Hello, hello everyone. I hope you're doing well. Welcome. Welcome to another live stream here on my YouTube channel. So I was just cleaning my teleprompter. So let me move this out of the way. Great. Okay. So today we're going to talk about show notes. There's a couple of things I want to mention first. First of all, if you are just joining me, my name is Joe Casabona. I am at J. Casabona on most social networks. And so if you want
to follow me and learn more about me in and around those parts, you can. The other thing I want to mention really quick, which I will bring up here on the big screen is that I have a new piece up over on podcastworkclose.com called overcoming the seven deadly sins of podcasting really sucked about this. It's very long. So if you're looking for like a long read this weekend, I think this is this is a good one. It basically tells you what the
seven deadly sins of podcasting are and then how to avoid them. So if you don't want your podcast to fall victim to the seven deadly sins of podcasting, I think this is a really good piece. So you can find that over at podcastworkclose.com slash sins. That's podcastworkclose.com slash sins. Okay, so today we are talking about show notes. I have again, up on the site, I have a couple of pieces that I think will be really good for informing this conversation.
I guess I should also make sure we're actually live. If you are watching live, say hello in the chat. Let me know where you're coming from. And of course, if you have any questions about podcasting in general, or if you have questions about show notes specifically, I'd be happy to answer those for you. So yeah, it looks like we're live over on YouTube. I think I'm probably alive over on LinkedIn. I am. LinkedIn is the only place, unfortunately,
that doesn't push comments to E cam live. So I'll have to go there and check periodically, but every place else Twitch, YouTube and Twitter slash X does push comments to E cam live. So if you have any comments, drop them here. I'll put them up on the big board. And yeah, we can keep rolling from there. Okay, so let's go back here. I see. Yeah. So I have
two pieces on show notes. These both went out in my newsletter. So if you want to, you know, get these delivered right to your inbox, you can sign up over at podcastworkclose.com as well. But I started thinking about this because I saw two kind of two things pointed me in this direction, right? Where the first was I was giving a talk last week in my friend Stacy's community. And I just kind of casually mentioned show notes. And somebody in the
audience asked, like, Hey, what, what are show notes? So I thought that was really interesting because like if you've been podcasting for a long time, then you're like, you already know what show notes are, right? They're the thing that accompanies the episode, right? In an app, like the text and links and a lot of podcasters say like you can find this in
the show notes. So it's, it feels pretty intuitive if you've been podcasting for a while. Now, if you haven't, and in Stacy's community, right, like she encouraged and I love this, she encourages like messy launching, you know, just like get your podcast out there and then we can fix it later, which is great because I think a lot of people myself included get hung up on the details of podcasting or anything really. And then like we, we fail to launch
because we're afraid of perfectionism. But you know, if you, if you are unfamiliar, then you might not know like, like what show notes are, why people refer to them as show notes. The other thing that kind of encouraged me, I'll say to write this piece is an email I got from my friend Crystal Prophet about, and she, she runs the profit podcast, that's profit with two Ts. And I think two Fs and two Ts, I'll double check that about coaching
her friend into kind of mixing show notes all together. And her point ultimately is like, don't let things that, that hold you back or things that are a struggle for you to prevent you from actually doing the thing. And I agree with that. But I strongly believe that show notes are a very important aspect of growing your show. So we'll talk about what show notes are, how they work, how they appear in different apps, and what you could
do to improve your show notes and hopefully grow a little bit more. So again, if you're just joining us, let me know, say hello in the chat, let me know where you're coming from if you have any questions, let me know. So let me bring up this piece here. Also, let me know if I sound okay. I've been messing with my board a little bit. I feel like, I feel like, like certain like heavy breaths come through very clearly on my microphone
and I don't like that. And so I've been trying to like mess with the levels and the processing a little bit. So I mean, let me know how I sound. Okay. So what are show notes? I have this, I have this up here. Show notes are the text in the podcast listening app for a particular episode, right? Rich show notes will have a lot of information. I have seen show notes that are basically like a one sentence description of an episode and then like a
link to the podcast producer. And so if you're an independent podcaster, especially, I think having rich show notes are important. So I think that your show notes can be defined by three important elements, right? We'll talk about more in a minute. But I think that there are three important elements to your show notes. And they are a description of the episode. So people know what it's about before they listen, right? This is the marketing
copy, the thing that will hook the people and actually get them to listen. You need to spend some time on this, right? Like no matter how you slice it, you need to spend some time in this area because you don't just want to have a description that's like, in this episode, Joe Casabona talks to, you know, Jimmy John about sandwiches, right? Like that's not, that's not something that's going to get people to actually listen to the episode.
