The Tools for Podcasters Guide is Live!
Hey, everybody, and welcome to Podcast Workflows, the show that provides insights into how to improve your podcast systems and workflows, allowing you to create and grow a high quality podcast by showing you how to best spend your limited time. I'm your host, Joe Casabona, and today, I want to talk about the brand new tools for podcasters guide over at podcastworkflows.com/tools.
Now, when I came up with the idea for Podcast Workflows nearly a year ago at CEX 2023, one of the aspects of the site was to have a tools page, something that could showcase the tools used in the deep dives I was doing. But I didn't wanna rush that. I wanted to focus on the content and see where the site went.
For those who don't know, the site started as doing weekly deep dives into another podcaster's process to see how they did things, what tools they used, and what budding podcasters could learn from the pros. But the site evolved into something more than that.
In November, I made the decision to move from weekly breakdowns, and at that point, they weren't so weekly, to more regularly published content around all aspects of podcast workflows, processes, and systems. That kicked off unofficially with Podcast Advent, a highly successful thing that I've been wanting to do for a while but never got around to doing it.
In November, I thought, you know what? I am going to juice the site with new content every day in December over at [podcastworkflows.com], and I'm gonna do it with Podcast Advent. So it kicked off unofficially then. And then in January, I started publishing more regularly. I also had my VA move all relevant content from both {casabona.org] and Podcast Liftoff to Podcast Workflows. Maybe we can get into a what's the difference between Podcast Liftoff and Podcast Workflows sort of thing in the future. But today, I want to focus on the tools page.
So I'm excited to announce that a very important piece of cornerstone content for Podcast Workflows is finally live. That is version 1.0 of the tools page that I wanted to build last year. So in the rest of this episode, I'll kinda go through the tools, like how I decided what sections to do for now, what you can expect from the page, and then some plans for the future.
Let's start off with a couple of programming notes about this page.First of all, it's not comprehensive yet. Right now, it's tools I have direct or indirect experience with, so I could speak to actually using them. Right? So I probably won't list, for example, every possible podcast hosting platform because there's a lot, but I will probably expand to more than the four that are there now, depending on a few other things that I'll talk about in a minute. There are a bunch of categories which we'll talk about, but I plan on adding more based on feedback and questions. And I've already got this is I think this is the most exciting thing for me is that I already have a bunch of feedback because I announced this to my mailing list first, and they wrote in with great feedback. I got some direct messages on LinkedIn from people who shared it, people from my mailing list who shared it on LinkedIn, and then I got feedback from them. So just a lot of really exciting things already in the first few days of this project.
So, again, thanks to everybody who has written in so far. But I do plan on adding more categories based on the feedback and the questions I'm getting. Each tool, again, you can visit this page if you wanna follow along over at [podcastworkflows.com/tools]. It'll also be in the description for this episode.
Each tool has 3 Attributes associated with it.
The first is a star rating. 1 through 5, half stars are included. So it's really like a 10 scale. Right? The rating is the tool relative to the category it's in. So for example, you might notice that Riverside has 2 different ratings, one for the remote recordings category and one for the transcription category. I did this on purpose because if I'm recommending the best possible tools and tool sets, I don't want to make it seem like let's use Riverside again. Right? It's amazing. It's best in class for remote recordings, but there are a lot better tools for transcription if you're just looking for transcripts. So I wanna be clear about that in the ratings.
Next is a pros and cons list. I really want this to be impartial. Right? I've got associations with, rss.com and other podcast tools. I've had some of the tools on this page sponsor my podcast. There are affiliate links, but I really want this to be an impartial set of tools so that people can make the best possible decisions. So, the the second thing after the star rating is a pros and cons list. No tool is perfect, and I want that to be reflected on the page.
I've seen a lot of, I won't call anybody out by name, but, you know, some of the best content out there is the, you know, best tools in category, right, or what's the best website for blah blah. And then you have, either affiliate link farms who are just saying the best tool is the one with the best affiliate payout, or you're having tools in that category trying to rank for those keywords, and they're putting themselves first where there are are no cons, only pros. I want to be as independent as possible in this, and I want to make sure that when I recommend something, I look at the good, I look at the bad, and then I make the best possible recommendation for somebody. So pros and cons list is crucial.
And then at the recommendation of my friend Brian, he said that I should have like, a scenarios section, and I'll get to that in a second, or I'll talk about that in the plans for the future. But, basically, what he meant was maybe you should list, like, who this tool is best for. And so I've also added a best for list, and this is the different scenarios for why you might choose that tool over the others in its category. Right? So if people are like, well, like, what's the difference between Riverside and SquadCast? I give them specific scenarios for why they might pick 1 over the other. So it's not comprehensive yet. There are several categories I'm gonna add more based on feedback. Each tool has 3 attributes, star rating, pros and cons, and best four list.
