Captivate Your Audience: The Power of Episode Art in Podcasting

Want your podcast and videocast to be seen, heard, found and rewarded in this noisy digital world, you are not alone. Join the nonprofit community at Podcasters United and podcast industry experts Tom Hazard and Tracy Hazard as they debunk all that outdated and bad advice you've been getting from the podcast gurus and find out what actually works today. Get ready to feed. Feed your brand with smart cut tactics proven to cast your original voice to the world.

Hey everyone. Welcome to Feed. You'd brand. I'm Tracy Hazzard along with my co host Tom Hazzard, and we are here to talk about some of the nitty gritty things in podcasting.

Episode Art this is one of my favorite topics. It also at times becomes a little bit of a pet peeve for me, I will admit, and I'll try to keep from expressing frustration here. But because it is so highly underrated, that's one of the things that I want to say. It's all too often overlooked people who self publish podcasts. The reality is, all you've got to do, create your unique MP3 file, give it a little title, little description, publish it, Boom, you're done. Or as like my family used to say when I was younger, bub's your uncle, right? You're done. And yeah, you can. But again, underrated and underutilized. And I can say this from experience because I literally meet with usually between six and eight different podcasters every day, literally, to review their shows, provide some insights, help them get the most out of their shows. And the vast majority, unless they've already somebody who's been working with us already, do not have any unique episode art for each episode at all. And they certainly are not. Even if they do, they're usually not uploading it as the featured image in their podcast RSS feed, which. So let's just cover that first. Especially for any of you that are new, you can do that. You can post a unique image for every episode, and that goes in the RSS feed. And it's used in the vast majority of listening apps as the artwork for that episode. Except Apple, which is ironic because Apple invented the industry. They are still where the majority of podcast plays are coming through. For most podcasters, okay, we find typical show between 50 and 90% of their plays are coming from an Apple listening app and an Apple device. Why does Apple not do it? I don't know. I mean, and I've actually spoken with Apple executives and they say, yeah, I know, I know, we're not doing that. We should be doing it. And I'm like, well, what the heck's the matter with you? Okay, so note to Apple, get your button gear.

It's powerful. And so here's the thing. I want to explain the difference between some of the arts. Okay? We call the COVID of your show, the icon that is your show is called cover art. Cover art, it's the COVID of the album, it's the COVID of the show. It's that cover art is the default. In other words, if you don't put anything in episode art in the single episode and give it its unique image, that would be episode art. Right. And it's a square, mind you, still a square.

Same specifications as cover art for the square image. It's just a unique one for the episode.

That's right. And if you don't put one there, it's going to automatically load in your cover art into that position. So it's not like you're going to have nothing there. You will. It will by default come to your cover art. And then we have one more thing that a lot of people put blogs on their websites or their episodes. And almost every blog has a header image. It's not always, but it is usually a panoramic, a landscape size, right? A horizontal view image that is the top of a blog. And so that's also another image that you might have. You call it the blog image or the blog header. Right. And very often a lot of people will also add information about their podcast in there and they make that an additional episode art. It's the episode art landscape, if you want to call it that. And so thinking about there might be these three types of things now, most people also use that header image, especially one that's stylized, happens to have the title of the episode, maybe an episode number in it. If you're still doing that, they also become YouTube thumbnails. And that is YouTube video thumbnails. Not a YouTube short thumbnail, a YouTube video thumbnail. The panoramic, the landscape view is important. The aspect ratio of that is important for YouTube. Very often we use the same thumbnail we use on YouTube is also used on our blogs.

And to add to that point, Tracy, which is an excellent one, very often the square episode art, the square version of the landscape image, essentially, right. That you're talking about, is also used on most websites for the featured image for the blog. So that when there is a blog feed or a blog roll or a carousel of featured images of blogs, whatever you might have on your website, it uses the square to display info about that blog rather than the full wide landscape image.

