How to Use Guest Booking Forms? Top Things to Know and the Best Practices to Remember

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Everyone. Tom Hazard here and I want to talk about guest booking forms and really share a bit of best practices for how to use a guest booking form to not only make it easy for you to collect information from your guests, but also to make it easy for your guests to provide you the information and to do it on your timeframe and not just theirs. It's very important when you're gonna book a guest to be a guest on your podcast that you don't have to chase them down to gather the information that you need. For all their information, you know, their social media handles, their headshot, their bio information, how do they want to be represented your show? So that's what I want to talk about today. Guest booking forms and share really what we do and what we see as best practices. The first thing is you want to use a calendar program, and I'm sure many of you use a calendar program to get people on your calendar for all sorts of reasons. Of course, you can do that for booking guests as well, and there are many different ones out there. There are a lot of free programs like Calendly, there's Acuity, there is what used to be called Schedule Once. Now I believe it's called OnceHub and there are others as well. There's a lot of different choices you have out there, and I'm certainly not an expert in all those different options. You really need to evaluate and vet the ones that you want to consider using and see what's going to work for you. I am going to share with you what we use, and that is Once Hub, the former schedule Once. And you know the reason we use it, quite honestly, the biggest reason is because Tracy and I have a lot of booking calendars that we share. We're co hosts on a few podcasts and we found that that program, OnceHub, really does have the best options for us for being able to go out and look at both of our calendars and find the open times where both of us are available because we each book appointments individually for different things and then we're gonna come together for podcast interviews. So obviously time has to be free on both our calendars. So that's the main reason we use it, but also because of the capability of the form. One of the things I want to also mention and caution you on is that some of the free programs may not allow you to collect as much detailed information and to create a custom form. You know, if you find one that does, that's great. But, you know, certainly we haven't found a free one that really had as robust capability as we wanted. So on your booking form, you want to be thorough. You know, you really want to gather all the information you need. And so the way this works is you give somebody your booking calendar link and then they're going to, of course, go to their web browser or within the calendar program, if they're on their phone, however they do it, and they're going to indicate their time zone because obviously they're going to book the appointment in their time zone to be a guest on your show. And that's the first thing they'll set up. Then they'll look at the available times, usually that are on your calendar and find one that works for them. But before, and this is key, this is the. One of the most wonderful best practices to take advantage of here is that before they can book the time on your calendar, they have to fill out your form and provide the information that you need for your show. So it does it right up front. And, you know, if they don't have time to do it, then they won't be able to book the appointment. And this is another reason why when you create your form, you want it to be thorough, but you don't want it to be too much work for them. If you give them like 20 different things to enter and it takes a long time to fill out, they're probably going to abandon the form and not do it right then. Or at least they might come back to it later. But some of them may just say, oh, this isn't worth it. It's too much information. I don't want to have to work that hard to be a guest on your show. So being thorough, collecting important information, but not too much, you know, if it's too busy, they may not do it.

