The value in targeted podcast episode show notes

Something that often gets overlooked in podcasting is the value of targeted podcast episode show notes.

Great show notes filled with targeted keywords and key phrases are what will help get your show to the top of the search results. When looking for a new show, many listeners use keywords to search in their podcast app so you want to make sure that your show comes up in that search!

In this episode, I talk about how to increase the searchability of your podcast by writing comprehensive show notes using thoughtful keywords and phrases. I also talk about how to repurpose content by including the show notes on your website and social platforms.

Creating a high quality podcast involves more than just recording an episode and uploading it to a podcast host. Listeners need to be able to find you! If you’re not already including show notes with every one of your podcast episodes, start doing it TODAY!

Transcript:

00:00
Welcome to Pump Up Your Pod today I'm going to be chatting about podcast show notes. And the importance of those, essentially, there is so much more to the whole podcasting game than just recording an episode and putting it up there. Of course, your content needs to be amazing. That is the main thing. And I've talked about content before in other podcast episodes, but something that gets overlooked a lot. If you don't really know what you're doing is the value of proper podcast show notes.

What I mean by shownotes is just the description, you know, underneath the like when you're in a podcasting app, you can see that there is some words in there that describe and a summary of the actual episode that you are listening to. And a lot of people don't put very much thought into those, they just have a little thing today, I'm chatting to x about blah, and we hope you enjoy it. Here's some links, those sorts of things. If you don't put the effort into these podcast, show notes, then they can't work for you. And they can work for you very well. What do I mean by work for you, I mean, those key phrases, the key words that you can potentially be grabbing out of proper podcast shownotes versus just writing some sentences that you haven't really thought too much about. They can be extremely valuable in helping you reach new audiences that you don't even know that you need.

You may know from previous podcast episodes, I've mentioned that a vast majority of people go to the podcast app of choice. So whether that's Apple podcast, Spotify, overcast, whoever it is, they go to their podcast app, and they if they're looking for a new show, they'll just type in a keyword that is something that they're interested in, maybe it's nutrition, maybe it is fitness, you know, as niched as they like to get it their gardening, indoor plants, you know, something like that, whatever it is, they'll go to the search bar of that podcast platform, and they will search for that thing. And then the parameters and those sorts of things that come up there are based on the title of your episode and the description within your episode. So if you have good key phrases, good keywords that you know, people search for within your Podcast, episode description, your show notes, then you are very much more likely to be included in the list of options there in the search for a person that is just trying to find that information.

So it is my advice that you always take an extra 1015 20 minutes, however long it takes to actually write some solid, key phrased show notes. I want proper sentences, I want maybe three paragraphs plus some really solid links to things resources that people will actually be interested in. Put all that in your episode description, use as much of the available character space that your podcast hosts will allow us as much as you can in there to fit as much info as you can.

It doesn't mean that the person that's listening to your episode is going to be reading those show notes. In fact, a lot of the time they won't, it is more for them to be able to find you using those search platforms, that little search bar. That's the stuff that's the juicy stuff. And it's not going to go to waste either. Because once you have those nice show notes written there, that episode description, you can still then also put that on your website. So if you have a podcasting page for your website, which absolutely if you don't have one, you need to have one, you need to have a page on your website where your podcasts can live, and preferably a link to each podcast episode within that website. So like a blog, if you go to Bamby media.com/podcast, you'll see just a very simple way to actually make a podcast landing page. And then that is a blog. So each episode is its own blog post. And then the show notes are included in that. So you're getting the key phrases and keywords on your website as well, which helps with SEO traffic, then you're using those same key phrase keywords or those sorts of things on the actual podcast platforms themselves. And then you can also take that information, reword it, take little bits, you wouldn't use all of it, and put those same things onto your social platform.

So whether that is a caption for a photo for a graphic for something to do with episode, or maybe you don't even mention the episode at all, but you're using some other graphic and you can use some of the words that you use in the actual episode show notes for something for your social media as well. I also liked To take it into LinkedIn and create a LinkedIn article out of that episode description, I normally put more wording into that and those sorts of things and and flesh it out more because I want it to be a proper keyworded type LinkedIn article. And that has to be slightly different. So a little bit more thought goes into the LinkedIn article.

And then I also have a podcasting community called pod lovers, which you will have heard me talk about before, where I use that same episode description to formulate something cool for the pod lovers as well. It's normally different to what I have on my website, it's momily, more detailed for those within that free community, and may provide few more links and those sorts of things. So you can see that there's value in that, to take that extra few minutes, I mean, it's actually going to be a little bit more time consuming than a few minutes, I would imagine it should take you 2030 minutes, maybe more.

05:52
I know that our team here when we do show notes for clients, it can take us up to an hour to do really good show notes for an episode that we know we've researched that there's key phrases that we know we've, we've done a bit of a search into the guest if it's a guest episode, to really formulate something that is a bit of a story that has some solid paragraphs, and that we know will be useful for the client for all the other things that I've mentioned, they can repurpose it and take it and use it wherever else they want to use it.

If you're not currently putting any or very much thought into your show notes, you need to start doing it because it is a very valuable and important part of the process to gain organic reach to gain new listeners to your podcast purely from the search function. Now, just because you have those keywords in there, it doesn't mean that you're necessarily going to show up just like Google in the search results. Because if you are competing with a whole bunch of other podcasts that are more popular than yours that have more reviews than yours, then perhaps yours won't show up. But that is something that will grow over time as well.

If you want any help with your shownotes certainly you can reach out to us and you know, we can have a look at what that might look like. But you don't necessarily need us to create great show notes I just want you to make sure that you have someone on your team that is putting the thought into it, whether that's a VA whether that's yourself, whether that's your copywriter, whoever it is copywriting for podcasts is different to copywriting for other things. So you just need to make sure that you're targeting things properly, and that you have done your appropriate research into the type of things that you should be saying in your podcast descriptions as well. That's it for today. I hope you've had a lovely day so far, and I will chat to you next time.