4 reasons to write your podcast before you record it

How do you prepare for your podcast?

Do you wing it? Jot down talking points?

Or do you write and read from a script?

In this article, I’ll offer four reasons you might want to write your podcast before you record it.

1. Organize abstract ideas

Writing helps most people think through what they need to say.

Even extroverts, improvisers, and ideators could benefit from organizing those nebulous ideas for the sake of listeners.

No matter who is listening, a clear, organized presentation helps. If you have trouble getting to the point (or the bottom line) quickly, you will lose listeners who need to understand you quickly.

2. Discover new ideas

New ideas often come when initial ideas are written.

I don’t understand it fully, but I’ve experienced it.

Maybe it’s because once that idea is written, your mind is free to push the idea further.

You’re not trying to hold on to it anymore. You don’t have to. You got it out of your head and onto the screen. Or notepad. Or marker board. Or napkin. It’s safe.

Getting ideas out of your mind and recorded somewhere lets your mind process something else.

3. Write show notes easily

Once you’ve written your show, you can more easily and quickly overcome one of the biggest hurdles podcasters face: show notes.

If it’s hard to write your show before your show, it’s doubly difficult to write it once you have finished recording and editing.

For some, audio editing is difficult.

Even more than that, those final few tasks after production are some of the most agonizing things to push through. Why?

Exhaustion.
You just want to be done.
You want to move on to the next topic.

If you write your show before you record, you breeze through post-production more easily and quickly.

4. Repurpose content

After you have published several podcast episodes, you now have a collection of scripts that can be repurposed.

You can turn those scripts into something else.

You could make an e-book to sell.

Or you could give the e-book away as a resource or guide in exchange for emails or signups for your membership site.

Of course, even if you didn’t write your show before you record, you could still go back and have someone transcribe all that content, and then make a book from that.

But writing your show before is much cheaper. Easier. And probably requires less copy editing than a transcript of you just winging it.

What do you think?

Regardless of your preferences, these are four benefits of writing your podcast before you record it—even if you choose not to read from it during the show.

Do you write your podcast before you record it?

Why or why not?