AMY PORTERFIELD: Welcome back to another episode of the Online Marketing Made Easy Podcast. I’m Amy Porterfield and I cannot wait to dive in to this topic today because it’s all about podcasting.
In true Amy Porterfield fashion, I guess, I’m going into the step-by-step, here’s-my-project plan. If you’ve ever thought about podcasting or if you’re podcasting now and are curious as to my entire process, that’s what this episode is all about.
A few weeks ago I posted a question on Instagram. I asked, “What do you want to see more of on my podcast?”
The answers were so good. There were so many great ideas. I loved reading all of your thoughts and insights and your wants and needs around online marketing. I ‘m just so glad I posted that.
A few of those requests were around my podcast. The funny thing I’ve done a few shows about podcasting before but I’ve never given you a complete backstage pass to the intricacies of how the show comes together every single week.
I haven’t told you how I plan it out, step by step, how I use my team, what tools I use. I mean, from concept to recording to the actual writing of the show notes and the email it’s all included in this podcast episode.
Honestly, I don’t know what took me so long. I could talk about my podcast planning process all day long. And the freebie! Oh, the freebie is so dang good. I’m not even exaggerating. The freebie for this episode is a complete project plan of our process ready for you to use at any time.
Go to http://amyporterdev.wpenginepowered.com/176download and it will take you right to the opt-in page to get the freebie. If you’re on our show notes at http://amyporterdev.wpenginepowered.com/176 just scroll on down and you’ll see the opportunity to grab the freebie once you opt in. It’s there waiting for you right now and it is oh so good.
This show combines some of my favorite things: Podcasting, systems, and working with my team. I’ll work through our process category by category highlighting the key players and milestones along the way. If you get tripped up at any time during the episode just refer back to today’s freebie.
Before I jump in there are a few things to keep in mind. Some of these steps may feel more advanced. That’s okay. I’ll call out the essential pieces in the freebie. When you get the project plan and download it I’ll call out the pieces you don’t want to skip no matter if you’re just starting out or if you’ve been at it a while.
If I don’t call it out as an essential it’s something you can work toward. Remember, I’ve been podcasting for a few years now so my process today looks very different than my process in the early years where I just did the essentials.
I’m all about keeping it simple with baby steps and moving into more advanced strategies when you’re ready.
The second thing I want you to keep in mind is that even if you’re not doing a podcast or planning a podcast just yet I think this episode is going to provide a ton of value about the entire content creation process.
If you’re doing a video blog, a written blog, or a live show stay with me because I think you can take some of these steps and strategies into your own model even if you’re not doing a podcast.
The last thing I’ll say before I jump in is that I’m a planner. This is just who I am by nature. So if you don’t like a lot of planning and you like to work off the cuff and wing it you’ll hate this episode. This one might be one that you need to skip.
But, for all of my planners and for everyone who’s wanted to know my process and if you just like a behind-the-scenes view then you, my friend, are in the right place. Let’s get to it.
First, I want to talk to you about roles. As I go through the tasks you will hear me talk names of people on my team. Remember, again, I’ve been doing this for a while so I have a full team to help me. It’s still a very small team.
I always say I have a small but mighty team and I always want to keep it that way. But I do have a team. If you’re just starting out and it’s just you then pay attention in the freebie when I call out the essentials because that’s what you’re going to focus on first.
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As you start to make more money in your business and as your podcast becomes more popular and you’re starting to see it really make an impact with your audience I would think about bringing on some team members to help you.
Ideally, I would love for you to at least have a virtual assistant helping you with some of these pieces. Your podcast will be better if you don’t insist that it’s just you. I don’t want you to be a one-man or one-woman show. I’d like you to at least consider bringing in a VA for a few hours a week and ease into leveraging some of these pieces.
For me, here’s what the roles look like. In terms of podcast management, that’s Chloe, my project manager. She oversees the podcast in terms of the process and the due dates. She manages all of the SOPs and the entire system inside of Asana in her project plan which looks very similar to the freebie you’re going to be getting for this episode.
The talented Lindsay, many of you know her because she’s my community manager inside of all three of my paid Facebook groups, Lindsay actually does the tasks that are needed to get it done. Lindsay runs all things podcast.
