Writing a podcast script is a great way to keep your podcast on track and make sure that you know you’re not going off piece too much.
But the thing is if you write a script that is too rigid, it can sound well exactly like it is scripted and prevent you from injecting your own personality into the podcast (which is not good).
So you want to make sure the podcast script is a bit loose, for you to inject your personality over and over again.
In this article, I will give you eight things that you can put into your podcast script which will allow you to follow a script structure while allowing you to also inject your own personality and make your podcast sound great.
Make sure you read every detail of this article so you know how to structure a podcast script perfectly.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
It would be a bit weird if you were to reads this article without an introduction or watch a movie that didn’t have some kind of title sequence or an opening scene. -So it will be if you skip the introduction in your podcast script.
An introduction highlights three things
- Gives your audience an idea of what’s coming up in the episode.
- It keeps listeners engaged and
- It promises what they’re going to learn or what they’re going to discover or how they’re going to be entertained through the episode.
But so quite often introductions are recorded after the episodes had been recorded.
The reason for recording your introduction after the episodes had been recorded is because, it allows you to kind of summarize what is coming up in your episode and give the listeners something to anticipate about.
But try and keep it slick and within 30 to 60 seconds
Next up is a message from the sponsor.
2. Pre-roll
It’s quite common nowadays for podcasts to have sponsors or to have some kind of promotional upsell and it’s great to get this in either really before the podcast even starts or straight after the introduction this is often called a pre-roll.
This can sometimes be a predefined message that you will be asked to read word for word; also known as a live read.
But in summary, this part of the podcast script is when you promote a product or service.
And if you don’t have a sponsor for your podcast this can be substituted for a call to action for listeners to subscribe to your newsletter so they’re notified when new episodes are released or it could be something like; go and check out our merchandise store.
Whatever it is, it’s always a good idea to get this in before getting into the nitty-gritty of things. You can also do a mid-roll and post-roll but basically, this is a commercial message.
3. Host and Guests introduction
You should introduce yourself as a host and also introduce any guests that you’ve got on your show.
Introducing your guests makes you set precedents for who they are and what the listeners can potentially expect from them.
Let it be simple, you don’t need to go into your guest’s whole life history as you will get that from them. For example, I would say; “I’m interviewing Brother Paul who is the founder of the Matchmaker FM podcast and he’s an entrepreneur working within the audio space”.
Try to summarize it within a few words, a couple of sentences at most, and let the guests speak for themselves; “Let them tell their stories”.
And of course, it’s always a good idea to introduce yourself as the host as well
4. Segways
You might have noticed that podcasts often aren’t a linear format, they might have different features going on or different elements within one podcast and a seg is simply a link between one section and another.
This is commonly used in radio programs. You might say between two songs, for example, let’s say; “I might outro a song and say we’ve got this song coming up next”.
Likewise in a podcast; you can seg between two different topics or two different elements of your show. It’s like saying; “well that was great, now let’s learn about x, or here is our weekly feature where we talk to one of our listeners”.
Whatever it might be, just make sure you put these into your script. And because these segs are recorded separately you can script it word for word.
Segs are like the glue that binds all of your episodes together between various different sections or elements.
5. The Main Topics of Discussion
At this point, a podcast script is particularly very useful if you are interviewing a guest for your show or maybe you are doing a discussion with your other co-hosts.
It’s always really good to actually map out on a document (i.e your script) what you’re going to be talking about in the episode.
I know sometimes people will just have one topic of discussion and that’s fine. But then, you can quite often forget to talk about certain things that can sometimes really add to your show or add depth to what you’re talking about.
So split your topics of discussion out into bulleted lists of things that you want to talk about; Like into headings and subheadings, or topics and subtopics, and include some details so you don’t forget to talk about things that are crucial to the core of your show (i.e, what it is you actually want to talk about in that episodes).
It doesn’t matter if you hold it in front of you, during the course of discussion with your guests or cohosts. And if you start going off on slight tangents (off the main topic discussion), which is bound to happen, with your reference point (script) right in front of you, you can bring back the discussion back on track.
All that matters is that you make sure that you’re following exactly what you set out to talk about.
6. Summary
A summary is a really good way of drawing your episode to a close. Once you’ve recorded your episode you might actually want to go back, listen to it, and then record your summary.
The reason it is advisable to listen to the episode again before recording your summary is so that you can pick out the quotes your guest made, edit them together and make something nice out of them.
Or the summary could also be you just reflecting on yourself on what you’ve learned from talking to that person(guests).
You can even use the summary to talk about potential things that are coming up in the next episode and also use it as a tease to talk about what is coming up in the future.
But a summary in general is a really good way of just basically saying; “Here is what it has been like in this episode”. And also it is a really good way to finish your episode and draw it to a natural close.
The perfect time length of a podcast episode summary should be between one minute to five minutes.
7. Outro
An outro is simply a means of saying; “thanks for listening to the podcast” and maybe reminding the listener to leave a review, comment, or get involved in the discussion.
It is a really good way to wrap up the episode
8. Call to Action
The call to action is kind of very similar to the intro and pre-roll that I talked about earlier in this article.
A call to action is a combination of things such as; telling the listeners to take some kind of action that could be directly connected to a commercial sponsorship message.
It could also be a means of saying; go subscribe to our newsletter, and follow our social media accounts. Whatever you think is relevant and appropriate for your podcast include it in the call to action.
Too many podcasters neglect this (call to action) section and don’t get involved with their listeners as much as they should.
Obviously, you don’t know who your listeners are, but by using a call to action where you say; “Hey send us an email with your thoughts, tweet us, follow us on Instagram, or join our newsletter”.
By allowing feedback from your listeners, you suddenly start to build a picture of who your real audience is.
So, a call to action is really important. If you have not got one at the end of your podcast episode, I recommend you do it because it’s one of these things that can change your podcast and really allow you to grow it significantly.
Once you’ve got that connection that bond with your audience you’ll notice things start changing very rapidly in your favor.
Check these podcast-related articles also;
- How to Start a Podcast
- How To Upload & Host Your Podcast On SoundCloud
- How to make a podcast on Apple
- How to Start a Podcast on Spotify
Conclusion
So there we have it, the 8 easy ways on how to structure a podcast script successfully.
But of course, all of these elements are interchangeable, meaning; you might not necessarily need all eight of them in every single script you write.
And in addition, there are no hard and fast rules to writing a podcast script.
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