Pulling great quotations from your podcast content is harder than it seems. That’s not because your content is boring—it’s because translating speech from voice to text is a real challenge.
When they hit ‘end recording’, most podcasters are confident that they’ve got loads of highlight quotations that they can use to promote their new episode. In reality, although the quotations are there, they’re often rambling and full of filler words and overlapping speech. This discrepancy between perception and reality occurs because our brains do an amazing job of clearing up human speech in real-time so we don't notice these tics. We become aware of them only when we see audio content in written form.
If you’re struggling, here are a few sure-fire ways to source memorable, engaging quotations from your podcast:
1) First, finding notable quotables (as I call them) actually begins before you record. If your episode is already recorded, bummer. Skip ahead to stage 3.
Content repurposing is most successful when it’s baked into your strategy from the beginning, not tacked on at the end. This means asking yourself a couple of key questions:
What message do you want people to get from the podcast episode?
This determines which bits of the content you should invest effort in repurposing
Where will you post the repurposed content?
If it’s via email: Perhaps a short, snappy quotation for the subject line and a longer quotation for the email body
LinkedIn: A good platform for longer quotation in the form of posts. If you also share an audiogram, it should be less than 60 seconds
Instagram and Facebook: Look for short snappy quotations for posts (when they’re embedded in a photo), or a clip of up to 60 seconds for a Reel
TikToks: An audio clip of up to 10 minutes (although this would be very long compared to most TikToks on the platform)
Once you’ve answered these questions, you’re ready to record.
2) As you’re recording, keep in mind the kinds of quotations that you want to hear. If you’re the person delivering these quotations, keep them as clear and succinct as possible.
If the quotation comes from your guest and they ramble on the delivery, reframe it for them in the moment: “Let me see if I understood that: You’re saying that more than half of Americans who go to a theme park will go to a Disney park?”. This will compact the quotation to its snappiest form. You can always send the highlight quotations to your guest to sign off on before you publish them.
3) Once you've recorded and edited the episode, use software such as Otter.ai to create a transcript of the episode and assign dialogue to the relevant speaker.
If the transcription is messy, clear it up in sections with ChatGPT. My friend Jeremy Shere has created a great prompt and process for this which he explains in this video. Thanks for sharing it with me, Jeremy!
When your transcript is clean, your quotations will be ready to copy and paste to wherever you need them.
4) If, once all this is done, your ideal quotation is still too long, review your editing process to see if there's anything you could cut. If you’re sharing the quotation as text, you can also abbreviate it with ellipses (...). However, use ellipses sparingly. Too many and the quotation will look messy and it could undermine your audience’s trust in your content.
Another way to communicate the quotation without citing it directly is to paraphrase it:
“Listen in to find out which theme park more than half of theme-park attending Americans go to! (From 12:06)”
If these tips have helped you to pull quotations from your podcast episodes, feel free to quote me by sharing this post.