Don't Let Podfade Kill Your Podcast: How to Stay Consistent & Motivated

Is your branded podcast slowly slipping into silence? You're not alone—podfade claims the life of 84% of podcasts. In this episode, we're diving deep into how to avoid podfade and keep your show alive, consistent, and effective as part of your brand’s content strategy.

From planning smarter with a podcast content calendar to using batch recording for efficiency, host Josh Troche breaks down actionable tips every marketing manager, entrepreneur, or small business owner should know. You'll learn how to stay motivated, tap into creative inspiration, and leverage tools that simplify the podcast production process—all without burning out.

We’ll also explore how reconnecting with your “why,” engaging with your audience, and using analytics (the right way) can breathe new life into your show.

If you’re serious about making your branded podcast a consistent and valuable part of your marketing, this is a must-listen.

Topics Covered:

• What causes podfade and how to spot it early
• How to build a content calendar that saves your sanity
• Why batch recording is a podcaster’s best friend
• Motivation tips and celebrating milestones
• Using audience engagement and feedback to drive episodes
• Production hacks and automation tools that reduce time and stress
• Staying connected to your mission for long-term success

🚀 Perfect For:

Marketing professionals creating content for brand awareness

Entrepreneurs using podcasting to build authority

Content creators battling creative burnout

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction: What is Podfade and Why It Matters
• 0:38 The Slow Death of a Neglected Podcast
• 2:26 Strategy 1: Plan Content Ahead with a Topic List
• 4:30 Batch Recording for Consistency and Flexibility
• 5:09 Staying Motivated: Set Realistic Goals
• 6:20 Celebrate the Small Wins
• 8:23 Overcoming Creative Blocks and Fueling Ideas
• 9:30 Avoid Burnout with Self-Care and Breaks
• 10:36 Connect with Your Audience for Feedback
• 12:06 Streamlining Your Production Process
• 13:52 Long-Term Strategy: Reconnect with Your Why
• 15:04 Use Analytics to Guide and Motivate
• 16:11 Wrap-Up: Keep Podcasting Fun and Stress-Free

