You may have heard show notes mentioned and don't realize how important they are. On this episode I talk all about what show notes are, how to build great ones using a paragraph of text. If you use chapters in your podcast consider using a paragraph of text for each chapter. I also talk about how the best way to list URL's in your show notes, including using redirects.

Welcome to Podcast Answers, the show where I help you start and grow podcasts, your podcast

by answering any questions that you have. So in that you can watch us live. We record

this show live Tuesdays at noon Eastern. You can go to now streaming.live and see us do

this. You can ask your questions right online, right when we're recording live. So you can

actually be part of this show and we would love to have you be part of the show because

it's a lot of fun.

You get your podcast questions answered in the comments and I yeah, it's great. So that's

why I exist. I exist to help people. Well, I don't exist, but the show, the podcast answer

show is here to help you start your podcast, grow your podcast and answer all sorts of

podcasting questions. So again, that URL is now streaming.live Tuesdays at noon Eastern

is when I record this podcast so you can be a part of it.

Today we're going to be talking a little bit about show notes. What are show notes? So

show notes are essentially your blog post to the episode. And what is great about that

is it's your butt. It's it the way that you it's extra notes for your show. So I'm doing

this show in audio. You can hear me talk, but if I'm mentioning things, if I'm talking

all about different topics and ideas and I have URLs to go to or pictures to show you

and now pictures I could show you in the YouTube video because I am streaming this live on

YouTube as we're recording, but it, but if you have something like a URL, that's really

hard to say. So essentially the show notes are the blog post for your episode. And it,

it is also when you create your, your episode in your podcast host, it's called the description

of your episode and it shows up in all of the podcast apps.

So if you're looking at Apple podcast right now or Casta Matic or Curio caster or any

of the podcast apps, you're going to see the title and you're also going to see the description

and the description is that it's the show notes for your episode. It is what your episode

is about. And so what it does is it allows your listeners to know where the, what the

episode is about.

So if they're just looking at, at the title of it, they may know like in this case, this

title of this episode is show notes or something along those lines of how to create great show

notes. And so you may know that that's about show notes, but what if it is something less,

less descriptive? Like what if it's just something like today I interviewed John Smith, are you

actually going to know what that's about?

Cause you don't even may not even know who John Smith is. So the show notes allow you

to say John Smith is the leading expert about how podcasting works technically in your brain.

When you listen to a podcast, what happens in your brain? You can use those things in

your show notes. And then people can, as they're looking at your titles can get a little bit

more information about what they're going to be listening to.

It also allows you to, again, if you're saying links in your episode, sometimes those are

really hard to know, especially if you have something like, um, let's just say something

really, really long. So if it's an episode or if you're trying to link to something that's

like amazon.com/product slash, this is an awesome dash product.com. Like you're not

going to remember that if you're just listening in the car, a lot of times I'm listening to

podcasts in the car.

And so I don't actually hear, I don't actually know. I'm not going to sit down and go to

that website right away that I want to go to. So what, what show notes allow you to

do is put that URL in your actual podcast app so that that way people can find it easier

later. Now, I recommend using redirects anyways. So like for instance, for this podcast, it's

podcast answers.com/buymeacoffee. We'll take you to our, our buy me a coffee, but I don't

want to have to say buy me a coffee.com/podcast answers or something along those lines.

Cause you may not, you may not remember what all of those are. So I try to use branded

links by using a redirect. So again, I can just tell you to go to podcast answers slash

buy me a coffee or podcast answers slash support or whatever. That's going to be kind of branded

as me because it's podcast answers.com/buymeacoffee. But I also have short links set up for lots

of other things too. So just for instance, if you want to learn how to use Ecamm, you

can go to podcast answers.com/ecamm, E C A M M, and that'll take you to Ecamm. Or if

you want to learn of all about podcast hosting and you want to check out the podcast hosts

I use, you can use podcast answers.com/captivate. And so I use all of these really short URLs,

these these redirects. So I don't need to give you the separate different links that

may be longer and harder to remember. I give you those, but I would also, even if I say

that in the episode, so I may say like I just did their podcast answers.com/buymeacoffee.

