Summer Spark: Rebrand Your Podcast for More Fall Downloads - Kim Parkinson

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00:00 Hello and welcome to bringing the Spark back into your podcast. This is so very important during the summer and in the month of December. I feel like those are the months where people have a tendency to be really busy and sometimes they just kind of let their podcast slide away and it's hard to get that momentum back so today we're going to talk about bringing that spark back into it and getting your momentum restart started if you have maybe fallen off. So I am Kim Parkinson, so very nice to meet you today i am a podcast growth coach.  

00:40 I'm also a podcast producer and a podcast host. So my podcast is Podcasting for spiritual women and our first episodes will be released on June nineteenth so if you're listening to this before then, be sure to go and follow that on Apple and on all of your favorite podcast players and you'll get a chance to listen to all of the different growth tips that I have for podcasting and women specifically in the podcasting realm. So let's go. So why do we lose the spark, especially during those summer months? First of all, we're probably super busy with just hanging out by the pool or maybe just all of the times where we don't have a set schedule anymore, the kids are home or we just want to be outside there's more daylight and it's it just feels like being cooped up inside of your office or inside of your studio space doing recordings isn't really where you want to be.  

01:41 And a lot of times losing the spark also is, you know, you're not having very big audience growth people aren't listening. Let me tell you that in the summer months, this is very common and I do have a a few tips and a few tricks where we can kind of maybe see if we can tweak a little bit more out of them. But don't despair. More often than not, if you're staying consistent, come September, those people will just come right back and they'll probably binge all of your summertime content. So don't stop recording in the summer and don't stop releasing in the summer. My suggestion is to do some batches.  

02:23 And now a couple of other reasons here that you may be losing the spark is you, maybe you have an unclear direction, maybe you've done a pivot in your business and you're like, I don't know, maybe how do I get to that next stage? And that could just be as easy as maybe doing a little bit of a rebrand on your podcast. And that is actually pretty easy and really convenient to do during the summer time when maybe your listenership is down a little.  

02:52 Now, lack of inspiration and burnout also go very hand in hand, right maybe you are just exhausted because you want to be outside, you want to be at the pool, you don't want to be in here, you don't want to be recording. But if you just take maybe a little bit of time to carve out a couple of evenings, maybe a rainy day even where you are going to be recording a couple of solo episodes. And by a couple, I mean you do not have to have solo episodes that are an hour long.  

03:23 Even if you maintain a 10 to 20 minute episode during the summer months, a couple of 1020 minute episodes, you're going to find that the consistency, as long as you're bringing a little bit of value, is going to really uplift and it's going to just continue to feed those listeners and they're going to want more and more. This is especially going to be very favorsome when you have listeners that are coming back in September and they want to binge. It's so easy for them to binge a 1020 minute episode and just keep going as they're doing their workout, their walk, the dishes, laundry or just commuting to work. So I just wanted to kind of go over a few of those.  

04:07 But just so you know, again, we all kind of go through this, all of the podcasters, and the worst thing that you can do is stop recording or pod fade because then it's really hard to kind of get that momentum back up by maybe doing a few batches in a row. You can actually get right through that so let's talk about a couple of other things that we can do to get the spark back. So we're going to talk about the three ways to reignite your podcast. The first thing that we're going to do is reconnect with your purpose. So why did you start podcasting? Who are you serving? And then maybe you need to realign that mission with your ideal listener.  

 04:52 Businesses change all the time. Perhaps one thing that was working last year isn't working this year, and you're finding it really hard to connect those dots with the podcast. So in this case, I want you to revisit your show description, your cover art, your music, and the energy that you're bringing into your podcast. What I want you to take a look at is can you rebrand? And by rebrand, I mean take a real good look at where your direction is of your business and of where you're headed. And maybe it just needs a fresh cover art, maybe it needs an entirely new show description.  

