Hey savvies. Welcome back to another episode of the podcast. In today’s episode, we’ll be covering how to take a podcast hiatus. 

Now, this can be a planned break from your podcast like maternity leave, sabbatical, etc., or even just taking a brief break in between podcast seasons. 

With podcast breaks come people losing interest or potentially even forgetting that your podcast exists so it’s important to have a plan in place during your breaks so that you can continue to retain listenership. 

Before we dive into the episode, I wanted to share about the 5 Mistakes You’re Probably Making with Your Podcast Guide. With this guide, you’ll learn the 5 most common mistakes people are making with their podcast and how to fix them. 

Tips for Taking a Hiatus 

  1. Let your audience know ahead of time – Laying out the expectations for your time off from your podcast will really help your audience understand what’s happening, why it’s happening, and how long they can expect to not hear new episodes from you so they don’t just think that you randomly fell off the face of the Earth with no notice. 
  2. Do reruns of some of your favorite episodes – During your break, you obviously don’t need to be publishing new episodes, but consider doing some reruns of either your all time favorite episodes or your audience’s favorite episodes so that your feed isn’t completely dead to people who happen to stumble upon your podcast during this time. Also, you never know, your current listeners may have never heard some of these episodes so it doesn’t hurt to reshare them on the show. If you do go this route just make sure that you’re making it known that these episodes are replays so that your listeners can decide if they want to listen or not.
  3. Queue up social media posts promoting old episodes to continue to nurture your audience – The worst thing that you can do when you take some time off from your podcast is to stop promoting. Just because you’re not sharing new episodes doesn’t mean that your social media needs to be dead silent too.
  4. Use your off time wisely – I always advise my clients to use their time between seasons or any other planned break to start working ahead on the next season. Start reaching out to your guests, writing and recording content so that you can get ahead of the game and have enough episodes ready to go before you’re even back from your break. This will relieve some pressure in the event that things get super busy and you don’t have time to record your episodes on a weekly basis. 

Now I wanna know, have you ever taken a planned (or unplanned) break from your podcast before? Head over to Instagram and shoot me a DM @jennysuneson.

And if you’re struggling with even knowing where to begin with podcasting, I can help. Head here and book your free call with me today. I can’t wait to hear from you! 

Thanks so much for listening to today’s episode.