Episode 191. Time commitment, benefits & strategies for efficient and effective podcasting
This episode explores the time commitment, benefits, and strategies for successful podcasting, emphasizing how podcasting fosters deeper connections with the audience, offers lasting legacy content, and allows for efficient repurposing on social media.
Inside, you’ll hear my perspective on various aspects of starting a podcast and I’ll address topics from entrepreneurs considering podcasting, including:
Time Commitment: The time commitment for a podcast can vary, with episodes ranging from as short as 15 minutes to an hour or more. The actual time spent on podcasting depends on factors like whether you do it all yourself or outsource production and the initial effort required for the podcast's launch.
Podcasting vs. Social Media: Podcast content has a longer shelf life compared to social media content, which often expires quickly. Podcast episodes are consumed differently, with listeners seeking a deeper connection and a more authentic exchange. Podcasting allows for stronger relationships with the audience.
Legacy Content: Podcast episodes, especially evergreen ones, serve as legacy content that continue to attract listeners, even when you're not actively creating new episodes. This can result in ongoing engagement with your content.
Ownership: Podcast content is considered an asset that you own, in contrast to social media content, where you're essentially renting space. This ownership provides more control over your content and its distribution.
Building Relationships: Podcasting allows for deep, authentic connections with the audience. When potential clients reach out after listening to your podcast, it often feels more like a conversation than a sales pitch.
Repurposing Content: Podcasts serve as pillar content that can be easily extracted and repurposed into smaller pieces for social media. This strategy makes the content creation process more efficient and drives traffic back to your podcast.
Broadcast on Social Media: Social media can be used as a platform to broadcast snippets of your podcast, inviting your audience to listen to the full episode.
If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to tune into the rest of the Podcast Curious Series:
Episode 187. Healing the Throat Chakra: Speak Your Truth (a guided meditation gift)
Episode 188. How to Monetize Your Podcast: Podcast Curious Series
Episode 189. When to DIY vs. When to Outsource: Podcast Curious Series
Episode 190. Marketing Strategies for Non-Social Media Lovers
Ways to work with Nichole Joy:
Podcasting with Heart (NEW):
Podcast consulting application: https://nicholejoy.hbportal.co/public/64fa005ec70ae50024c65155
Birthworker Retreat Tickets: https://mailchi.mp/behervillage/birthworkerretreat
Black Birthworker Scholarship Application: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe2Cye69MQ01inIERCVj5AAbPBPvg7In7zisLdpFJqKM0_S_g/viewform?usp=sharing
Honeybook (CRM) trial:
Transcript:
Here are three things that you need to know before you listen to this episode. Number one, podcast consulting. So I'm now offering podcast consulting. I am holding your hand and showing you while you are in the driver's seat, how to put together your podcast. Whether you're gonna DIY, outsource, whatever.
We are going to be building podcasts together. If you'd like a spot at podcast consulting with me, there's an application link in the show notes or dmm me. My dms are always open. Announcement number two, if you'd prefer to learn at your own pace and all of it. DIY, the podcasting with Heart Self-paced course is now available.
I'm still in the middle of teaching it, so if you get the self-paced version, just note that as I teach the modules, they're being loaded into the portal. But that is an option. There's a link in the show notes. You can find out all the information.
Announcement number three. You've already heard me talk about the birth worker retreat. It's two and a half months away, so it's November. Our retreat is January 22nd, 23rd, 24th in Clearwater Beach, Florida. It is a birth worker retreat with a focus on MINDBODY business. I am opening three intensive spots.
Private one-on-one before and after the retreat. So if you plan on attending and you would like to book some private in-person time with me to get ish done, reach out to me, dmm me ASAP to secure one of your spots
, and we can book it around your schedule of when you're gonna be arriving and when you plan on departing from the retreat. Side note, also related to the birth worker retreat, there is a black birth worker scholarship available, so be sure to click the link in the show notes and apply if that's something that you feel like would be helpful for you.
As always, if you have any questions, my dms are open. .
