Stop Writing Bad Show Notes

00:00 Hello and welcome back to How To Get Discovered. I'm Maya. And I'm Tom. This is episode 6. Stop writing bad show notes. Last week I told the story of my tax episode, the three-year-old one that quietly became the biggest source of new listeners my show has, and it only got found because its title and notes happened to say what people were searching for. By accident. You said so yourself. I did. So this week is Tom's chance to make it happen on purpose. It's the easy wins episode. Things you can fix this afternoon without rebuilding anything. And Tom has been waiting to do this one since we planned the season. Longer, honestly.

00:42 I've had a list in my phone for about four years. He's going to be unleashed. My job is to keep him honest. You mean interrupt me? Mostly the same thing. I'd like to start with a confession. Oh, lovely. For my first three years of making podcasts, I wrote my own show notes. And they were dreadful. Not interestingly dreadful either. Dreadful in exactly the way almost every set of show notes I read now is dreadful. One sentence. Usually, this week I talked to Brian about freelancing. That was it. That was the whole thing. Was it always the same guest?

01:24 Different Brians, to be fair. Same sentence though. And I think I know why I did it. And I think it's why most people do it. I treated show notes as a receipt. Proof the episode happened. A little label so you could tell it apart from the one before. It never once occurred to me that a stranger might read them and decide something. What changed? Somebody pointed out, very kindly, which made it worse, that for a person who's never heard of you, the title is the first thing they see and the notes are the second. Between them, that's the entire pitch. If both are useless, they don't press play.

02:01 They scroll on and you never even find out they were there. Brutal, because the episode itself could be the best thing you've ever made. Yep. If the title's episode 47 and the notes say, this week I talked to Brian, the only people pressing play are the ones who are going to anyway. So that's your argument for today. In one line, yes. Most show notes are written as receipts. They ought to be written as pitches. Go on then, show me a pitch. I've got a structure. It's embarrassingly obvious and it took me an embarrassingly long time to arrive at, so be gentle. When am I ever anything else? You're really not. First paragraph is the hook.

02:46 What's this episode about? Framed as something a stranger would actually care about. So not, I talk to Brian about freelancing. More like, Brian freelanced for 10 years before he set up a limited company, and he's very glad he waited. Here's why. That's already better. I'd click that. Second paragraph is the substance. What do we actually get into? Three or four specific things, written as a sentence rather than bullet points. If someone's on the fence, this is the bit that tips them, because they're checking whether the episode covers the thing they're worried about. So you tell them. We cover when it's worth incorporating, why his accountant talked him out of it the first time, how the tax worked out in year one, and the one form he wishes someone had warned him about.

03:33 And, this is me being me, every one of those phrases is something a real person types into a search box. I knew you'd say that. Because it's true. When is it worth incorporating is a search. Talk to Brian isn't. Fine. That's where my instincts and your SEO instincts happen to land on the same spot. They do that constantly. You just hate saying so. Third part is the takeaways. Two or three things you'll walk away knowing, short and concrete. And this is where the guest earns their place, actually. Not Brian is a freelance consultant, but why his opinion's worth 40 minutes of your life.

04:15 He's done it for 12 years. He's made the expensive mistake, and he can tell you what it cost him. How long does all that take you? 15 minutes? Maybe 20. Against the hours I spend editing the audio, it's nothing. And does it work? Because the honest answer for most of what we talk about on this show is slowly, if at all. Picture two episodes from the same show, equally good, sitting side by side in an app. One's notes say, this week I talked to Brian. The others tell you what Brian's going to tell you. A stranger sees both. Which one do they press play on? You don't need a dashboard for that.

04:56 The notes are the only part of the episode a stranger can judge before. they've committed 40 minutes to it. I'll take that. It's not a growth chart, but it's hard to argue with. And I'm not promising anybody a growth chart. It's a better shop window. That's all it is. One more annoying question though. Where do these notes live? I can see you smiling. Then you might as well answer. On my own domain. Since the domains episode. I'm not making it a whole thing. Noted. For the record. Don't. Let's go back to titles, because we only scratched them when we were arguing about domains, and I suspect you've got more.

05:39 Oh, I have categories. Of course you have. Most episode titles fall into three groups. First, the cute one. Brian's Big Day. The one about the thing. In jokes and wordplay that mean everything to the host and nothing to anyone else. Guilty, at least once. Second, the lazy one. Episode 47. Or, if you're feeling generous, episode 47, Brian. A number and a first name. Don't people like knowing where they are in a series, though? Sure, but the number's got its own field. Apple has a separate box for the episode number, and plenty of apps display it anyway.

06:22 Putting it in the title as well means the first words a stranger reads tell them nothing at all. And third? The stuffed one. How to negotiate your freelance rate. Freelance tips, freelance advice, freelance negotiation. With Brian. Somebody read one article about search, panicked, and did that. I've seen worse, genuinely. Everyone has. And I'd argue they're worse than the cute ones, because they're not written for a person at all. They're written for a search engine that hasn't worked like that in years. So what's the alternative? A fourth group. A title that tells a human what the episode's about, in the words a human would use, with a bit of voice around the edges.

