If you want the best content for your podcast, you need to know where to hunt it down and gather what you plan to use in an easy-to-use format.
Here are three simple Google tools to help you track and gather the best content for your show.
Google Search: This is obvious. Search the internet for the content of your next podcast. But here is the pro-tip to find the best content: Do not search for broad terms that are generally used in your field of interest. Rather, search for longer more specific phrases related to detailed aspects of your show’s topic. As an example, do not search for ‘Current Trends In Entrepreneurism’ search for ‘September 2020 New Entrepreneur Innovation and Tested Practices’. While the latter will produce fewer search results, these results will be more on topic and more applicable to your podcast.
Google Alerts: Let topics of your next podcast be automatically emailed to you. Google Alerts allows you to choose specific words relevant to your interests or your podcast’s theme and emails you when it discovers new information that includes those words. As before, you might want to be as specific as you can with your words, but having new information sent to you is a real time saver.
iGoogle: You may hunt down your podcast content by reviewing several trusted websites and checking the news headlines. An iGoogle portal will display all of those websites and news feeds on one page. This allows you easy access to your trusted news sources while away from your home computer; and the biggest benefit of this service is the time you save finding content.
So, what are you going to do with all this content you are finding? Use Google Docs to help you organize your podcast content.
When using Google Docs for you podcast content curation use the following three practices to make your life easier.
- Create a Google Doc for each of your three upcoming episodes. Name each doc the show’s topic and as you find related content just copy and paste that information and links into the appropriate Doc. This allows you to stay focused on what is coming up and allows you to have the best possible upcoming shows. As you release an episode, create a new document for your episode that is 21 days away.
- Create a Google Doc simply titled, ‘Potential Future Topics.’ With this document easily available you can add interesting topics to revisit later, even if it doesn’t fit with your next three shows.
- Create folders named for your general topics that your podcast covers (you may want to use your connected Google Drive for this) and save your past episode documents in these folders organized by topic. Organizing your historical documents by topic allows you to quickly review what you have already shared so that you do not accidentally address the same exact topic too soon. This also allows you to have your past research at your fingertips if you need to do a quick review of anything or everything you have said on a topic on your podcast.
Did you know that in addition to this Podcast Insider Blog Blubrry has an entire Podcasting Manual on our website? There is a specific section that addresses how the Goals for your podcast, the Content you present, and the Format of your show should all work together in unison. Be prepared though, instead of just spending a few minutes reading about Goals, Content and Format, you may spend several hours reading the entire Podcasting Manual.