How to Easily Schedule Podcast Interviews with YouCanBook.me

As a podcaster, you always have a long list of tasks to compete for every new episode.

And finding and booking podcast people to interview on your podcast can be one of the most time consuming tasks. You’ve got to research and find the right people, get their contact details, send them an invite, follow up if needed, keep a track of all this information etc.

And if you’re not already using an online scheduling tool to book those interviews, then you’re probably also wasting a lot of time going back and forth with people in order to find a date and time that works for you both.

In this post, I’m going to show you how to use YouCanBook.me to easily schedule interviews and save time, so you can get back to creating great content and building your audience.

YouCanBook.me is online booking software that integrates with a Google or iCloud Calendar. You get a personalized scheduling page so your podcast guests can book the interview online.

Using YouCanBook.me (Free Version)

The basic version of the YouCanBook.me is free and will give you everything you need to schedule your podcast interviews.

So let’s walk through the process of setting up your personalized booking page.

1. Signup for a Free Account

Signup for a free account at YouCanBook.me. If you signup with your Google or iCloud account, then your calendar will automatically be integrated with YouCanBook.me which will save you a step.

Once you’ve signed up, you’ll have to select a free or paid plan. For now, just choose the free plan.

Once you’ve completed the signup process, you’ll see the YouCanBook.me dashboard. Your first booking profile will automatically. Click ‘Edit Profile’ button to complete the setup.

2. Setup Your Basic Information

Under the ‘Basic’ tab, choose a URL for your booking link, upload a logo and customize the title and text that will appear on your booking page.

3. Setup Your Available Times

Under the ‘Times’ tab, select the days and time ranges e.g. between 10am and 3.00pm where you want to be available for podcast interviews. Don’t worry if already have a meeting during that time – YouCanBook.me will only allow your guests to book a time if your Google or iCloud calendar doesn’t have a booking conflict.

Also select the ‘default booking’ duration e.g. do you want to schedule interviews for 30, 45 or 60 minutes?

4. Setup Advanced Settings

Under the ‘Advanced’ tab, set the ‘minimum notice’ to your preferred duration. For example, if you set this to 24 hours, then your guests won’t see any available times in the next 24 hours. This is useful if you don’t want people booking at the last minute and not giving you enough time to research and prepare for the interview.

You can also set the ‘maximum advance booking’ field to whatever duration you want people to be able to book out to in the future e.g. up to 12 weeks out.

5. Setup Booking Form

Under the ‘Booking Form’ tab, you’re going to setup the information you want your guest to provide when they make the booking. The default form will ask for their first name, last name and email address.

In addition to this, you may want to ask them for their Skype or telephone number (see example below):

6. Setup Afterwards Settings

Under the ‘Afterwards’ tab, you’re going to set what you want to happen once the booking has been made. In this section you can configure the following settings:

• Messages: what you want to display on the booking confirmation page.
• Calendar Event: how you want the event to be shown on your calendar.
• Email to You: what information to include in the email confirmation to you.
• Email to Guest: what information to include in the email confirmation to your guest.

7. Select Booking Calendar Appearance

Under the ‘Appearance’ tab, select a theme for how you’d like your booking calendar to look. You can select from the existing themes or you can customize the colors/fonts to match the look and feel of your website.

8. Publish Your Booking Page

On the top right of the screen, you’ll see that your booking page is currently offline. Click on that to change the setting to online. And then click the confirm button to make your page visible to others.

9. Share Your Booking Page Link

At the top of the settings page, you’ll see a link to your booking calendar. Simply share that link with your prospective books and let them select a convenient date and time for the interview.

What Your Guests Do to Book an Interview

Here’s an overview of what your guests will experience when they book an interview.

1. Booking Calendar

Your guest will see your personalized booking calendar page, where they can select an available date and time for the interview.

2. Booking Form

Your guest will then be asked to fill out a booking form with their information.

3. Booking Confirmation Page

Once they’ve submitted the booking form, your guest will see a booking confirmation page with options to help them add the booking to their own calendar.

4. Booking Confirmation Email

Both you and your guest will receive a booking confirmation email.

Additionally, the meeting will be automatically added to your Google or iCloud calendar.

Using YouCanBook.me (Paid Version)

As you can see, YouCanBook.me is a powerful, simple to use and free solution that will save you a lot of time when it comes to scheduling (or rescheduling) podcast interviews.

However, there are a few reasons why you might also consider upgrading to a paid plan (about $10/month).

1. No “Powered for Free” Message

When using the free plan, your podcast guests will see a message on every page which says “Powered for Free by YouCanBook.me”. If you want to remove this, you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.

2. Padding Between Meetings

With the paid plan, you also have the option to add “padding” to your booking page. This will avoid situations where you have meetings scheduled right after one another. So if you want to make sure that you have some time before or after the interview free, then you’ll need to use the padding feature.

3. Email Reminders for Your Guests

If you want to automatically send reminder emails to your guest, then you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan. Just tell YouCanBook.me how many hours or days before the interview you want the reminder email sent and what information you want included in the email e.g. link to podcast, your contact information etc.

4. Follow Up Emails to Your Guests

An additional benefit of a paid plan is that you can automatically send your guests a follow-up email after the interview. Just set how many hours or days after the interview you want the email sent and what information you want to include the email.

Whether you choose the free version or the paid version of YouCanBook.me, you will save time scheduling and booking guests for your podcast. And you’ll be able to spend more time creating great content, building your audience and growing your business.