05:36 And in some cases, maybe you need an entirely new podcast name. And that's very possible as well. So if you that is the case where you're finding you need to rebrand, summer is the perfect time to do that. This is the time when you can focus on just really nailing down all of those keywords. So if you have a podcast name and maybe it is, you know, something very generic like Gardening with Kim, understand that perhaps that is not going to be searchable by some people that are maybe looking specifically for indoor plant gardening. If you are actually maybe more talking about different types of gardening, right there's so many different types, so maybe gardening isn't the right description here or the right example here, but you really want to nail down what your podcast is about and who it's for in your podcast name.  

06:39 So for instance, my podcast Podcasting for Spiritual Women, I specifically speak to spiritual women about podcasting. And so that's it. I don't even have my name on there. And I understand that sometimes you do want your name to be prominent on your cover art. I suggest that maybe you leave that off and put those just on your social medias. So any kind of post that you might do or anything that you might publish on your social media or your blog or even your newsletter, you can certainly have a different cover art, but the one that goes up into your podcast player, make your name big and bold. And then when you go to look at this, I also want you to take a look at your show description and make sure that your show description has tons of keywords specific for who you are looking to talk to and what you're actually speaking about.  

07:36 And if you have a podcast already, go back and take a look at some of those maybe your keywords or your key phrases have changed over the years or the changed over the episodes and you might just need to revisit that show description. Because Google and Bing and all those other search engines, they search for your podcast name 1st and then they're going to start searching for your podcast description. So those are in the importance of how it is.  

08:03 Podcast name is super important. Podcast show description is also very important and searchable. And then the podcast titles is the third one that is also very searchable. And by the podcast titles, I mean the individual episode titles. Your show notes is actually really good for some of your social media content, your blogs, and maybe even Pinterest. It's not as searchable on these engines as you think and as you want it to be.  

08:33 Unfortunately, we put a lot of emphasis into them, but unfortunately it's just not as searched as we want it to be. So when you are reconnecting with your purpose, really take a deep dive into who you're talking to and find those keywords. Once you have kind of taken a look at that, what you can do is really kind of get that spark back to really kind of reinvigorate who you're talking to and what it is maybe you can bring back into that. Now I talk about freshening up your format is the next one here. And sometimes what this is, is you've been doing a ton of guest episodes now a ton of interviews.  

09:16 Interviews are easy because you're like, I need somebody and and you find that doing a podcast swap is really nice because then people will end up really reaching out to you and maybe you're growing your show by doing podcast guesting. And that is all well and good, but on your own podcast, my suggestion is to really make sure that you are staying as the authority figure O you want to make sure that you're making a ton of solo content. And also, let's face it, guest interviews have a tendency to be an hour long, sometimes 45 minutes to an hour long. They don't have a tendency to be on the shorter side, which during the summer let's let's try to do a couple of shorter episodes just to stay consistent and to give that value.  

10:05 Try some more solo episodes. And if you are already saying, I already do solo episodes and this isn't working, like it's not, it's not growing it's not, I really need to bring some of that spark back. Then maybe it's possible you need an additional guest on and it could just be a couple of couple of things that you can do here. You could do a guest interview and maybe you could make it into a little miniseries or you could have a miniseries on its own.  

10:33 For instance, you could do, if you were going to stick with the gardening, you could do a miniseries on the type of vegetables in your garden and and then just talk about what the difference is between heirloom tomatoes and regular tomato or other tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, grape tomatoes, whatever they may be. And you could have a little miniseries all about different vegetables in your garden. Of course, if you have a gardening one, you probably know all of the topics better than I am off top my head here.  

11:03 But this is just giving you an idea of like a miniseries that you could do. So whatever you teach on, whatever you coach on, whatever you're talking about in your podcast and in your business, is there some way that you can add a little miniseries to this? And whether or not that is a guest miniseries, meaning you're bringing a guest on for a couple of episodes all in a row so you're already doing solo episodes on a regular basis. You bring on a guest and you're like, for the summer we have 6 guests and we're going to do 6 guest episodes in a row.  

