Planning your Episodes
Episode Show Notes
On this PodOn episode, TJ and Julian talk about a key step for both scrappy and expert podcasters: planning. Podcasting is booming and everybody wants to start a podcast, but most creators underestimate the amount of work and time it takes to even release the first episode. Experimenting with the format, considering recording time, and sharing information with your guests are some of the key steps you should make before even plugging in the microphone. Listen to today’s episode to learn from TJ and Julian’s expertise in podcast planning.
Jump straight into:
(03:30) - Focus on defining a format and theme for your podcast - ‘Just because the Pod On podcasts are gonna be about the educational format, it doesn't mean we can also have an interview.’
(04:25) - Finding your episode frequency, being consistent, and batch recording - ‘Who says that you have to do it for 52 weeks out of the year... maybe do two months' worth of content.’
(08:00) - How long should each episode be and how much time it takes to produce - ‘People want to talk for an hour... And then overtime, you see that they get shorter and shorter because they realize how much time is being invested.’
(09:14) - If your recording is too long, don't cut it short! - ‘They had an awesome interview, they didn't want to cut any of the content because it was too good, so we decided to break it out into two episodes and release them on the same day.’
PodOn is hosted by TJ Bonaventura and Julian Lewis, founders of the full-service podcast company based in San Francisco, StudioPod. If you want more details on how to fully record and produce your podcast with our services, you can reach us at http://studiopodsf.com, send us an email at info@studiopodsf.com or contact us through our social media channels as @studiopodmedia. Music by GaryOAKland.
Episode Transcript (via Rev.com)
Julian Lewis:
TJ, why do people even listen to podcast?
TJ Bonaventura :
Well Julian, according to Edison, 74% listen to learn something new while 71% listen to be entertained.
Julian Lewis:
Oh, word.
TJ Bonaventura :
This is the PodOn Podcast. We're your host TJ Bonaventura that's me and Julian Lewis.
Julian Lewis:
That's me. As founders of a podcast media company. We had to start a podcast.
TJ Bonaventura :
So join us each episode as we and our guests drop knowledge on podcasting for you, the curious and scrappy podcaster.
Julian Lewis:
On today's episode of the PodOn Podcast, we're going to talk about planning out your episodes. TJ, what does it mean to plan out your episodes?
TJ Bonaventura :
It's a great question. And it's something that each podcaster should do, to make sure that they're staying consistent with every subsequent episode that they're producing or recording. So the first thing you want to think about is what type of podcast cast you want to do which is usually the first thing that come to any podcaster's mind. For you, you had one with a couple collective I'm sure you're like, I want to interview couples. Okay. Well, now that you know you want to do that, what is the format of which you want to record? There's interview, conversation, educational, solo. There's lots of different ones out there. So how did you land on wanting to do a interview style podcast?
Julian Lewis:
For me, I wanted to basically interview couples to understand their path to the relationship success. And so for me, I thought interview would be the one that made the most sense. Now, in full transparency, although I set out to do an interview podcast, mine intended to be a little bit more conversational and the reason why is because I knew who I was interviewing and I already had a relationship with them. And so, there's these little inside jokes here and there that we would essentially have. But I realized from getting feedback from the meetup group that we go to when I was in the hot seat that they wanted to come off as more interview, so I could provide more context on the questions that I was asking and the topics that we were discussing. So I definitely could have done a better job planning for it to actually be an interview podcast and not just assuming it was because I was asking questions.
TJ Bonaventura :
It's a great point. And we see those lines bleed all the time between interview and conversational style podcast. So making sure that you decide on that format will help you when it comes from recording episode to episode. Now the other thing is going to be theme and you touched on a little bit. So the theme of the couple collective, and we're going to use you as a guinea pig here, was to help, tell me if I'm getting wrong here, help couples get to lead to success. What was it?
Julian Lewis:
Yeah, not even close. Essentially is to capture stories from couples, to understand their path to success so that my audience can learn from other couples. And so that's my overarching theme and then kind of just selecting. What type of podcast would make sense to bring that to life. And that's where I went back to the interview style format.
