Takeaways
- Abbey recorded this episode from the lake while sick with a cold, using it as a real time case study for why she believes so strongly in batching podcast content ahead of time.
- She walks through three low effort ways to build a bank of backup episodes: a running notebook of ideas, her own podcast planning journal, and a running note on your phone that you can turn into a quick recorded episode any time you have a spare 30 minutes.
- If a podcaster ever finds themselves with nothing ready to publish, Abbey suggests digging into old analytics to find an episode that deserved more attention and repurposing it as a labeled replay episode instead of scrambling to record something new.
Summary of the Episode
In this episode of Abbey the Podcast Lady, Abbey Graves is recording from a pontoon on the lake on a beautiful September day, and she feels terrible. A cold and flu bug is going around right as school started back, and she is pushing through a sore throat and a runny nose to get this episode out because she did not batch enough content ahead of time.
That becomes the entire point of the episode. Cold and flu season, sick kids missing their first day of school, and unpredictable family emergencies are all things that happen to podcasters whether they are ready or not. Abbey argues that the best defense is always having episodes sitting in your back pocket, recorded and ready to go before you actually need them.
She breaks down exactly how she builds that backup bank: a running notebook or phone note of episode ideas, her own podcast planning journal for laying out titles, topics, and guest tracking, and using small pockets of time, even just 30 minutes, to record an episode now and edit it later.
Abbey closes by covering what to do if you truly have nothing ready to publish. She recommends digging into your show's analytics to find an older episode that deserved more attention, reposting it as a labeled replay, or putting together a best of episode when you have more time. She wraps up with a reminder that she offers coaching, podcast production packages, and an online course for anyone who needs help getting their content system in place.
Key Topics Covered
- Why podcasters need to batch content ahead of time
- Recording a podcast episode while sick
- Cold and flu season and its impact on content creators
- Preparing for unpredictable life events and family emergencies
- Keeping a running notebook of episode ideas
- Abbey's own podcast planning journal
- Using a phone notes app to track episode ideas
- Recording episodes in short pockets of time
- Editing episodes later versus recording them now
- Repurposing old episodes as replay content
- Using analytics to find underrated past episodes
- Best of episodes as a content strategy
- Abbey's coaching, production, and course offers
Bet on Your Podcast Course: https://www.skool.com/abbey-the-podcast-lady-5733/classroom
Work with Abbey: https://abbeygravesproductions.com/podcast-production/
Podcast Planning Journal: https://amzn.to/4gd1Vxs
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