Over the past three decades, we’ve all gotten better at eliminating websites, hosting plans and domains we no longer use. We have gotten better at updating our profiles on all social venues to make sure all ways to reach us our current. Why are we not doing this with podcasts yet? I think because it’s more personal and we have more of “us” invested in it.
Podcasts fail for a variety of reasons. The most common is losing steam and support to create and promote the episodes and show overall. We change jobs, positions, move, have kids, health issues – whatever, we NEGLECT and IGNORE our podcasts but can’t seem to just put them to rest. Statics show that there are over 750,000 podcasts in 2019. What they don’t count is how many of those are old, abandoned podcasts that haven’t had new episodes in months or even years. They clutter up all the venues including ApplePodcasts, IHeartRadio, Stitcher, Blubrry, Spotify, Alexa and the rest. You may even have RSS to email feeds, drip campaigns and more promoting this show that is no longer active or maintained. Realistically, probably 30% of podcasts being counted in that number are not current, meaning there hasn’t been a new episode in more than six months.
Pulling my own covers, I have a few of these loose ends out there. I let go of the hosting and domains because they cost money, but I didn’t go through and clean up the venues and remove the show. This is due in part that I didn’t set them up under my own accounts and I don’t have the login to remove them. But what about you? Who set up all of that communication between your podcast RSS and the venues, drips, and posts? Time to let it go.
If you’d like to visit with us to see if there is some way to keep this going or if you need help handling all of this, let Susan Finch know via
If you can be honest, it’s time to put them to rest and help declutter the world of podcasts. Here are some steps:
- If it’s a recent (less than 4 months since your last episode) realization you don’t want to do this anymore – make ONE LAST thank you episode that will be sent to all of your subscribers. THANK THEM, gush and suggest 2-3 similar podcasts they may enjoy. Your past guests may even have shows you can recommend.
- After your swan song, make a back up of ALL episodes and zip it up, tuck it away. This may mean downloading one at a time, including the MP3, the artwork, the description, the transcript. Tuck it away in episode folders, zip, and store in the cloud – just in case you become famous and want to cash in on the “ah, I remember when…” aspect of your old shows.
- What is costing you money? Delete those. This includes hosting accounts, boosted accounts, ad campaigns, domain accounts, SSL certificates.
- Domain in Cloudflare or similar? Delete it there too.
- Did you have it automatically posted to YouTube? You may want to group those episodes as a past project, edit the description a bit and make a playlist.
- Paying for mail or have free mail set up? Either set up a forwarding account only for former fanboys and girls or just delete it.
- Sponsors? If you were lucky enough to have them, do they know you are no longer interested in continuing this podcast? Let them know. They may want archived episodes with their commercials.
- Auto posts from RSS, auto-tweets, drip campaigns, email marketing from RSS? It’s time to remove those forms, save the list and put it in that cloud storage unless you want to send a farewell email to them all thanking them for their support in case you didn’t choose to do one final episode.
- Venues – get them all. Login to your ApplePodcasts account, Stitcher Radio, iHeartRadio support form, spotify, Blubrry, Alexa skills if you have one, and the rest. DELETE the show or email support to ask them to delete the shows. LET IT GO. Come on, time to move on. This is how you thin out your obsolete digital footprint.
- Remove it from your social profiles, website navigation, website landing pages promoting the show, find all mentions and only talk about it in the past as past successful projects you enjoyed.
- Convert that landing page to the “best of ” for the evergreen episode topics.
- Consider repurposing short snippets as blog posts with a more current opener, “This segment is from our series: Geekspeak Guides” or whatever your old show was. Again, treat it like a successful project in the past.
Keep in mind, when people find your OLD neglected shows in venues and see you haven’t been keeping up, it reflects on your professionalism. You look flighty, flakey, and a bit reckless. Help keep search results clean and clear for current shows that are continuously adding new content.
If you’d like to visit with us to see if there is some way to keep this going or if you need help handling all of this, let Jim Obermayer know via
