Do you pick up where you left off?

Do you start a new show with a new angle?

Do you change the format of your show?

There are a lot of options, but by using the Business Podcast Blueprints, you can always find a strategy that will work.

The most important thing to consider is what you need your podcast to do for you now rather than what it’s done for you in the past.

Nic Redman was facing exactly this kind of choice when she joined me on the Business Podcast Spotlight.

Nic is the principal at Nic Redman Voice, a vocal coach and voice director, author of On the Mic and long time podcaster who is evaluating options for the future of her show, the Voice Coach Podcast. (She also has an amazing free vocal warm-up exercise for podcasters – you can get it right here.) Nic had been successfully podcasting for years before taking a pause, and now she’s ready to come back and start leveraging the brand and audience she’s built up in new ways. But is it better to start a new show, switch to a seasonal format or something else entirely?

Listen to the full episode below, or read on for the strategy!

What’s Happened So Far

Looking at Nic’s situation, she has done some amazing work to get her audience and podcast to where it is, took a much needed break, and now has some incredible opportuities for how to move forward.

Nic started like most of us do, with well-prepared and well-researched content that would demonstrate her expertise to others in her industry, but after a few episodes she realized a small error there – her key audience of buyers would be much more interested in her personality ad how she could help them than the professional signifiers her coleagues ould notice.

This clear understanding of who her most important listeners are led her to loosen up her delivery, and start to connect with people more quickly and effectively by being herself. She is casual and friendly and most importantly, extremely generous and helpful with the knowledge she shares. This translates into faster sales with better clients.

She knows that her podcast has helped her business in some important ways:

It generously shares foundational information about her work so anyone can take advantage of it, and demonstrates her effectiveness to those who are looking for more individualized support.

It “separates the wheat from the chaff” in terms of potential clients. When people have heard the show and reach out, they have already decided she is an expert who can help – and have usually done a lot of the “easy” work in terms of taking the advise she shares on the show – that means coaching goes faster and is more productive.

After 2 years of very successful podcasting, life got in the way, and Nic took a step back from the show, letting it act as an evergreen resource and lead generation tool on her website and on the podcast platforms. Even without new content, she was regularly getting hundreds of weekly downloads, and new leads from the show.

But now it’s time to come back – but not on a weekly release schedule – that just doesn’t fit the business anymore.

So the question is how to come back from hiatus when you want your podcast to be different.

That is composed of many smaller questions:

• Do you have to start a whole new show?
• Can you continue using your old feed if things aren’t the same?
• How do you differentiate the new content form the old?
• Can you reuse anything?

The New Plan

As you’ll have heard in the conversation, after evaluating Nic’s current business priorities (moving to a slightly more corporate podcsater direction), and her available bandwidth (it *can’t take up too much time!) we determined that a limited release season, or special series associated with her current show would be the best way to go, and that there is no need to do a whole new RSS feed or audio-visual brand.

A season can go on an old RSS feed and simple be packaged as a new offering by having a specific landing page, and some lightly altered episode-level cover art so the season is visually distinct, and easy to share as a unit.

This will have the beefit of being easy to create – a couple of days scripting and recording, then outsourcing production means it can be done quickly, then promoted over the next several mnths.

Each short season is also going to work as a beautiful cold outreach tool where she can open up a new relationship with a low-risk and highly valuable gift.

“Hey! I think you might find this short podcast season valuable in your work” is a really nice way to open up a relationship.

This will be easy to repeat for different customer segments if that ever becomes useful.

Business Podcast Blueprints Analysis

A limited series like this is an Audience Engagement Podcast strategy, where the main goal of the show is going to be connecting with and nurturing people who, by various means, become aware of her and her work. Over time, this increased knowing, liking and trusting among new and older audience members will benefit her business in a variety of ways.

Nic knows who her audience is, and the season can be used to nurture strangers who find her work through socal media and SEO and those who she specifically finds and invites to listen to the show. The seasons will also help existing community members by repackaging new and old content into easy-to-digest seasons with sepcific goals critical to their situations.

We can expect that a season specifically designed to teach a particular customer segment particular skills will shorten her sales cycle, and improve her conversion rates on sales calls.

For the specific details on how, grab a copy of Podcasting for Business: How to Create a Show That Makes a Bottom Line Difference for Your Business.

How to Do It Yourself:

So if you want to use this kind of strategy, here are a few questions to ask yourself:

• Who is my current most important customer segment?
• Are they currently being served by my library of content? If they are – could I make it easier and more convenient for them by arranging my content into playlists and webpages?
• Are there any important gaps in my podcast – information that key potential customers could use to make a buying decision that I haven’t talked about?

That will make the foundation of your new limited release series – and you can absolutely directly reuse old episodes – just freshen them up with a new intro and outro explaining the context of the season that makes them a cohesive unit rather than standalone episodes.

Now – if you don’t have a big archive of content already, you can still use this strategy to make a highly efficient podcast.

Think about the conversations you have with people during discovery calls – what are the questions that come up the most frequently? What are the things you teach again and again? What is the reality of the people you are talking about? These are the key epiosdes you need to create – add a little context and framing and you’ve got a podcast season that makes you an official podcaster AND doubles as a sales tool that you can use.

How to Track Success

Here are the stats you should track for this kind of limited release podcast season designed to nurture leads and shorten your sales cycle:

1. How many people you directly send it to, and how many people respond by email or booking a call with you.
2. Your close rate on calls with people who have heard the show (you have to ask them, or have a unique booking link for listeners.
3. The revenue you generate from those sales.
4. And of course, if you’re interested, you can cout the downloads of the season, and compare THAT to your conversions and sales as well – but I’d call that one optional.

Next Steps

Nic is off and creating her new podcast season, and in a few months she wil lbe invited back to the spotlight for another conversation so we can hear how it went. Make sure to grab her free vocal warm-up for podcasters, and reach out if you want a little support in your podcasting! After all – your voice is the single most important tool in your podcasting toolbox – it’s worth spending some time on to shortcut the time it takes to sound as professional as you are.

Connect with nect on LinkedIn, or Instagram and check out her book, On The Mic!

Become a Guest

If you have a podcast, or are considering one for your business, then we’d love to chat with you about how to make it as profitable as possible. Go to OneStoneCreative.net/SpotlightGuest and fill out an application.

Level Up Your Podcasting with Solid Strategy

If you’re looking for support with your current or an upcoming podcast – the team at One Stone Creative is ready to help. You can book a free strategy session with Megan Dougherty right here, review our ongoing and seasonal production options, or explore our new podcast Sprints Program, where we’ll do all of the heavy lifting for a podcast season that drives your business forward.

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The post Why a Vocal Coach is Switching to Seasons After a Podcast Hiatus first appeared on One Stone Creative.