I don't know why I'm out of focus. Okay. That's not going to be something that's actually going to get people to listen to the episode. You want to open a curiosity loop. Have you ever wondered if you should do something or have been discouraged to do something because everyone else is already doing it? That's how Jimmy John of Jimmy John's subs felt when he launched his store, whatever, like something that tells more of a story than just kind
of like a sterile writing of what the episode has. That's really important. No matter if you include anything else, you need to include a good description. Number two is links and resources mentioned in the episode. Look, there are people who will say they never check the show notes, but like if, if a podcaster mentions a resource or a tool or a thing that you're interested in, that you're really interested in, you will check the show notes.
Like that's like saying like, oh, well, I need groceries, but I never go to the grocery store. Like you're going to go to the grocery store or you're going to buy food when you need it. Right? So this is, I think, something that's really important because it's an opportunity for you to get your guests or your listeners rather to take action. It's a place where people can learn about your guests if you do interviews. And if you are mentioning products,
it's a place for you to add affiliate links, right? And hopefully generate some income for your show. So, um, I'm like, I had, I put an affiliate link in my show notes. I interviewed a guest. They were doing some launch thing. They made me an affiliate. I put their link in that episode and that episode made me like 400 bucks. Like that one affiliate link covered
the cost of like a month's worth of edits at the time. So, I mean, at the very least, you want to have links and resources and you want to make it easy for your listeners, right? To take action. That's also another really important part is it's really hard to get listeners to take action in general because listening to podcasts is such an unfocused activity. Like you could be driving or running or doing chores or at the gym or wrangling
your children. And so like, you know, if you just say like, oh, check out my free resource at whatever, whatever. Okay. That's really ephemeral and they're not going to remember it later. And are they going to be able to find the link later? And if, but if you put it in the show notes, then on their next break, they can at least check the show notes, right? I think you go, Oh, well, they mentioned this. So I'm going to, I'm going to check in the
app where I'm currently listening, right? At least book market. So like you want to make that as easy as possible. And then number three is a call to action, right? You should always have a call to action for your listeners, whether it's join my mailing list or leave feedback or go and like, now it could be like, if you're listening in Spotify, leave a comment.
Or I guess soon, right? Cause that's like rolling out. You want people to take action and just saying it on air, like yes, you want to have an easily speakable URL, but you also want to place where they can go and click on a link in the app they're using. So, you know, this is, this is super important. I say here, I suspect the main reason they're
called show notes is they're largely made up of links during the show, right? Like back in the day when podcasting first started, like you kind of needed a following, right? Because people had to download your episodes and put them on your, on their iPod. That's why it's called podcast. And so like show notes is just like, Hey, we mentioned some stuff, but now they've evolved and they have so many things available. So, you know, I
think that that's really important. So, um, show notes are a place for you to leverage your audience in a really effective way. Um, and a way for you to grow your show in a really effective way. Okay. So, um, I, you know, I, I kind of touched on this, like why you should have them. Uh, I'll, I'll show this here. Um, I kind of touched on this, like why you
should have show notes. Um, but I think that this is a good analogy, right? Have you ever woken up in the middle of the night with a great idea and you were like, Oh, I'll remember that in the morning, but you definitely don't remember that in the morning. That's like, that's the experience of not having resources in your show notes, right? It's like, Oh man, they mentioned this really cool thing and I can't remember what it was called. So I guess
it's lost forever, right? Like they bet I can, I can rewind and try to find where they said it. But if you have like an hour long podcast, are you going to really sift through just to find a thing like, you know, you're going to hope you come across it again. So that's like another reason that you should have good show notes. Um, lots of resources.
