Collaboration is important when podcasting with guests or cohosts. These free and premium tools will help your plan your episodes and show notes better!

1. Google Docs

This is the “king” of real-time, document collaboration. It seems that everyone knows about Google Docs!

With Google Docs, you can create documents or spreadsheets to share with your podcast cohosts or guests. This makes it really easy to coauthor notes and give feedback on ideas.

Google Docs is part of Google Drive, which also allows you to share files and folders, similar to Dropbox.

Honorable mention: Zoho

2. Workflowy

If you like lists, then you'll love this tool! Workflowy gives you a single, bullet-point list with infinite depth. You can share any level of points.

Workflowy is my favorite for taking simultaneous notes, such as for a TV-show-fan podcast. Each episode gets its own bullet point, then themes or segments are subpoints, each cohost gets their own named subpoint under each theme, and then they make additional subpoints there.

3. HackPad

Mix Google Documents and Workflowy together and you'll get HackPad. A modern, feature-rich collaboration platform.

HackPad focuses a lot on team-collaboration features, making it really easy to see who edited what. You can also easily embed multimedia from simple links.

4. Slack

Slack is my new favorite tool. It's designed around communication, but can be used for much more.

Think of Slack as a group instant-messaging program. You can have open or private channels (like chat rooms) for specific conversations, or communicate one-on-one. I use Slack now for all communication with my Noodle.mx Network team. It's fast and easily accessible from multiple platforms.

There are many app integrations that also make great for collaboration. You can draft notes together, share Google Documents, upload images and files, and more.

5. Evernote

Need an app for collecting or remembering things? Then you've probably heard of Evernote.

Evernote lets you create individual notes to hold almost anything—photos, text, files, links, and more.

The collaboration comes in by sharing a whole notebook, where you can create, collect, and edit notes together and have a “work chat” channel built in.

6. Delicious

If your show primarily discusses links, then Delicious might be the tool for you! Users can tag and share links with each other and add their own comments.

Honorable mentions: Diigo, Pinboard

7. Sync.in

If you want something quick and simple, consider Sync.in. Like other services, it offers real-time collaboration on basic notes. But it doesn't require an account. (However, free public note creation is currently disabled as of May, 2015.)

8. MindMeister

Most of these methods are either linear- or collection-based. Mind-mapping is another way of thinking. Start with a core idea and start branching out.

This is a great way to brainstorm as it allows you to easily follow multiple paths of thought.

Honorable mention: Mind42

Pick what's easy and meets your needs

All of these tools have their places and could be fun and powerful for collaborating. But a podcasting collaboration tool is no good if no one uses it. So I suggest that you go with what's easiest for your entire team to use. Any tool that makes collaboration happen is better than no collaboration at all.

What are your favorite tools for collaborating with your guests or cohosts?

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About the Author
As an award-winning podcaster, Daniel J. Lewis gives you the guts and teaches you the tools to launch and improve your own podcasts for sharing your passions and finding success. Daniel creates resources for podcasters, such as the SEO for Podcasters and Zoom H6 for Podcasters courses, the Social Subscribe & Follow Icons plugin for WordPress, the My Podcast Reviews global-review aggregator, and the Podcasters' Society membership for podcasters. As a recognized authority and influencer in the podcasting industry, Daniel speaks on podcasting and hosts his own podcast about how to podcast. Daniel's other podcasts, a clean-comedy podcast, and the #1 unofficial podcast for ABC's hit drama Once Upon a Time, have also been nominated for multiple awards. Daniel and his son live near Cincinnati.
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KiwiManaBuzz
KiwiManaBuzz
8 years ago

Another tool we would be lost without for booking guests onto our podcast is calendy, we are in New Zealand so it really helps finding mutual times for our guests.

Great show Daniel… Gary Fawcett
Kiwimana buzz beekeeping podcast

BitCoinDaddy
BitCoinDaddy
8 years ago

Slack looks delicious, especially for content support teamwork during a podcast.

Octávio A C Brito
8 years ago

Do you know this one?

http://www.webex.com/ciscospark/

Octávio A C Brito
8 years ago

I’m thinking about use this with my team (biomedcast.com), but I’m not sure if it’s better than Slack. What do you think, Daniel?

Octávio A C Brito
8 years ago

Nice!

Thank you, Daniel. It was a pleasure to talk to you.

Prescott Perez-Fox
7 years ago

I use Freedcamp to track my workflow for each episode. If I had a co-host or producer, it’s a great tool for commenting on tasks and assigning duties between team members.

Olga
Olga
6 years ago

Thanks for the review! I absolutely in love with Slack, and of course use Google Docs. When I need to collaborate in a visual way (with my remote teammates, for example) I use RealtimeBoard (https://realtimeboard.com)

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