Episode 75: 11 Ways to Turn Old Podcast Episodes Into New Growth: Part 1

Kylie Chandler: Hey friend, I just wanted to bop in and let you know that as

Speaker B: I prepare for my maternity leave, I'm

Kylie Chandler: going to be changing things up just slightly.

Speaker B: So instead of recording an episode every single week for June and July and possibly August, I'm actually going to be dropping an episode every other week. Don't worry, they'll still be super tactical, really strategic, and so valuable to you and your growth in podcasting and business.

Kylie Chandler: On top of that, I'm also going

Speaker B: to only be sending one newsletter per

Kylie Chandler: month, so if you are not on

Speaker B: my newsletter quite yet, please get on there. You can head to podcastmarketinghub.com subscribe and I will still provide you with a ton of juicy insider insight, including industry updates and all of the juicy things. If you want something that can really support you in the meantime, I highly recommend you go check out my quiz if you which is at podcastmarketinghub.com forward/quiz. And that is going to give you a really clear understanding of where the gaps are in your business and podcast and how to merge those gaps so that you can start to turn podcast listeners into subscribers into buyers. So again, that's podcast marketing hub.com forward/quiz thank you so much for being here. Please stick out with me while I go on maternity leave and spend a little bit of time with my new business baby and my family. And again, I'll be releasing an episode every other week and then dropping a newsletter weekly. So thank you for being here. I truly, truly appreciate you and I will see you soon.

Kylie Chandler: If you've ever wished you had a podcasting pro with nearly a decade of experience whispering growth secrets into your ear, that's exactly what you'll get when you tune into Podcast Grow Tools with me, your host, Kylie Chandler. This is the ultimate show for you if you're ready to grow your podcast audience, skyrocket engagement and turn your show into a traffic driving list building powerhouse. I've been in the podcasting world since 2015, helping creators like Amy Porterfield grow their shows to over a million downloads a month. My superpower. Breaking down proven podcast strategies and marketing techniques and into step by step guidance you can actually implement without fluff, overwhelm or guesswork. On this show, we're getting real about what actually moves the needle when it comes to growing your podcast audience and using it to boost your email list growth. From actionable insights and expert interviews to behind the scenes secrets, I'll help you turn your podcast into a traffic driving list growing machine. Grab your earbuds, hit subscribe and let's take your podcast to the next level.

Kylie Chandler: So I want you to think about something for just a second. How many podcast episodes have you published? Maybe it's 50, 75. Maybe you're well over 100 at this point. I mean, I work with anyone from, you know, some of my clients have over 600 episodes. I also have some know students in my mastermind who are starting out and they have like 15. But here's the real question, and I want you to be honest with yourself on this one. When was the last time that you actually did anything with those back catalog episodes after they went live? If your answer is never, or if you're thinking, I know I should be coming, uh, up with things that I have done with these, but I haven't, it's okay. You're in the right place and you're not alone, because here's what nobody really talks about in the podcasting space. You are truly sitting on a gold mine. Like, every episode you have ever published is a gold mine. A literal goldmine of content that has the potential to grow your email list, bring in new listeners, and drive people to your offers at every stage. And for many podcasters, I know that it's just kind of sitting there, right? And I get it. I totally do. Because when we're in a rhythm of putting out a new episode every single week, the last thing on our minds is like going back, looking at what we've already created, right? We're too busy thinking about what's next. But what if I told you that the fastest way, well, one of the quickest ways and, um, easier lifts to grow your podcast in this season might not always be to create more and more and more, but actually activating the content you've already made. So that is what we're going to dive into today. So this is part one of a two part series. So I am going to release part one today and then in two weeks because I'm on maternity leave at this point. In two weeks, you'll get part two. Okay? And we're going to talk all about how to activate your back catalog and make it work for you and your business. Bringing in leads, driving people to offers, lots of different options. And what I want to say is today is all about the foundation, the strategic groundwork that we're talking about, right? We're going to talk about optimizing auditing, really setting everything up so that next week in part two, I can actually show you how to turn the back catalog into leads, revenue, and some really Creative things that you're. I hope you're excited about, you know, repurposing old content. Um, so I'm excited for this episode. I want you to say that if this episode is like, oh, well, I only have, you know, 15, 20 episodes, I still want you to listen. Because the cool thing about where you're at, you're at an advantage because you can start thinking ahead, right? Like, okay, if I plan and publish this episode, how am I going to repurpose it in three, six months, you know, 12 months, two years, whatever it might be. And then, of course, if you have 50 plus episodes, like, this is great for you. You're going to be able to really start. I want to turn the wheels on what you can be doing. Okay, so step one, I want you to take a little bit of time to do a back catalog audit. So for any of those who are like, wait, what's a back catalog? That's basically all of your historically published episodes, right? So anything you've already published, go. Is considered back catalog. So anything that's not brand new. So step one, and I know this isn't the sexiest starting point, but trust me on this, everything else we talk about in this series really depends on this, right? So you need to audit your back catalog. We gotta take a little bit of time. Now, the cool thing is we have AI, right? So this is less of a lift than it would have been maybe, you know, five years ago. And before you tune out with the word audit, because it sounds like something that your accountant might say, I promise, this is way more fun than taxes. I mean, I'm. Trust me, we are in, like, Q2, taxes, prepping before I go on maternity leave. Like, I get it, but this is about getting to know our content in a way that maybe you've dabbled in but haven't really dove fully into, or maybe you haven't even thought about. So I want us to really get into it. So here's what I want you to do. I want you to pull up your podcast analytics. Now, that might be from Captivate, it might be from Spotify for creators, it might be Apple Podcast Connect, Buzzsprout, Whatever you use, the more you pull, the more data you'll have, Right? So totally, uh, up to you how. How in depth you want to go with that or how light you want to go. And what I want you to do is first, I want you to identify your top 10 episodes. We're not just going to go by downloads here, but I actually want you to look at which episodes consistently get played, even like months after they went live. Right. So those are your evergreen winners, if I were to name them.