And so often what we're seeing is that you're making these. You're making them for YouTube, you're making them for your blog, and you're not using them in the RSS feed. And that's what we wanted to release, hit on today and really talk about. We're talking about taking those square featured images that have to do with the episode content that are reinforcing what this episode is about, using that in the RSS feed and inserting it in the episode image space and making sure that you're using it because it has the power to the viewer, to the reader, to the listener. And here's where I want you to think this through. If I find your podcast and I'm looking through and scanning your episodes, and there's an episode image on the side of that that is reinforcing something in my head about the power of it. Maybe it's the color of it. Maybe it's bright red. And it says mistakes people make with a webinar. That's the topic of your episode. And the image is red. I go, ooh, I'm going right there. Mistakes. That's what I don't want to do. Right? That's a don't. I want to go to the don'ts so you can reinforce the title and the image to make people take action. And that's the power of your feed.

And let's talk about why that happens just for a moment here, because this is important in case you don't know, all of you listeners out there, and this is scientifically tested and proven. This is not according to Tom Hazard. And I will try to find a reference and add it to the blog post for this episode, because I know read it a few different times. People's brains process images or graphics faster in their brain. They interpret it and process it faster than they read words, and their brains interpret what those words really mean. People gravitate to visual images faster, process them faster. It attracts them to something faster. So if you've got just the same image, your show, cover art, in every episode, you're making people read through all your titles to decide what episodes they may want to listen to next. And can't even tell you how many people don't even read titles, quite honestly. I mean, that's a whole nother subject. Because we do believe in engaging titles. There are a lot of shows that title things very poorly. I see people use only their guest name as their title. That doesn't tell me anything about what you're talking about. Just tell me who's there on the show with you. My point. And not to go down too deep a rabbit hole on titles, but the images are so important, they can reinforce.

The power of what you're talking about. You can make it so that they're not all the same. You can not over brand it. And we are a big fan of the titles being on there. But it's a short title. It's like the catchphrase, if you want to think of it like the keyword in an SEO standpoint, a search engine optimization. Right. So I might have webinar mistakes, might be on that example that I just gave. But that's it. That's the same title that's going to go on my YouTube thumbnail. Because YouTube doesn't want you to have a big long title on it either. It likes webinar mistakes. Right. And we might make that color stand out amongst the other ones. That's great. Most people will go for the easy branding, the exact, simple, the same exact template. And that's almost no better than using your cover art. There are exceptions to that. And that is when your guests are kind of unknowns and putting their image there isn't going to help you if they are known. Like we have a client who has famous football player, former football player, who's a quarterback, who people recognize his face. Putting him on that episode image will stop people in their tracks because they will recognize his face before they'll see the words, before they'll see his name. And if they're a fan, they're clicking on that episode. So it can really have a power to creating stickiness for the episodes that you're creating. So thinking that through now, if you cannot take the extra time to make everything original, you could change the colors out. You could create a differentiator between. If I have guest episodes and I have topic episodes, you could make sure that the topic ones have words and maybe the episode with interviews have pictures, have a picture of the guest. So at least someone knows when they're going through the feed. These are interviews and these are topics. These are. That is helpful in navigating through your feed. So there's some other reasons for it in terms of clickability, readability, navigation, where you can help people find what they're looking for faster in your feed. And that's critically important as well.

It is critically important. I want to talk a moment about the guest images headshots. Okay. Because you made a very good point. There are good reasons why in Certain contexts, you may very well want to use it, and that will help attract people to try it out. It will foster click engagement, really only if they're very well known, at least nationally, or if you have a very niche audience easily recognized in your niche. That would also apply. But we also have podcasters we work with who have been doing it the same way for years, since before they knew us, and we've given them the good reasons why. And they say, okay, Tom, thanks. I appreciate knowing that I'm comfortable where I am. I'm gonna keep doing it my way. And what it's your show. That's your choice. You absolutely can do it. But I have a podcaster that's a good example to me of what not to do. Because even on the podcast page on their website, they're using a featured square image for every episode. And it is entirely a guest headshot with no text on it whatsoever. No name of the person, no name of the show, no identity of the show, no. No title of an episode. It's literally just a face. And I'll tell you, I don't believe all those faces are very well known, even in the niche for this podcast. I think that when you do that as a podcaster, you're giving up a really good brand opportunity, an opportunity to share your brand, to make sure your brand is more widely recognized. You're also giving up on any kind of opportunity to pique curiosity and get people to click to learn more. You're not taking advantage of the potential to get more click engagement. Each episode image may be unique. Okay, that's fair. It is. But again, there's no good reason why I want to click on this person's face versus that face. Maybe human nature is people tend to like people like themselves. If they see a face that's similar to theirs, maybe they'll click on it. But I guarantee you, if they see an image that is truly relevant to the topic that's discussed in that episode, or the good reason why I as a listener want to click it, because I'm going to learn something or there's going to be some amazing story about this, whatever it is. That's what we're talking about here is your opportunity that you have to do this, and it's free, other than your time to create the image, it's free to put that image out there with your episode.