She works with the designers, posts the final podcasts, posts and formats the show notes. Lindsay essentially has her hands on everything before it goes live.
We have a content writer. I have a writer who writes the emails, the show notes, the freebies, and anything beyond that.
The last thing I have that most people won’t have is a content developer. That is Gina, who I have talked about before. She worked with me at Tony Robbins. Right now we are batching, which I’ll talk about in a moment.
That means Gina and I come together and have a three to four-hour meeting where we hash out a bunch of ideas. We go over the surveys. We go over your Instagram posts of your ideas for my podcast. We go over all of that together and then we start to formulate our ideas for podcast episodes.
Gina then goes off and puts outlines together for me. I don’t read a script during my podcast but I do have a really detailed outline based on the conversations Gina and I have. Then, when we come back together, we look over the outlines. I ask her any questions, I kind of put my own touch on things, and then I go into the recording studio.
Having Gina on my team to help me with the content and the outlines has been incredible. I always say that I create all of my own content and I truly do. But for the podcast I needed a little extra help coming up with a new really good idea every single week and then fleshing it out.
You guys know I like my podcast to be mini trainings so I needed to bring in a sidekick for that and Gina has been the perfect person for the job.
Looking at my roles, if you’re just starting out you likely don’t have a project manager. Hopefully you’re thinking about having somebody do the tasks for you, which could be a virtual assistant or a coordinator on your team, or maybe you split the tasks so you’re not doing all of them yourself.
You may be the writer if your bootstrapping right now. I know I wrote all of my show notes and emails and all that good stuff for a while until I could afford to have somebody help me do so.
Again, I don’t expect you to have this big of a team for your podcast. You’re just going to ease into things and you might not want to do all of the things I do for my podcast.
But it’s kind of fun to go behind the scenes with somebody to see what they do, especially because you all know my podcast is very successful. What I’m doing definitely works so that’s why I thought I would take you behind the scenes.
Step 1: Develop the Content
On to the steps. Step 1 is to develop the content. First we select a topic. I come up with the episode’s theme based on a number of criteria. Like I told you, we look at surveys, we ask my audience what they want, we see what’s trending on social media and online marketing.
We also think about where my audience is right now and what they need to be educated on. I also look at my own experiences and new things I’ve been learning and testing out in my business. I then think of whether my audience would care. I’m always asking that question.
Once I decide on the topic I ask myself if it’s me teaching it or if I should bring on a guest. You all know I don’t do a lot of guests on this podcast. I do a lot of solo shows. However, if the guest is going to kick but, be really really good, and spend some time on putting some great content together then, by all means, I would love to have a guest on.
I’ve got to give a shout out to Zach Spuckler. Zach Spuckler and I did a podcast together and I think that was my most favorite experience because we went back and forth. Gina usually does it but for some reason it was me and Zach so I got to experience it.
We came up with the questions together and detailed out exactly how he was going to answer them and in what detail. He thought of examples and stories.
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Before we even went into the interview we had a really good fleshed out outline. That typically doesn’t happen with all of my guests but I love when they’re game and are “for sure, I’ll do it.”
The conversation is still conversational. We can go off it. It’s not a script, it’s just an outline so we don’t have to stick with it. But I love being prepared because I don’t want to waste any minute of your time.
Funny enough, Zach Spuckler’s episode was one of my most popular. It’s in the top five most downloaded. I will link to it below, it’s all about putting a five-day challenge together for list building and sales. It was really, really good.
Shout out to Zach. A lot of my other guests have been incredibly helpful in preparing as well but that was a special episode with Zach because I got to pitch and catch with him.
From there we move into outlining the episode. I’ll break this up into A and B depending on if it’s me teaching or if I have a guest. If it’s a solo mini training, once the topic is decided I’ll outline the episode and organize it into three areas: My intro, the core content, and my close.
You know I have Gina do that part for me. It’s not me. But if you are a smaller team than I am then maybe you are outlining it. I say don’t spend more than 30 minutes to an hour doing this. But this is really going to help you once you turn on the mic.
I also keep in mind that if I have a sponsor for that particular episode I need to find a space to talk about the sponsor in the intro and in the outro and if I haven’t done so already, I have to record the promo spot for the sponsor. I usually make sure to make note of that in the outline.
