52. Thinking About Taking a Break From Your Podcast? Podcasting Tips for When You’re Feeling Stagnant

Are you feeling like your podcast is stuck in a rut? Thinking about taking a break but not sure if it’s the right move? In this episode, I dive into why your show might feel stagnant and whether or not taking a break is the best option. Plus, I break down my ARC (Attraction, Retention, Conversion) framework to help you diagnose what's going wrong with a stagnant podcast and offer practical tips on how to fix it.

This episode was produced by me, The Podcast Teacher! Contact me at Hello@ThePodcastTeacher.com.

Transcript

Hey. Hey. And welcome back. Today, we're talking about taking a break from your podcast. I hear from podcasters on a regular basis that you're thinking about this. And while there are a variety of reasons for the desire to take a break to come up, I find that it's most often due to not seeing a reward for your effort. So you've been pumping out content regularly like you're supposed to, but you're not seeing your listenership go up, or maybe it's even gone down. Or possibly you have listeners, but they're not turning into your clients.

Your show feels stagnant. It feels like a chore. You signed up for podcasting knowing that it would take some effort, but you're frustrated with the lack of results from all of your efforts. And I get it. Delayed gratification is hard. Sometimes, it just downright sucks. But I promise that podcasting is worth it if you just keep going. So let's talk about when it's time to take a break and when it's time to keep pushing forward.

While feeling stagnant is the most common reason that I hear from people wanting to take a break, of course, there are other reasons. If you've received a major health diagnosis or are going through a significant life change, then maybe you do need to press pause for a little bit. I always encourage folks to try and find a way to keep podcasting, but you're the only one who can decide if you can handle it given any specific circumstances that you are dealing with in your life. So please always do what's best for you. But in most other circumstances, my opinion is going to be, no, you probably should not take a break from your podcast. Let me explain my thinking here, and I'll also give you some tips on how to identify why your show is stagnant and some ways to fix it so that you can keep moving forward. My biggest argument in favor of not taking a break from your podcast is that your show is going to lose momentum that it currently has. That's both momentum from your audience and your own momentum.

Your listeners are depending on you. They've incorporated your show into their routine. If you take a break, they're going to find another podcast to keep them company on their walk, during their car ride, or while they're doing their chores. If or when you come back from your break, they may not give up that other show and come back to you. By taking a break, you can lose any momentum that you have with a current audience. Then there's your own momentum. It's so much easier to maintain an existing habit or routine rather than to start a new one. So if you're in the habit of creating an episode on a regular schedule and then you take some time off, it's likely going to be incredibly hard to get back into the routine.

I cannot even tell you. The number of podcasters that I've seen say that they're, quote, unquote, taking a break, and then they never actually come back. It breaks my heart. So in my professional opinion, if it's possible to keep going without taking a break, that's the best course of action. If you decide that a break is necessary for whatever reason, I encourage you to commit to a return date and then stick to it. In your last episode before a break, communicate the information to your audience. Let them know when to expect you back, and if applicable, how to stay connected with you in the meantime. So maybe that's social or on email.

Okay. So let's say that you're willing to listen to my recommendation and not take a break, are you just supposed to keep trudging forward with your stagnant show and just continue to be miserable? No. Of course not. You've probably heard that saying that doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is the definition of insanity. So if you're not happy with your current podcast results, you can't just keep doing the same old thing and expect to get different results. You're going to need to make some changes to one or more aspects of your podcast. And in order to figure out what those changes need to be, you need to figure out where the problem or problems are in your podcast arc. I use the acronym ARC, ARC, to help you with this.

So do you have an attraction problem, a retention problem, or a conversion problem? ARC, attraction, retention, or conversion. If your show is getting less than a 1000 downloads a month with weekly episode releases, you have an attraction problem. People aren't finding your show and listening to it. In this case, you need to focus on your podcast search engine optimization and your marketing efforts to attract people to your show. If you have any number of downloads coming in, but the individuals are not consuming most of your content, then you have a retention problem. You're going to want to look at your consumption rate. You can find that in the back end of Apple Podcasts Connect. That's podcasts, plural.

And you can see how much of your episodes are being listened to. It gives you a percentage. If it's usually less than 70% per episode, especially if it's significantly less than 70, we're not talking like 68, 69 here, then you have a retention problem. People aren't listening to your whole episodes. That's a problem. You can also look at your number of podcast followers, people who say they wanna get updates about their show, versus the actual listeners, people who are actually listening to some or all of your episodes. And so, again, you can find this information in the back end of your Apple Podcasts Connect account. Retention problems usually have to do with your content in some way or at least the framing of your content.

In this case, you really wanna examine if the value to your listener is clear from the episode's title and description and if your messaging gives them an incentive, a reason to press play. Most of us, myself included, have room for improvement in these areas. And finally, your show could have a conversion problem. You have the listeners, you have the downloads, but they're not turning into clients. The first thing you wanna look at here is your expectations. On average, 1% of podcast listeners turn into clients. So if you have less than a 100 listeners, that's less than one person. If your expectations are not too high, then you wanna look at several different things.

But I suggest starting with your call to action. What are you asking people to do after listening to a podcast episode or during listening to a podcast episode? And is that a big ask or a small ask? Are you asking them to do more than one thing? You wanna keep it simple, and you wanna keep it small. Now you could have just one of these problems, attraction, retention, or conversion, or you could have all 3. If retention is a problem for you, I recommend tackling the retention problem first because there's no sense in attracting more listeners to a show that doesn't have people sticking around. And, of course, if they aren't sticking around, they're certainly not converting either. Once you've increased your retention, then focus on attraction and lastly, on conversion. If you have a problem with attraction and or retention, you are an ideal candidate for my podcast growth pilot program, which is enrolling with very limited spots. Right now, October 8, 2024, this day of release.

Head to the podcast teacher.com/grow to request more info about this pilot. The purpose of this pilot is to test my strategies with a small group of podcasters before I turn it into a full course or membership. So if you're listening to this episode in the future, head to my website, the podcast teacher.com, to see what I'm currently offering. I encourage you to stick with your podcast even if you're not seeing the results that you want just yet. And if you're thinking about taking a break because you're just stretched a bit thin, the holidays are coming up, and you want to take some time off, be sure to come back for next Tuesday's episode, which is all about simplifying your podcast and getting through the holiday season without a break. Until next time, happy podcasting.