Episode 5 - The Benefits and Challenges of Weekly Releases

In this episode, Jon delves into podcast scheduling and frequency, exploring how often podcasters should release episodes and what factors should be considered when making this decision. He discusses the pros and cons of various release schedules, offering insights into the best days and times to publish episodes based on genre and target audience. Jon emphasizes the importance of consistency and reliability in establishing credibility and fostering a loyal audience. He also walks through a step-by-step guide to planning and scheduling episodes in advance for a smooth and timely release.

Takeaways

• Choose your podcast release frequency based on your capacity to produce consistent content.
• Weekly releases can increase downloads and credibility but may be hard to sustain with other commitments.
• Bi-weekly releases offer a good balance between consistency and manageable workload.
• Mondays and Fridays are ideal release days for personality-driven podcasts.
• Publishing episodes early in the morning can engage listeners during their daily routines.
• Planning episodes in advance ensures timely releases and reduces last-minute stress.
• Consistency and reliability are essential for building trust and a dedicated listener base.

Chapters
00:00 - Introduction and Overview
02:24 - Determining the Frequency of Podcast Episodes
05:44 - Considering the Challenges of Weekly Releases
08:05 - Exploring Bi-Weekly Releases as an Alternative
11:23 - The Power of Releasing Episodes on Mondays and Fridays
14:14 - Working Backwards from the Release Date
17:11 - Building Credibility and a Loyal Listenership through Consistency

Resources

• Download the Wayfare Podcast Strategy Workbook
• Need help with your podcast? CLICK HERE
• Need help starting your podcast? CLICK HERE

Versions

• Check out our video version of the podcast.
• Check out our audio version of the podcast.

Acknowledgments
A big thank you to:

• Kath - Creating the podcast artwork (You can find more of her work here)
• Anna - Wayfare's Admin Assist.
• Matt - Graphics creation for the show
• Dan - Post-production work

For any additional questions, please reach out through this link.

Thank you for listening!

Transcript

Jon (00:01.574)
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Wayfair podcast. are listening to episode five and today we are going over podcast schedule. this is going to be a pretty, lengthy discussion, I believe just because there's a lot of questions that I tend to run into, you know, when is the right type of frequency that we should release? what time is appropriate for when we release and

yeah, it's, it's, it's a little bit more, an intense question that I usually run into when I, talk to, clients. And I think this is going to be a really good episode for you to kind of like chew on when we're done discussing, when we're done filling out this information. again, if you're new to the show or you're, randomly checking out this episode to kind of get the vibe for, who I am and what the show is all about.

we, for this particular series of episodes, we are going over, this podcast, a workbook that I have available for whoever wants it. It's a free resource that I like to share. I find it really helpful for clients that work with me to fill it out. And then we talk through it and work through it together. honestly, if we do consulting calls and they don't have this provided, this is what I talk with them through and ask them.

ask my questions. This is what it's based around. My consulting is based around. So, you know, if you have the workbook, you got me, that's what consulting is, on the first call afterwards. It's a little bit more nuanced. yeah. And it's a, it's a, it's currently a free resource. you can check it out through the, description and show notes, depending on how you're listening to this, whether it's video or audio.

yeah, and I'm filling it out with you guys. We're checking out together. so I'm kind of, it's very progressive, the, the, episode by episode. And, so yeah, let's just jump right into it again. Rate review, share with people, make a comment and start a, start a, conversation with people. And I want this to be super collaborative and,

Jon (02:24.956)
Podcasting is such a broad form of media It's cool to see what everyone's coming up with and talking about see I write off the rip. We're on page 11 The first question that is on there is how often will you publish an episode and this is?

This is a pretty, strong question that I get from clients. had a, I had a conversation as of this recording. Was it yesterday? I think it was yesterday or two days ago. It's kind of a blur, but they, were asking, do you think weekly is good? Do you think bi weekly is good? Do you think monthly is good? And I, and I asked them,

I asked them what they were feeling because, because there's a couple of, there's a couple of,

Sub questions, I think that need to be asked of you before you fully determine what is appropriate. And there is like data that shows like, if you do weekly, your download numbers are gonna be stronger per month. And there are some platforms that out there like Buzzsprout or

There's another one that's coming to my mind, but I can't think of an F course in the moment when I'm recording, I forget the name of it. Buzzsprout's the big one that I can think of right off the top of my head because that's usually what I work, work on with clients as of this recording, where they like requests that you have X amount of downloads per month. And so if you have a weekly frequency, those are more downloads that you can get per month and you kind of like game the system a little bit. But I mean, you know, sorry, context.

