Planning Your Podcast
The decisions that shape everything that follows
Every good podcast begins long before the record button. The choices you make at the planning stage — your purpose, your audience, your format, your name — shape every episode that follows, and save you hours of reworking later.
This section walks through the key planning decisions every research podcaster needs to make: why you are making the show and who it is for; whether audio or video suits your goals; how often you will publish and in what season structure; and how to land on a title and description that help the right listeners find you.
The principles here apply to both audio and video. Where the two formats call for different approaches, we flag it.
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Podcast production starts with an idea. But a good idea alone is not enough. Before recording a single episode, the most important work happens on paper: clarifying your purpose, understanding your audience, and choosing a format that serves both. This helps ensure there is a clear pathway to impact for the podcast, with built-in steps to measure and evaluate it (see the Podcast Impact Framework).
This guide covers the key planning decisions every research podcaster needs to make. The principles here apply to both audio and video podcasts. Where the two formats require different approaches, this is noted in the relevant sections.