11:39 That's very possible. And it's a good little mini series, right just something very simple and something different than you're normally doing. Or you could do a mini series where you are talking about one thing specifically in your business as you go along, whether or not that is the tomato plant and then the eggplant and then the cucumber plant, and then maybe you have one on squashes or something like that. You could certainly do a little mini series and again, keep those 10 to 20 minutes long and you don't want to talk about more than one thing in each episode. So if you're talking about tomato plants, just talk about tomato plants. If you're talking about eggplants, just talk about eggplants.  

12:26 And I'm actually thinking more and more as I'm talking about this. I think I could probably give you a good 20 minute conversation about tomato plants because there are a lot of different varieties out there, right? And maybe there are different ways of gardening each of those varieties. I don't know those, but if you are a gardening expert, you might now a couple of other episodes that you can bring to the table, one of which is a coaching episode.  

12:53 So perhaps you are a coach or maybe you are someone that just really teaches on a certain modality and you do have, you know, bunch of people in a room on a Zoom call or maybe you've done a webinar and you are teaching someone something you're really coaching them. You can actually cut out some of those bits and pieces of maybe your hot seat coaching or maybe what you already record in Zoom and then you upload to your community.  

13:24 You can take those coaching episodes and you can make those into podcast episodes. Make sure that when you are doing this, you maintain that authority and you're showcasing how they have an issue and how you would go ahead and fix that issue. This is not only going to maintain your authority, but also going to teach people how you coach and how you help them. And this is going to just make them say, I wonder maybe I should work with her because I really like how she coached that person.  

13:58 And that question, that problem, that answer was all something that I got value out of so let me go click on her show notes and see where I can work with her too. So it's a great segue into that, showcasing how you do coaching, how you do whatever it is that you do. And even if it's just a tutorial, right like this is how I edit a podcast and let me walk you through it in a verbal way.  

14:23 It could be something very simple like that. Another one that is very popular and really great in the summertime especially actually I'm going to mention this one is especially great for a December episode, right around the holidays. It's just AQ and a episode. Maybe you have a lot of people that are asking questions and it's questions that you get all the time, right? The same questions, the same ones, and you're saying, I'm answering this so many different times that I'm going to make a podcast episode of just the questions that I get on a daily basis.  

14:57 And when somebody asks me, I can one, I could answer them or I could also say, you know what, I've got this podcast episode that actually explains it in depth. And so here's that episode number. You can go ahead and listen to that and hopefully you get your answer and if you have any other questions after, please let me know. Kind of a little bit of a all podcast episodes are Evergreen, but it's kind of a little bit of like a almost having like Ava in your pocket this particular episode, right it's kind of like I'm already answering all the questions that you have.  

15:30 So let's go ahead and create that. So it's easy to send people to could then be one of your top producing episodes because people are like, yeah, I needed to know that and now I do and I'm super glad that you had that available. And maybe they also have a additional questions and you can do a follow up Q and A episode at a later date. All right, so next one is to reinvigorate your audience connection. Maybe you're like, oh, my downloads are down and my audience isn't really listening or I don't feel like they are what's going on? And a lot of this I'm going to mention again, a lot of this is based on your keywords so if you have rechanged or or redone, renewed, refreshed your podcast name to be really honed in on your keywords and your keywords of who your audience is.  

16:23 And maybe you've done a refresh on your show description. Maybe you're looking at your podcast episode titles. Now when you are looking at your podcast episode titles, make sure that the keywords that are in your episode are actually in your title because that's really going to be what people are searching for on the podcast players so make sure that you have those keywords in that title. Once you have done that, a couple of things that you can do is you can ask for some feedback from, from your avid listeners or from your audience. If you already have say a Facebook group or maybe you have a heartbeat or maybe you're doing something else right.  

