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Podcast Skeleton

Lesson 9 from: Launch, Market and Monetize a Podcast

Sam Laliberte

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Lesson Info

9. Podcast Skeleton

Lesson Info

Podcast Skeleton

So now we want to talk about creating a podcast skeleton for each episode. This is going to really help you shape your process to you up for success when you're editing and really just make your life easier all around. This is a pretty standard formula that the most successful shows follow after I go through it with you. You're gonna have a lot of alright moments, you've experienced this while watching other shows and it's definitely something that I do consistently. It's just a really helpful way to organize your episode and when we do the live demonstration from an editing standpoint, you'll really see what I mean. So to start off your episode, you're typically going to put a preview clip at the very beginning of your episode. I love doing this. I kind of call it my like mic drop moment and it's the last thing I do in the editing process. So after I recorded the episode, I've edited it, I pick a small snippet, usually of my guests talking or if it's a solo episode, something relevant...

that I said, that's gonna be really interesting. That's gonna hook the listener in in the first couple of seconds so that they want to keep listening to the full episode. So I put that at the very beginning of every episode. Next, we would have the podcast jingle so jingles. If you think about radio shows and radio jingles for commercials, it's very much like that. This is going to be a very produced, almost like a theme song for your show. Similarly to watching a tv show and they have that theme song with the same music and it's the same visuals in the case of a tv show every single time And you really want that to emulate the feel of your show. So the energy, the sound as well as what your show is about. So mine's quite long minds, about 45 seconds. You might want to aim for 30 seconds um just so that it's quick, it's simple, but You can't just assume that even though you've had 40 episodes, People have listened to episodes 1-39, you really want to treat every episode is perhaps this is the first time someone is listening to my show. So you want to have a consistent jingle at the very beginning. Uh these can either be host read or if you want to do like radio style and get a hype man or woman, you can use a service like fiber, which allows you to find remote freelancers to create things for you for very affordable prices. There's a lot of people on fiber that are creating podcast jingles, so definitely recommend that. So, preview clip, then your podcast jingle, then it's gonna be your intro to that episode. So that's really when you're going to see your listener up for what they can expect from that episode. Yes, you'll use some of that in your marketing and your description, but now you want to remind them with excitement what's so great about this show. So a tool that or a trick that ritual does is he always says, I'm so excited for this episode, You're really gonna love it. This is a really great one. Pretty much every time to make you really subconsciously feel like, okay, this is a really great episode. I'm really excited to listen to this one, so let them know who your guests is or what topics you're going to be covering in that episode. There next would be a really great place for sponsored ads. If you are monetizing your show in that traditional way, you're going to want to have your sponsored ads right there, it's ideally you're going to have them host Red. Those are the most effective ads anyway versus just inserting something else that clearly came from your sponsor. So when you're negotiating with the brand's push for host Red and there's a lot of data to prove that those are actually the most effective in converting anyway, so that's what you want to include their, you know, you might want to think maybe you could have a mid roll ad or the end of an episode ad, you can, but when you're just starting out, the sponsor is gonna want them to be at the beginning. So you're gonna have it there. If you're not doing sponsored ads, perhaps this is an opportunity for you to share some personal updates, You can do both. I really like to bring my listeners behind the scenes of my life and my journey to living the freedom lifestyle and my journey to working online and becoming a podcaster. So if I don't have a sponsor for that episode, which not every every episode I do, I will do updates about my own personal life or push my own products. So sometimes I'm my own sponsor, I'll promote my online course or I will promote an event I'm doing, or if I'm doing an affiliate marketing partnership, you know, I'll promote another brand, which I get a percentage of sales from. So we'll talk about those again when it comes to monetizing next will be the actual episode itself. So this will be the bulk of your show. Again, it can be any time frame if you are just doing a shorter solo podcast episode, that will be much smaller than perhaps a long interview episode. I don't do this enough, but people do really like this. You include a summary at the end. I recently read an article on scripting for audio and there's a term called signpost where essentially you really make clear transitions when you're going from topic to topic or point to point in visual and video. We can do lots of different body languages and signs or have a visual aid to let you know, okay, we're onto a new topic ahead or here. But with audio, you're really having to take that listener on the journey. So think about that throughout your episode. Maybe even when you're asking your guests a question be like okay now we've learned about X. Y. And said let's find out how you did 123 and you walk them through that. So the summary is a great sign post of reminding them the key topics and findings and insights that you've just shared in that episode. Lastly this is your Call to Action. Call to Action is great to put right here because this is the time when they are the most likely to do something you want them to do. So if they've gotten to the end of your episode, you know, they're hooked, they got some value from it, they're connected to you. Audio is a very intimate experience, so give them something to do but don't give them so many things to do. You know, don't say tell a friend subscribe right, this shows us on social media, go join my facebook group, go download my e book, sign up for a one on one. Like for each episode, give them one specific action you want them to take versus many and make it really simple, this would be a good time to tell them to subscribe to the show. If they're not already doing that. If they're listening to the episode, you know, they've gotten past that friction point of how the hell do I navigate these podcast apps, they are more comfortable with it. And you could then now ask them to leave your review or a lot of people who are using podcasting as a way to give out free content as a way to push people to purchase other products, you know, sending them to a landing page, sending them to um maybe your instagram to connect with you. There are great call to actions. Finally, if you do know your next episode is going to be, it's a great way to tease the next episode, you know, if your cadences next week, let them know, come back next week. Well I'll be talking about X and get them excited about the next episode. Of course, if you're not that organized and you don't really know what your next one is going to be, that sometimes my case, sometimes I have multiple episodes in the backlog and I'm not sure which one will be next. So I don't always do that, but it's a nice thing that you can do and then I keep saying finally, but here's the actual finally, finally this would be your outro. So similar to how you had a consistent intro experience with maybe some music you want to have, like an outro sound effect or a little bit of music at the end to just leave them off with kind of a, a nice feeling. I have some, it's the same music for my intro that I included my outro and I just faded in and I faded out on both ends. I bookended of the episode and of course I'm gonna show you how to do that when we do the editing feature. So there you go. There's your podcast skeleton. Use it, use some of it, use all of it. Use none of it is up to you. But having a plan before you start recording is going to be really helpful for you to think about what value you're gonna provide in each episode and making sure you're teeing up all the sections in your process and getting everything you need before sitting down to added an episode.

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Ratings and Reviews

Armando Cartaya
 

Big Up's to Sam Laliberte, awesome course. I have been podcasting since 2020 and I took the course to improve my podcast structure along with my marketing skills and for sure it paid off. I learned so much in this course that I have been applying it to my podcast and how I promote the show. I highly recommend this class to anyone who is podcasting or thinking about it. Thank You Sam putting on the right track. Great tip on Instagram, thanks.

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