Podcasting Q&A

3x Tips to Streamline Your Podcast Editing Workflow

August 03, 2020 Buzzsprout
Podcasting Q&A
3x Tips to Streamline Your Podcast Editing Workflow
Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

Al Pete from the Flowers For The Culture Podcast asks, "Are there any tricks or integrations I should use to decrease the amount of time it takes to edit my podcast?"

TL;DR
It’s easy to spend hours upon hours refining and critiquing your podcast to make sure you deliver consistent, high-quality episodes to your audience. But if you’re looking to optimize your workflow and produce the same high-quality episodes in less time, there are some proven strategies you can implement.

In this episode, we’ll cover the top 3 ways that you can streamline your podcast editing workflow

#1. Use Templates

Templates allow you to reuse work you've done in the past so you don't have to keep repeating your work for every podcast episode. Some low-hanging fruit would be creating email templates for prepping your guests for interviews, starting with the previous episode project in your editing software and keeping your intro and outro segments saved, and copying your show notes from the last episode to get a head start.

#2. Batch Production

Another way to speed up your workflow is to work on multiple episodes at the same time. Schedule all of your interviews for the month during the same week. Edit 3-4 episodes in one sitting. Create show notes and upload 3-4 episodes at the same time.

You'll find that batch production unlocks another level of efficiency and can easily reduce the amount of time you spend on each episode by 50%.

#3. Software Integrations

Find software solutions that work well together. This will streamline your workflow beyond what you could do on your own.

For example, you can edit your podcast in Alitu, Hindenburg Journalist Pro, or Descript and publish it directly to Buzzsprout. This saves you the hassle of exporting the episode to your computer, opening your web browser, and manually uploading that episode to your podcast host. Add up those little time savings over the course of a year and you'll see some big-time savings!

Software that integrates with Buzzsprout


Bonus - Magic Mastering

Magic Mastering is a new feature available to Buzzsprout podcasters that automatically mixes and masters your podcast episodes. Once you assembled all the pieces of your podcast episode, simply upload to Buzzsprout using your normal workflow and we'll take care of the rest.

Check out all of the things Magic Mastering does for your podcast.

Record your podcasting question at Speakpipe.com/Buzzsprout to be featured on a future episode.

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Travis :

In today's episode, I'll share three tips to help you streamline your podcast editing workflow. Welcome to Podcasting Q&A, where you learn the best tips and strategies to launch grow and monetize your show. This week's question comes from Al Pete.

Al Pete :

Hey Buzzsprout. This is Al Pete host of Flowers For The Culture Podcast. I've been podcasting for years, but I am looking for ways to streamline the whole process. Are there any tricks or integrations that she used to decrease the amount of time it takes to edit my podcast?

Travis :

Thanks for your question, Al Pete. Now, it is easy to spend hours finessing and critiquing every single one of your podcast episodes so that you consistently deliver high quality content for your audience. But there are some ways to still get that high level that high bar that you set for yourself without spending a ton of extra time doing it. So in this episode, I'm going to share the top three strategies that I use to save time editing my podcast up So tip number one is to use templates make it your goal in life as a podcaster to never duplicate your work, whether it's your outlines, whether it's your audio editing software, your projects that you work in, your emails that you send to your guests, anything that you do consistently, spend some time, really make it unbreakable, make sure that it's exactly the way that you want it. And then don't go back and redo that actually leverage that work you've done in the past to speed up future episodes. So let's say for instance, that you have a guest that you're bringing onto your show. Rather than writing a custom email from scratch, send them the one that you sent to your previous guest, but then change out the first name so then it looks like a brand new email because they haven't seen that email before. And you know that it has all the details that they need to know to make sure they're fully prepared to come on your episode. Once you finish a recording and you bring your interview into your audio editing software You shouldn't be creating a new project from scratch, you should be opening up a previous episode, saving it as a duplicate, and then rewriting over the pieces that need to change leaving intact, your intro your outro and all of your audio preferences. And then when you're creating your show notes, they should be copy and paste from your previous episodes, show notes, and then filling out the fields and changing everything that's different. Just by using templates just by leveraging your previous work and previous efforts for future episodes is going to save you a ton of time. Tip number two is to batch production of your podcast episodes. So anytime that you are producing an episode, there's so much involved there's so many moving pieces that need to happen in a specific order in order for you to create that episode. So you have to start with generating ideas then you have to Create Outlines or scripts. If you have a scripted podcasts you have to line up interviews. You need to record the episode you need to edit it you need to upload it you need to schedule it All those things take time. Well, it takes even more time if you do every single episode by itself. But let's say instead that you scheduled all the interviews that you needed for the entire month, in one week, maybe you had two recorded on Tuesday and two recorded on Thursday, you now have four episodes to start working with that Saturday, you create the outlines for the rest of the episode, you record the narration, put it with your intro and your outro music, and you export it, you output it to your podcast host. And now you schedule it out. you've just done a month of content in one week. So if you're looking to optimize and streamline your workflow even more beyond templates, the next best thing to do is to batch your episodes. Tip number three is to use software that integrates with other software. Now, many software companies utilize API integrations to connect their software with services that they're pretty sure that you're already using. That's why we have Buzzsprout a partner with several up and coming podcast companies as well. Awesome really established players to try and create that seamless process for you because there are editing software companies like Alitu, Hindenburg and Descript that make better audio editing software than we could if we tried. So it's better for you as a podcaster to use those services, and then push them into Buzzsprout. With an API integration. If you're using transcripts, you can use otter.ai, which allows you to export a transcript that is already formatted for Buzzsprout transcripts, or you can use Descript and when you push it out through that integration, it's going to bring your audio and your transcript with it. If you're looking to monetize your podcast, you can go with a service like Podcorn, which has a direct Buzzsprout integration and the list goes on. But the key thing here is you want to find companies and services that talk with each other because the more that these services integrate with each other, the more time you're going to save, not having to basically duct tape together your own workflow and say, Okay, I need this piece of software. I need this file to then go to this person to download and then go over here. When it's all connected through API integrations, it just makes it a lot easier. And as a bonus tip, I want to encourage you to try out Magic Mastering. Magic Mastering is a new feature that we've just added for Buzzsprout podcasters. That allows you to automatically mix and master your podcast episodes as a part of your upload workflow. So if you were gonna do this in your editing software, you would edit your podcast, and then you would start doing leveling, you would start doing compression, you would start doing background noise removal, hum reduction, loudness, target settings, all those things would be on you. But if you have Magic Mastering turned on, then you just take that edited podcast episode, upload it to Buzzsprout, and Buzzsprout does all of that for you. And what's really incredible about it, is you don't have to change anything about what you're doing. So if you're looking to really fine tune your editing workflow, make sure you use templates. Make sure you batch produce your episodes, make sure you use software that talks to other software that you're using. Then also try out Magic Mastering to really put the cherry on top and save hours of time while still delivering high quality podcast episodes to your listeners. Thanks for sending us your question Al Pete. If you have a question you'd like us to answer on a future episode of the show, just go to speakpipe.com/buzzsprout or click the link in the show notes and send us a brief audio message. Make sure to subscribe to the Buzzsprout YouTube channel if you haven't yet to get Podcasting, Q&A videos, software tutorials, even gear reviews and strategy videos. And if you're listening to this around the house or on your way to work, make sure you subscribe to Podcasting Q&A and your favorite podcast app. That's it for today. Thanks for listening and as always keep podcasting

"How do I streamline my editing workflow?"
#1. Use Templates
#2. Batch Production
#3. Software Integrations
Magic Mastering