Navigating the holidays as a podcast creator can be challenging. During this time, many content creators choose to take a break. Now, there’s nothing wrong with taking breaks. In fact, we recommend it! Taking time away from the pressures and responsibilities of content creation can ensure that you’re feeling rested and ready to continue making great content after New Year’s Day.
However, there are right and wrong ways to go about taking these breaks. In this article, we’ll outline 3 steps you can take to ensure that you don’t leave your audience in the dark before holiday break. Taking the time to communicate with your audience before your break begins will prevent any confusion on the audience’s part and encourage them to return for more content after the holidays.
Give a timeline
If you can, one way to keep your audience in the loop during the holidays is to let them know when they can expect to see you return after your break. If you can share a specific date that they can expect to see content after the break, that’s great—if not, you can also provide the audience with a time frame, like “the first week of January.” But as a general rule of thumb, the more specificity the better.
Share plans for content after the break
If you’ve already got an idea of what content you’ll be putting out over the break, then you can share that with the audience. Sharing plans for content after holiday breaks not only keeps your audience in the know, but also helps to build anticipation and further engagement with your content after the holidays.
You might share teasers, trailers, or graphics related to your post-holidays content. Sharing these will give the audience something specific to look for after the break.
Announce the break across platforms
Remember that certain audience members will have preferences for what platforms they choose to engage with you on. For this reason, you’ll want to ensure that you reach everyone by announcing the break on every channel that you use.
While your first instinct may be to update social media platforms, don’t forget to also use other mediums—such as your website, newsletter and even your podcast. Doing so will help to make sure you cover all your channels and also ensure that you reach audience members who might not be as active on social media. Overall, using specificity about duration of the break and content plans for afterwards demonstrates to your audience that you intend to remain active within the podcasting space.
While ensuring proper communication with your audience is important, don’t forget to take time off for yourself. It’s important to spend time recharging, not only so you can be more productive when you return, but also so that you can reconnect with friends and family over the break. Happy holidays!
