Productivity tips for podcasters who don’t want to outsource

NOTE: This podcast was transcribed by a free AI tool called Otter. Please forgive any typos or errors. Melissa Guller 0:00 Before we get started, I’m excited to share that I have a new, free training called “How to launch a podcast in 60 days without feeling overwhelmed” I’ll help you cut your production time in half and start a high-quality podcast without any complicated tech or confusing editing tools. If you’re even a little bit curious about starting your own podcast, I’m going to share three of the biggest mistakes I see new podcast hosts keep making and I’ll walk you through my step-by-step podcast launch system, which hundreds of Wit & Wire students have used to launch their podcasts. Learn more and save your spot at witandwire.com/register. Melissa Guller 0:32 Welcome to Wit & Wire, where we take you behind-the-scenes to learn how to start and scale a successful podcast that makes an impact. I’m your host, Melissa Guller, a Podcast Producer, Host, and Instructor on a mission to amplify and diversify voices in podcasting. No matter how new or seasoned you are as a host, I can’t wait to help you find more listeners, expand your audience, build authentic connections, and hit the charts. Melissa Guller 0:51 Welcome back, podcasters. I’m Melissa, and today, I can’t wait to introduce you to Jacqueline Aenlle, the host of From Urban to Ag. Jacqueline is a one-woman show, quite literally. She’s a doctoral student outside of running her podcast, and she’s here today to find new strategies to make her overall podcast production process take less time without sacrificing the quality of her show. And although outsourcing is a great option, and one I definitely recommend if it makes sense for you, today we’re going to focus more on saving time, doing less, and streamlining your overall workflow so you can spend time doing what you love most, which is creating great episodes for your listeners. Now let’s say hello and meet today’s Wit & Wire podcaster. Jacqueline Aenlle 1:55 My name is Jacqueline, I am a doctoral student at the University of Florida, but originally from California, the Bay Area, and my podcast is called From Urban to Ag. And I came up with this idea because I’m from a very urban area, San Francisco. I grew up, you know, in the city I didn’t have a lot of connections to food production but got interested in it in my college career started studying it fell in love with it and I wanted to share that experience with others I wanted other people to have that experience of being able to ask questions about food and animals and the environment in a safe environment. Melissa Guller 2:33 At the time of our recording, Jacqueline had been podcasting for about a year, which is a huge accomplishment. And I had to ask her. Is there anything that she wished she had done differently or that she had known when she first got started. Jacqueline Aenlle 2:45 I will say that I wish I’d had a couple interviews recorded, and some content ready to go so I could be more consistent in the beginning than me, you know, week to week, struggling to find content. Melissa Guller 2:57 She also made a few really smart adjustments to her posting schedule as she went along. Jacqueline Aenlle 3:03 I published episodes bi weekly, that was helpful for me I just couldn’t get the time commitment to weekly episodes but I learned at least from my listeners, being in a routine, even if it isn’t as frequent is better than nothing, you know, and then the only other thing that I really recommend is having a break between seasons, to get all my content so what I did before I came back with my second season in June. I recorded at least 10 interviews before the first one was published. But then when I started my season. All I had to do was take that contract and run with it I didn’t have to be scrambling with scheduling and whatnot so that’d be my recommendation is kind of setting aside that time to do a lot of that legwork ahead of time. Melissa Guller 3:44 I love this advice from Jacqueline and I couldn’t agree more. I think it’s so helpful to not only batch your content and record a good amount, ahead of the game, but also I’m often asked how long does it take to launch a podcast and my answer is it depends. And it’s not just because it’s an answer, but to me it depends not only on how quickly you want to move, but also on how many episodes, you want to have at least recorded, if not fully finished before you much. I am in the business of helping people launch, high quality, long term, podcasts, so to me I have an extra weeks before your podcast, to really set yourself up for success, with a few additional recordings. But with that, podcaster and you haven’t launched yet, or even if you’re in your early phases, Jacqueline actually had one more really amazing tip that I wanted to share if you are considering doing batch recordings. Jacqueline Aenlle 4:41 Make sure you edit your first interview before you record your second, because I learned so much by listening back to how I facilitated an interview, I learned so much listening back to those beginning interviews, I could then change and improve upon my ability to host and navigate an episode that would be like my one other little tidbit in there is take the learning opportunities before you get too far into it. Melissa Guller 5:05 Now at this point, Jacqueline and I, we’re ready to dive into the coaching part of our conversation, and her question is something that I have a feeling, a lot of you will relate to. Jacqueline Aenlle 5:14 Podcasting isn’t my full time job it’s not most people’s full time gig if you want to call it that, and it’s just me I don’t have a co host. I don’t have a team helping me with any pieces of like the social media or marketing it or editing. I