And so before we get to the format, I want to mention this other piece I have, um, because I published the one we were just looking at and I got some really good feedback from people. Like I got really good comments, right? My friend Alistair McDermott said, I think show notes are useful to help listeners decide if the episode is for them. I think the episode page on your website is for the resources. Uh, and then Leo, uh, over on Twitter said,
you know, um, I have a love hate relationship with show notes. I hate creating them. I love having them. When I listen to podcasts, I always want to look at them and I never do. I don't know Leo, but like, I have a hard time believing this statement. I always want to look at podcasts, but I never do or pot show notes, but I never do. Um, that's that statement's really hard for me to believe. Um, this is actually one of the reasons I
think all podcasters should have a chat bot. Okay. He, and in the thread, uh, he does like go on to explain more about why, but, and I think these are good points, right? They're both really valuable assets for podcasters. A website is absolutely crucial. Like you need a website for your podcast and I would strongly encourage you to have one that is not just the default one you're hosting provider gives you. That's a good backup. It's a good
place. Like for like one off episodes, I guess, but you really need a good website. Like I would say that part of the reason that my show grew so much in the beginning is because I had a good website, right? I've got, uh, I've got subscribe buttons here. I've got the latest episode. I've got a search bar. If you click through to one of these episodes, there's Becky's, Becky's is probably really good. Uh, for that, right? I've got like a
feedback link and the subscribe buttons again, which takes you to a subscribe page. I've got a call to action for people to join a little this as pro. It should be accelerate now, but, um, I've got the description, the takeaways, the links and the transcript. This is the canonical resource, the canonical link where I can send people and not have to worry about if they, you know, if I'm sending them to Apple podcasts, are they, uh, am I excluding
them because they use Android and they don't have access to Apple podcasts, right? So, and then this is, I forget what episode number this is, and I can't see it here on the, oh, whoops, um, I can't see it here on the artwork. But if it, you know, if it was like 345 or something, then I say, yeah, just go to a streamlines.fm slash 345. Having a good website is crucial to having, um, a podcast that grows. It's a universal place to send your
listeners and a unit and a chat bot can also be really good, right? Especially if you have like deep transcripts and you've been talking about a lot of stuff, uh, you can have a chat bot that like catalogs all of your transcripts and you could say like, Hey, when did Joe talk about accounting, right? Or whatever. I just interviewed my accountant for my podcast,
so it's top of mind for me. Um, I think both of those things are really important. So like I definitely don't want to, um, like put down either of those statements because they're both true, but there is a fatal flaw in both of them. And that is that you are creating friction, right? If you have your resources on another link, right? If you have the description and then you say, get all the resources at streamline.fm slash 425, that's one more step
the user has to take. The listener has to take that creates friction. Why not just send them to your signup page or to the product that you're promoting because you want to meet them where they are. And I responded to Alistair here and I said, um, you know, this is really good, but also like Google is not crawling podcast apps, right? Like it's not crawling overcast or Apple podcasts, at least not that I know of or Spotify and
Apple podcasts and Spotify are not crawling the web for your show. Like when someone searches for your podcast, the rich, especially in Spotify, like it's like questionable and Apple podcasts, but when someone searches in Spotify, the richer your show notes, the more likely it is that you'll be found, right? In inside of those show notes. So you want
to have parity between the two. And then Leo again, like I agree that a chat bot could be very helpful for a podcaster, but he says, when I listen to podcasts, I always want to look at show notes and I never do. If you never take the action of looking in the app, you're already using. I, again, I have a hard time seeing a situation where people will
then instead go and interact with your chat bot on your website, right? A chat bot is great for long-term discovery and user experience for like for your listeners to find stuff later. Show notes are the thing that you like this is the thing that will help them take action now. And that's what you want from your show notes. You want people to subscribe to your podcast and maybe share it and subscribe to your mailing list. And if you're like,
go talk to my chat bot about it, that's like, that's not good. That's not good. Or even like go look on my website. Also not good. Right? The fewer steps that you can make for your listeners to take the action, you want them to take the better. In that article, I say you want to meet them where they are, create a frictionless experience and meet them where they are. Because if we are already recognizing that it's hard for it's hard
to get listeners to take action, any amount of friction makes it harder. So, you know, I think, again, I don't want to pick on Leo here, but like these two, like these statements are in my opinion diametrically opposed. Right? And I follow Leo like I don't, again, I don't know him personally. I'm sure if we had a conversation that was more than just a tweet, we'd find more common ground. But we want as little friction as possible. Right?