If we go on to example B, when I am actually interviewing somebody, we take some time for a pre interview. Gina will actually do some research on the guest, come up with a series of questions based on the overall theme of our episode, and then when needed will actually get on a call with the guest.
It’s not a really long call. It’s not laborious or anything like that, but Gina wants to get input from the guest so it’s not just us trying to think of questions to come up with. We want to make sure the guest feels really supported, they are talking about the stuff they love to talk about, and they are ready for some examples and stories based on the questions we are going to ask.
I can tell you that if I listen to all of the interviews on my podcast from the very beginning until now, one thing I know for sure is that I’ve gotten better at interviewing. It’s not something I’m totally comfortable with, me being the preparer that I am.
Gosh, I sound so controlling, right? I definitely get a little bit nervous on podcasts, especially if it’s a really big name or someone I’m enamored with, which happens a lot.
The second thing I’ll tell you is that now that we have more of a process where Gina gets on the phone with the person, she goes back and forth, and she sends them questions in advance, that has really contributed to better interviews.
If I were to listen to all of my episodes I know precisely which ones we had an outline for and which ones we didn’t. The stories are richer. The examples are better. The guest feels more relaxed because they know what’s to come…They know what is going to come (that sounded a little weird).
I just love that they are totally supported in the process. That’s just something behind the scenes around how I view interviews.
I had mentioned that we started to batch. I wanted to kind of let you in on what that looks like because it’s a big deal to me.
I’ve always struggled with batching my podcast and I’ve always struggled with getting ahead of the curve. As much as I love producing the podcast it’s something that always feels forced at a certain time. We get to a point where we don’t have an episode for “next week” and then we get caught up for a while and we are one month in advance.
We then easily get into not having an episode for “next week”. This is one area where we’ve struggled. So I was listening to Michael Hyatt’s Free to Focus program. I absolutely love it and recommend it. I talk about it a lot now because it’s incredible.
While I was listening to it he talked about batching. Of course we all know about batching. I’ve heard it a million times. But for some reason the way he explained it, and I know he’s a podcaster and I know he’s a planner, I thought if Michael can do this I just know I can do it as well.
I went back to Chloe and I said I want a mega batch. I want to do six episodes at a time. I think Michael does 10 to 12 or 14 or something ridiculously crazy like that in one day. I can’t do that. But I can do six at a time and may ease into doing more down the road.
We are finally batching and I want you to know kind of what it looks like.
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We do one meeting where Gina and I come up with all of the topics. A week later she comes back to the table an we have another meeting, just the two of us, in person. I love that she lives close so we actually go to my co-working space.
We rent out a little conference room and hash out the outlines. I read them along with her. I ask her questions. I ask what she thinks about adding “this” story or “that” story. We hash out all six and then we pick a day soon after, while it’s fresh in my mind, and I come into the studio, which I’m doing today.
There is some wiggle room here because there are some interviews I need to do. Yesterday I did one with James Wedmore. Next week I’ll do one with Michael Hyatt. These are people that are coming on the show soon.
I’ve got to make some space for those interviews but I love the fact that we are going to get these done and then, here’s the magic moment of batching, we all know this but I just want to share it from my experience, I am looking forward to a full month where I’m not working on the podcast.
When I come back for the next batching session imagine how excited I am going to be to work on the content and how fresh I’m going to be and just really energized. If anyone is struggling, if you are struggling with the batching of anything in your business, rethink it. Just know I’ve struggled with it from the get go. This is the first time it feels really, really good.
So there you have it. It’s a big step for me. I’ve talked about batching before. I said we were on track and we weren’t so I’ll keep you updated, I promise. This is the first time I think we’ve found our groove and I think we’ve got this batching thing down.
Step 2: Recording and Editing
If Step 1 is all about developing the content then Step 2 is all about recording and editing. First, the prep.
After the questions and outlines are done, whether it’s questions for interviews or just outlines for me, I will take at least a few hours to go over my notes. That’s what I talked about in the second batching meeting with Gina.
We sit down and dive into those outlines just to make sure they are in my voice and are valuable enough. Again, I just don’t want to waste your time so I really spend some time making sure this is really, really good.
Here’s something cool we just started to do. With each episode, as I’m reviewing the outline, Gina and I decide the main question we’re answering for each of the podcast episodes. For this one the question is, “Amy, what is your process for producing a podcast from start to finish?”
