setup. I'm currently batch recording for May. It's the 5th of May and I'm currently batch recording for episodes throughout the month of May. And as I said, I've currently lost my podcasting studio and I haven't had got a new setup yet. So I'm just in the corner of the Bedroom, but I don't have the computer on a desk or anything and I was holding the microphone and my back was just getting sore So now I'm lying on the floor but it proves the point that you can podcast from anywhere you do not need a Fancy setup or anything like that in order to have a quote unquote successful podcast Do I think my podcast is successful? Actually, I'm going to be big headed and say yes because You of the amount of people who contact me and say that the podcast has really helped them on their podcasting journey or it's given them a fresh perspective on a particular podcasting topic. So for me, that is success. And we do work very well in different charts, particularly good pods. Today we are talking about how to get multiple podcast episodes from one guest interview. So what you may have noticed, and I'm going to link all of the episodes that I talk about down in the show notes for you to check them out. But I have had Adam Shibley from podcasting business school supposedly on this podcast four times. And what I mean by that is because I have had four episodes that have featured Adam on this podcast. And as I said, I'm going to have those all linked down below so you can go back and listen to those episodes. But the interesting thing is I only hung out with Adam for one hour, one interview, and that turned into four podcast episodes. Because essentially we covered four key topics when I was interviewing him. Now, bear in mind, my episodes are normally, like, what, 10 to 15 minutes long? So, I wanted to be able to break the interview I had with him down to respect those timings, and also to make sure that you guys, my audience, were getting exactly what I was promising from the episode titles and notes. Because we all know there's nothing worse than listening to a podcast episode which promises one thing in a title. And then you have to get like halfway through the episode before it actually gets to that point or within five minutes, it's covered that point. And then it's all just filler and I don't know, nonsense or whatever. People like to know that they are getting what they're signing up for, for a show. Otherwise you just click off and people aren't interested in the show and they don't come back for another episode, which is just devastating in my opinion. So yes, when Adam and I talked, when I interviewed Adam. As I said, we covered four podcasting topics, which I felt broke down really, really nicely in 10 to 15 minute segments that I then divided up into four episodes. First of all, I got four episodes worth of content out of one hour's worth of recording. And then for Adam, not that he needs the additional exposure, but for Adam, he then got four episodes worth of promotion out of my podcast. For him and more promotion for him as well, because all of his links were still in the show notes, regardless of whether or not we spoke about them in that particular episode. So that was great for me because it was so much content and I split it up how I put it out there. I didn't have it all go out in same month or in one hit all in the same day, which you could do if you wanted to, but I just, I broke it up. So that was great for me and similar. Back in April, I had Sarah from CopyHop, who I did two episodes with her. Again, it was one interview. Now, I'd got a little bit wiser to the fact of doing this technique of multiple episodes from one interview from doing Adam's interview. And I actually said to Sarah when I first went on, I was like, look, I know that we want to talk about these two things, but before I hit record, would it be okay with you if we said hi and did all that thing, we talked about this one topic, and then we kind of signed off, and then we take a couple of breaths, and then we go into another quote unquote episode, and You then get two episodes out of it, I get two episodes out of it, double the promotion for you, double the content for me. I said it will be a little bit strange because I will be saying bye to you, and then about 30 seconds later I'll be saying hey, welcome back to the show, it's great to have you on again. But she was so great and she was like, yeah, that's so, that's great. Let's just maximize our time together. And she was grateful because as I said, it was two lots of promotion for her. I got two lots of content. We covered two amazing topics that just wouldn't have made much sense for me. I don't think to be putting into. into just one episode or not breaking them up. So I think that that's a way that if you know that you want to talk to a guest about topics, which, you know, they obviously have a crossover because otherwise, why would you be talking to them for your podcast? But maybe they are different topics in the scheme of things. So, um, You could approach them and say, you know, is that okay if I either just record as one massive long conversation But I am gonna chop it up into multiple episodes or as I did with Sarah because we knew that we were going to talk about two very different topics actually recording them as separate episodes, but on the same interview, then why not go for that? I think sometimes we make things really difficult for ourselves by being like, oh, I'll get back in touch because I'd love to have you on the podcast to talk about that exact thing. If you've got that person there, why not just talk about it there and then? Now if your episodes are an hour, hour and a half long, then maybe recording back to back episodes, that could actually be quite traumatic almost for everybody involved. So obviously, this is really going to factor into how long your episodes are. But even if your episodes are like, what, 20, 30 minutes long, or Even if they are 40 minutes long, book out an hour of your time. Maybe do slightly shorter episodes with, with that individual. Two 30 minute episodes, or a 40 minute and a 20 minute episode. Because you think, once somebody's already introduced themselves once, they don't really need to do that again for a follow up episode. So get clever with the time that you have with a guest, particularly if you know what you would want them on a subsequent episode for, just maximize that time as much as possible. Now, you don't have to do that, and sometimes it wouldn't make sense to do that, so I did an interview Matt from the life shift then Chris from Podtastic Audio. I interviewed them both back in December of 2023 and January of 2014. For and their episodes, I didn't cut up those episodes. I did put out as the full 40. I think there were nearly 40 minute interviews, maybe 20 between there was somewhere between 20 and 40 minutes that those interviews went out. Now, the reason I didn't chop those up was because we didn't jump around the topic so much and we kept much more on topic. the same conversation. And also, at the time, I was just experimenting with longer episodes. I wanted to see whether or not having longer episodes made any effect to my download numbers. Alert. It did. didn't. It made no impact to my download numbers at all. I didn't see an increase, didn't see a decrease, which was good. And I wanted to see if my listeners were turned off by a couple of longer episodes, you know, whether or not my retention for the episodes was better. So like how long people listened for, or if it was worse. And again, spoiler alert, I found no difference. I found that people stuck around for the information, even though the episode was longer than they might be used to from this podcast, because the information was valuable. So they still stuck around and listened to the longer episodes, which was great feedback for me. And also thank you to everyone who listened to the episodes. Again, all be linked down in the show notes. But after those two longer interviews, I wanted to go back to some shorter episodes and stick closer to the ethos of this podcast of 10 to 15 minutes interviews. That's exactly what I did. So, It's almost similar to what I was talking about a couple of episodes ago about are you killing your episode's own growth by not experimenting with different things? And this is a definite experiment. So, you know, could you be chopping up your interviews into multiple episodes to maximize your time? with that individual. And like I said, I think that's brilliant because if I was, if I gave somebody a one hour interview, even 40 minute interview, and then they split that up into even just two episodes, that's twice as much coverage for me because each time they promote one of those episodes, that's me getting that promotion and that coverage, which I think is fantastic opportunity. If you do want to experiment with longer interviews, again, why not? But I hope that you have got something that you can take away from this episode about multiple episodes from one interview. Definitely have a go and see whether or not it's a format or a strategy that is going to work for your show. Otherwise, I'm Verity. This has been The Lazy Girl's Guide to Podcasting. Please share this episode with a fellow podcaster if you think they'll find it helpful and I will see you next episode. Happy podcasting.