Podcast clips are short vertical videos, usually 10 to 60 seconds, cut from a full episode and posted to YouTube Shorts and Instagram so new people find the show. The system below is how Andy Milligan turns a back catalog of interviews into a daily stream of podcast clips, with an assistant doing most of the editing.
Andy is the founder of MMG Design and the Columbus Marketing Organization, and he hosts the Marketing by Design podcast, powered by AMA Columbus. He calls the podcast "my glue and bizdev method" for both businesses. This playbook is built from the standard operating procedure he recorded for his assistant, so every step is something he actually asks for, not a theory.
If you want the bigger picture of how a podcast fits into finding clients, start with how to get your first client, then come back here for the clipping system.
Who this playbook is for
This is for marketers, freelancers, and agency owners who already record long conversations, such as a podcast, a video interview series, or recorded workshops, and want more people to see them. It works best if your guests are the kind of people your clients follow.
The outcome: a repeatable process that produces three finished podcast clips per guest, a backlog you can post from every day, and captions that send viewers back to the full episode.
Prerequisites:
- A library of recorded episodes. Andy has been publishing weekly for 166 straight weeks.
- A recording and editing tool with AI clip suggestions. Andy uses Riverside, which describes its Magic Clips feature as "an AI clip maker that actually picks your video's highlights automatically."
- A shared folder for exports and someone with good judgment to do the editing, either you or an assistant.
- A YouTube channel and an Instagram account to post to.
Why podcast clips are worth the effort
Long episodes are a hard first date. Most people will not commit an hour to a show they have never heard of, but they will watch 30 seconds of a good idea. Clips are the low-commitment way in.
The audience is there. According to Edison Research's Infinite Dial 2025, 55% of Americans age 12 and older are now monthly podcast consumers. Video is growing on professional platforms too: LinkedIn reports that video viewing on the platform is up 36% year over year.
For Andy, the stakes are concrete. His first year in business brought in $200K in topline revenue, his goal for 2026 is $250K, and he says the podcast drives a large share of it: "The podcast last year was the source of 80% of our referrals and client base."
Clips are not the source of those referrals on their own. They are the top of the funnel. More visibility brings better guests, sponsors, and local marketers who want to be on the show, and each of those becomes a relationship. That is why this is a content repurposing system, not a viral video strategy.
The podcast clips workflow in 9 steps
Step 1: Decide what the clips are for
Time: 30 minutes, once (estimate).
Andy's clips have one job: drive top-of-funnel visibility on YouTube and Instagram so viewers find the full episodes. Because the show is about marketing, the same clips also serve his design studio, which works with healthcare companies, and his Columbus community.
Write down which platforms you will post to, who you want watching, and where every clip should point. Andy chose two platforms on purpose: YouTube Shorts and Instagram. Starting narrow keeps the process simple enough to delegate.
Step 2: Build a backlog before you post anything
Time: about one hour for the first batch of clips, according to Andy.
Do not post the first clip the day you make it. Andy's instruction to his assistant was to go through older episodes first and build a backlog, then start posting once the format was approved.
The filing system matters more than it sounds:
- Create one shared folder for all clips. Andy's is called the clipping experiment.
- Inside it, create a subfolder for every guest.
- Aim for five to ten clips per episode over time, starting with three per guest.
- Work through the back catalog in a set order so nothing gets skipped.
Andy's assistant edited the first set of clips in about an hour of work. Once he approved the format, the strategy was greenlit.
Step 3: Let AI find candidates, and let a human choose
Time: 10 minutes per episode (estimate).
In Riverside, open an episode, go to the "Made for you" area, and open Magic Clips. The tool pre-generates clips, names each one with a hook, and gives it a score.
Andy does not trust the scores. "To be honest with you, I don't find these scores to be valuable or tangentially accurate," he says. That is why he wants a person with taste choosing, not the algorithm.
His selection rules:
- Pick the clips most related to your audience. For Andy that means marketing, websites, social media content, branding, LinkedIn, healthcare, and design.
- Favor clips where the guest does most of the talking.
- The ideal clip includes both the guest and the host.
Step 4: Clean up the edit
Time: 10 to 15 minutes per clip (estimate).
Andy's standard edit, inside Riverside's AI tools:
- Turn on remove all pauses.