Jon (04:21.628)
they have a program for dynamic ad insertion where if you get X amount of downloads per month, you are allowed to get into that program. I kind of just started talking about that without giving the context super sorry about that. but yeah, if you do weekly, you can get more downloads and you can have more proof to be a part of that program, but there it's one thing to,

game the system on that. And it doesn't have to be that particular program. That's just an example. But there's a way to like kind of game the system where you have more proof of downloads based on your frequency. But like, is your personal schedule going to be available to do that? Like, can you do weekly? You know, if you have full time, if you have a full time job, that would be pretty, I would imagine that'd be pretty intense depending on your personality type, based on, know, can you

consistently be a weekly show based on your full -time job. And so then I say, cool. Well, if you can't do that, that's totally fine. Let's take a step back. Can you do by weekly? Okay, cool. Well, yeah, I can do once every other week for a recording session and that'll give you time to post produce it and get it scheduled, write up all the show notes. Cause there's a lot of work that is involved too. Can you, can you record weekly? If you go back to the weekly discussion, can you record weekly?

Can you produce show notes weekly? Can you edit weekly? Can you create a clips weekly? You know, if it's a video podcast, and if you can't buy weekly is totally cool. yeah. And you can also outsource help. Like you can get a post producer, like, you know, what we do wait for recording. That's our big nine to five job is post production. And that will definitely help the workflow.

but can you still show up every week? And so biweekly might be the option. can you do two times per week? That's super intense. I do have a client that can do that, but he also manages his team to a point where he can be the face of the show two times per week. Like that is now a part of his job description for his business. and I guess I'm,

Jon (06:43.076)
I'm trying to like say all this to say that like, can you show up consistently every time for your show, for your listeners? Because if you're trying to develop a podcast that is building credibility and you're creating a community around your show and your follower, your listenership, followership, whatever, if they can,

Rely to if they can rely on you showing up every week, you're building more credibility and more reliance. And if you're being super sporadic, like, yeah, we're to do a weekly show, but then you skip one week per month. if you start skipping two weeks per month, it's just a year, kind of, you're going to start losing those downloads. You're going to start losing the followers, the listeners, whatever, and your credibility is starting to diminish, I guess.

But that's all like on a personality level too. Like, know, I, I, like if your podcast is a personality driven based podcast or whatever, you know, if it's a corporate podcast, a B2B podcast, wherever you want to call it, monthly is totally cool. By monthly is totally cool. The goal is to, the goal at that point is to just kind of build rapport, build a network. don't.

It's still good to have some sort of frequency because there may still be listeners out there that are kind of relying on that. But like, you know, for this show to kind of answer the question here, to answer to, if, if I were to fill this out, I'm filling it out with you guys. I would say other, because I'm going to be working on this. You're going to be seeing this. You're going to see season one altogether at once because I'm trying to build more of an information based podcast, for this season, at least.

I want to be able to have everyone be able to watch all the videos all at once. There's no cadence. There's no whatever. It's just like, cool. We're releasing it 10 or 11 episodes. think I can't, off the top of my head, I can't remember when I'm releasing all at once, but,

Jon (08:51.291)
Boom, all in one day. that would be my answer to this.

So the next, the next thing on here is what days of the week will it be published or what day of the week will it be published? This is going to be much more dependent on what you, what schedule you end up forming for your podcast. This is going to be also based on what your genre is and what your demographic is. I like to share with people if it's going to be a true crime or personality driven based podcast, good recommended.

days to release your podcasts are usually going to be, Mondays and Fridays. those are pretty good. there's really the whole thing about podcasting is there's no wrong answer here. So there's no wrong answer for that. you know, Tuesdays might be more practical Thursdays might be more practical, but I like the idea personally that you do either Monday or Friday because if you're a personality driven show like

to that degree, guess, you know, whatever. Mondays are super exciting because it's like, cool. It's the first day of the week. I'm having a hard time getting to work, but I got the show that comes out every morning. Like I have something to look forward to Monday mornings. Right. And the, the same can kind of go for the Friday's tour. It's like, sweet. It's the end of the week. I'm super stoked. for Friday, this can be really great. And the cherry on top is I get a new podcast episode. it's kind of that headspace.

and that's really just an example to kind of run with. Again, there's no wrong answers. I know that some people like doing Wednesday mornings. If you're kind of doing much more of like the corporate, B2B style podcasting, that's more of a trend that I've noticed. It's not really, there's not really any data that shows that that is a strong one. It's just something I know is pretty good for that angle of podcasting, the marketing style of podcasting.

