Yes, you should edit your podcast

As an editor, this is a topic that I’m going to be very biased about. Please do everyone a favor and edit your podcast. When you’re first starting out, it’ll be a bumpy ride. Both on the recording and editing front. And that’s okay!

However, one of my biggest pet peeves is when something like a coughing fit or technical difficulties are left in an episode. Why? I’m of the opinion that it isn’t wise to waste your listeners time. Does that mean I think every little tangent should get edited out? Not necessarily. But if your show is a narrative one, then yes, tell the story you want to tell and cut everything that isn’t related to it. If it’s more of a free-flowing conversation or interview, then leave it in at your discretion. Don’t worry, your listeners will tell you when something gets to be too much or when something just isn’t working.

Honestly, editing can also just make your show so much better. You can add in intro and outro music, sound effects, or other audio clips to enhance your show. Plus, you can cut out the fluff. Did you ask someone a question, but it took them a couple tries to answer? That’s fine! Cut out the false start and no one else will ever know they stumbled on their words. Plus, your guests will usually appreciate that.

Basically, unless you’re really good at talking to other people already, especially for shows with guests, you’ll want to edit things down. Also, sometimes life happens while you’re recording and someone has to get up because there’s a delivery at their door. Or even more common, someone might have to pause to go to the bathroom (I’ve edited out many bathroom breaks). There’s just some stuff that you don’t need to leave in. So even if you just do minimal editing, at least cut things like that out.

Now if you want to do some heavier content editing, that is entirely up to you. With a lot of the shows I work on, I’m not making content edits unless asked. SO most of it is editing out those aforementioned false starts, long pauses, along with filler word such as um, like, or you know (some people say these a lot more than you think and you’ll notice it a lot when you have to edit them all out).

The most important thing though - respect your audience’s time. If they’ll listen to 2+ hours of conversation from you, great! But I’m betting there’s still probably about 15 minutes that could be edited out of conversations that are that long just to tighten them up even a little for your audience.

I could go on much longer about this, but I plan to do a whole series on editing, so you’ll get more of this when that comes around soon.

If you need any help with editing, feel free to contact me here or set up a consultation.