Okay, so let's pick up where we left off. We're continuing the podcast Curious series, and I'm answering some of the questions that came in for people who are considering starting a podcast and they kind of know that it's in their future and it's on their souls path, that starting a podcast is probably gonna be something they do and they have questions and things that are coming up.
I polled my audience on Facebook and on Instagram, and I kind of put the questions that people had into different buckets. Some of the questions were more appropriate for the curriculum and my podcasting course. Podcasting With Heart Proud Plug. Some of the questions felt more appropriate and helpful to answer on my show, , and that's because I can answer you deeper on the show than I would be able to on a Facebook comment. Right? So let's talk about this next question, which was, what is the time commitment for a podcast? I know a lot of business owners, entrepreneurs, people that wear multiple hats are like, I don't have the time.
I don't have the time, and. I hear you. I get it. So the short answer, if you know me, you know that I will give you the short answer and then we're gonna go on a deep journey and I'm gonna explain to you what I mean. So the short answer is that you could spend as little as 15 minutes an episode, , and it could be up to an hour or more per episode.
And your minutes spent on podcasting, however many minutes you decide to put into episodes every week or as often as you like to put them out, will be utilized more efficiently. And we'll go further. I'll explain. So the real answer is that like many things when it comes to business and life, it depends on a lot of different factors.
for example, will you be DIYing it like doing it all yourself or will you be outsourcing some or all of the production
, and the startup? Like anything that you start up is what takes up the most time. It's that initial. Movement forward, that initial launch that takes the most energy to get moving. Once you get moving, it's a little bit, okay, let's use bicycle riding, for example. To get the bicycle moving, it probably takes the most energy to initially push your legs forward and get the bike going.
But once you're moving, once you're biking, it tends to flow a little bit easier, right? And it feels more easeful. It's kind of like that, the initial launch of your show, there's a steep learning curve. Or there's pieces that you haven't yet done that you need to figure out. Once you know how to do those, it goes a lot faster.
Now, a couple important things that I want you to remember as we talk through this longer answer is that if you're building an online presence for part of your business, whether you have an online business or an in-person, brick and mortar, an online presence is a smart thing to have. You're likely creating content.
You may have even fallen into that, um, social media hamster wheel, which makes you feel like you need to be creating content every day, every week so that you can beat the algorithm and get your information, and get your message, and get your products and services in front of your clients, and hope to like hack the system and be in front of people by constantly creating and pumping out content.
The thing about that is, and I do enjoy social media, if you follow me on social media, you know that I enjoy my stories. I enjoy creating reels sometimes. But the thing about it that's important to remember and keep in mind is that social media content tends to have a short shelf life.
Social media content lives for just a few days at best. Now, there are rare exceptions. If you have a, let's say an Instagram reel that happens to pick up and start going viral out of nowhere, it's happened. It's rare. It's not usually the thing that brings all of the perfect eyes to your business though.
. Then Instagram stories and or Facebook stories only last 24 hours. I enjoy stories, you know, usually once every day or once every few days, I'll do one time update. So I call it my Enjoy News. So, Nicole, joy, enjoy news to my Instagram stories and I update you on all the things in one.
Moment. So I'll go for a walk. I'll do it while I'm outside walking, put all the things. Sometimes it takes me upwards of an hour to put everything that I want to share with you in my stories, and I do it because I enjoy it. But the truth is those stories only last for 24 hours.
Even the content that you're creating for social media, whether that's a written post or a carousel or a reel or any other kind of video, you could spend 30 minutes hours. I've had clients who've spent hours on one post for social media that they poured so much research and education into
one. Single post that may or may not have a long shelf life.
Now, what that has to do with podcasting is that you could utilize that same amount of time that you would be spending on a written post, on a carousel, on creating a reel or on your stories. You can allocate those minutes to podcasting and they'll have a longer shelf life.
