What's Your Christmas Song? (It's Podcast Advent!)
I am one of those unholy people who commit the seasonal crime of listening to Christmas music too early. I get the itch around early November, but I exercise restraint until a week before Thanksgiving.
Every year, I set aside some time to review and update both of my Christmas playlists, the family-friendly one and my personal list, a combination of classics and slightly more vulgar songs from my youth.
And this year, I came to a realization, and that's what I'm gonna talk to you about, today. But first, I do wanna tell you about a month-long event, or really a season-long event, I guess, I'm doing over at Podcasting Workflows called Podcast Advent. These are daily posts that you'll get from the 1st of December until the 24th of December, 1 each day, delivered right to your inbox. And there'll be longer form articles like this one, but there'll also be just tools, tips and tricks and some giveaways. Most of those articles will become episodes here on the show. But if you want them earlier and delivered right to your inbox, you can sign up over at [podcastworkflows.com/advent].
All right. So let's get into this realization I came to when updating my Christmas playlists.
Welcome to Podcast Workflows, where you get daily tips to improve your process, grow your show, and maybe even make some money. Each week, I also do a daily dive into the process of the world's most successful podcasters and reveal their tools, processes, and systems to help you simplify the production of your own show and reclaim hours in your day. You can improve your own podcast production process by seeing how the pros do it. I'm your host, Joe Casabona. And today I wanna ask you the question, “What's your Christmas song?
See. There are lots of artists on those aforementioned playlists that I only listen to during the Christmas season. Leona Lewis, NSYNC, and Bobby Helms just to name a few. These artists likely know that there's a specific part of the market that they could capture by having a Christmas song. And while Leona Lewis and NSYNC, at least, had huge international success before their Christmas songs, there are artists that are primarily known for their Christmas music and have used that Christmas music to grow their fan base. Pentatonix and Michael Buble, while they became public before their Christmas music came to mind.
There's a reason musicians want to make a Christmas song or an entire album. They sell to a more broad audience, a more general audience than their niche audience. As podcasters, we don't have a lot of chances for our episodes to go viral on a platform like TikTok or YouTube. But that doesn't mean that we can't have our own Christmas song, an episode that has wider appeal beyond our niche audience.
Now, I was lucky that my show saw some success early within my niche. I got some great guests, asked the right questions, and I got early support from the community. And I was happy to continue on that path, But I did something interesting and special for my 100th episode.
A little over 2 years in, and things were going pretty well. So I had my friend, Jeff Large, turn the tables and interview me on how I built the podcast. Now, Jeff is a great interviewer and a teacher, so he was able to elicit some great answers from me. He even asked me a question that I used to ask every guest at the time. Do you have any trade secrets for us? I thought it was a great episode, but I was shocked to see the stats. It was far and away the most popular episode for a long time, and it showed me that people love behind-the-scenes content. People from all niches. That was my first Christmas song. All the elements were there to make it a more generally popular episode. I had a guest and a fellow podcaster who knocked it out of the park. I was covering podcasting as opposed to what I was covering at the time which was WordPress development. And it was a behind-the-scenes look at how the idea of my podcast happened and continues to happen. This doesn't mean it was for everyone, but it was for an audience way bigger than my niche. That kind of happened by accident, but it's not a lesson that I let slip away.
So what should you do if you wanna find your own Christmas song? The trick is to pick something that aligns with but is not exclusively for your audience. You still want to fulfill the mission statement of your show, but you want to expand it.
Let's look at our musical artists again. NSYNC has a very popular Christmas song that you probably can sing off the top of your head, at least if you're in the United States. But it's still in their genre which is pop. They didn't try rap or country, and that's what you want to think about as well. You wanna do the same thing for your show.
One of my most popular annual episodes and again, a Christmas song for my episodes is my gift guide. They're still for solopreneurs and creators, but there are a lot of people looking for gift ideas for loved ones who work at a computer most of the time or work from home most of the time. So that episode does very well. In fact, the 2023 version is leading my episodes in downloads over the first 30 days despite not being out for 30 days yet.
Another episode that does well is my yearly theme episode, which I do in January. More than just solopreneurs like to think about goal setting and the idea of a yearly theme, already has a big community behind it. So I make sure to produce those episodes every year because they are an opportunity for growth and discovery.
So if you're thinking you wanna do this, here's a quick litmus test to ask yourself. It's 2 questions:
1. Is this topic helpful for my audience? And;
2. Is this topic only helpful for my audience?
If the answer to 1 is yes and the answer to 2 is no, then you might have yourself a Christmas song. Number 1 is crucially important because you can likely come up with a topic that has mass appeal. Most things that are controversial and stated absolutely find a big audience. But there's a strong risk that you'll alienate your current audience, the people that you serve for the rest of the year.
The other thing you can do is use the data you have. I realized that my 100th episode was a hit because I noticed it was getting listened to a lot more than my other episodes. You can leverage your podcast platform stats and the data that you see in Apple Podcasts Connect to see what people are listening to and how long they're listening and get ideas from that.
If you usually talk about how runners can leverage their phones to create better habits, maybe you can talk about your favorite fitness apps or how you use your Apple Watch. This serves your audience of runners, but it also appeals to a wider audience of aspirational exercisers.
The biggest thing you can do here is take action and experiment. Unlike the Christmas Song, you have more than 1 shot per year to make a hit. Every few months, try something different, a format or topic that might do well beyond your audience. Measure the data and see what kind of feedback you get. Then try again and keep what works.
Thanks so much for listening to this Day 1 of “Podcasting Advent”. You can read this article. It'll be linked in the show notes. You can find all of the days of the Advent calendar over at [podcastworkflows.com/advent]. If you wanna get these delivered directly to your inbox every day, you can also sign up over there.
Thanks so much for listening. And until next time. I can't wait to see what you make.
Hey. Before you go, I want to tell you about a free resource I have called My Podcast Process Templates. They are a set of Notion documents that give you a full podcast planner, a show planner, and even some AI prompts to help you get the creative juices flowing. You obviously want to improve your podcast workflows and save time, and these templates will give you a basis for all of your other processes. Through my Notion and Airtable templates, I am able to automate a number of things as well as stay organized so that I am using my podcasting time more efficiently.
If you wanna get your hands on these templates completely for free, you can head over to [podcastworkflows.com/templates]. That's [podcastworkflows.com/templates] to get your free podcast process templates, today.