And so, you know, if we look at the benefit of detailed show notes, we will achieve Alistair's goal, which is to convince people to listen. Right? And I'll get to the format in a minute. We put our primary CTA right in the app where people are, so we're meeting them where they are. We give them a reason to keep reading the show notes because we've added more detail.
And then we can provide other resources or a secondary CTA, like a chatbot, right? Hey, if you liked this episode, you should go talk to my chatbot and find other episodes where I talk about the thing that you liked the best. Right? It doesn't even have to be like, hey, I also talk about accounting in these episodes. Right? In my interview with my accountant,
we talked about LLCs a little bit. And you'd be like, hey, if the thing that stood out to you was like incorporating your business, like head on over, talk to my chatbot about what other episodes I talk about that in. Right? And then as I was writing this article the last night, my friend Michael Bicket commented another reason why detailed show notes are
important. A new reason for detailed show notes spotifies new comments feature on platform comments may potentially reduce listener need to interact with podcasts on their socials. And I would add on their website, right? Like if people get everything they need from the platform, then they don't need to leave the platform to go to the website. And if they're commenting and interacting and finding other stuff to listen to, you want everything to
be there. Right? It will, however, it will, however, increase visibility of show notes. Right? So this is like the comments will increase visibility. If podcasts just have affiliate links for other TTAs, they absolutely need to be in show notes instead of relying solely on their website or socials. I agree wholeheartedly, right? I mean, look at YouTube. Look at all
of the effort YouTube has put in to keeping people on platform. Not only, not only because like comments are there and more and more content is there and the recommendation engine is there, but like you can purchase products right from a YouTube video, right? Like you can become a member on YouTube. You can subscribe to community posts, right? You basically have if YouTube wants people to stay there and so they're giving creative the tools to fully
interact with and monetize their audience on platform. Spotify is very obviously trying to do that with podcasting. And I'm not saying it's a good thing in the sense that like your content should be everywhere and that's the reason that you might want to have a website. But YouTube is very successful and has made people very successful. And it's very convenient for people, for the people consuming your content. And so you want to make this as convenient
as possible for your listeners. So that's everything I have to say about show notes as far as like why you should have them. The other thing I want to dig in on here, I'll go back to the other article actually, is the format. So let's talk about this format a little bit. I'll do like a quick, actually I'll do a quick comments check. If you're just joining me, let me know, say hello. Let me know where you're coming from. If you have
any questions about show notes or podcasting in general, I'm happy to answer them. So let's see. Don't see any comments over here. I'll go to LinkedIn because that's the place that doesn't push comments to me. Don't see any comments over there. Okay, so great. We are so ready to move on to the next spot. I don't I don't know why my camera is not focusing the right way. Okay. This is like a new issue. It's super weird. Okay. Where are we? Okay,
great. So let's talk format. And I'll say like I don't fully follow this format yet. I have like a little bit of technical debt as far as how my show notes are put together. But as I was thinking through this, I basically thought of this and published it before I started implementing it. But as I was thinking through this, I think that this is a very
good format for show notes. You have the hook and the description, right? So for the for the episode I am working on now, which is Rachel's episode, this is not fully written yet actually. But the hook is when I first started my business, I was 14 years old. My income was pretty light and my expenses were even lighter. I didn't even pay for hosting. Like I hosted my few client websites on a web server in my bedroom. But even then
I started to write this and then I realized what time it was. So and then this is like the AI summary that I'm going to like bastardize and turn into like an actual good piece of writing. So but even I'm writing here but even then I knew the importance of keeping track of my expenses, right? And then I'll kind of go on to why you should listen to
this. Like if you're a solopreneur and you're wondering about expenses and essentially how to like maximize your tax refund and keep more of your money and keep an eye on things like this is what you need to do. I think this is someplace a lot of solopreneur struggle. And so while it's not like strictly automation focused, it is like time like from a time saving perspective. My accountant Rachel has saved me a ton of time and money by setting