will do more with my podcast but in order to do that I need help figuring out how to manage my time best because it takes time to successfully complete all those components to have good editing, Good marketing before during an after you’re launching a new episode so what is your advice to make it more efficient as far as time management and where to spend most of my time. Melissa Guller 5:50 I think it’s a great question because, especially if you start to feel like there’s this overwhelm of things to do, that’s probably where podcasters lose steam or potentially stop before they’ve even really had a chance to get the podcast, off the ground. And before we start kind of chatting. Are you definitely thinking that you want to maintain your status as the one woman show quite late, or are you considering outsourcing any parts of production? Jacqueline Aenlle 6:15 You know, that is a excellent question. As of right now I am planning on Season Three being so just me hosting. I don’t feel like I have the resources to outsource some of the behind the scenes work of editing and marketing, just because it would take money. Now if my podcast was making money and I could hire someone to help with those components I think I’m in a position right now to bring on more people. Melissa Guller 6:40 That make sense and it’s a tricky balance I think because we’re always spending something we’re either choosing to spend time, or to spend money, but I do want to focus on advice that we can offer that doesn’t require you to outsource, like I think outsourcing is really great and depending on what your goals are as a podcaster, I think for some people it’s absolutely the right decision. But for today, I think what we can do instead is ask, what makes the most of your time, which is I think what your question comes down to is, what are the things that are worth spending time on, where can we streamline and maybe there are some things that you don’t need to be doing but perhaps feel like you should be doing. Great. Let’s start by focusing on marketing and maybe if we have time we’ll circle back to production, but I imagine a lot of listeners also have questions around how to spend time marketing, what makes a difference. And maybe for each individual, it’ll be a little bit different. So I do want to give a little bit of a disclaimer that I think the advice that we come up with may be different for you than it is for everybody tuning in, because I think a big part of marketing is understanding who your listener is and where they are. So who is listening to your podcast. Jacqueline Aenlle 7:50 So my target audience was urban consumers of food and products that come from agriculture, but my unintended audience is I have a lot of graduate students, or undergraduate students who are from a similar field as me, tuning in. I have a lot of teachers and educators that are using my podcasts in your classrooms. And lastly, producers that agricultural producers listening. Melissa Guller 8:13 Interesting, so that’s really helpful to know that you do have pretty different, I would say, audience members because we’ll probably want to think about them separately. Also, can you tell us, what are you currently doing to market your podcast. Jacqueline Aenlle 8:25 Yes. So currently, the urban ag podcast. I have a website, which I know I do not fully utilize to its potential. I have a blog, I have an Instagram account which is probably where I’m most consistent, a Facebook page, a Facebook group and a Twitter. Melissa Guller 8:44 And, week to week when you have maybe a new episode that comes out. How is your time being spent like once the episode is published, do you have some kind of workflow? Jacqueline Aenlle 8:55 Currently I have a system, I, it’s not the perfect system, But I’m not creating my graphics for Instagram until after the episode is published, which is not ideal, but it’s just the timeline I’m on right now so normally I have some preset graphics that I use three of them, for each episode and then one has like a quote one has a video component to it, and those will normally go out the week following an episode telling people that it’s available. Go listen, check the link in my bio, and then between episodes. I’ve been trying to add in other content like not specific to the tracks themselves, but it also been hard to like have new content constantly coming in that I can use on that page that is different than my personal branding and my personal pages content. Melissa Guller 9:41 Sharing past episode content is something that not many podcasters, are doing, but when I see a few who are using that strategy I think it’s really effective, kind of like you said, when your buddies. There’s so much rich content from any of your interviews like I’m sure there are things like resources that could be recommended or guest quotes or pieces of advice, there’s just so much that could be turned easily into something as simple as an Instagram quote post. And I think the misconception is that the week your episode goes live is like the only week you talk about that episode ever. So maybe something that you could start doing is, as you’re prepping an episode to go out, you don’t have to create all the content at once, but maybe you think about, okay, here are a few ideas a handful of ideas maybe even up to 10 that you could at some point, put out on social media. I’m talking about lists, not actually making all of them at once. But the reason I’m saying you could do it as the episodes are being released is just because of recency, like I know two weeks after an episode goes live. I already forgot what’s in it, no matter how wonderful the episode was because I’m just constantly thinking forward. So to me, the best time for me to take notes that end up being show notes or end up being social media posts