- Apply magic audio.
- Turn on smart layouts, so the camera switches to whoever is speaking.
- Add captions in your brand style. Andy sets the caption size to 88 and applies the change to similar scenes so it stays consistent.
- Make sure captions never cover anyone's face. When the layout switches to split screen, keep captions in the middle.
- Remove the show logo from the clip.
- Crop so each speaker is centered.
- Watch the whole clip before export. Small fixes only show up on a full watch.
Keep clips between 10 and 60 seconds. Andy chose that range so every clip fits both YouTube Shorts and Instagram without re-editing.
Step 5: Write the on-screen hook
Time: 5 minutes per clip (estimate).
This is the step Andy calls the biggest. Every clip opens with a text hook that calls out the viewer and the topic, so the right person stops scrolling.
His formatting rules:
- Add the hook as a text title at the very start of the clip.
- Place it at the top of the frame, away from anyone's face.
- Keep it short: "Try and make it fit on two lines or less."
- Use lowercase text with a solid background behind it.
- Show it for about three seconds, then let the guest take over.
A hook from one of his clips reads simply: honor your website visitor. It names the topic and the person it helps, and nothing else.
Step 6: Export and file
Time: 2 minutes per clip (estimate).
Export each finished clip in 4K and save it to the guest's subfolder. Three clips per guest is the starting target. Consistent filing is what lets someone else schedule posts later without asking where anything is.
Step 7: Write the caption
Time: 5 minutes per clip (estimate).
Andy uses one caption structure on both platforms:
- First line: the hook, rewritten as a reason to watch, followed by the guest's name. For the website-visitor clip, that became "Why you need to honor your website visitors," with the guest's name after it.
- Below it: a canned paragraph about the podcast and where to watch the full episode.
Andy borrowed the idea from another creator whose captions are just the hook, pointing back to the YouTube channel. Once the format is set, every caption takes minutes.
Step 8: Post daily and track the results
Time: 10 minutes a day to schedule (estimate).
The target is one clip per day on YouTube Shorts and one on Instagram. Andy posts from more than one YouTube channel, with his Andy the Marketer channel set as a collaborator, so each clip gets more than one chance to be seen.
Be honest about the starting point. Before this system, Andy posted one or two clips a week, and some got 300 to 400 views. "Now, imagine 100x that volume and all of them point back here," he says. He set up a format for tracking these inputs and plans to share the results of the experiment, so he can compare them against that baseline.
Step 9: Feed the clips back into your guest pipeline
Time: ongoing.
Clips make the show look active and credible, which makes it easier to book better guests. Andy grows the show on three principles:
- Fit: guests who serve the same clients you do in a different way. They might offer a different service, or serve larger or smaller companies.
- Process: make the clipping process turnkey with a recorded standard operating procedure, so it runs without you.
- Follow-up emails: after an episode launches, ask every guest for a testimonial and a referral to someone like them who would make a good guest.
Those testimonials build what Andy calls a wall of social proof, which makes future guest invitations convert better. The client testimonials guide covers how to collect them. For how he finds guests in the first place, see his podcast Dream 100 outreach session, and for how he structures episodes around leads, see podcast for business.
Delegating podcast clips to an assistant
Andy does not edit these himself. He recorded the full process as a video walkthrough for his assistant, who now does the selection, editing, export, and scheduling, with Andy approving the format.
If you do not have help yet, Andy's suggestion is to hire through OnlineJobs.ph and train an assistant on a recorded standard operating procedure like this one. He puts the typical rate at $6 to $10 per hour. The recorded walkthrough matters as much as the hire. It answers the questions an assistant would otherwise have to ask.
Podcast clips checklist
Copy this into your project tool and use it for every clip.
Before you start
- Platforms chosen (for example, YouTube Shorts and Instagram)
- One clips folder created, with a subfolder per guest
- Target set: three clips per guest to start
Selecting
- Opened the episode's AI clip suggestions
- Ignored the scores and picked on-topic moments
- Favored clips where the guest talks most
Editing
- Pauses removed, audio cleaned, smart layouts on
- Brand captions added, size consistent, no faces covered
- Logo removed and speakers centered
- Length between 10 and 60 seconds
- Watched all the way through
Hook
- Text hook at the top, two lines or less
- Lowercase with a background
- On screen for about three seconds
Publishing
- Exported in 4K to the guest's subfolder
- Caption line one: hook plus guest name
- Standard paragraph about the full episode added
- Scheduled to YouTube Shorts and Instagram
- Inputs logged for tracking
Mistakes to avoid
- Trusting the AI score. Andy found the scores unreliable. Use them to find candidates, not to choose.
