Podcast Publishing Checklist

Validating the RSS feed after publishing (not just before) is worth the extra minute, since it's the actual feed apps pull from — a broken tag or malformed episode entry that slipped through can leave an episode silently missing from Apple Podcasts or Spotify's index even though it looks fine on your own hosting dashboard. Confirming cross-platform availability the same way closes the loop: RSS validity and actual appearance in each app aren't always the same thing, since indexing can lag.

• •Dead air and clipping are worth checking in the final export specifically, not just an earlier editing pass — a render or export step can occasionally reintroduce a stray silence or a clipped peak that wasn't there in the working file.
• •The social clip matters as much as the episode itself for actually growing a show — an audiogram or promo card ready at publish time turns a passive RSS listener into something shareable the moment it goes live, rather than an afterthought added days later.