I want to stop you right there and talk about shareability, because this is where you're really not using the power of episode art and you're creating A lack of shareability. So if I'm the guest on your podcast and I'm that guest whose headshot you used, the easiest, fastest way for me to share the episode is to go and go and click share. But when it shares, all it does is show a picture of me and it's more work for me to like replace it or delete it and then it becomes a text only share. I'm less likely to do that. And so you're not getting your guests to do some of the heavy lifting on the sharing part and you want them to do that. But I'm not going to share it if it's just my picture because my picture's already on the profile of my social media, so why would I do that again? The second thing is, if you're continually sharing your cover art again and again and again and you're not sharing episode art, then your readers and your people going through your feed, your followers on social media, they think you're promoting because remember, they're very quickly looking at the visual image. They think you're promoting the same thing again, even if there's a slight difference. Like if there's still some branding elements, like if I'm promoting my show, the binge factor and I'm going to flip it around so see the red and blue and white and I'm promoting it and it has red and blue and white ingredient branding or stylistic branding in my episode art. But the image in the middle is different than they know. Oh, she's sharing something about her show because we already know about her show. But wow, I should stop and pay attention to what she's sharing. Right? That's what we want to have happen, is that there's just enough of that visual difference where our eye goes up, brain, stop, take a look and see what's going on here. That's what we want to have happen in our feeds and that applies to our shareability and our social feeds as well.

All right, so for those of you listening to the podcast, I want you to know that Tracy in the video version here and you can see that in the blog post@podcasters united.org or on YouTube was using her mic flag on her microphone that has a potatoes brand on it and Shinshi turned it to because it's three sided and showed the binge factor cover art there that you want to go check that out. Oh, you want to share. Okay, United we pod is the new one coming up.

I'll flip the other one too for those of you. Because Nazanin commented before, she's like, oh, that looks really cool. And I had it flipped the wrong way.

So, yeah, so I do. I have all three of the shows that we record. I have them all on the same mic block so I can flip them around easily. But it is, it's in a branding thing. What I want to just touch on again here is that shareability of your show matters and getting people to say, I haven't heard that one yet is critically important. And the visual trigger is critically powerful in making your brain and that person stop.

It's incredibly powerful. I can't tell you how many shows, even when I'm looking in an app like Spotify. And if any of you listeners out there want to go see what we're talking about with this unique episode art, I mean, there are lots of apps that do it, but just pull up Spotify and in the free version is fine. You don't have to have a Spotify paid account at all and search up the binge factor. Just go look at that show or feed your brand. One of our shows.

In the blog post for this episode, we're going to drop in some screenshots here. So if you just want to go there@podcastersunited.org and check that out in the Feed yout Brand episode there, you'll be able to see what that looks like or go to your favorite app and just do it. But if you're in the Apple app and you don't have anything else, come to the blog post.