these things up the right way. So that's going to be my job in the hook and description, right? Why you should listen where I break from this format is I put the top takeaways right after the hook and description. But I think at this after the hook and description, you want to put your primary CTA, right? Because you've hooked people now they are ready to go. And so you could say, by the way, get more advice like this on my mailing list,
right? Or if you want to hear this conversation ad free and extended, Rachel and I dive into my business even more. And I ask her questions about my business that she knows better than me. You can become a member, right? And I have the link to the membership. That's going to be my primary CTA for streamlined solopreneur, right? Because that is that's a pot. It's not a podcast I'm doing like separately from my business is only part of my business. But
it's not. There's nothing I talk about in that show that's kind of directly related to my coaching business. So that's just kind of like its own stream of income and a thing that says that I can point you to be like, Hey, I know what I'm talking about because look at this show, right? Anyway, that's the hearing over there. I mean, but you should think about your your primary CTA, right? I've always said that you should have one clear
call to action for listeners to take. Because if you are throwing a bunch of things at them, then they're not going to remember any of them, right? When I tell my seven year old or my four year old to do something. And if I tell them to do like three things in a row, they are not going to do any of them. They're going to forget the first thing I said. And then they're going to be like, I don't know what to do now. So instead, I tell them I try
at least to tell, I try to tell them to do one thing at a time. So have your primary, think about your primary CTA, think about the goal of your podcast and the action that you want your listeners to take and put that here. Then you want to have top takeaways from the episode, right? So you have the hook in description, you have your calls to action, but you want them to keep reading because you want them to see all of the fun stuff
you have to offer. So here, again, if we look, if we look back at Rachel's document, I basically, this is like the only place where I really use AI properly, I think, not the only place, but the most common place, right? Is I say like, give me five to three to six top takeaways from the episode. And then I compare these with my notes and I go, okay, yes, I wrote this one down, I wrote this one down. I've got the top three now, right?
Like just to see if AI surfaces anything that I might have missed in the conversation. So then I have the top takeaways, which again provides more content for the crawlers and the apps to search in. Then I have, if I have sponsors, so this is another place like I put the sponsors at the bottom, I should, I want to put them. And again, this is a little bit because right now they're dynamically inserted by my podcast host. But I don't know if I'm really, what they have is
not real dynamic ad insertion. It's more like you can slide some content in there later, without having to edit or record it live. And so I, you know, I think as I rework how I do sponsorships, there's a big benefit to that, right? Which is that I have until, you know, maybe two days before the episode goes live to sell those sponsor slots. But I think it makes for a worse experience. And I'd rather have those spots sold. And then I could always like add it
dynamically in later, right? It's like there's, there are ways around that, right? And so anyway, I'd like to put the sponsors here under the top takeaways, right? They're higher in the list. So they're called out a little bit more. And then they're mentioned in the show. Depending on what you negotiate with the sponsors, like some sponsors want to be listed at the very beginning of the description, especially on YouTube, that's between you and your sponsors. You could put them above
the primary CTA. I think that my goal is to serve my listeners of the best way for me to serve my sponsors is to properly serve my listeners, because then my listeners will trust me more, and therefore be more open to listening to my sponsors or listening, learning about my sponsors. And so I'd rather have these three things here. And then the sponsors, because they're still like high in the description, right? I guess I could put them under the primary CTA. But again, I want
to provide a bunch of valuable information and then hit them with the sponsors. That's my goal. If you don't have sponsors, it doesn't matter. You can just skip right to the show notes. And this will be any of the links that you mentioned. And really, like it should be, if you say I'm going to include this in the show notes, or you let you mention an interesting link or resource, it should
be in the show notes. Because because then you are showing you're teaching your listeners, hey, if I mention an interesting link, go to the show notes, go to the description in your app, and you will find that. And then they'll see everything else too. They'll see the call to action. They'll see the sponsors. They'll see a transcript or a link to the transcript. That one's a little different, right? Apps handle transcripts differently.
