In this episode, we discuss essential yearly tasks to ensure your podcast stays relevant, engaging, and successful. These tasks will help your show look and sound its best. We'll cover a range of important activities, including:

• Developing a content calendar: Plan your episodes, themes, guest appearances, and special events in advance. This will help you maintain a consistent schedule and avoid last-minute content scrambles. Use tools like Notion to plan your content and put them on a calendar. Consider taking a retreat with your co-host to plan episodes.

• Conducting listener surveys: Gather feedback on content performance, areas of improvement, and what your listeners want to hear. Use tools like SurveyMonkey or website plugins to easily create and distribute surveys. Ask specific questions about content preferences, such as video, audio, and specific topic areas.

• Reviewing your marketing strategy: Explore new platforms or methods to reach a wider audience. Consider options such as paid advertising, appearing on other podcasts, or engaging on new social media platforms. Decide if you will change your posting schedule and how you will engage your audience.

• Updating your branding: Ensure your website and social media reflect any changes in your podcast's branding or content focus. Check your logo, cover art, and color schemes for consistency. Be sure to check how your website appears when shared to make sure your branding is correct.

• Performing software and hardware maintenance: Keep your equipment and software up to date to avoid potential problems. Regularly update your website hosting, plugins, and other software.

• Analyzing financial performance: Review your expenses, revenue, and potential monetization strategies. Create a budget for the upcoming year, considering costs for marketing, equipment, and hosting services.

• Networking and collaboration: Identify events and conferences where you can connect with other podcasters and professionals in your niche. Make sure to include these costs in your budget.

• Investing in skill development: Enhance your podcasting abilities by taking courses or workshops that cover areas such as on-mic presentation, audio editing, and marketing.

By addressing these tasks, you can ensure your podcast remains engaging, successful, and fun to produce. Remember, these tasks can be done at the beginning of the year, or even every six months, to keep your podcast fresh and up to date.

Welcome to Podcast Answers, the show where I help you start and grow your podcast and

your live stream.

I'm doing a live stream.

I love doing live stream.

So guys, we're here.

It's the beginning of the year.

Today, we're going to be talking a little bit about tasks that you can do yearly to

keep your show up to date, to keep your show looking good, sounding good, and just be the

best podcast that you can be.

So that's right.

Today, we're going to be talking a little bit about yearly tasks that you can do for

your podcast.

And let's start by a very obvious one is developing a content calendar for your year, outlining

your episodes, your themes, your guests, the appearances and special events.

So for me, what does that look like?

For me, I am sitting down and I'm taking an actual calendar and I'm saying, "Okay, these

are my release dates.

These are some ideas that I want to do."

So I've talked before a little bit on this show about having a Notion document that I'm

using for planning my episodes.

So I have all my content in there.

And if I get an idea, I throw that into my Notion document.

But this is also taking it a step further.

And you can actually even do this within Notion.

You can plan your episodes out.

So you can put them on a calendar, say when they're going to be released and it shows

up on a calendar.

So I like this idea because it allows you to go in there and say, "These get a strategy."

Instead of going week to week and saying, "Okay, I'm not exactly sure what I'm going

to be talking about.

So let's talk about this."

Or, "I don't really know that I have something to talk about this week.

So I'm actually just going to sit and not do an episode.

I'm guilty of that, guys.

I'm guilty of not necessarily knowing what I'm going to talk about.

And so I don't actually do the thing.

I don't actually talk about podcasting because I don't do an episode because I just don't...

It's easy to say, "No, I'll skip it and do it next week."

If you don't have the content planned out.

If you have your content planned out, then you know that you have to do this show this

time, this day, and release it when everyone is expecting it.

So sit down, take a day, maybe a day and a half, go on a retreat, if you will, especially

if you're co-hosting that...

And I love doing this.

If you have a co-host for your episode, sit down and actually take some time, go away,

maybe rent a room somewhere, maybe get out in there and take some time, plan your episodes

out.