TJ Bonaventura :
Got you. So, you know you want to interview couples. Okay? So that's what your podcast is going to be about. You know you want to interview them, so that's going to be the style or that's going to be the format. And you know you want to help your audience learn about how they can get to apathic success with their partner. So that's the theme. Now the topic is going to be what individual episode is going to be about and how it ladders back into that theme of the path to success for relationships. So I know you have a couple examples, but that's how we think about it at StudioPod, within the PodOn Podcast we do the same thing. On this one we're happening to talk about planning out your episodes. So how do we make sure that this levels up to podcast and it ain't easy but it doesn't have to be hard, that's our theme. And goes into our format of a conversational educational podcast.
Julian Lewis:
Yeah. And I think to that point exactly TJ is that, this is conversational but at the same time it is educational, right? We are focused on trying to make short snappy episodes that are 10 to 15 minutes. And if we start to just riff on random stuff, then it's going to go much longer and it's going to tend to be more conversational, but we're trying to focus on being educational. But just because the PodOn Podcast, the first two episodes are going to be about the educational format, doesn't mean we can't also have an interview. Which is what we're going to do when we have an expert guest on because we want to interview them to be able to add that same value of podcasting ain't easy, but it doesn't have to be hard to the curious and scrappy podcaster.
TJ Bonaventura :
So once we have our theme and once we have our format, we want to start thinking about our frequency, right? How often do we want to release this? Is it going to be a once a week, multiple times per week? Is it going to be once a month? Really this is up to you. And I think there's a lot of creativity that can be done in the industry today. And I think a lot of early on podcasters think they have to do it one way, where I think the dirty little secret is there is no right way. And I like to say this all the time, podcasting it's in its toddler ship. It's still early on or beyond the infancy phase. And people are really starting to catch on to doing this. And in doing this medium, that's really awesome in terms of putting your voice out there.So feel like you can be creative with how often you're going to release it.
TJ Bonaventura :
So for us, as we've talked about and if you've listened to our previous episodes, we'll do two episodes of a conversational style podcast and one that's a little bit longer where we're interviewing somebody. That's what we're choosing to do. What I would recommend is really think about if you're able to continue with that cadence that you wish. If it's going to be once a week, that's a lot of time and effort that you have to put up front. So this leads us to our favorite topic and our number one suggestion that we give to everybody here, at stupod which is...
Julian Lewis:
Batch recording. And we talked about it with podfade, right? If you batch record and you have money in the bank that you can then tap into you to put out, I think that's only going to make you hit the consistency in which you want to hit. And for us again, we're trying to do it weekly. I want to ladder back up the frequency to the topics of each episode. So sometimes you can't control when you're going to be able to touch on that particular topic because of the fact that for me when I'm interviewing a couple, I can't just assume that they've gone through something, especially ones that I don't know. With ones that I do know, I can say, okay, we're going to touch on this topic on this date. But the beautiful thing about having a podcast that isn't about current events, you can be flexible on when you actually talk about that topic. And when you batch record, then you have the ability to organize when you're going to talk about one topic versus the next.
TJ Bonaventura :
So what I recommend and what we ultimately recommend here is, have some sort of spreadsheet or document that lists out each of your different episodes, who you're going to be talking to, and what it is the topic you're going to be talking about? And then double checking with yourself. Is this going to align with my overall format? Is it going to align with my overall theme of the podcast? We talked about a little bit during our defining the audience episode, your audience expects consistency amongst what the subject matter is going to be. And with your cadence of when you're going to release each episode. So making sure that you can move things around and having everything laid out in some sort of format that's easy for you and your guest to understand or the co-host to understand, what each episode is going to be about will make it so much easier for you to stay consistent in the long term.
TJ Bonaventura :
Overall podcasting is a long term game. One thing that we talked about during one of our recent Airbnb experiences was using seasonality. If you're going to be doing interview style podcast for example, or a conversational style podcast. Who says that you have to do it week in and week out for 52 weeks out of the year, no one says you have to do that. Give yourself a break. Let yourself breathe. Work on getting the next season. So maybe do two months worth of content. That's going to last you eight to nine weeks. Take a month break, go to season two. Who says you can't have three seasons within a year? Why not?