- Posting before you have a backlog. A backlog lets you post daily without scrambling.
- Covering faces with text. Captions and hooks belong where they do not block the speaker.
- Long or clever hooks. If the hook does not fit on two lines, it is too long.
- Clips with no next step. Every caption should point back to the full episode or channel.
- Judging the system too early. Andy's own clips averaged a few hundred views at one or two a week. The point of the system is consistent volume.
- Treating clips as the whole strategy. The value comes from the guests, testimonials, and referrals the show produces.
How podcast clips fit the Columbus community
Andy's podcast and his community feed each other. Columbus marketers see the show as social proof and want to be guests, and guests become referral partners. Columbus Marketing Organization is a peer community for marketers, freelancers, and service providers in Columbus, Ohio, founded by Andy Milligan. Members share leads, introductions, and job opportunities, including the weekly Columbus Marketing Jobs newsletter.
If you are building your own video podcast or content repurposing system, you do not have to figure it out alone. Members compare what is working in the Columbus marketing community, and you can meet them at the next Columbus marketing event.
Start your podcast clips system this week
Podcast clips work when they are boring and consistent: a backlog, a format, a hook, and a daily post that points back to the full episode. Pick three guests from your back catalog, make three clips each, and approve one format before you scale.
Andy's advice on sticking with it applies here too: "If you're crazy enough for 166 straight weeks, you will start to make some traction." To compare notes with other marketers running the same experiment, join the Columbus Marketing Organization community on Skool.
To be honest with you, I don't find these scores to be valuable or tangentially accurate.
Frequently asked questions
What are podcast clips?
Podcast clips are short vertical videos cut from a full episode, usually 10 to 60 seconds long, and posted to platforms like YouTube Shorts and Instagram. They give new viewers a low-commitment way to discover a show and point them back to the full episode, where the deeper relationship with the audience starts.
How long should podcast clips be?
Andy Milligan keeps his clips between 10 and 60 seconds so the same file works on both YouTube Shorts and Instagram without re-editing. Within that range, keep only the moment that delivers one clear idea, open with a short text hook, and cut the pauses so the clip moves quickly.
How many clips should I make per podcast episode?
Andy aims for five to ten clips per episode over time and starts with three per guest. Three is enough to test which topics land without spending hours on one episode. Build a backlog across several guests first, then post one clip per day so you never scramble for content.
Can a virtual assistant edit podcast clips?
Yes. Andy's assistant selects, edits, exports, and schedules his clips. He recorded a video walkthrough of the full process and approved the format before scaling. He suggests hiring through OnlineJobs.ph and estimates typical rates at $6 to $10 per hour, with training on a recorded procedure.
Do podcast clips generate leads?
Clips are top-of-funnel visibility, not a lead source by themselves. They make the show more credible, which helps book better guests, and guests become referral partners. Andy says his podcast was the source of 80% of his referrals and client base last year, with clips supporting that pipeline.