Putting a full transcript into the description box probably isn't going to work, which is why I say possibly a link to your transcript. Modern podcasting apps support transcripts now. So as long as you add the transcript in the right place in your podcast host, then you should be good to go. So like if I go over to, let me see, if I go to rss.com and go to one of my actual podcasts, right, rss.com, which full disclosure, I am an evangelist for rss.com. But you know, if I go
over here, right, they have the transcript, transcript has been added to the episode. And then if I just look at it here, like on the website, there's a separate section for the transcript. If I look at this in Apple podcasts, oh gosh, I'm like pointing to all of this and I just realized I'm not sharing my screen. So here we support transcripts in rss.com. And then on the website, you know, we have the time stamped transcript. This is, we'll automatically generate,
rss.com, we'll automatically generate transcripts for free. And then we include them here. If I go to Apple podcasts, and you know, I look up the TIL podcast since that's the one I'm talking about, and then I look here, Apple podcast displays the transcript here. And the Apple podcast will also automatically generate one. You can also flag that as a transcript here. And then you can also flag that, hey, if I provide a transcript, I want you to use that. So if we look at a streamlined
solopreneur, let's see. No, are we not doing the transcripts for this one? Let me, I guess let me go to an older episode. This one. Okay, so the transcript's automatic. I don't know why it's showing the automatically generated one here, but my point, my point being that this is a play, this is an opportunity for you to share the transcript or a link to the transcript. So, and you can kind of see,
I can't like bigify this, I don't think in Apple podcasts, which is frustrating. But you can see, like I have a, you know, a lot of description here, the top takeaways, the sponsors, and then and then my primary call to action, right? So I, this is where I need to rearrange a few things. And these live streams are really for me to like kind of hash this stuff out, right? So you can see
the example here, where I could make things a little bit better. And maybe what I'll try to do is show this on my phone, so that you can kind of see like how it looks in apps. Yeah, so I'm going to try to do that right now. I say try, I should be able to. This is like a pretty, this is like a pretty common thing I do these days. I just, I'm not, I wasn't quite set up to do that. So let's see, get the right and then, of course, if you have any questions,
I'd love to answer them for you around show notes or podcasting in general. Again, if you're joining, I see people like steadily joining. So if you're just joining us, say hello, tell me who you are, where you're coming from. If you have any questions about my setup or anything at all, I'm happy to answer them. While I find the right cable for me to, let's see, this is really good. This is great content right here.
Where, let's see, this, this one should work. I can never find the cable I need to find when I need to find it. This one will not work. I just remembered that I'm, so this is actually better than it should be. I forgot I was using an iPhone 15. Let's see. Dude, this is great content, isn't it, everybody? Am I losing? Is everybody gone now? Oh, you're all sticking around. That's really nice. Okay, so I need to trust this device. We're good there. And so then I should be able to switch to this
other device. Oh, wonderful. So I have recording on. Okay. So if I open Apple podcasts, I hope I don't get a text. All right. So we can see if we go to Justine's episode, you can see what it looks like here in Apple podcasts, the top takeaways, the show notes. And yeah, I'm like a little bit surprised that there's no transcript in the app right now. So again, if I go back and look at Sarah's episode, and I scroll down, we have the transcript right
here, automatically generated. If I go to Overcast, and I go to, you guys can see all the baseball podcasts I open to, I guess. And I should mention that Overcast, Marco Arment just announced that he's revamping this app. So it's going to change. But again, you can kind of see the same format here. I'm not seeing transcripts in this one. So if we go to Spotify, I'm sure Spotify will probably just start playing music frustratingly.
You know, like start playing an episode. Yeah, newest episodes filter. Newest. Okay. So if I go to Justine's episode, you could see what the show notes look like here. And yeah, I'm not seeing transcript support here. So point being, I do like I do upload the transcripts. And maybe I'll try like podcast guru. I don't use this is just like an app I use for testing. Yeah, this is like, I wonder if so I use a different host than RSS.com for this podcast, because there's a private podcast
and dynamic ads associated. And I wonder, I wonder if they don't display transcripts the right way. So like what's a let's see, there's an pod news is probably doing transcripts the right way. The pod news here. Very rich show notes. Okay. I mean, so maybe apps just aren't displaying. Maybe these apps aren't displaying transcripts. Go to pod news here.
Let's do pod news weekly. And go here. Okay, so we've got chapters. Yeah, I mean, maybe it's just maybe we aren't seeing transcripts in the app for whatever reason. I like maybe maybe I have to start playing it. I'm really sorry. Yeah. Really interesting. I would have assumed that I would have seen if you're like in the live stream and you know the answer to this and you're screaming at your screen, let me know. Because I'm really curious about this.
