In May I had a call with someone who’d been making a podcast for just over a year. He had nearly 40 episodes and around 7,000 downloads. The median podcast gets about 30 downloads an episode. His were getting 100 to 150, with a long tail of people going back to older ones.
By most measures, it was working. It didn’t feel that way to him.
He was making it on his own, alongside a day job and his kids. The plan was weekly. In practice there would be a gap of a few weeks, then two or three episodes in a row to catch up. Listeners had noticed. A couple had told him they hadn’t seen a new episode in a while, then found one had been out for days. Monthly downloads had settled at around 160 and stayed there.
He came to the call asking about discoverability. What we mostly talked about was his schedule.
Why weekly feels like the rule
Weekly is the default because that’s what the shows we listen to do. Those shows usually have a producer, an editor, someone booking guests and someone cutting clips. A solo host with a full-time job is trying to match that output with none of the support.
I told him that if I handed him a plan with weekly episodes, three social posts and a weekly newsletter, he’d burn out in about three weeks. I’ve been there. A few years ago I made 40 episodes of my own show, and I know how quickly your ambition outruns the hours you actually have.
The thing that hurts a show isn’t the gap between episodes. It’s the pattern breaking. People lose track when you’re weekly, then silent for a month, then back three times in a fortnight. And there’s already more podcast content than anyone can get through. Nobody will feel short-changed hearing from you every two weeks. Most will be glad it’s manageable.
What the podcast was actually for
Before we got to tactics, I asked what he wanted from the call. He started with purpose, which told me a lot.
The show began as a way to get a message to parents about kids and technology. Since then he’d built a free website of guides that schools were printing and sending home. He’d also launched a framework he hoped to turn into a paid assessment and certification. The podcast’s job had changed. It was now the front door to that.
That changes what success looks like. A hundred thousand downloads would feel good. But if none of those listeners sign up for the thing you’re building, the number doesn’t do much. If ten thousand downloads gets you the twelve pilot participants you need, ten thousand is enough. He had seven.
Downloads are a treadmill you never get off. What the podcast does for your work is the thing to measure.
What we changed
Nothing we agreed needed him to work harder. Most of it needed him to do less, more regularly.
Fortnightly, and stick to it. This was the main one. Choose a day, publish every other week, and let the show grow from a pace he can keep.
Tell people when there’s a new episode. He had no email list. He did have a contacts book full of teachers, head teachers and parents’ groups. I suggested a plain email every time an episode goes out: what it’s about, and a link. It should take ten minutes, and it doesn’t need to be the next great newsletter.
Reuse what’s already made. He had fifty-odd written guides. Five points from one guide makes a simple LinkedIn carousel. Tag the campaign groups working in the same space and they’ll often share it. He wouldn’t have to start a single post from a blank page.
Go on other people’s shows. He had the knowledge and a good voice for it, and he’d only been a guest once. We set a target of pitching five podcasts over five months. When I ran my own show, a guest pitching themselves was a relief, not an imposition. Most hosts feel the same.
Make it easy to say yes. For his own guests, that meant a calendar link with a couple of fixed recording slots a week, so nobody has to go back and forth over email. Then send each guest the episode before it goes live, along with any graphics, so sharing it takes them no effort.
If you're starting a show
None of this is clever. It’s a smaller version of the plan he already had, sized to the hours he really has.
Podcasts grow slowly. No algorithm pushes your episodes to strangers the way social platforms do, and the discovery features inside Apple and Spotify aren’t what they used to be. Growth comes from word of mouth, other people’s audiences, and turning up when you said you would.
So choose the schedule you could keep in your busiest month, not your quietest. If you’re already running a show and it feels like you’re chasing it, slow down a gear. The show will be fine, and it will probably get better.
I do a handful of these Deep Dive calls with podcasters each year. If you’re stuck with your show, drop me a message.