Read the video transcript
Kind: captions Language: en This is Andy and this is my channel where I share updates on how I grow each of my businesses. For some context here, I've been in business since February 1st of 2024 and I have three businesses. One is my design studio which is MMG Design. We do web and SEO for B2B healthcare. This is our homepage. I also am the owner of the Columbus marketing organization which is my in-person networking events job board and community for marketers in Columbus which is my top offunnel business that is meant to infor to provide leads for everything else. And I also run a podcast which is my glue and bisdev method for both of these. I've been documenting my journey since February 1st of 2024 as you can see from this uh less than high production value screenshot right here. back then when I was really just scraping around for leads. In my first four year business, I did 200K in topline revenue. And that's not because I'm exceptionally smart or a great business owner. This year, the goal is in 2026, the goal is to make uh a quarter of a million, so 250K. And I'm this is my process where I show you everything that I do, build public, and my goals to make it happen. In this video specifically, we're going to be talking about my podcast clipping strategy. So, as you guys know, the podcast in and of itself is a big bisdev mechanism. I posted a few days ago how I do email outreach to get on podcast guests that could be referral partners and also made a presentation about this for an SEO summit a few months back as well. But in this video, I'm going to be sharing with you a clipping strategy that me and my assistant are working on in order to make this thing blow up. So, a little bit of context here. At the end of this video, I'll play the full SOP that I've sent to my assistant that's going to execute on this. But I want to talk a little bit about the strategy. So, what I see do perform best with podcast clips is we perform we do all of our editing and recording here in Riverside and we have hundreds and hundreds of episodes. So, for the purpose of getting more viral reach and more potential for sponsorships, getting on better guests, it's a nice and vicious flywheel there. Uh my goal is to increase visibility on YouTube to grow that channel and also Instagram to get more top offunnel traffic. In addition, it's a marketing podcast. So it fuels both of my businesses in the sense that marketers locally will see it as a high social proof value asset to come on and uh potential leads for my web flow design studio that's focused on healthcare markets. So you can see how this ecosystem is kind of coming together and the point of the strategy is to drive more top off ofunnel visibility for each of these three. So without further ado, let's actually go into the actual strategy in and of itself, which is what you're here for. Um this is our strategy so far and I'll go through the SOP. So what we want to do is for each of these three projects with here in Riverside, I want to create five to 10 clips. So, we're going to start with three. And my assistant has done a great job. We just started doing the editing today. But what I was ideulating on is a really great format for I have a dedicated folder here called clipping experiment. Um, but that which is a great name, but what she's done is she's created a folder for every single guest of the podcast and she's exported the clips that she's edited to each of them. After we have a backlog, we can start to promote these clips and she'll just start scheduling them out on both the YouTube and Instagram. Uh driving traffic again to the podcast from there and I have conversion mechanisms as well. I told her to edit in the following format. What Riverside does is it does a great job of letting you get these clips started. So, if you go into any Riverside project and you click made for you and then you go down to this right here, boom, magic clips, it already names them via a hook and it scores them. To be honest with you, I don't find these scores to be valuable or tangentially accurate. So, that's why you have someone like a VA who has taste and knows English in order to be able to fine-tune some of these. but she will go through and she'll pick the three highest converting ones that talk about mar that talk about marketing, healthcare, design, anything that's related to what our audience wants to hear about. Then what she will do is she will edit them. And what I've told her to edit them is by creating a hook that calls out the viewer as part of the edit in the assets. So let me explain. So if you watch this example from Andy Cresadina, you will see this clip right here. It's possible to to put it into AI mode, give it your persona, give it a web page, give it a goal, and watch it open a virtual browser and click around and then you can ask it how confused it was. Ask it to write a That's one here is another example. There's brand marketing and there's performance marketing. Brand marketing is partly just about reaching a larger audience and building general awareness so that people that you know when they when they in the moment of need you know they might think of you how to be top of mind. So hard and here is another one. Not in a bad way but there's a good reason why you went to that page. Honor that honor that person. Stay totally focused on them. The back button is the one common feature on every URL in so as you can see there's definitely some similarity with these clips here. Here's another one from Angela's episode as it was here. And I would say AI is a tool. It's not a colleague or a friend. And it's masked in such a way that it feels like a colleague and a friend. And I sometimes, but as you can see, I won't bore you by going through every one of these here. And again, this is only our first day of starting to edit these clips, but you can see the the conventional formatting. We have a call out