But anyway, getting back to this format, transcripts really important to include either way a link to the transcript is probably what you want. Or if you include again, like I showed you so I showed you rss.com if I show you my use transistor for streamlined solopreneur. If we okay. So oh yeah. So like the transcript for Justine's episode is complete. And then if I go to like if I go to the transistor webpage, the transcript is there. But like I said, I'm not pointing people to this.
I'm pointing people to my actual website. So really interesting. I didn't I don't think I realized like how poor transcripts support in apps was. Maybe that will change since Apple has started supporting, you know, started doing their own transcripts. I do there's a there's a setting in in transistor. I think. Oh no, it's in it's in Apple podcast connect, where it's like use use the transcript I provide and if I don't provide a transcript, then generate one.
But I'm not sure if they're actually reading the transcript feed or not, like the transcripts tag in the feed. I definitely need to double check that. So but ultimately, if we kind of this part not withstanding, this is to just let you know that you should definitely have transcripts. Hook in description to get people to listen. Primary CTA to get them to take action. Top takeaways to continue to deliver value in the show notes. Sponsors if you have them.
Show notes, which is like the links and resources. And then a link to your transcript. Or if they're really long, reiterate your CTA, I guess here. This is something that again, I haven't fully you, I mean, you saw right, I haven't fully implemented it. But it's definitely something I'm going to experiment with over the next few weeks. I'm going to get with my VA and kind of explain to her what
I'm thinking and changing the format. You know, something else that I want to do a little bit better is because my directions for her, I should say this, right, my directions for her are not very good. I don't provide her, excuse me, I don't provide her with the exact links I want to include. And so, you know, she'll like in my show doc, I usually just have the word link, I tell her to look for the word link. And if she doesn't see that word, then then she only includes
a link to the guest. So what I should probably do a little bit better is as I'm putting this, so the way my, the way that my process works is I will record the episode, I will write the description and the top takeaways, and then I'll send the document to my VA and say, hey, take the summary, write the description and the top takeaways, and then look through this document for any time I
write the word link and find the link and add it to the show notes. When it's really unclear, she just grabs whatever link she can find, she's not, she can't read my mind, and she doesn't have access to my affiliate links either. So I think what I should ultimately do is when I'm doing the summary is also create the links, or otherwise give her a tool for her to find the links I'm
thinking about or the affiliate links myself. So, you know, I think that's probably what I ultimately need to do to create better show notes, because what I've been doing is like after the fact, adding the links that she didn't add, and I'd like to have that all done upfront, right? So, I'm good at like noting them during the interview in the document, but I've been mostly leaving it to her to do, which, again, I want to express, I wanted to express that it's not her fault,
it's my fault. Matt Medeiros coming in, why is this so small? What is happening here? What is this? Oh, I broke something in, in Ecamm Live is what happened. No background color. Well, background. What about the text? This is so weird. This looks so bad. This is what I get for messing with stuff like right before a live stream. Don't do that. Great. That looks better. Yeah, what you wanted to say was more apps should all support podcasting
2.0 transcript tab like Apple finally did. That's exactly what I wanted to say, right? Like, for sure, more apps should support this. So, if you're unfamiliar, podcasting 2.0 is, gosh, what's the best way? Well, I'll bring up the website that describes it a little better. It's basically just like a new set of features. Podcasting2.org is the website that I like to go to. Oh, my gosh. This all, like, this has been redesigned?
Maybe it's just like supporting dark mode. No, I think this got redesigned. Okay. Anyway, podcasting 2.0 is making podcasts better for audiences, listeners, and developers, richer listening experience, more features for podcasters to have. So, transcripts is really nice. They're called namespaces, but it's like, let's call namespaces features, right? That's essentially
what they are. And this is basically like a document for podcast apps and podcast hosts to follow to implement these universal features so that we don't have, like, vendor lock-in or features only in one place or another. And it's a really good initiative, right? This is like what makes the open web the open web, is there's a spec, essentially, for features that browsers should implement so that you have mostly a, like, a homogenous experience across various apps, or consistent,
and there's the right word. And so, there are some really good features here, like transcript is one, chapters is another to make it easy to jump around. I want to see better supported chapters across the board. I want chapters, like, I want adding chapters in podcasts to be as easy as adding chapters in YouTube. And right now, that's not the case, because the chapters need to be embedded into the MP3. Some apps do a good job of supporting, like, text chapters in the show notes.
