If your podcast includes a lot of one-time or recurring guests, it’s important to follow best practices. These would help you make your episodes more attractive, save time, and also make your guests’ life much easier. Podcasts are becoming more and more popular and one of the most successful podcast formats is the “interview style” option where the host brings over a different (or recurring) guest on each episode and interviews or just have a casual conversation with them.
Featuring guests on your podcast can help you find more content topics, and even grow your show by getting exposure to your guest’s audience.
When it comes to actually recording an episode with a guest, there are a few tips and best practices that’d help you iron out some potential issues. If your guest has never been on a podcast before, doesn’t have the right equipment, or isn’t comfortable enough recording the episode – it could be a pain for you as a host and eventually for the listeners. Luckily if you follow some of the recommendations shared below, it’d help you make the most out of your podcast guests. Helping your guests succeed would surely help your show and make the episode they’re featured in much better.
This post covers everything you need to know about featuring guests on your podcast. You’ll learn how to find new potential guests, add a podcast guest intake form to your site, include a guest release form, improve your guest booking schedule and much more.
If you don’t have a podcast (yet!), but want to become a guest on other people’s podcasts – we’ll also cover tips for becoming a guest on popular shows, how to find podcasts to be featured on, and how to prepare to be a guest on a podcast.
How to find guests for a brand new podcast?
If you’re just getting started and don’t have a lot of traction around your podcast, you might find it hard to book new guests. We recommend that you focus on your immediate network as a first step. Your colleagues, friends, family and basically any people you know or can contact directly can be potential guests on your show.
Once you start having guests regularly on your show, it can become easier to find others – you could share links to existing episodes to lure potential guests, ask your booked guests for some introductions or recommendations from their network, and more.
We always recommend to engage with your listeners and potential guests on social media – it’d help establishing a reputation around your show and hopefully get your more guest bookings down the road.
Another popular option is to look into existing podcasts, and search for people who were brought over as guests on other relevant shows. The Podchaser creators directory features over 150,000 different people, and that includes podcast hosts, guests or other participants.
Sure, starting a new podcast can be tough, but it’s definitely possible even if you don’t have an existing audience, or don’t have a shortlist full of guests ready. It could take a little time to grow your show and attract high-profile guests, but it’s definitely doable!
Automating your workflow – guest intake forms, release forms and booking
When you deal with guests on a constant basis – automations and improvements to your workflow can save a lot of time and back and forth communication between you and the booked guests or potential guests.
We recommend to use tools that help in every step of the process. For example, if you have a podcast website, it’d be smart to let guests come to you and set up a page for potential guests to fill out a guest intake form.
When you let potential guests fill out those podcast guest application forms, your involvement is minimal – you’ll get applications from potential guests, so they can fill out most of the information and send you a short message directly. Here’s an example of a guest intake form taken from Podcastpage.io –
Sure, you can always use a form builder like Formsort, Typeform and similar, or manually create a new guest intake form on the website. But the Guest Intake Form on Podcastpage has some great advantages:
- It’s already pre-built, designed, and includes the most common required fields for onboarding a new guest on your podcast.
- Once a potential guest submits the form, you get an email right away with all the info and a guest profile page is created on your website (as a draft).
- You can easily publish the submitted intake form and turn it into a beautiful guest bio/profile page on your website.
Why you need a Release Form
The next step is to provide a guest release form, (or link from your intake form to the release form). While there are guest release form templates available online, we strongly recommend that you consult with a legal advisor or lawyer if you’re unsure about the release form. Generally speaking, release forms are legal documents that “release” certain legal liabilities from you, protects your content, and gives you more creative freedom with your podcast. (for example, this can become important if you decide to monetize your podcast).
Tips for guest booking
Naturally, podcast guest booking is also a critical part of the process. It’s always easier to use scheduling tools like Calendly or similar to book the actual recording session. There are plenty of providers around scheduling, and many of them can also integrate directly with the recording software of your choice (assuming it’s a web-based / remote interview) and send a link directly to your guests. By booking the recording session (or even a short intro session) well in advance, both you and the guests will have the time to prepare for the episode, exchange more ideas, questions etc.
