Tips for Designing a Podcast Editorial Calendar

We all have been victims of writer's block at some point in our lives. And, as a podcaster, brainstorming new content for your episodes time and time again can seem intimidating. However, there are many strategies that can help keep your content current and optimized towards your business goals. An editorial calendar is a great way to manage a podcasting strategy and to ensure that nothing falls through the cracks when producing multiple shows for your business podcast.

A podcast editorial calendar can also help to keep your team focused and organized throughout production. Especially if there are multiple members of your internal podcast team, you want to make sure everyone is following the same goal and vision for each episode.

A business podcast editorial calendar is a tool for viewing the big picture of your production schedule. There are a few important aspects that should play into your editorial calendar for podcast shows, including podcast show, purpose, audience, frequency, length, release date and time, and format. For planning podcast episodes, it can be helpful to write down the episode name, season (if applicable), guests (if applicable), hosts, release date, episode icon, description, share link within uStudio and more. You can download our content calendar templates here to help you plan future podcast shows and episodes. 

Audience pertains to the target audience who will be exposed to your content. The content you produce for a certain podcast show within your channel, might only be relevant to certain teams or organizations within your business. This is where the group function within uStudio’s private podcasting application will come in handy. Groups are available to allow uStudio administrators and content creators to restrict access to shows to certain target audiences. This enables content creators to restrict sensitive information to only those who should have access to it, as well as limit the content to the most relevant and pertinent. You can learn more about creating a group in the uStudio application on our website here.

The Purpose of your podcast show is what the material will deliver. For example, it is meant to gain understanding of a particular product within your company or strengthen the relationship between employees and leadership? Establishing the purpose should emphasize why you are creating the podcast show in the first place and may factor your production choices down the road.

Frequency pertains to the rate in which a new episode is posted within a show. Inconsistency can sadly lead to abandonment. Frequency is important and should be kept track of in your content calendar to make sure no deadlines are missed and your employees are being exposed to consistent and relevant content.

Length refers to the amount of time of your podcast episode. For customers of ours who are producing long podcast episodes, some have found success in also producing a shorter wrap-up episode in which only the major points of the longer episode are touched on. This can also result in interesting analytics content. Reviewing these types of business podcast analytics gives you the ability to compare the success between different episode lengths and produce more efficient podcasting content in the future. You can learn more about uStudio’s deep media analytics on our website here.

Release time and date is similar to your frequency. It can be helpful to keep track of exactly when the new episodes will be posted. Posting a new episode of a certain show the same day and time of the week can be helpful for employee engagement. When employees know when to expect new podcasting content, they are more likely to be on the lookout and give the new episode or show a listen.

Format of your podcast pertains to whether your show episodes will be in video or audio podcast format. Note that uStudio now offers podcast shows available in both video and audio podcasting so that you can utilize the format that will best support your message and your audience. To read more or schedule a demo of our private podcasting solution, visit our website here.

If you are approaching your podcast as a Series, this is important to call out and guide you as you are planning your episodes. Unlike episodic podcasts, with a series you must start at the beginning for it to make sense. If many of your podcast episodes cover the same topic within a show, you could consider advertising them as an individual series.

Guests pertain to guest speakers that will be joining you on your podcast episode. This is important to plan ahead of time as you will have to recruit the speaker ahead of time, prep them for the call, brainstorm interview questions and more.

You can also note the Stage of your podcast episode. Is the episode still in the planning stages or have you moved to production? Does it require approval from any stakeholders? Or has it already been published? Recording this, or color-coding this, in your editorial calendar will help to quickly visualize which episodes are live within uStudio and which still require your attention.

Remember, these facets are just the beginning. The more aspects you include, the more prepared and on track you will be in the podcast production process.

Other Things to Consider: 

• There are many free and paid project management tools that can help you build a business podcast editorial calendar. Even something basic like Google Calendar can be a great way to keep organized.
• A helpful pattern to follow could be adding a new episode to your editorial calendar every time a new podcast episode is published.
• Another strategy could be to keep your episodes scheduled at least a month or two into the future. But, as you get closer to your record date, you can update your calendar each week to add a little more detail for planning each episode.
• It is definitely better to have more ideas than not enough. You can always remove podcast episode content from your calendar at a later time if you feel it does not represent your business objectives.
• Color coding certain tasks or topics can also keep things organized and easy to follow visually.
• Keeping track of company milestones, events, and announcements in your podcast editorial calendar can also help with designing new topics for your podcast show, especially if your enterprise podcast revolves around sales trainings or internal communications. If your business podcast show revolves around training, do you have a product release coming out? If so, you would want to have material ready to coincide with your release, which means you would need to start planning well in advance. Your editorial calendar can remind you of this.
• If writer’s block hits and you start to have trouble building unique episodes it can be helpful to get other members of your business involved outside of your podcast stakeholder profiles. What are your managers hearing on the sales floor? Can any of their thoughts or concerns be turned into a valuable podcast episode?

The pre-production process of your business podcast can seem overwhelming. But, a podcast editorial calendar can help to make sure you never miss a deadline and your team stays focused on objectives. Feel free to adopt these tips to your workflow or come up with something unique to your business.