232. The Podcasting Workflow Mistake That's Causing Last-Minute Stress

There's no one "right" podcast workflow. From content prep to recording, editing, and scheduling, you need to do what works for you. If you're struggling to figure out what that is, in today's episode I'm sharing the system that works well for me. Plus, a completely different system that works really well for one of my clients. Tune in to find out if one of these podcasting systems is a good fit for you!

Resources Mentioned:

• Episode 11: Should you script your podcast episodes?
  
  
• Podcast Startup Academy: www.ThePodcastTeacher.com/academy

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• Podcast Roadmap: www.ThePodcastTeacher.com/roadmap
• 50+ Podcasters Launch Club: www.ThePodcastTeacher.com/club
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This episode was produced by me, The Podcast Teacher! Contact me at Hello@ThePodcastTeacher.com.

Transcript

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Hey. Hey. And welcome back. Today, we're talking about your podcasting workflow. Do you batch all of the different tasks for a single episode together or batch the same task together for multiple episodes? How do you get ahead on your content to prevent last minute stress? We are diving into these questions in this episode. Let me start out by saying that there is no one right way to do this. I'm going to share the system that works well for me as someone who scripts my episodes, as well as a completely different system that works really well for one of my clients who only uses an outline for her episodes. Let's start with a process for the folks who script 80 plus percent of each episode word for word.

That's me. If you are a Scripter two, you know that it is super time consuming. I would like to get to a place where I can work from a detailed outline, but for various reasons, I'm just not there yet. And I personally prefer the stress of finding the extra hours to write the script over the stress of having to retrieve words or really attempt to retrieve words from my brain on the spot. Scroll way back and listen to episode 11 if you would like more information on why I choose to script my episodes and whether or not you should too. Anyway, because I script, I dedicate a three hour block of time each week to working on my main Tuesday podcast episodes like this one. I'll talk about how I do my FAQ Friday episodes with the second approach. I need three hours.

You may be able to do it in two, or you may need up to four. If you need more than four, then we have other problems to address that I can't cover in this episode. During that block, I script out my episode, record it immediately after scripting, and then edit immediately after recording. If I know when the episode will air, I will also go ahead and schedule it for future release in Buzzsprout during this block as well just so that I don't forget. I prefer to do these tasks back to back for a couple of reasons. First, when I am writing out my script, I hear the tone and cadence in my head, and I find that I lose that if I don't record right away and then the delivery isn't quite as smooth. Then I edit immediately after recording because I can remember where I stumbled and what needs to be cut out. So for example, if I had to try saying a single paragraph three times, I would easily remember to skip the first two in editing and just cut straight to the third.

My editing is more efficient when I do it right away rather than doing it days or weeks later. By the way, I teach some tips and tricks for quick and easy editing in my podcast startup academy course, and I'm thinking of pulling out the editing lessons and making that a mini course. Use the send me your question link in the episode description below to let me know if that is something that you would be interested in. To stay ahead on episodes, I block out a second three hour block during the same week. I prefer to do two separate chunks, but you could do one really long session if you wanted to. Ideally, you protect both of those two hour blocks on your schedule, and you end up getting further and further ahead on your episodes and creating a quote unquote bank of episodes that you can draw from when life inevitably happens and you can't create a new episode for whatever reason. If you are really good at protecting that time, you can probably just do the second block every other week. For me, I put it on my calendar every week because I have a habit of often giving in to external requests and scheduling something over top of that second block.

Now that's not a great way to do things, but I like to keep it real around here and make it clear that I'm not perfect and therefore you don't have to be either. I am working on better protecting that second block of time so that I'm always ahead of schedule, but it's a work in progress. Alright, so that's the approach of how to batch your tasks when you're a scripter. Do all of the tasks for a single episode in one sitting. Schedule two of these blocks a week, maybe the second one every other week, so that you can build up a bank of episodes and therefore you have a buffer. Now, in these three hour blocks that I am scheduling, two of those hours are used for scripting. Ugh. I know.

Right? Think twice and fully understand what you're signing up for if you want to be a scripter. For me, for now at least, it is the lesser of the evils and I'm willing to deal with it. Anyway, if you are an outliner and not a scripter, you don't need those whole two extra hours. If you can spend twenty minutes outlining, twenty minutes recording, and twenty minutes editing, then you can get an entire episode done in one hour. Then if you have a three hour block, you can do three episodes in one sitting, or you can stretch it to a four hour block and do the entire month at once. With this approach, I recommend batching your tasks. So batch outline all of your episodes, then batch record all of your episodes, then batch edit all of the episodes, and finally batch schedule them. This prevents you from having to switch modes every twenty minutes which the gurus say make you more productive.

While this approach is mostly ideal for outliners, this is actually the approach that I use for my FAQ Friday episodes. Now, I do script those, but they are super super short, so this approach works in that situation. I script out four of them at once, then I record all four, edit all four, and finally schedule all four. I can get all four episodes done in about one hour, which is a fantastic feeling. I could see myself switching to this workflow for my main Tuesday episodes if or when I can record from just an outline. Both of these workflow approaches that I have described here in this episode assume that you are doing everything yourself. If you outsource your editing, you could get a greater number of episodes scripted or outlined and then recorded before sending them to your editor. I do very little editing anymore these days.

I started out as an editor, and I have shifted more into teaching and coaching over the years. But I do still have a handful of editing clients who are still with me. And there's one in particular who spends a few hours each month outlining and recording her episodes and then sending them to me. She loves it because she only has to think about it for a few hours and then the rest just happens automatically for her. I do the work on my end. And the system is really efficient and works really well for me too. So as you can see, there are different ways of approaching your podcast workflow. I have shared two popular methods here today, and maybe one of them will work for you too.

Or you might come up with something entirely different. I want to make clear that there is no right or wrong way to do things. It doesn't really matter what your workflow is as long as it works for you. Until next time, happy podcasting.