That is the question we’re answering. But we kind of struggled with some of the other episodes and thought we were off a little bit. If the question we are answering with this podcast is not clear then let’s go back to the drawing board and make sure it is clear. That’s one thing we do when we go over the outlines.
For recording, I now record in my video studio. For all of you who follow me on Instagram you know I have a new video studio that also acts as my podcast studio. I have some soundproofing on the walls, some carpet on the floor, and I have a really, really easy podcasting setup.
In the show notes I made a quick little video on my iPhone of all of the equipment I use for my podcast: The microphone, the software, the mixer box, and it’s way simpler than you might think because I used to use a big fat mixer. The thing took up half the desk.
I made it way more complicated than I needed it to be but, quite honestly, maybe a few years back you had to do it that way. I don’t know because I don’t know technology that well. But Pat Flynn helped me out with a new setup that I absolutely love.
I’ll make a quick little video of that and put it on the show notes at http:// amyporterdev.wpenginepowered.com/176.
For each episode I record it takes me about an hour, maybe even a little bit longer. Let’s say this was going to be a 45-minute episode, I usually stop and kind of look at my notes and think about things here and there while I’m recording since I’m not reading a script.
If I mess up I pause and then let my editor pick up where I mess up. She is probably going to think that was a mistake but I was just showing you guys. If I really want her to fix something I just pause and it’s very obvious.
I don’t tend to say “um” or “like” or those words a lot so I don’t have to worry about that. The editing is really for if I just messed up and it didn’t make sense. Then my editor will clean that up.
Let’s move into editing. That’s the next step. I use Pro Podcast Solutions. This business was created by a guy named Darrell. I love him. He’s always been fantastic to work with.
His business has recently gotten bigger so he’s brought in a few extra people to edit my podcast. They’ve been doing a stellar job and I love them so much because they even get into our Asana project plan and allow us to assign the podcast in there, put any edit notes that I might have, and they really just work nicely within our team.
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I’ll link to Pro Podcast Solutions in our show notes if you want to check out my editor. It’s incredibly affordable and fantastic to work with.
After I record an episode and if I have any editing notes I put them into Asana for Darrell’s team to check out. Again, there’s no heavy editing, it’s just cleaning up some mistakes and missteps along the way. We are then good to go and the episode gets edited pretty dang quickly.
From there we move into episode title and the freebie title. I’m going to talk about the freebie a little later in another category. But the episode title is important. This is one area that I’m trying to improve in terms of making sure that it is incredibly descriptive and speaks to exactly what you’re looking for.
When appropriate, I uses key words that are good for SEO. We really do spend some time on the episode title to make sure it’s good. We also think of the freebie title at this point since we’re working on titles. Not every episode I do has a freebie but if it does that’s where we work it out.
It’s important we work out our titles early on because we create some images for those titles to put in emails and in the show notes. Lindsay can be working on those while we’re working on everything else and that’s why it kind of lands here in my project plan.
Step 3: The Copy
Moving on to Step 3, just to make sure you’re following along, Step 1 is to develop the content, Step 2 is to record and edit, and Step 3 is the copy.
While the file is being edited I send the raw files to my writer to get the copy going. What we do in terms of copy we have an email. You could call it your weekly newsletter. We send out an email to my entire email list every Thursday to talk about the podcast episode and why it’s so important that you take a listen.
If you’re on my email list and you’re not receiving my weekly Thursday emails one of the reasons that might be happening is that you are in a current funnel with me. You all know about email segmentation, right?
We can segment our email list. If you are currently in a funnel where you are getting invites to a special webinar I’m doing or you are actually watching the webinar and getting the promo emails, if you’re in any one of my three funnels for either List-Builder’s Lab, Courses That Convert, or Webinars That Convert, you have a tag inside of Infusionsoft (my email service provider) that says DND, which means Do Not Disturb.
Devin, my partner in business, is really good with creating funnels and creating them in a way to exclude people that shouldn’t get certain emails and then putting them back into the weekly emails when they’re done with a special promo funnel that we’ve put them in.
