Plan out the next year of your podcast with these 5 steps. This will help you save time and focus on accomplishing your podcasting goals.

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1. Plan with a calendar

Your first step is to grab a calendar for the next year. Start your planning here as this well help you be aware of events that may affect your podcasting.

Holidays, for example, may inspire you with timely ideas (it’s usually best to publish holiday-themed episodes before their holidays). But holidays could also affect your schedule by either motivating you to postpone an episode, or else plan and record early for a scheduled release.

When you know how the upcoming year’s events affect your publishing schedule, you will have a target number of episodes to release.

2. Brainstorm an episode list

Now that you know how many episodes you need and what episodes might publish near a significant holiday, you know how many episodes you need to plan for.

Start brainstorming for future topics or guests. The point is to make a list of as many ideas as possible. Don’t try to organize or plan their details yet. Simply get the ideas into a list.

If making a list of 50+ individual topics/guests is too much of a challenge, consider picking monthly themes and then figuring out the subdivisions to those topics. For example:

• Twitter
  • How to getting started with Twitter
  • How to get more followers
  • How to automate your sharing schedule
  • How to manage multiple accounts
• Podcasting
  • How to start a podcast
  • How to grow your podcast audience
  • How to monetize your podcast
  • How to get others on your podcast
• Finances
  • How to make a budget
  • How to overcome debt
  • How to teach your kids about money
  • How to plan for the future

3. Organize your episode ideas

Now that you have a list of topics or guests for your podcast, look back at your calendar and place the easiest topics on the ideal dates. Such as:

• Holiday-themed topics on or before holidays
• Special guest appearances when they are relevant to your guests’ events (such as launches)
• Prerecorded content when you’ll be away

Simple to my previous point, also look for or create themes for certain months. These could tie in with notable holidays or be arbitrarily assigned to specific months (such as January, 2015 is a “new year” theme for The Audacity to Podcast). Sometimes, designating a month as a particular theme will inspire more ideas for that month to fill or extend it.

4. Commit to a schedule

Now that you know what you want to cover and when you want to do it, you need to look at your calendar again and “budget” your time.

Podcasts don’t produce themselves, so you need to figure out when you’re going to plan, record, and edit these episodes. This is especially important if you want to batch your work.

5. Be flexible

Now that you have a plan, it’s time to build in some space for mistakes, sickness, traveling, breaking events, and such. This margin gives you more flexibility for change as well as the freedom to leverage time-sensitive opportunities.

One simple method to be more flexible is to avoid episode numbers when possible. It’s easy to change an episode number in text, or maybe even easy to change the number in your intro (depending on how you do your intros). But it’s much harder to change numbers if you refer to your episode number throughout an episode (such as for your show notes URLs).

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DanielleBean from USA said, “Daniel teaches you the basics without ever talking down to you. He’s honest & helpful, entertaining & informative. A must-listen if you are learning to podcast! I just launched my podcast (Girlfriends) this week & could not have done it without this incredible resource. Thank you Daniel!”

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Announcements

• Join me and The Real Brian from ProfitCast for a live, free webinar on January 28, 2016! We’ll share “Why You Must Profit from Podcasting and How to Do It.” Click here to register!

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