Spring Clean Your Podcast: What to Fix, Update, or Remove Right Now – PCI 478

0:00 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.

0:45 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.

1:29 So, you know, you have broken links on your website, descriptions get outdated.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.

2:12 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.

2:55 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.

3:39 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.

4:33 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.

5:19 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.

6:07 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.

6:53 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.

7:37 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.

8:32 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.

9:16 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.

9:59 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.

10:43 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.

12:02 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.

12:45 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.

13:27 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.

14:23 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.

15:08 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.

16:00 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.

16:43 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.

17:25 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.

18:16 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.

18:59 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.

19:45 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.

20:41 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.

21:28 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.

22:09 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.

22:59 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 for more information, to subscribe, share, and read our show notes. To check out our latest suite of services and learn how Blueberry can help you leverage your podcast, visit blueberry.com. That's blueberry without the e's. We couldn't afford the e's.