Intentional growth requires regular evaluation and adjustment, and your podcast is no different! Here are 5 things I suggest you evaluate about your podcast every year so that you can make the changes necessary to keep growing your podcast.
/evaluateyearly
It wasn't until after I prepared this outline that I realized these 5 things fit nicely in my 5 cornerstones model: PROFIT, content, presentation, production, and promotion (I now put podcasting PROFIT first). That worked out quite nicely!
1. Your podcasting goals and PROFIT
In a single word, why? Why do you want to podcast and why should your audience want your podcast?
This is really about the goals you have for your podcast. I call it the Podcast P.R.O.F.I.T. Paradigm™: popularity, relationships, opportunities, fun, income, or tangibles. It's what you might hope to gain from your podcast, but it's also what you might hope to give to your audience.
Every year, carefully consider what your podcasting goals are and whether you're actually doing the right things to grow your podcast and audience toward those goals.
You might decide to change your goals, and that's okay!
I put this as #1 because it's the most important and I'm doing this list in descending order because I want you to consider all the following evahluations through the lens of your podcasting PROFIT for yourself and your audience.
2. Your episode structure and flow
Are your individual episodes still accomplishing what you want to do and—this is key—in the most efficient way possible?
A great place to get some insights for this is looking at “retention” analytics like you can see in Apple Podcasts Connect and the Spotify for Creators dashboard. (You can also see similar information on YouTube, but since YouTube isn't a podcasting platform and consumption habits are so different on YouTube compared to in podcast apps, I suggest you put less importance on the retention data from YouTube. It's still insightful, but not as valuable for your podcast as actual podcast analytics.)
Your retention stats will typically show you how much of each episode is played. With that, you'll be able to see more information about where people skip or drop off.
You will always see a downward decline with more people listening at the beginning and fewer listening at the end. That's normal. But the rate of decline and anything that breaks from a consistent decline can give you more insight you can use for evaluating your episode structure and flow. Maybe you need to move your more important call to action earlier in the episode. Or maybe you need to start ensuring your audience knows about some extra value you're saving for the end of the episode to encourage them to sticker around until the end (like I talked about in my previous episode about the ideal length of episode closings).
But in all of your evaluating, keep considering it through the lens of your podcasting PROFIT goals.
3. Your podcasting workflow
Podcasting can sometimes feel more like a chore than a joy. Part of that could be your regular workflow. Look carefully at your podcasting routines and especially your personal progress with them. Do you notice your rhythm slowing down on certain task? Do some things seem to take more time than they should? Do you often forget certain steps? Or do you really hate certain parts of your workflow?
As you evaluate your workflow, you might start to see points you could optimize by changing methods or tools. For example (and I'll talk more about this in a future episode), I found ways to eliminate several steps from my own publishing workflow by investing time into improving my podcast-publishing tool (PowerPress). I'm also experimenting with using the vast AI toolbox I have in Magai to speed up some mundane tasks like creating my chapters. (In my case, I already know exactly what my chapters should be, but it takes unnecessary time to create those chapters with the right timestamps.)
I'll talk more about my PowerPress changes and these AI tricks in future episodes.
To reverse President John F. Kennedy's famous quotation, I suggest you ask not what you can do with AI, but what AI can do for you!
4. A podcast trailer
Do you even have a podcast trailer?
I've had The Audacity to Podcast for 15 years, and although it's not one of my top 15 regrets [episode 394], I still keep wanting to make a podcast trailer!
If you're like me, then let's make it our goal together to create and publish a podcast trailer in the next 6 months!
And if you already have a trailer, listen to it again and see if it still aligns with what your podcast is about, that it still describes your podcast well, and—most importantly—that it still supports your podcasting goals and the P.R.O.F.I.T. (popularity, relationships, opportunities, fun, income, or tangibles) you want for yourself and your audience.
5. Your podcast description
After finishing the previous 4 evaluations, now look back at your podcast description. Not only should you consider whether it accurately describes your podcast anymore, but really look at it from the perspective of a potential listener and figure out how compelling it is. Does it really entice people with your podcast? Does it focus on the value they will get from your podcast? Does it make promises you have delivered or will be able to fulfill?
A reason I put this after making or updating your podcast trailer is because the trailer can be your chance to be more relatable, passionate, and audibly motivating. After you you've explored the personable aspect, then you can optimize the more scientific aspect of your podcast description.
AI can be a great tool to help you with this. While Google Gemini Pro, Anthrophic Claude Sonnet, and OpenAI GPT models will all be good (and you have access to all of them and more inside Magai! I earn commissions from purchases through this link, but I suggest things I believe in, regardless of earnings.), I suggest you use them in these specific ways.
- Give your description to Claude Sonnet with the “Writing Tutor” persona and ask it to evaluate your tone of voice. If that matches your desired tone of your podcast, great! If not, switch to the “Expert Copywriter” persona and ask Claude Sonnet to rewrite the description with your desired tone of voice. For example, if the description is currently formal but you want it to be fun, then ask for it to be rewritten with a fun tone. Claude Sonnet is really good at being analytical and accurate without getting too creative.
- Give your description to Gemini Pro with the “Master Persuader” persona and ask it how compelling the description might be to your potential audience that you will also describe. For example, “Here's my podcast description for [ podcast name ]: [ description ]. How compelling do you think this is for my target audience of [ demographic ]?”
- Give your current description and a list of your episodes (by title or topic, whichever is more accurate) to GPT-4.1 (latest at this time) with the “Master Persuader” persona and ask it to rewrite your description with the tone of voice you want, or try the “Marketing Expert” persona and ask it to rewrite your description with popular marketing frameworks (like problem-agitate-solution, before-after-bridge, segmenting-targeting-positioning, and such).
- If you're need some inspiration, switch to Perplexity Deep Research and the “Assistant” persona and ask it to research what's working for the most popular podcast descriptions, and distill that into a formula you could try repeating, and then switch to Claude Sonnet and “Master Persuader” or “Marketing Expert” persona (in the same chat) and have it apply that formula to your podcast description.
No matter what the AI gives you, evaluate it yourself and make adjustments that seem best to you. Please don't worry about the things some people are spreading fear about as being giveaways of AI. Instead, focusing on getting the tone closer to the way you would speak without compromising the goal of the description. Also ensure it appeals to you since you're probably a member of your own target demographic. And look for any weird patterns or unnecessary things (for a while, almost every “promotion” response I got from earlier large language models (LLMs) contained stuff like, “Looking for a new podcast?”).
But also don't delete any of the AI-enhanced descriptions. Save your favorite ones and actually experiment with them! Try one for a couple of months and try tracking how many new followers you get, and then compare that to a different description for a couple more months.
No matter what, the most important thing to focus on in your description is the P.R.O.F.I.T. (popularity, relationships, opportunities, fun, income, or tangibles) your audience will get from your podcast. Make it not about you, but about them and their wants or needs, and then how your podcast fits them and their wants or needs.
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This post may contain links to products or services with which I have an affiliate relationship. I may receive compensation from your actions through such links. However, I don't let that corrupt my perspective and I don't recommend only affiliates.
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