If you’re done with the Webinars That Convert webinar and you already got all of the promo emails, you bought or didn’t buy, it doesn’t matter, after a week or so you get put back into the general email where you will start to get my weekly emails again. That way we don’t send you too many emails while you’re in a funnel.
The email that we send every week is part of the copy that is going to get written. In that email we are focusing on getting the right hook in there. We want to convey the incredible value of the podcast and what’s in it for the listener. We spend some quality time on that email.
The next piece of copy is show notes. This is a piece that I think has undergone the biggest transformation in my business. A few years ago we would write out full, in-depth pieces on our blog around the show notes.
Then I started to think that if I include everything in the show notes who would ever listen to the podcast episode? I scaled that back and made them shorter and maybe a little snappier. Then I still felt I was missing something. I haven’t always loved our show notes.
I don’t actually believe, after getting educated about this from some of my peers, that detailed show notes means people aren’t going to listen to the episode. Some people just love to listen to the episodes so they’ll listen regardless. Other people might not be podcast listeners but they get great value from the show notes.
I think it’s a preference thing in terms of you, the podcaster, how you want to do it. But here’s the deal. What we’re going to be testing out over the next few months is two different types of show notes. One week we might do really detailed show notes. We’ll include images, some video, and we might even actually do that once a month.
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Resources are limited. We are working on other stuff as well as producing this podcast. Once a month we might do some really detailed show notes. Then, for other episodes, we will just have a few takeaways at the top (something new) every show note will include the top three to five takeaways from this podcast episode.
Right away you can look at the takeaways and decide if this is an episode you want to listen to or not. From there we will do some kind of intro paragraph and from there we will just do bullet points. We are basically spelling out the key lessons in this episode : You’ll learn this, you’ll learn that, Amy will talk about this.
We are putting time stamps where the bullet points are and I’m really excited about this because that means you can come to my show notes and look at the time stamps and if you don’t have tons of time but you really want to hear me talk about “that” you can download the episode, listen to it, and forward to the areas that you want.
I hope you’ll listen to the entire episode. But sometimes you’ve just got to get to the stuff you need and that’s why we’re including time stamps as well. I’m excited for this new transformation of the show notes and as we do it for a few months, you know I always like to go first and then tell you how it went, I’ll report back on my views of our show notes.
Moving on to the third piece of copy, the freebie. We do not do a freebie for every single episode but right now we’re trying to do a freebie a month, at least. But really, instead of saying we’re going to do a freebie once a month for one of the episodes we ask ourselves if the episode needs a freebie.
Right now, of course this episode has a freebie, it’s the whole podcast project plan. Again, http://amyporterdev.wpenginepowered.com/176download will take you right there. But then maybe when I record the next episode I will come up with a great freebie idea and we’ll do one for that as well.
We don’t force it. Here’s my criteria for deciding if we’re going to add a freebie to a podcast episode.
- Does the episode need a companion piece to help my listeners implement what I’m teaching them. If I’m doing a workshop on my podcast episode could my listener use a worksheet to go with it? Maybe they need a swipe file example so that I could show them exactly how I’ve done something in my business. If the answer is “yes” then Boom! I’ve got a freebie for that episode.
- Does it bring the topic a step forward? I don’t want to just regurgitate the episode in the freebie. That’s a big one for me. My freebie should never just be practically a transcript of what I just taught in the episode. Instead, it has to take things forward. In the example of the freebie for today, yes the freebie’s going to cover everything I’m telling you here but it’s also going to call out the essential pieces you want to do no matter where you are in your journey. It’s also going to add extra value I don’t even mention here, things we just don’t have time to get into but that I want you to know – moving it forward.
- Does the episode need a visual? For example, for my Facebook episode on what’s trending now, the examples of engagement on Facebook and videos on Facebook was perfect to put into a freebie. If you want to see this in action grab the freebie. That’s another great criteria if you should include a freebie (some kind of lead magnet) with your podcast episode.
As I mentioned, you don’t want to force a freebie either. There have been a few episodes where I thought I really wanted a freebie for it and after a few rounds of not coming up with any good ideas for a freebie we just nixed it.
Don’t force it because freebies add a few extra steps, to say the least, to your podcast process plan so when you get my freebie from today’s episode you’ll see that if you include some kind of lead magnet there are a lot of steps involved.