Transcript

0:00

84% of podcast succumb to pod fade. Don't let pod fade happen to you. I can't do that. Seriously. But you shouldn't let pod Fade happen to you. And what are the things that you can do to prevent pod fade from killing your podcast? I mean, 84% of podcasts die because of this. Yes, I'm getting passionate about this. Don't let Pod Fade. Take your podcast. We're going to talk about how to prevent that this week. Stay tuned. Don't let your podcast die a slow death due to pod fade. Because what I mean, it just becomes neglected. That's what pod is. That is a neglected podcast that's just sitting there waiting for you to just deliver that next episode. And it just waits and waits and waits and you never, ever, ever deliver that pod fade. Maybe you deliver 1 or 2, like, sporadically throughout. But you you see it so many times with podcasts and kind of the definition of podcast pod fade is you do your podcast consistently. Maybe it's every week and you do that for 12 to 14 episodes. Most podcast die at episode 1,586% of podcast die at episode 15. So keep that in mind that. But you see it that a podcast gets to like episode 12 and it has been consistently every week. And episode 13, maybe that happens in two weeks. Episode 14, maybe that happens like the week after that, but then episode 15, maybe that's like two months out. Then next year you say, hey guys, we're back. That is Pod Fade. Your podcast just walks off into the sunset to die because you haven't nurtured it. We're going to give you some strategies today in order to make sure that that doesn't happen to your podcast. It should never happen to your podcast. Well, we will we will help you put your podcast on the table. Give it CPR, give it the shot, Pat, whatever they do. We will make sure that your pod fade does not occur and your podcast does not die that slow and painful death. The we've got probably. What is it? One, two, three, 4 or 5, six big tips that we're going to work with today. And we're gonna break some of those down into different spots. The first one that I'm going to tell people, and this is the number one, we're not going to save the best for last. We're starting with the best. Have your content laid out ahead of time. You need 20 topics. I mean, lay those things out. If if you're an experienced podcaster, I'd say you should have 7 or 8 laid out in front of you. Cocked, locked, ready to rock. Have those things all laid out, ready to go. I have been in the studio where someone walks in and, like, I have no idea what I'm going to talk about today. And I'm like, well, that's not that great. It's not it's not the right way to do things. I mean, think about this, would you? I mean, when you order materials for your business, do you just wing it? No. You plan this? Do you say, hey, we're out of stuff? I mean, think about it as a restaurant. Waited until. Oh, hey, we're out. We're out of hamburger buns. We should probably go get more of those. No, but order them ahead of time. Same thing with your content. Make sure that you've got some content ahead of time. There's all sorts of topics. Ask your clients for. Hey, what would you like to hear about? What's a question you have about our product? What's the thing that brought you here? Go talk about that. Those are all big things. Those are all great ways to get those topics. When you've got those topics and episodes, look at them occasionally. Go through them. What's relevant right now? What what seems to resonate with you if you're walking into the studio thinking, what am I going to talk about today? You're not going to be talking about the best things. If you've got a list of 15 things and even a week before you're ready to come into the studio or you're just going to record on your own. You look at your topics and you're like, oh, hey, I got a couple of ideas on this one. If you have those topics laid out before you, everything becomes so much smoother because it's it's already there for you, it's waiting for you. And the tough part is done. The other thing that I'm going to tell you about this, this enables you to batch record. Now you can record two, three, four episodes in one setting. You're sitting here, I'm sitting here, I'm going to record a couple of sessions. I'm in my podcasting mood. I'm, I'm I'm ready to go. I'm amped up. Now's the time to record. So if I've got 2 or 3 subjects and topics laid out on that, I'm ready to do that. I, I, I'm ready to roll out and just go with it. If I don't have a couple of topics lined up, I'm stuck and I'm struggling for topics. And then maybe we end up with something that's not where we want it to be. So that it's piece number one, piece number two, maintaining motivation. Oh, this is a huge one. Because I mean there's like me, I am always super excited to get in here to talk on the microphone. I love I, I truly love being in the studio. I love being in this room. There's some people that that I realize that's it's more difficult for them. Part of that is, is the goals that they have set. There's a lot of people that think, hey, I'm going to walk into the podcast studio and I'm going to be an instant star. And in episode 15, when they are not the instant star, that they get upset about it and they're like, nah, screw this, I'm out. Realize that, like, turning the microphone on is not your ticket to fame. It's the first step in working towards that. But like famous actors and that just didn't happen overnight. For them, it was time after time. It was effort after effort. People talk about like where Jeff Bezos is today in terms of his success. Yes, there's a lot of steps before that. What we see is the success, what we didn't look at was all the steps before that. So many people get into the steps before that and they're like, screw this. I don't want to do this anymore. The other way that I can talk about that is myself as a weightlifter. I used to see people throwing around giant chunks of iron and thinking, oh, yeah, they make that look easy. I can do that. And then I go into the gym and let's just say I was severely disappointed. It's it's a long term goal. It's it's it's long term efforts. And I realized that once I got going where I started from where I wanted to go, and I saw progress at every little step. And as long as you keep after it, you will see progress. But if you leave and come back and leave and come back, you won't see that progress. What it is, is it comes down to setting that realistic goal. I want to do X thing in y time, make sure that x thing is achievable by y time. Huge. The other thing that I'm going to say is there's recognition of progress no matter what the size. Buzzsprout is a platform that we use a lot for some of the podcasts. And with this, I mean, they send out like, hey, you've got 25 downloads, which sounds like absolutely nothing. But you know what? Celebrate that. Celebrate that. That's going I mean, that's a that's a big deal. 25 different I mean, not necessarily different people, but 25 times your episode has ended up on someone's phone. That's pretty cool. That's very cool. When you get to episode ten, you're like, hey, that that's an accomplishment. When you get to episode 25, you're like, oh my gosh, I'm better than 86% of the podcasts out there because they only made it to episode 15 before they died. Celebrate those little goals that set those small goals. Celebrate them along the way. Something else you're going to want to do is there's some times that I feel like I'm a reasonably creative guy, and sometimes the creative juices just aren't flowing. You go to that well and it is completely dry. I would suggest that you talk with other podcasters, work with other like people that are in maybe your your realm, talk to people, get out there, be social and that will probably help get those creative ideas going. Think. Look at it like how can my podcast use this if you're I mean, let's say you're in a real estate business and you're out here hearing from other realtors and one one realtor says, hey, I've got a