Project Management Tools for Podcasting

Organizing your podcast is important to help you avoid burnout and overwhelm with your podcast.

However you do it is great but having a project management tool can make your life so much easier as it’ll be a one-stop shop for keeping track of all your podcasting tasks, information, and due dates.

Continue reading to learn how to use project management tools for your podcast workflow.

Understanding Podcast Production Workflows

What is a podcast production workflow? Well, it’s a place to keep track of all the different stages of tasks for your podcast production such as planning, recording, editing, and promotion.

For many podcasters, you are taking on all of these tasks by yourself which can get overwhelming and cause burnout. So, having a workflow and a project management tool can help avoid these issues by keeping you on track.

Choosing the Right Project Management Tool

But how do you choose the right tool for you? There are many different tools out there so I will discuss a handful of them to get you started and help you figure out which one may be the best one for your budget and needs.

Airtable

Is a cloud-based software that will help you manage all your tasks such as creating to-do lists or managing your projects (aka your podcast!). Airtable is similar to Excel but has a lot more features that are helpful when managing different tasks.

You can create different “tabs” for each podcast season for example and then within each of those there is an Excel-like grid view to be able to organize your episodes and all the information you need such as the topic/title of the episode, who the guest is, have you contacted them, when you plan to record, air date, checklist for each episode, and more. You can also turn the grid view into a calendar so you can get a bird’s eye view of what you have planned for the month.

Price:

• Starts free with unlimited bases and up to 5 editors (which is nice if you have a team)

• Then you can upgrade starting at $20/month with more storage and other features.

Asana

This is a great option for someone who is a beginner and likes to see a visual breakdown.

We love the way it organizes things very simply. It has columns that you can create for each stage of tasks like planning, recording, editing, and promotion (or however, else you’d like to break down your tasks). Then you can create a task and include all the information you need, due dates and even assign the task to someone (including yourself) if you have a team or need reminders sent to you via email.

For each task you could, for example, create an episode and then include all the important things you need underneath as a checklist such as topic, title, guest, episode description, due date, and more. So you know what’s been completed and what still needs to be done.

Price:

• Starts free but you can upgrade for $10.99/month to get additional features like a timeline, reporting, forms, and more.

Notion

Notion is also similar to Airtable but has even more going on. It’s like a combo of Google Docs, Excel, and Drive. If you are someone who doesn’t want to learn a bunch of new things though, this program may be a little more complex.

You can basically do it all in one platform with Notion such as write out your script on one page or have a sheet like Excel that keeps track of all your episode tasks and information. The other neat thing is you can link workspaces/databases together so if you wrote a script for an episode in Notion you could then link it to that episode’s task management portion so you can grab all the information in one place.

Price:

• Starts free

• Or you can upgrade to $15 seat/month

Trello

This is another great option for a beginner or someone who likes to see a visual breakdown and is similar to Asana (we personally use this program regularly for our tasks and clients!).

It is a simple organization tracker where you can create columns for each section (planning, what’s scheduled/not scheduled, live, etc.) with “cards” underneath each column to organize each episode. Then within the cards be able to organize all the information you need to keep track of (topic, title, guest, due date, etc.) and then can move it between each column as you go through the tasks.

Price:

• Has a free plan that includes unlimited cards, 10 boards per workspace, and more.

• But if you want to upgrade their next plan starts at $5/month

We’ve personally used all of these tools and love them all for different reasons (and there are more out there!) as they do the job similarly and have a ton of great features.

So, it doesn’t matter what one you specifically pick, you’ll just want to pick one based on your budget, what you are looking for organization-wise, your team size, and more. So, think about what you need and want, to help you choose the best one for you and your show.

Task Management and To-Do Lists

Once you’ve narrowed down what program you want to use, it’s time to figure out how you want to utilize it for your podcast.

I would sit down and figure out what tasks you want to have organized and how you would like to organize them.

For example, some things you may want to include:

• A section for brainstorming podcast topics

• Script writing or episode outline section

• Guest information

• What episodes are confirmed but not scheduled

• What episodes are scheduled + the due dates for recording so you know when those are taking place

• Once it’s recorded and in a Drive ready for post-production

• What tasks need to be done in post-production for each episode

  • Such as editing, grabbing video snippets, creating a transcript, etc.

• Once the episode is live

Then you’ll also want to consider how you’ll organize them, depending on the platform you pick this may vary for example if you are using Airtable/Notion you may set up an Excel-style organization or if you are using Asana/Trello you may create different columns and checklists for these items.

Once you’ve set up your project management tool also see where you can automate and integrate within the platform to make your life even easier such as automatically uploading audio files for easy access or being able to set up guest scheduling.

Reviewing and Optimizing Podcast Workflows

Finally, don’t forget to regularly review and take note of ways you can optimize your workflow. Your goals and tasks may change so you want to continue to make sure your workflow is efficient and not slowing you down.

There is always room for improvement especially when you add team members, change up your workflow, or just have areas that need adjustments.

No matter what project management tool you choose or how you set up your tasks, remember it’s important to stay organized to keep you from getting overwhelmed and staying efficient.

Let me know in the comments what your favorite podcast tool is.

And if you are ready to add a team member to your podcast production workflow to help you save time, send us an email to see how we can help support your specific podcast needs.

Aleea