Well, but searching in Apple, then after for comparison on a show and go below the fold to scroll down to where you're going to see episode results. So I just put the show results first up top. And a lot of people, especially new ones, don't even know they're not scroll down below the fold. So scroll below the fold and see all those episodes and here's what happens. And it happens in your social media feed. If you're on LinkedIn or Facebook or any place like that, it happens on your own website. If you have a blog post for every episode and there's a blog feed there, you scroll through and it's the same image over and over. Most people are like, keep scrolling. Seen it, seen it, seen it. Nothing new here. Because guess what? They're not reading the titles. They're not reading the dates to say, oh, this one was published more recently. The image makes the difference. It is a game changer for getting people's attention, piquing curiosity and building anticipation for people to click to learn more that, you know, they say the cliche that exists, and we've all heard it, a picture's worth a thousand words. That cliche came about for a reason once photography started to happen. And they probably even said it with painted pictures before photography. But a image communicates so much and our brains engage with them faster, that if you take nothing else away from this episode, please take that away. It is critically important. But that's not all. I do want to talk a little bit about the context of these images, these square images, and why, where people are seeing them, because that is important.

I agree with you. One of the places that is really powerful is your car. How many of you listen to podcasts in your car? Yep. And Tom, we typically run the podcast off my phone in the car, and I run in an Android. And so you get the episode art imagery there. It shows up when you play it from the Apple device. You don't. You just get the show. And when it goes from episode to episode, sometimes you don't realize that you're in a different episode.

Yeah. Again, Apple, are you listening? Please be listening. Can you fix this, please? This is ridiculous.

Okay, I know, but you can't really read the title. You just can't do it while you're driving. Right. So the episode art image, you know, you're on a new episode. It's a good brain trigger to let you know a new episode started and what it's about, and. And then you're good to go. Right. And you get engaged in. It's a great way for that to happen in that listening in the car model. But there are other places that you're going to be in context of places where this is going to be shared. And that's what we want you to remember, is that not only is it viewed this way within the app, so it's viewed in search. Okay, so there's a search within the app. When you say I'm looking for. Go back to my episode, to my example of webinar tips. How do I create the best webinar webinar tips might be what I type into the search engine. It's going to give me shows and it's going to give me episodes, and I have the ability to search through either. And when I see the same image that's above in the shows, and I didn't pick that show for a reason, and all I do is see it again down there, you don't have a second chance of capturing me. If I skipped your show up at the top because your cover art or the name of your show or whatever it was didn't do it for me. There's no way I'm going to click again in the bottom part in the episode. But if your episode art is different, there's a chance that I might click it and give your show a chance, even though I wrote it off above. What else? What are the other contextual ways when.

You have decided that you're going to. When you haven't before, create unique artwork for every episode, or if you've already been doing it and you just want to up your game, make them the best they can be be, then you need to consider a few things. Scale is one of the biggest things you have to consider. Please go test search in several different places like Tracy was talking about your favorite listening app you use. Try some other listening apps. Go look on social media. You could do it on your computer if you want to do that, but do it on your phone especially. Because what I want you to see is how stinking small these images are displayed in many contexts.

They're like a half an inch.

And this is also true. And I've talked about this in other episodes and I conduct webinars with podcasters regularly. I talk about context of your cover art because a lot of people make the same mistakes with their show cover art. But what I want to talk about is text. Hey, I understand branding guidelines. You have a brand book. You have your format that your brand strategist tells you, oh, your brand needs to be shown this way everywhere. Okay, I understand that. But again, look at the context. Cause if you got this really beautifully incredibly thin font, you better make sure you can read that when the entire image is 3/4 of an inch square on your phone. And it might even be smaller than that in some apps. So scale.

Scale matters.

Scale of text, scale of whatever logo pieces you might have. Scale of whatever image you're using. You know, we talked about headshots or we talked about using other images, whether original images or stock images or whatever image, make sure you have the rights to to use and then put it in as an ingredient in your episode artwork. You want to make sure, even if people won't necessarily understand everything about why you chose it or exactly what it is, if it doesn't pique curiosity. It's like, I'm not exactly sure what that means, but that's pretty cool. I want to learn more. Click. Boom. You won.

