The holiday season doesn’t have to derail your podcast momentum. With a little planning and creativity, you can stay consistent, keep your audience engaged, and even prepare for the next podcast growth season.

From batching episodes to rerunning favorites and reflecting on lessons learned, these strategies help you keep your message flowing while honoring your time and energy. Set yourself up now for a strong start in the new year and let your podcast carry your voice with ease.

https://kpcreativemedia.com/growth-clarity-call

Hello there, beautiful souls.

It's Kim Parkinson with Podcasting for Spiritual Women.

And today we are going to be talking about something that I think in many households starts this week, and that is the busyness of the holiday season.

I know we're talking about it, but Halloween or Samhain is this Friday.

And that is typically when I find that it marks the beginning of that, that really busy packed time for our personal lives.

Now, this does also happen in the summer.

So if you happen to be listening to this and you're like, well, this is June, I'm going into this.

It happens in the summer too.

And sometimes it happens for other reasons.

Maybe weddings or maybe you have a bunch of cluster of birthday birthdays that are all together, birthday parties that are all together.

And so you find that, you know, things are a little hectic during different times of the year.

So this is kind of like just like a benchmark, like an idea of couple of things that you can think about to do to maintain your podcast, maintain your business, and just keep it flowing, keep it going.

So first, I will mention that if you have in your mind what you're going to be talking about or what you're going to be offering, if you have programs for the next couple of months, that is going to really kind of build and be the foundation of your podcast episodes.

So if you know that you are going to be opening your program up again, you're going to be opening up the membership again in January, you may want to kind of subtly start talking about this in November and December to get people on that wait list or get people interested so that when it does open in January, they're ready for it, they know it's coming.

Now, another thing that's really super popular at this time of year is Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Small Business Saturday.

Right.

So not in that order, of course, but those ones there, you may have some special offer, and sometimes people don't want to put that offer out until that time, but you can get them on a waitlist, you can get them into your newsletter, you can get them to be excited about maybe what's coming up for the first part of November.

And then if you do like a, hey, we're going to offer this again in December around the holiday, around Christmas, maybe you might want to kind of hint to that as well.

So there's a couple of ideas there, a couple of things that you can talk about.

There's one thing that I really want to cover here and that is just maintaining consistency.

Now, I know that that is super difficult because, let's face it, things happen.

And it's not just family, friends, obligations, but it could also be colds, coughs and laryngitis.

Right.

So we want to make sure that we have kind of like a plan to work on those.

Now if you were to also think ahead, have an idea of what you're going to be talking about and then when you were to batch record a couple of episodes.

And my suggestion here is I also have a couple of coaching episodes kind of in the bank ready to go.

They haven't been published yet, but I think I have three or four of them and they just haven't fit into what I want to talk about.

I've decided to kind of expand on certain topics and I have other guests that are coming on.

So.

So not that they won't come back, but I've got them in there for the, you know, the time in the winter where my voice isn't going to be its best.

So have something like that pre recorded and kind of ready to go.

So a couple of things to just have, just have some episodes in the bank.

Now, if you can do some batch recording for the four weeks in November.

Let me take a look.

Typically it's four weeks in November and it looks like Tuesdays in December.

There's five Tuesdays in December this year.

Now if you release on Monday or Wednesday, it's also 5.

But if you are a Thursday releaser, then you are, you are at 4.

Again, you're still at 4.

A couple of things that I want to maybe reflect on in the event that you are not able to get out or pre record or batch nine episodes.

Right.

Let's face it, nine.

And I would also go to say that let's also do a couple extra for the beginning of January, because January is marking that beginning of the podcast growth season.

And if you don't know what a podcast growth season is, let me just tell you that there are two times of year that podcasts have a tendency to really grow.

This one we're in right now is the short season.

So September through November 15th, 20th, something like that.

And then there's also January through like May, end of May, maybe beginning of June.

Those are podcast growth seasons and you really want to embrace those and make sure that you have the the best growth season you can.

Now, if you are not sure about whether or not you have a podcast growth season and whether or not you're ready for it, I do have a podcast growth clarity call that you can book and that is kpcreativemedia.com growth clarity call and you can get on and we'll talk about maybe a few things, a few tweaks to make sure that your podcast is all set up for the podcast growth season.

But part of that is that you also have some content in the bank for them to start listening to right away in January.

So that's why I'm suggesting maybe have a couple extra in January so that you are already set up and ready and just like jumping right into that podcast growth season with two feet.

Now, I have a couple of suggestions in the event that you're like, you know, I love the idea of batching, but I am already super busy and I don't really have the time to put into recording nine episodes today.

And you don't have to record all nine today for sure.

You could record two at a time, you know, as you see fit.