here in the top that calls out the ICP topic of the video. Good captions that auto switch the camera and a short length anywhere between 10 60 seconds so that they automatically fit on YouTube and Instagram. And that'll just start scheduling multiple of these a day out. And I imagine we can get to hundreds and hundreds of these clips. My assistant did all of this in about an hour of work. And now that I've approved the formatting, we have greenlighted this strategy. So, if we go to my existing YouTube channel, what you'll be able to see here is the channel we'll be clipping them on, and I'll be I'll be posting these from multiple channels. So, this channel right here, Andy the Marketer, is going to uh be a collaborator with these YouTube shorts, and they'll go from this channel and also go from my main channel. So, if I view my channel right here, what you'll see is my own shorts have gotten a good amount of visibility from the podcast. Some of them get 3 to 400 views. Not great and nothing exceptional, but I imagine we can do much much better than this if we actually have consistent volume. As you can only see, we've only been doing like one or two per week. Now, imagine 100x that volume and all of them point back here. One person that I did really love their strategy is all they do is they have a uh the con the uh the caption is just the hook of the video similar to as you can see right here that calls out and then points back to the YouTube channel and then you basically spray and pray once you have the formatting down. So, I've have a format for tracking all of these inputs, and I will definitely be sharing the results of these experiment. But overall, the podcasting strategy, I alluded to it a little bit earlier in the podcasting email outreach video, which I'll link in the card, but we want guests of the podcast to have the following visibility. ICP, they serve the same clients in a different way. So these are and apply this to your own marketing brand. Someone that serves the same clients as you in a different way. Maybe they offer a different service. Maybe they serve customers at a different value level. So maybe they're up market and they only serve enterprise whereas you serve SMBs. And that's the strategy or they're they serve they're in the same industry but they offer a different service. The second one is process. So with this you want to make the process really turnkey. Again, I'll go straight to the video at the end of this that adds the full SOP of how we're going to edit these clips and systematize this and the review process behind it. You can watch that. Stick around to the end for how I communicate how these tasks need to get done through assistant. I have a full I ran a whole workshop for a community called um how to onboard how solo marketers can onboard an assistant. I'll also link to that when I haven't published that yet, but I'll link to that soon. Or you can go on online jobs.ph, a PH hire an assistant and train them and pay them $6 to $10 per hour and they will execute on all these visions for you. So highly recommend also marketers take that action. And uh third part of this process for growing the podcast emails and pre and post in the presentation I gave in the SEO community we talked about perfect emails to send after a podcast launch and afterwards. So ask every single guest for a testimonial, which is how you get this nice compelling wall of social proof that makes the emails that you send out to potential guests and makes those convert much better. And also the second thing you ask for is a referral. Is there anyone like you that would like to be interviewed for this podcast? And they're going to want to interview introduce you to someone great that's in their network. As you can see, if you stick with it, if you're crazy enough for 166 straight weeks, you will start to make some traction. and in review the podcast last year was the source of 80% of our referrals and client base. So, keeping it nice and short, stick around for the full SOP of how I uh delegate this task to my assistant. But this is my podcast equipping growth strategy to get more sponsors, agency leads, and grow my community of marketers here in Columbus. Make sure you subscribe to the channel. Again, my name is Andy and I'm going be posting transparently all of my lead generation and business growth activities while I build in public. And make sure you subscribe and stick around and I'll see you in the next one. Peace. Free audio postp production by alonic.com. Okay, Roa, hope you are doing well. This is going to be a podcast clipping walk through. So, top level instructions. Every single day, I would like to start posting one clip to YouTube shorts and to Instagram, just those two platforms. But we need to start getting a backlog ready. So, I want to have you start by going through our old podcast and editing short clips and adding them all to one drive folder and creating subfolders for each guest. So, these are the ones that I'd like you to start with. Angela and these projects that I'd like you to create clips from reference these Angela and Andy Lillian and Andy Christina Matt Vivva Matt Bojack Untitled this is Mac Andy this one right here creating three of that one Tom Cassano Danielle which is this one right Brian Massie, which is this one right here. Ryan Hawk, this one. Nikio H, which is this one right here. Casey, which is this one right here. Bridget Murphy, which is this one right here. Clay Astrom. Allison Dmer, Casey Hill, Steven Schneider, Bill Balder, Julian Guzo, J2 This one right here with Alley. This one right here with Kyle Adams. This one right here. Lee Densmer. Michelle Bourbaner. Jeff Risner. Andy Cresadina. Jason Vandervir. Meredith Dennis. And that'll be it for now. Also, last one would be Brandon Triola. This one right here. Focus on those for now. Start with the oldest and work your way back up to the most recent. So, start with Brandon