Crafting Engaging Social Media Posts for Your Podcast with Descript

[00:00:00] Arielle Nissenblatt: Hello, women in podcasting network. My name’s Ariel Nissenblatt. I am on the community team at Descript, and I’m really excited to be here today to share a video that I’ve made just for you, Jennifer’s community. In this video, I’m going to show you how to use Descript to make audio and videograms for your podcast.

[00:00:31] If you’re new to Descript, let me show you around real quick. Descript is an all in one video and audio editing solution that uses a WordDoc like editor to make editing extremely easy. You can also use the Waveform editor if you want. I use it to record and edit my solo podcast, which is called Feedback with Earbuds, and I use it to edit another podcast that I co host called Trailer Park, the podcast trailer podcast.

[00:00:55] So let’s get into how to make audio and videograms using Descript. First two [00:01:00] audiograms. We’ll use feedback with earbuds. My podcast about podcast recommendations as an example. I record this solo podcast using scripts recorder. I press record right within the app. I read and voice my script, and when I hit stop, I get my transcript pretty much right away.

[00:01:20] I spend some time cleaning it up. I correct some misspellings. I take out the times that I repeated myself, I delete some of the bad jokes that I made off script, and I apply Studio Sound, which makes it sound like I recorded in a sound treated environment, and then I’m ready to select my clips for audiograms.

[00:01:36] I want to select clips that are going to be enticing, parts of the script that might get a potential listener interested in learning more about the episode. My hope is that they like it so much, that they go to their podcast listening app of choice and listen to the full episode. But another way of thinking about how to select clips is, where does your guest look and sound their best?

[00:01:54] Now I mentioned that my podcast is a solo podcast, but I do incorporate clips from guests. The way that the show works [00:02:00] is that each week of my podcast recommendation newsletter is curated by a different person, and on the podcast I have that curator on to share a bit about their podcast recommendations.

[00:02:09] So when I select a clip that features a guest, I want to make sure that they sound great, and the clip highlights their work. Let’s choose this clip from Nikki Boyer, host of the podcast Near Death from Lemonada Media. She tells us about the podcast episodes that she recommends, and the reason that she started her show, Near Death.

[00:02:26] I love this. I love these kinds of storytelling. I love leaning into the uncomfortable conversations about death, about sex, about things that make you uncomfortable in the moment, but at the end kind of feel healing. To discuss. So, um, that’s what I’m gonna share today with my curated list, and I’m very excited I selected this clip because it’s Nikki in her own voice telling us about herself.

[00:02:50] She’s gonna love it, and that means that she might share it with her network, especially if I add colors, images, and other elements that make it visually appealing. So let’s add some of those elements. [00:03:00] First, I select my clip. I highlight it. I copy it. Command C or Control C if you are on or non Mac. Then I create a new composition.

[00:03:12] I go up to the top of the screen. And I press the plus button. Create a new composition. Title it. And then I just paste my clip over there. Then I go up to the top menu, click on templates. I go to gallery, and I click on audiograms. I’m just going to select a template. So it’s already going to populate that template.

[00:03:35] But I don’t necessarily need the Descript logo, so I’ll get rid of that. Instead, I will bring in Nikki’s podcast logo. It’ll get added and I can resize it as I please. I’m going to put it up in the right corner as if it’s a logo. I’m also going to add another element. I’m going to add a picture of Nikki so that we have an idea of what she looks like so that we can envision her speaking these words.

[00:03:58] I’m going to. [00:04:00] I’m also now going to want to change the colors a bit because they’re in Descript Blue. We can instead go with Nikki’s podcast colors. And we can use the eyedrop tool to choose pink for the waveform. We can change the color of the title over here. And then let’s see what it looks like when we press play.

[00:04:17] I love this. I love these kinds of storytelling. Love it, but I don’t love the blue. So let’s change that to the same pink that we were using before. And there you have it. It already looks like it’s branded in Nikki’s podcast colors. So now I just like to go through it and make sure that everything looks and sounds great.

