Keep It or Cut It: The Podcast Editing Dilemma

I know I'm supposed to edit my podcast, but how do I decide what to keep and what to cut?

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Dave Jackson.

I saw this post on Reddit where somebody said, hey, like, how do you edit?

What do you edit, Etcetera, etcetera.

And you know that the beginning of this starts with pretty much.

I say this in about every episode.

It starts with knowing your audience.

Now, there are times when you don't know your audience, so you come up with an idea of who your audience is.

But even if you don't know your audience, there are things that people do that you can identify.

So, for example, if I ask you tell me about a time when you were afraid, and your answer is, pepperoni.

Okay, well, you've given me an answer that typically would go with, what's your favorite pizza?

But you've thrown it in here.

It doesn't.

You didn't answer the question.

You gave me an answer, but you didn't answer the question.

And I hear this especially with.

Not to paint with a super wide brush, but authors who are out promoting a book often have their kind of default answers.

And you ask them a question, it's like you pulled their string and here comes the answer.

So if they don't answer the question, that's usually something that's going to go, but listen to the answer.

Does it deliver value?

Now, if it does, even if it didn't really answer the question, if they came up with a good story, then maybe it stays.

Now, when they're done with their answer, this drives me absolutely bonkers.

So you'll say, hey, what's your favorite color?

And they will go, green.

I love green.

And I don't know if you know this or not, but yellow and blue, if you combine them together, make green.

All right, they answered the question.

Whether or not that's valuable, that's up to you.

And then the guest thinking that somehow they've talked about splitting the atom.

That's really hard to understand.

We'll go, yeah, I've heard that yellow and blue make green, and that's your favorite color.

Yeah.

You just repeated what they said.

We didn't need you to repeat the answer.

We got it the first time.

And if we didn't, we can hit rewind.

But I hear that a lot.

And consequently, a Show that should be 20 minutes is 40 minutes.

Because every time they answer a question, you repeat it back to them.

And I get it if you're having a discussion with your partner.

Yeah, that's called active listening and that's great.

This is an active listing.

It's an interview.

And you might even do that.

Just cut it out, we don't need it.

Something I do when I interview someone is I will say something like, hey, I know you've done this before.

In the past you did this and then that led to this.

And really when people are doing this, they think about this, yada yada yada, background, background, background.

And then I will finally spit out a question.

And usually again the question isn't that hard.

I've just given them background to understand kind of the answer I'm looking for.

I will cut the background out.

My audience doesn't need to hear me come up with the question.

So anytime you can make yourself or a guest sound better, why wouldn't you?

And I get it.

Keeping it real, man.

I'm going to keep it real.

Okay, well you're probably keeping it real boring.

Now there are other things when it comes to editing.

I have, I do a little bit of editing for other people and I'll have somebody who used a built in microphone in their laptop that makes them sound like they're in a fishbowl.

There is a tool from Apex, that's the name of the company.

It's called DX Revive.

And then there's DX Revive Pro.

I put out the $300 ouch for this plugin and it removes reverb.

It kind of makes them more understandable.

It'll add a little bass, it'll add a little treble.

And the reason I put out that kind of money for that is it has saved me insane amounts of hours where people hand me really bad audio and I run it through this thing and it does slow down the export process, but it's still much faster than just trying to use all these other plugins.

It's a great plugin, but that's another one.

It has to be listenable.

And I understand that there are times we have guests that don't have great microphones and things like that.

And those people, I would tell them to go get a mic, I wouldn't let them on my show.

But that's me.

Unless it's like an A list celebrity.

So keep that in mind is the fact that the actual audio quality has to be listenable.

And I know sometimes you go, ah, it's just a little room noise.

I never thought that was a big deal until I started listening to podcasts in the car.

And when you add the sound of traffic and tires on the pavement, all of a sudden you have to really crank up your audio to just be able to understand them.

And so that's why I always try to remove, especially when it's excessive room noise that can really hinder the listening experience.

And then the other one is uneven volume levels.

So again, this often happens with an interview where someone is much louder than the other.

So the quiet person comes on, the person in the car, they crank up their volume, or if they're earbuds or whatever, great, I can hear them now.

And then the person, the second person comes on who is normal and blasts their head off.

That is not a good listening experience.

If you are having your audience grab the volume knob, I'm here to tell you, if you go look at the, you know, percentage listened to on that particular episode, it will be very low because everyone I know says, the minute I gotta grab the volume knob, I'm done.

They reach the volume knob and then they go, wait, swipe left, delete.

And so the bottom line is by knowing who your audience is, you can determine does this deliver value.

I just read a report on podcast marketing and they said the shows that are growing, the hosts personally, as in one on one, talked with their audience and you're like, well, how do you do that?

You say on your podcast, hey, I'd like to do a little research and find out what you really want on the show so I can make it better.

If you'd like to hop on a quick zoom call, use the link in the show notes and then you go buy yourself Tidy cow, which is a one time fee, lifetime use scheduling tool.

And I've told the story before about how I did this once and thought I was sending it out to 10 people and I set it out to my entire list and ended up with literally like weeks of talks, 15 minute talks with my audience.

Now that was a mistake.

It was also the best mistake I ever made because it really helped me understand who my audience is, which helps me then figure out what to keep and what to lose when I'm editing my podcast.

If you need help with this, you know where to find me.

Schoolofpodcasting.com join use the coupon code LISTNR that's L I S T E N E R when you sign up for either a monthly, quarterly or yearly subscription.

And that comes with a 30 day money back guarantee.

I'm Dave Jackson.

I help podcasters.

It's what I do.

And I can't wait to see what we're going to do together, because I want to be your podcast consultant.