SOP for Publishing my Daily, Mini Podcast
I like to imagine that when Thomas Jefferson finished writing the Declaration of Independence, he sat back in the swivel chair he invented, smiled, and sighed a big sign of relieve.
The same thing goes for when Walter Cronkite finished his first TV broadcast, JK Rowling finished Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and Simone Biles stuck the landing in her last Olympic gold medal performance.
Not that anything I’ve done is anywhere close to the same level of any of those things…but I’ve finally done it. I hit the proverbial “publish” button on my new daily podcast.
I’ve been sitting on it for a while, saying that it’s not as good as I’d like it to be. That I don’t have as many episodes banked as I’d like. That I don’t have a rock solid process in place.
All of those are poor excuses though. I so I finally hit publish.
It starts Monday, October 2nd, a week where I’ll be away at a conference called CaboPress.
…not that it matters much, because I have a whole process in place that I’m going to share with you — how I started, and where I’ll go from here.
I also have some announcements about the membership at the end!
How The Show Works
OK so first, the show is the latest iteration of my podcasting focused podcast, now called Podcast Workflows, to have alignment with the newsletter and articles.
It’s a daily podcast, Monday through Friday. On Wednesdays, listeners get a 20-30 minute deep dive of a podcast. It’s a narration of one of my previously published long-form articles.
Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, they get a short (usually 5 minutes or less) tip on how to improve their podcast (through growth, monetization, or process).
These come from the vast amount of emails, blog posts, and social content I’ve created over the last 2 years or so, all housed in an Airtable base that’s quite instrumental to the production of this show.
Recording and Editing
For the short episodes, I don’t do too much editing. I have a simple template with bed music and an intro, and I try to start with a cold open or story. Then I give the tip, and sign off.
For the deep dives, it’s basically a verbatim read of the article, but I’m trying a few things I haven’t before:
- Adding audio cues so people know when I’m about to state top takeaway
- Sound effects that add an extra layer of depth to the show. This could be writing sounds, record scratching, or anything else that serve as little pattern interrupts.
I think once I get this process down, I’ll likely send it off to someone else, who’ll have a better touch than me for proper audio engineering. But part of why I’m doing it now is to experiment and know how to ask for what I want.
I’ll likely start adding a gab for DAI, but not for sponsors. This show is strictly for lead generation and audience building.
Once an episode is finished, I’ll save it to a Dropbox folder I share with my VA, naming it SeasonNumber-EpisodeNumber-Topic so she knows how to reference it based on the Airtable base.
Creating the SOP
Now, part of creating the SOP for me is recording how I do the process so my VA can transcribe the video, and write out the steps for whatever I’m doing.
This process has allowed us to create a handbook for my company, Good House Media, LLC, and all of the online properties I manage!
This time was a little different because I didn’t already have a clear process in place. So I hit record, and talked through what I was doing, making notes for myself and my VA, Ana.
Luckily at this point, Ana is used to me meandering so that shouldn’t be a problem.
One thing that came out of that video was me making some improvements to the Airtable base…
Tracking in Airtable
Ana has access to this view in Airtable, which tells her what episodes are ready to publish, the content to include, and the episode number and publish date.
I also have several other views to let me know what ones I need to work on next, which ones are already published, and a list of raw material for me to convert into episodes.
It’s basically then brain of the operation. But it didn’t look anything like this when I started recording.
I realized in recording that this was a mess Ana shouldn’t be expected to understand.
So I cleaned it up, added more info to it, and created all of the view I referenced above.
It’s in much better shape than it was before I hit record.
As I write this, Ana is currently working on the SOP. I’m confident by Monday we’ll have a great process in place.
Next Steps
At this point, my only job (once I review the SOP Ana creates) its record. This is clutch for a daily podcast, as it can quickly turn into a grind if you’re trying to record and publish every day.
Ana will know to check the Airtable weekly to see if there are new episodes to schedule, and the idea is to stay two weeks ahead at any given point.
I will likely add some email reminders like she gets with How I Built It, but the How I Built It process is much more automated, as more people are involved there.
I will probably trigger an email or DM based on hitting “Episode Created” so she knows to schedule it at here convenience.
Membership Updates
OK so there are few updates to mention:
- The first is that I’ve effectively killed lower plans of the membership. They weren’t really selling once I introduced the higher plans, and this allows me to direct my focus to creating a great community of people who want to improve their podcast workflows.
- If you did get a lower plan before I killed them, don’t worry. Your price isn’t going up. This include people who purchased the highest plan more recently, as that current price is only an introductory price that will increase after Black Friday.
- Part of the new membership benefits is more live streams and workshop events. I’ll be using Uscreen for that, so look for an email about joining forge.podcastworkflows.com sometime in the next 10 days (I go to CaboPress next week).
- Finally, the membership has a new name that’s going to stick: The Podcast Workflows Foundry, or Podcast Foundry for short. This name is indicative of the fact that we’re forging new workflows, experimenting with processes, and building cool stuff, all in the service of making our lives easier.
Phew! This was a long one. If you have any questions, let me know!