If you're going to have guests, get them, maybe even contact them, or at least know

when you're going to contact them so you have enough time.

Because I'm guilty of that too, where we say, "We want to do this episode," and we try to

get a guest and then they're not available.

So what do you do then?

So take some time, plan your content out, get it on the calendar.

That way you're ready to go.

And again, it doesn't have to be jam packed full.

You can do an episode maybe or leave a couple spots in your calendar open or just so you

know that those spots are there that way, when you go ahead and try to do your show,

you're going to have people...

You'll have the rest of your year planned out.

Now another fun thing that you can do at the beginning of the year, and I know we're already

a month into 2025, and that's crazy guys.

That's crazy that we're a month into 2025 already.

I can't believe that we're already a month into 2025.

But what you can do is you can conduct listener surveys to gather feedback on content performances,

areas of improvement, things that people want to see.

And again, you don't have to say, "What was bad about my show this last year?" or "What

was good about this year?"

But you can use this survey to say, "What kind of content did you like?

Did you like this episode?

Did you like this?"

So for me, I could create my survey and it's really easy to do that with Survey Monkey

and other free survey sites or plugins that you have on your site you can create if you're

depending what kind of website you have.

If I have a WordPress site like I do, you can easily create a survey on there.

And so I would say things like, "Hey, do you like what I'm talking about video?

Are the video topics hitting it with you?

Do you prefer that I'm talking audio?

Do you prefer that I do how to edit your podcast, or how to do video editing or live streaming

or whatever?"

The idea is to get your content out there.

The idea is to get what your listeners like and want and want to hear from you.

And again, it's your show so you can do what you want.

But if you have listeners and they have ideas, listen to them.

So also, one of the things you should be having for your show is a marketing strategy.

So you want to take the time this time to look at your marketing strategies and explore

maybe new platforms or methods to reach a bigger audience.

Maybe that means that you're gonna do paid advertising this year.

Maybe it could also mean that you're doing things like being on a different podcast or

a different social media.

Maybe there's a new social media that you want to be part of.

Take this time to update your strategy and try to figure out what that means for you.

Are you going to change your strategy?

Are you going to just post during the week?

Are you going to create a Facebook group, not just a Facebook page?

And then what kind of content are you going to put in there?

And how are you going to engage with your audience?

So this can all be done in that same planning meeting, the first of the year, and then figure

out what you're going to do for your social media presence.

How are you going to get out there and be a leader in your community?

The other thing you want to do is also make any changes in your website or your social

media to reflect any changes in your branding or content focus.

So if your podcast has changed, if your brand has changed, and maybe this is a good time

to actually sit down and rebrand, how long has it been since you've updated your podcast

logo, your podcast cover, your podcast colors?

Maybe this is time to sit down and actually take a look at your podcast content, your

website, your social media, making sure it's a cohesive unit.

It's all one brand.

I know for me, I recently changed my logo on another podcast like a year ago or so.

And I found that some of my things still show the same old logo.

So not to get too technical, but there's a way to when you share a website like a URL,

that a graphic shows up in it.

So like, let's say I text you the link, there's a way to have a graphic show up and a couple

of my links on one of my podcast sites still show the old logo guys, it still shows the

logo.

And I don't see that because I'm not constantly looking at that because that's not something

that I'm constantly looking at.

It's when I share the site that I go, "Oh, that actually is not correct because it has

the old logo in it."

So this is where you need to take a look at all of your things.

And again, this is a good time to do it at the beginning of the year and maybe even half

a year.

Sit down and look at something like that and make sure just that your branding is cohesive

with your colors, that your colors didn't change, that you're not using a slightly different

color for something.

The next thing that you want to take a look at at the beginning of the year is your software

and your hardware maintenance, your equipment.

Do you have a soundboard?

If you have a roadcaster, is it up to date?

Is the software you're using up to date?

I'm using Ecamm.

Is Ecamm up to date?

For me it is because I'm actually running on the beta software because I run like that.

I run with scissors, I run beta.

But for others, you have to look at things like that.

