Woo Your Listener - Writing Effective Show Notes (Audio Companion)

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00:00 / 14:58

These words need to count, so don’t waste them. Discover my favourite DON’T and your show notes will be better right from the get go.

These few simple tips will help you avoid the obvious pitfalls and make the most of the critical text in your podcast show notes. These are the hooks which contribute to wooing listeners to your podcast episodes, so making them count is important.

This episode is an audio companion to the blog article “Writing Effective Podcast Show Notes” (https://eastcoaststudio.com.au/how-to-write-podcast-show-notes/).

Episode Transcription

0:24
This episode is the first of a short series we’ll be doing, which are audio companion pieces to run alongside some blog articles that I’ve been writing about the world of podcasting. So in this episode, we’ll be looking at the topic of how to write effective shownotes. For your podcast, I’ve got a few simple tips to help you avoid the obvious pitfalls, and make the most of this critical text in your show notes. This text provides the hook which will contribute to wooing listeners to your podcast episode and then hopefully, subscribing and following you for the journey. First of all, let’s have a look at the context in which your text will appear. The browsing environment is absolutely critical to understand the user experience is the canvas and also the constraints that we have to work within. So most likely, this canvas will be an app or a mobile phone screen, maybe the desktop app on Mac. The limited space that’s available for your text means only a small part of the description that you write is actually visible at all when people are casually scrolling by.

These words need to count.

1:36
I’m looking at the Apple Podcasts, desktop app here to illustrate some of the points. But in the article, we’ve got some good screen grabs from the iOS app that probably is the most useful gauge of the environment that your text will appear in.

1:56
But regardless of that, these same principles apply to any other podcast app, because none of them were showing through your description text in its entirety.

Good Example Show Notes

2:06
So first of all, I just started to sort of pick out a few things to use as current illustrations of what I think is really good. And in the article, I’ve got, like,
a little list of importance for each of the items here. So the way I break it down is your title. The title of the episode is really important because that has to communicate to the listener, the what and the why, for that episode, what are they going to get out of it, the first line of your descriptive text will always be there, at least the first, whatever it is, I can’t, I’m gonna have to count the number of characters to be able to to tell you accurately. But to me, it’s something like first time words is guaranteed, maybe first 20 words, if you’re lucky. So that is very important that the following paragraph, I would say is important. But in order to read that subsequent paragraph, your your your reader or your your browser, the person has to actually act, they actually have to sort of click into it in order to be able to access the further information. So really, I think we can sort of discount anything. Beyond that we’re looking at good title, really good first line. And that’s that’s the best shot that we’ve got.

Ted Tech

So a couple of examples which I didn’t produce. Just just browsing here is the TED Talks always seem to sort of smash every kind of media which they put out there. So savvy, their latest episode of the TED Tech Talk is “Six big ethical questions about the future of AI”. Slash Genevieve Bell says everything that you need need to know it’s got the topic. It’s got the the author who will be presumably guiding you through that topic, and gives you that sort of orientation and motivation… Well yeah, I want to know what the ethical questions are because I want to know what I need to look out for.

There’s another good one here, let me see was this Q Podcast these are based on my subscription so far, and Apple’s just put this in the More To Discover category.

Q Podcast

So I’ve got one here, “How Elon Musk can promote free speech without turning Twitter into one big dumpster fire”. I really liked that because it’s got a little bit of personality in there. The line that follows it, of this is Quillette. Okay. The line that follows it is “veteran technology expert, Jim Ron tells Quillette podcast…” something something so that that first line is failing a little bit really because veteran technology expert, Jim right, okay is establishing the credentials of the guest I guess in this case, he tells Quillette podcast, whatever. Presumably he tells Quillette podcast how Elon Musk can promote free speech without turning Twitter into one big dumpster fire. But but we don’t know because the remains of that sentence are under the under the fold. I can’t see that unless I click click into it.

So, as I’m talking about first line, let me just go back to that first episode, the TED Tech podcast “Six big ethical questions about the future of AI”, Genevieve Bell. Firstline “artificial intelligence is all around us. And the future will only” dot dot dot. I’m kind of intrigued I sort of am aware that artificial intelligence is growing around me. But I like things that it’s that sort of like future gazing look. So that word future that personally that appeals to me. Let me see if I got any other picks for you. And there’s another one. Just in my search subscriptions. I subscribed to a lot of music, podcasts as well as talk but so they don’t always have Reno titles which work in the same way.

Ted Talks

6:17
Ted Talks Daily, new show out today, “The crime fighting power of cross border investigative journalism, Bakhtawar Iskender”, first line: “organised crime operates across national borders”. Brilliant, that tells me a whole lot in a very short space of time. So I think all of these things are, the sort of guidance that I’m that I’m getting is that title has to give the reader as much information as possible about what is the subjects of, of the podcast, in this case, there are Talk Talk podcast. And ideally, if you can inject a bit of personality and a bit of motivation in there as well, then we’re looking at something which has a bit of a compelling effect on the reader.

