Are you wasting a ton of time managing your podcast because you don’t have the appropriate templates in place? I’ve got you covered! Today, I’m sharing 5 templates every podcaster needs to streamline their podcast production (two of which you can grab in my shop)!
Listen in as I share about email templates, interview outlines, graphics, and so much more in this important episode all about podcast templates!
Clocking In with Haylee Gaffin is produced and brought to you by Gaffin Creative, a podcast production company for creative entrepreneurs. Learn more about our services at Gaffincreative.com, plus you’ll also find resources, show notes, and more for the Clocking In Podcast.
5 Templates for Your Podcast
1. Interview Outline Template
When interviewing guests you’ll want to have a dynamic podcast interview outline for your guests that you can plug custom questions into. Your podcast may ask the same questions to each guest, followed by custom questions, then a similar interview exit for sharing their contact information.
2. Podcast Guest Email Templates
Copy & paste email templates can help save you time in your inbox. Grab my 6 canned emails for podcast guest communication in my shop. These 6 emails include:
- Pitching a Potential Guest
- Scheduling an Interview with a Guest
- Media Request (From Assistant)
- Interview Prep (Tech & Question Guide) and Media Request
- Episode is Going Live
- Reminder: Your Episode is Live
Grab my 6 Podcast Guest Email Templates for just $19! If you’re looking for a way to reject podcast pitches, I’ve also created a pack of 6 rejection templates!
3. Podcast Show Notes Template
Your show notes are a great resource to highlight the key takeaways for your episode, but it’s likely that you’ll use a particular formatting for them, along with similar highlights. Here are a few things to include in your podcast show notes template:
- Podcast Production Disclaimer
- Staple Sections of the Show: Get to Know Guests, Standard Questions, Bios, etc.
- Links Section
Side note: Consider how you want to share show notes in your podcast players vs. your website show notes.
4. Podcast Graphic Templates
Creating consistency in graphics is important for your branding, just ask your graphic designer! With that, it’s important to create graphic templates for your podcast not only for your brand, but also to streamline your content creation process. Here are a few templates you should consider creating for your podcast:
- Episode Cover Graphic
- Pinterest Graphics
- Blog Graphics
- IG Story Announcements
- Any Social Media Graphics
5. Podcast Content & Project Planning Template
Managing a podcast can be overwhelming, especially if you don’t have a podcast producer! That’s why it’s important to have a template or a system that allows you to better manage the tasks associated with your podcast. If you’re a digital planner, programs like asana or clickup are perfect for you. If you’re still stuck in the paper world (no judgement here), you can grab my Podcast Episode Planner for $39 in the shop.
Who I’m Cheering for this Week:
Anyone who has ever launched a shop.
Links
gaffincreative.com/shop
6 Podcast Guest Email Templates
Podcast Episode Planner
The Podcast Workflow Mini Course
Review the Transcript:
Templates are a resource that can streamline your work. In my experience as a project manager in the past, I found so much value in create templates and finding ways to minimize how much time I’m spending on repeated tasks. In today’s episode, I’m sharing 5 templates you need as a podcast host or producer so you aren’t spending hours repeating and rewriting things you’ve already done a million times.
And… I’m doing something special today, because today is a special day—It’s my birthday! To celebrate, I’ve launched an online shop of podcast resources! Whether you’re ready to plan your podcast, start planning out your podcast content and make sure you’re taking care of every step, or you’re needing some guidance on communicating with guests, we’ve launched with three items in the shop! Head over to gaffincreative.com/shop to check it out!
–
If you’re anything like me, you LOVE a good canned response or template, essentially anything that makes your life easier or a task move faster.
After nearly four years in podcasting, I’ve found X templates that every podcaster needs for their podcast.
Now you may push back and say that you love personalizing and putting the time into creating each of these on custom basis—and guess what, you still can. I love looking at templates as shells—you can completely customize them.
I think about it like easter eggs. When we were kids (and maybe you do it for your kids now), we would get easter eggs to dye. We all got the same eggs, the same ink, and the same tools. We could all choose to make exactly the same egg by dipping it in the dye that was closest to us… but we also had the option to customize it.
If we look at any tool in our business like that, we have the option to use exactly what we’re provided, or customize it. That’s how templates are supposed to be.
