Today, I'm diving into the exciting new AI features from Captivate Spark, designed to streamline your podcasting process and enhance your content creation. I’ll walk you through how these tools can help you generate episode ideas, create talking points, and even transcribe your episodes, saving you valuable time.

As a podcaster, I know how crucial it is to keep our content fresh and engaging, and Captivate Spark offers some fantastic solutions for that. Whether you’re looking to suggest new episodes or create detailed outlines in just a few clicks, these features can greatly enhance your workflow.

Takeaways:

• Captivate Spark offers innovative AI tools that streamline podcast episode planning and creation.
• Using AI can significantly reduce the time spent on post-production tasks for podcasters.
• The Suggest New Episodes feature analyses trends to generate relevant new content ideas.
• AI-generated transcripts and show notes can enhance SEO and listener accessibility for podcasts.
• Captivate Spark's feature for generating episode details saves time and improves content quality.
• Integrating AI into podcasting can help creators focus more on content and creativity.

Timestamps:

00:00 Intro

01:02 Introducing Captivate Spark: A New AI Feature for Podcasters

05:35 Using AI for Podcast Episode Generation

08:24 Organising Episode Assets

10:49 SEO and Content Formatting

13:14 Exploring the Benefits of Captivate Spark

Links referenced in this episode:

Try Captivate.FM free for 30 days - https://veritysangan.com/captivate

To another episode of the Lazy Girls Guide to Podcasting with Me, Verity as ever, if this is the first time listening to the podcast, then it is great to have you here.

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For this episode I wanted to do a review of the latest AI feature that has come out from Captivate fm.

Captivate fm as we know, if you've listened to any of my episodes whatsoever is the hosting platform for Lazy Girl's Guide to Podcasting.

If you are watching this on YouTube then you are going to be seeing my screen for this.

But don't worry, I am going to be explaining what is happening and what is going along.

So if you're listening to the audio only, then everything still makes sense.

I'm not going to go into the ins and outs and like the positives and downsides of using AI in your podcasting.

That is going to be a separate episode.

Today I just want to review this feature which I think is a really, really cool new feature.

First thing that I'm going to review from Captivate Spark is their episode planning.

I'm going to go over to my episode planning section and I'm going to click on this Add Episode idea and you'll see this little drop down and it says either Suggest new Episodes, Create from prompt or Manually Add new.

Now manually add new is what I would normally do, but these two new features from Captivate Spark are Suggest new Episodes and Create from prompt.

So the Suggest new episodes I think is really fun.

What it does is it looks at your 30 days trends, it looks at your subject trends and the episodes details in order and it also talks about potential guests.

And I think I was talking there for all of, I don't know, three seconds and it has come up with three new episode ideas.

So it's had a look at my 30 day analytics, it has looked at the content that has been doing really well, it's looked at the themes of my content and my episodes and it has come up with these three suggestions.

Podcasting for nonprofits, Making an impact, Harnessing Social media for podcast growth and monetizing your podcast strategies and pitfalls.

So those are three content topics that would really, really fit into Lazy Girl's Guide to Podcasting.

What I can then do is dive into this a little bit more.

So if I select one of these ideas, I've selected Podcasting for Non Profits Making an Impact just because it was the first one at the top.

It has given me six main talking points.

I could talk about the unique advantages of podcasting for non profits and social courses, how to craft compelling stories that resonate with listeners and drive action, how to find your audience, understand the technical aspects of podcasting for small organizations, collaborating with other nonprofits and measuring the success of a nonprofit podcast.

It's then given me some guest suggestions.

It has recommended for this particular one someone called Megan O'Neal.

I've never heard of Megan O'Neal before, but it's saying that Megan O'Neal is a non profit leader who successfully launched a podcast to promote her organization's mission and engage supporters.

And it has given me her website, Instagram and X.

And then it's given me three questions that might be useful if I were to get hold of her successfully get her as a guest on the podcast.

And it's also recommended someone called Randy Hayne who is a consultant for nonprofits.

It's given me good talking points and a starting point for creating an episode which will very likely resonate with my audience if I go into another one.

The idea is harnessing social media for podcast growth.

It's again given me six talking points.