[00:04:33] I love this. I love these kinds of storytelling. I love leaning into the uncomfortable conversations about death, about sex, about things that make you uncomfortable in the moment, but at the end kind of feel healing to discuss. So, um, and I’ve decided that I’m going to cut out the so um, cause I want to make sure that it’s a succinct audiogram.

[00:04:51] So let’s listen back to that. That’s what I’m going to share today with my curated list. And I’m very excited. Love it. And then I am going to publish it. [00:05:00] I’m going to export it and I can export it as a video. Nikki on Feedback with Earbuds, and save. And there you have it, a 30 second ish audiogram that I can share on social media for my audience, and I can send it to Nikki so that she can share it with her channels as well.

[00:05:13] The process for choosing and editing a videogram is similar. For this example, let’s use my podcast, Trailer Park, the podcast trailer podcast. Here, my co host Tim and I record our episodes on Squadcast. And then we bring the files into Descript in order to edit. We don’t publish a full video podcast, but we do use the video elements to create clips for social media.

[00:05:35] Let’s select a short clip from our recording. First thing I want to do is go to squadcast. fm to get my files from the interview that I did with my co host, Tim. So I’ll log into my Squadcast account. I will then select the session that I want to pull clips from, I’ll choose that session. I will then select the files that I want to edit into script, and very easy, I [00:06:00] can select that I would like to edit those files in video and audio format, that’s MP4.

[00:06:05] So that’ll start our export process, and then we can create our project. I like to make my edits on the desktop app, so I’ll let it move me over there. So we’ll let those transcribe for just a few seconds. There’s me! In the meantime, we can title our project. And while things are getting prepared, I can think about what I want my videogram to be.

[00:06:24] So once we’re all imported, we can check out what that looks like. I like to resize our… Face boxes so that we can both be seen in this clip. Tim’s wearing a nice red hat. I like to change our background up a little bit. How about that orange for today? Then I want to go through my script and select a passage that we’ll use for our videogram today.

[00:06:46] For this videogram, I think I want to take right from the beginning of the episode. So we’ll start off with just the intro to this episode. Good afternoon. Good morning, afternoon. Good morning, afternoon, evening, middle of the night to you, [00:07:00] dear listener. Arielle here. Let’s tease some audio, shall we? Let’s tease some audio.

[00:07:05] There may be some bloopers there, but I think it’s a good time, and I think it gives potential listeners… Some insight into how the rest of the show is going to play out. So I’m going to choose that. And what I want to do is just grab my text. I can copy it. I come up to the top. I press new composition.

[00:07:23] I’m going to title it. And then I am going to paste it right there. I then want to make sure that all of my spelling is correct. Evening, middle of the night to you, dear listener, Ariel. Not the way my name is spelled, so let’s fix that up. The rest looks pretty good, and now it’s sort of up to me, do I want to cut out all these extra good morning afternoons, or do I want to leave them in, because it’s kind of fun.

[00:07:44] I’m going to decide to leave them in, and what I’m going to do next is caption my videogram. I’m going to go up to gallery, I’m going to go to captions, and I’m going to choose karaoke skewed. That’ll add the template, then we can change up the template as we please. I’m going to go back to that orange because I liked it.

[00:07:59] And then [00:08:00] let’s watch it through. Dear listener, Arielle here. Let’s tease some audio, shall we? Love it. Looks like there’s some extra space at the end, so I’m gonna cut that off. I’m gonna move the captions a little bit. Also gonna make them a bit smaller. Then I can also add a progress bar. That’ll just show how far into the audiogram we’re at.

[00:08:16] Good afternoon. Good morning, afternoon. Good morning, afternoon, evening, middle of the night to you, dear listener. You can also add yourself a waveform. So once we have added all of that, The flourishes, we can then go ahead and publish our videogram. I export it as a video, and we are done. And there you have a videogram.

[00:08:36] Descript makes it very easy to make both audio and videograms. If you decide to test out making some audio or videograms using Descript, please share them with me. I would love to see them. Thank you again to Jennifer for giving me the opportunity to share this video with The women in podcasting community, happy creating.[00:09:00]