Podcast Clips—Your Best Member Recruitment Tool
What if just 30 seconds of your podcast could bring in your next member?
It's just getting hot here in the San Francisco Bay Area, and the kids went back to school! One thing I found myself doing more than usual this summer was scrolling social media. I found myself in parks waiting for my daughter and her friends as they played on the slides and swings, while I sat on a bench with the other parents scrolling away on our phones. It's sad, but a reality these days. I do spend a lot of that time sharing clips I like with my friends, co-workers, and family, much like your association members and prospective members who are also scrolling Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, and YouTube Shorts.
Consider producing short, snackable clips for them. Hopefully, they will share them. They will then discover your association and the valuable long-form audio and video content that you produce.
Podcasting Insight of the Week
Topic: Short Podcast Clips for Social
Why It Matters: Short-form video clips outperform long-form content in visibility and engagement. They're the hook that draws new members into the whole experience. If you aren't doing this, think about it starting now.
Quick Win Idea
Create a 30-Second Clip from Your Latest Episode
Choose a quote or moment that made you think, “That’s the good stuff.”
Add captions and a bold title.
Share it on LinkedIn, Instagram Reels, YouTube, and/or TikTok.
Link to the full episode in the post or comments.
This builds curiosity, drives traffic, and builds brand familiarity fast. It's not a heavy lift,t and talk to your producer about testing them out.
Episode Ideas Spotlight for Compelling Clips
Member spotlights: Interview members from different backgrounds and experience levels within the association, focusing on their career journeys, challenges overcome, and lessons learned. This can be particularly inspiring for younger or aspiring members. A great play to grab clips to showcase your podcast and, better yet, your association and industry it supports.
Success stories and case studies: Showcase how members have successfully navigated industry-specific challenges, implemented innovative practices, or achieved notable goals, providing valuable insights and actionable advice. Over and over again, these perform fantastically.
"A Day in the Life Of...": Feature members in various roles and at different career stages, offering a glimpse into their daily routines, responsibilities, and how they contribute to the field. Who doesn't want to see how others in your industry do things?
Make sure to…
Videos with bold titles and clear captions get three times more engagement than videos without them.
From Strategy to Action
Ask yourself:
What moment in the last episode sparked a strong reaction?
How can I clip that to make members or prospective members stop scrolling?
Why it matters: As we stated above, short clips work. Studies show podcast clips shared on social platforms get up to 3x more engagement than full episodes and can increase show discovery by 20–30%.
Takeaway for associations: Use clips as your hype machine. Tease an announcement, spotlight a member, or share a big moment—then let that short segment do the work of pulling in new listeners. Clips like these can help show your board a real return on member engagement and visibility. If creating clips feels out of reach, let us show you how we do this for clients in under an hour of their time each month.
Taylor Swift Podcast Strategy
A smart newsletter might have led with Taylor Swift. When the New Heights podcast teased host Travis Kelce's girlfriend, Taylor Swift’s new album, with a 12-second clip, the internet went wild, with millions of views across platforms before the whole episode even dropped. News outlets picked it up, fans mobilized, and the podcast became the place for the reveal.
As of this writing, clips from the New Heights x Taylor Swift podcast episode have generated:
Instagram: 350M views, TikTok: 28M views, X: 70.6M views, YouTube: 12M views (Shorts + episode), Threads: 1.85M views. Spotify reported a 2,500% increase in average streams and female listeners spiking 618%.
That’s roughly 462M views. Whew!
Today is National Potato Day: Take some time to enjoy a potato in whatever way you most enjoy eating or throwing.
How many ways do you think Taylor Swift could prepare a potato to eat?
Fried, baked, mashed, roasted, hmmm. What am I missing?
Let’s connect.
If you’re curious how podcast clips could help your association engage members and attract new ones, hit reply — I’d love to hear what you're working on.
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