Speaker B: Right.

Kylie Chandler: And those are the episodes that are clearly resonating with people long after you publish this. Again, AI can really help you identify these. So that's, that's a great resource to be using for this audit. Okay, so that's our top 10. Second, I want you to look at your bottom 10 episodes. I know, I know, right? Nobody likes looking at these because they didn't perform well, even though we put the effort in, even though we thought the topic was great. This and that.

Speaker B: Right.

Kylie Chandler: But this is where some of the biggest opportunities are actually hiding. And I'll, I'll tell you why in a minute. All right, the third part of this audit is that we are going to look for patterns. What does that mean? It means are your solo episodes outperforming interviews are, uh, episodes about a specific topic, like maybe email list growth or monetization consistently getting more plays are, uh, shorter episodes doing better than longer ones? So this data is going to tell you so much about what your audience actually wants from you. So not only is this going to serve us and when we start to think about how we can repurpose our back catalog, this is also going to help you plan moving ahead.

Speaker B: Right.

Kylie Chandler: So most podcasters, I find, have never really taken the time to look at this. But again, let me go back to it. Using AI to give you this data. And this information is so helpful and so beneficial. So when I said pull your metrics and I mentioned that you could pull it just from your hosting platform, I personally highly recommend grabbing hosting platform Spotify for creators and Apple Connect. If you can do that. That would be my. That would be like the goal. But of course it's okay if you don't as well. You'll still get data. I also want you to take a look at which episodes are driving the most action. So if you have Google Analytics set up and you have show notes blog style pages on your website, you can go in and you can check out the traffic there. Right. You can see what of, um, those show notes blog posts are doing the best. Okay. If you have a quiz or a freebie, which episodes are driving the most opt ins? So this is where you can kind of start to see the full picture, not just of what people are listening to, but what's actually moving the needle in your business, which is so exciting and so fun.

Speaker B: Right.

Kylie Chandler: So here's your homework for this section. Open up a spreadsheet or honestly, a notebook, whatever you want to do, right? Write down your top 10 and bottom episodes, right. With their download numbers. Then note any patterns you start to see again. You can pull those and then have AI analyze them. I, um, would still recommend you analyze them just from a standpoint of knowing your ideal customer and ideal listener.

Speaker B: Right.

