How to Plan Your Entire Podcast Year Strategically
Is your podcast running your life instead of the other way around? By aligning your content with your business goals, mapping out themes, and filling in the details, you can create a podcasting schedule that’s fresh, engaging, and aligned with your vision—all while avoiding last-minute scrambles.
In this episode, I’m sharing a step-by-step framework to plan your entire podcast year with intention and strategy. If you’re ready to bring clarity, ease, and purpose to your podcasting process, this episode is for you.
Why Planning Your Podcast is a Game-Changer
When you have a clear plan in place, everything about podcasting becomes easier.
No more wondering, What should I talk about this week?
No more scrambling to tie your episodes to your launches or goals.
No more burnout from constantly feeling behind.
A well-thought-out plan helps you:
Stay consistent: Consistency builds trust and loyalty with your audience.
Create purpose-driven content: Every episode supports your broader vision.
Save time: With a roadmap in place, you can focus on execution instead of ideation.
Planning doesn’t stifle creativity—it supports it.
The 3 Steps to Planning Your Podcast Year Strategically
Here’s the exact framework I use (and teach) to help podcasters align their shows with their goals:
Step 1: Align Your Podcast with Your Business Goals
Before you start brainstorming topics, map out your key business objectives for the year.
Do you have launches or promotions planned?
Are there specific services or products you want to highlight?
What are your overall growth goals (e.g., building an email list, growing engagement, or positioning yourself as an expert)?
When your podcast supports your business goals, every episode has a purpose.
Step 2: Map Out Themes by Quarter
Themes create consistency in your messaging and make it easier to plan content.
Choose a theme for each quarter that aligns with your business focus. For example, if you’re launching a course in Q2, your Q1 episodes might focus on the pain points your course solves.
Themes give your audience a cohesive experience and help you stay focused.
Step 3: Fill in the Details
Once you’ve mapped out your goals and themes, it’s time to get specific.
Brainstorm individual episode ideas that fit within each theme.
Decide on guest interviews or solo episodes.
Plug your episodes into a calendar or planning tool.
With your details in place, you’ll always know what’s coming next, freeing up mental space for creativity and execution.
Tools to Support Your Planning
The right tools can make the process even smoother. My favorites include:
Google Sheets: Perfect for mapping out your content calendar.
Notion or Asana: Great for organizing ideas and tracking progress.
A notebook or journal: Sometimes, pen and paper are the best way to get the creative juices flowing.
Choose tools that work for you and make planning feel easy.
Ready to Plan Your Podcast Year with Confidence?
If this framework resonates with you, I’d love to invite you to my Strategic Podcast Planning Workshop on December 11th.
In just two hours, I’ll help you:
Set clear goals for your podcast.
Map out your themes and content calendar.
Leave with a solid plan for the year ahead.
💡 Learn more and grab your spot here: wildhomepodcasting.com/plan
Let’s make this your most intentional and impactful podcasting year yet!
Your podcast has the potential to be a powerful tool for connection, growth, and impact. By planning strategically, you can align your content with your goals, stay consistent, and create episodes that resonate deeply with your audience—all while making podcasting a joy, not a stress.
Are you ready to take control of your podcast and plan your year with purpose? Let’s do it together!
The Transcript for Share, Strategize, & Shine:
204: How to Plan Your Entire Podcast Year Strategically
[00:00:00] Do you ever feel like your podcast is running your life instead of the other way around? Oh my gosh. I know we've all been there. You are not alone today. I'm going to bring you a sense of calm and clarity to your content planning. I'm going to guide you through a process to plan your entire podcast year, strategically and intentionally.
[00:00:18] So you can spend less time scrambling and more time creating content that connects.
[00:00:23]
[00:00:23] [00:01:00] Hello, everyone. Welcome back to share strategize and shine. I am on holiday this week, but I'm recording it before the holiday. So just knowing that I'm going to be on holiday, the week of this comes out, it makes me so happy. And I want to get to a problem that I have solved this week. I was thinking about this and I was really struggling.
