Podcasting is fun, rewarding and addictive. It also takes time – time that you probably don’t have a lot of, especially if you’re juggling a full time job, family or other projects.
That being said, there’s no reason why you can’t produce epic podcast content when you’re strapped for time. All you need is a solid and efficient podcast workflow that helps you to work smarter, not harder.
To help save you precious podcasting time, Captivate has a Zapier podcast integration that means you can automate all of the manual tasks and every day processes that go into managing your podcast and focus more on the things that will grow your audience.
In this tutorial, we’ll talk you through what Zapier is, how it works and give you 12 ways to speed up your podcast workflow quickly and easily using our handy Zap templates and integration. Happy days!
In this article:
What is Zapier and How Does It Work?
Zapier is a tool that helps you connect apps to other apps in order to automate your manual or repetitive tasks, like running analytics reports, publishing tweets, setting reminders and following up with guests!
The beauty of Zapier is that there’s no coding or developer knowledge needed. All you need to do is create a workflow, choose a trigger and an action, then activate your automation (or ‘Zap’).
Once your Zap is set up, Zapier will perform your chosen tasks automatically whenever your trigger is met (e.g. whenever you publish a new episode), without you having to think about a thing.
With Captivate’s Zapier podcast integration, you can choose between one trigger and two actions. That means you’ll be able to build automations around:
- A Change of Episode Status – trigger an action whenever an episode is published, scheduled or deleted
- Creation of a Draft Episode – create an episode from an audio file
- Analytics Reports – get the number of downloads for a given show for today, the previous 7 or 28 days, or your all-time total.
What Apps Work with Zapier?
Zapier’s library includes over 2000 apps – Captivate now included – with more added every single week. Popular apps include:
- Podcasting: Auphonic, Patreon, Mailchimp
- File Storage: Dropbox, Google Drive
- Project Management: Slack, Trello, Monday, Asana, AirTable
- Social Media: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn
- Scheduling: Calendly, Google Calendar, Outlook, Acuity
- + thousands more (literally)
How Do You Use Zapier?
When you log into Zapier, you can choose from a number of pre-built workflows, search other users’ templates or create your own from scratch.
Creating a Zap using a template or from scratch is really easy. All you’ll need to do is set a trigger followed by a series of actions to mimic your own manual workflow. You can also add things like delays, filters and conditional logic to make your automations as complex or as simple as you need them to be. The sky really is the limit!
Want to know more? Read up on:
- How to use Zapier and create your own automations with our Zapier FAQ
- Follow along with our How to Use Zapier video tutorial
12 Zapier Templates for Speeding Up Your Podcast Workflow
Captivate’s Zapier podcast integration means you can automate a lot of your podcasting workflow!
If you need inspiration, we’ve created 12 podcasting Zaps that you can copy, change and use however you like. Some use Captivate, some don’t, but all are workflows that are sure to save you time when publishing, editing and promoting your podcast.
Automate Creating New Episodes
Here are 3 zaps to help speed up the early stages of editing and creating new podcast episodes.
1. Create a draft episode in Captivate when you start a production in Auphonic
If you use the free audio processing tool Auphonic, this Zap will send your newly processed episode directly to a draft within Captivate. Then all you’ll need to do is fill out your episode details and you’re ready to schedule or publish!
2. Create a draft episode in Captivate when audio is uploaded to your Dropbox
If you use editing or processing tools and software that don’t (yet) integrate with Zapier, you might want to just drop your finished episode straight into a designated Dropbox folder.
Using this ap, Captivate will create a new draft episode when an audio file is uploaded to a specific Dropbox folder. This is handy if you work with external editors or creators, and means you can bulk upload content without having to manually create episodes and attach the correct audio back in Captivate.
3. Create a draft episode in Captivate when audio is uploaded to your Google Drive
If you prefer Google Drive to Dropbox, use this zap to create a new draft episode in Captivate whenever a new audio file is uploaded to your Drive!
Automate Communication and Collaboration
Juggling calendar invites, reminders and emails is hard! Here are 3 zaps to help take a load off managing those tiny admin tasks that come with each new episode or guest appearance.
