Podcast Workflows - Tips for podcasters to grow their podcast without wasting time.

 There's a myth that if you do something for 21 days, it becomes a habit. I say it's a myth because it's been debunked, several times. The truth is no matter how long a habit takes you to form, the more complicated it is, the more easily broken it is.

So producing a podcast is likely not a habit you're forming. It's work you're doing as efficiently as possible without sacrificing content. But listening to a podcast, that can be a habit. It's why I often tell my clients and students that you don't need a weekly podcast, but a monthly podcast could be a tough sell if you want to be part of someone's routine.

Something I've been thinking about a lot lately is producing a short daily podcast. I've been thinking about that because, well, for the last month I've been producing one. And I was thinking about it a lot before that. So for today's deep dive, I thought I'd share what I've learned about producing a daily podcast, and how I can maybe improve moving forward.

So look for these top takeaways. A daily podcast can be an incredible authority-building asset for you. You need to pick a format and topic that lends itself to your business goals. Batching your content is a super important aspect of a daily podcast.

 Welcome to Podcast Workflows where you get daily tips to improve your process, grow your show, and maybe even make some money. Each week, I also do a daily dive into the process of the world's most successful podcasters and reveal their tools, processes, and systems to help you simplify the production of your own show and reclaim hours in your day. You can improve your own podcast production process by seeing how the pros do it. It's Wednesday, and that means we're doing a deep dive.

And today's deep dive, everything that goes into producing a daily podcast. And let's start with the question, what is a daily podcast? It might seem like a silly question, but the answers may vary. Ryan Holiday's podcasts, The Daily Stoic and The Daily Dad are both daily. While the Daily Stoic is Sunday to Saturday, the Daily Dad takes Sundays off. Given the subject matter, I think that makes sense. It's also worth noting that Ryan Holiday also has likely more material for the Daily Stoic.

But there are other shows like History Daily and the Bulwark that are both Monday through Friday taking weekends off. Though History Daily does a podcast swap on Saturdays. So, for all intents and purposes, I'm going to say that a daily podcast is one that runs at least Monday through Friday. Weekends are optional.

So with that, let's dive into what kind of format a daily podcast should have.

I think as far as format goes, the sky's the limit. Let's look at some of the shows I just mentioned.

The Daily Stoic is a short form, less than eight minutes on most days with a longer interview on Wednesdays. And there's actually two episodes, those days.

The Daily Dad is also short form, less than five minutes with longer Saturday episodes. Both of those shows offer tips or words of encouragement. Very daily affirmations style.

History Daily is also short form, 15 minutes, and tells a story around something from this day in history. I actually have a full breakdown over at [podcastworkflows.com].

The Bulwark podcast is a daily news podcast. Host Charlie Sykes has a rotating cast of co-hosts. He talks to you about the news of the day while other shows can be batched. This is much closer to a Daily Radio Show, reacting to current events in near real-time.

As you consider the format for your daily podcast, the real answer to this question depends on two things: The topic of the show, and your schedule.

In Charlie Sykes's case, the Bulwark is his full-time job. He spends large portions of his day commenting on current events. So his show makes sense. This content is a large portion of his business, his income. But other daily podcasts, in fact, pretty much anything that doesn't count on current events in real-time can be shorter and batched. These include daily tips, short stories in fiction and nonfiction, and even coaching calls, listener questions in your niche, audits, and more.

My recommendation, select a short solo format that allows you to record several episodes at a time.

So now let's talk about your topic. If you're going to create a daily podcast, you need to be at least one of these things:

1. Deeply passionate about the topic or an expert in the topic. Ideally, it's both. Looking at the Daily Stoic, Ryan Holiday has dedicated a large portion of his life to studying and writing about the Stoics. He knows those stories well

Lindsay Graham, (not that Lindsey Graham) and his team are expert researchers, but they're also deeply passionate about history. So they dedicate their time to creating a great daily podcast. This goes the same for all the news-based shows. If you're going to do a daily podcast about current events, you need to care about those current events. So, ask yourself. What do you care about? What are you an expert in?

