Summer is coming, and your podcast doesn't have to suffer for it.

Batch recording before the warm weather hits is one of the smartest moves you can make for your podcast growth — and it doesn't have to be overwhelming. Kim breaks down why summer is a pattern disruptor for downloads and routines, what batch recording actually looks like (hint: two episodes ahead counts), and how to use solo episodes as your secret weapon when guests are impossible to schedule. She also shares her simple action plan for getting at least seven summer episodes done before June arrives, plus how the free 4 in 40 Workshop on May 13th at 3pm Eastern can help you walk away with four episode topics ready to record.

Your audience will be there when you show up. Make sure you do. Grab your spot at the free 4 in 40 Workshop at kpcreativemedia.com/4in40 — and go batch those episodes.

kpcreativemedia.com/4in40

Summer is coming, and if you don't have a plan, you're going to be scrambling every single week trying to come up with something to record.

Or worse, you're going to go quiet.

And that's the one thing that you really shouldn't do.

Hey there, beautiful podcasters.

My name is Kim Parkinson, and today you are listening to Podcasting for your spiritual business.

And you know what we're talking about today?

Batch recording.

You know what my favorite thing is?

When a client comes to me and says, I've recorded four or five episodes.

Here you go.

You may have them, or I've already submitted them and they're already ready to go out.

Oh, my gosh, my heart sings when that happens, because I know that if they get a cold or if they get, like, some magic money and they are now on their way to Bermuda for an amazing weekend away, they don't have to worry about their podcast.

They're ready to go.

They're already ready to be published to put all their knowledge and wisdom and everything out to the world.

They've already got everything they need.

So today, I am just reminding you, yes, it is as of this recording.

It is the last week in April, but summer is coming quicker than you think.

And if you're anything like me, maybe you have been kind of backlogging.

A few interviews, a few case studies, a few coaching calls, and of course, some solo episodes if you haven't, because I've done that before.

If you've ever looked my name up, there's probably a couple of other podcasts out there that you might have seen.

And yeah, I stopped mid summer right after I said, don't stop for the summer.

Yeah, that was me.

But here I am trying to get ahead for this summer coming up because I don't want to stop recording.

I want to have something in the bank and ready to go.

And even if it wasn't what I originally planned, I'm okay with that because I at least have some kind of knowledge, some kind of value to send out to you in the world.

So here's what I'm going to say about summer.

I mean, it's not summer everywhere.

I get it.

If you are listening in the Southern hemisphere, you're just getting into winter, and you're like, no, I'm ready.

I'm ready to record.

But here in the United States, we're coming into summer, and summers in New England are absolutely gorgeous.

And I am just going to say it.

It's a pattern disruptor for many.

Sometimes you can expect that Your downloads are actually going to go down in the summer.

But you know what?

Some podcasts do amazingly well in the summer because maybe they're talking about travel or they're talking about cruises, or they're talking about summer beauty, or they're talking about something that has something to do with summer.

Also, not everybody goes away for every single week in the summer.

So there's still some regularity to this.

So if you have a shorter podcast, like I do, you know, 15, 20 minutes, whatnot, then you know what, that's still a commute to work.

And you can probably consider that you're going to get those consistent downloads.

But schedules do change, routines do break, kids are home life is busier, but days are longer.

So yeah, you could still get some really great downloads.

So don't give up.

Even though downloads do naturally dip, it's normal.

You know, that's just the data that's out there.

Don't give up because then they'll have a lot to listen to when they are ready.

And you never know, it could be a rainy day, that day that you're sending out your episode, and they may just be like, you know what?

I haven't listened in a couple weeks.

I'm going to just download them all today.

And that happens.

That happens all the time.

I have clients all the time come to me and say, hey, I got a whole bunch of downloads.

And it's not one episode.

It's like across the board.

And yeah, that's what you want because that means somebody started listening and then they just went and they listened to a whole bunch more.

Yeah, that, that's exactly what you're looking for.

So here is a, here's a little bit of a danger zone here in regards to the summer skipping the weeks or re releasing old episodes and going quiet.

Right.

I am and have done the re releasing of old episodes with clients before.

