People can be wonderful parts of your podcasting team by relieving some of your burdens. I include people as an “automation tool” because they can be so skilled that all you need to do is assign a task and they return amazing results. So please never underestimate the value of others!

Here are the most powerful roles you can assign for podcasting “automation” with people.

The premise of “automation” (versus automatic actions)

Many tools can do things automatically. But all of the following tools are focused on automation, that is, automatically doing many things for you and not only a single task.

Automation may have a learning curve, but the ultimate result will make up for it!

Contributing content

Your podcast content doesn't have to be created solely by yourself. You could “outsource” work to other contributors in the form of cohosts, guests, audience feedback, and audience submissions (such as research, production pieces, content, and more).

Editing audio or video

Podcast-editing is usually one of—if not the—most-hated tasks for podcasters. But some people love editing (God bless those superheroes)!

Delegating audio or video editing to someone else could be the biggest stress relief you'll ever have in podcasting, perhaps even more than getting a cohost!

Writing

What's the second most-hated task for podcasters? It's usually writing show notes. But a good writer can help you in many other ways, such as helping with marketing copy, repurposing content, and improving existing content.

Moderating

Whether you have an active community or you receive a lot of feedback, a moderator can help filter everything and keep everyone engaged. Usually, the ideal person for this position is already extremely active in your community.

Designing

“With great power comes great responsibility” [Spider-Man] could apply to the myriad of design tools now available. It's so easy to create images that anyone can create a disaster of pixels.

You may not be able to afford an ongoing designer for your regular design needs (website, print, or other images), but I do highly recommend you invest in a professional designer for your most important stuff, like your podcast cover art.

Consider hiring someone from 99designs (https://theaudacitytopodcast.com/99designs), DesignCrowd (https://theaudacitytopodcast.com/designcrowd), or contact me if you need a designer and I can refer you to someone I trust.

Booking interviews

Whether you like to have guests on your podcast or you like to be a guest on other podcasts, it can be a huge pain to find, filter, contact, and follow up with every possibility. That's why I highly recommend delegating this to someone else, and they can probably do a much better job!

I recommend Jessica Rhodes' Interview Connections (https://theaudacitytopodcast.com/interviewconnections) to help you “rock the podcast from both sides of the mic” (booking guests for your own show and booking you as a guest for other shows). If you want to focus solely on being a guest expert and optimizing your entire marketing plan around that, then I recommend Tom Schwab's Interview Valet (https://theaudacitytopodcast.com/interviewvalet).

Managing your website

Remember the Spider-Man quotation, “With great power comes great responsibility”? All that power should be handled cautiously regarding your website. You could easily crash your podcast, your site, or even your entire server by running bad code, not updating things, or making some bad choices.

Whether you need a developer or a designer, I highly recommend that you get someone else to manage the technical stuff for you.

For a reliable web host, I recommend SiteGround (https://theaudacitytopodcast.com/siteground). If you need much more powerful hosting and more management, then I recommend WP Engine (https://theaudacitytopodcast.com/wpengine).

Contact me if you need a website expert or developer and I can refer you to someone I trust.

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