So let’s chat about a few templates I believe will streamline your podcast process, whether you have a podcast producer or not.
Let’s start at the beginning, before you record. If your show includes guest interviews, you’ll want to ensure that you have a great podcast interview outline that outlines all the questions and things you’ll be covering in the interview. Many podcasters will create a set of standard questions to use in their interviews. This helps keep a consistency in the interviews, allows them to get to know the guest, but also makes for an easy way to ease into the conversation. You may have 2-3 standard questions, then 2-3 custom questions. You’ll always want to end with offering up the guest to promote the best way to get connected with them, which would be the final piece of this template.
Now, in addition to this, you’ll also want to create templated emails for your guest communication. Until you’re a few episodes in, you may not realize how much you’ll be communicating with your guests leading up to both the interview and the release of the episode. Having email templates will allow you to spend less time in your inbox and more time doing things in your business. So i have 6 email templates I share with podcast consulting clients, and they’re the ones I use for each of my own clients. They include:
- Pitching a Potential Guest
- Scheduling an Interview with a Guest
- Media Request (From Assistant)
- Interview Prep (Tech & Question Guide) and Media Request
- Episode is Going Live
- Reminder: Your Episode is Live
You can grab these 6 email templates for $19 at gaffincreative.com/shop or head to the show notes, where I’ll link them there. Now, remember that these are shells, they’re templates.. You can absolutely customize them to fit your needs—the value of these templates is I’m sharing everything you need to say to prepare your guests, set expectations, and communicate with them! All of my clients are using these templates, but they’re customized to their needs and their show.
The third thing I want to talk about is your podcast show notes. Now not every podcast uses show notes as a resource, but I highly encourage it for my clients, because almost every podcast I produce is being used as a marketing tool or educational format for their particular industry.
A few items that I typically keep the same over and over again in a client’s show notes are:
- The production disclaimer, which essentially is the “This podcast is brought to you by [insert client business name]…” which almost serves as an ad for their business.
- I also include any staple sections of their shows, specifically for interviews: a get to know the guest section, any particular questions they always ask guests, and a section for the guest’s bio.
- The links section for any resources mentioned in the episode
- And the most important thing is the formatting. If there is an SEO strategy and we’re using H2 tags throughout, or they prefer to have pull quote, all formatting is essential in the podcast show notes template.
In addition, you’ll want to consider how you’ll treat your podcast player show notes vs your website show notes. This one is entirely up to preference. I recently started testing my show notes to only include the description and a link to the episode in the players, then full show notes on the website. We’ll see how this goes and then I’ll take the findings and see if it impacts how I handle my client’s show notes.
Now that you’ve set a standard for your show notes, it’s important that you have consistency in your graphics so that your branding is recognizable. One way to do this is to create a variety of graphic templates for your show. This could include templates for your episode cover photo, pinterest photo, blog photo, story announcement, and social media graphics. While you may not want your social media graphics to look exactly the same in your feed every time, you can create variations and alternate through those.
For example, I have each of the templates that I just mentioned for my own podcast, along with four different social media graphics that I can alternate through based on what my feed is planned to look like at the time of release. The best part is that I use every graphic template, because I can repurpose what’s not used on Instagram and facebook to my Pinterest strategy.
Lsat but not least, your podcast may need a little project planning template. I personally use both paper and digital versions for my podcast planning.
When it comes to digital I set up a custom asana board for each of my podcast clients based off of a template I developed over the last few years! If a client uses another project management tool, I’m happy to convert my template to that if it helps serve their business better. I know that project management tools like asana can be overwhelming—that’s why I offer an a la carte service for podcasters to set up a project management tool, like asana, and plan out the first three months of content for you!
If you’re anything like me, it took a long time for me to move out of the paper world—and honestly I still track most of my work on both paper and digital.. So I’ve created a podcast content planner that helps you plan your content, outline your episodes, and manage every task that goes along with producing your podcast! This new workbook is also available in the shop I launched today! For $39 you can grab this download to print at home!
To recap, the 5 templates you need for your podcast include:
- Interview outline template
- Email templates (grab my guest communication email templates in the shop)
- Show notes templates
- Graphic templates
- Project planning templates (grab my content planning workbook in the shop)
