What's the best time of day to publish your podcast episodes?
You probably already know the answer and here are some more things to think about as well.
Thank you for joining me for The Audacity to Podcast.
I'm Daniel J. Lewis.
Does it matter what time of day you publish your podcast episodes?
Yes, it does.
In short, publish either in the morning or as soon as possible.
Of course, I've got more information about that for you to consider.
Now, I'm talking specifically about the time of day.
If you're wondering about what day of the week to publish your episodes, then listen
to my previous episode where that's all I talked about is specifically the day.
This episode focuses on what time of day for whatever day that is that you chose.
So get that previous episode inside your podcast app or from the link in the show notes for
this episode a tap or swipe away or at theaudacitytopodcast.com/besttime.
So number one, and you probably knew this was coming, consistency.
Like with your publishing day of the week, consistency is most important.
Try to publish at the exact same minute of the same hour on every publishing day, whatever
day that is that you choose for your podcast.
This helps some legacy systems, including Apple Podcasts, to learn your publishing schedule
so they know when to expect new episodes and can catch those new episodes more quickly
when you publish.
But some not so smart legacy systems will just continue checking your RSS feed regardless
of when you publish your episode.
Now that whole legacy thing, that can really be replaced so much more effectively with
podpeeing from the Podcasting 2.0 standard.
The Podpeen protocol is when you publish an episode, it sends out a ping to a service
that all of these other apps and services subscribe to so that when you publish a new
episode it pops up in those Podcasting 2.0 compliant apps and services almost immediately.
It's amazing how fast it is.
So if your publishing tool and your favorite podcast apps don't already support Podpeen
and Podcasting 2.0, then please nicely ask them to and insist that they support Podbean
and the Podcasting 2.0 standard.
Now all the good podcast publishing tools will let you schedule when your episode publishes
so you don't have to worry about staying up late or getting up super early in order
to hit it right on the dot.
But if your publishing tool does not allow scheduling your episodes to publish in the
future at a specific time, then get a better podcast publishing tool.
And when you know what the published URL will be, as most tools will actually show you even
before you publish the episode, you can also then schedule more of your initial promotion.
Like your posts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, that is if you have an Instagram business
account that lets you use scheduling tools and schedule a post to publish automatically.
You can also work with your email newsletter and other automations so that when you publish
your episode at that consistent time, then all of these other things trigger at a consistent
time as well.
Just ensure that any caching system you use on your website will automatically update
when you publish the new episode.
Most on-site caching systems, like if you use WordPress, your WordPress caching plugin,
or if you're using your podcast hosting provider's website that they give you for your podcast,
their own caching system will do this too.
of these systems will automatically update whenever you publish a new episode. But watch
out for any kind of off-site caching system or something that's a bit more advanced that
doesn't integrate directly with the publishing button. Like for example Cloudflare. But many
of these off-site or third-party caching systems do have certain integrations so that their
caches are refreshed quickly when you hit publish. Make sure that if you use any of
these systems reach out to their providers or look in the documentations for what you
need to do to make sure that your cache is updated immediately.
So consistency is the most important thing here.
The same minute of the same hour.
And don't try and wean it.
I see some people say, "Oh yeah, we're ultra consistent."
I ask them, "Well, do you actually publish at the same minute of the same hour on your
publishing days?"
And they say, "Well, no.
publish around 10 o'clock or whatever the time is. No, I mean you need to be absolutely consistent.
The exact same minute of the same hour on your publishing days, whatever days those are. With
that in mind, what is the best time to publish your episodes? So number two, usually mornings
of your majority audience. Look at your podcast stats to see how your show performs in different
countries and regions. And also think about who is your target audience. The United States will
probably be the number one consumption country for most podcasts out there. But if your target
audience is in a different country, maybe you have a podcast about British affairs, British politics,
British sports, anything like that, then the American audience in the United States is not
your target audience. Even if it's your biggest audience, they're probably not your target
audience. So think about either your target audience or the majority of your audience,
and you can get some of that from your stats and also just from knowing your audience,
who you're trying to create your podcast for. I suggest then usually publishing in the early
mornings for the time zones of most of that audience. For example, The Audacity to Podcast
really is designed for an international appeal and I even try to make it even more international by
including other measurements. Like I don't always stick with the imperial system. I try to include
the metric system as well because the Audacity podcast is for podcasters in any country. As
long as they speak English and can understand what I'm saying, it's for them. It's for you.
But the majority of my audience is in the United States. So I publish the Audacity podcast at 6
a.m. Eastern Time, which is 3 a.m. Pacific Time, making the episode available for most of my
American audiences' morning routines. Now remember time zone differences, especially
if you're behind time zones where most of your audience is. For example, 6am in California
might seem like a good publishing time if you're in California, but keep in mind that's
9am in Florida. So publishing at 6am Pacific Time might be too late for the audience in
Eastern Time to catch the episodes before they start their daily routines. This is why
you need to see where is the majority of your audience or your target audience, what is
their time zone, and how can you make sure that your episode publishes in the early mornings
for wherever that audience is. That's number two.
Number three, as soon as possible for urgent content. If you have truly urgent content,
I'm not talking about just content you're really excited about getting out there or
or that you want to be timely because a new movie is coming out. But I mean truly urgent
content. Then don't worry about being totally consistent. If you have breaking news and
you just recorded an episode and this is brand new breaking news, like there was a keynote
from your top company or you're publishing live from the Consumer Electronics Show or
something like that, late breaking news and you're sharing it with your podcast, don't
worry about waiting until your publishing day later in the week in the publishing time.