Maybe just start out with doing one a month. I think that’s a great way to ease yourself into it. And you can keep your freebies simple. As long as they are value packed and will make an impact with your audience you can do a PDF, a cheat sheet, a check list, a swipe file, whatever works for you.
But I don’t want you to spend hours and hours on these freebies. One thing that makes it really easy for me, and I think I’ll mention this a little later as well, we have a template for our freebies.
All of our freebies are essentially PDFs so we have a look and fill for every freebie so if you have five of my freebies right now since I rebranded my website, they all look exactly the same. They are just different content. That makes it a whole lot easier.
Moving on to the fourth section of copy, social media. For a long time my writer would write the Facebook post, the Twitter post, and sometimes an Instagram post.
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But I’m actually experimenting so I love this episode because I get to share with you what we’ve done for a long time and then what we’re playing with right now. You always have to mix things up or it gets boring, right?
I thought I would start to record short little videos for social media when a new episode comes out. So you’re going to see me start to do this fairly soon because remember that I said with the show notes that we are going to start out at the very top with a few takeaways?
Since they will already be written I thought I would get on my iPhone (nothing professional) and say, “Hey guys, I have a brand new episode. Let me give you a few takeaways just to see if this is an episode you’d like to dive into. You’re going to learn ‘this’, ‘this’, and ‘that’. I can’t wait for you to check it out. The episode is called ‘this’, it’s number ‘this’” and there, done.
It’s just a quick little video that I can use for Instagram. I could use it on Twitter and I could use it on Facebook. I will likely do an InstaStory as well.
Here’s a little secret with me and social media. If I don’t have a plan, if it’s not on my calendar, if I don’t have a template of how I’m going to do something I’m not consistent with it. With InstaStories sometimes I would jump on Instagram and do a quick story or video about the episode. Sometimes I wouldn’t.
Now we kind of have a little plan. Every Thursday morning when a new episode comes out I know I’m going to jump on. I know how I want to talk about it. It could still be off the cuff and never really polished but at least I have it on my calendar so that I know “this morning” I need to jump on Instagram because I want to talk about the latest episode.
That helps me and maybe it could help you as well.
Beyond social media there are a few other areas of copy we pay attention to. If we have a freebie we need a little blurb about the freebie for the pop-up box in the show notes. It might just be a sentence or two but we use an image that has the title of the freebie and maybe one sentence as to what it’s about. Then you click the button and a pop-up box appears and that’s LeadBoxes.
We use LeadBoxes for all of our freebie pop-up boxes on our website. We need a little blurb for that. Then we have PushCrew. Have you guys heard of PushCrew? I’m going to talk about it in an upcoming episode when I talk about list building and some of my favorite tools.
PushCrew is a little blub that pops up in the upper right-hand corner of your browser or even on your desktop to alert you that something new is on a website. This is something you actually need to agree to so when you come to my website.
If you’ve ever agreed to a PushCrew message, every time I have a new podcast episode, no matter where you are on the web or what you’re doing on your computer, as long as you are connected to the web a little box will pop up in the right corner saying, “I have a new episode. This is what it’s about…” I love PushCrew.
Another tool we are using is a messenger bot. If you come to my Facebook page and want to leave a message you will actually get a message from me that says, “Hey, since you’re here, I have a brand new episode out about XYZ. Click here to check it out.”
We are using messenger bots directly on our Facebook page to advertise the newest episode as well.
One thing I’ve learned is that you do need to be everywhere it matters to broadcast or promote your podcast episode. You also don’t want to be bogged down with way too many steps. Again, ease into it grasshopper. You don’t have to do all of this all at once but because I have a team that can help me I’m going to do it. I know it works.
Step 4: Design and Transcript
Easing into Step 4, again, I like to keep you informed as to where we’re at. Step 1, develop content; Step 2, record and edit; Step 3 is all about the copy we write for the episode; Step 4 is the design and transcript.
With everything written, now that we have the copy of the show notes and the email and all of the extras I told you about it’s time for Lindsay to send out images for the design that we need. For design we get some images created for social sharing.
We have a featured image so this is the image that’s highlighted on the top of my show notes. It’s the image if you go to one show note episode, it’s the big picture at the top. It’s really simple. We use stock imagery and then we add some text to it. But still we need to get it designed.
