Rhythm is defined as a movement or procedure with uniform or patterned recurrence of a beat, accent, or the like.
Rhythm is essential to music, because without rhythm we would not be able to follow along dance, or get a feel for where the tune was taking us.
There isn’t one person I know who enjoys an unstructured cacophony of sound, even if it is called music. That’s why we call it noise!
It’s the same with running – long distance runners use their sense of rhythm to find a steady pace, so their body can anticipate the distance and energy required to complete the race.
Sprinters on the other hand run a short distance, and then they stop. For them, they go flat out, and then fall in a heap to recover.
Let’s stop for a moment and consider podcasting. If the rhythm is the frequency of how often a podcast comes out, then you can think of a large number of episodes as a podcasting marathon.
As a podcaster, I need to find a frequency or rhythm that suits me as a producer and my listeners. One that’s not too quick, so that my listeners need to race to keep up, and one that isn’t so slow that they feel like they’re on an ambling stroll than a foot race.
It’s a delicate balance, because you don’t want to overwhelm yourself with a podcasting workload, or your listeners with more content they can consume.
I’ve been podcasting for five years now, and I know of very few people who tune in to lengthy podcasts every day. Most people don’t have that sort of time to dedicate.
I guess it really depends on your topic. News may change more frequently than current affairs. And general educational information may not have any expiry date at all.
For the podcaster it means you need to think carefully about how often you’re going to publish an episode. Your timing should never be just publishing content because you have it available.
Think of it a bit like eating. You don’t want your listeners to be savouring one mouthful, while another mouthful is being shoved in! Eventually you have a really uncomfortable gag-reflex, and that becomes quite unpalatable!
As a general rule, allow at least 2-3 days for the bulk of your listeners to consume your content before you publish more.
For most podcasts, this means keeping at least one week between your episodes for shows that are longer than five minutes in duration.
Take a look at your download statistics after you release an episode. There will be a spike of activity as your active subscribers download, followed by people who may listen on your blog, via social media channels. Then you’ll see your episode consumption dissipate as time chugs further away from the release date.
You want to pick a nice middle ground where you’ve given the bulk of your listeners’ time to consume the content, before you give them another mouthful.
Features in blogging platforms like WordPress, give you the option of scheduling episodes to appear at a future time and date. This means that you can prepare several episodes at one time and then drip feed their release at rhythm that’s comfortable for you and your listeners.
For you it may mean the difference between having a long-lasting and successful podcast, as opposed to falling in a podfading heap before the finish line.
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