17:09 I'm, I'm drawing a blank right now on all of the different communities that you can have. But you know, if you have a community, you may be able to pull some of your audience and maybe just ask them what kind of episodes are you looking for? What are you looking to get out of working with me? How can I bring more value to you is there any questions I can answer? And all of those could then turn into coaching episodes. They could turn into hot seat episodes, Q and A episodes. And then what ends up great is that you can say, I had this question in my community and here I'm just going to answer it.  

17:49 And then once that person has asked that question, you can also say to them, hey, I made a podcast episode based on your question and I just want to really go in depth with it. So it's almost like they're getting a private session, but it's publicly out there, right so anybody can listen, you could do a little listener shout out for them too. If they're agreeable, always ask them first if they're agreeable to it. And you could say Kim is bringing you this question today and Kim is a podcast growth coach. And her question today is how to plant the correct tomatoes, when to plant the the tomatoes.  

18:28 And if you just want to make sure that that particular question and that person is put together. And sometimes, if you want, there's also something out there called Speak Pipe so that's speakpipe.com and they can actually ask the question directly in there. You can put that with your audio and then answer the question after that so it's them speaking and then your question after if you want to be really cool about it and maybe they might share it, or you can ask them to share too. If they have a podcast or a business and you say to them, please make sure that you promote your podcast, promote your business, promote yourself of some kind when you are presenting the question to me, I'm going to say you're probably going to get a ton more questions one, because it's self promotion and it's free promotion too, right? And two, when that episode goes live, they're more apt to share it to their audience as well.  

19:27 So it's a win win on both parts so ask them for a little bit of self promotion when they ask their question. When you are promoting your episodes, sometimes you just want to do a little bit of extra, right so maybe you want to promote your episodes on your email with reels, repurpose them into blogs, Pinterest, YouTube, any one of those. Now you might be like, that is way too much for the summer, and I totally get it.  

19:55 Pick one. And you know what? You can always revisit those episodes in the fall or even next year and do some more promotion on them. So if you really do an amazing episode, say, say your episode was absolutely fantastic and it was released. July fourth weekend right here in the United States you're like, you know, I don't know. I don't have enough time for all of the emails, the reels and all of the self promotion.  

20:25 But really, that was a really great episode. You can advertise that at any time at a later date. It just is just a, hey, a throwback i just want to let you know, this episode was recorded and released last year, but I really think it has a lot to do with what we're talking about now. And that could be any time. So don't even worry, even if you have a new episode out that week, I always suggest going back and trying to showcase old episodes so people can go back and listen to them because you never know whatever they listen to then might not have sparked any interest, but it could be something that they really need to hear now.  

21:04 So reminding them of that episode later on could be exactly what they need. Hopefully this will spark some interest for you when the audience starts engaging i know that I always love it when people start talking to me about different things that I've talked about. And so it really just brings that like little like, oh, they're interested, they're talking to me, they want to know more and I have that information and let me bring that to them. So I hope these have really helped you kind of really think about some of the things that you might want to talk about in your episodes this summer.  

21:38 So I have a few recaps here and a invitation. So if you want, just remember, reconnect with your purpose, refresh your format and that could be a whole new rebrand. And then engage in your audience and ask them questions get them to ask you questions, tell them they can get a little bit of self promotion there and then go ahead and just send that out so that they have that connection with you if you are finding that your podcast is actually not doing as well as you would like to do. I am a podcast growth coach and I do have a free podcast growth Clarity call.  

22:20 You can see that on the QR code there or there is also the link right there. No obligation. It is a 20 minute call, so if you feel like you just want a little bit more information about how to grow your podcast, I invite you to go ahead and reach out to me. Thank you so much for everything today you've got this i know you can bring the spark back into your podcast. You can always follow me on KP Creative Media and I do send out a weekly newsletter with some podcast growth tips and my new podcast will be released on the nineteenth of June and I encourage you to follow that for even more tips.   23:03 All right, thanks so much have a great day and talk to you soon. Bye bye.