Jon (10:56.252)
Yeah. And then the last question on this page is what time will be, will it be published? Again, there's not really a wrong answer, but if you want to kind of run with the example that I shared, for the personality driven podcasts, if it's going to be a Monday or Friday morning, I like the idea of releasing it earlier in the morning, like four or 5 a which you can pre schedule it, you know,

You know, like what I like to do with clients that I work with is that when it's when they give me the green light that this is going to be published, I'll say, cool, we'll publish it 5 a on Friday. I'll go in and you can pre -schedule all of the stuff. You don't need to get up early and do that. That's ridiculous. but I like to do early morning because when people get up in the morning and they are getting ready, they see on their phone that, you know, new episodes up. So it's ready to go. Good to go.

Not much thought of it. get in the car and they start commuting and they turn on the podcast and they're getting like they're on their way. So, yeah, that's pretty much as far as logistics go on how to publish your show. page 12 is the last page of the section.

Jon (12:14.556)
And really this is kind of much more of a like zoomed out image or zoomed out way of looking at your schedule for your show. like, you know, hypothetically, let's say that we're going to do a bi -weekly every other week, podcast scheduling where, know, we're kind of working backwards. want the show to be released on a Friday, 5, AM and it's every other week. So if Friday is your,

End goal.

If you're working backwards, I'm looking at the calendar right now. There's like a calendar image that I have on the, on those PDF. So you're going to spend the form, the former week. So released on Friday, the Thursday before Wednesday before, and so on. That is kind of like your post production week. So ideally Monday, you could send it to your post producer. So you could send it to like, you know, me and my team, for example, Monday is when we receive it.

Typically it takes like a team about two to three days. That's what our standard is at least. so by Wednesday is when we would send it back the first draft and that day and Thursday is when you can like review it, send any reviewing notes. you can create a second draft and then it's approved. then Thursday is when you set up for release. Honestly, that's pretty good for like a weekly schedule. If like,

the post -production team, whoever you work with can rely on, you recording possibly for an idea, you recording your show Monday morning, sending it Monday and the like 1 PM to the post -production team. And then that just like you run with that schedule. and again, I'm thinking on the fly here as I'm looking at this, cause it's tricky to think about it because like, it,

Jon (14:14.244)
Like I'm just envisioning like any podcast out of whatever. it's really determined on what you need and what's practical for your schedule. That's been the whole, I guess, the bottom line principle of this whole episode is what's your schedule look like? What's reasonable for you? cool. Let's work with that. But going back to my example, cause I was kind of running with a biweekly schedule here. The formal week is kind of more of like a cool. You record it.

On the Monday before, you can't send it off that day. And that gives the team that you work with way more time to work on. can spend, you can go through the remainder of the time working on show notes, working on, transcription stuff, working on publishing. And if your schedule is like, you know, free for a buy, like you're all of a sudden free, have a lot of time. You can really start banking on those episodes and just start cranking them out one after another.

after another for your biweekly schedule. So now you have like a whole month to work on your next set of episodes. I'm hoping this makes sense because it's a lot of like ID, ID, aiding here. and I don't have a schedule in front of me with you, where we're just kind of like, cool, it's like work on this together. but that's kind of the gist of it. yeah, that kind of falls into, there's a little question above the schedule.

that I have here that says how many days will you need to record, edit, review, revise and schedule an episode? That's kind of much more of like a, a launching off point for the schedule below. like if you say seven days, cool. Look at one week, start writing that out. Your little, notes like edit on Monday, review on Wednesday, schedule on Thursday, Friday's release day. yeah. So

I think that's pretty much it for this. I, again, this is all like ideating stuff, very heady things. So if you have any questions, feel free to reach out. there should be an email available for you to do so, on our website, which I'll have a link in the description and show notes associated with this format. However, you're listening to a video audio, same thing with the PDF. If again, you're listening to this for the first time and you're like the, you're liking the idea of at least

Jon (16:40.526)
Looking at it, reviewing it. Maybe it'll be helpful for you to just kind of go through and do it on your own. And then you can come back and check out the show or you can work along. You can start from episode one onward. yeah, the link for that PDF will be in the description and show notes as well. yeah, feel free to reach out. Let's, let's do a consultation call if you, if you like all this,

I don't think if there's anything else, right? Review, share, comment, create a conversation, whatever works for you. yeah, until the next episode, next one's going to be about content plan.

Got some guests you're thinking about for your interview, brain dumping, some ideas. It'll be, it'll be a great time. It should be a quick one too. This, this is going to be much more just like ideas. Boom. Write it out. but yeah, until the next episode, talk to you guys later. Bye.