Julian Lewis:
Yeah, definitely. Seasons have definitely saved me in terms of being able to go hard for a couple months and then take time off. Let people have an opportunity to listen to the different episodes. And then I can take feedback that I'm receiving and then I can apply it to the next season. So another thing when it comes to planning out your episodes, is determining how long each episode should be. So what would you say the length of an episode should be TJ?
TJ Bonaventura :
The answer would be, it depends. However, what we recommend is trying to stay within the 20 to 35 minute range. Especially if you're getting started. It's less about your listeners or audience wanting to tune in for that length. It's more about your bandwidth. We talked about it in the podfade episode, people get gung ho. They really want to get started and they want to talk for an hour. And then over time you see they get shorter and shorter because they realize how much time is being invested in all the facets of creating a podcast the editing, the mixing, the show notes. It takes a lot of time. It takes effort.
TJ Bonaventura :
So I would say, stay on a shorter end and extend if you need to. And also consider when you're planning out your episode, what the final production is going to be in terms of length. Because you're going to have intro, you're going to have an outro. You're going to have music. Maybe you want transition music. Maybe you want to have a narrator. These are all different aspects that are going to add time into your podcast length. So consider what your actual record time is going to be and how that can convert to the final production time. So if you want to do a 35 minute podcast, maybe you only need 25 minutes worth of actual recorded audio to then produce that into a final episode.
Julian Lewis:
We open up the episode talking about why people listen. To learn as well as to be entertained. So it's also important to know when they listen. And so I know we're in an interesting time right now where people aren't necessarily commuting to work, but over half of people according to eMarketer, listen when they're commuting to work. And so looking at the census and what the average commute time is, it's 27 minutes. So as you're trying to grow and build an audience, start to think about, if most people listen then and most people commute this long, maybe I should keep it within that. And then as you get comfortable and as you get to know your audience and what they're receptive to, then you can play around with the length. Because it doesn't have to be, it has to be 30 minutes. We'd never tell anybody that, but at this same time to TJ's point, the longer you have an episode or the longer that you're recording, you're going to realize how much time and effort it's going to take for you to actually then bring that to life.
TJ Bonaventura :
Another tactic that we like to recommend, if you're recording with somebody or you're just riffing and it's going really well and you love the content, but you know you're going to go way over your projected time. Don't cut it short. Don't cut out really good content for the sacrifice of time. Either have an anomaly episode, that's going to be longer. And you tell your audience ahead of time maybe do a little narration say, "just for our listeners, this is a little bit longer of an episode." So they have a little bit more of inkling of understanding of why you did it, or break it into two episodes. Part one, part two.
TJ Bonaventura :
This actually happened with us for the very first episode of ground truth that we help produce by Dogpatch Advisors. They have an awesome interview with Jeanne DeWitt, who is a CRO of Stripe. Incredible interview. They did not want to cut any of the content because it was too good. We decided to break it out into two different episodes and release it on the same day. Why not? There's no hard set rule of when you should be releasing, how you should be releasing the ultimate length. It's your podcast. You should do what you're comfortable with, but also understand the time that goes into producing each one of episodes.
Julian Lewis:
Yeah. And TJ, I like to say, when you have one interview that could be broken up into two pieces of content, that's like two birds, one stone, right? And then money in the bank, because that's batch recording. If you don't decide to release both of them on the same day, you could do it in subsequent weeks. And then now you have two episodes and you have more time to build your content around them.
TJ Bonaventura :
So Julian, what are the key takeaways when planning out your episodes?
Julian Lewis:
This could be applied both to the curious and scrappy podcaster. That is an individual as well as somebody who might be doing a private podcast within their organization. First and foremost, what is the format? And how does that format really bring the theme of your podcast to life? Second, what is the topic of each episode? If you're an individual, you could have a little bit more flexibility with your different topics and what comes out of the conversations that you're having. But maybe for an organization, if you know a leader for instance, is an expert in something in particular, make sure that you go to that person to really bring that topic to life.
Julian Lewis:
Next, figuring out your cadence or what your frequency should be in terms of when you're going to release it. You can do it weekly, you can do it biweekly, you can do it monthly or if you want to break it up into seasons or if you want to do it Netflix style, you can release a bunch at once and then come back for another season at a later time. And the last thing is how long will each episode be? We recommend less than 30 minutes to start, or if it's going to be longer and you're having a great conversation you can take a longer episode and break it down into two chunks.
