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Too many podcasters skip a key step when publishing: the episode details.
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Or show notes, as you likely have called them.
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This helpful text isn't optional, podcasters.
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It's required.
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And I'll give you five new reasons why.
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Hello, and welcome to another Podcast Pontifications with me, Evo Terra.
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Look, man, I have been there, slogging through all of the pre-production work,
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multiple recording sessions, a slew of paper edits back and forth, writing out
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all the VO parts, working with their talent to get their reads nice and tight.
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Then the episode assembly happens with multiple revisions, adding in
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the music, mixing, mastering, and then all that promotional stuff you
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have to do from getting sound clips to making audiograms, writing social copy.
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Am I really going to tell you to do one more thing with your podcast episode
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before you release it to the world?
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Damn skippy, I am.
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I'm gonna tell you the same thing I told you almost four
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years ago, back when Podcast Pontifications wasn't even a podcast.
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You need to stop writing shitty show notes, or episode details
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as I prefer to call them.
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That's the copy that you enter into your podcast hosting company that describes
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the episode you are about to publish or schedule for future publishing.
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My position is now what it was then that episode details
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are required and not optional.
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Not if you wanna make your podcast better, that is.
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Though my point is still the same, I've updated some of the
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reasons why this is important.
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And I'll get to them in just a moment.
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But let me first be extremely specific as to what I mean here.
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I mean episode details, again, which you probably call show notes.
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I do not mean a transcript.
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Although, I do think a transcript is another crucial part of your podcast and
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you shouldn't skip that either, but that's not the same thing as episode details.
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I do not mean a webpage or an article that you create and post on your
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website or Medium or somewhere else.
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Yes, I think that's also important and I highly recommend that you make
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excellent-looking webpages or articles for each one of your podcast episodes.
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But that's not the same thing as the episode details I'm speaking about now.
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I do not mean a video version of your podcast.
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I do not mean an enhanced episode.
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I don't mean adding chapters.
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All of which, or at least some of which, are likely things you should
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seriously consider, even if you've previously seriously considered them.
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Things change fast in podcasting.
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But I don't mean any of those things when I'm speaking of episode details and
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the importance of getting them right.
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I mean a written piece of text that goes in the description area when you load the
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episode to your podcast hosting company.
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Now, they probably call that section show notes and they probably don't require you
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to put anything in there, which is a shame because in case you haven't caught my
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drift by now, this text is not optional.
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Or at least it shouldn't be.
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Not only should you consider it not optional, but you shouldn't
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half-ass these things either.
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But you're probably wondering why.
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Well, I have five good reasons for you to stop making shitty
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episode details updated for 2022.
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Back in 2018, I said you should stop making shitty show notes and all of
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those reasons are still solid and valid.
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But now, of course, I call these things episode details and I've come up with
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five new reasons for you to spend the time crafting episode details for
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each and every one of your episodes.
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Here we go.
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Number one, podcast players are getting better.
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And by better, I mean more functional, especially when it comes to displaying
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information to people who are listening right now to your episode.
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Now, these apps are far from perfect and I have plenty of beefs with all of them, but
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as more and more apps start allowing for, if not downright encouraging, listeners
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to interact with the app as they are listening, it's going to become a more
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normal behavior for people to seek out information on an episode that they're
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listening to in real time in that app.
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And if you're not supplying the app with that info, your audience is gonna start
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to wonder why you are not doing that.
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Number two, the other people who help make your podcast and everybody
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else's podcast are finally getting the attention and respect that they deserve.
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Now we still have a long ways to go, but I'm encouraged when I hear lengthy credit
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roles at the end of podcast episodes.
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That, to me, is wonderful.
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But why not take the next step and add those same credits that you mention
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in your audio to your episode details?
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And you can do it with lots of things you can only do in text like links, like
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bios, heck, even images of the people will now display in some podcast apps.
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There's literally no reason for you to not do this.
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And creators who keep ignoring this option?
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Well, I think eventually they'll become ignored themselves.
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Number three, it's good SEO practice.
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Now, look, I'm not here to give you SEO tips.
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I did that long ago back in my career in marketing, and I
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don't wanna do that anymore.
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And also we have the problem within app search algorithms and the fact that
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they are really terrible for podcast apps, but it should be rather obvious
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that the episode details should be, and I think will be, a rich source
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of information about an episode.
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Now that is obviously if more people, more podcasters, actually took the
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time to write out detailed episodes.
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Now, yes, parsing transcripts of the actual audio is oftentimes the best
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way to find that information about the episode, but solid episode details could
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reinforce that transcription much in the same way that a page's description
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tag is designed to be a reinforcement of the contents of the webpage itself.
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Filling out episode details will eventually make podcast search better.
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Number four, it's great content that you can repurpose into other areas.
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You can take your episode details and turn them into a Twitter thread or
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even a long form post on LinkedIn, where you're actually linking out
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to the episode's webpage for other parts of your social media posting.
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That's likely to gather you a lot more engagement than just posting
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a link to the podcast episode's audio, or maybe an audiogram, or just
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the title linked to your website.
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In my experience, those things aren't nearly as helpful, but
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having helpful summaries that you could maybe post on your website?
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Sure.
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Although, I think you should post more than just a summary
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of your episode on your website.
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That might hap- that might help you as well.
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A topic for another day.
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I've even used my episode details to put out a mini version of this very podcast.
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Lots you can do to repurpose that content.
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Finally, number five, writing detailed, helpful episode details, which are
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designed to be read in a podcast listening app primes you to do more.
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Yeah, more.
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Like adding chapters for one thing.
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Now, I don't have chapters in the episodes of Podcast Pontifications
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because each one of my episodes is about one thing and one thing only.
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But I chapter the hell out of the episodes of The Download, the weekly
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podcast I produce for Sounds Profitable that covers the most important
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news of the week for people who work in the business of podcasting.
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Soundsprofitable.com/thedownload if you wanna see how that works in practice.
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Or, I'm putting in a screenshot and a link to every single article we cover.
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Now, no, that's not universally supported.
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And sadly, the media hosts that we're using has a tendency to not
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preserve those chapters when I put them in, but that support is becoming
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much more universal and it starts by you writing better episode details.
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So there you go.
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Five reasons for 2022 why you should stop writing shitty episode details, or
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show notes, for your podcast episodes.
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A big part of the process of making podcasting better is making
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your podcasts better and having well-written, detailed episode details
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on each episode is a part of that.
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So do it for me, please.
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And with that, I shall be back next week with yet another Podcast Pontifications.
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Cheers!
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Podcast Pontifications is written and narrated by Evo Terra.
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He's on a mission to make podcasting better.
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Links to everything mentioned in today's episode are in the notes
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section of your podcast listening app.
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A written-to-be-read article based on today's episode is available at
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podcastpontifications.com where you'll also find a video version and a corrected
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transcript, both created by Allie Press.
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Podcast Pontifications is a production of Simpler Media.
