It's time to hit publish!

It’s ideal to set a launch date for your first episode. Make sure it’s the day of the week that you consistently want to post, so Wednesday for example. Then make sure you post your trailer the week prior to that date. It might be a little daunting to hit publish on that first episode, but just make sure people know about it before it goes up. Send it to your friends and family who would be interested in what you’re covering. Post it on social media, and be sure to post it more than once.

One quick publishing note: I tend to schedule episodes around 1-2AM PST just so the episodes are ready to go for people on both the east and west coast first thing in the morning. It gives the apps time to pull the new episodes while most people are still sleeping and if they have automatic downloads set up for podcasts that they subscribe to, it’ll be waiting for them when they open the app for the first time that day. It’s not like social media where there are peak times to post your podcast really, so this is just what I’ve always preferred to do.

Once your first episode is published, you can take a quick sigh of relief and then you’ll probably need to get to work on the next episode once that sigh is over. You’ve done it. Welcome to The Podcast Life.

So you might be wondering what’s next not only for yourself, but for the newsletter. I have some fun content planned, including an interview with Arielle Nissenblatt, who writes Earbuds Podcast Collective and is the Head of Community and Content over at Squadcast. I’m also in the midst of a movie podcast deep dive, which I will be doing a full breakdown on here.

I hope you’ve found this series on launching your podcast to be helpful, and if you have any suggestions or questions, please feel free to respond to this and let me know what you’d like me to cover and/or answer here on the newsletter.