TJ Bonaventura :
And that's the episode on how to plan your episode. Can't get more better than that on the PodOn Podcast. Earlier I mentioned our Airbnb experience. We're super excited to have released an online Airbnb experience where we're helping any potential at home podcasters professionally record in their home. So if you're interested in booking that you can check out the show notes where we have a link directly to the Airbnb experience or you can go to our website, studiopodsf.com and in the top right you're going to see book of course. Every episode of the PodOn Podcast is produced and edited by StudioPod Media. For more information about our work and our clients go to studiopodsf.com.
Julian Lewis:
Shout out to GaryOAKland for the fire track.
TJ Bonaventura :
GaryO.
TJ, why do people even listen to podcast?
TJ Bonaventura :
Well Julian, according to Edison, 74% listen to learn something new while 71% listen to be entertained.
Julian Lewis:
Oh, word.
TJ Bonaventura :
This is the PodOn Podcast. We're your host TJ Bonaventura that's me and Julian Lewis.
Julian Lewis:
That's me. As founders of a podcast media company. We had to start a podcast.
TJ Bonaventura :
So join us each episode as we and our guests drop knowledge on podcasting for you, the curious and scrappy podcaster.
Julian Lewis:
On today's episode of the PodOn Podcast, we're going to talk about planning out your episodes. TJ, what does it mean to plan out your episodes?
TJ Bonaventura :
It's a great question. And it's something that each podcaster should do, to make sure that they're staying consistent with every subsequent episode that they're producing or recording. So the first thing you want to think about is what type of podcast cast you want to do which is usually the first thing that come to any podcaster's mind. For you, you had one with a couple collective I'm sure you're like, I want to interview couples. Okay. Well, now that you know you want to do that, what is the format of which you want to record? There's interview, conversation, educational, solo. There's lots of different ones out there. So how did you land on wanting to do a interview style podcast?
Julian Lewis:
For me, I wanted to basically interview couples to understand their path to the relationship success. And so for me, I thought interview would be the one that made the most sense. Now, in full transparency, although I set out to do an interview podcast, mine intended to be a little bit more conversational and the reason why is because I knew who I was interviewing and I already had a relationship with them. And so, there's these little inside jokes here and there that we would essentially have. But I realized from getting feedback from the meetup group that we go to when I was in the hot seat that they wanted to come off as more interview, so I could provide more context on the questions that I was asking and the topics that we were discussing. So I definitely could have done a better job planning for it to actually be an interview podcast and not just assuming it was because I was asking questions.
TJ Bonaventura :
It's a great point. And we see those lines bleed all the time between interview and conversational style podcast. So making sure that you decide on that format will help you when it comes from recording episode to episode. Now the other thing is going to be theme and you touched on a little bit. So the theme of the couple collective, and we're going to use you as a guinea pig here, was to help, tell me if I'm getting wrong here, help couples get to lead to success. What was it?
Julian Lewis:
Yeah, not even close. Essentially is to capture stories from couples, to understand their path to success so that my audience can learn from other couples. And so that's my overarching theme and then kind of just selecting. What type of podcast would make sense to bring that to life. And that's where I went back to the interview style format.
TJ Bonaventura :
Got you. So, you know you want to interview couples. Okay? So that's what your podcast is going to be about. You know you want to interview them, so that's going to be the style or that's going to be the format. And you know you want to help your audience learn about how they can get to apathic success with their partner. So that's the theme. Now the topic is going to be what individual episode is going to be about and how it ladders back into that theme of the path to success for relationships. So I know you have a couple examples, but that's how we think about it at StudioPod, within the PodOn Podcast we do the same thing. On this one we're happening to talk about planning out your episodes. So how do we make sure that this levels up to podcast and it ain't easy but it doesn't have to be hard, that's our theme. And goes into our format of a conversational educational podcast.
