Should you use templates in your podcast? Well, in today's episode, I'm going to tell you exactly what I think about using templates for planning, scripting, graphics, and everything in between. Here we go. Hey, y'all. Welcome to the clocking in Podcast, the podcast for podcasters entrepreneurs and professionals making their way in the working world while building their own personal brand in the podcasting industry. I'm your host Haylee Gaffin, owner of Gaffin creative a podcast production company for creative entrepreneurs. If you're a podcaster, or even just dreaming about launching your own podcast someday, this show was built to help you merge your love of conversation, education and business. You can find resources, show notes and more for the clocking in podcast at Gaffin creative.com. Today's episode is brought to you by MIC CHECK society, a community that was built for podcasters who are looking to take their podcast from good to great, scale your podcasts, improve your processes and connect with your listeners through our educational trainings, our private members only community and our monthly calls. If you're ready to join us, you can head over to Mic check society.com and enroll today. And you can get $10 off per month with the code podcast. Now let's clock in and get to work. All right, friends, I get asked all the time. Should I be using templates for my podcast? Or is it okay that I am using templates for my podcast? And my overall answer is yes, use those templates. Use templates because I think it allows new podcasters to explore the things they don't know. It highlights everything that you may not have any idea about. Or maybe you're someone who's just too busy and every other thing that you're doing with your business or podcasts or life to sit down and create it all from scratch. So today I'm going to share a few of the templates that I think podcasters should consider using when they're either starting or continuing to grow their podcast. But I will go ahead and say that I do think it's important to customize. I love using templates, I sell templates, I create templates, I actually start every single one of my podcast launch clients off with a template. But it is so important that your podcast matches who you are, what you want it to be, and your voice. So that's my caveat before we dive into all all things related to templates, and podcasting. All right, the first template I want you to consider using and this is for brand new podcasters, I want you to consider using a planning guide. So this is for podcasters, who don't know what they're doing. And that's totally fine. We all start there. I started there at one point. But if you've never launched a podcast, you honestly don't know unless unless you've done a ton of research, you don't know everything that you need to know in order to push your podcast live. So what I suggest is using a planning guide, and this is probably the number one template that I will push on a new podcaster to explore, because it does highlight all of those things we talked about. So whether it's the title, the host details, description categories and beyond, you don't know what you don't know. So if you're able to access a template that will help guide you on what you need, then you will know it also makes it really, really easy to gather all of these assets and get them together so that you are ready when you go to launch. And if you are looking for a guide like this, if you're brand new podcast or you're looking for one, I do sell one in my shop, you can use the code podcast for 15% off any of the templates in my shop. Now the next one I want to talk about is a is scripting templates for your intro outro and trailer. So if you are someone who's like, Oh, I really I have no idea where to start. I have created a free downloadable. So this is essentially just the bare minimum of what you need to include in your intro outro and trailer. And this is for very simple, and I'm talking simple. Like if you're wanting to go all out with your trailer and include clips from the audio of episodes that are coming up. That's totally fine. You can still use this. You just have to get creative on your own and that's what I want to remind you of is Get creative when you're working on this but if you head to Gaffin creative.com Ford slash scripting, you will find my intro outro and trailer scripting guide and it is a free download that you You can grab today. But what I want to highlight is in this scripting guide, we're talking about how to introduce your show, introduce yourself what you talk about, all within a short timeframe specifically for your intro. What I recommend is you start with your trailer, because I feel like you get the most information from your trailer. And then you can condense it down into your intro and outro. And within each of those, there are so much that changes all the time, you will hear professionals tell you like oh, you don't need to include your URL, or you don't need to include your name. I'm a big believer in the more people hear at the more they remember it. So I include the podcast name in the intro and outro, the host name in the intro, and then usually the URL in both the intro and outro. If you are having trouble keeping everything concise, then you can start eliminating from there. But if you have a website, I definitely include it in both. So that's just a little tip from me. And if you do end up buying my podcast planning workbook, it does come with that scripting template inside of it as well. But if you just want the scripting template, the worksheet, you can go and grab that for free. And we will link that link in the show notes. Now the next one I want to talk about is templates for email communication. So this is probably one of the biggest things I was asked for for a long time. And so I of course made it a shot product. And I created podcast communication, email templates. And these are plug and play copy paste, email templates that will help guide you in communicating with your guests while also preparing them for the interview and upcoming promotion of the show. So that you're getting in front of their audience to. And these include six email templates, from the pitch to scheduling to media request, interview, prep, the episodes going live, etc. All right. The last template that you should consider using is Canva graphics. Whether this is your cover art, or your promotional graphics, I am a huge fan of templates in Canva. I'm a huge fan of purchasing other people's templates. And as of now I don't have any Canva graphics of like cover art that you could purchase. I do have like a launch graphic if you're looking for just an announcement graphic. But honestly, there are so many options out there. My biggest thing with this is you want to make sure that you stand out. And I think that's why I haven't necessarily launched cover art templates, because I want your photo to be as I guess as custom as you are in like unique to what you do and what you want on your podcast. But I get that everyone needs somewhere to start. So I definitely recommend starting with graphic templates, but making it your own and long term, I do encourage you to if you work with a designer on your main brand, I encourage you to work with them to create a graphic that has some sort of cohesive approach and like tie to your existing brand. Now it doesn't have to be exactly the same because they're not the same brand. But if they are tied together in any way, they could at least have some sort of cohesive element to them. So those are just a few of the templates that you could be using in your podcast journey, whether you're just getting started, or you are someone who is on the path to growing your podcast. As a reminder, you can get the Planning Guide and the email communication templates for 15% off with the code podcast in my shop. And if you want that free scripting guide, I will link it in the show notes. It's Gaffin creative.com Ford slash scripting. And then if you are looking for Canva graphics, I highly recommend that you post in your favorite Facebook group. Go and connect with the people you know that are graphic designers see if they sell anything, but get creative with it. Just remember at the end of the day with every template that you are using and playing around with get creative with it. Alright friends, I hope you enjoyed this quick little episode today about templates in your podcast. And I will see you all next week for another episode.