If we have a freebie all of the content needs to be put into the template I told you about. Then the freebie opt-in box on my show notes needs to be designed and then we need an image for the newsletter.
You might be asking if I am insane. You don’t want to create that many images for your podcast. But here’s the little secret. If you follow my podcast religiously and get my weekly emails you know it’s all templates. It all looks pretty much the same except that the content’s different and for each episode we have a different image.
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For each blog post you have a new image at the top. That’s the same with us. So we might get 20 images sourced at one time so we know we have 20 images we can pull from for each of the next 20 episodes.
We like to do things in batches so we’re not starting from scratch ever. With each episode it’s not like we are starting from scratch so “here we go.” We’ve got things pretty dialed in so it gets easier as you go.
In the freebie for this episode, the Podcast Project Plan, I list all of these design elements we use. You don’t need to take notes because it’s in there. But I wanted to kind of run though exactly what images we use.
We also use 99Designs for this. We found one guy, we love him, and I’m scared to even say his name on this episode. You guys know me, I’m an open book. I share all of my stuff with you. But this guy, because we get a lot of downloads per episode, I’m just going to save his name for now.
I have mentioned him in all of my paid Facebook groups. If you’re in any of my courses you already know his name. But really, you don’t even need to know his name. There are some amazing designers at 99Designs.
We use 99Designs and not my regular designer, Jess, because Jess is way more expensive and we don’t need expensive design for these podcast elements. Anywhere we can save money and use a designer that’s not as expensive (again, a lot of these are templates) then we are very, very happy campers.
I have already mentioned this one a few times but when we have a freebie it gets written by Gina and someone on my team will look at it for any edits, typos, or anything like that and then that will go to 99Designs as well.
Because earlier in the year Jess, my main designer, created a template for all of our freebies for our podcast we gave that to our designer at 99Designs and he now just puts the content right in there. I love that because I know it’s going to be fully branded to my own personal brand and it’s going to look really, really good.
As Lindsay is working on all of the design elements she’s also sending out the edited audio to our transcriptionist. We’ve worked with the same transcriptionist for years and it’s so nice to have these long-term relationships because she knocks these transcripts out really quickly.
Lately she’s now putting five-minute time stamps into the transcript so people can kind of find, in the transcript, where I’ve called out certain things in the show notes. Remember, I’m time stamping my bullet points in the show notes as well. Now there are time stamps in the transcript.
That’s one thing we’ve added. But I love to share the new stuff we’re trying out with you so here’s something new. We have always put the transcript in a PDF. You can click a link to get it if you want that transcript.
On the show notes click a link to download the transcript. What we’ve done is actually also start to load the transcript onto my website. Now when you click a link to get the transcript you can go to a web page and all of the copy is on that web page. We’re doing this for SEO purposes.
You can also click a link right at the top of the show notes to get that PDF if you want to save it on your desktop but it now lives on a stand-alone web page on my website, all of the transcripts moving forward. This is something brand new we’re doing and I cannot wait to try it out. Again, as I get results I’ll share it with you.
Step 5: Loading the Content
We’ve got images and copy and the edited podcast file. Everything is now complete and we’re loading it up in the appropriate places. We use a few different pieces of technology for this part.
For the email it all happens in Infusionsoft. We have a template (see it’s all about the templates) inside of Infusionsoft. We load our email there.
Here’s one thing I do that maybe a lot of other podcasters don’t do if they’re working with a team. I make sure I get that email sent to my personal account before we send it out. I want to see that finished email.
To me email is so incredibly important. It’s a huge piece of the promotional puzzle for your podcast. If you have an email list you want them to know every single week when you have a new podcast episode. This is really important.
Because I use my podcast as my weekly consistent content I’ve got to make sure that email is good. So I touch it twice. One, it gets written and I review it. Two, it gets put into a template in Infusionsoft, sent to me, and I look at it one final time. It might take me ten minutes but that’s not really a big deal, of course. But I just want to be the final eyes on it before it goes out.
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It’s important to me so I make time for it. And that’s the email.
Of course, the show notes all happens inside of WordPress. Lindsay will add the content to the WordPress site and will add hyperlinks, bullet points, images, and, like most websites (whatever you’re using, WordPress is most popular) we have a template for all of our show notes. They all look the same and Lindsay knows exactly how to load the content.
