Hey, everyone.

I'm Mike Dell, VP of customer relations here at Blueberry.

And I'm Mackenzie Bennett, marketing specialist.

With the holidays approaching, we're talking about something every creator faces at some point, podcast burnout.

You need to step back, recharge, and remember why you started your podcast in the first place.

Exactly.

Staying consistent doesn't mean pushing yourself to exhaustion.

It means finding a balance that keeps you motivated and creative for, for the long haul.

You're listening to Podcast Insider hosted by Mike Dell, Dave Clements, and Mackenzie Bennett from the Blueberry team, bringing you weekly insights, advice, and insider tips and tricks to help you start, grow, and thrive through podcasting with all the support of your team here at Blueberry Podcasting.

Welcome.

Let's dive in.

Yeah.

This, this episode kinda hits me, a little bit because I'm participating in NAPOD promo, which is National Podcast Posting Month, and I've been doing a daily show the whole month.

And we're, what, eight nineteen days in?

Yeah.

We are.

So I can I can appreciate burnout?

I don't know how these people do the daily shows that they do for as long as they do.

But, anyway Specifically, the people that do them by themselves.

You know?

If you got a team, it's easier, but it's still not easy to do an everyday one.

You know, it's it's easy to just start dreading the recording and the editing and the publishing and the show notes and and everything like that, or you're just you're stuck and you're like, I have nothing else in my brain for this for this show.

What do I do?

That does happen for sure.

You know, I get that, you know, doing this this thirty days in a row daily show.

No.

It's, like, kinda hard to come up with topics.

Now I, ahead of time, went through, and I mapped out all the topics I was gonna talk about, but that's not what we're here to talk about.

Yeah.

We're we're here to talk about, you know, how do you how do you spot the signs of burnout before it becomes a problem?

Right.

And that's kind of where you figure out, like, take a minute.

What does your body feel like?

What does your brain telling you?

Do you want to record?

Do you want to edit?

Do you feel like this is a requirement and not not a privilege or a joy, something like that?

Yeah.

You know, there's there's some bullet points here that you, you wrote up on the notes, but, it it all works.

You know?

If you're you know, feel episodes feel like they're forced or you just don't wanna do it, you dread recording or you dread the editing, all that, you know, if you're out of topics.

There's just a lot of things that can tell you that, hey.

Maybe, maybe I'm burning out here.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And that's alright.

But if you do reach that point, you know, you you gotta figure out a way to, stay creative.

And there's a couple different ways that you can do that.

So you should probably try to change things up.

Maybe do a shorter episode or just do, like, a bonus one.

I mean, that sounds a little weird doing doing an extra episode, or something like that, but it's a little out of the norm, and that could just spike your interest.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's and reruns, you know, if you've been at it long enough, you know, picking an episode from a couple years ago and, you know, just do a new intro to it and send it.

I I've done that myself, and that works for me.

Yeah.

We do it on this show once in a while.

You know?

If we just don't have the time or the inclination to record, we we put out something that, you know, evergreen content, something that is still useful even though it might have been two, three years ago.

Yeah.

Yeah.

This is also a really good time to ask your audience if there's anything specific that they would like to hear.

You know, if it's especially if you're doing something creative, fiction wise or anything like that, they might say, okay.

You've done a lot on this topic.

This is a little too fantasy.

Can you go do something else for a little bit?

You know, these are all easy ways to Be careful with that one, though, because, you know, your audience might request something that's just out of your wheelhouse.

Yeah.

Example, I I asked that question a couple years ago on my show, and I said, hey.

What do you guys want me to talk about?

What do you you know, is there something I haven't covered that you wanna cover?

And somebody asked me, yeah.

I want you to do a Star Trek episode review.

No.

I'm not doing that.

I'm not a TV reviewer.

You know?

I mean, I like Star Trek.

Do love Star Trek.

Yeah.

I like Star Trek, but, yeah, I'm not gonna do a review.

There's people who do that on YouTube way better than I do.

You know what?

I also I appreciate that because nowadays, anyone kinda just thinks they can, like, get online and start critiquing things, and they can, but that does not mean they are good at it.

