Podcasting is a fantastic content marketing tool, and like any good tool, it requires commitment and investment. And when it’s done right, it can yield a great return on investment by creating a brand personality, creating connections with your target audience, and creating content to fuel your amplified marketing strategy. But like in all areas of business, you have to make sure that your processes are efficient and effective.
If you’re spending too many hours editing or waiting until the last minute to find topics and guests, then it’s time to make a few changes. The success of your B2B podcast relies on how well you manage your processes; otherwise, it can turn into a time-suck.
To make your podcast the most efficient it can be, you should be continuously finding ways to make improvements. Here are a few tips to help you get started.
Shaping (and Refining) Your Podcast Process
What does your current B2B podcast process look like? Does it involve a repeatable, step-by-step process? Or is it more fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants, do whatever you can when you can, causing delays and mistakes in episodes—or worse, problems that last entire seasons? If you don’t have a consistent process that’s fast, seamless, and simple, then you need to make some adjustments.
The typical podcast process consists of four stages:
1. Planning
2. Recording
3. Editing
4. Publishing
Let’s review some ways you can make each of these stages better.
Planning
The planning stage consists of brainstorming, choosing topics, and expert guest outreach. You should do this well in advance, so you have everything aligned weeks ahead of time. Treat your podcast like you would a content calendar. Having topics lined up for the entire series is ideal. This gives you time to come up with questions and find guests to interview.
Here are several ways you can enhance the efficiency of your planning:
● Use collaborative tools like Google Docs and Sheets
● Try topic discovery tools like Quora and BuzzSumo to find ideas
● Talk to your sales staff about the questions leads and customers are asking
● Brainstorm with your internal staff for a big topic list
● Create a calendar for episodes (like Google Calendar)
● Make a list of experts in your industry and in different topic categories
The more fleshed out your strategy is, the easier and faster your planning process becomes. Here’s how David Poole, the Producer of the Georgian Impact Podcast, and his co-host handle brainstorming:
“We do our individual research because it stops us from biasing each other’s opinion onto what we think the flow of the podcast should be, what we think we should focus on, what the most interesting tidbits and stories are. Even if we both do it independently, we come up with two different sets of ideas, and then we can brainstorm together more effectively. So we have that brainstorming session booked.
“Then we go through doing that, and we open up a Google doc, we pour all of our ideas in, and during that hour, we tend to just come up with a very high level of, say, four or five points’ flow that we think looks good for this particular guest. And then John will go away himself and add in his flavor and his coloring because he has a very particular way of talking, and he’s nailed that on his own over time,” David explained.
Recording
Getting the best recordings for your podcast is a top priority. So you use tools like Zoom to capture conversations and simplify the uploading and editing process. But what are you doing to get the best audio for each episode?
If you take notes from David Poole, you’ll add an additional step to your process.
“The first stage is really to select a time for the podcast and to send a noise-canceling headset to our guests,” David shared.
Going this route ensures there will be no audio mishaps on your guests’ end.
“Then we move into the recording. We use Zoom for all of our recordings. And if you don’t know about the dual-track option in Zoom, I highly recommend that you turn it on because it means you get to download separate tracks afterward, and you can clean up any coughs and sneezes that happen,” David continued.
Editing
There are several ways you can improve your editing process. You may find a new tool that speeds up editing. Or it may be the steps you take that are slowing down your progress. In this case, you may find outsourcing to an agency to be ideal.
Let’s take a look at how David manages the editing process.
“We move into Descript, which is our tool of choice for the production process. And so for getting to that—we call it the rough cut—it takes about half the time I find then working with an audio editor. I don’t know, maybe other producers listening are more familiar with using those types of programs, but I personally am much more familiar with word processing as a toolset; Descript just feels way more what I’m used to.
“Typically, we will have a couple of questions that we need to rerecord just to better fit what the output is. So John will go back and rerecord. That’s usually when he records his intro as well. We’ve played around with so many different ways of doing the intro, but we’ve found that it works probably better if it’s done afterward. And then we send to a production company called Pop Up Podcasting, they’re based in Ottawa, and they make everything sound even better. They take the flow that we’ve developed in Descript, and they deal with all the cuts and the edits. They add the intro music, the outro music. They just really smooth all the bumps out and everything to make it a smooth audio experience.”
Publishing
Let’s face it—there’s more to releasing a podcast than hitting the “publish” button. This, too, has a process that can hurt or help your podcast’s success. You have to publish the episode to your platform, create a transcript, pull key takeaways as audio snippets, and share those snippets on social channels (among other things). The tools you have in place can make or break the post-production process.
Here’s how David handles it.
“We also have one more round of reviews backing the script. So we actually re-upload our final versions of the script. And that’s when I’ll share it with PT, who’s our communications manager, who will go in and highlight and pull all of the shareable sections. And in the past, what we would do is pull those down and create audiograms. Now, what we do is go into Casted and take the Casted transcript, find the social media snippets and create the key takeaways.”
Consolidating Your Podcasting Tools
Your podcasting process is only as efficient as the tools you use. If your setup consists of multiple tools, consider finding one that offers multiple solutions in a single platform. This will make it faster and easier to go from pre-production to post-production without hiccups. Plus, there’s the convenience of having all your data in one location.
We are (not surprisingly) big fans of being able to do all of your processes in one platform, with numerous tools, (Casted *cough,cough*) and owning your show vs. publishing on other platforms and being at their mercy.
Giving Your Team Access to Content
A podcast isn’t just for your audience — it’s a resource your teams can use to amplify their campaigns. Podcasts help enhance emails, blog posts, and ABM campaigns— they can have great impact even during the sales process. But it can be challenging to find the right episodes and snippets quickly. You can eliminate this issue by implementing tools that store your podcast content and provide access to your teams. With Casted, you can allow anyone on your team, from your CSRs to your Sales Team to the CEO, to go in and pull whatever information they need, whether it be a transcript, audiogram, clip or more.
Make your podcast process as efficient as possible. Consolidate your content, and publishing into a single platform, and save yourself times and headaches. If you’d like to make your B2B podcast more efficient, then schedule a demo with us today!