[00:01:25] I was like, man, thanks. It been going so smoothly. But I recently was having a conversation with someone and they really felt like their downloads were not where they were supposed to be. And honestly, when they told me their downloads, I was a little shocked as well. Like I felt like you should definitely have more downloads in that. And I wanted to remind you, like it is really, really important to take a look at your feed. I mean, how many of us?
[00:01:51] And I feel like if we were in a room, we would all raise our hands. Set up our feed and then completely forgot about it. I know I'm not the only one. [00:02:00] I have a lot of clients who come to me. And we will start working with them. The first thing we will do is go into their feed and update it. The reason why this is so important is because as the apps are changing and evolving, they're adding tags, they're requiring other things, and sometimes they will penalize you.
[00:02:17] If not all of that information is filled out correctly. Now you should have in your RSS feed, hosts, every available box to put information then, and definitely take advantage of all of it. If you are still finding after that, that you are not getting the download, do you think you should be getting like I'm talking like something feels off with your downloads? Then I would highly recommend taking a look at your category. Your SEO that you're using in your titles.
[00:02:47] And if that still feels like it's not aligned. Then I would take a deeper look. So for example, if you notice that Spotify seems to not be working well for you at all, But apple [00:03:00] podcasts is, you know, go look at your Spotify category. Sometimes they will put you in a category that may not necessarily make sense to you.
[00:03:07] You can just send them an email and they will update your category. Things like that. Those little tweaks can really make an impact. So I definitely suggest every quarter to do just like a little quick audit of your podcast. Uh, you know, just go through a little checklist. This is something we do in my membership every quarter we do. Planning and my, strategize and shine membership.
[00:03:29] And in that planning workbook that they get, there is a quick little audit to do. Because one of the things that we do not want to do is put something up, forget about it, move on. So. Anyways, that is a problem that we solve this week. Be sure to check out your feed. Don't set it and forget it. And yeah, I mean, you never know like a small tweak can have so much impact on your podcast.
[00:03:54] So be sure to go do that.
[00:03:56] One of the biggest struggles I hear from [00:04:00] podcasters is the constant battle with content overwhelm. You know, each week it sneaks up on them and suddenly they're scrambling to come up with a topic record and edit all while juggling. All the millions of other things they have going on, but it doesn't have to be this way. By taking a step back and planning intentionally, you can actually bring a sense of flow and ease to your podcasting process.
[00:04:26] It is so important. And it's so important, not just so you feel good about your podcasts, but so that way you're creating content that is aligned and you're setting yourself up for longterm success. So I'm really excited to dive into this topic today because I think. When we think of podcast success, we often do not think of the process as being an important piece of that. And it so is, and so I'm excited to chat about it today.
[00:04:54] So let's talk about why a content plan can , bring clarity and ease to the [00:05:00] whole process. Like, I just want to say right off the bat, this is not about locking yourself into rigid plans because I know that things can change. And I know that things come up that you want to talk about. But you need to have a structure that not only supports. Your creativity, but your overall podcast strategy, right? So, if you listen to episode two and three, I talked about having a podcast is goal. That goal is going to help you create a strategy for your podcast.
[00:05:32] Like that goal, that, that thing that you say you want your podcast to do is going to determine a lot of the steps that you do for your podcast. And one of the ways that we can implement that, those action items for that goal and have them actually work and create impact for your business. Is by having a content plan. So what's so great about this plan is, like I said, it's not about rigidity, [00:06:00] but it's about, okay.
[00:06:01] Here's my strategy. Now I can be creative around it. And a thoughtful plan is also really going to allow you to show up consistently . While staying aligned with your business goals. And that's exactly what I was talking about. Right? Like making sure that I'm not just creating an episode for the sake of creating an episode, like I'm actually creating an episode.
