Expert Podcasting Practices For Dummies®

Chapter 6. Transitions, Timing, and Cues

In This Practice

• Creating bumpers and rejoiners

• Using pauses effectively

• Developing hand signals for communicating with co‐hosts

• Fading in and fading out

How easy do you make it on your audience to listen to your show? Leaving aside the topics of finding your show and filling it with great content, what about the physical activity of listening (or watching, if it's a video podcast) that your audience goes through each time they consume your program? What may seem like a very passive activity is actually anything but, and producers who understand the listening process — and what listeners have been trained to expect — will create a better show.

Consider (by analogy) reading: Text is easier to read when the writer uses correct punctuation, groups related content into paragraphs, gathers paragraphs into sections, and then combines paragraphs into chapters as the final book is assembled. A good author (or editor) uses various techniques to segue from one segment to another at each of those transition points.

In this practice, we show you how to apply that same philosophy to your podcast — including ways to make good transitions during a live recording session and how to add them in during the post‐editing process. Consider it “packaging” — and understand that it can make your show dramatically more listenable.

Making Transitions with Bumpers and Rejoiners

Unless your podcast episode is about a single self‐contained topic, you will likely cover multiple ...