Why is that so one, the way that podcasts are consumed, the way podcast content is consumed, it's very different than the way social media content is consumed, right? Oftentimes when we sit down to scroll social media, we're looking for quick, we're doing the thumb scroll, right, and we're looking for quick dopamine hits.
We're looking for a laugh or a chuckle or something funny that we can send to our best friends. And it's generally consumed in a different way. When you're scrolling TikTok, , it's that couple seconds you have that digital marketers will explain to you. You have a very short amount of time to like grasp people's attention. I don't really buy into that. I make reels when I wanna make reels about what I wanna make reels about. I'm not too much into creating TikTok just for the sake of creating TikTok.
I don't know. I just don't pour my energy into TikTok like that. So I prefer going deep.
The way that people tend to consume podcast episodes is a little bit different. We're not flipping through podcast episodes, looking for quick dopamine hits. We're going through podcast episodes and looking for an energetic match. We're looking for a deeper connection with somebody, and when we find that, when we enjoy a podcast or we feel like we found our person for whatever the topic is or whatever the, um, experiences that we're looking to have on our human journey.
We tend to click subscribe and then we binge their episodes,
and I like that because while I enjoy, you know, social media has a different place in my content consumption life. I enjoy that for a different reason. When I go to podcasts and I'm looking to consume podcast content, I am looking for that deeper connection. And generally the people that I attract in my audience are people who wanna establish a deeper connection with their community, and a lot of which actually don't like social media at all and or can't stand creating reels and can't fathom the idea of only having 60 seconds or 90 seconds.
To connect with their potential clients through a quick little social media video. And because of those reasons and the way that we consume podcast content, . It's a beautiful tool that allows us to go deeper with our community. Another thing about podcasting as episodes are legacy content, right?
I said that they have a longer shelf life. And when you think about it. If you're creating Evergreen episodes for your podcast, right? So let's say it's not, um, a news podcast. There are podcasts that are like all about the news and they episodes pretty much expire when that news is old news. But a lot of us are creating legacy content, even if it's seasonal, right?
So as of the time I'm recording this, it's early November. Thanksgiving is right around the corner, and I have a couple of old episodes that are seasonal in that they're like Black Friday, cyber week shopping. Seasonal style episodes where I'm giving you ideas on Black Friday and cyber and, you know, holiday season stuff that you can do in your business.
While those are seasonal, they're still kind of evergreen because I just shared this morning to a local, uh, business Facebook group that I'm in. I had compiled all of my Black Friday holiday shopping ideas for business owner episodes into one little sheet and share the link to the Google sheet so you can refer back to the episodes.
And they're evergreen. And so the evergreen style episodes that if you're listening to me, you're probably creating are legacy content that is not going to expire in 24 hours. And a great example of this is during this past summer, I took the summer off of the podcast. I allowed myself the first time to have summer hours.
Entirely and not podcast. So for three months that I didn't put a single episode out, there were over 1200 new downloads of old podcast episodes. So it's, it's just . Amazing proof that this is legacy content that continues to support us as business owners and our communities with our message while we are doing other things.
While I was vacationing with the kids, while I was summering with my kids and being very present with them all summer, I was still getting my message out. People were still able to listen to this legacy content. Another thing to remember about podcasting versus, you know, the time that you're putting into your podcast, we'll say it that way, is you own your podcast content, your investment of your energy in creating episodes.
And content for your podcast is investing in assets. It's in ownership. This is different than creating content for social media where you are renting space. You can invest minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years into social media and get kicked out by the landlord.
Your podcast, however you own, you can house it as I do on my website. Now I send it out to all the places. So that they share it and distribute it. So Apple, Spotify, all of those beautiful places where they share podcasts, but it also lives on my website. I own my podcast, so the minutes that I'm putting into creating intentional content for the podcast goes toward an investment in something that I own.
Let's go back for a second to the point I made about how people consume your content , because it allows you to go deeper. People who listen to your episodes really get to know you. It is a stronger energetic exchange than somebody flipping through your social media reels that, see, they might read a couple of caption words or they might see you lip syncing to something or like mouthing over, um, an audio or, you know what I mean?