Kylie Chandler: But I want you to pay attention to topics that performed well, formats that worked. Uh, anything that jumps out to you, they will. Words will jump out to you, keywords will jump out to you, titles will jump out to you, things like that. Because you're going to need all of this for everything that we're going to move forward and do. Okay? So the next thing that we are going to do is we're going to optimize your underperformers, right? So this is why we pulled those bottom episodes. Now that you know which episodes didn't perform as well, this is where we can have some fun and we can kind of make it interesting. Because I can tell you from working with not only podcasters for years, but also my personal experience is that a lot of times an episode underperforms, not because the content is bad, but because the packaging of it is off. So think about it like this. You could have like the most incredible life changing episode podcast, whatever. And if the title is something vague, so let's actually give this, um, let's say that it's an episode about podcast monetization. But if the title is something super vague, say I named it, uh, my thoughts on making money. Nobody's going to click on that, right? Nobody is searching for that. The content might be gold, but the rapper doesn't tell my listener what's inside quickly so that they decide they want to listen. So here's what I want you to do with those underperforming episodes. I want you to rework the titles, make them keyword rich and specific. Instead of My thoughts on making money, try something like three podcast monetization strategies that actually work for female entrepreneurs. Do you see the difference? Do you see how strong those keywords are compared to my thoughts on making money? Also, it makes it about your listener and less about you. So it's going to tell them exactly what they're going to learn. And that's what people want to click on because they want to know right away if this is going to serve them right. They don't want to gamble and click on it and then 20 minutes later feel like this episode has nothing to do with what they want or what they were looking for. Okay, so that's step one. Step two, I want you to rework the description. Your episode description is SEO real estate. We know this especially on podcasts and Apple podcasts, um, and Spotify. And if your descriptions are like one sentence long or super generic or anything like that, you're really leaving this organic discoverability element on the table. So I want you to go back and I want you to write descriptions that include relevant keywords. Click clearly state what the listener is going to learn, Give people a reason to press play. Lastly, some hosting platforms allow you to add tags and keywords for individual episodes. So I actually want you to go back to those underperformers and make sure if your hosting platform allows that, that you're adding those in. Because here's the thing, this is probably the lowest effort, highest reward thing you can do in your back catalog because you're not recording, you're not having to rerecord anything, you're, you're not creating new content, you're just changing the packaging on the content that already exists. And sometimes that's all it takes to give an episode a second life. I've seen clients do this and I watched episodes that were getting like 30 downloads suddenly start get getting like 150, 200 downloads just from a title and description change. Because now the algorithm can actually find it. Now people searching for that topic can discover it.

Speaker B: Right?

Kylie Chandler: It's wild how much of a difference that makes. All right, next up, this is for those of you who have show notes on your website. So like a uh, blog style show note and then also have Google Analytics set up also. By the way guys, Google Analytics is super easy to set up. So if you don't have it set up, I highly recommend you do because it does give us data and insights as a podcaster, as an entrepreneur, all the things. So this is one of those things that I'm pretty passionate about. But more, most podcasters aren't doing this, but if you do have like a blog style show notes on your website, you definitely want to go back and update them. So what I would recommend doing is go back and just see like you know, use your episodes that you found were the top performing and bottom performing and compare them to what kind of traffic you're seeing on your website and then go back and update them. So how do we update blog style show notes? We can add internal links, right? So maybe an older episode, you know, gives way really well to an episode that you did that wasn't published, a newer episode that wasn't published at the time that you published that, those show notes. So maybe you, you know, add an internal link that drives people from that one to the next one, right? So it's like the client journey, um, so you can link them together. This keeps people on your website longer, which helps Google to understand more about your website. Refresh the cta. So, you know, your CTA might be eight months old or was about something that you don't really drive traffic to, or you have maybe you have a quiz now or a newer freebie or a newer offer that you'd rather have people go to. Go back, update those so they're a little bit more relevant. And then lastly, you can beef up your show notes content, right? We can totally change this. It doesn't matter when your content was published. Google doesn't care. Um, it wants to see things like this. So if your show notes were originally, you know, just a few sentences, I

Speaker B: see this a lot.