So that's my, if you're interested, leave a comment and I'll do, like, a whole live stream on chapters. Podroll is recommending other podcasts. And then there's, like, you know, locked. I don't know what got, like, the popular tag here, but locked is probably the one that is the most supported, because this means that people can't just straight up steal your podcast. So, like, this is a really important one. And then, you know, funding clips, that's really interesting,
season numbering location. Lots of really good extra info to make the podcast experience richer, because main thing is that podping is a way to, like the way the app, the way most apps work is they will periodically check the feeds that you're subscribed to. So that's every 15 minutes. Whereas if they implement podping, the feed basically sends out a signal saying like, hey, it's like email, and then it'll get downloaded.
So a lot of really good features here in podcasting 2.0, but like these three, I mean, transcripts especially are crucial, right? Transcripts and chapters are a way to make your podcast more accessible to more people, right? Transcripts for people who can't listen or prefer to read or skim or are looking for something specific that you said. And then chapters to let people jump around to the part of the episode that they wanna hear, right? I love using chapters as a listener.
As a podcaster, I use them more in podcast workflows than I do in the Streamline solopreneur because I feel like I'm kind of telling a whole story in the Streamline solopreneur and it's not like a segmented show, you should listen to the whole thing. But in podcast workflows, like I have a three things in podcasting, if you don't care about the first thing, you can jump right to the second, right? So I love using chapters for that.
So anyway, Matt, you've sent me on a little bit of a soapbox thing, but yeah, I agree wholeheartedly. Like you should, more apps should implement podcasting 2.0 features. I use Overcast. And so I'm really excited for this redesign.
I'm actually kind of bummed I'm not on the beta, but I don't know, I didn't realize that there was, I think I was on the beta and then like he purged everybody and I was using Pocket Casts at the time, like I was trying out Pocket Casts for a while, but I went back to Overcast. Anyway, I'm really excited for the Overcast redesign to see if he has implemented more, Marco is his name, if he has implemented more podcast 2.0 features.
I'm also like something that's noodling, that's like needling at me. Maybe this is, if no other questions come in, this is where we'll leave it because I know it's almost three o'clock, even though for some reason my phone says 941. I don't know why that's happening. I'll unplug my phone. Okay, that was insanely weird, whatever that was. Something that has been poking at me is, oh, well that's not gonna be right at all. Like how, why isn't the transcript showing up? So let's see.
This'll be a show and tell thing. If I click RSS feed. Like the transcript is not in the RSS feed. If we view the source here. Like I should really ask, okay, like, okay, so here's pod role. These are the podcasts I recommend. Support my trailers. I'm testing out a new category here. Season numbers. Okay, transcript URL. Transcript URL is this. So it is linking to a transcript. Whoops. It is linking to a transcript for the episode. So I guess it's just, it's up to a lot of times.
Okay, so this is justines. Yeah, so I don't know if it's just that, like I'm using a text format and that's not right. That's something I should dig into. But I didn't really think about digging into until now. But like maybe, actually, come on this journey with me my friends. Let's see, URL type, okay plain text HTML VTT JSON. Language, the language of the link to transcript, if there's no language given, the link is assumed to be the same language. Okay, well, if it's captions.
So like this is accurate. This is fine. Where is it? I've lost it already. I guess I've, oh there it is. Podcast. Type, text, plain. So like this should be fine, right? Like this should be something that apps can pick up. So I don't know, that's something I'm very curious about. But let me see, I haven't seen any more questions come in. I will head over to LinkedIn to make sure that is true since I don't really know how comments work on LinkedIn. No, no comments there.
So that's it for this live stream. Thanks so much to everybody who stuck around and watched. I hope you found it helpful. Thanks to Matt for putting into words what I was trying to say nicely in the stream. Thanks Matt for showing up in the chat. If you have any questions about showing or something like that, I'll just leave it there. I'll just leave it there. If you have any questions about showing or something like that, let me know.
You can find me on socials or head over to podcastworkflows.com. Check out my seven deadly sins article and join my mailing list. Thanks so much for watching. And until next time, I can't wait to see what you make.