If I go into the third one monetizing your podcast strategies pitfalls.

Again, it's given me six main talking points and two people who I could contact if I wanted suggestions for than being on the podcast.

That's the first feature that Captivate Spark gives you.

The next one that they've given me is from this drop down.

Again I'm in episode planning.

I can go to create from prompt and if I click on that I can type in the topic idea that I have.

So let's go with using social media to gain podcast listeners main talking points.

I want to talk about using Instagram to grow a fan base talking point to creating TikTok videos to promote your podcast.

And maybe my third talking point could be using social media versus email marketing and I'm going to click on generate AI episode ideas.

It's going to take a few seconds to work that there.

So that was five seconds and it has already created me an episode idea maximizing your Podcast reach Social media strategies that work it's given me six talking points understanding your target audience on social media, leveraging Instagram stories and reels for for podcast promotion, creating engaging TikTok content to drive listeners, using LinkedIn for networking and podcast growth, balancing social media with email marketing strategies and analyzing social media metrics to adjust your strategy.

And again, it has given me suggestions of people I could contact.

So here it suggested Jenna Kutcher, Pat Flynn with contact details and if I were to interview those two individuals, the kinds of questions I could ask them.

And again, it's created me some really good talking points and suggested to me a really good title within five seconds.

Was that the third feature from Captivate Spark, which I really love, is the AI generation of your episode details and this is probably one which I would say I would be using the most.

I'm going to go into episodes and here's all of my episodes, both published and draft, but this one episode 104 why SEO is so Important in Podcasting I recorded this yesterday, but if I go into my edit episode you will see that even though I've got the episode uploaded, this is just a draft title and then I've got nothing at the show notes.

I made a little note to myself that I talked about episode 93 within this episode.

So I've just clicked a link or created a link there, but you'll see I created a canva graphic and that is it.

So there's no show notes and the title isn't formalized, there's no transcript.

Etc.

So what I'm going to do is I'm going to click on this button here Generate Transcript and AI episode assets.

It comes up with this box.

Use Captivate Spark to transcribe this episode and generate authentic SEO shareable show notes.

Is there anything I'd like to add?

I could add in some episode information here, anything about the tone, if I want it written in first person etc.

I'm going to leave it for now though, just because I've set up my settings so it should be okay.

And then my total number of speakers I'm going to select one because it was just me and then clicked Generate transcript and AI content and it is going to just take a few seconds to create all of this different content.

So my transcript, episode title suggestions, intro summary key takeaways, show note suggestions.

It's going to give me timestamps which is just a huge savior for me.

URLs mentioned, companies mentioned, SEO description and SEO keywords.

You think how long it would take me to come up with all of that myself.

It has given me six potential episode titles.

I have got an intro summary, three suggestions for show notes, key takeaways, my chapters ad suggestion markers.

I don't actually use ads at the moment, but it's nice that it gives me some suggestions.

Links referred to in this episode that's useful.

Companies mentioned, SEO title, SEO description and then I really like this bit at the bottom of keywords because we know that I do publish my episodes onto YouTube as well.

So this is a really nice section to be able to copy across for YouTube keywords as well.

But to use this is so nice and simple.

If I thought that this was the best title, I'm just going to click Add to episode and it would be imported.

Having a look down at this summary intro again, if I like this, I'm just going to click add to show notes and you will see behind it has just.

It's just appeared.

I can then go in and I can change that around.

As much as I want takeaways, I love to have key takeaways, so I'm going to add that to show notes as well.

Chapters.

I love chapter markers.

We know that those are so super important as well for making your episode more searchable.

I also like to just copy them and then come back to my show notes and I like to insert them down here as well.

And the reason for doing that is because then when this automatically gets sent across to YouTube that is already there.

And then I can also when I put the YouTube episode out there as a video, I could just copy all of this and then I've got the automatic trap to markers in my YouTube video as well.

Which again we know is good for SEO.

So to go back in, I'm just going to click View AI Episode Assets.

I'm going to add the links referenced in the episode to the show notes because that'll give me a reminder to put my affiliate link in.

For example, for Captivate fm, I don't need to use the companies because I've already got Captivate as a web link and then my search engine optimization meta description.

