Podcast creators constantly work on their audio content to attract new fans and delight existing listeners. But those, who also invest time and effort in accompanying elements, indisputably stand out.
Founders of podcasting platforms see the market from a different angle and know what and how exactly affects users’ decision-making. I am here to share how to win search optimization, simplify navigation, and separate episodes into metadata chapters.
Podcast accompanying elements
Traditionally, creators fill out their podcast profiles with a title, picture, and podcast description. In addition, platforms allow supplementing each episode with timecodes and other extra content. This guide focuses on three main ways to attract a new audience and smoothen each person’s user experience:
1. Аdd podcast description to convert searchers to followers
According to Podcast Discovery Statistics research, podcast description is the strongest factor that makes the user choose a particular show. This section goes under the logo and title and signals listeners if the piece is worth their attention.
Search crawlers analyze the text in the description to respond to the search query as accurately as possible. Along with that, the number of podcasts is increasing every day and listeners become more and more selective over time. Thus, a precise description of the podcast taps into podcast fans’ selectivity, tells what the podcast is about, and explains how it is relevant to this particular listener.
3 ultimate tips to improve description paragraph:
- Benchmarking. Check out what other podcasters within a similar topic or genre put in their descriptions, and analyze whether your podcast’s first impression is as good as their one’s.
- Accurate focus. Avoid generalizing the topic, clarify what makes the show stand out, and introduce the host.
- Clear writing. Prioritize the needs of the user, not the crawler. Avoid link stuffing and non-related keywords to grow unfair traffic.
The rest is pure creativity: experiment with rhetorical questions, intrigue the user, and don't miss the chance to turn an interested listener into a loyal follower.
2. Include episode’s show notes to enrich your podcast
Each episode’s show notes block contains a list of topics, additional links, charts, and images for an episode. Ideally, “show notes” contains description and timecodes:
3 ultimate tips to design episode show notes block:
- Episode description. Design a juicy summary and introduce a discussion agenda.
- Clickable content. Place relevant links to your website, other episodes, speakers’ accounts, and more.
- Audio timecodes. Give the user an opportunity to skip uninteresting parts and navigate throughout the episode.
To create a basic show notes block, a podcaster adds an MP3 file to the hosting and accompanies it with a title, description, and tags. Then, this information is attached to the XML file and later extended to any podcasting app or platform. Those creators who prefer an advanced approach work with metadata and divide their episodes into separate chapters before uploading MP3 files.
3) Break the MP3 file into pieces to add chapters
All podcast players support descriptions with timecodes, but for even more convenience, creators need to add chapters. Only a few podcast platform chapters in the MP3 file. To break the podcast into chapters, creators divide the MP3 file into blocks. Such division serves as the opportunity to add clickable navigation and additional content inside each episode part.
Separating episodes into blocks opens up incredible interaction opportunities. Creators can reference other episodes, add links, integrate promo codes from advertising partners, and invite listeners to unlock the device and follow the link attached to the chapter.
3 ultimate tips to enrich show notes with chapters:
- Use MP3 editing tools. There are online resources that split the file into small pieces, specify timecodes, and add links.
- Inform the listeners of an episode. Tell users how they can navigate the episode, interact with content, and try other interaction options you provide.
- Analyze timecodes interactions. A lot of skips on the listening graph may signal that certain content is not relevant for listeners.
Such extensions as episode show note block and chapters are at the forefront of podcasting engagement innovations. A range of podcasting platforms develops features to help creators attach visual content to timecodes, display links, and allow bookmarking.
At Elision.one, we do it to encourage creators to make relevant content, optimize it, improve navigation, and drive users to interact with episodes, click links, ads, and bring benefits to content makers.
It's vital for podcast creators to keep these hacks in mind and benefit from additional opportunities to stand out from the crowd of competitors and win new listeners through search algorithms.