And then number 4 in the kind of notes is it's not an affiliate farm, but there are affiliate links. I don't envision this as making a bunch of money for me, but I have put and continue to put in a lot of time to make this the best possible guide it could be. I want it to be a free resource for podcasters at any stage. And so if I'm gonna make the time investment, then there does need to be some benefit for me for that time. I obviously don't want that page to be sponsored because, again, the integrity and impartiality of the page is really important to me. And so affiliate links are the best way for me to hopefully recoup a little money for the efforts of making this page while also ensuring that it remains impartial.
Number 5 is it there is a table of contents, so you can easily browse by category. That's going to be more crucial as more categories get added. So before we get to the plans for the future, let's take a look at the page. Again, you can follow along over at [podcastworkflows.com/tools].
So the categories I decided to go with at first are podcast hosting platforms. Obviously, recordings and and streaming interviews, like tools for recording and streaming interviews, planning and organizing, editing, transcription, AI repurposing, private podcast platforms. That is, that was really good because it allowed me to do some initial research on a long form piece I'm working on. And then scheduling automation and recording and audio tools. And so I won't go through all of the tools. Obviously, you can find them and see them yourselves.
But, again, each one has kind of a star rating. I have some text describing the service, and then I'll pick 1 at random. I guess I'll pick, let's just say Descript shows up a lot on this page because there's a lot of stuff.
So for editing, Descript has a 4 star rating. If it was just for me, I'd probably actually really give it a little bit less, but it is really good for a lot of people. So the the pros and cons. The pros, it's easy to use. You can edit audio and video by editing text. Great AI features built in, free to start, easy publish to several platforms.
And the cons is it I don't think it handles complicated projects well. It relies on transcripts, and you can blow through minutes quickly, and it doesn't support external audio plug ins. And that was kind of the deal breaker for me. That's why I'm not using it anymore. But it is best for and I'm really doing this so you could see how the best for section is formatted. It's best for if you want an all in one recording, editing, and publishing app, if you want to make simple occasional edits, and if you want to do first pass edits before sending the files to an editor. Right? So if you have Descript and you want your editor to do like, the final mix, but you don't wanna have your editor cut things out, you can easily do the cutting yourself and pass it along. So that's how it's formatted. Everyone's like, every sentence starts with if you, or if you want. So, like, maybe I should do best for if you want, but I don't know. The Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress, like, really yelled at me for that. It's like, hey. You have, like, dozens of sentences that all start with the same exact phrase, but I thought that was a good choice stylistically.
The only other thing to note on this page is the recording and audio tools. There's not a pros and cons or best for, because there's only 2, and they're very unrelated. One is iZotope audience plugins, and then the other is my Podcasting Gift Guide. So I don't have best for or pros and cons there.
The gift guide, there are no pros and cons. It's just people who wanna check out gear. I'm probably gonna move that page over to Podcast Workflows. It's at [podcastliftoff.com] right now, but that's another thing for the future. So I'm really pleased with the way it turned out. Maybe at the end of this episode, I'll get into kind of how I put the page together because I did get a question about that. Like, hey. What did you use for this? It looks really good. And that's also very exciting because I want this to look good, and I want it to be easy to use. So that's the the guide in its current form now.
Here's what's up next. I wanna add more tools. I wanna add more tools to the current categories, and I want to add more categories. I wanna fill out each section with more context and links to other stories on the site. So for example, you know, I have 1 or 2 sentences at the beginning of each section. I maybe want it to be a little bit more than that because I want this to be an educational resource as well. And since it's cornerstone content, I would like it to help direct people to other helpful stories. So, you know, I am maybe I have a dynamic ads service section, though I probably won't. But if I do, then I'll link out to my long form piece on the Dynamic Ads, my experience with Dynamic Ads.
I want to create short form scenarios combining the tools to build kits for different podcasters. And the reason I say it like that short form scenarios is it's not gonna be like these long form stories like, hey. You're Sally, and you have a full time job, and you wanna do this. It's more like if you are just starting out today, maybe these are the tools you wanna use. If you're a solo podcaster, maybe these are the tools you wanna use. If you're a host, co host podcaster. If you do interviews, these are the tools you wanna use. That's mostly what I'm thinking about for these scenarios. I thought about launching it with version 1, but it would take too long. I wanna put some good thought into those and maybe get some feedback. So they'll probably be at their own kind of page, like slash scenarios. But that'll be heavily linked or heavily intertwined with the tools page, obviously.
And then the other thing I wanna do is move my gift guide to the site as I said earlier so that for two reasons: I'm gonna keep the gift guide as is because that's really good content. It does well for me every year. I like to update it every year to make sure it's current, but there is a lot of overlap. And so moving the gift guide over will help me have one more internal link in this kind of suite of content, but then I'll also add a hardware section to the page. And so let's get into some of the things that kind of based on the feedback I got, some changes I'm going to make.