It is something that you can do in what I would consider maybe the state of an emergency.

Maybe not.

Maybe it is something that needs to be said again.

But you know what, could you maybe do a very short episode and point them to that old episode?

That would be even better because then maybe you'll get some downloads on that old episode, but you really submitted something new and sent out something new and maybe you had a little fresh take on it too.

So don't skip weeks.

That is actually really.

It can be really dangerous to your listener count.

Now there is some talk and everything could change, but realistically, if your regular listeners are listening on Apple podcasts, what could happen is that if you don't release an episode within 15 days, Apple could just say, oh, they're no longer downloading.

Forget it.

We're not going to give it to them any longer.

And then you have to kind of make sure that that person is going back to say, yes, they.

They want that podcast.

So if you don't Release 1 within 15 days, you may have a uphill battle to get some of those people back.

Which is probably why you should have a newsletter, by the way.

Hint, hint.

But the best time to do this is actually just right now, right?

Right before everything starts to get crazy busy.

Because in my household, not this year, but next year, May will be graduation, college graduation, and May does actually start high school graduations and kids starting to get out of school.

And while we had a ton of snow days this year, so maybe June will be a little quieter for a little bit longer.

Here's the other thing.

It might be tighter of a time for you to start recording.

Maybe the landscapers are there, or maybe the neighbors are out working in their yard and the dogs are barking.

I don't know.

There could be a number of different outdoor distractions.

Maybe you just want to sit outdoors.

That could prevent you from staying inside and recording.

And who wants to just do a whole bunch of batch recording on a rainy day in the middle of July?

Not me.

In the middle of July, if it's raining out and I don't have anything to do, I want to be cozied up with a nice good book.

All right, if you are batch recording it, it really just doesn't mean that you have to have like 12 episodes done in one sitting.

This is like, legitimately two is a batch, okay?

But if you can two, three, four, that'd be great.

And more if you could.

But don't push it, right?

As long as you have a couple ahead.

I feel like that's.

That's got a little bit of a.

Of a cushion.

But remember, just because you have a couple ahead for your cushion, if you use those couple in June, then you have nothing for July and August, and you'll definitely want those.

And realistically, I would even consider thinking ahead as far as maybe even the first two weeks in September, while September, the end of August, beginning of September begins another really amazing podcast growth season.

Sometimes it is hard for us as podcasters to get back into the groove.

Because you know what?

The allure of the longer days and the crisp, beautiful nights ahead.

Well, as I said, I'm from New England and I adore Fall.

So I think most of the time I'd rather be outside.

Then maybe I should batch record in the fall, not in the summer.

Matching your energy to batch.

If you wake up and you're like, oh yeah, I'm going to record and you feel like, yeah, I could do another one, do it, don't stop, do it, do it again.

And you know what?

Have a couple of them outlined.

You know, if you're working a day job and you have a few minutes, do an outline and then you're ready to go when you get home and you can get into your podcast studio and you can start recording and that way you already have all that content ready to go.

Now another option here is you can go ahead and record a couple of interviews or a couple of case studies, or a couple of coaching episodes, whatever you'd like.

You can go ahead and do any and all of those.

It doesn't always have to be a solo episode.

If you haven't recorded any of your interview style episodes yet, now is a great time to reach out because people are going to get busy and having a interview person come and join you in June, July and August are going to be really hard, really hard.

So I really suggest that if you are going to batch ahead, just plan an afternoon or maybe a couple of afternoons in one week and schedule a couple of interviews and then just boom, boom, boom, have them, have them done and maybe get them edited if you have time.

Or maybe you don't edit, some people don't, which is fine, and just schedule them out.

You can change the schedule just because you put it up there.

And captivate, Buzzsprout, Libsyn, Spotify, wherever you put it doesn't mean that even though you put a date to it, it doesn't mean that that has to be the date.

You can change it, you can.

So get it ready to go and then figure out what the date needs to be at a later time.

But at least it's up there and ready to go and you've got all the things that you needed for it.

And you weren't really interfering with somebody's vacation in the middle of July because you're like, oh, I really wanted to interview somebody about this and they're not available.

So make sure that you try to see if you can get ahead for those as well.

