Welcome back to Podcast Insider. I'm Mike Dell,
the VP of customer relations here at Blueberry.
And I'm Dave Clements, Blueberry support and media
specialist.
Yeah. This time of the year, everybody's thinking
about spring and spring cleaning. Although we just
had a blizzard here, so I'm thinking about
all this damn snow needs to melt. But
it's also a great time to clear things
out and get your podcast organized.
Yeah. I just spring cleaned and redid my
entire office, but your podcast probably needs the
same thing probably more often than you think.
Exactly. So today, we're gonna be talking about
how to spring clean your podcast and what
to fix,
what to update, what you might want to
remove altogether.
And some of these are quick wins, and
some of them are going to take a
little bit more time, but all of them
are gonna help your podcast perform better as
you
go. You're listening to Podcast Insider hosted by
Mike Dell, Dave Clements, and Mackenzie Bennett from
the Blueberry team, bringing you weekly insights, advice,
and insider tips and tricks to help you
start, grow, and thrive through podcasting with all
the support of your team here at Blueberry
Podcasting.
Welcome.
Let's dive in.
So why does spring cleaning matter?
A lot of podcasts
don't fail because of one big thing. It's
usually a bunch of small things stacking up
over time.
So, you know, you have broken links on
your website, descriptions get outdated.
You know, your workflow might get a little
messy.
One thing that I run into a lot
is
it starts to feel stale, and you typically
don't realize why. And that these things
are kinda sitting in the background. So some
of the things that
cleaning
your podcast up improves
would be things like listener experience,
discoverability,
and then you can get ready for monetization.
And we've talked a lot about monetization lately.
Yeah. And a lot of podcasters don't really
care if they monetize or not. It's a
hobby. So, you know,
whatever you're into, that's just fine.
But, you know, some of the
stuff that really help you stay motivated
and
give a better listener experience is, you know,
make sure your show description is still accurate,
and you make sure your episode titles, you
know, don't change past ones. But
the way you're doing episode titles, are they
clear, keyword friendly?
Do they still reflect what your show is
all about? Yeah. One thing that I did
fairly recently with one of my shows was
I was putting episode numbers at the beginning,
and I realized I don't need to do
that because most people don't care what episode
it is because it wasn't a serial
show. So even something simple like that, you
can go through, remove those numbers,
and just clean things up a little bit.
That's always nice. And, you know, it may
depending on how you rewrite those titles or
descriptions, it might catch the attention of someone
new. Yeah. And, you know, the other thing
about putting episode numbers at the beginning
is a lot of apps cut off your
episode titles.
Mhmm. You know, they only show the first
so many characters, and I don't have an
exact number or anything and what apps do
which. But
if you put unimportant stuff at the beginning
of the title, such as your episode number,
that's really only important to you in most
cases these days.
You know? Unless, like Dave said, if you
are doing a serialized
show that, you know, the the the episodes
go in a certain order and it's kinda
good for people to know, you know, okay.
This is episode one. This is episode two.
Whatever.
That's not important
to your podcast.
Take them out all altogether or put them
at the end of the title. I recently
did that with my main show.
I went through and took out all the
episode numbers in the titles.
Mhmm. Because a lot of the apps now
will use the episode number you put in
the settings. And at Blueberry, we have in
both PowerPress and
Publisher feeds, you can
number your episode. You don't need to put
them in your titles anymore,
and they'll sort them
automatically most times.
Yeah. You know, and all my episode file
names, which most people don't see,
But my episode file names have the episode
number in them, and that's mainly so I
don't duplicate an episode file name. Exactly. You
know, that's the main reason for that. It
kinda serializes it. So that and it also
keeps me,
like, you know, I look at my files.
I say, okay. The last the newest one
here is, you know, 467.
Okay. The next one I record should be
468.
Easy. Right. You know, I don't have to
worry about, oh, what am I gonna call
this? No. Have I used that name before?
But that's not something you do spring cleaning.
That's what you do all along.
You know, either date it. You know, like,
with this show, we put the date
in the title or in the file name,
not the title, the file name.
But, you know, just,
you know, kinda rethink how you wanna keep
organized. You know? The more, the merrier that
way. Some of your links and calls to
action, you know, I've no. You know, years
ago, I was
advertising
Citrix,
which Citrix,
I think, is out of business.
Some of their products still exist, but those
links that I had in my show notes
are probably really old.
Yeah. So, you know, if you're using a
WordPress site, for instance, go through and search
for dead links. There's a plugin you can
install called dead dead link checker or something
like that
or broken link checker, I think.
And go through there and either update those
with, you know, current
links to whatever it was you were linking
to, or if that doesn't exist anymore, take
the links out.
