Dressing up your podcast

Dressing up your podcast is a step you don’t want to neglect. It makes it recognizable or simply keeps your listeners from dozing off in the middle of your show. Here are some tips for making your podcast more dynamic.

The introduction

We won’t lie, credits are an essential part of your podcast. A great podcast intro is one that’s recognizable from the first second. There are several types of openings for your podcasts. It’s up to you to choose the one that suits you best.

– The musical intro: Easy to do with a good theme song that’s not too long and is placed at the beginning of each of your shows to create a recognizable opening. You can even make it a bed (i.e., background music you talk over while introducing the subject of your podcast). Make sure you choose a piece of music that you own the rights to or that’s royalty free.

Resources: Auboutdufil is great for finding THE best royalty-free tracks to meet your needs (and it’s free!)

Feel free to browse for tracks existing in the public domain. You can find some great little nuggets there. The Archive site, for example, lists millions of free titles.

Transitions

Don’t try to create a one-hour podcast without transitions, jingles or interludes. It’s important to separate the various sections. Make short transitions by inserting jingles, for example. They can also be simple recorded announcements that you can reuse for each podcast. If your podcast doesn’t have sections, feel free to insert a small jingle between two natural stops.

Resources: Create your own jingle from your intro music with Audacity. Find a free jingle on Musicsreen.

The Outro

At the end of your show, you’ll need to make your listeners immediately want to listen to another episode. So take care of your podcast outro in the same way you took care of your intro.

You can take the theme from your introduction in a longer format and use it while announcing the subject of your next podcast, thanking guests or inviting your listeners to vote for your podcast, etc.

It could also be fun to give your listeners a small montage of passages that were cut during editing, a laugh etc. In short, it’s THE little things that will make them stay until the end.

What tips and ideas have you found for dressing up your podcast?