Those things are fun. Doesn't really allow you to go deep and have a deep energetic exchange with somebody on the other side of a piece of technology. For example, if we are not in person, the energetic exchanges have a bit of, um, they have a bit of a ranking, and this is not meant to say like it's a hierarchical better or worse.
It's just that there are stronger energetic connections when it comes to full length video or video at all. Where you are talking. Audio where you are. It's very intimate to be in somebody's ear.
And when you do your job correctly on your podcast, and in my eyes, what that means for me, and this may be different for you, but for me, if I'm doing my job correctly on my podcast, I'm being as me as I can. I'm being my most authentic self. I am allowing you to get to know me in a very deep way. And when you do that.
Ultimately, when somebody inquires and reaches out, if they, they'll really get to know you, right? And when, when somebody does reach out and inquire to work with you. It's not a salesy kind of situation, right? Like if somebody reaches out to me through the podcast and they book a free, uh, consult, for example, and they're like, I wanna talk to you about what it's like to work together.
So we book a consult, 30 minute free chat. Let's see how I can best help you, whether that's me supporting you in a private capacity or guiding you in, directing you towards one of my courses or telling you about another resource of somebody else who I think might be better suited to help you with whatever it is that you're dealing with.
When people reach out and we have those calls, these are not sales calls. I don't look at these as sales calls because I've done my job correctly. So when we get on Zoom together and we have that initial 30 minute conversation, I'm listening to you. I'm not selling or pitching. I don't need to sell you or pitch you on my services.
And what I almost always hear from people who have found me through my podcast is I feel like I already know you because I've listened to your podcast. And that's one of the biggest honors. To me is I'm doing my job. And then it's more of a conversation of, okay, you already know me. We're not on this call so you can know me.
I wanna know you. I wanna know the problem or the challenge, or whatever it is that you're navigating, and let's see how I can help you. That's what that is. And so it's a beautiful thing to get on calls like that because it eliminates whatever pressure you might feel as a business owner of, I need to sell this thing.
You don't need to sell this thing. They have already gotten to know you and business and sales, marketing. It's all about relationships, and the podcast is a beautiful tool that allows you to go deep and build virtual relationships with people if you're doing it correctly.
Now the last thing I wanna mention about your minutes that you spend creating content for your podcast, going farther and being more efficient, is that effectively a podcast is pillar content, right? So it's this large, deep, longer form piece of content. What I like about that is that it makes it very easy for you to extract and repurpose.
From the large pillar content, you extract and repurpose smaller pieces of micro content. For social media. Social media tends to be somewhere that people prefer micro content, 60 to 92nd reels, or a short quote or a short caption. I think Instagram captions, they only give you like 2200 characters, which I speak way more than 2200 characters.
When I need to get a point across, I always want the long answer.
I always want to give the long answer.
And so if you're not sure what I mean by extracting pieces of the podcast to repurpose and put on social media, just go to my Instagram and browse. And what you'll find is, um, a mixture of excerpts that are actual video clips from these episodes that I. Put into smaller pieces of content for Instagram reels or videos that go on Facebook, reels that go on Facebook.
Sometimes I'll scroll through, um, my podcast episode and find a quote and I'll take a quote that I said in the episode, put it on a quote graphic and share that to social media. It makes your content creation process much more efficient because now I don't have to create content just for social media.
I can focus on my pillar content if that's what I prefer, to go deep with people, and then I can, or I can outsource somebody to pull little parts out of it and put it on the, on social media. And really what that is, is using social media as a broadcast place to let people know where they can go, find the full
Episode, the full story of whatever it is that you're talking about. If the podcast is a play on demand broadcast, then social media can be a place where you broadcast what's on the podcast and you invite folks back to listen to the podcast.
So the last thing I'll say for my fellow heart-centered entrepreneurs is that there's a time and a place for quickies.
It's not when you're building real relationships with real human beings. I hope you enjoy the rest of the podcast, curious series. See you soon.