Let's publish the episode, and as quickly as you can.
For example, I've hosted several TV after show podcasts where we discussed a TV show
episode in each episode of our podcast.
For our most popular one, we did two episodes every week of one episode of the TV show.
We would do a short initial reactions episode right after the TV show aired, and then a
longer full discussion episode midway between TV airings.
By the way, building on the previous episode's topic of what day of the week, did it matter
what actual day we published?
No.
Now we published on Thursday mornings, but that was midway between when the TV show aired,
which was on Sunday evenings.
So our full discussion gave the audience enough time to watch the TV show episode and send
us their feedback, and then enough time for them to listen to our episode before the next
episode of the TV show aired.
But that was the full discussion episodes.
Let's look back at the initial reactions episode. And a side note here, if you do a
TV aftershow podcast, try to live in Eastern Time or Central Time if you can because it
seems almost all of the shows are at such and such time, Eastern/1 hour before Central,
which is actually the simultaneous time. So if you're in Eastern or Central Time and
watching that show, you're watching at the same time as a much larger portion of the
audience than if you're in mountain or pacific time or if you're in some other country in a
different time zone altogether. That's also great if you're hosting a live event after the tv show
because you're able to reach the largest number of your audience. But yeah that does also mean that
anyone in the west coast can't make it if you're trying to record right after the episode because
they haven't even seen the episode yet. However, that's talking about live streaming. We're talking
talking about podcasting. And in podcasting, you're recording it and they can listen to
it when it's available later. So we recorded those initial reactions episode 15 minutes
after the TV show episode aired. And we did that in Eastern Time, which also worked great
for the Central Time audience who was watching at the same time. And we would live stream
it as well. And we told our audience that come to the chat room 15 minutes after the
show if you're watching in Eastern or Central Time, then we would rush to publish that initial
reactions episode as soon as possible on the same night. And we almost always had it up
before those in Pacific Time even started watching the TV episode. So our podcast episode
was already there waiting for them. As soon as they finished watching the episode, sometimes
even before the people in Mountain Time finished watching the episode, our episode would be
there. So when they finished watching the episode, they could jump straight into our
podcast episode with some initial reactions and initial thoughts about what they just
saw on TV. Now although some legacy apps, that is those that aren't using the Podpean
protocol from Podcasting 2.0, might not always catch these ASAP episodes quickly, your audience
might come to expect them and might be eagerly manually refreshing their apps or even going
to your website in order to catch your episodes right away. And this is a good aside for why
you need to make sure that you have a website that your audience knows about. So if they're
looking for your episode to listen to it as soon as possible, they'll know where to go
to get it instead of having to wait around for their podcast app, which might be slow
if it's not using PodPing. So as soon as possible for this truly urgent content, don't worry
about the consistency with that. Just get it out there as quickly as you can. Your other
content like with our mid-week episode, we would publish that at a more consistent time
later in the week on those Thursday mornings, but those initial reactions we wanted out
there as quickly as possible so that our audience could consume it as quickly as possible.
And they came to rely on that aspect of the consistency, that it was there as quickly
as possible.
And they would be manually refreshing their feeds or refreshing our website looking for
that newest episode.
And number four, you might be wondering, what about after work content?
Because we talk about this in the perspective of get it ready before the morning routines.
That's before a commute, before getting ready for work, before work, that kind of stuff,
for all of the considerations that come along with that and when people might listen. But
you might be thinking, well my content is designed for after work. It's designed for
what people might be doing or enjoying in the evenings, not what they're doing during
the day. You might be tempted to postpone that non-business oriented content for the
afternoon or evening, but I still recommend mornings even in these situations because
business people often like to consume non-business content while commuting to or from business.
In other words, and this applies to the whole concept of timing, both the time of day and
the day of the week, don't worry about trying to perfectly time when your episode publishes
so that it's right there at just the moment that your audience is going to listen. Don't
Don't worry about that kind of perfect timing.
Perfectly time your consistency, but don't try to perfectly time when it lands in your
audience's devices.
Simply stick to mornings for consistency, or as soon as possible for more time-sensitive
content and your audience will listen when they want, as long as your episode is available
by that time.
And when you're consistent, they will learn when to expect your episode to be available
and they'll even build it into their routines.
Some people will say, "You are part of my Monday morning routine.
Every Monday morning.
If your podcast episode isn't there by Monday morning, then I just don't have anything to
listen to on Monday mornings when I commute to work."
Or it might be Thursday mornings or anything like that.
Consistency is most important.
And then stick with the mornings if you can.
Publish as soon as possible for the truly urgent content.
But don't worry about trying to perfectly time it for your audience.
Just be consistent.
That's the most important thing.
consistency with urgency. Even that is a kind of consistency.
If this episode has helped you and you think it might be beneficial to other podcasters
as well or you want to review the notes then please go to theaudacitytopodcast.com/besttime
or it's a simple tap or swipe away to share or read the notes.
Please make sure you check out mypodcastreviews.com for ways to engage and grow your audience
through the power of podcast reviews and you get those nice shareable pages like lovethepodcast.com
for getting ratings and reviews easily from your audience and follow thepodcast.com to
help you grow your audience and display smart buttons that show only the options compatible
with your audience's or potential audience's devices.
That's over at mypodcastreviews.com with a really cool version 2 coming soon.
Now that I've given you some of the guts and taught you some of the tools, it's time
(no pun intended there) for you to start and grow your own podcast for passion and profit.
I'm Daniel J. Lewis from the audacity2podcast.com.
Thanks for listening.
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