Yeah.

I'm only good at what I'm good at, and you're only good at what you're good at.

And that's, you know, stay in your wheelhouse.

Yes.

Stay yeah.

Yeah.

I guess that's the thing.

You know?

Tread that line of staying in your wheelhouse, though.

You can take a look at your podcast ads, whatever platform you're on, to see which topics or which episodes are are doing the best.

And, you know, take a look at that and go in that direction.

That can probably be a good idea of of what you should do.

Yeah.

And it all depends on the goal of your podcast as well because, you know, my podcast is simply just me using the tools and, you know, just I I like to get on and talk about things.

You know?

Whether anybody listens to it or not is not particularly important to me.

You know?

I know that sounds weird, but, you know, my goal is this is a hobby for that particular show.

Anyway, this show here, we're trying to educate you.

Mhmm.

But, you know, my goal of my own personal show is not to get the biggest audience in the world.

It's to, you know, you know, one thing is it really helps me test out our tools.

So that's that's part of it.

But, you know, for the most part, it's a hobby.

And, you know, trying to do something else that's not within your goal is not a good way to avoid burnout.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But you're you're not alone in that sense of where you're like, I don't really care if people listen to this.

If they do, that's great.

You know, like, if if I have a little community, that's wonderful.

But you're you're kinda doing it for yourself in that sense, and that's very popular for people on YouTube, their own podcast, you know, any type of social media.

People kinda treat it as their own journaling nowadays.

Vlogging became very popular very fast for a reason.

It's because people like to, you know, get out their stream of consciousness sometimes, and, that can definitely find people.

Yeah.

We get this question once in a while.

You know, somebody will say, I wanna start a podcast.

What should it be about?

Well, that's really the first question you need to ask is what you want it to be about.

Yeah.

You know, don't just do something because it's popular because that will also you know, if you're doing a subject you're not really that interested in, you're not gonna be good at it.

And the audience is gonna hear that, and you'll burn out.

You will you will burn out fast.

Yeah.

Very fast.

Yeah.

And I've seen that happen, you know, whereas, well, it's really popular to do a show about lost.

That was the big thing years ago.

So, you know, there was 20 shows, doing aftershows about lost, and I know three quarters of the people that were doing those didn't really care about that show.

They just thought it was popular, so they're gonna jump on the bandwagon.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They're not there anymore.

Well, neither is Lost.

But Neither is Lost.

And for quite a while now, as a day one Lost fan, I somehow missed all of those podcasts, but maybe that's for the best.

Yeah.

For the most part.

There was a couple really good ones, though, I have to say.

Anyway Yeah.

Just there's your history lesson for today.

And so yeah.

And another thing, you know, take some time off.

You know, we're coming up on the holidays.

You know?

It's okay to, you know, just let your audience know, hey.

You know, it's Thanksgiving weekend.

I'm gonna go do something else.

So I have an episode in two weeks.

You know?

Something like that.

Let them know.

Yeah.

I mean, we're recording this the and it's, yeah, a couple days before, the week of Thanksgiving, and it'll go out Monday, the week of Thanksgiving here in The US.

And, I was like and we need to get the next two episodes figured out as well because I'm not gonna be here the Monday after Thanksgiving either.

I'm like, it's we we gotta plan these things out so that we get them going, and so it's not like a bummer or like a rush.

You you and Dave are slacking.

You guys both gonna be on Monday after, so we'll have to record early on those.

But, you know, it there's nothing wrong with taking time off.

You know, a lot of podcasters will will just disappear for a while.

I I'm the king of that.

You know, my you know, I might do an episode a month sometimes, and sometimes they'll do a whole bunch in a row and then take another month off.

But, again, you know, my goal is not to be consistent.

Your goal should be.

It was not what I do.

Right.

This is a prime example of Mike's doing, national podcast month, and then he's not gonna podcast at all in December.

Probably not.

That's probably what's gonna yeah.

That's that's probably what's gonna happen, which is totally fine, but also, like, not ideal if this is something that you're trying to do to build that community of listeners.

So definitely one of the things that we wanna remind everyone to do is just keep people aware of what's going on on your social media.