You know, you could still leave
the episode in the description and talking about
that product, you know, because you don't want
our episodes either.
But, you know, just take that link out
of the show notes. You know, it's a
bad look when you even, you know, someone's
going to a five year old episode and
they click a link and the link's dead.
Yeah. Well, especially, like, you know, you know
this, Mike, because we've been doing this long
enough. But, like,
we I would say a lot of podcasters
got involved in affiliate
marketing
and sales and things like that through their
podcast.
And so
I know that there have been times I've
had to go through and go, oh, that
promo code or that offer that I had
for three weeks back in
2017,
that doesn't work anymore. I should remove that.
Because, again, like, you you're just gonna lead
people astray, and then you get that email
or whatever that's like, hey, you I can't
get 35%
off of that really cool product that you
were talking about in this episode,
and you don't really want that.
Right.
Right. Yeah. It's
you gotta kinda maintain stuff is, I guess,
the takeaway for that. You know? And same
thing with part podcast artwork.
Mhmm. You know? I know your listeners probably
aren't tired of looking at your artwork because
they don't look at it very long. They
say, oh, new episode.
Hit play.
Yep. But
you, as the podcaster, look at that thing
all the time.
And, you know, just for you, maybe update
that artwork a little bit. You know, make
sure it still matches your brand or your,
you know, your subject matter or whatever,
or just looks cool. Whatever. You know? It's
totally
not,
you know, something you know, people get used
to whatever you put there.
But
Yeah. Some something that you really have to
consider is depending on how long you've had
your artwork and your show,
you know, we're looking at high definition
screens now. Like your phone, your monitors, your
TVs. They're all high definition
four k,
generally.
And
those images
are gonna look different now than they did
years ago when you started doing your podcast.
So for me, it's been almost fifteen years.
I would not use my old artwork because
it was pretty pixely intentionally,
but it just the resolution wasn't there. The
quality wasn't there. So always, like, stop and
look at that image,
you know, in a monitor. If you can
put it on your TV, whether it's
through, like, an Apple TV or,
you know Google. Screen share or something like
that.
Look at it in different sizes,
and then shrink it down to as small
as you can and go, is it still
legible? Do people know that's still
my show?
And then sometimes, like, you just need a
refresh. Like, I've
I created artwork
for
a podcast
that was about video games and had a
video game vibe.
And I just changed it up because it
was like, well, this is like eight bit,
you know, pixely looking thing. Now we're gonna
do something that's a little bit more sleek,
a little bit more modern just because that's
what we're talking about more. Right. But don't
go overboard with this high resolution thing.
No. You know, like,
there's still technical specs
that you need to have for your podcast
artwork.
Yep. And
I always recommend and this is just me,
so take it for what it's worth and
what you paid for it.
But I say go 1,400
pixel square. I
there there's no instance that I can think
of where you need 3,000 pixel square.
You can.
But the problem with that is then the
file size starts getting in the way.
And, you know, 3,000 pixel image
is enough. If you wanted to blow it
up to be a billboard, it would probably
look okay.
And, you know, most people are looking at
it maybe two inches on their screen. Mhmm.
You know? Or if they're on Apple TV,
it might be 10 inches or whatever.
But that's gonna look just fine.
But as Dave said, look at it on
different size screens, of course, and also shrink
it down because, you know, you put a
bunch of text in your episode artwork,
maybe that text is gonna be way too
small for anybody to read. One inch or
two inch sized display on the phone.
Yeah. And you definitely don't need a 40
foot by 40 foot image, unless you wanna,
like, put the banner in your yard or
something like that. You know, we have one
of those programmable
billboards down the street, you know, where they
it switches every so often. I always often
thought maybe I'll throw my podcast up on
that billboard. Well, okay. Maybe I'd give them
a 3,000 image for that, but I would
Right. One off for them.
Sure.
But, you know, hey. I always tell people,
you don't need to make a billboard out
of your podcast artwork. Well, maybe Mhmm. Wonder
what that costs.
Anyway,
then we already talked about some of this,
you know, with cleaning up your back catalog
with the broken links and outdated stuff. But
I don't ever think that you really need
to go rerecord an old that episode unless
you make it a new one.
You could do another episode about that same
topic.
Mhmm. Make that a new episode. Leave the
old one there. That's me. Another thing that
you might consider, and I've done this some,
is, you know, promoting older episodes. Maybe, you
know, find one that you really liked in
your back catalog and promote that on social
or in your other show. Hey. Go back
to this episode and check this out, you
know, something like that. Yeah. Another thing you
could do is, you know, kinda thinking about
I have monetization on the mind right now
because that is very much what we're focusing
on here at Blueberry as far as marketing
goes. You know, if you've used baked in
ads
within your episodes, it might be a good
idea to go back and cut those out
and just reupload
that episode without those ads
or, you know, something like that. That's just
something to think about, not a necessary thing.
