Master the art of scheduling podcast guests with professional finesse. Discover five straightforward strategies that can elevate your podcasting game, leaving both you and your guests impressed. Let's delve into the world of efficient and effective podcast guest management.
5 tips to bag the best podcast guests and impress them at the interview
Guest interviews are one of the best ways to grow your podcast and reach new audiences.
- Podcasts are audio-only, which means grabbing your potential listeners’ attention straight away is paramount
- Audio is not shareable as text or video; people consume it differently
- Discovering new podcasts and podcast episodes is a slow-burn process based on personal taste and recommendations
Use search hacks to surface your guest’s best content
Using search operators in Google or a tool like Ahrefs (paid) or BuzzSumo (free for a few searches) allows you to find all content associated with a certain person.
- It’ll even show the popularity of each article so you can see which content struck a chord with the audience.
Listen to your guest’s other podcast appearances
Listen Notes is a search engine that pulls up past guest appearances your guest has made on other podcasts.
- Podchaser allows you to search for someone and pull up a curated list of their guest appearances in a special tab.
Create a guest page on your podcast website
To make the guest experience as seamless as possible, provide a “Guest Page” with essential details, such as contact and recording information
- Some scheduling tools allow you to automatically send guests to the guest page after booking a recording time.
Do extensive research
Show that you’ve done your homework on your guest.
- This will help you produce a better podcast and increase the chance that your guest will share the episode with their audience, refer you to other guests, and do you a favor in the future.
Streamline production follow-up
If your guest has recorded any audio locally on their end, do them a favor by providing a link to your Google Drive or Dropbox so they can upload it without any problems
- Once you’ve scheduled the episode to publish, send your guest a quick note about which day they can expect it to go live
Use Twitter advanced search to research your podcast guest
Twitter’s advanced search makes it easy to filter by the number of likes, retweets, and keywords used to find interesting content from your guests that you can ask questions about on your podcast
- Dave Gerhardt, the host of Tech In Boston, shares how he uses Twitter to find guests on his podcasts
Personalize the scheduling link
Some people take offense to receiving a generic booking link. To avoid offense, personalize your scheduling links.
- Use a tool like SavvyCal to generate personalized scheduling links for each and every guest, including the guest’s name, email address, and even their avatar.
When it comes to podcast guests, good impressions last
Do extensive research
About the Author
Corey Haines is the founder of Swipe Files and the marketing lead for SavvyCal.
- Previously, he was the head of growth for Baremetrics
- He consulted with over a dozen SaaS startups on marketing and growth.
Research your guest’s LinkedIn profile
See a precise timeline of their jobs and involvements in different companies.
Quora answers
If your guest is active on Quora, searching through their past answers might give you some good ideas for questions to ask since you can literally see how they would respond
Send your guest a prep email
Once your guest has booked a time to record with you, send over a list of questions or topics to help them prepare
- Show your guest that you are well-prepared and on top of your game
- Allow your guest to be able to deliver the best content they can for you