4. Send proactive event reminder emails to guests using Gmail and Google Calendar
There’s a lot of effort that goes into running an inbox. If your podcast features regular guest interviews, your calendar can get full really quickly. Thankfully, you can use Zapier to keep on top of your emails and automate a huge deal of your scheduling and correspondence.
This zap connects your Google calendar to your Gmail inbox and will send out an automatic reminder a day before the scheduled event. Add in talking points, important links and your guest marketing pack ahead of time so all you need to focus on is preparing to record.
If you don’t use G Suite, feel free to switch up the apps to suit your own workflow. Danny, our Podcast Support Expert, uses a similar template to connect Calendly invites to his inbox and content management apps.
5. Send a Slack message when a new episode is published
Promoting and marketing any new episode is crucial for creating buzz for your show. Use this zap to send a Slack message to a specific person or channel whenever a new episode is published – great for letting co-hosts, guests, VAs or external partners know when new content is live!
If you don’t use Slack, don’t worry: Zapier integrates with hundreds of project management and communication apps!
Another article we think you’d like...
Reading Time: 3 minutes Wondering how to get your podcast on Amazon Music? Here are all the steps for submitting your podcast to Amazon Music, Audible and Alexa devices.
6. Notify team members or guests via Gmail when a new episode is published
Get notified when a new episode has been published successfully without having to log into your Captivate dashboard. Use this template to send yourself or your guests a simple email that an episode has gone live so you can keep on top of release day marketing!
Automate Marketing and Analytics
Podcast marketing, audience engagement and analytics are extremely important to your show’s growth. With these 4 zap templates, you can save time by automating the key podcasting workflows that come with each new episode release day.
7. Send an episode audio file for transcription in Descript then get a Slack message when your transcript is ready
Smooth out your episode publishing workflow with this doozy of a zap: when a new episode lands in a Dropbox (or Google Drive) folder, Zapier will send the file for transcription and send you a Slack message when it’s ready to use. Magic!
Zapier currently integrates with 12 transcription services including popular apps like Descript and Rev.
9. Promote your new episodes to your Twitter feed
Save yourself the time of having to schedule tweets and posts ahead of release day. Use this zap to connect Captivate to your Twitter, Instagram or Facebook profiles and send out automatic messages to your followers whenever a new episode is published.
Obviously, there’s no substitute for real audience engagement when it comes to promoting your podcast on social media. But this automation will take a lot of the leg work out of publishing and scheduling, so that you can focus on getting creative and attracting new listeners.
10. Get analytics reports for your new episodes direct to your inbox
Seeing your latest episode’s download milestones is both exciting and insightful. Get reports delivered straight from Captivate to your inbox to see exactly how your episodes are performing within their first 24 hours, 7 or 28 days without having to log into the dashboard.
11. Update a Google sheet with your latest stats every day
Save more time by drawing your podcast analytics direct from Captivate into any of Zapier’s spreadsheet apps. This zap in particular compiles your podcast’s stats into a Google Sheet over time for quick reporting later on.
We’ve also seen podcasters adapt this template to compile podcasting overheads and expenditure into a single sheet for less admin and better organisation!
12. Add or remove private podcast subscribers from your feed
Captivate offers private podcasting feeds on all plan levels! There’s zero upgrading or paying extra to run an internal podcast, paid membership or premium content offering alongside your public podcast feed.
Use Zapier to add and remove your subscribers automatically from wherever you manage them, without having to manually send invitations out yourself.
Zapier connects a Captivate private feed to any CRM/list-management software, including Google Sheets, AWeber, Mailchimp, Patreon, Memberpress and more!
Speed Up Your Podcast Workflow with Captivate’s Zapier Podcast Integration
Our Zapier podcast integration is available to use right now. Head to the Resources tab on your Captivate dashboard, log in directly or grab yourself a free Zapier account and start benefiting from a smoother, faster podcast workflow!
We’ll slowly be adding to our Zap template library as time goes on, so if you have an ingenious use for Zapier that you can’t wait to share, let us know on Twitter or in the Facebook group!