07:07 Descriptive part first, then either the guest or an angle. When to incorporate your freelance business, with Brian whoever. Or, if the episode's got a strong point of view, lead with it. Don't incorporate yet. Brian on the tax trap nobody mentions. That one's doing two jobs at once. I'm going to push back. Your regulars don't need when to incorporate your freelance business. They know what the show is. For them, the descriptive part's a bit of a tax, and the voice is what makes them want to listen. Partly fair. But they're scrolling a feed too, and knowing what each episode's about helps them pick. Hmm, maybe. Besides, the regular's going to press play, whatever you call it.

07:51 They're not the constraint. The stranger is. So you write the title for the stranger, and you trust the regular to forgive you for being slightly less clever. That's annoyingly neat. I'm stealing it. Credit me in the notes. Now the bit nobody enjoys. Metadata. The fields in your hosting platform you filled in once when you launched and never opened again. Show description. Category. Episode description. Author. At midnight. Typically, the night before launch. Every time. And they matter far more than people think, because they're what every app uses to describe you.

08:32 Apple files you by category. Spotify shows the description. The directories pull it all straight from the feed. Can I start with the one I got wrong for years? Go on. When you set up a show, Apple lets you pick a primary category and a secondary one. Most people pick whichever sounds most like their show. Money show? Business. Done. What nobody tells you is that the category decides who you're up against. In something huge like business, you're next to shows with a hundred times your budget, and that chart's full of programs people already know. Nobody's discovering you there. Whereas a narrower subcategory has a smaller pool, less competition, and it's probably where your listener's actually browsing, if they browse by category at all.

09:20 Better to be visible in a small room than invisible in a big one. Although I gently point out that very few new listeners find a show by browsing categories. Agreed. Some do though. And this whole episode's about small gains. Fair. They stack up. Quick one on the author field while we're here. For years, mine said the name of a production company I'd set up and then abandoned. So anybody who heard me as a guest somewhere and searched my actual name found next to nothing. Go on. What was it called? I'm not telling you. telling you that. It had a pun in it. Of course it did. Which brings me to the field I care about most. The episode description in your feed.

10:04 Every podcast app pulls from it. It's what someone reads in Apple Podcasts or Spotify when they're deciding whether to press play. And it's the field everyone writes once in a little box in their hosting platform and never looks at again. So it's blank, or it's the cute one-liner, or it's this week I talk to Brian. Even if the web page version is lovely. That's what kills me. You do all the work on your web page, and the person in the app never sees it. They see the feed description. So either write it properly there, or at the very least, paste the good version across. This is the dullest tip in the episode, and quite possibly the most useful.

10:47 It costs nothing and takes 30 seconds. Dull is fine. And if you've got 200 episodes? Then you start with the ones people might still be searching for. You spent all of last week telling me how to spot those. There's one more thing in the feed I'd add to your list, and it's newer. Chapters. As in timestamps in the notes? Those, yes, but also proper chapter markers that travel with the episode. They're part of what people call Podcasting 2.0. Extra files attached to your feed, like chapter markers and a transcript, that podcast apps can pick up and show. In an app that supports them, a listener can see the chapter list, jump to the bit they care about, and read along.

11:31 Which players actually show them? A growing number. Not all of them, and I'm not going to oversell it. But think about what it means for everything you've just said. You've written a hook and a substance paragraph that tell a stranger what's in the episode. Chapters do the same job from inside the player. 12 minutes in, when it's worth incorporating. The person who was on the fence can go straight there. So the pitch carries on after they've pressed play. Exactly. And it's the same thinking. Once you've worked out the three or four things your episode covers for the notes, you've more or less got your chapter list. Doing that by hand for every episode, though? That's not a 30-second job.

12:14 No, which is why most people don't bother. I'll mention PodHerd here, once, since this show's archive lives there. On every tier, it creates AI chapters and Podcasting 2.0 assets automatically, and you download them and add them to your podcast host, so they go out with the episode. Other tools handle bits of it too. What matters is that the thinking you do once for your notes doesn't just sit on one web page. Fair enough. It's the same idea as the notes, just finished off properly. That's practically an endorsement. It's a shrug, at most. Don't put it on a poster. So, someone's got one free afternoon.

12:55 What do they actually do? Pick your five best episodes. Not the newest, the best. Rewrite the notes as hook, substance, takeaways. Fix the titles so a stranger knows what they're about. Paste the good notes into the feed description. Check your category while you're in there. Chapters? If your host isn't doing them already, yes, fine. Next week's a strange one. The question behind the query. I'm going to read you three search queries, all about roughly the same topic, and you're going to tell me who typed each one. And apparently, they turn out to be three completely different listeners. They do.

13:36 One of them wants a single moment. One wants... No, I'll save it. Tease. Thanks for listening to How To Get Discovered. See you next week. Bye.