Podcasts often fizzle out, or fail to get started entirely, because the process of putting out regular episodes just feels too hard. Here are 9 ways to bring ease into your podcasting workflow.
1. What would happen if you edited with a with less precision?
Do you really need to remove every umm and uh? We all want to sound our smartest, but if you’re looking for ways to make the process easier, that level of detail could be the first to go.
2. Is there a part of the process you can drop?
Do your show notes need to be quite so detailed and meticulous? Do you need to spend an hour making the artwork unique, when a simpler template could do? Is a hand-corrected transcript necessary at this stage, or could an AI-powered one get us close enough?
3. What can you delegate?
Editing, writing show notes, writing promo copy, producing artwork, scheduling guests… everything can be delegated apart from yourself.
4. What can you automate?
Did you know you can run tasks like posting to Twitter, LinkedIn ,or Facebook – even Instagram – when your episode is published, regardless of who your podcast is hosted with? It’s all done using your RSS feed, and it could save you some time.
5. What can you repurpose?
The Calmer Content Marketing approach starts with the voice, and helps you build your whole week’s worth of content from the conversation you’ve had in your podcast. By making notes as you chat with your guest, you can end up with a blog post, a transcript, a number of tweets or LinkedIn posts – none of which are simply “Hey, listen to the latest episode!” – and more.
6. What can you do or plan in bulk?
Check out the blog post How to plan a whole year of podcast content in a day for the definitive guide on this.
7. What can you do in context?
While you’re feeling in Record mode, you could get a whole month’s episodes recorded in a single day – if you’re a solo podcaster – or schedule a month’s worth of interviews over a week.
When you’re feeling like you want to do some process work rather than work from a blank page, you can sit down and get all your outstanding episodes edited.
in a writing mood, or sat on the sofa paging through Netflix? Maybe that’s a time to knock out a month’s worth of podcast show notes.
8. Do you need to promote on social media?
What would happen if you took a month off promoting episodes on social, then tracked how it affected your downloads?
9. How might constraints create ease?
Try limiting your solo episodes to 15 minutes, and not a second longer. Or try the Ignite technique, and make up a PowerPoint presentation where the slides auto-advance after 15 seconds. That time constraint, or that enforced pace, may help you make shorter, pithier episodes, which reduces the amount of editing you have to do. And by creating a few notes beforehand, you already have the bones of your show notes.
Wrapping it up
Podcasting can be a challenging and time-consuming process, but with the right techniques and mindset, it can also be simplified and made more manageable. By considering these nine useful techniques, such as delegating tasks, repurposing content, and creating constraints, you can streamline your podcasting workflow and focus more on sharing your message with your audience. So try these techniques out, and see how they help you simplify your podcasting journey.