Kylie Chandler: With some timestamps, I want you to consider going back and actually turning them into like meatier blog posts. So adding subheads and keywords. Maybe you add a summary of key takeaways, um, links to resources you mentioned, things like that. So another beautiful thing about all this is it's not new work in the way of creating a brand new episode, right? You already have the content. You're just making tweaks so that it works better. And when I say it's low hanging fruit, I mean it. If you spend like one afternoon updating the show notes on your top 10 episodes, I truly believe you can see a noticeable bump in organic traffic within a few weeks. But that's the cool thing about SEO, right? That's the power of SEO. Okay, the next thing that I want to talk about is bringing back your episodes, but adding just a bit of a new fresh twist. So almost consider these like strategic RE airs, if you will. So this one's a game changer and I feel like not enough podcasters are taking advantage of it. So strategic RE errors. Here's what I mean. You have an episode in your catalog that crushed it, right? You've got them, I know you do. They've got great downloads, they drove great opt ins, people sent DMs to you about them. So why would you let that episode just like live in an archive where only the most dedicated binge listeners might find it? I want you to re air it, but we want to do it strategically, right? Record a fresh intro. So maybe 60 to 90 seconds where you say something like, hey, friend, I'm resharing One of my most popular episodes today because the message is so relevant to what I'm hearing from you right now. And at the end, I've added a brand new action step that I think you're really gonna love. Then play the original episode and tack on the intro outro, you know, or whatever you want to do and update the cta. So there are so many great use cases for this one. Launch weeks. So if you are about to open the doors to an offer, re air an episode that maybe aligns with that offer's topic, right? It warms up your audience and it really perfectly aligns with what you're working on without having to start from scratch when you need a break. Like I'm getting ready for maternity leave, I'm recording fresh ones. But then I'm also probably going to re air a few, uh, repeats as well, right? So, you know, things happen, right? We get sick, we have babies. All the things a, uh, strategic re air lets you stay consistent without recording a new episode. So it's so valuable to do this. Lastly, seasonal relevance. So maybe you did an incredible episode on Q4 planning last year. Re air it when Q4 rolls around. Again, the content is evergreen. Your new listeners haven't heard it, and your lawyer listeners might appreciate hearing it again, right? So the key here is that you're not just republishing an old episode and hoping nobody, you know, notices, like, being secretive. You're being intentional about it. You're framing it, updating the cta. You're choosing to reshare it in a moment that makes strategic sense for your business. All right, my last point that I want to share is creating a curated listening path. Okay? So I personally love this. I think it's really powerful and I think it's amazing if you are in a launch or planning out a launch. So I want you to think about your back catalog as almost a sales tool and in a really strategic, intentional way. So here's what I mean. Let's say you have an offer, maybe it's a course or a coaching program, a membership, whatever, and that offer solves a specific set of problems for your audience. Well, chances are you have had multiple episodes in your catalog that address that exact, those exact same problems, right? You've probably been teaching those topics for months, maybe years. So what if you created a curated listing path? So a sequence of, let's say, three to five episodes that you recommend people listen to in order or before they buy your thing. So let me explain a little bit more. It would probably look or go a little bit like this. So let's say episode one is like the awareness episode. This is where they realize they have the problem, right? You call it out, you offer the problem that your offer solves. Episode two is a deeper dive. This is where they start to understand why they have the problem, what's been keeping them m stuck, all of that stuff. Episode three. So this is the kind of here's what's possible episode. Maybe this is like a client interview or a case study, something like that. Episode four is a strategic episode where you're going to give them a quick win, something they can implement right away that gives them a taste of what your full offer delivers. And then the last one is going to be the CTA episode. And this is where you share your, your offer and invite them in. So here's the cool thing. You can literally mix and match. Maybe you have episodes that fit really well in here from your back catalog mixed with some that you have to record new. For instance, you might need to record the CTA episode new, right? So, but the sequence is really valuable. So now imagine, okay, you've created this, you've crafted it, you've put them together. Now imagine that you put this maybe on your sales page or you send it out in an email welcome sequence. Or you can dm, um, a lead saying, hey, if you're curious about working together, I actually have a curated playlist of episodes that will give you a great sense of what we do. I want you to start here. Anytime that we can send a listener or an ideal, uh, uh, potential customer episodes to help them kind of like move across the bridge, get off the fence. You, anytime we can do that to support them and saying yes, do it. It's content you've already created and you know, it's good. It's going to give them so much more information than even hopping on a one on like a consultation call.

Speaker B: Right?

Kylie Chandler: Because by the time they get to the offer, they already trust you. They've been listening to you for hours and they feel like they know you. So you could literally do this. There's a few ways you could do it as an opt in, right? So you could almost do it as like a bundle. The bundles I teach. You could um, re release fresh on your podcast. You could do uh, it as a private podcast as well. So there's different ways that you could go about that. Okay, so that is part one. We're going to dive in more next time. But let's recap what we've covered today because I know I just threw a lot at you. Probably a lot to think about. But step one, I want you to audit your catalog. Get to know your top performers, your underperformers, notice patterns. Number two, optimize your underperforming episodes by reworking the titles, descriptions, keywords, all that. Three, update your show notes on your website, internal links. This is our SEO boost, right? Four, use strategic re airs to bring back that content at the right intentional time. Lastly, consider creating a curated listing path that can bring your listeners through your back catalog into your sales funnel and over to your offer. Okay, here's what I want you to do before part two drops, which you have two weeks, so. So you have some time, but go do that audit. Pull up your analytics, find the top 10, bottom 10, look for patterns, all that, because in two weeks, we're taking everything you, you've uncovered, and we're going to turn it into some creative, really fun things. Like we're going to talk more about podcast bundles and quizzes, maybe a podcast, a private podcast experience, freebies, more. And you're going to need to know what we're working with to really make the most of that, um, content and the things I'm going to teach. All right, so if this episode was helpful, I would love, love, love if you could share it with other podcasters. Um, maybe they have a back catalog that's collecting dust as well. Uh, so go ahead, send it over there. Um, go ahead, share it on Instagram, wherever. Send me a dm. Let me know how you've loved it. I will be probably snuggling my new baby around this time, so, um, well, maybe, who knows, uh, who knows when baby's gonna show up, but, um, I always still love hearing from you. I'll just be a little bit slower at responding, so. All right, go dive into those analytics. Have some fun with this. And I will see you in two

Speaker B: weeks for part two.

Kylie Chandler: And we'll dive in. It's gonna be a good one. So I'll talk to you soon. Thanks so much.