Another thing Lindsay has to load up is the freebie for the episode if I’ve got one. If you are scrolling into the show notes you will see an image that highlights the freebie. If you click the button a pop-up box appears. That’s LeadBoxes through LeadPages, one of my favorite tools.
Lindsay has to program that to make it work. It’s easy but it still takes some time. She sets up a web form. She sets up tags so we know which viewers have signed up for which freebies. We are very clear, if you signed up for the podcast freebie versus signing up for a different freebie I have or if you sign up for all of them.
We have tags to tell us this. That’s really, really cool when we do special marketing. She sets up all of the prep for the LeadBox that pops up for that freebie.
She then puts the images into the show notes and, if I have any video like the video for this one to show you the podcast equipment I use, she will program or embed that video into the show notes as well. That takes her a little while just to get it all good and going.
Remember, I’m going to do two different kinds of show notes moving forward. When it’s really elaborate with lots of images, videos, and lots of examples it’s going to take her a little bit longer. But with the new format where I just have the takeaways at the top, a short paragraph, and then the bullets that’s won’t take her as long.
Maybe I’ll add an image or a video, depending on if I have something extra to share or if I have a freebie. There you have it.
Step 6: Social Media
The final step, is all about social media. Once the episode has gone live, it’s on iTunes. We actually put it on Google Play and Stitcher. Once it is live and email goes out to let my list know I have a new episode. We then post on social media.
As I mentioned, this is where I want to include more videos with takeaways from the episode and I will do my InstaStory, Facebook video, video on Twitter, and then sometimes we will do an Instagram post.
Here’s something cool I didn’t mention earlier. Once in a while we will do an Instagram post that is actually an image with the broadcast waves going through the image. Have you ever seen me do that before?
If you click play it’s not really a video, the only thing moving is those little broadcast waves, but you hear a snippet from the episode. I’ve done this a few times. We’re bringing it back. We took a break from it to get a new plan together.
They are more work than I could even talk about in this episode to make sense. This is more of an advanced strategy. I don’t want you doing this if you feel overwhelmed already with your podcast. It’s something to move into.
We will probably do it for this podcast episode so that you will see all of the examples I talk about here. On Instagram you will likely see an audio post where you hear a snippet. That advertises the episode as well. Good stuff? Alright.
Let’s go ahead and wrap it up.
One quick wrap up of the steps. Step 1, develop content; Step 2, record and edit; Step 3, copy; Step 4, design and transcript; Step 5, load it up; and Step 6, post on social media. It’s no big deal, right? Just a few steps.
Yeah, it is a big deal. There is a lot going on here. And, when you get the freebie of my Podcast Project Plan you will see that I’ve called out the essentials. If you’re just starting out or are already overwhelmed with everything you’re working on do not try to tackle every step I do.
Ease into the tasks as you have a bigger team and more time to focus on some of the other exciting things you want to do with your podcast.
I am so, so glad that you joined me here because hopefully I gave you a glimpse of behind the scenes. Remember, I put a video on the show notes talking about my technology if you want to see that in action as well.
I also want to give a huge shout out to all of my team members. You all make this possible. I know you do most of the work and I get to just show up, create the content, and record the episodes. But there is so much going on behind the scenes and thank you to each of you. Your hard work and dedication and your flexibility and great attitudes never ever go unnoticed. I love you all very, very much.
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Switching gears just a bit, next week’s episode is with a returning guest but this time we’re talking about something totally different. It is Mr. Michael Hyatt. I know many of you love Michael just as much as I do and I’m excited.
Next week, in Episode #177, we are talking about the ideal week strategy. It is so good. So I already put my ideal week together before I talked to Michael. But I’ve been struggling a little bit with implementing it.
If you don’t know what the ideal week is, it’s going to change your life, so show up next week and definitely tune into that episode. For those of you who know what I’m talking about, we’re going to get into some details as to how to go about putting your ideal week together and then actually sticking to it and implementing it, how to have the conversations with your team and your family about how important that ideal week is to you, and how to stay accountable on your own with that ideal week to make sure it really sticks.
It’s going to be an awesome episode. I think you are going to love it. So I’ll see you here next week and thank you again for tuning in. Bye for now.