[00:06:22] That's going to help me drive impact for my business. Okay. So I have a three step framework for year long content planning that I want to talk about for a minute. And we'll just talk through it. And you can implement this yourself. I'm going to give you. An option to help with implementation. Okay. So the first step is. Aligned with your business goals. So we set that goal for our podcast, but we also need to think about our business goals.
[00:06:51] You know, what's happening in your business this year. Do you have any major launches coming up? Any key themes that you're focusing on? We want to [00:07:00] make sure that we put these all in the calendar before we start mapping out our content. Now. This used to really overwhelm me because I didn't have any idea.
[00:07:10] Like, I don't know. I don't know if it would be doing in six months, but you do, you do know, like, think about what you promoted this year. Think about what you're hoping to promote. I know for me, every quarter I do a promotion of my membership. I know that every October. I sell my podcasting for black Friday toolkit. I know that every year we're going to be doing the annual strategic podcast planning workshop. You know, there are things that I know are going to happen every year and the dates can change, but if I put them on the calendar, This is going to help me as I'm planning out my content and deciding which topics and going to talk about. So, this is really where that intentionality and that strategy meets because when we are creating content, Around our [00:08:00] offers around our launches, around our marketing. We're really telling people what we want them to do and where we want them to go.
[00:08:07] So that is the first step. Literally printing out a calendar, writing down all your key important dates. Making sure that they are going to be a part of your planning and your strategy.
[00:08:19] So step two is all about mapping out themes by quarter. Okay, let's talk about this for a second. This really? Is where a lot of magic can happen. , but there's a couple ways you can do this. So one way is to have a theme, you know, like I spend 10 per quarter to know that. This is a guiding theme that I'm going to focus on.
[00:08:42] It reflects your business focus and your audience needs it also reflects your unique. , perspective on things, you know, all of those, like, you know, kind of think about like content pillars and taking the content pillar and saying, I'm going to focus on this one. Right now. So you can do this by [00:09:00] quarter. You can also do this by I've seen this work. Really really brilliantly for some clients. Doing it per month. Y, I think themes are so magical. Is that. They send a consistent message to your audience that you're talking about.
[00:09:17] This thing. And you can talk about it in multiple ways. It also really helps you bring in super aligned guests. If you have podcasts guests on your podcast. And here's the thing you probably don't even know, but you might already be doing themes. So when we talked about aligning, like with your launches and your promotions and those kinds of things. Like I know when I'm coming up on a launch, I am probably going to be talking about leading up to for a certain amount of time.
[00:09:47] And then while the launch is going on, I'm going to be talking about certain things. And so on and so forth. But that is a theme. And in and of itself, So for example, this episode is part of a theme that I am running, for [00:10:00] a few weeks, which is about planning your podcast. Why? Because I'm running my annual podcast planning workshop. And so by focusing on that theme on making podcasts easier. On planning on why planning is important. I am taking you on a journey as it were. And guiding you to the thing that I am working on promoting.
[00:10:25] So this is where the themes come in. Really handy. Now, if this part feels overwhelming for you. The first thing I want you to do is think about your launch, your promotion, your sale. And then start to think about like, what's the catalyst for people buying? What are they going through?
[00:10:43] That's going to actually make them click the buy button. And how can I create episodes around that and just start brain dumping. A lot of times when we use your content strategic content planning, we start with a brain dump. Like we will literally just start dumping these into a document. [00:11:00] And then we start placing them. And that brings you to step three, which is filling in the details.
[00:11:06] So I mentioned that we're going to start thinking about. What episodes would fit each theme? And this is that brain dump moment, right? This is where we start to brainstorm episodes for, you know, promotions, certain topics, certain content pillars. And then start plugging them in. When I say, start plugging the bin.
[00:11:27] I mean, I literally am talking about. Pulling up a spreadsheet and putting them in the spreadsheet or a notion board or whatever the thing is that you use. And, you know, , like I mentioned before, you can leave room for flexibility. I have had episodes planned and then decided, you know, that's not really the direction I want to go in.