Triola. Actually, no. Start with Andy Cresadina, which is this one right here, and then work your way back up. Start with a list of those and then proceed to that step here shortly. Okay. An actual SOP for editing each clip. Say I'm starting with Andy's episode. I'm going to click into it like this. It might quit here. This is already bugged on me three times and stop recording. So, I'm going to hope that this doesn't quit or just freeze. So, a lot of different clips you can use. This is the format that I'm going to give you an idea for. Um, so going to this made for you. You're going to see a lot of different pre-generated clips. Use your best judgment to try and find ones that are related to our audience. marketing, websites, social media content, branding, LinkedIn, anything that's on topic. And if you can have a clip where the guest, it's primarily the guest, but also both of us talk, that would be a perfect clip. Now, I'm going to show you how you can go in and edit each clip. So, a few things that I want to think about when I edit. Um, I've clicked into this one that says honor the visitors intent. A few things that I want to do right off the bat is I want to go to AI tools here in the top right. I want to make sure remove all pauses are turned on. So just for demonstration purposes, they're all turned on and it's up to the mask. So update the mask, remove all pauses. Magic audio is applied. Just go ahead and click that. And smart layouts is applied as well. Now what I'm going to do is I'm going to go to captions. I'm going to put brand and click on that. That's going to start playing. It's going to generate right there to start with. I want to make sure that these aren't covering the face of the visitor. So to start with, when it's right here, I want you to hit similar scenes. You're going to apply the changes. So the text needs to be a little bit bigger. Make it say 88. Hit similar scenes. And hit similar themes. And it'll only add up the ones like that. When it switches layout, it can go to one like this again. Change the font size. Boom. on similar scenes. When it splits screens, this should be in the middle. And again, make sure it is 88 across all of them. And remove the logo. The logo should not be on there for us these episodes. So, the biggest part, listen, go ahead and watch all the way through. Not in a bad way, but there's a good reason why you went to that page. Honor that. Honor that person. a couple small things like this to be able to crop and make sure that the subjects are centered. Um, but the biggest thing I want you to do is called the hook. So, uh, this one's called, you can use this for reference. Honor the visitors intent. For each one, you want to create some kind of a text line hook. You can use this for reference. What you're going to do at the very beginning of the video, hit text, hit title, and you're going to move this to the top again in a way that it's not in the speaker space. So some are kind of like here. Name it something like this. Honor your website. Honor your website visitor. Boom. Try and make it fit on two lines or less. And then also make sure that the text is lowerase and that it has a backdrop on it. So it should look something kind of like this. Yeah. Background invert. Kind of like that. So that's a good hook. The title should start in the beginning and it should only last a few seconds. So like 3 seconds. Not in a bad way, but there's a good reason why you went to that page. Honor that. Honor that person. Stay totally focused on them. The back button is the one common feature on every URL in the world. So you have to do you have to make it good enough, strong enough, deep enough, compelling enough, specific enough, helpful enough that the mouse doesn't drift up and to the left. Boom. So I would qualify that as good. As you can see, the text of a layout doesn't overlap with any faces. It all has the biggest size and there's a small hook. a bad way, but there's a good reason why you that last 3 or 4 seconds. Next, you're going to hit export after you've watched it all the way through. Export, and you're going to export it at 4K. You're going to hit export video, and you're going to save it to that folder. Again, make one folder for all the clips, and then you make a subfolder with a guest name. Make three of these per guest. All right. So, I will also include that video, that folder link that I have started. It's this one right here. It just says clipping. What the hell? Says clipping experiment and I have the first one started with Andy Cresino. So, we need two more for his. And again, create new folders for each of the guest names. Last thing I want you to do in terms of formatting the actual post. Again, don't feel the need to add this to the if you want to add this to the content calendar in order to organize it, feel free to do that. So, what we need to do for captions on Instagram, take reference from this. Make the first line whatever that hook was that you put in the text. Um, so for this one, for example, it was the Andy Cresadina example that we've been running with. It was honor your website visitors. So, the quote, so the first line would be why you need to honor your website visitors. And then in closed after that, put the guest name, Andy Custadino. Then in the subcaption, we need to put the template that I'll write for you uh in this SOP. So it'll say something about the podcast and do it like that. This is for Instagram. For YouTube, it's relatively the exact same thing. So, the preview text, a um hook with the guest name, and then a canned um a canned template that you put below that is going to be about the company, about the podcast. Again, let's don't start uploading anything yet. Let's start getting paid over the next few days, and then I'll give you the thumbs up to start adding those to the content calendar if that helps, and then uploading one per day on each. Cheers, and talk to you soon.