Julian Lewis:
Yeah. And I think to that point exactly TJ is that, this is conversational but at the same time it is educational, right? We are focused on trying to make short snappy episodes that are 10 to 15 minutes. And if we start to just riff on random stuff, then it's going to go much longer and it's going to tend to be more conversational, but we're trying to focus on being educational. But just because the PodOn Podcast, the first two episodes are going to be about the educational format, doesn't mean we can't also have an interview. Which is what we're going to do when we have an expert guest on because we want to interview them to be able to add that same value of podcasting ain't easy, but it doesn't have to be hard to the curious and scrappy podcaster.
TJ Bonaventura :
So once we have our theme and once we have our format, we want to start thinking about our frequency, right? How often do we want to release this? Is it going to be a once a week, multiple times per week? Is it going to be once a month? Really this is up to you. And I think there's a lot of creativity that can be done in the industry today. And I think a lot of early on podcasters think they have to do it one way, where I think the dirty little secret is there is no right way. And I like to say this all the time, podcasting it's in its toddler ship. It's still early on or beyond the infancy phase. And people are really starting to catch on to doing this. And in doing this medium, that's really awesome in terms of putting your voice out there.So feel like you can be creative with how often you're going to release it.
TJ Bonaventura :
So for us, as we've talked about and if you've listened to our previous episodes, we'll do two episodes of a conversational style podcast and one that's a little bit longer where we're interviewing somebody. That's what we're choosing to do. What I would recommend is really think about if you're able to continue with that cadence that you wish. If it's going to be once a week, that's a lot of time and effort that you have to put up front. So this leads us to our favorite topic and our number one suggestion that we give to everybody here, at stupod which is...
Julian Lewis:
Batch recording. And we talked about it with podfade, right? If you batch record and you have money in the bank that you can then tap into you to put out, I think that's only going to make you hit the consistency in which you want to hit. And for us again, we're trying to do it weekly. I want to ladder back up the frequency to the topics of each episode. So sometimes you can't control when you're going to be able to touch on that particular topic because of the fact that for me when I'm interviewing a couple, I can't just assume that they've gone through something, especially ones that I don't know. With ones that I do know, I can say, okay, we're going to touch on this topic on this date. But the beautiful thing about having a podcast that isn't about current events, you can be flexible on when you actually talk about that topic. And when you batch record, then you have the ability to organize when you're going to talk about one topic versus the next.
TJ Bonaventura :
So what I recommend and what we ultimately recommend here is, have some sort of spreadsheet or document that lists out each of your different episodes, who you're going to be talking to, and what it is the topic you're going to be talking about? And then double checking with yourself. Is this going to align with my overall format? Is it going to align with my overall theme of the podcast? We talked about a little bit during our defining the audience episode, your audience expects consistency amongst what the subject matter is going to be. And with your cadence of when you're going to release each episode. So making sure that you can move things around and having everything laid out in some sort of format that's easy for you and your guest to understand or the co-host to understand, what each episode is going to be about will make it so much easier for you to stay consistent in the long term.
TJ Bonaventura :
Overall podcasting is a long term game. One thing that we talked about during one of our recent Airbnb experiences was using seasonality. If you're going to be doing interview style podcast for example, or a conversational style podcast. Who says that you have to do it week in and week out for 52 weeks out of the year, no one says you have to do that. Give yourself a break. Let yourself breathe. Work on getting the next season. So maybe do two months worth of content. That's going to last you eight to nine weeks. Take a month break, go to season two. Who says you can't have three seasons within a year? Why not?
Julian Lewis:
Yeah, definitely. Seasons have definitely saved me in terms of being able to go hard for a couple months and then take time off. Let people have an opportunity to listen to the different episodes. And then I can take feedback that I'm receiving and then I can apply it to the next season. So another thing when it comes to planning out your episodes, is determining how long each episode should be. So what would you say the length of an episode should be TJ?
TJ Bonaventura :
The answer would be, it depends. However, what we recommend is trying to stay within the 20 to 35 minute range. Especially if you're getting started. It's less about your listeners or audience wanting to tune in for that length. It's more about your bandwidth. We talked about it in the podfade episode, people get gung ho. They really want to get started and they want to talk for an hour. And then over time you see they get shorter and shorter because they realize how much time is being invested in all the facets of creating a podcast the editing, the mixing, the show notes. It takes a lot of time. It takes effort.