is actually right after I do the recording while it’s fresh in my mind. Jacqueline Aenlle 10:57 I’m the same way, once it’s edited and published two weeks later I don’t remember what was in it but if I take a bullet list or pull out the quotes that I need as I’m listening through it and editing that would save a lot of time so don’t have to go back and re listen to it, try to find something that’s worthy of sharing next so I think that’s a, that’s great advice. Thank you. Melissa Guller 11:14 And I think different people keep track of notes in different ways, but something that still honestly stresses me out a little but I have a better system is just having a dedicated place where I put ideas I’ve used different notes apps on my phone. For some people, keeping it in a notebook, others maybe putting cards in Trello or Asana or notion, like, it doesn’t matter if it’s a digital or written method, but just designating a place in your life, like a running note or a project board where you just put ideas. I think can be a huge help because that way you know they’re all in one place for safekeeping for later. Instead of having, you know, some notes here and some things written in some post its on the wall and then some things in email just in the saved folder because I think it’s harder to recall that info. So maybe as like a tangible recommendation, just deciding like where do you keep all of your ideas, and what kind of system could work for you. I know on top of social media and just kind of coming up with content ideas, we have more in marketing than just social media so what are some of the other marketing channels that maybe we could talk about. Jacqueline Aenlle 12:22 So I have not been putting transcripts of my episodes on my blog. What’s the etiquette in going back now to maybe previous seasons and how would you go about catching up, and providing those. Melissa Guller 12:35 I think it’s most important to add them going forward. I think it’s always great to go back and update them so for anybody who already has published episodes to go back and add transcripts, I think is always good. Like it’s, it’s never too late to add transcripts, is what I’ll say. But probably easiest is to focus on your next episode, and move forward. But if it’s helpful, there’s kind of two options when it comes to transcription. There’s a third option which none of you should do which is to transcribe your own podcasts, only if you have a very scripted podcast, maybe it’s already handled, but generally, the two options, and one of them is free, is to use an AI, an artificial intelligence, online internet bot, which can transcribe your episode for you for free. I will auto link in the show notes. What I like about Otter, is that even though it’s not 100% Perfect, it still gets kind of like 80% of the way there and then I just want to listen to your guest name and their business, the most important parts. And then, I’m kind of fine, if there are small typos or mislabeled words in the transcript, I don’t mind. The other option is to pay for human transcription through companies that offer like $1 or $1.25 per minute. You can see all that adds up with that obviously the quality is much higher, so I’m guessing for you, the auto route would be perfectly fine. Jacqueline Aenlle 13:59 Yeah, that sounds great and I’ll definitely have to look into that and start thinking about how I’m going to incorporate it going forward. So thank you so much. Melissa Guller 14:09 The other thing about transcripts, is that it’s kind of tempting to put them into a downloadable PDF, and a lot of podcasters did used to do that. But if you put it in a PDF, then you don’t get the benefit of Google, being able to read it. So that’s why people do, paste it right on the page, and there are some options that can help make your transcripts look nicer and not too long and I’ll put links to all of those in the show notes too, but I did want to just add on that I don’t necessarily recommend creating a PDF because not only is it extra work but it’s also not as Google friendly. Jacqueline Aenlle 14:41 I’m already looking forward to the show notes, I’m gonna have to visit and look at all these links. Melissa Guller 14:45 I think maybe another topic we haven’t gotten to our newsletters, is that something that you’re currently doing? Jacqueline Aenlle 14:51 You know, I was just thinking about this the other day, I am currently paying for a subscription to call Flodesk, that’s what I wanted to use this send out newsletters, I have not actually sent any, I think, maybe a few other reasons. Jacqueline Aenlle 15:11 I knew I was worried that I wouldn’t know what to put in them, you know, even if I only sent it out once a month, I was worried about the content I would include to keep them, you know, new and relevant other than just like, Oh, these are the two episodes that came out, you know? Melissa Guller 15:26 It’s interesting that you say that because I do think that email marketing is this kind of like mystery a black hole world for a lot of people and it sounds really intimidating float ask, is a great tool I do admittedly have a partner link I’ll put it in the show notes if anybody wants to check it out. But with any email service provider, no matter which one you use, I think, starting with even a monthly newsletter is a great place to start. You can include links to your podcast, and you can share your most devoted listeners may have missed one of them. So I think it might be surprised to see how many people do use those email reminders to tune in, like, I don’t know about you but I of course check my email every day it’s a huge part of running my life and business. And so, when things come into my inbox, it’s sometimes a better reminder than seeing a notification on my phone, and I think depending on the topic, you