But if you are finding that that is even a stretch and maybe that's feeling tight inside of you and you're like, I really, I don't think I can do that.

I really need to need some other suggestions and ideas.

So I have a couple here.

You could do a rerun.

If you are a Gen Xer, you definitely know what reruns are.

We had a lot of TD reruns in my day.

And the thing about reruns is I don't always choose an episode when I, when I do reruns for for clients, I don't always choose an episode that was well received, not one with the highest downloads.

I'm choosing one with maybe lower downloads.

Because that to me may say that while it was a good episode, maybe it was a busy time of year for those people, or maybe now that episode's going to hit differently.

If have an episode where you explain your modality or you explain some really profound information, I would rerun that episode so that you can really get a hold of that audience, that maybe one has never listened to it before because they didn't go back, or two, they listened to it the first time and it just didn't hit right.

And now it's going to hit differently.

So I would definitely go ahead and take a look at what you have and do a rerun.

I wouldn't try to do reruns in a row, but if you have to, it's okay.

It is okay.

It is fine.

Now another thing might be, and I love this idea where if you're having a community party, if you have a membership or an offer or something like that, and you're having like a little party with all of your members.

If you take a portion of that and you kind of like unveil, like a peek behind the curtain, so to speak, and you unveil and you kind of show.

Show the listeners what is happening inside of your community for a fun party, for a fun little thing.

I would definitely tell the people that are in your community that you are going to be recording this so that you're going to put it up into an episode.

Because, you know, you don't want anybody mentioning some very personal things at this time either.

You want it to be fun, light, and again, just like a reflection of maybe what it's like to be part of your fun community now.

Not only reruns, not only communities.

Maybe a meditation that would be an amazing one to do.

Maybe a reflection of some of your best guests.

You might say, you know, I had this guest on, and I didn't really reflect on her as much as I wanted to kind of go back and do a reflection.

You could also do a lesson learned.

Maybe you had an episode earlier in the year that was something that you really firmly believed in at the time, and then something in your life has happened and changed, and it's a different way.

And so reflect back.

Go back and say, you know, in episode, you know, 2:22, I talked about this and I really firmly believed in it.

But now, you know, this has happened in my life and I have.

I have a lesson that I've learned from this and kind of reflect on that.

So there's a couple of easy ones to do.

Of course, the reruns is the easiest.

The community might be super easy, too, because you're already doing it.

A meditation might not take very long for you to do, or if you find that it's taking too long, then don't worry about it.

Now, some people like to do a montage.

I find that montages is a lot of work that could be really hours of work.

So think about that.

It might not be a good time to do that because it, let's face it, like, they have to go back to like maybe, maybe 52 different episodes you've had all year just to listen and see what they might want to put together.

So that can be a little bit more time consuming for that.

You might be better off just recording a new episode at that point.

But people do do it.

And if you have been like, pulling different clips out as you go, this could be a real easy one for you to do.

Another real easy one.

If you've been doing it all along is maybe have like outtakes.

You know, I mean, that's more of maybe a YouTube thing to post if you have outtakes.

So montages and outtakes are if you've already been thinking pre ahead for those.

And then you could also just do a gratitude episode where you just tell them how grateful you are for them and make it just short and sweet and just say, you know, I'm hoping that you have a fantastic holiday season and I'm kicking off a new program in and then maybe talk about that for a few minutes.

But whatever it is that you decide to talk about or whatever it is that you decide to put out for the next eight weeks, nine weeks or so, I do want you to have a little bit of clarity around what you are going to be putting out, what you're going to be offering.

And then really, we're going to start January super strong because you're going to start gaining some listeners in this next podcast growth season, which is a long one.

January through May is a long podcast growth season and those people are going to not only listen to your new content, but if they're really enthralled with you, which we know they're going to be, they're going to want to go back and listen to previous ones.

And you don't want to have something in December, that is in November that is maybe not a true reflection of you.

So make sure you still put your heart into it and get those episodes batched or get them ready.

Just, just know what you're going to be doing, know that you have a game plan and know that you can go ahead and, and make sure that they get the best of you and the best value that you bring.

All right.

I hope you have enjoyed this episode and remember where your voice flows, your business grows, and I look forward to bringing you a little mini series next week.

About one sheets and I have a little speaker sign lined up and I have a coaching session and I'm super excited because I think not only in podcast growth for the new year is your podcast growing, but let's try to get some guesting under there too to help grow your podcast that way.

So we'll talk about that all starting next week and into November.

Until then, talk to you soon.

Bye Bye.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Podcasting for Spiritual Women.

If you would like more strategy and tips and sim tricks on how to make your podcast better, I recommend that you join my newsletter list.

You can find that@kp creative media.com newsletter until next time.