Now, I'm hopefully I said it a couple of times, so hopefully you actually remember it. But

what if you don't like what if you're driving and you're like, Hey, I remember on the episode

about about show notes, Andy talking something about about buy me a coffee or support or

I don't remember what it is. You know, the episode you were listening to, you knew it

was the episode about show notes. And so all you have to do is open up your podcast app

and you can find all of the links in there that I'm talking about. So for instance, what

I do is I usually put a paragraph about what the episode is like what I talked about in

the episode. So in this in this podcast episode, I'm going to say something like we're talking

all about show notes, show notes, give your listeners a way to know what the episode is

about and also how to link to different things that they may be talking about or something

along those lines.

I may not use that exact verbiage in for this show note, but I'm going to put a paragraph

about what the show notes or what the episode was. And so that gives me that gives me an

eye. The very first thing is going to be what this episode is about. And then for me, what

I do is I put links. So I have a like I start all of my show notes off with like just a

regular text.

But then after I put what the episode is about, I have like it in a heading format. So I use

an H3 specifically. So not all podcast apps are going to display your show notes the same.

And it's it's going to drive you nuts if you try to get all of the podcast apps to display

your notes exactly the same or exactly how you want them, because they're not going to

do that. But you're going to want to use something like for those that do use HTML tags. If you

put like I use a heading three, so it kind of stands out bolder and I say links.

And then the one thing that's important to know about links in your podcast notes is

you can if you know what a hyperlink is, you can. So for instance, that would be something

like the text on the page says support. And when you click that link, it takes you to

podcastanswers.com/buymeacoffee. I'm going to keep saying that in this episode because

it's important because that's how I get supported for this episode.

So this show, that's how I continue to be able to continue doing it. So I'm going to

keep saying it. But but not all podcast apps allow you to click the link if it's just a

hypertext. And so what I do, a lot of them are they some of them require what they're

calling naked links and naked links are just that they're, let's say in this case, podcastanswers.com/buymeacoffee

is written out in my show notes text.

And so I need to have that as a naked link. So usually for me, what I actually do is I

actually will write out something like support the show. And then I put https colon slash

slash podcastanswers.com slash buy me a coffee. But then I hyperlink that whole thing. So

if the if the podcast app that you use allows you to do hyperlink text, now you can click

on it. If it doesn't, it still has the link there so people can see it. And if it takes

the naked link and makes it a link, then great.

So that's, that's, that's what I do for my show notes. So I again, I start with the topic

of what the show is going to be about. And so I talk a little bit about, you know, what

the episode is about. And then I talk about the links that I have. And so I am able to

easily go in and say, Hey, go to the links link section of the show notes. So look in

the show notes, you'll find the links for this episode. And that may be lots of different

things that may be the link to the YouTube episode.

Because if you're in a podcast app, you may not even know that I have a YouTube video

that for this specific episode, and it may be, you know, let's say I'm talking about

support. So buy me a coffee is going to be there. And you know, all of those things like

that. Or if I have a guest on what I do is I have the gut, all of the guests contact

information.

So for instance, a few weeks ago, when I had Todd from Blubrry on, I put, you know, Blubrry.com

in there, I put their, their link to podcast AI or pie, their Blubrry pie. And also it's

a different thing. I put the links to, so those are the things that we're talking about,

but then you can also go and actually link to them. It's going to have a better click

through it.

Because again, if people want to get to the website, most people aren't going to type

that in their browser. They're going to want to go and click in and find something really

easy. And so if you provide that for them in the show notes, then they can get to what

they're looking for. Super, super easy. Now, if you have chapters in your podcast, which

I highly recommend. So if you're, if you're listening in a lot of podcasts apps, if you

look down right now, somewhere on the interface on your podcast interface, there's going to

be a chapter.

So I usually for my show, I have a intro, I have a topic, you know, I call it whatever,

like this time I'll talk about chapters. Sometimes if I'm talking about lots of different things

or lots of different parts of the show. So like if I was talking about what to put in

your show notes, how to do links, I may actually break those out into separate chapters and

chapters are cool because you can skip around.

And again, I know a lot of people say, I don't want people to skip around in my show, but

a lot of times if you're going to, like, that's the way for it to make it memorable too, because

yes, they may just want to get to the meat and of the show. And that's okay. But if you're

talking about lots of different topics and you have them linked lots of different places,

you can skip around.

So again, if I'm talking just about redirects, then I can skip them to the part about redirects

that they want. A lot of times for me, I'm listening to the whole show, but I may be

riding in the car and I want to hear something again because I missed it, but it was really

a good idea. So for me, I go back and use the chapters and skip to that part that the

hosts were talking about the thing that I actually wanted to listen to and take notes

on later when I can.