could include other sections to like for you and maybe it’s articles that you’ve read that you’ve been really enjoying, or a recommended product or service. If you had your own products or services to sell, you could mention them in those emails too but for you I don’t think this is really a fit. Other ideas about just things that maybe you’re already talking about in some of the episodes that you’ve just call out in email content. Jacqueline Aenlle 16:45 Yeah, I mean now that you mentioned that that’s such a great yeah I thought that all the content pieces. But the fact that you said like articles I’ve read I think that’s been a mistake or I could have a section on like current news like current events in the industries that I’ve been covering or highlight upcoming topics if ideally I know my upcoming speakers so I can start doing that or giving leads to some of their work I have show notes, I’ll give links to like some people have written, or they’re like, farms website so I guess I could even include that information be collecting and put it into a newsletter. Melissa Guller 17:20 I love that idea. When I found that email list is that it’s a really great place to solicit feedback, so I’ll put out surveys and that helps me decide on future podcast content or future course content so every so often you get invited to simply reply to the email to say, You know what they were planning next month’s content, What kind of topics do you want to hear about and people will actually reply to emails, and then that case my job was to. Jacqueline Aenlle 17:50 I want to. I’m having to contain myself and not take notes. I was making sure I didn’t miss any of this because this has been so, so good to hear. Jacqueline Aenlle 18:05 Chin feedback Jacqueline Aenlle 18:06 engagement centers. Have you been great for maybe a Facebook. Facebook group, beaming Melissa Guller 18:25 contents, then you need a minute. That’s a great question, in terms of things that aren’t specific Jacqueline Aenlle 18:32 lend themselves. People often count Melissa Guller 18:41 the number of channel traffic for one wire, a lot of years or could be a great chance to get to your content, but it’s not what I would describe an engagement channel, It’s more of a challenge in the way to learn. On the other hand, it’s a great place to engage with listeners to prompt in your stories from that Melissa Guller 19:10 semester to actually go. Listen, immediately to an episode because it is pretty insulated scription then there might be a topic for another day. But I think there’s Instagram and also for free, Twitter and Facebook groups that they invite conversation. And if you start to build a relationship with listeners, they will find your podcast, like they will see that you talk about it, they’ll see the link in your bio, and they will become, hopefully, loyal fast, any of the kind of shapes or forms are just for you, it’ll add a topic. So as an example, if we’re doing a leadership or a management podcast, I would never advise you to use Instagram, even though I think that’s the default for a lot of people, they need to have, instead I would say focus completely. That’s where people want to see professional management advice, and you’ll probably get a lot more traction on LinkedIn and probably your guests if you have, are more likely to share it, such as my mom. Now, I’m just pleased. The long winded answer is that the best place to find engagement is probably the one that your ideal listener is using the most. It’s been an absolute pleasure having you on that. They can work out my web site, www, I’m going to add com, We are going to do Melissa Guller 20:57 A huge thank you to Jacqueline for joining, and wow, what a packed episode. I’d say that the overall takeaway I hope you get from this episode is this: As podcasters, there are tons of strategies we’re all told we should do. And a lot of them are great! But you don’t have to do them all, and you don’t have to try them all at once. So if you’re feeling overwhelmed by the process, start by asking, “What feels like it takes the most time?” and then quickly follow by asking, “Is this making an impact?” Because if you’re spending most of your time on strategies that aren’t helping you connect with listeners in a meaningful way, I’m guessing there are a few things you could either stop, scale back, or even pause for now. These strategies skate the surface on the in-depth strategies and systems I cover in our Wit & Wire programs, including our signature program for new podcasters, the Podcast Launch Accelerator. So if you’re interesting in learning more about my methods or some of my core philosophies around starting a podcast that truly builds your authority and connects with listeners in a meaningful way, I do hope you’ll check out the new free masterclass at witandwire.com/register. It’s called called “How to launch a podcast in 60 days without feeling overwhelmed” and continuing the theme of today’s episode, I’ll help you cut your production time in half and start a high-quality podcast without any complicated tech or confusing editing tools. Again that URL to learn more and save your free spot is witandwire.com/register. Melissa Guller 21:59 Thank you so much for joining us this week! To catch up on all of the articles referenced in today’s episode, or to see my full list of recommended podcast hosting platforms for any budget, visit the complete show notes at witandwire.com/34. At Wit & Wire, we help online business owners start podcasting so they can share their message and expertise with a wider audience, and if you’re interested to learn more about our programs and services, you’ll find everything on our website at witandwire.com. Thank you again for joining me, Melissa Guller, in this episode of the Wit & Wire podcast. I’ll see you next time!