[00:11:44] Let me come up with a different direction. And do that and that's totally fine. But by starting this plan, you're giving yourself a super strong foundation to work with. So some of my favorite tools for mapping this out and [00:12:00] planning this. Is definitely a Google sheet. I love a Google sheet for this. I actually have a customizable one that is, included in my membership.
[00:12:10] And then if you come to the workshop, You'll get that as well. But why I like this is, it is like the first step. So you've take that calendar. And then in one of the columns, you're going to put dates. And in the other column, you're going to put the promotion, the sale, whatever the thing is going on in your business, the theme. And that is going to help you then determine where do I start plugging in these episodes? So I love using a Google sheet to get a, an overview. For me, the tool that I have really fallen in love with is notion. So I love notion. I've been using it a 10. I actually tried it once and then didn't like it.
[00:12:53] And then I came back to it. The cool thing is it's incredibly customizable. So you can literally build something for yourself that [00:13:00] works. The downside is you literally have to build something for yourself that works. And that takes time. But I have it in like a table and I have same thing. I have my promotions and sales and a column.
[00:13:13] And then I create my episodes. And what's neat about these, and notion is you're actually able to open it. As like I can open the episode from the table as a document. And that's where I keep my scripts. So, you know, finding a system that works for you is really, really important and a key part of this process, because as we're planning, we want to actually plug them in with dates. And that's really hard to deal with paper and pen.
[00:13:38] It could absolutely work. If it's something that you know, that you're going to be referring back to over and over again. But those are just some of my favorite tools that I love. So, let me just say for a minute, like why this framework works on your remind you of those steps. We went through it again.
[00:13:55] One was to align your business goals. Two was to map out themes and three [00:14:00] is to fill in the details. The reason why this works is because it's going to help you stay grounded. First of all. So I know that I am in creating content intentionally. This is content that's going to help grow my business. It has a very specific purpose. The second thing is it keeps your content fresh and engaging.
[00:14:18] When we sit down and make a plan, we're able to see, you know, what am I doing? What is the big picture? What am I talking about in March? What am I talking about in April? What can I tell my audience to look forward to? What am I talking about this summer? When do you take some time off? When am I not going to have podcasts episodes? And all of that is going to create a very dynamic schedule.
[00:14:41] That's not just great for you, but it's also great for your audience. When we are creating content last minute, we're sitting down. We're just riffing. A lot of times it's not doing anything for us. It won't be our best. It won't be aligned and our audience can tell that it's last minute, [00:15:00] the everything that's interesting about this, as you will find yourself, repeating yourself often. And so that's why I love doing this and why I think planning and actually doing it in a structured way is so, so important. Because it really does help. Your content. Be amazing.
[00:15:17] Engaging. And, and fresh, and that's what we want. That's what our audience wants. So I hope that this was helpful for you today. When you think about planning, when we talk about process, once you have this plan, like I mentioned, then you're able to. You know, Script out more than one episode you're able to batch record.
[00:15:38] It makes that process so much easier. What's coming because you've been intentional about it. You've planned it. And so even if like me today, I'm doing a little bit of last minute recording. Cause my schedule this week was a wonky. It's it doesn't feel like last minute because I already had it planned.
[00:15:56] I already had it scripted. It was waiting for me. So [00:16:00] definitely keep that in mind, if you're feeling any resistance to actually doing this and taking the time to do it, because it really can make a difference. And if podcasting planning feels overwhelming, don't worry. I've got you covered. You can join me on December 11th for my strategic podcasts planning annual workshop.
[00:16:19] This is a workshop I do every year. It's super popular. It's two hours. And we actually will map out your entire podcast here together. You'll have time to get feedback, to ask questions and you're going to leave feeling really empowered. And you're going to leave with a lot of clarity. Around your goals and your podcast plan.
[00:16:38] So to reserve your spot, head to wild home podcasting.com/plan. And I'll be back next week with a new episode.
