Speed Up Your Podcast Release Steps with Evernote Checkboxes and Hyperlinks!

liAfter you create an episode for your podcast, the next step is to edit it, produce it, tag it, upload it to a media host, post links to it in social media, and sometimes a lot more. A checklist is highly valuable to make sure you don’t miss a step, and will save you some brain function on those late nights when you’re running up against the clock.

I’ve been using Evernote for my podcast release checklist for a while now. Here’s why:

• It’s free
• It’s ready to run with one click (easily accessible in the system tray of my PC)
• ToDo lists (checklists) are easy to create and edit
• I can add hyperlinks that open webpages and execute local programs! (THAT is awesome)

That last item is an extreme time-saver because as you go down the checklist, you won’t even have to open another screen to access a web page or a local program.

For example, one of my steps is to upload each episode to libsyn. Normally, I would open a browser, then type www.libsyn.com into the address bar. It sounds easy, but when you have to do this multiple times for different sites, each item adds more steps and gives you less free time (though, browser bookmarks do shave a few seconds).

Below I’ll outline how to create a checklist in Evernote, add Checkboxes (ToDos), and utilize hyperlinks to open websites and local programs.

1. In Evernote, click on File…New Note
2. Name the note anything you’d like. For this example, I called mine “Podcast Release Checklist”

3. Click in the body of the Note, then select the ToDo (checkbox) icon:

4. Enter the first ToDo, then highlight the word from which you want to create a hyperlink:

5. Right click on the highlighted word, and select Hyperlink…Add. Now, just add the website URL you want to open when you click this link:

6. If you want to execute a file on your machine, repeat steps 3-5. Then, instead of a URL, copy the drive path of the executable program.

For example, I create a video for every audio episode I release using a program called Camtasia. To make opening Camtasia easier, I copied the path to the Camtasia executable and pasted it as a hyperlink in Evernote. Here’s what the path looked like:

C:\Program Files\TechSmith\Camtasia Studio 8\CamtasiaStudio.exe

There you go! You can now save time by following an easy to create checklist, while having all your links in one place. I have links that go to all sorts of places, like my Add A Post option in WordPress, specific Google Docs files, social media sites, my graphics program, and more!

It’s a huge time-saver for me, and I hope it is for you too.

PS: If you want a great podcast host, choose Libsyn! And make sure to use the promo code “brain” if you want the rest of this month and the entire next month free!