problem with this. That should be your podcast. So use other people to help fuel fuel your creativity. The other thing with that is guest interviews. If you have guests on your show, rely on some of their creativity. Ask them questions like, hey, who do you think I should have on next? What's a subject you'd like to hear about next? Those are the types of things that can help keep your creativity going, even when. Then, like I said, if if you're out of gas in the tank, that can be that push that maybe comes along and helps you there. The other thing that I want to tell you, and this is kind of go back to the, the batch recording, you need to schedule some self-care and you need to schedule some breaks if you are in the studio time in, time out, or if you are recording every single week at the same time. Some people fit into that type of routine. There is a lot of people where that routine doesn't fit their life, but there's a lot of people that are just going to get burned out on it, and they're going to show up. And finally, after the third week, they are going to be like, I'm in the studio again. You don't want to let it get to that point. There should always be fresh. This should always be exciting. So schedule some breaks, make sure you've got the content built up to do those breaks. And that's why once again, this is going to come back to that. Having that list of topics out there. If you've got that, that gives you a whole lot of leeway when it comes to this. The other thing is connect with your listeners, send comments, send an email to them. If you can encourage that active audience input. It's funny when I talk like I'm experienced in talking to a camera like this, when it's often easier for guests, podcast, when they can talk back and forth because they're looking at each other, they're playing off of each other. It's tough to talk to a camera like this. I mean, I really I know you are listening to me on the other end of that, but for a lot of people, they just see this blank camera lens and this, this tin can of a microphone in front of me. They just see those things and the like, what do I do with this? And it once again, it becomes kind of dry for them. If you can encourage that audience participation through comments, likes, send messages sent, send clips to your friends and be like, hey, what do you think about this clip? I'd love your feedback on it yet get that audience participation that can that can really help fuel, especially in the beginning. The beginning. Tough. It's a tough slog. You're doing this and you frankly don't have a lot of people around you saying, yeah, go you. So send that out, get that audience participation. And once again, if you don't have the audience go out and ask people to be your audience, get that feedback, because that can be huge. When they say, hey, I love when you said this, or I loved when you said that, or I love your energy or how excited you are to do this. That type of stuff can be hugely motivational. And remember, it's that lack of motivation, that lack of like all that backing. That's what's going to kill your podcast. Another piece I want to dive into here is streamlining the production process that I mean, as you guys know, it's something that we do for a number of different podcasts. We handle the production. I love doing this. It takes some of that gritty, grimy work off of people. Now, granted, I really like the gritty, grimy work. But really, to me it it's that it's taking off some of that time. It's taking off some of that load that people are under to get the podcast done. If there's certain pieces of the podcast, like post production or pre-production that you hate, you should be trying to offload that, plain and simple. It's it's that whole piece that the one thing that you hate about it is the one thing that's going to prevent you from doing it. So offload that piece. I know people that love being on the microphone. They love doing the pre-production stuff. They hate everything about posting it. They hate the the time invested, the the coming up with things to say for clips, the coming up with, the chapter mark. They hate all that stuff. I get it, I get it. It's it's a lot of work. It's why we do it. If you can offload those pieces, do that. If you can automate some of those pieces, do that to. So what are some long term strategies here. Because we're talking about pod fade. Pod fade is something that happens. And it kind of creeps up on you. It's it you're like, oh I'll do it next time. And you feel a little bit guilty about it. But you're like, let it slide. So what are some of these long term strategies that you need? Because it's this can't be a crash diet. Reconnect with your why I typically have something about like in our podcast planner that I look at when we're working on an episode. Why are we doing this? Oh yeah, we're doing this to help people. To me, that that is the big key. The fact that I can I can send this out there to help you. So and to me, when I hear that and I am able to reconnect with my why like the why am I doing this? I'm like, yeah, I'm doing this to help people, that it's my driver. It it gets me excited about it again. So if you can connect with your why on that, that can be a big thing that that's really it's going to encourage you to like reflect on what you're passionate about and why you're starting this. The other thing that I'm going to say is analyzing performance. Take a look at some of the things in the back and look at your analytics and say, hey, what went up? What went down? Those are the types of things that can be motivational. Oh, hey, that episode did really well. Maybe we should do something parallel off that. Did you enjoy that? I found that typically the episodes that you enjoyed the most are the ones that do the best. It's amazing how as an audience, podcast, podcast listeners know when you're really, truly enjoying it because it does well. The other thing that I want to say with that is that really, you want to make sure that in the analytics side, you don't get buried in it, look at it, take some quick notes with it, but then move on with your life. If you look at like, hey, we got 15 downloads and nine of them came from here and eight of them came from there. And does that really matter? I know some people will get bogged down in that type of stuff, and then they look at it and they're like, I don't know if this is worth it. Don't get bogged down in those those details about it. Look at what's working, what didn't make a decision and move on with it. I want to kind of wrap all this up in a bow podcasting. And it really comes down to it's you presenting your passions and your brand to everyone out there. We want to make sure that you've got the tools to do that. Sometimes things can get in the way of your passion. There's people that are passionate about sports, but not passionate about practicing. Once again, the practice is the difficult part, and that's what can prevent some people from playing those sports or being good at them, or getting to the level that they want to be. And to me, it's all about setting up that little bit of a plan ahead of time. If you come into the studio thinking, okay, crap, I've got to, I've got to record something for this week that's stressful. Podcasting stressful enough as it is. So let's do some preparation to make sure that we aren't coming into the studio stressed out, to make sure that every podcast is as fun and as exciting as it could and should be to me. I, like I said, I love being in the studio. I there's so many of the podcasters that I work with. You can see when they turn on the mic, they're excited about it, they're ready for it. They walk in, they're ready to go. Most of them are also very prepared. We make sure that you are prepared when you walk in the studio. With all that being said, I don't I didn't want to cloud this up with a news article this week. So do me a favor. Take care of yourself. You can take care someone else too. I will see you very, very soon.