Planning Gives You Confidence, Mastery Your Audience Can Sense
As a podcaster, you of course want to strive for excellence every time you click ‘Record.’ Your audience hears your confidence, your preparation and your mastery of your episode topic. Why would you not use every tool at your disposal to bring your best to every recording?
Checklists have long been a valuable tool in the business world to ensure that seemingly minor-yet-important tasks are always completed. The Hartford Business Journal cited that using a checklist can improve such management skills as productivity, excellence and creativity, among others. Checklists help podcasters to prepare for recordings.
While each podcaster uses unique tools, techniques and procedures that feel comfortable to them, there are general tasks related to podcast pre-production that can easily be incorporated into a universal podcast checklist template. Such a list can focus your thoughts and be flexible enough to allow you to customize tasks based on your particular practices.
Below is a list of general tasks to include on your podcast pre-production checklists.
Equipment Checks
- All equipment looks clean and in good working order
- All equipment is turned on
- All cords and wires are connected
- All levels are set to capture a quality recording
- A test recording is made to ensure equipment is operational
Software Checks
- All software to be used is open and up-to-date
- All software is logged into (as needed)
- All software subscriptions have more than enough recording length/storage space/resources for the recording
- A test recording is made to ensure that all software is operational
Topic Checks
- You know the general topic to be covered
- You know key points of the topic to be covered
- You know the order in which you will cover the key points
- You can easily pronounce key terms or individual’s names you plan to discuss
Intro/Outro/Call To Action Checks
- You know how you plan to introduce the episode and the episode’s topic
- You know how you plan to end the episode
- You know the specific call-to-action you will ask of your listeners at the end of the episode
Again, checklists are important and the lists above can be a starting point to create a podcast template (if you do not use one already). Feel free to copy and paste the lists into your plan and add any specific tasks from your processes that you do not want to forget. With only a little more effort you can have a powerful podcaster checklist that is customized exactly for you.
And so that we can all learn from each other, please comment on this post over on the Blubrry Podcasting Group and share what you add to your checklist.