So I'm going to share with you on our form. Certainly it collects their name and email address. Those are required fields. They have to do that because we're going to email them. Well, obviously we want to know who their name is, who's booked this appointment, and they need to get an email confirmation. But we're also going to email them when the episode airs, with all the links and graphics, everything they need to share it with their followers. Their company name, that's not required. Their phone number, which is their website, is also required. Now, here's another really important best practice for all you podcasters and or videocasters out there. We have a statement here that says, I understand and accept that the interview will be recorded. This is a very simple way to get them to actually authorize you to record them and for you to use the recording. It's not a huge legal agreement that there, you know, is going to have all kinds of legal language, but it is simply to put it right up front, you're going to be recorded. And by clicking this button and booking this appointment, you are acknowledging and accepting that you are going to be recorded. And then the checkbox is already checked because it's required. If they uncheck it, they won't be allowed to book the appointment. So it just says acknowledge and accept interview recording. Very important. Now we've got the next thing which is also required is a big text field for their bio. You really need to collect their bio information. And while a lot of people might have that posted on their own website, sometimes it's out of date. They need to update their bio. So you know what, here they're providing you the bio they would like you to use on your website. If you create a blog post for every episode, which you should, and certainly if you work with us at Politize, if we produce your show, we create a blog post for every episode and put it into your website for you. So you need to have that bio information. And, you know, this gives them an opportunity when they're. Even if they're just going to copy and paste it from their own website or some word doc they have on their computer, if there's anything they need to update, they'll do it right then. So definitely getting that bio is very important and that is obviously, as I said, required. Next thing is a headshot. And this is again, one of the things that I really like about, you know, once Hub formally schedule once with their booking calendar is that they will allow you to have on that form the ability for your guests to upload their headshot right to this form as their booking the appointment. And you can say we give people the option to upload their headshot or if they're a podcaster, their podcast cover art is another option. Third option is company logo. You know, if they really don't have a good headshot or a current one at Least upload something, some graphic that you could be identified with. We have a file size limit of 5 megabytes and they upload it right there into the booking calendar form. Next thing we have are their social media handles for we give them option to give us their Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and YouTube links for their social media. And that's so that we make sure that we go ahead and, you know, have connected with them on social media. And we want to be connected with them because we want to know if they're sharing our stuff after we want to know, you know, when, when we publish the episode they're a guest on, you know, are they sharing our stuff? And when we share it, we want them to see it. We create a lot of different posts and we want them to share it. So you've got to be connected over social media. So we want to know all those places that they're at. I've got a relevant question here from Rachel Calderon. Hello, Rachel. What's the name of the scheduler? So Once Hub, it used to be called Schedule Once and I believe it's all redirected. If you still go to scheduleonce.com it'll redirect you to their new brand. This happened a month ago or maybe six weeks ago. They rebranded their company. Personally, I liked the name Schedule Once. I don't know why they had to go and change it, but I'm sure there's a reason companies change their brands. So there it is. Schedule Once, Once Hub. That's the one we use. We've used it for years. We use the paid version so that we can do these advanced forms. And it's very important. So that's my recommendation. So going back to our form now, after the social media handles, we put in here some suggestions for the guest to share with us, some topics for discussion. You know, basically what's important to them, what do they want to make sure that we remember or at least consider to ask them about. Now, I'm not saying I want my guests to really drive the entire conversation and dictate what we talk about. It's my show. But hey, I want to know what's new and exciting. Maybe you have a new book that's come out and that's why we're having you on as a guest. Or maybe you're just an expert in a certain field and you're going to share some nuggets of information in a certain niche that our audience is going to be interested in. So we invite our guests to share with us and write in our form what are the topics for discussion that they would feel that they're experts in that they would like to talk about. Now I'm always going to do my own homework anyway about them and maybe ask them some things. I don't give my guest questions in advance. I don't really always believe in that. Maybe there are some cases where that would make sense. But basically this is, hey, what do you want to make sure that we ask you about?

And then we have an open field that says, is there anything else we should know? A pretty open ended question. Very few people fill it out. Usually they would write in the previous one topics for discussion. But maybe there's an event coming up where they're giving a keynote and they want to make sure we know about that and we might mention it on our podcast, things like that. Or no, it could be anything really. But we leave it open ended. Now once they enter in all that information, they click done on the form that enters it in and now their date on our calendar is booked. And like I said, they have to enter in all that information. Here's the other wonderful thing that I love about these scheduling softwares is that they then put it into my calendar. And if it's, you know, Tracy and I are co hosts on this show, goes into each of our calendars, each separately. And then all of the information about your guests that you've collected from them, not only does it get emailed to you from the scheduling program, but it's in your calendar, which makes it really easy. You now have a handy reference when you're going to conduct the interview. It's the appointment that's in your calendar. But if you click and expand all the notes, all that information on the recommended topics that they are saying that they would want to be asked about or you might want to ask them about, that's all in there. And you know, it's a really handy reference. And then so I use it, I have that open and have that information there when I'm interviewing them. The bio information is very helpful when you might be introducing the guest or you know, to remember all a few details from their bio. You have it at a glance there even while you're recording the episode. And again, the topics for discussion are very helpful, especially if, you know, you get off track and your mind wanders. You can come back, you have a handy reference right there in your calendar. And then it's even more important after the interview is over because when you need to go and submit your episode to Your producer for production, then you obviously are going to be providing the raw audio and or video. And then that's great and all that detailed information. But remember that headshot, the bio, the email, you guessed the name, the name's really good. Especially if they have a tricky spelling of their name that they have that tricky spelling, then you know they're spelling their own name. You have the actual spelling in your booking calendar. So make sure you've got it right. And they're making sure you've got it right. So in our form on our politized dashboard, when you submit your episode for production, you know it has these same fields, but now you can just go through your calendar and just copy from there. Paste in the dashboard. Copy, paste in the dashboard. Copy, paste in the dashboard. Very easy to submit your episode for production. And even with the headshot, now the headshot you actually have to upload to the Poditize dashboard when you make your episode request. And with one sub, you have to, you go into your calendar entry and there's a link. What happens is they've uploaded their headshot to the form, it's in their database at once hub. And then you get a link to it in your calendar entry. Well, right from your calendar, you click on that link, it'll open a new tab in your browser and then take you or actually download for you to your desktop, to your computer, your downloads, wherever it will download that guest's headshot and then you can immediately just upload it right to our form in the appropriate place for production. So, you know, using the calendar form I find incredibly handy and valuable not only to collect the information from your guest, have them provide the information right there when they book the appointment. So, you know, if you just give them a regular booking calendar link to book a time on your calendar and you send them an email saying, hey, can you please provide all this information before our interview? They may forget, they may not have time, they just may be too busy. This way you're doing it right up front. You get it all in the beginning before they can even book. And then you've got it and you don't have to ever chase them down and wow, isn't that really handy and easy? Now I want to share another cautionary tale about a booking calendar. We've also seen some people really create what I would call more than a thorough booking calendar form, but a incredibly comprehensive form, asking, I think, too many questions, too many long form questions, and really setting themselves up for a challenge in getting your guests to be able to reasonably provide that information in a, and we're going to overuse the word, but a reasonable amount of time. I mean, you don't want to burden your guests before you've ever interviewed them with doing so much homework. They're going to think, wow, this is too difficult, I'm not interested in doing this. I wanted to be a guest on the show. But now in some cases a high profile guest will have a PR firm they're working with. We get PR agents coming to us soliciting guests for us to consider. And if they do that, usually the PR firm will fill out the booking form for their client and it's their job to do it. And they probably would put up with more than the guest will in terms of how much information to provide. But I caution you on how much information you collect and how many forms you or fields of information you have them fill out. I think it should be something they can do in about five minutes, 10 at the absolute most. And the only reason it might take them that long is if they don't have their bio prepared and they're actually writing it on the fly. Usually it should take someone two or three minutes to fill out the form, no more than five and then they're done. But you don't want to drive them away, you don't want to push them away from booking on a guest and asking too much information. So that's why I think the questions we ask are great, not too many.

