The challenges of podcasting over the holidays are numerous. Do you have permission to take a holiday? Will your listeners be too busy to tune in if you podcast? Here, we’ll discuss how to get your podcast ready for the holidays in the best possible way.

Going on a Break

You must decide whether to keep producing podcasts throughout the holidays or take a break.

Perhaps you worry that everyone is busy at this time of year and doesn’t have time to listen to podcasts. Or maybe you decided to take a break because it better suits your individual situation. Instead of stopping production completely, think about making content ahead of time so that your podcast doesn’t disappear from the minds of your audience. Some people find that the holidays give them more time to listen.

Sticking to Your Podcasting Schedule

Sticking to your production schedule has the benefit of giving your podcast the chance to shine and stand out in a crowded field if bigger podcasts are taking a break over the holidays. You might attract a few casual listeners who end up tuning in again because your podcast resonates with them so much.

A lot of people will travel over the holidays, and most people will have time off. They’ll want to download fantastic podcasts to listen to on their phones.

There are inventive strategies you can use to stay on schedule. Consider recording a few solo episodes, for instance, if your podcast typically features guests but they are unavailable over the holidays.

There are benefits to delaying interview releases until the new year. If you and your guests aren’t both drumming up interest in the episode, your guests might not be as diligent about publicizing their appearance on your podcast as they normally would be. Think about putting off your juicy interviews until you’re sure you’ll have enough time to promote them well, as long as the content of the interviews won’t get old in the meantime.

Adapting Your Podcast Schedule

There are a few approaches you can take to make releasing your shows simpler if you decide against taking a break. After all, you don’t want to be trying to edit out the sound of Christmas gift wrapping because you ran out of time and are now practicing extreme multitasking!

Keep in mind the golden rule if you intend to continue your regular podcasting schedule over the holidays. The hosts of podcasts should always be ready. Here are a few ideas for getting a head start on holiday podcast preparations. 

Reduce your release schedule. If your show typically goes out weekly, you could halve your workload by dropping temporarily to every other week.

Prepare some re-releases rather than letting your feed go completely inactive. Your replays will maintain your listeners’ interest as long as they are carefully curated. The “best of the year” or “highlights” series might even be one of these.

Try out some fresh concepts. Put the word out if you’re a member of a podcasting community and would like to participate in a guest host exchange. By replaying each other’s shows, you could even assist one another and change things up to keep your audience interested.

In other words, the earlier you begin holiday preparations, the better. Spreading out this task by creating an extra episode each week is much simpler than attempting to finish it all at the last minute.

True, it might not be best to publish fresh material during the holidays since many of your regular listeners won’t get to see it.

Using one of the suggestions here will help you get the most out of your time while keeping your podcast feed active.

By planning your holiday content ahead of time, you can make sure that your podcast feed doesn’t go completely dark during the holidays. Additionally, you might want to start planning your first few episodes for the new year so it will be easy to get back into it before you sit back and unwind for the season.