Monday, December 31, 2018

How to Create an Anchor Only Episode and Get Community Feedback

Did you ever wish you could get feedback from your friends on a podcast episode before it was released to Apple Podcasts?
Or maybe you want to add audio clips from other podcasters before your episode is finalized?

You can do that and more by posting an Anchor Only episode that can only be listened to by users in the Anchor app or on your Anchor podcast show webpage.


Take a listen to this episode to see how and why you should produce an Anchor Only Episode to get feedback from the community on your work-in-progress podcast.

Head Over to Your Computer

The key to creating an Anchor Only episode is using the desktop browser to finalize things before you hit publish. From the desktop you will see this right before you publish.

Notice the by default, your episode is set to "Publish everywhere".



All you need to do is toggle off this option (remember this only works on desktop, and it is not available from mobile).

Published Only on Anchor

Now that you have toggled the switch and published only to listeners in the Anchor app, you will continue to see the following prompt:
"This episode is published, but can only be heard on Anchor."
Followed by a huge purple button that says:
"Publish everywhere".
Here's how the message looks when you login to the app and open the episode.

But, Why Would You Want an Anchor Only Episode?

Here are a few examples of how to use an Anchor Only episode.
  • You did an interview and you want to let the interviewee listen beforehand
  • You are building a special episode that is based entirely on listener feedback
  • You are testing a topic idea to see if there is any interest
  • Can you think of other ways to use an Anchor Only Episode?
When you "finalize" an episode and publish it to all of the other podcast directories (like Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Pocket Casts, etc.) your current subscribers will download the file from your RSS feed. If you add any additional content to your episode they will never know! Only the newer subscribers from after you added the last piece of content forward will hear the episode in it's entirety.

Now of course, I'm not suggesting that you change your workflow. I just wanted you to know that whenever your current episode is a work-in-progress, think about logging into your account from the desktop browser and publish to Anchor Only!

For more Anchor tutorials, click here to checkout this playlist on YouTube.



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How to Create an Anchor Only Episode and Get Community Feedback

Did you ever wish you could get feedback from your friends on a podcast episode before it was released to Apple Podcasts? Or maybe you wa...