Play by play 🎲
The all-in-one tool for overseeing your podcast
Welcome to The Audio Storyteller: tips and ideas for audio producers. Subscribe to get the full list of jobs, courses and other fun stuff straight to your inbox.
Hey audio storytellers,
When I was launching my first podcast, I used the tried-and-tested but not entirely rigorous method of a whole bunch of random google docs to keep track of all my planning and scheduling. I enjoy a maze of emoji-labelled spreadsheets as much as the next guy, but I sensed there might be a better way to organise and oversee my audio projects.
And now there is! Alina Serebryany — podcaster, workflow pro and friend of the newsletter — has designed a really brilliant resource that basically puts everything you need need to plan, launch, and manage a podcast all in one place. I had a little preview of The Podcasting Playbook recently, and can confirm: if you’re a podcaster or audio producer who values your time and sanity, you need this thing in your life.
Essentially the playbook acts as a dashboard for your podcast with customisable templates for everything from content ideas and logline through to growth tracking, marketing and budget. There’s also an amazing production workflow template to stay on top of your pre-interviews, guest booking etc. Plus social media assets, sponsorship decks, monetization: it’s all there in one easy-to-access place. (Did I mention it’s all in one place?)
Alina has even gone one step further and put together some super-useful resources of interviewing tips; where to outsource help like editing, branding and marketing; plus best practice for show structure.
Here’s Alina:
“Initially, I spent many hours interviewing podcasters and mapping their workflows, and as a thank you, I eventually released a small template for organizing your production workflows which garnered some very kind attention. But during COVID especially, when it seemed like everyone was starting a podcast, I got contacted many times for advice on how to start a podcast and how to grow that podcast.
Producing one was great, but it seemed like that was just the beginning of the challenge. I realized that having been a director of marketing, it would be interesting to add some of that strategic knowledge around growth to whatever I was sending people. So I spent the last few months combining both information, worksheets, and workflows into a single resource so that ultimately we could all learn by doing :)
The Podcasting Playbook is a dashboard for every part of your podcast workflow: from finding guests, to interviewing and recording, to growing your audience and monetizing. All built on Notion. Best for new podcasters and podcasters running interview-based shows.”
📌Check out the Podcasting Playbook here.
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What I’m listening to
🎧 I’m making my way through the selected shorts from this year’s On Air Fest - there’s some gems in there.
🎧 Digging into The Crisis, Vice’s new environmental investigation about a coal mine in Colombia.
🎧 I enjoyed this interview with the Guardian journalist Sirin Kale on In Good Company where she discusses her hard-hitting series on COVID deaths, as well as her career transition into journalism and her hopes for the future of media.
Thanks for reading, audio storytellers! If you enjoyed the newsletter, I’d so appreciate you forwarding it to a friend or co-worker, word of mouth’s how I get this resource out there. (They can sign up here.) As always, hit me up on Twitter or email with what you’re making or listening to.