If you want to do a daily news podcast, I say, start slow. Pick one story from early in the day that you can cover or pick pieces that are not necessarily timestamped. Something where you're not constantly learning new information after you record. I know that works for some folks, but it would drive me crazy. It makes sense that my daily podcast is about podcasting. Not only am I an expert in the field, but I'm deeply passionate about it. Plus, I'm often giving out the same advice. This show will be a knowledge resource, a knowledge base for me where I can send people who ask common questions.

My recommendation is to pick a topic you know deeply or are passionate about, and one that can be a resource for you and your business.

Once you have your topic, you need to come up with episode ideas. This can be a pretty daunting task for a daily podcast. You need at least five separate ideas per week. If we look at the Daily Stoic, again, Ryan Holiday has a large resource pool to pull from. He even has a book of the same name. Actually, he has a book for the Daily Dad, too. And so he can give one tip or story every day. He may have worked backwards starting the podcast first. But either way, he spent some time creating a list of timeless ideas. With History Daily, Graham picks one thing that happened on that day in history, and he reuses at least one episode per week. He'll have the content for a long time. It's also worth noting here that he has several other history podcasts, and I've noticed that things that he covers on his longer-form podcasts often make their way to History Daily.

So if he does a deep dive on the Salem witch trials for American storytellers, then there will be a history daily episode around at least one thing in the Salem witch trials.

For this daily podcast, I'm pulling from a daily tips email that I send to my newsletter subscribers. Those tips came from questions I got via email, social media, comments and conferences. I'm also taking these deep dives and pulling out the top takeaways and turning those into episodes as well. This gives me over 50 episodes to start with. In 10 weeks I can record an advance. Those episodes may spark other ideas and already have actually as well as questions from the listeners creating a content flywheel for the show.

My recommendation: when your topic is based on your expertise or a passion you already write about, you can come up with ideas quickly by reusing those writings, emails, or social media posts.

So let's talk about the recording workflow because this is really important and something that I haven't really perfected yet. Once you have a format and a topic, it's time to get the recordings done. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say most of the podcasts I've mentioned here are scripted. So let's talk about script versus outline.

History Daily definitely is. They publish their scripts on the website. And Ryan Holiday's podcast, both the Daily Dad and the Daily Stoic. While he knows those subjects well, benefits greatly from a script that allows him to deliver his short, punchy points with maximum impact.

The Bulwark podcast undoubtedly isn't. But as we discussed, it's a little bit of a different beast. It's more like a radio show that has rotating guests discussing the news of the day. They are absolutely doing prep work though. Sykes decides what topics they're going to discuss and usually preps the guests ahead of time. So they are doing research. But for a short daily podcast that focuses on your expertise, you should likely script or at least outline each episode.

This show is fully scripted. Though I will ad-lib from time to time depending on how you want to deliver each episode, you need to answer this question, Do you want to deliver the information efficiently and quickly? Or do you want to tell a story around it? More and more, I believe that telling stories is the way to go. It doesn't need to be long and drawn out, but it should be related to illustrate and help drive home the point of your episode.

A good sequence of events for your short daily podcast, and one that I try to do with this one would be this: A story in the cold open, then the intro, then a possible call to action as long as you've delivered value first. Then you deliver the meat of the episode. Tie it back to the story If you need to, and then an outro with a call to action. This is going to take some work on the front end, but you can also experiment with scripted versus non-scripted.

The important ingredients here are the story, the tip, and the clear call to action. But no matter what you choose, you should absolutely batch your episodes. Recording and producing an episode per day can zap your productivity to work on anything else. Trust me. I fell into that rhythm a little bit when I got sick in the middle of recording and batching this podcast.

With a daily podcast, you'll want to record several episodes in one sitting. The general workflow for my daily podcast is to review the content in my Airtable base (soon to be Notion) for short, punchy tips to make the core of the episode: Script a cold open with a story, record 7-10 of those episodes in a row, have my VA upload and schedule all of them using my podcast planner and content calendar that we share. And then the episodes are ready to go and be promoted later.

