No matter how big a podcaster gets, one thing they can’t lie about is that there are days where they struggle to stay consistent with their podcast. So as a new podcaster, don’t let that scare you, it’s a common problem in the podcasting community.
What is not common though is the secret I’m about to tell you, this is something I have been doing for years now and it has worked marvellously for me. I know I said every podcaster struggles with consistency at some point but if I’m being honest, staying consistent has never been my issue.
Disclaimer; if you don’t put in the work then this secret would definitely not work for you.
You need to be determined and disciplined for this secret to work well for you. Now that we have gotten that out of the way, let me tell you the secret. This secret is what I call the One Hour Consistency Plan.
What does that mean exactly?
Well, let me explain. As you know we have 24 hours in a day and one thing is also certain, you can’t be busy for the whole 24 hours. There will definitely be that spare 1 hour, to say the least, that you would always have to yourself and it’s that One Hour that you need to stay consistent with your podcast.
Say you put out an episode every Saturday, it means you have from Sunday till Friday to do everything you need to do to put out an episode. Now let me break down how the One Hour Consistency Plan would work.
Sunday: Out of your 24 hours, use just One Hour to research or decide the topic you want to discuss on your next episode. It should take less than one hour for you to come up with a topic, but then again, with that one hour, you can choose a topic and decide how best you want to approach it. Depending on how your podcast is structured, you could approach it from a banter angle, from a more serious point of view or from an educated point of view. Once you have done this, then you are done for the day.
Monday: On Monday, use just One Hour to research the content or body of your topic. If you have decided to talk about Why Podcasting is Important, use that One Hour to build your points, facts and any other relevant information that is needed for the topic. You can search the internet, ask friends, develop your own points, whatever method you decide to use will depend on your topic and how you decide to approach it. Also depending on your topic, you might not be able to do this in one hour, that’s why there is another hour on Tuesday
Tuesday: continue from where you stopped on Monday, that’s if you aren’t able to finish up on Monday. But if you were able to develop all your points on Monday, then use your One Hour on Tuesday to script your podcast episode if your podcast is a scripted podcast and if not, you can use your One Hour to arrange all the points you have built. These arrangements would be a guide to know which sentence, phrase or point would come first. If you want to introduce your topic with a bit of storytelling, you can use this One Hour to determine which story best narrates your topic well.
Wednesday: At this point, you would clearly see that your podcast episode is already taking shape, so use thus One Hour to record your episode.
Now that you already know what your topic is, how you want to approach it and it has been scripted or arranged, recording your podcast episode will be less stressful and you might not need more than two takes.
Thursday: This is where you get to edit your episode. Again, because of everything you have done from Sunday to Wednesday, you won’t spend much time editing your podcast episode, as a matter of fact, the only thing that might make your editing tedious is if the recording has a lot of noise. But if you recorded in a noise-free environment, then cutting out all the unwanted parts, won’t take you time.
Friday: Friday is the day that you use One Hour out of your 24 hours to design the artwork for your podcast episode.
Because of the work you’ve put in from Sunday to Thursday, creating a design won’t even take you more than 30 minutes but hey, take your time and maximise your one hour. In case you weren’t able to finish your editing on Thursday, you can use part of your One Hour on Friday to finish up your editing.
Saturday: This is the day that your audience has been waiting for, the day that you put out that fire episode you have been working on from Sunday till Friday. Obviously, it won’t take you up to 30 minutes to upload your podcast episode and write your show notes. Your show notes should come from the research you did from Monday till Wednesday, so it’s all about extracting it and tweaking it to your taste and once that is done, you can hit the publish button and share those links.
NOTE: The One Hour Consistency Plan will work perfectly for a podcaster whose podcast isn’t heavily guest based. That’s not to say that if your podcast is guest based that you can’t use this, just saying that this might not give you the best results. Don’t worry though! My next article will be for podcasts that are heavily guest based.
Finally, the One Hour Consistency Plan works best if you are determined and disciplined.
Thank you for reading, see you on the next one!