When you're thinking about episode art, there are two things that you have to think about. One is that how it looks in small and in the feed, as Tom's pointing out here, but also how it looks when it's shared. If I clicked that and I shared your show and I share that episode image, is it giving me enough information about the show? Is it letting me know that it's a podcast? Is it doing things, doing things differently in that model? It's okay if those things are tiny in the app because I know I'm on a podcast. I know I'm on the binge factor. I know I'm on the show. Right? I know this is feed. Your brand already is, like, too tiny to read. That's okay, because then when it's shared and it's on Instagram and it's a much bigger square, it's filling up half my phone. I can now see the feed your brand ingredient in the corner. That's a good thing there. So it's okay to make it too small in one aspect where it doesn't matter and another to make it bigger where it is. But here's the other thing. Numbers. Don't put numbers on these things. I wish you all would stop numbering your episodes. That's a whole nother podcast. But don't put your numbers on these things. It's actually a total waste of time. Because what happens when you delete an episode, when something changes? Are you going to fix all your graphics? What happens when you have a teaser episode and in the system your numbers are actually off? And so I say I'm on number 101, but it's really number 102 because of the order of things and the way that it happened. And my teaser episode became number one instead of zero, it just messes everybody's brains up. And there's a cognitive dissonance with that. Just don't do that. Don't bother. It's a waste of space. But putting your ingredient of your show that when you share it out on social media, when it's automatically shared from somewhere, someone in some of the apps, GoodPods does this. I can share from GoodPods and say, share this particular episode and it will share that episode art. It's now sharing out something. And I want the show brand to be in there somewhere, but keep it small. You can make it like a watermark. You can make it ghosted in the corner. Like, you don't have to use the actual whole square. You can just use the words feed your brand or whatever the words of your show are. Stop putting your image there. That's another thing. If your photo if you are doing a share of your guest, stop repeating your image there. You're the host of the show, it's unimportant in the scope of things. Or you're the one who's sharing it out on social, it's already your feed. Like, you don't need to have the repetitive things that are not seen. Selling that episode for you and then be thinking about when it's shared on social media, what's the essential thing for them to know so they can find it? That's it. That's all they need is to know where to find it. Everything else they'll find if they're interested. If it was shared out in a valuable way, I'm going to go look for it. But if the only thing I have to remember is the name of the episode and the show it was on, done, it's easier.

And you know, the same thing happens when you share a blog post for your episode on social media and you actually share the URL for that blog post. And this is even true if it's a summary show notes post, although we don't recommend doing that. If you listen to this podcast long enough. You know that we recommend a very comprehensive blog post for a lot of good reasons. But let's just say it's a typical short show notes blog post. And again, you have a header image and a featured image. You share that blog post on social in any way. The social media channel scrapes the blog for that featured image and displays the image. You're not just posting text out there of the name of your show and a link. You're actually. You put a link in, you make a post, it pulls up the image from your blog and displays it as the main visual part of the post. And then when people click it on social media, guess where it takes them? Back to the blog on your website, which is an excellent way to share your posts. But again, you get a bunch of those posts in your feed over time. People scroll through your feed. If all those images are the same people just keep scrolling. Endless scroll. Seen it, seen it, seen it. They won't click.

There's so many powerful reasons to do it. Here's my basic recap of the elements that you want. First off, it needs to be 3,000 by 3,000 so you keep it as high resolution and as powerful as it that will be useful everywhere.

I'd like to interject, just save it efficiently. Keep the file size low because you don't want it to bloat your podcast RSS feed. You can have 3,000 by 3,000 images that are really efficient. Half a megabyte or so, sometimes even less.

It has been recommended to us that if you're going to put it in your blog, make it a Webp. Webp. Webp. Make it a Webp. So it's not scrapable, but it's embedded there. You can do that. JPEG is the next version that you want.

Well, in the RSS feed standard, Tracy, it has to either be a JPEG or a png. You can't do that web format in your RSS feed. You can on your website, though.