But it kinda goes back into you don't
wanna lead people astray thinking that you have
an offer
that you don't have anymore.
I wouldn't lose too much sleep over going
back, but especially if you're gonna promote an
older episode, listen to it. Maybe edit a
little bit more.
Yeah.
Get rid of outdated
calls to action, whatnot. But, again, you know,
I wouldn't you know, I've got, you know,
nearly 500 episodes on my show. We've got
nearly Sure. Episodes on this show.
We're not going back and changing anything.
Yeah. Probably not. But, you know, like, there
there are some that are egregious, you know,
like Yeah. People change or, you know, businesses
just don't exist anymore. And, you know, maybe
it just doesn't align with your show anymore.
It's just something to think about.
Yep. And, you know, another thing, this really
doesn't have anything to do with spring cleaning.
But if you wanted to take a week
off for you from your show like we
did last week, run a rerun. We did
that last week. Mhmm. Information was still good
and and all that. So that's another thing.
But put it out as a new episode.
Change the file name. You know? And you
could put the same episode out. Maybe put
an edited intro at the beginning, something like
that. But that's not so
we'll we'll move
on. But, you know, your workflow, you know,
how you
publish,
you know, maybe that needs a little bit
of tweaking. You know? Like, with us, sometimes
we are scrambling to put out an episode.
Mhmm. Do we need to rethink how we're
doing this? Maybe.
You know? Just
some workflow issues. There's all kinds of of
ways of doing it and in what order
and all that. I'm constantly doing that with
my daily show. I was just telling Dave
before we started recording, I've been playing with
AI a little bit, trying to make the
show prep a little quicker, and, yeah, so
far limited success.
Yeah. I think you just kind of have
to
step back and look at what is the
entire process from start to finish for an
episode.
And not so much cut corners, but where
can you trim the fat? Where can you
make things work for you instead of against
you? That was always a big thing that
I ran into
with,
you know, doing a show by myself
was
I had to move the obstacles out of
the way for me to actually sit down
and record
the episode.
So yeah. Like,
you just gotta analyze. There's not really a
one size fits all approach. So just step
back and go, what is the thing that
gets in my way the most? And then
start to work on that. And maybe that
is I gotta think of, you know, five
episodes
and then work on an outline one at
a time before I can record or something
like that. You know, you're gonna be the
person that knows what hurts the most when
you get by in the microphone.
Yeah. For sure.
You know, like with me, you know, sometimes
I'll do show prep,
then I'll
record, then I'll do the art episode artwork,
and then I'll publish, You know? Mhmm. In
that order. And then sometimes what I'll do
is I'll start with the artwork.
I won't even do show prep. I just
know what it's gonna be about, so I'll
play around and get the artwork the way
I want it. Then I'll go back and,
you know, do prep and then
record
and edit and whatever.
Edit. Yeah. Right?
But,
you know, how that goes, it just
you know, I you change it up once
in a while. You know? Yeah. And don't
be afraid to throw in a checklist,
you know, and tear that checklist up, restart
it. Do that as many times as it
takes to get comfortable
doing it. Like I said, over and over
again, remove the obstacles
because that is what is gonna slow you
down, and that's what leads to pod fade
and burnout and things like that, which we
talk about,
but I think everybody's afraid to change anything
even if it hurts.
Right. Yeah. And, you know, the thing is
if you're doing a podcast, let's say you're
doing a weekly or, you know, whatever
whatever
cadence you do,
you have a way of doing it, and
maybe that's getting a bit old. You know,
change it up maybe just just for the
heck of it. Maybe add a segment to
your show that you didn't do before. I
meant that you're doing that's like, oh, I
gotta do that again.
Yeah. So,
you know, just clean it up. Spring cleaning.
Mhmm.
Talk about monetization
since you guys have been in marketing, been
talking about that a lot.
Yeah.
Yeah. And we I guess I kinda touched
on these. I jumped ahead in our show
notes unintentionally.
But, yeah, like,
check. Are you still promoting old sponsors? Do
you have dead affiliate links on your site
or in your show notes?
Is there something that you're not promoting that
you should be? Maybe since you've started your
podcast, you've started to
offer a service or a newsletter or, you
know, you've started a Patreon or something like
that, and you haven't thought to put it
in your show notes or really talk about
it. Definitely do that. Yeah. Also, you know,
intros, that's that is one thing I would
go back and edit
depending not very far. You know? I whenever
I say I I would go back to
edit something,
it's usually last 20 episodes. I'm not going
500 episodes back.