And not just that, but also you have to look at things like the website hosting.

Are you hosting on a WordPress?

If so, is your WordPress up to date?

Is all of your plugins up to date?

Because if they're not, your site can easily get hacked.

That's a task that I do every month.

In fact, I actually do it every Friday.

Every Friday, I go into all of my websites.

I look and say, "Oh, there's an update for WordPress.

Oh, there's an update for this plugin.

Oh, there's an update for this plugin."

Making sure that my stuff is up to date and fresh.

Now again, that may take some time and it's a good thing to do regularly because if you

get behind on some of your software updates, if you get behind on some of your hardware

updates, there may be trouble if you try to jump up to a very fresh version if you're

behind several versions.

So it's important that you keep those things up to date.

Now the other thing you want to do too is analyze your podcast financial performance,

including expenses, revenue, potential monetization strategies.

I know that not everyone is doing a podcast to make money.

And that's great.

We need people who are doing podcasts just because podcasts are fun to do.

They're easy to do.

And we need people that are going to be doing podcasts just for the fun of it.

Not necessarily to make money.

Making sure if you don't have a budget, create a budget for your upcoming year.

Look at your costs, your marketing, your equipment, your hosting services.

I know for me this year, one of my goals is to upgrade some of my cameras for the podcast

studio.

So I need to create a budget.

I need to look at my expenses.

I need to know what I can spend on new equipment because I do want to update my equipment.

So I need to know what my budget is going to be for that.

What it's going to be for marketing, hosting services.

Podcasts do cost money to produce.

They are, they do.

And so I need to have a budget to know, "Okay, this is how much I want to spend this year

on my podcast."

Whether it's a hobby or a business, you need to know how much that's going to cost.

Another thing you need to think about doing is networking and collaboration.

What events are coming up this year that you can do conference-wise that you can go and

network with other podcasters and professionals that are in your niche?

Go ahead and look at that at the beginning of the year and say, "Okay, in October, I

want to go attend this event."

That plays into your budget too.

You need to make sure that you have money for that in your budget.

And so as we go throughout the year, create that in your budget.

Because that's a good way to grow your podcast too is networking with other people that are

in your niche, whether it's a podcast or not.

It's good to be able to networking.

And then another thing you need to do, and it's good to do at the beginning of the year,

is invest in your skill development.

Invest in learning new skills related to podcasting, such as like how to present yourself on mic,

how to edit your audio, how to do storytelling techniques, how to market your show.

Considering courses or workshops that enhance your podcasting abilities, hire me as a one-on-one

consultant.

You can do that at podcastanswers.com/contact.

And I would love to help you out with that.

But you can hire me to help you out to learn such things related to your podcast.

But plan that ahead of time.

Plan that now.

Plan when you're going to do that this year.

By addressing all of these things at the beginning of the year, you can ensure your podcast remains

relevant, engaging, and successful.

You can have an amazing podcast, guys.

And sometimes we forget, "Oh, we need to take a look at these things at the beginning of

the year."

It doesn't have to be the beginning of the year.

The beginning of the year is just an easy way to say, "Hey, calendar is changing.

I want to get in here and I want to make sure my podcast is good.

My audio is good.

But I've got content planned for the rest of the year."

And maybe you're not planning content for the rest of the year.

But you're only planning content for six months.

But getting in there, doing the job, those are things that you need to take a look at

every...

I would say at least every year, but even six months.

So guys, with that, thank you so much for tuning in for another episode of Podcast Answers.

Again, if you want to hire me, I can help you live stream, I can help you podcast edit,

I can help you teach you how to podcast.

We can get your podcast rolling.

You can be a better podcaster today.

Go to my website, podcastanswers.com/contact and contact me and we can set up a one-on-one

time to do whatever you need to do related to podcasting.

Guys, thank you so, so much for hanging out with me.

And if you have any podcast questions you'd like me to answer, hit that same website up

podcastanswers.com/contact.

Have a great weekend.

And keep podcasting!