One of the bad things about podcasting is the lack of definition.
How long do you podcast for? 1 year, 5 years, 100 years?
How often do I podcast? once a week, once a month, every day?
What should the format be? interview, monologue, Q&A?
So many questions to answer when you’re starting and planning a launch… Or even after you launch. And to many times we feel like if it’s not right in the beginning. “there’s no going back!” “if I screw up this time there’s no chance of going back”
Well….
I have good news for you.
There is a different way to look at things.
Podcasting by seasons
I think the first time I heard of this concept was from Michael Hyatt. (check it out here) It’s the idea of breaking a podcast up into seasons, consisting of a specific numbers of episodes.
Here’s how by adding this constraint you can gain greater freedom…
Let’s say you have a specific topic in mind you want to talk about, interview people about, etc…
For the example – if you were going to start a podcast about golf. Maybe you dedicate season one to “putting”. So you design somewhere between 12-24 shows about putting. And then after that take a 1 or 2 week break and start into the next season (or topic).
By breaking things up it gives you a chance to be more creative. Maybe for season 1 on putting. You have 6 interview shows. Then you have 6 shows on specific aspects such as the club, grip, mental approach etc, and then 6 shows answering questions. And you mix all of those together so you have a great mix of educational and entertaining content.
Also – I’ve found by this it gives you permission to stop if you set boundaries on your season. So if you want to try something… You can set boundaries and then see how it goes. If you don’t get the number of email subscribers, downloads, then you can stop… No issues. No one to answer to.
How many TV shows go for one season and then end. Quite a few. Not everything anyone ever tries will be a success.
Questions to think about.
- If you could script out your first 18 episodes who would they look?
- What would be the topics?
- What would be the different show types.