So if you're using chapters in your podcast, which again, I recommend you do write a full

paragraph about each chapter. I've heard it said, Todd from Blubrry says, create your

audio for your listeners and your show notes for Google. And so that's a good thing to

remember because it allows you to say, okay, I'm doing this audio for you as the listeners

and the show notes are there for you too.

I mean, if you want to go back and read them. Yeah, that's great. But you really want to

invest and put your descriptions in and put some time into that for Google. Don't just

do a transcript dump of the podcast. Yes, transcripts are great in podcasts, but don't

just do a transcript dump and put that on your, on your show notes because it's not

going to make sense because Google is looking for things like articles and web pages that

are written like the written word.

And you don't speak like you, like you write when you write, you write in a different tone

and a different style. But when you, when you're, you're talking, you say words that

you wouldn't say when you're writing, you get to the point your sentence structure is

different.

So write your show notes for Google because Google is going to index that. And that's

how people are actually going to find your episode. They're going to find it because

they're listening to you talk about whatever you're talking about. And so in order to find

that, Google needs to know where it's at because a lot of times I'm going to be searching for

a topic on the internet.

I may be talking, I may be looking for show notes, how to write show notes for your podcast.

And if, if my podcast episode has great show notes and Google has indexed that they're

going to be able to find my show, you're going to be able to find my show. And so do that.

I kind of like to think of show notes, like the liner notes on CDs. Now, if you're old

enough to remember CDs or cassettes or records or whatever, I would find myself going in

to find out more about the song I was listening to.

I'd find out who wrote it. I'd find out the lyrics because a lot of times lyrics aren't

easy to hear or understand when you're listening to them. Same thing with audio podcasts. Your

show notes are kind of like the liner notes for, for a cassette or a CD, because you can

go back in and you can see the art on them.

You can see what the person was talking about. You can link to more details. You get more

details. Think of your show. It's as a way to enhance your audio episode. Your audio

episode is great and has great content, but your show notes enhance that and make that

better. So because people are going to be looking for that, it gives more information

about the episode that you were talking about.

So and some people like to learn better by listening and some learn by reading, provide

both provide both allow people to go back and remember what you talked about in this

episode. I know Daniel, Daniel, Daniel from the audacity podcast does a great job at making

his show notes full, full books.

He does a great job at this. If you've never heard his podcast, go check it out. The audacity

to podcast.com. He does a great job at covering a lot of podcasting topics too. And yes, we're

in the same space and I don't consider him a competitor of mine at all.

Like we're in the same space and we're trying to just make the podcasting podcasting space

better. So go check out, go check out Daniel's podcast, the audacity to podcast. And, and

you'll see like he does a great job at writing his show notes like a book. He talks all about

everything. He puts everything step by step that he's explaining in there in his show

notes.

He talks a lot about it and it's great because you can go back and see what he's talking

about, especially if he's talking about code or things that you can do on your website,

you may need to see that because it's a, it's a visual thing. And so it's best to go back

and put all of that information in your show notes.

So that way people can go back and get that information and see it and remember it. So

guys, I hope this, I hope this episode was, was super helpful for you. I hope that you

enjoyed listening to it about show notes. I hope you do a great job at show notes. I

hope you put the time into, into there.

And so that people can not just listen to your episode, but go back and get all the

information that they may have missed when you were talking about whatever topic it was

that you were talking about. Now I've mentioned it several times in this show, and this show

is value for value. And essentially what that means is if you've gotten value from this

show, please consider giving value back to me.

I don't, I don't have any sponsors in this show. I don't have anyone that's paying my

way, my hosting bills, anything like that. And so if you could have got any value about

out of this show, you know, you may pay somebody to talk about podcasting and teach you how

to podcast. I'm talking about podcasting here. So if you've got any value about out of this

show, please consider heading over to podcast answers.com/support or buy me a coffee, either

one works and consider giving back what you feel this episode was worth to you.

If that was $5, give me $5 back. If it was $10, $10, if it was $500, $500, whatever it

is, it's up to you, but just consider it. If I've given you any value, please consider

giving value back to me at podcastanswers.com/support. And again, I do this show live every Tuesday

and come join me live. I would love to have you watch or listen live.

We do it in the audio and the new podcast apps, which you can find at newpodcastapps.com.

Or you can go to nowstreaming.com again. I'm sorry. nowstreaming.live. And we're live every

Tuesday at noon. Come join us. Have a great week, guys.

[music]

(upbeat music)

Thanks.