Planning your podcasts

Planning a podcast should not be seen as scripting a speech. Engaging podcasts often have a conversational tone that requires a certain degree of spontaneity and improvisation. Writing content in advance can be useful to keep track of the subject matter, keep track of time, have data you want to talk about, or prompts to topics to talk about at specific moments. As a general rule it is not a good idea to write text that you will read verbatim.

When inviting guests to talk on very specific topics, it might be a good idea to have a chat (sometimes referred to as a pre-interview in more formal settings) before the start of the discussion to get a general idea  of what will be discussed. This also gives you the chance to do some research if you need to.

Podcasts should not be longer than an hour. If the content you are covering requires more than an hour, consider splitting the podcast into separate parts, and logically group content in each part. It is also a good idea to plan breaks within a podcast episode. This gives listeners a break, and gives you the opportunity to recover if at some point the podcast is going in a direction you feel is irrelevant or if you feel that have lost control over the conversation/interview. If you have guests booked for a single session, you can always record everything in one sitting and break the podcast into two episodes as part of your editing - just make sure you plan this ahead so you can determine a logical point for that break.

Most listeners will decide whether they will listen to your podcast within the first minute of listening, so it is important that you clearly introduce the topic (and guests) right at the start to draw your audience in right from the start.

When planning your podcast episodes, think about how sustainable the frequency of your episodes will be – episodes can take several hours to write, record and edit, which can be onerous to do weekly. Many people start by planning one episode a week, without realising how much work it can sometimes take from writing to publishing.