But again, the solo episodes, those are your secret weapon, right?

That's your voice, your authentic voice.

There's no scheduling, there's no guests, it's just you.

It's just you and your Outline or your transcription if you have it.

And that is going to be you just talking about different topics that you know that are going to come up.

Now when you do this, I do think that you need to have some planning around this.

Right.

So I have actually come up with a 4 in 40 workshop that I have and this is a great way to get some ideas to batch record.

Now I'm going to put the link in the show notes but ultimately it's going to be kpcreativemedia.com fourinforty and that is going to be held on Wednesday, May 13th at 3:00pm Eastern Time.

And in that hour, I know it says 40 minutes, but there's a little bit of us doing some homework in each of it.

It comes with a workbook and what you're going to be doing is you're going to be writing out different topic ideas that you come up with for your podcast for batching.

So this is why I trying to get this out early.

I'm trying to get this out as soon as possible in basically two weeks time.

That's when this is happening.

Now if you are missing this after that and you still want that there are replays available, please just reach out and I will be happy to provide that for you.

So you can do that now.

The energy when you're in the room is really exciting.

And so if you are at all interested in joining me for that, it is a free workshop, it's an hour and you will come up with at least four topics.

But I have actually had people join me for this workshop and they've come up with 24 topics.

So lots of ideas.

That's a whole lot of batch recording.

That's a whole lot of batching.

I invite you to that.

Again, that website URL is kpcreativemedia.com forward/4n40.

So that's 4 in 4 0.

If I can just remember what it was.

All right, so here's your action plan.

I need you to start batching.

I need you to reach out.

If you need anybody that needs you want on your podcast for an interview, reach out to them now.

Reach out to them today.

Try to get on their schedule before.

Try to get them on your schedule before the end of May because after that it's going to be next to impossible.

And if you need somebody to be a guest on your show, reach out to me.

I'm always willing to be a guest on somebody's show.

So if you need an episode, yeah, let me know.

I'll be there for you absolutely.

And then make sure that you put those on your calendar.

Get those done.

Here's thing.

For the summer months, at least three interviews is good.

You could do more.

I mean, it depends on your cadence.

I only prefer to have like one a month, but sometimes I've had more than that, you know, couple times.

But for the most part I think one a month would be good.

So at least three interviews.

I don't think that's a bad thing.

I don't think that's a hardship.

I think that's probably pretty easy to do then.

If you need topic ideas for for solo episodes, sign up for the 4 and 40 workshop and that is again on May 13th at 3pm Eastern.

And we will get you at least four episode topic ideas that you can batch immediately.

But you know what, you might be an overachiever and get 24.

And hey, you'd be set through Christmas practically.

All right, again, you can go back to my AI episode.

That was episode 533 and I talked about how I use my AI to come up with my outlines for my episode ideas.

And that could be super beneficial for you if you are having an idea and then have scattered brain and want it to be cohesive and something that kind of flows.

Right.

So use AI to your advantage if you feel so called to do so.

And then lastly, sit down and record.

Just sit down and get those done.

There are what, 12 weeks in the summer, give or take, and I'm asking you to maybe have 15 or 16.

Do you have to have 15 or 16 episodes batch recorded?

No.

But you know what, if you do three interviews and if you do four episodes with me, that's seven.

That is half.

That's half of them.

So you would already have a huge jump on everything all done for you for the summer.

So I want to just remind you that the link to join the 440 is going to be in the show notes down below.

It's free, it's live.

It's Wednesday, May 13, 3pm and by the end of it you'll have four episode topics ready to record or more.

And I hope I see you there.

Okay, so now go ahead, go do your batch recording, go find those people again, reach out to me if you need somebody and we will get you all set up for summer so that you continue to thrive and grow this summer with your podcast and your business, of course.

And remember where your voice flows, your business grows.

Until next week.

Talk to you soon.

Thank you so much for being here and spending this time with me today.

If you're ready to deepen your visibility and grow your podcast in a way that feels aligned, come join my email list@kpcreativemedia.com Newsletter where I share exclusive guidance, support and next steps.

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Until next time, keep showing up and sharing your voice.