And let's see then I think, oh, mailing address, that's another thing you might want to consider. We don't currently collect it on our form, but you might want to collect a physical mailing address. A lot of times, you know, that can be important if you want to send an actual written thank you card in the mail after they've been a guest. It's sometimes a nice touch for, you know, sort of an old school nice touch. When somebody gets something in the mail, you can use a service that does it. You don't actually have to go and do it, but you might not make that a required field. But if they're willing to provide the physical address, then you can send them a nice follow up, you know, actual either postcard or, you know, greeting card letter thanking them and then let's see. I guess the last thing I just want to mention, and I did say it up front, but I just want to say it one more time, if you're on a budget and you really only want to use a free calendar, you can do That I would still do that. Better than not having a booking calendar that you're going to use. But you're probably going to be limited in what you can do with this form and collecting this information with a free calendar. The paid ones give you a lot more options and a lot more capabilities that are going to be useful to you. I find it invaluable. And, you know, actually, you know what? If you want to go see our booking form, you can go and do that. Our booking form is FeedYourBrand Co Guest. And then we actually have two different kinds of episodes that we record. We have normal feed your brand episodes, and we have the center of influence series of episodes that Tracy is recording for part of her authority magazine column. And so that's the other reason we use OnceHub is once you go to that link, there's two different forms up there you can choose from. Are you booking for feed your brand or are you booking for a center of influence interview? And our guests will know which one that they're supposed to be booking, and they choose the one, and then they get into that form. And that also books the right kind of appointment that's on Tracy's calendar, but not mine if it's center of influence and both of our calendars, if it's on a feed, you'd brand episode. So again, once hub, I like it. I recommend it. Especially if you have complicated calendars, you're coordinating multiple calendars, or if you have more than one kind of podcast interview that you book. Between Tracy and me, there's like four or five different podcast interviews. We book, and we're coordinating at least two different calendars, hers and mine. She has a co host that is not even me on one other podcast. So schedule one's actually coordinates with that third person's calendar. Really complex stuff. So I recommend one sub. But if you don't need it, if you don't have that level of complexity, there are plenty of other programs that may work well for you. So anyway, I guess that's about all I have to say on that. If there's any more questions about best practices or recommendations for a booking calendar or form that you may use to help gather that information from your guests, please feel free. You can comment here. If you're watching this recorded and you're not watching it live, that's fine. Do that, and we will certainly answer all those questions. All right, thanks so much, everybody. Thanks for tuning in. That'll be it for today from Tom Hazard. Thanks so much. I'll talk to you next time.

You've been listening to the Feed you'd Brand podcast. We'd love to hear your comments on today's show, as well as suggestions for future topics and guests. Visit us online at feedyourbrand Co or on Social edyourbrand. Thanks for exploring content marketing and podcast influence with us.