Planning For Better Podcasting

Great. Podcasting doesn't happen by accident. Even good podcasting can be made better with a more deliberate approach. It's okay if you don't agree. Plenty of others are planning podcasting's future without you.

Hello and welcome to another podcast. Pontifications with me. Evo Terra, the future is going to come one way or another. You get to decide what role, if any, you get to play in shaping that future. Now, I'd like you to play an active role. I plan on playing an active role, and I think you can too. You're a working podcaster.

You have a vested interest in making podcasting better in the future of podcasting, don't you? Surely you do. So let's plan on doing better podcasting. Now, there's four ways I want you to think about this are four layers, and I probably shouldn't have said that because I think I wanted to build tension, but that's fine.

We'll roll with it because that's the way things happen to podcasting. Four levels of planning. I want you to think about, now I know you're already thinking about some of them, so I want to try and layer them all together. Not necessarily together. I want to layer them in sequence so you can get the larger picture I'm talking about.

So the first layer of planning, I want you to think about the first level of planning. I want you to think about, okay, is planning for your episodes. Yeah. That boring thing about planning for episodes. You have a plan for your episodes, don't you? And I said with that amount of derision, because one of you out there listening doesn't like to plan.

There are episodes you like to just get behind the microphone and wing it, which I have done, which I would reckon most of us have done. And if you want to keep doing that, knock yourself out. But the topic of this conversation is planning for better podcasting. So to get better, you need to plan out your episodes.

Now, how much planning you do is completely up to you. You just need to do some. And if you ask the successful podcasters out there, you'll get a wide range of how much planning they do. For a lot of people, planning becomes an innate thing. It's just what you do. You don't even think about it. You're going to show is, or life prep, let's say their life is show prep is oftentimes said, well, that's fine, but still that plan has to happen at some point in time.

Let me use my show as an example. This thing right here called podcast pontifications and we're talking about an individual episode. I was asked by a friend of mine, hi, Mike, what my planning process looks like. He asked, do I sit down and write out a script and do the whole thing? What do I do? Well, I don't write out a script, as you can tell.

Uh, it's more extemporaneous, but that's not without planning. I wrote out my steps. There are 14. 14 different steps to making episodes of this particular show. I've got a plan. I didn't start that way when I started the show almost two years ago. I didn't have much of a plan. It was just me getting in rambling.

Now I've got a plan, and you know what? According to my stats and according to the commentary I get from people, the show is better. So that's good. So the episodes themselves are better than they were previously. But don't stop with planning. Just your episodes. Plan out your entire show. How will the episodes link together?

How many weeks in advance are you planning out episodes? More importantly, how does the show overall work? Are you using seasons? When is the end of the season you're in currently? When is the break you're planning on taking so you don't go completely and totally stir-crazy. How far advanced, how far in advance can you plan your show?

Not just your episodes, but I mean your show overall. What is the over writing arc your episodes have? What about your website? What about the way you present your show to people in, in other ways, pins, uh, you know, flyers, stickers, all these various things. What sort of planning are you making for your show?

But don't stop there. What about your role on other shows? Not necessarily shows that you are the host of, but shows you are involved with, maybe as a recurring guest, maybe as someone who is offering various services that you do well to other podcasts. Maybe you're great at editing, editing. Maybe you're a great copywriter.

Maybe you've got some fancy jingles that you write. How can you play a role on other people's shows? And if you're not playing a role on other people's shows right now, you need a plan to do that because spreading your influence beyond just your episodes or your show is a great way to increase your overall visibility.

In podcasting, and it'll also get you better at podcasting because you're doing more than one thing, but don't stop there. What's your role in the industry of podcasting? What's your plan to have a bigger role in podcasting? Even if you're brand new right now, what's your plan to have a bigger role in our industry?

Are you submitting to speak at the many podcast conferences, all of which are cropping up all the time? Are you engaging in conversations, constructive conversations with other industry leaders or other people just in the podcasting space? Are you well known in podcasting and if not, what's your role to get there?

Or if you are well known and people kind of think you're ready, Dick , what's your plan to change that? Yeah, he said, speaking from experience,

those are the four layers I want you to think about when you're planning for better podcasting, like the rest of us. Can plan to make better episodes, but don't stop there. You can plan to make a better show, which then lets you make a plan for how you can make more podcasts better by playing roles on other shows, and then ultimately you can start influencing the direction podcasting is heading when you have planned for better podcasting at the industry level at the way up top level.

I think you can do it. I think we could all do use with the occasional reminding that that thing that we do with our singular podcast, there's more to it and a plan almost always is better than having no plan at all. Now, I didn't plan on this. But if you wanted to go to buy me a coffee.com/evo Terra and buy me a coffee, you can set it up so that it buys me a single coffee every single month.

If you like to show some support for the show, that's awesome. Buy me a coffee.com/evo Terra if money's a little tight and you just want to show your love and appreciation and say, Hey, people should listen to this. One great way to do it is go to rate this podcast.com/pod Ponte. And that will let you leave a rating on whatever possible services work for.

Well, whatever you use to get to that URL, it's pretty cool service. And finally, if you know of someone or you are someone who needs some assistance with your podcasting, maybe this whole strategy is just hard and you just don't quite get how it works with your overall business mindset. That's what my company does at simpler media production.

Go to simpler media.pro or just drop me an email. We'll talk evo@podcastlaunch.pro. Thanks for watching. See you tomorrow for another podcast on . Cheers.

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