Collaboration is important when podcasting with guests or cohosts. These free and premium tools will help your plan your episodes and show notes better!

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1. Google Docs

This is the “king” of real-time, document collaboration. It seems that everyone knows about Google Docs!

With Google Docs, you can create documents or spreadsheets to share with your podcast cohosts or guests. This makes it really easy to coauthor notes and give feedback on ideas.

Google Docs is part of Google Drive, which also allows you to share files and folders, similar to Dropbox.

Honorable mention: Zoho

2. Workflowy

If you like lists, then you’ll love this tool! Workflowy gives you a single, bullet-point list with infinite depth. You can share any level of points.

Workflowy is my favorite for taking simultaneous notes, such as for a TV-show-fan podcast. Each episode gets its own bullet point, then themes or segments are subpoints, each cohost gets their own named subpoint under each theme, and then they make additional subpoints there.

3. HackPad

Mix Google Documents and Workflowy together and you’ll get HackPad. A modern, feature-rich collaboration platform.

HackPad focuses a lot on team-collaboration features, making it really easy to see who edited what. You can also easily embed multimedia from simple links.

4. Slack

Slack is my new favorite tool. It’s designed around communication, but can be used for much more.

Think of Slack as a group instant-messaging program. You can have open or private channels (like chat rooms) for specific conversations, or communicate one-on-one. I use Slack now for all communication with my Noodle.mx Network team. It’s fast and easily accessible from multiple platforms.

There are many app integrations that also make great for collaboration. You can draft notes together, share Google Documents, upload images and files, and more.

5. Evernote

Need an app for collecting or remembering things? Then you’ve probably heard of Evernote.

Evernote lets you create individual notes to hold almost anything—photos, text, files, links, and more.

The collaboration comes in by sharing a whole notebook, where you can create, collect, and edit notes together and have a “work chat” channel built in.

6. Delicious

If your show primarily discusses links, then Delicious might be the tool for you! Users can tag and share links with each other and add their own comments.

Honorable mentions: Diigo, Pinboard

7. Sync.in

If you want something quick and simple, consider Sync.in. Like other services, it offers real-time collaboration on basic notes. But it doesn’t require an account. (However, free public note creation is currently disabled as of May, 2015.)

8. MindMeister

Most of these methods are either linear- or collection-based. Mind-mapping is another way of thinking. Start with a core idea and start branching out.

This is a great way to brainstorm as it allows you to easily follow multiple paths of thought.

Honorable mention: Mind42

Pick what’s easy and meets your needs

All of these tools have their places and could be fun and powerful for collaborating. But a podcasting collaboration tool is no good if no one uses it. So I suggest that you go with what’s easiest for your entire team to use. Any tool that makes collaboration happen is better than no collaboration at all.

What are your favorite tools for collaborating with your guests or cohosts?

[reviews]

David Silverman, cocreator of Clammr, said, “I’m trying to learn everything I can about podcasting and I can definitely say, that it doesn’t get any better as a source of up-to-date info than The Audacity to Podcast. …” Read the full review.

Mmmmmagic3461 said, “… I love it! It is one of my favorites, very practical, and friendly too. …” Read the full review.

audiobrian said, “Daniel has many helpful tips.”

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Announcements

• Coming up next: interview with Audacity cofounder Roger Dannenberg as we celebrate Audacity’s 15th birthday!
• “How to Improve Your Podcasting Workflow” copresentation with Erik Fisher at Podcast Midwest. Use promo code “NOODLE” to save $20.
• SEO for Podcasters price going up in June. Buy it now for only $99!
• Upcoming podcasting conferences: New Media Europe September 12–13, 2015, in Manchester, United Kingdom; Podcast Movement July 31–August 2, 2015, in Fort Worth, Texas (use promo code “NOODLE” to save 10%).

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