Branding Your Podcast

Boosting your podcast with podcast intros, outros, and jingles is an element not to be overlooked. Whether it’s to be more recognizable or simply to prevent your listeners from sneaking off midway through your show. Here are some top tips for making your podcast branding more dynamic.

[Side note: Branding your podcast is different than a branded podcast. A branded podcast is a podcast made as part of a corporation’s content marketing strategy. Branding your podcast just means creating an identity for your podcast through things like intros, outros, and jingles.]

The Intro

There’s no point in lying, the opening credits are an essential part of your podcast branding. A good podcast intro is a recognizable intro from the first second. There are several types of openings for your podcasts, it’s up to you to choose the one that suits your show the best.

– The musical intro: Easy enough to carry out, you simply need a solid theme. Nothing too long but a recognizable entry for the beginning of each of your shows. You might even want to create a bed (a musical background that you can talk over to launch the theme of your podcast). Be careful to choose a musical piece that you own or stick to royalty free music.

– You might even want to put together your credits by taking extracts from movie clips/adverts/interviews and editing them one after the other. This kind of introduction, which is incredibly popular with podcasters, allows for an original and very identifiable introduction.

Resources: Bensound: Ideal for finding a royalty free track that suits you (and it’s free!)

Don’t hesitate to push aside any tracks that have fallen under the public domain, you’ll be able to find some winners there. For example, the website Archive site lists millions of free tracks.

Transitions

Don’t expect to do a one-hour podcast without transitions, jingle or interludes. It’s important to make your topics recognizable. Create short transitions by inserting jingles for example. It can also be as simple as recording announcements that you can reuse for each podcast.
If your show doesn’t have separate topics, don’t hesitate to insert a small jingle between two steps of your podcast, basically just anywhere there’s a pause.

Resources: Create your own jingles from your intro music with Audacity. Or find a free jingle on Music Screen.

The Outro

At the end of your show, you’ll want to encourage your audience to listen to another episode straight afterwards. So treat your podcast outro the same way treat your intro.

You might choose to end with a slightly longer version of the theme for your introduction and use it while you announce what to expect in your next podcast, thank the guests, or invite your listeners to rate your podcast etc.

It could also be interesting to share a small selection of passages with your listeners, that were cut out during the editing process, like bloopers for example. In other words, make sure you find THE little trick that’ll make them want to stay right until the end.