So first, next for the tool. I wrote this down on a piece of paper on my sidekick notepad. Shout out to Cortex brand next for the page. Editing services, my editor actually recommended this, and I thought it was a great idea because right above the editing tool or right below the editing tool's headline, I say, you should really hire an editor, but if you don't. Right? So I'm telling them to do something but not giving them any guidance on this. So I'll probably have the editing tools and then right under editing services, I just wanna vet a couple more services that I could recommend in different instances. Then maybe other services, but I'm not really sure about that, you know.
Under transcription, I could put, like, per like, person transcription tools or transcribers like, my VA does all my transcripts now, but I had a great transcriptionist, I guess, named Evelyn who did an amazing job for a long time. Like, maybe I can recommend her, But that's kinda what I'm thinking.
Another piece of feedback I got was, to do audiograms. And so I like that. I have 3, I'm kind of thinking about, but 2 are already listed multiple times on the page already, that’s Descript and Riverside, as well as Headliner. But, you know, I wanna look into some more of those tools.
Email service providers, then I kinda start to get into the what are podcast tool adjacent. Right? And so I'm always telling podcasters to start a mailing list. And so if I'm telling them to do that, maybe an email service provider. I want to do 3: ConvertKit, Beehive, and Substack are probably it.
And then maybe news sites. Maybe not. Maybe that's something different. Like, maybe I have like, recommended newsletter section because that's not really tools anymore, and I really wanna keep this tight. Like, I want it to be a vast resource, but I don't want it to be a hodgepodge of everything I recommend. I want this to be a resource where it's like, oh, I need a tool for this. I'm gonna go to podcastworkflows.com/tools.
So that's kind of my ultimate goal there. I might do podcast episodes here on each of the sections. Like, maybe that's something I will do. Let me know if that sounds interesting to you, if you just wanna hear me kinda, like, talk through some of that stuff. But I think that's it for this episode.
Oh, I did tease about how I put together the site. It's, like, not very exciting. I use WordPress. If you know my background, you would have already known that because I was a WordPress Developer for like, 20 years. And I'm using the Cadence theme. I'll have affiliate links in the show notes. The Cadence theme with Cadence blocks, and there's a particular block in Cadence block called row or row layout that makes it really easy to do a lot of things.
And honestly, that's all I did. I use a button block for each of the links, and I used an app called Sip to get the primary brand color for the button. Right? I didn't wanna have a bunch of blue buttons or a bunch of gray buttons. So each button is the primary brand color. So orange.com is orange, Transistor is yellow, Captivate is like this pink purple, Buzzsprout is green. So I use Sip to get those colors.
And then for the ratings block, Jetpack actually has a star rating block that's really good, and so I used that. Cadence also has, like, an accordion block, and that's what I used for the pros and cons and best 4 so that the page wouldn't be super long and everything wasn't just, like, expanded.
So that is basically how I did it. All of my affiliate links are linked through Switchy which is a great, affordable. Well, I got it on an AppSumo deal, but it's a really great link shortener. So I use it there. I really love it. It's one of the few AppSumo deals that I've purchased that I actually use. I mean the last few I bought. There was a time where, you know, I think all of us who know of AppSumo went through this. Right? We would just buy AppSumo deals aspirationally, and I was like, this is I'm wasting more money. So the last few tools I bought I've actually used, but, Switchy is one that has been really great. And so I'm using that for all of my affiliate links. I used to keep them on WordPress like, there's a thirsty affiliates plugin that will autolink certain text. The idea is that, like, anytime you mention rss.com, it uses your affiliate link or whatever. And I just felt like that wasn't my favorite way to do it, and so I've decided to just use Switchy. So that's it. WordPress, Cadence Theme, Cadence Blocks, the Jetpack star rating plug in, Switchy for short links, and then SIP to get the brand colors.
So that's it for this episode. If you check out the page, I would love to know your feedback. You can go to [podcastworkflows.com/feedback] or I'm on every social network, basically @jcasabona.
Thanks so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed this. And until next time, I can't wait to see what you make.
Hey, before you go, I want to tell you about a free resource I have called my Podcast Process Templates. They are a set of Notion documents that give you a full podcast planner, a show planner, and even some AI prompts to help you get the creative juices flowing. You obviously want to improve your podcast workflows and save time and these templates will give you a basis for all of your other processes. Through my Notion and Airtable templates, I am able to automate a number of things as well as stay organized so that I am using my podcasting time more efficiently.
If you wanna get your hands on these templates completely for free, you can head over to [podcastworkflows.com/templates]. That's [podcastworkflows.com/templates] to get your free podcasting process templates, today.
