Excerpt from: Podcasting at Work: 25 Questions to Ask Before Starting

If you’re getting help with podcast editing, be sure that everyone agrees on what’s included in an “edit” - and what’s not. There’s a big difference between crafting a 90-minute interview down to 15-minutes of gold versus just smoothing out the “ums” and “ahs”. Good communication on this from the outset can save you from big budget or timeline surprises.

At Pop Up Podcasting, our editing falls into two basic categories: content editing (editorial) and technical editing.

Technical edits are pretty straightforward. We’ll pick the best take of an intro; remove miss-speaking and crutch words like “um” and “ah”; and generally smooth things out and make them sound great.

Content or editorial edits are a little more complicated. 

In these cases we’re making creative decisions about moving or taking out content. We need to work more closely with our clients in these cases to ensure they’re getting exactly what they want. 

Often, the process starts with a quick conversation after the recording session: “we didn’t like this answer” or “tighten up this section” -- we can even handle broader requests like “take out the boring bits and reduce the length to under 20 minutes”. 

Some clients prefer to have full control of editorial decision making in-house - they are the subject matter experts after all. In these cases we can provide the raw interview audio and/or a transcript so that the client can easily communicate what needs to be removed or moved.

Regardless of who does what, we send our clients a draft of the edited audio for review, and make further edits based on their feedback. One of the reasons we assign a personal producer to each of our clients is that this feedback process improves their producer’s understanding of what clients want (and don’t want) over time, so the process gets faster and easier with every new episode.