That's a super, super easy one.

And especially if you don't wanna actually record anything, that is just, like you know, write 10 words.

Happy holidays.

I'll be back in a couple weeks.

Yeah.

There's nothing wrong with that at all.

And, you know, and if you have your own website, if you're using our PowerPress plugin and doing it that way, put a blog post up.

Yeah.

Just, you know, say, hey.

No episode this week.

See you later.

You know?

Or whatever your your schedule is.

That's an easy one.

And and, also, this one might be be good for people who are doing a specific type of podcast, but seasons are really good for not losing that momentum.

You know, it's you you get to plan all of your time off because you're essentially just you got all these episodes already or, you know, at least, like, one or two probably, and you're only doing it for a certain period of time.

There is an endpoint insight.

So that's that's kinda helpful.

Yeah.

And, you know, seasons you know, generally, it's not a good idea to take a lot of time off between seasons.

You know, just but you can, you know, well, as long as you're communicating that to your listeners, you can do whatever you want.

There's no rules in podcasting.

But There is.

Yeah.

One of the things that I like about people doing seasons is, like, it's it's like a miniseries.

Mhmm.

You know?

I get I get this clump of, you know, three to 10 episodes, whatever it is, and I really enjoyed this story or learning about this, and then it's over.

And I I kinda like I have I feel like I've been gravitating more towards that, in the past couple years where I'm like, okay.

I wanna ingest a lot of info about this one thing.

I wanna binge it and and, you know, get all get all the goodness out of it that it has to offer, and then it's over.

And it's kinda nice.

You know, and it works, like, on Netflix or whatever.

In my case, Star Trek.

You know, they they have seasons and, you know, all the new ones coming out.

You know?

There's maybe six months in between seasons or a year even on some of them, but, yeah, we keep coming back.

So, you know, your listeners may do the same thing.

Just, you know, I don't recommend six months, but, you know, break it up.

Yeah.

Exactly.

With that.

Nothing wrong with that at all.

Exactly.

But I mean, it is it is the holiday season overall for people all over the world, and there's just a lot going on, which means listenership can go up and down.

It can be that some people are so busy, and they're on vacation, and and, you know, seeing family, and go in this this place and over there, and they're just so out of their schedule that they have no time to listen to podcasts.

Meanwhile, I feel like in my day to day life, I'm listening to less podcasts.

And over vacation, I'll probably listen to a bunch.

And so You binge them.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I will.

I'll binge them because I'm like, oh, okay.

I have the next three days off.

I'm gonna go on a walk today and tomorrow and another and another, and that's what I'm gonna do.

Yeah.

I'm gonna listen to, you know, a backlog of different shows, and and that's just one of the things that's, like, great as a podcaster is you can you can let people soak up those episodes if they want.

And if not, they'll be back later.

Yeah.

We've noticed a trend over the years.

As far as podcast listening, you know, it does slow down through the holidays in general, but now certain people do listen more because they're off work or whatever.

But, you know and then it really picks up, right after, you know, the first of the year because everybody got new devices maybe or, you know, they they they get reinvigorated to listen.

So there's usually a bump in in January.

You know?

And that's in general because different podcasts are different.

You know?

Yeah.

That is all for today.

Anything else we we really have?

Any pearls of wisdom?

Not really.

You know, again, consistency doesn't mean not taking a break.

It just means finding your rhythm and, you know, hey.

What works for you?

That's that you know, again, no rules in podcasting.

There are definitely no rules.

So that's all for today, and thanks for joining us, and a happy Thanksgiving to those in The US.

Okay.

And, of course, we're here to help you with anything, podcast technical related or otherwise.

If you're recording or resting or planning for next year, whatever works, make sure you, come look at the show notes over at podcastinsider.com, and we have a lot of other stuff there too as well.

So happy Thanksgiving.

Thanks, everyone.

Thanks for joining us.

Come back next week.

And in the meantime, head to podcastinsider.com for more information, to subscribe, share, and read our show notes.

To check out our latest suite of services and learn how Blueberry can help you leverage your podcast, visit blueberry.com.

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