Automate guest booking with Riverside and Google Calendar

00:00 Hi, I'm Jamie Brooke. I'm a podcast producer for health, fitness, and wellness professionals. Today, I'm going to show you the workflow that I use to make booking podcast guests as seamless as possible. Many of my clients are often busy with full schedules, so while vetting guests may not be a problem, actually getting them on the calendar can be hindersome, especially if you have a busy co-host too.

00:24 This is a seamless booking workflow that works for hosts, co-hosts, and guests. I personally use Riverside alongside Google Calendar appointment schedules to give guests one simple booking link where they can choose a time that works for them, automatically receive the information they need for their interview, and ultimately join the correct Riverside studio.

00:45 I'll also show you what happens after someone books so that by recording day, I have everything I need from the guest and they have everything they need from me. I start in Google Calendar, so let's say that I have a new podcast client. and they are looking to book guests onto their podcast. So what I will do is I will create a new appointment schedule.

01:09 And I will do this in their calendar. If you're a host yourself, perfect. Just go on ahead and go into your Google calendar and click create and go to appointment schedule. So now we're going to create a brand new appointment schedule. Essentially what you're going to think about is when are you available as a host to interview guests.

01:29 First, I'll give this a title. So let's say that your podcast is the inner script podcast interview. Something along those lines, whatever makes the most sense to you. This will be guest facing. So make sure that it sounds professional. The next thing I'd like to think about is my appointment duration. So we can do anything from 15 minutes to two hours and custom.

01:53 Usually for a guest interview, depending on how long I like to speak to the guests, I'll usually choose them an hour and a half. An hour and a half allows for time before and after the interview in case you need to follow up, talk about anything, et cetera. Now, I will be doing this as a repeat weekly. I will choose the days and the times that work mostly for me.

02:15 So let's say that I want to have interviews on Mondays and Wednesdays. So I'm going to go over here and I'm just going to say that I'm unavailable on Tuesdays, I'm unavailable on Thursdays and Fridays. Saturdays and Sundays are already defaulted, but you can always change that. Let's say that you wanna add a Sunday, so you can add another period to Sunday and you can change those times so that they fit your schedule.

02:38 So let's say that you just know generally that you are a late riser and you don't really wanna have an interview before noon. You can just go ahead and change that to 12 p.m. There you go, that is all set up for you. Then you can change your time zone. Now remember, when you send this to a guest, your Google Calendar is smart enough to know that they're on the East Coast and will adjust their timing accordingly.

03:02 So if it's 9 a.m. here, it's going to reflect 12 p.m. for them. Scheduling window. So now you've got to think about your time range. So are you available now? Do you have a certain, let's say that you don't want to start for another two weeks? We can start and end those dates. Accordingly, maximum time in advance that an appointment can be booked. So let's say that you just don't know your schedule more than 60 days in advance.

03:27 I completely understand. So you can change that to 60 days as it is. You can even change it to 30 days, 15 days, whatever is most comfortable for you. And that is perpetual. That continues on and on. A guest can never book more than 60 days in advance. Another great feature is that you can actually choose the minimum amount of time that someone can book in advance.

03:48 So let's say that you send them a booking calendar. There happens to be availability later in the day. If that works for you, great. But if not, you could even change this to 24 hours, whatever you feel most comfortable with. One other thing to keep in mind is that once you start sending out this booking link, you want to make sure that your calendar is always updated. Now this includes your personal calendar, your business calendar, whichever calendars are important to you and how you run your day and weeks.

04:16 Now Google will keep track of all of your new bookings so you don't have to worry about going in and making sure that you're indicated that you're busy. However, it's important to enter personal appointments into your calendar that might have duplication or crossover. Now we're going to get into the nitty gritty of the appointment settings. Make sure that you're giving yourself some buffer time.

04:36 For instance, if you want to book more than one interview in one day, you might set yourself to have 30 minutes or you can do one hour. So if they've booked a slot before, no one else can book a slot directly after. You can also select maximum bookings per day. So I don't know about you, but myself, some of my clients, having more than one interview in one day can be exhausting.

04:59 So let's just change that to one maximum booking per day. Can the guests invite others? For example, if they have a producer that you guys have chatted about them coming on, you can also allow the guests to invite others. I personally like to select this so that they can always invite if they need. And then when you open up calendars, you can see the various calendars that I have personally created.

05:23 And this will allow you to select any other calendars. For example, if you have a personal calendar and then you have a business calendar, I like to make sure that I click on both so there's no way that there's crossover in terms of anything that's going on during that day that they can't select during that time. If I have a co-host that I add a person here and make sure that they are available on their calendar as well.

05:48 I'll hit next. And now just to make sure you might want to select your booking page photo and name, it defaults to your Google. So if you want to change that, you just go into your Google account settings. But it's always nice to have a good picture and a name on there. For location and conferencing, I say none to be specified later. And then this is when Riverside comes in.