If you're going to only want to save one format and you don't want to do that work, My recommendation to you is a jpeg, but as Tom put, keep it as small as possible in terms of its size. Like make sure it's not. It's compressed properly, but you're keeping that size. It must be 3,000 by 3,000 to be visible and valuable when it gets blown up in social media and. Or it'll get rejected, I think in the feed anyway. If it's not the right size. You want to do that. It's. It's standard everywhere and that will work for you. You want to have an ingredient somewhere of your show brand, your cover art brand, the name of your show, some kind of watermark for it. Put it in one of the four corners of it, keep it consistent, keep it in that corner every single time. Just makes it easy to find, makes it easy to overlay, makes it easy to do. Unless there's some compelling reason why you need to switch where it goes. Just do it for yourself. It's super simple. Just create it like an overlay and just drop it in. We've been using watermarks in. In all of our stuff lately. We do it on YouTube and you can actually add it into all the YouTube shorts and you just drop a watermark in. Lots of. You probably already have that. Just use it. When you create this image, then the last thing that I want you to keep in mind is that you do need text on this. However you choose your images. And whatever you're doing in the background is that text should be somewhere on it. It should be no more than three words. Think about that. You could put like really tiny of the. If you needed to, or the. In the corner, right? Like that's okay if you expand beyond it, but there should be three normal sized words and somewhere in this. That's about it in terms of a thumbnail visual that you want. You don't want more than that on any kind of small graphic. You do more than that, it won't fit. And try not to go for the big long words. Transformation is way too long to squeeze on there. By the time you do it, it'll be so tiny. Try to use active words like transform. Like use the Even if it's in your title, it's transformation. That's great. But maybe use transform on the short graphic. It's okay to have it be a variation on it. It does not have to be exact match. It just has to mean the same thing. I really want everyone to go to the blog post for this episode because there are so many links that have been flying through our private chat here with our clients that are just giving you so many options and so many resources for everything from understanding your RSS feeds to what links should you be sharing, to how blogs have residual value to why we don't recommend numbering. We touch on these things and if you haven't listened to our entire catalog of shows, you're not going to remember that all that data is there. We are cross linking them in the blog post for this episode at Podcasters United. Org and that's of extreme value. Lucky for our clients, they get to get it firsthand and before this comes out as a podcast. But that's your only recourse and your only resource right now is to go to podcastersunited.org and get all those links. Last customer service announcement before we go. Tom, I cannot stress this enough. If we have not convinced you to get to use episode art by now, the last thing I want to say is if your picture if your photo is on the COVID art of your podcast, you must get episode art. I very sure, as much as I try and Tom and I probably have a hundred episodes where we've said this to people, get your picture off your cover art. It's one of the most powerful things you can do to attract your show. But remember when I was explaining that search engine optimization thing where you're seeing those episodes? If your picture is on every single one of those episodes, no one is going to click it. Here's why. Because I think you're going to lecture me. I think you're going to tell me all about you and not tell me about what I want to know. If I'm searching for a topic that I desperately need information on and your pictures all over it, it is not going to help me. Do use episode art. If you have a self titled it's the Tracy show and or self imaged show cover art. It is essential that you do that. I guarantee you are going to see a lift in your listenership almost immediately. And it's all going to come from that search.

And it doesn't matter if your episode is actually going to help me, the listener, it may very well help me. You may have things to share with me that I really need to know and I will learn a ton, but your image will keep people from clicking and trying because the image makes it look like it's all going to be about you.

That's my last message about the power of episode art versus your cover art. Right? Two totally different things. Really use it. I'm so positive you're going to see an overall lift in listenership. You're going to be shocked by the value of it and today's world. This is not complicated, but go to Canva for free. You can create episode art like you do not have to have a paid Canva account. This is so easy. There are so many square images. You can use one of the Instagram squares. You can use any one of those kinds of things. They're so simple to use out there. There's no excuse for it. Go create some cover art. Takes moments, but the power to the clickability and the future downloads of your show are so powerful.

All right, let's leave it there. Thanks for watching everybody. Check out the blog post@podcastreusionata.org, we'll be back next week with another great episode. This has been Tom and Tracy on Feed.

You'd brand heard something valuable today but didn't get a chance to write it down. No worries, we've got you covered. We partnered up with podcasters united.org where podcast hosts like you can get free resources, free masterclasses, the live largest podcast tip library assembled, and free promotion opportunities. While you're there. Don't forget to follow us on YouTube and on social unitedwepod so you can get feed your brand live. Until next time, keep podcasting.