Practical Tips to Lighten Your Podcast Workload Without Outsourcing
Podcasting is time-consuming and takes a lot of effort from content planning, recording, and distribution. On top of all the other workloads you may have both personally and professionally. For many, passing off tasks to others can be a great way to save time.
However, not everyone can afford to outsource podcasting tasks so it’s important to find practical solutions to streamline podcasting tasks that help you keep producing your podcast without adding to your plate.
Here are 5 tips to help lighten your podcast workload without the added cost!
Tip 1: Plan, plan, plan!
Planning is a great way to help know what’s coming up on your podcasting plate and be able to make time for it.
First, develop a content calendar to help with better planning and organization. For example, if you have 2 podcast episodes this month add them to your calendar and figure out where you have time to tackle the tasks needed to be done.
This will also give you the ability to batch the content if needed. So, maybe you have a full month of work tasks and personal things like taking your kids to sports. Figure out where you have time in your calendar to batch your recording, editing, and promotion. Then mark those on your calendar so you get them done. This way, you may be busy but you can get more done in the little time that you do have available.
Tip 2: Utilize templates
Templates can be your best friend. From scripts and editing to promotions like socials/emails, creating templates can help save you a ton of time and energy if you already have a baseline.
For example, if you regularly use a similar script/outline structure - create a template to be able to use over and over again and just fill in the new episode information.
Same with editing and promotions. If you use the same structure for every episode you put together, email, or social post - create a template to help make your life easier.
If you are wondering how this can work, check out my blog on this here.
Tip 3: Automate where you can
With a tight schedule, you may not have a ton of time where you can manually do everything so consider automating where you can.
For editing. Find software or features that can help automate or at least save time on repetitive tasks. “Hot keys” for example can be a great way to set up quick editing options for things you use a lot like “silence” or “fading out”. Or if you want something that does even more of the heavy lifting, look at Adobe’s Podcast AI tools to help enhance speech in just one click.
Use AI tools for content creation. You can use Riverside’s Magic Clip Grabber or Opus to help grab stand-out video snippets quickly so you don’t have to run through the audio and grab them yourself.
Automate when your episodes and social posts go out. For your episodes, once you’ve batched your content as we discussed above, schedule them out ahead of time with your podcast host so that they are ready to go all month. Then hop over to a tool like Buffer or Hootsuite to schedule your social posts to align when the episodes go out. That way you have all your podcast episodes ready to go ahead of time (and can save you time!)
Tip 4: Repurpose content!
If you have great content, you should repurpose it. Why limit its impact to just one format when it can benefit across various platforms?
If you have a great podcast episode repurpose it into social posts, a blog post, an email newsletter, or whatever other medium you are on. This not only saves time but also increases the visibility of your content among audiences who may not typically consume podcasts or discover content through different channels.
Tip 5: Make your process simple
There are a lot of ways you can add to your podcasting tasks but don’t forget to keep it as simple as you can to help you save time, especially if you are already limited on the time you have.
Just because other podcasters are doing something doesn’t mean you need to be! Do what works best for you and be creative.
Consider minimizing the number of platforms you are on, keep your outlines/scripts to the point, don’t go too heavy on editing if it’s not necessary, and don’t post every day on social media if that just isn’t what you have time for - where ever you can, keep your process simple.
Lighten your podcast life!
You may already be doing a lot of this, but if you aren’t, I encourage you to implement these strategies gradually. You don’t need to take these 5 tips and do it today. But next time you are setting up your calendar for the month, start by adding what you can to make your life easier.
Be creative for your own needs and podcast, we are all on different journeys both in podcasting and business so figure out what works best for YOU.
Let me know in the comments what your experience is with running your podcast solo and if you have any additional tips that made your life easier!
Aleea