06:09 In Riverside, you have a dedicated studio link. This link will always work for you no matter what time you join or a guest joins or a producer joins. In addition to that, just so you know, Riverside also has individual links that you can add. Personally, I prefer to use the same link over and over again and I like to add it as a description here.

06:34 The way to find your Constant Studio link that will always work for you, simply go into your Riverside, go to the click invite to record and this link right here, all you have to do is just copy that link. You can also find your audience link which allows a producer or a guest's invited person to watch the interview but not be recorded.

06:57 So remember this link, the audience link should only be used if they don't want to record themselves. So we'll go to this guest link, we'll click copy. And under description, you will add that guest link as well as the audience link. And this is usually what I say. To join the studio on the day of the recording, please click on this link.

07:18 If you are an audience member or producer and do not want to be recorded, you can use this link here. I usually like to highlight and do not want to be recorded so that they make sure that they know that they won't be recorded if they click on that link. So for booking form, like to include first name, last name, and email address. This is defaulted in Google Calendar, which is great.

07:40 I don't like to add anything else here. I like to wait until we can do a more comprehensive form, which I actually do in Google Forms as well. Payment and cancellation policy, nothing here unless you do charge for your guests to come onto your episode, that is possible here. For booking confirmations and reminders, it is always defaulted that you always send the calendar invitation.

08:02 to the guest, they will receive that after they have booked. And then I also recommend an email reminder one day before, and I also recommend one 10 minutes before. So be sure to hit that add reminder and click on 10 minutes before. Then we'll just go ahead and we'll save that. Here you can see in my calendar, I already have some appointment schedules set up, so I can click on that and I'll get a one hour meeting.

08:24 But let's click on the one that we just created. This is the Interscript Podcast interview times. So what I will do is I will copy that link. I will then create an email as if I'm emailing the guest directly. will indicate that we have talked about him or her being a guest on the podcast and then I will send him or her that booking link.

08:45 So I'll just click on booking link. I will create a hyperlink URL and I'll insert that or you're obviously welcome to just enter it directly. And then once that gets sent, that guest is going to be able to open that booking link. And I'm going to show you right now how that works. Okay, I'm a guest and I've now received an email from Jamie.

09:06 Here is what happens next. I'm going to click on that link in a web browser and I'm going to open up their Google Calendar link. So here is that availability. Like we discussed, availability on Wednesday, Sunday. They can also click to next week and check out times that are available there.

09:26 So let's just say the 19th works perfectly. So let's click 1130 and this is what's going to pop up. Their first name, it's actually auto populated here, perfect. And we'll just hit book and that is going to be all confirmed. We'll just close that and they will receive an email. The next step, once that guest confirms a time that works for them and we've looked at the calendar and it's all set and ready to go, I like to send a Google Form to the guest.

09:55 This is a way to gather even more information about the guest. It helps with creating the show notes. It helps with creating promotional materials, social clips, et cetera. In addition, I also really recommend that you provide some advice and tips about how they can look and sound their best during the recording. This includes things that Riverside directly recommends, such as closing all tabs.

10:18 except for the recording one, making sure that your internet and wifi is working well before the interview starts, et cetera. And in addition, there's a few fun tips that I include such as not wearing any jangly bangles on your wrist, things that can make noise during the interview. I also have a recommendation of a budget friendly microphone in case they don't have a microphone already, all sorts of things.

10:44 But in addition to that, I also recommend that you ask them for their full name, how they want to be presented in the show notes, email address, phone number for if anything goes wrong on the day of, any website URLs or other URL resources, their Instagram, social media handles that will be important to share in the show notes.

11:04 I also recommend asking for a third person brief bio, maybe under 150 words, just something that you can include. in the show notes, promotional materials, et cetera. I also like to ask what topics are they most passionate about discussing. That helps us to really understand and steer the conversation in a way that will feel really enthusiastic and compelling.

11:26 I also recommend asking if there's any topics or questions that they don't wanna be asked. This allows for that space for the guests to feel safe and to feel more comfortable in how the conversation is going to go. I also make sure that they're comfortable with a video interview. Some people just are more comfortable with audio. It also sets them up to understand that this will be a video interview podcast.

11:48 So they might make different choices on what they wear or how they present themselves. I also asked for them to upload a headshot, which is super important for promotional materials. And then finally, I have a quick legal agreement that really protects the hosts and the guests in the process of this podcast interview. And they just have to agree and then submit that. Once that is all done and submitted, that goes into our shared Google Drive, and then I add that to the episode guest folder.

12:14 Last but not least, when the episode actually goes live, I like to send an email to the guests so that they know how to find where their episode is located. So I provide them with links to. places like YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and perhaps a website landing page in case you do blog articles as well to drive that SEO and AEO discoverability.

12:37 In addition to that, I also don't mind asking for them to leave a review or a rating or follow the podcast. And that, my friend, is how I and my clients also book their podcast guests. and make sure that the guest experience is spot on and also saves you a ton of time.

12:59 Happy podcasting.