Right. Right. You know? But maybe
if, you know, my intros were garbage, I
might rerecord an intro or, you know, have
a whatever.
But, you know,
just just be mindful that people do listen
to the old episodes,
and that's okay. Maybe it's nostalgic.
It might that's what it is. You know?
I like to go back and listen to
one of my episodes from 2006.
You know? Like, wow.
Twenty years ago, I was talking about that,
and that's still an issue? Or, oh my
gosh, what were we worried about? You know,
whatever it was.
And, you know but maybe spring cleaning is
the time to go back and listen to
some of your old stuff and see if
it's
still applicable and, you know, you might wanna
just cut down your feed and get rid
of 100 episodes. You could do that.
You don't have to,
but Right. You might want to. You never
know.
Overcomplicated
formats.
I can kinda speak to that because I
am a person who likes to dabble.
I wanna I'll I'll watch something or I'll
hear something, and I'm like, oh, how do
I apply that to my show? And then
before I know it,
you know, my
twenty five minute podcast has, like, 15 different
segments, and I barely have enough time to
breathe. And then it's just not enjoyable.
But usually, you can see if your audience
doesn't because your stats will start to dip.
I've done that a lot. And so sometimes
you just have to go, no. We're gonna
take it back and,
you know, we've got three segments.
And that's gonna be it for a little
while just to kind of reset. You don't
have to, like, fully, like,
blow up your show in order to do
that. You're just gonna okay. We're gonna just
trim things down a little bit and make
it easier.
Right. Well, we you know, we've tried different
formats
on this show
Mhmm. Years and, you know, and then, of
course, you know, titles changed,
what, four times.
That and, you know, that might be something
to think about. You don't have to rebrand,
but maybe you need to. That's another
possibility.
Mhmm. But, you know, like with us, we've
tried all these formats, and we always end
up coming back to we're gonna flip the
recording on. We're gonna talk about something,
and that's really it. We don't have a
dedicated format anymore.
And Mhmm. I think that's better for the
style of show that we do here. And,
personally, that's what I do on my shows
is, basically, I flip the microphone on and
I talk
and Right. Give it a whole lot of
thought. Now that's not probably the best way
to do it, but that's the way I
do it.
Some of the key takeaways,
you know, kinda sum it up. You know,
small updates can make a huge difference.
And again, you don't need to rebrand. Maybe
you don't. But fixing,
you know, fixing stuff like descriptions and links
and how you do things could immediately improve
it. Yeah. And then also, like, still understand
that, you know, you may be at episode
300, but your backlog
still matters
because
old episodes are still gonna get discovered by
people whether you plan for it to or
not. So try and keep them as updated
as possible.
Again, that evergreen content, we've talked about that
a lot over the years. And, you know,
evergreen also means
what does your links look like and stuff
like that.
Right. Right. You
know, consistency
is one of those things that really help.
You know, if you can do a clean,
repeatable workflow that makes publishing easier, reduces all
your burnout,
you know, go for it. Do it. Yep.
And going back to monetization,
which is the theme for the 2026,
you need to be clear about
what your show is, but also what are
your calls to action. If you are gonna
monetize your show, people need to know how
you're doing that, whether that's, hey. Come
join my Patreon for a dollar a month.
Go support
this sponsor or
this business or this course.
You have to direct people
somewhere meaningful
in order for them
to help you monetize your podcast.
So, basically, if it's not helping your show,
get rid of it. Outdated segments, long intros,
unnecessary
steps, you know, that kind of stuff slows
you down. I always dreamt when we first
started doing podcasting. When I first started doing
podcasting, it always seemed like it took me
a really long time to get set up
to the point where I turn the microphone
on.
Now
it's awesome. I walk in here. I fire
up a program.
I fire up the Rodecaster.
I hit record, and I talk.
And that's the fun part of podcasting.
All this other stuff is you know, can
be fun for some, but
if the less friction you have,
the better, and springtime is the best time.
Yep. If you haven't reviewed your podcast in
a while, it might be a great time
to do it. Even a few small updates
can make the difference.
And if you need any help with it,
that's what we're here for. You know, if
it's your hosting setup,
you have questions about stats, or you're just
stuck and you're like, I want a spring
clean, but I don't know where to start,
that's what we're here for. You can reach
out to us. Yeah. Just head over to
blueberry.com
and learn more about our hosting stats tools
to help you grow your podcast.
I think that's gonna do it for today.
So thanks so much for listening, and we
will talk to you next time on Podcast
Insider. Yeah. And be sure to go over
to podcastinsider.com
for the full show notes and other great
stuff we put on that blog.
Thanks for joining us. Come back next week.
And in the meantime, head to podcastinsider.com
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