13: What Day of the Week Should You Release Your Podcast Episodes?
In this episode of Podcasting for Coaches, I break down the main things you need to consider when deciding what day of the week you should release your podcast episodes on and what time of day of works best.
Sure, there's all kinds of fancy surveys and data out there about what the "top" podcasts are doing, but does that mean you should follow their lead? Take a listen below to find out!
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Transcript
Welcome to podcasting for coaches. I'm Britany Felix and I'm a podcast launch consultant who specializes in helping coaches and consultants utilize the power of podcasting as a way to build brand awareness and generate new leads for their business. I realize not every new coach or consultant can afford to hire someone to help launch their show. So I created this podcast as a way to guide you through the process of launching and utilizing your very own podcast to help you grow your business and reach a new audience of adoring followers and potential clients. If you're ready to get your voice and podcast out into the world, head over to podcasting for coaches.com to learn more. Welcome to Episode 13 of podcasting for coaches. Last week, we talked about the ideal length of your episodes. And this week, we're going to talk about the ideal day for releasing those episodes. And the reason I put these two episodes back to back is honestly because the advice is almost identical. There are surveys out there and articles and data that might say a particular day of the week is better. And definitely I hope you're the air quotes as I said that you'll see a lot of people recommend Monday as the ideal day of the week to release episodes. However, my thought on that is, if your listener subscribes to, we'll say five different podcasts, and each podcast puts out a weekly episode, four of those podcasts releases their new episode on Mondays come Monday morning, when your listener is most likely generally stressed, especially if they still work in corporate, they're going to be overwhelmed by the amount of episodes they have to listen to, they can only listen to so many in their busy day. So they're going to choose one, maybe two to listen to, and then the other two are going to get put on the backburner. However, if one of those five releases an episode on Thursday, and it's the only one they subscribe to you that releases on Thursday, who show are they going to be listening to come Thursday? No question about it, they're going to want to hear the new content from that show. So you make yourself stand out by publishing on a random day of the week. But the caveat there is you don't know when other people are necessarily releasing, a great thing to do is to maybe check out the most popular podcasts in the niche that your ideal client is going to be listening to. and do a little market research for yourself. See when they do release episodes and see if they overwhelmingly release on a Monday or Wednesday or Friday, and then try to stand out from pack. So I also want you to think about your ideal client while you're picking this day. Do they work in corporate? Are Monday is just insane for them? Or are they going to want a little bit of a break from their busy day and want to listen to your show during their lunch break? Is your ideal client, somebody who is trying to build a business so that they can have more time with their family. And they most likely have a strict policy of no work on the weekends, which means they may not necessarily be listening to your podcast because it may be considered business development, or are they just so busy during the week with their family, getting their kids to school, getting themselves to work doing all of these crazy things during the week that the only time they have to listen is on the weekend. You know, maybe you release your episodes on a Saturday or Sunday. There's no hard and fast rule. People say never release on the weekends only release on a Monday. That's really the only time that's appropriate. But I can tell you right now I have a client who releases her episodes on Sundays and she's killing it with her downloads. She has figured out what works best for her target audience and I want you to do the same. So just like in last week's episode, in addition to thinking about your target audience and trying to make yourself stand out a little bit, I want you to think about what works for you are your Monday's usually chaotic, do you have a no work on the weekend role, because of so I can tell you right now, you don't want to release episodes on the weekend or on Mondays. because inevitably, if you podcasts for long enough things will happen. episodes will have a last minute glitch, they won't actually go out to the platform's even though you've scheduled them to publish, you'll find that the wrong file was uploaded, any number of things are going to happen. And you're going to have to go into crisis mode at the last minute, or you know emergency mode trying to get a file switched out really quick before a whole bunch of people listen. So if you release on a Saturday morning, but you have a strict no work policy, you don't even know there's a problem until Monday when you're already slammed with everything else. Or maybe vice versa with the way that you have set up your schedule. Maybe your Thursdays and Fridays are your busiest days of the week. So you do want to release in the beginning of the week. So you have time to deal with any of those situations that may pop up. So take a look at what works best with your schedule. If you're outsourcing to an editor, you're probably going to want to have time to review those episodes before they actually get scheduled and published. So think about that when you're picking this as well. And the last point I'm going to bring up on this topic before I switch to something else really quickly, is to again just like I mentioned last week, ask your audience get them involved in the process ahead of time if you have a great following already. See what day works best for them. They're gonna feel invested and be excited for your upcoming podcast and glad they were a part of the process. If it works for you, great, then you have your answer right there. If you don't yet have a following, then you put out shows for a little while. And then you pull the ones that do start listening. You put them into a Facebook community, you put them on an email list, you gather them somewhere, you send them to your Instagram, you send them to your Twitter, so that they can interact with you and provide you with feedback, put out those polls, ask for feedback, have them emailing you do a speakpipe voicemail message on your website, however you want to collect this data, but just ask them and they will tell you something that goes along very closely with the topic of what day to release your episodes on is what time to release your episodes on that day. So this is largely going to depend on where your target audience is located. So I'm not going to tell you a particular time necessarily, because your audience may be in Australia and somebody else's audience could be in the US, which are going to have vastly different publication times. And makes it extremely interesting when you have two co hosts one in Australia, one in the US, as I have right now with one of my clients situations. But they have found a way to make it work and you can too. So just think about where your audience is located. And then think about when they're going to be listening to these episodes, most likely, it's a good idea to have it ready for them when they wake up. So for example, if the vast majority of your audience is going to be in the United States, I recommend no later than 6am Eastern Standard Time. Because that means most likely people can listen to your podcast as they're getting ready for work as they're heading to the gym in the morning. As they're in their car during their morning commute. You have it ready to go for them. They're not waiting around all day, and getting distracted so that they forget that there's even a new episode that's come out. So no matter what country you're in, think about your target audience and try to have that episode ready for them. When they get up in the morning. I have some clients who post as early as 3am. And honestly, that's fine, just as long as it's ready to go for the listeners as soon as they get up in the morning. So that's going to wrap up this episode of podcasting for coaches. And I hope that you join me back here next week where we are finally going to talk about your podcast artwork. Thank you so much for joining me and I hope that you have a fantastic week. And that wraps up another episode of podcasting for coaches. If you're wondering if now is the right time to start a podcast for your coaching or consulting business, head on over to podcasting for coaches.com where you can either take a free quiz or schedule a one on one consultation with yours truly, thank you so much for joining me today and I will see you back here for the next episode.