Podcast guests bio examples and templates
One you’ve finalized the episode, you and your guests can finally get excited about the upcoming release! The episode is ready to publish and you can finally release it to the public. We recommend to leverage social media and post a few intro posts before publishing. (“We have X on the show next week, stay tuned! “). Afterwards, you can also share a few short clips from the show, interact and tag them on social media, and feature the guests on your website.
One key opportunity you can take advantage of is to create a dedicated guest profile page on your podcast website. Ideally, when potential applicants fill out your guest intake form, you get a summary of their profile/bio information. This can include their name, occupation/role/company, image, website / social media links, and a short bio.
If you’re using Podcastpage.io for your website, these are all saved and used to create an automated guest bio page with a pre-designed template. Here’s an example of such a page the platform creates for you for each guest –
That’s a win-win both for you and for the guest, as it can increase exposure and improve your website’s user experience. Furthermore, when you have recurring guests that appear on multiple episodes (or even participate in anything else such as blog/articles, videos, producers, hosts and more), all of their related content would appear within this template so it really makes it easier to navigate and share.
And with Podcastpage, not only you could feature a particular guest on their own profile page, it’s also possible to create pages that list all of the guests and show off your previously featured guests.
How to become a guest on a podcast
Joining as a guest on other podcasts is really great. You’d get an opportunity to spread your message on someone else’s platform in front of their audience. If you’re a podcaster yourself, it’s a great way to grow your existing podcast. You could increase exposure of your product, book or just build your brand (personal or commercial).
If you’re not a regular podcaster but still want to join to other podcasts as a guest – it’s always possible and usually quite easy to do! You don’t need to have much experience or a ton of equipment (although a decent mic is highly recommended).
Sure, if you’re already a savvy podcaster trying to join other podcasts as a guest – it might be a little bit easier since you already know what it takes. You have the material, used to the mic’s presence, and probably know a bunch of people who are also in or around podcasting.
Being a guest on other podcasts can always help both sides. You, the guest, can get more exposure and can reach a new audience and get more potential listeners/customers/followers around your initiatives. On the other hand, for the host of the other podcast, it’s also great because interesting conversations and interesting people always contribute and help generating engaging quality content for their show.
If you ask yourself how to become a guest on a podcast, social media always comes to mind – it’s easy to connect and communicate with people around the world, and it’s super easy to reach out even if you don’t know them personally. If you know people around you who podcast – they might have an opening or know someone else who does.
Try podcast guest “marketplaces” for finding a good match
There are several services and “marketplace” type of websites where you can find podcasts to be a guest on. They pretty much do the whole matching process for you so it’s a huge time saver. These can match between potential guests and existing podcasts, so your search process might not be too time consuming.
Ultimately, if you have an interesting idea or conversation topic, it can always be useful and relevant for other podcasts so it can work great for both sides.
How to prepare for a podcast as a guest
Once you’ve booked your guest podcasting sessions, it’s important to prepare well. You can’t always expect to hop on the session and nail it without any preparation. It’s helpful to write down a few talking points. You can ask the host for some guidance or explore together a few topics that you know you’d be covering during the show.
If you’re not a regular podcaster yourself, make sure to at least get a basic microphone and run a few tests before recording on another podcast for the first time. Check that there are no loud background noises or other disturbances. You probably know how frustrating it can be to listen to a poorly recorded podcast, so you definitely don’t want to be the cause for that!
Conclusion – podcast guests
Dealing with podcast guests on a regular basis can become a lot of work rather fast. From finding potential guests, gathering their information, sending or signing guest release forms, booking sessions, recording, editing and publishing – you might find yourself chasing your own tail.
Automating parts of your workflow is key – you can use a guest intake form on your podcast website to let the guests come to you and fill out most of the information. If you use Podcastpage, you get an email the moment someone fills out the intake form, and you can approve it in one click to generate a guest profile right on your website right away or wait until the episode is published.
Booking and scheduling guests can be a tedious task so using tools like Calendly or similar can always be helpful in that part of the process.
If you’re looking to be a guest on other podcasts – try engaging through social media with potential shows, reach out to your network, or even ask your own podcast audience (if you have a podcast) for some suggestions or intros.