The trick here is that In prelaunch, I recorded 20 episodes. I intended to record 40-45, but I didn't quite hit that goal. I really want to stay one month ahead of this show. And that includes the four short episodes plus the longer one that you're listening to now.

Lately, I've been recording a week in advance, but over the holiday break, I intend to get caught up again which is a strong argument for having seasons even if you have a daily podcast.

So once you work out your schedule and your scripts, it's time to talk about recording and editing. Every podcast we've looked at here has at least one audio editor on their team. And while that's true for me too with this podcast, this daily podcast, and my mini episodes over on How I Built It, I take a different approach. I like to record in Descript and make content at it's as I'm recording. So I'll stop the recording. Delete the part where I messed up and then start the recording again. This is another instance where a Descript is your friend. This will cut down on the number of edits you need to make. Descript also has some nice, simple sound editing tools. If you want to do heavy audio engineering, a tool like Hindenburg or Adobe Audition would probably be better.

Also, keep in mind that this process is iterative. I may decide that I want to go with more audio engineering that I can handle. And if you've listened to other deep dives, you'll know that I've added some sound effects and some things to kind of change the pace. But I want to know a little bit more about the process and the art direction of this show before I hand it off to an editor.

So my recommendation here: Write short scripts for your episodes that include a story and pick a day to record a bunch to schedule ahead of time.

Okay. So something I always cover on this show in the deep dives is monetization. I'm not going to spend too much time here because podcast monetization is different for everyone, but there are several ways that you can do it.

There are a few points worth addressing though. First, it's never too early to start thinking about monetization. Some people will tell you to launch first and think about making money later. However, just as that's terrible business advice, it's terrible advice for a podcast that's more than just a hobby to you. Consider your options now. Because how you run the show early will ultimately affect how you make money.

Next, some feel that sponsorship depends on the length of the show. If you look at the Daily Dad, you'll see that's not true. And there are some instances where half of the episode is a sponsor spot. That doesn't stop Ryan Holiday from selling those spots. Obviously, he has a much bigger audience than most people. But I wouldn't let length determine if you sell ad spots especially if what you're doing is valuable. It's obviously working for Ryan Holiday. Otherwise, he wouldn't sell spots that long in the short podcast, right?

That said, a daily podcast is a great opportunity for you to elevate your authority and expertise. You’re creating consumable content that you can send to potential clients, customers, or partners. Would that in mind, a better path might be to grow your newsletter. And as a result, your own business. My approach is just that I've decided not to take on sponsors for the show, at least at this point. And instead, reserve one spot in the episode for my own podcasting services. Last week, I promoted my podcast audits.

My recommendation: Have a plan in place for monetization from the beginning even if you don't start right away. Knowing how you'll monetize will help shape the scope and direction of your daily show.

Okay. So let's talk about what to do next because daily podcasting isn't for everyone. However, it could be an incredible asset that not only creates more podcast content for you but also more social posts, short-form videos, long-form blog posts, and topics for your newsletter. It's also proof that you show up and do the work.

So my recommendations: If you're considering a daily podcast, first, think about if it's for you and if it fits into your content strategy. Then pick a format and topic that lend themselves to your schedule and expertise. Script out a few episodes to see how it feels creating a daily podcast. Record and batch the first month's worth of content, and then Publish. Ask for feedback and see how it goes.

Let me know if you are thinking about creating a daily podcast. I'd love to hear from you. I'd also just love to hear about feedback for this show because it's a grand experiment for me. And honestly, I'm really enjoying it. I just need to make some optimizations myself. I'd like to record more than the week's episodes ahead of time. While that's a nice Friday task, I'd like to maybe record episodes for this once a month. And I know that these longer deep dives are probably the bottleneck because I do the narration, and read the full script. And then I do usually add sound effects. though, I don't think I did for this one.

But that's it for this episode. Thanks so much for listening. If you want to connect with me, you can do so on just about any social network. I am @jcasabona on all of them. Or, you can email me at joe@casabona.org.

Thanks so much for listening. And until next time. I can't wait to see what you make.