You've started your podcasting adventure and are determined to make 2024 your year. A New Year's resolution, perhaps? Whatever the driving force, unlocking your podcast's full potential requires a well-crafted plan.
At Rephonic, we've designed a free podcast planning template to help you make 2024 your year of podcasting success!
🔗 Get the free podcast planner here
Unlike PDF templates that are difficult to edit, all you need to do to start working on this Google Docs planner is hit Make a copy.
Here are some helpful explanations and tips to help navigate potential roadblocks you may encounter when completing the podcast planning worksheets.
Podcast outline
This worksheet aims to get the main information on one page.
Podcast description
For the podcast description, try to communicate the essence of your show in just one or two sentences. A clear and concise overview will have a bigger impact than one that waffles on.
An excellent way to start thinking about your podcast description is with 'Who?', 'What?', 'Why?'.
Who does your show help? What does it help them with? And why do they want help with that?
Keywords that describe my show
How are listeners going to find you? What are they going to be searching for on Spotify and Apple Podcasts?
Try to be narrow enough that you avoid too much competition. For example, if you've got a podcast about the history of ancient empires, 'Roman history,' 'ancient Greek rulers', and 'Egyptian pharaohs' are better keywords than 'history.'
Once you've settled on your keywords, add them to your show's meta-data, including the description, show notes, and titles.
Target audience
Nailing down your target audience is vital to grow your show. If you don't know who your ideal listener is, how will you attract and retain them?
Of course, every listener is unique. But when completing this section of the podcast planner, you should focus on what most listeners have in common. Figuring out the barriers to listening to your show requires you to take off the rose-tinted spectacles (if you're wearing them), so this one might be more difficult.
Here are some examples of questions to ask yourself:
Is audio quality a barrier?
Do they usually consume this sort of content on TV, where the shows have bigger budgets?
Are there a lot of similar shows?
Is it hard for them to find an hour to listen to a whole podcast episode at once?
Podcast competitors
The aim here is to figure out what shows your ideal listeners are currently listening to so you can work out how to position yourself. If you have at least one competitor show in mind, use Rephonic's free graph tool to understand the broader competitive landscape. Type the podcast's name and hit enter to see a 3D web of similar shows.
When examining the competition, you'll need to find out what format they use, how many hosts there are, how long the episodes tend to be, etc. Then, you'll need to list what you like and don't like about the show in order to make yours better.
Maybe the host sounds monotone and boring. Perhaps they ask dull questions. But perhaps they do great podcast intros.
Use these notes to determine how your show will be unique and better. How do you know you sound better on the mic? What kind of interesting questions are you going to ask? And what inspiration can you take from their intros and make your own?
Podcast goals
What is your ultimate goal for 2024?
"Making the charts" may be your initial thought. But think a bit deeper to see if there's a more meaningful goal. Maybe you want to make 2024 the year you establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry. Or perhaps you want to generate leads for your business. Figuring this out is crucial because it will direct your podcast growth strategy.
How will you measure success?
Having a goal is all well and good, but how will you know if you're doing well? Suppose your strategy isn't generating a return on investment, i.e., you're putting a lot in but not getting anything out of it. In that case, it's a good indication that something needs to change.
If you aim to build a reputation as a thought leader, you may track the number of social mentions and backlinks to your website. If your goal is to generate sales, you might track the number of customers and total revenue.
What do you need to focus on to achieve your ultimate goal for 2024?
Growing a successful podcast can be broken down into several parts...
- Getting in front of your target audience
- Convincing my target audience to listen
- Retaining current listeners
- Increasing listener engagement
- Refining your current audience
The best shows will do all of this very well, and that's an excellent long-term goal for you, too. But you probably don't have the time right now to do every single one of them well, so narrow your focus to what will move the dial closer toward your goal for this year.
Suppose you've just launched a podcast for your business to increase brand awareness. In that case, you might find that getting in front of your target audience and convincing your target audience to listen is more important to focus on this year than increasing listener engagement.
Podcast growth strategy
Strategy isn't a shotgun approach; it's like shooting an arrow. Your growth strategy demands intelligent choices that are aligned with your goals. Not every tactic will serve your purpose, so select those that resonate and discard what doesn't move you towards your goal.
Let's say your ultimate goal for 2024 is brand awareness, and your priorities are to get in front of your target audience and convince them to listen; some actions will help you get there better than others. For example, creating a podcast trailer will be much more effective than writing a regular newsletter.
We'd recommend first going through the list and ticking off the things you're already doing, then crossing out the things that definitely won't help you achieve your goals for 2024. You can then go through the remaining growth tactics and decide if it's a quick win or something for later down the line.
Remember, trying to do everything is a surefire way to do nothing well. The more strategic you can be, the better. If you want more information about any growth tactics we've listed, check out our blog post, which contains 50+ podcast promotion ideas.
Episode planner
For every episode you produce, the content should be well thought through. Nothing puts listeners off more than an episode containing a whole load of waffle. Planning your talking points in advance will make your episodes sound much more coherent.
As a guide, consider three overarching talking points you can break down into sub-topics. That way, you'll have plenty to talk about!
Remember that every episode should have a CTA, whether that's listening to another specific episode, downloading a guide, leaving a review, or using a discount code on your website.
Interview planner
If your show has a guest format, use the interview planner to list what questions you will ask your guest. First, list the overarching topics from the episode planner, then come up with at least one question related to each sub-topic.
Having all of your questions planned out might make your episode sound a little rehearsed, so having some starting points will help you cover everything you want to while leaving you room to be spontaneous.
Final words
In your quest to make 2024 a pivotal year for your podcast, Rephonic's podcast planning template is here to help guide you along the way.
Complete the Google Doc as one big project, or fill out the worksheets you need and leave the rest - whatever you need this year to ensure your show reaches its full potential.