TJ Bonaventura :
So I would say, stay on a shorter end and extend if you need to. And also consider when you're planning out your episode, what the final production is going to be in terms of length. Because you're going to have intro, you're going to have an outro. You're going to have music. Maybe you want transition music. Maybe you want to have a narrator. These are all different aspects that are going to add time into your podcast length. So consider what your actual record time is going to be and how that can convert to the final production time. So if you want to do a 35 minute podcast, maybe you only need 25 minutes worth of actual recorded audio to then produce that into a final episode.
Julian Lewis:
We open up the episode talking about why people listen. To learn as well as to be entertained. So it's also important to know when they listen. And so I know we're in an interesting time right now where people aren't necessarily commuting to work, but over half of people according to eMarketer, listen when they're commuting to work. And so looking at the census and what the average commute time is, it's 27 minutes. So as you're trying to grow and build an audience, start to think about, if most people listen then and most people commute this long, maybe I should keep it within that. And then as you get comfortable and as you get to know your audience and what they're receptive to, then you can play around with the length. Because it doesn't have to be, it has to be 30 minutes. We'd never tell anybody that, but at this same time to TJ's point, the longer you have an episode or the longer that you're recording, you're going to realize how much time and effort it's going to take for you to actually then bring that to life.
TJ Bonaventura :
Another tactic that we like to recommend, if you're recording with somebody or you're just riffing and it's going really well and you love the content, but you know you're going to go way over your projected time. Don't cut it short. Don't cut out really good content for the sacrifice of time. Either have an anomaly episode, that's going to be longer. And you tell your audience ahead of time maybe do a little narration say, "just for our listeners, this is a little bit longer of an episode." So they have a little bit more of inkling of understanding of why you did it, or break it into two episodes. Part one, part two.
TJ Bonaventura :
This actually happened with us for the very first episode of ground truth that we help produce by Dogpatch Advisors. They have an awesome interview with Jeanne DeWitt, who is a CRO of Stripe. Incredible interview. They did not want to cut any of the content because it was too good. We decided to break it out into two different episodes and release it on the same day. Why not? There's no hard set rule of when you should be releasing, how you should be releasing the ultimate length. It's your podcast. You should do what you're comfortable with, but also understand the time that goes into producing each one of episodes.
Julian Lewis:
Yeah. And TJ, I like to say, when you have one interview that could be broken up into two pieces of content, that's like two birds, one stone, right? And then money in the bank, because that's batch recording. If you don't decide to release both of them on the same day, you could do it in subsequent weeks. And then now you have two episodes and you have more time to build your content around them.
TJ Bonaventura :
So Julian, what are the key takeaways when planning out your episodes?
Julian Lewis:
This could be applied both to the curious and scrappy podcaster. That is an individual as well as somebody who might be doing a private podcast within their organization. First and foremost, what is the format? And how does that format really bring the theme of your podcast to life? Second, what is the topic of each episode? If you're an individual, you could have a little bit more flexibility with your different topics and what comes out of the conversations that you're having. But maybe for an organization, if you know a leader for instance, is an expert in something in particular, make sure that you go to that person to really bring that topic to life.
Julian Lewis:
Next, figuring out your cadence or what your frequency should be in terms of when you're going to release it. You can do it weekly, you can do it biweekly, you can do it monthly or if you want to break it up into seasons or if you want to do it Netflix style, you can release a bunch at once and then come back for another season at a later time. And the last thing is how long will each episode be? We recommend less than 30 minutes to start, or if it's going to be longer and you're having a great conversation you can take a longer episode and break it down into two chunks.
TJ Bonaventura :
And that's the episode on how to plan your episode. Can't get more better than that on the PodOn Podcast. Earlier I mentioned our Airbnb experience. We're super excited to have released an online Airbnb experience where we're helping any potential at home podcasters professionally record in their home. So if you're interested in booking that you can check out the show notes where we have a link directly to the Airbnb experience or you can go to our website, studiopodsf.com and in the top right you're going to see book of course. Every episode of the PodOn Podcast is produced and edited by StudioPod Media. For more information about our work and our clients go to studiopodsf.com.
Julian Lewis:
Shout out to GaryOAKland for the fire track.
TJ Bonaventura :
GaryO.