How We Write Show Notes

7:12
So my examples, which I’ve put in the blog article, writing effective podcast show notes, are some notes that we wrote for a show, which launched at the beginning of 2022. Called parents in tech. It’s a series of interviews with mainly female tech, business people who also have kids. So that’s the whole sort of thrust of off the show is exploring how to parent and also build a build a career, particularly in the tech sector. So my example, from one of the early episodes, is baby tech quality time and asking for help with Dr. Petty. First line. As a working parent, life becomes easier when you know and make use of the resources available to you.

8:07
So let’s say that’s all the reader will see what we’ve actually done. Beyond that, the second paragraph talks about the guest, Dr. Betty, who she is what what’s her professional credentials. And then the third paragraph goes into a little bit more detail about the content of the show, followed by paragraph of links for getting in touch and further further follow up. So we’re kind of using that same sort of ambition that the headline says, who is the speaker? And what are they speaking about with a bit of insight into the actual detail of the conversation?

Favourite DON’T

8:54
So this brings me on to my favourite don’t when writing these, these podcasts, China’s I see this quite literally all the time. Which is exactly why it comes in mind number one, for don’t do this.

9:14
So here’s the sentence of your description, which I would love you not to write.

“In this podcast episode, the host, talks to the guest….” Blah, blah, blah. So the reason I am not advocating that sort of obvious approach is I guess it’s another example of that sort of linear thinking where you’re trying to sort of set out everything and give the reader a full orientation and background or something. But we we can take for granted the fact that the reader will know this is a podcast episode because they’re looking at it in their podcast app, presumably looking for new do podcasts sign up to subscribe to or making that decision about whether they actually want to listen to this show in your podcast. So they know it’s a podcast episode. And that’s your first four words, just wasted hostname. Again, very, very popular.

Yes, hosts are very important. But your name as the host will most likely be present in a few other levels of the podcast, you might be on the artwork, you might have your picture on the artwork, the name of the show might include the hostname. So we know the host net, the host is named. So we don’t need to do that in the show notes.

10:45
Similarly, although perhaps not quite sort of pushing it, to that degree, the guest name in that first line is sort of it’s sort of good, I tend to take that approach, if it’s a guest that people may know of, or it may have some sort of search value, let’s get them in that title. Because if you are aware of web structures, we have a body text of pages, but we have a heading text. And the headings have a rating from one to six, in terms of their importance to the hierarchy of the document, it says with a web page being in the being the document, but the h1 rating is still there for podcast episodes. And that being the title is the overall little piece of text, which describes everything that follows after it. So it’s, it’s important. And it’s given that importance in search.

11:48
So if your guest is someone who may well be searched or have have a bit of value in that respect, let’s get them in the in the title of the show.

11:58
Otherwise, if they’re not, obviously they need to be acknowledged and referenced in in the notes. But they’re not necessarily bringing any extra value, if the reader doesn’t know who they are so better to you to be a bit more descriptive earlier on, and then have a full biography of the guests in paragraph two or two or three, so that we’re sort of ticking that box. And there’s that extra bit of information there that might be useful later.

12:29
This is basically it. So it’s a one shot choice that that you’ve got here. In this sort of hierarchy of information. We’ve got podcast artwork, title, first line. And those are the chances that we have to grab people’s attention.

12:48
So don’t kind of waste it just by waffle.

Take Away

12:55
So in essence, what I’m suggesting is that we just reconsider the use of text for our episode titles and descriptions and make sure that they are motivating pieces of text, we want to encourage an action from the reader. If we don’t encourage an action, our efforts are wasted, we might as well not have anything at all. So in summary, podcast episode title should contain some kind of topic hook, which makes the listener click through to hear more. And my suggestion, also the name of the guest, or maybe the organisation that’s being talked about for extra kind of search value.

13:35
Following that, let’s just focus on that first line of the description text. To give a little bit of extra depth to the topic. Don’t worry about telling people, it’s a podcast, don’t worry about telling people who the host is. And possibly don’t bother telling people who the guest is. If people are hooked by the theme that you’re talking about, I think it’s okay to push the push the guest down a little bit. But if there’s a bit of value in name checking them or maybe you want to sort of give them a bit of credit and support them by putting their name in your title, then obviously, you can do that. Beyond this, you’re absolutely free to elaborate on any of the details in the podcast. Add links to further information, because you can use HTML in podcast description so you can then link to people’s LinkedIn, you can link to the articles that you reference or any other kind of resources that are involved in the podcast. And that’s about it really. So good luck with writing your podcast, stay focused, make sure you get that motivation in there. And everything will be better