51. How Can I Create My Episodes Faster? Podcasting Tips for Planning, Recording, and Editing

FAQ Friday answering the question of "How Can I Create My Episodes Faster?"

This episode was produced by me, The Podcast Teacher! Contact me at Hello@ThePodcastTeacher.com.

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Transcript

Welcome to Podcasting for solopreneurs and FAQ Friday, where I answer a common podcasting question in 5 minutes or less. Today's question is, how long should it take to create a podcast episode from idea to uploading it? This question is from Angie Wilson, host of the Love Your Life After Divorce podcast. Hey, Angie. Thanks so much for listening. She goes on to say, I'm new to podcasting, only 12 episodes in, and it is taking me 4 to 6 hours to create each episode. This feels like a long time, especially because most of my episodes are shorter than 20 minutes. Do you have any tips to create an episode faster? Okay. So let's start with the first part of this question.

There's really no standard for how long it, quote, unquote, should take. It takes what it takes. 4 to 6 hours for a 20 minute episode is on the higher end, but that doesn't mean that it's wrong. I can tell from the second part of your question, though, do you have any tips to create an episode faster that you want to shorten this time? This is a complex topic that I may have to do a full length episode on in the future, but I'm gonna try and give you a few tips here within my 5 minute limit. First, I would encourage you to take a look at your process and identify which part is taking the most time. Is it planning, recording, or editing? Then see if you can figure out why it's taking so long and identify possible solutions. Is planning a struggle because your ideas are big and abstract and you're having a hard time putting them into individual focused episodes? Then maybe feeding your idea into ChatGPT and asking it to help you pull out the pieces may help. Is recording taking a long time because you're trying to speak off the cuff and are having trouble putting words together in the moment? That's me.

Perhaps writing an extremely detailed outline or full script will help streamline things. Is it the editing process? Use a dog clicker during recording to help you quickly identify trouble spots during editing. Go back to episode 21 of this show for more info on this strategy. You could also try using a different editing program or outsourcing this task. For me personally, I spend about 2 hours planning and scripting for my 15, 20 minute episodes. I do spend a lot of time here because the structure and flow of the content is most important to me, and I am personally at my best when I plan it all out rather than trying to do improv in the moment. So then I spend about 20 minutes recording. This part is really quick because I fully write the script out word for word, and then I just simply read it.

And finally, I spend about 30 minutes editing. I will say that at 50 something episodes, I am faster and more efficient overall than when I first started my podcast, so hang in there, Angie. If you have a podcasting question, click the send me your question link in the episode description, and I'll answer it in an upcoming episode. Until next time. Happy podcasting.