I quite like that meta description.

So I'm just going to say add that in as well.

Then the only thing I need to decide is which of the suggestions I prefer for my show notes.

Now they've put all of these in the third person, which is not my preference, but I'm just going to press add to show notes.

Anyway.

These are all the things that I've now added to my show notes.

So I've got the intro, I've got the episodes mentioned which I'd already added in myself.

I've got the takeaways, the links referred to, which I can make this look prettier and then I can change this so it's in the first person, but you can see how quickly that has generated content.

Now I'm not going to leave this as it is, I'm going to format it.

So for example, takeaway straight away, that's going to go into BUL because I like my headings into I like my headings in bold.

I'm going to change things around because at the moment I've gone and stuck my show notes all the way at the bottom there.

So that's going to be moved up so that it's after the summary.

My preference is that everything is in British English because I am in Britain.

Nothing wrong with it being in American English, but it's just my preference that it's in British English.

So I'll need to go through and change things like that.

And then I'm also going to make sure that the SEO rich keywords are in there as I want them to.

And then I might just want to amend certain bits and pieces because I want them to sound like and not like it's something that's been AI generated.

I want to make sure that things aren't overly repetitive as well.

I can see already there's some bits which are repetitive which is just not going to serve any need for from an SEO point of view or from a listener point of view.

But otherwise this is just now needing a little bit of cleanup.

And if I scroll down the page and I come to chapters, I can see that my chapter markers have already been inserted.

Again, this is great from an SEO point of view because I've got all of these different keywords, but it's also great from a YouTube point of view as well.

If I scroll down, I can view my transcript.

It's all already been put in there.

I have to say, I don't tend to go through and check the transcript too much.

For me, it's there to support people to be able to access the podcast slightly easier.

And it's also there from an SEO point of view.

But I don't go through and check everything word for word.

But on saying that this would be really useful to just copy and paste this and go into somewhere like Chat GPT and then have it turn into a blog post and come down to episode SEO SEO title is just going to be generated based on what I've already entered in for the title of the episode.

So I'm not going to change that.

And then the SEO description is being put in as well.

I'm just going to change the exclamation mark at the end.

I don't tend to like exclamation marks.

I think, personally, I think it ends up looking very AI generated if there's too many exclamation marks.

Again, I might just change some of this a little bit so that it sounds a bit more like me.

I wouldn't word things in quite this way, but otherwise once I've done all of that, then I can either update the draft episode or schedule.

So I'm just going to update the draft for now because there's bits and pieces that I need to change in that and it will take me back through to my episode dashboard.

Personally, I absolutely love love these three new features of Captivate Spark from Captivate.

If you're thinking that you want to use Captivate Spark yourself and you are wondering how much it is going to cost you, Captivate itself costs me £17 per month.

There's two different ways that you can get Captivate Spark.

You can either use it as a monthly package and this is an add on to your 17 pounds per month, which I believe is just converted straight to dollars.

It's 5 pound, 10 pound or 20 pound per month.

And with that, that equals hours of transcription.

So if you spend 5 pound per month you get 5 hours of transcription, 10 pound hours, 20 pounds 20 hours and you can do it as a monthly subscription.

When I signed up to it, I only spent five pounds to get five hours.

My episodes are short, I don't need an awful lot and my transcription balance after just two episodes I've still got four hours 35 minutes.

So this is going to last me a long time.

So because of this I haven't signed up to the monthly bundle.

I've just signed up for the one off top up.

If you want to do the same then you can buy transcription hours in 5, 10 and 20 hour chunks.

You just press buy now and then you just use up your transcription balance.

But at the moment I think that the biggest things for me for using Captivate Spark will be the transcription, also the generation of my show notes.

I think that will be hugely beneficial.

I'll probably do a follow up episode of this in a few months and let you know how I'm getting on with Captivate Spark and let you know my thoughts because I know that there's also a lot more features that Captivate are kind of teasing that they're going to add into Spark, but otherwise I'd love to know have you been using Captivate Spark?

Are you using a AI for your podcasting at all?

You can reach out to me on Instagram veritysongon, let me know your thoughts.

Hope you have found this helpful as ever and I will see you next episode.