Cover Art That Attracts Listeners

So let's talk about COVID art that attracts. This is one of my favorite subjects, because visual impact, this is the first thing people see. It has your show name on it. So that's why we went over the name and that part first. But what people see is absolutely the first indicator of, like, do I want to check this out? It's a stopping point. It's where you're being heard, starts with being seen. So we want to make this as powerful as possible. We want to make sure that you stand out. And so when we do that, we need to research our competition and make sure that you're going to stand out here. So one of the things that I like to do is go researching all those categories. So once I save those words from the last time I did this, right? And if I'm looking for personal transformation or personal growth, personal development, whatever the words are, whenever I type them into itunes, what I do is I take a screenshot of all of the podcasts that show up in that listing so that I can see them side by side. And so you want to take those and you want to save them. This is why I recommended you screenshot them before, because now you will have done this. Now you want to look at that and say, how do they stand out? Which one really stands out to me? And remember that you need to, like, pin it on a wall and walk away from it, because it's only going to be about a half an inch big on your phone, and that's how most people are scrolling through and looking at these words. So it's really small and really tiny. That's why we need our cover art to be impactful. So let's look at the few that stand out, and let's look how we can compete and how we can stand out against them. So that's our goal with our podcast art, our cover art, as it's known. Some people call it their icon. I call it your cover art, and that's what I'm going to keep calling it as we go through here. But your cover art can have good and bad characteristics. So this is what we've seen over time, and we've had to fix a lot of really bad cover art. Cover art can hold you back, and it's never too late to fix your cover art. So if you ended up starting with a bad design or you just got one and you're launched, let's fix it. It's always able to be changed and fixed. I think we've been through five or six different versions of WTFF over the years because we also thought that each year it needed a refresh. Right? It needs to look fresh and new. And also what happened is when we put in the original colors of it and that actually cover art that you saw is its old colors. It's red today, but when we did that before, that teal and green stood out against all of the other art that was there. But this year there's new podcasts in the mix and they copied our design and so we needed to set ourselves apart yet again. So now ours is red this time. So refreshing it. You could take a look at it every six months, every year. It's okay, go ahead and fix it and update it. It's completely in your control. Here's some good cover art characteristics. It needs to be impactful, visually impactful. So it needs to be bright and colorful and standout color. It needs to be readable very small. So your font size should be really big. And when your font size really big, that means that you don't have a lot of space for words. So you should have three words. Is my recommendation for your show name for your short show name. Because remember, you have your subtitle to go longer. Five words if a couple of them are like the two. So the new trust economy. Right. The and new are very small words. And so keeping that in mind, that's what you're going to do. But again, remember, the best cover art is not about you, so your picture shouldn't be on it. We're going to talk about that in a second. We also look at bad cover art is really too salesy. It's got your corporate name and your logo and those kinds of things on it. It's hard to read because if they can't read it, they're just going to skip it. And when it's all about you, it has your picture on it. It's named after you. Those are the worst cover art. Those are the ones that don't track and don't get the click through. They don't get what we call the organic traffic. They only get the traffic when you push it out to them. And you get your face in front of people and you say, okay, now subscribe to me. And we want people to choose to come to you because they're out there looking. We want the people who don't know you yet. That's why we take your face off. We recommend absolutely taking your face off your cover art. Every time I give this presentation, I'm always afraid that one of the People that are pictured in this are going to show up. I think all of these podcasts are pod faded already, so thank goodness. And they pod faded for probably the reason. The one in the middle on the top is the one I point out every single time because, you know, he doesn't even have his name on it. So he's got this picture but you don't even know who he is or why he's an expert. I like the name 5 Minute Marketing. It's amazing. But what does this picture have to do with anything? And who is this guy? And so that's really where this sort of disconnect between what you're doing and the image that you're portraying. You're wanting to be a blind date. That's what we need is blind audition, like the Voice, right? You don't want them to see you because we don't want them to say, well, wow, I don't know her and I don't think I'm anything like her. She looks too put together for me. I want somebody who's more down to earth and. And maybe that's not reflected the image. Here is a photo that was done with high end stylist and you had the whole thing made up. And yet it's really not who you are when you come across in the show. So they're not giving you the chance for them to get to know your personality by putting your face on the front. They're screening you out already based on that. So my recommendation again and again is remove your face from your cover art. Here's some other ways you can do it though, where, and I'll show you in a minute, some that you can work your face in a different way. This is one of my absolute favorite cover arts. I love the show too. The successful thinker with Corey Janke. He's very thoughtful. He's looking at, I'm going to say, deep consciousness and how we choose to.

Be successful. All types of things like that. And so he's got a very thoughtful show. This is expressive, but he's also about energy. It's not just about like systems and processes and all of these. He wants it to be about energy as well because he believes consciousness extends out and is all around us and we're responding that on an energy level. So our brain is just energy and not just matter. And so I love that thought because it comes across in this cupboard. He's expressing it in this energy of ideas and other things that the light bulb represents. And he also has it set so it doesn't say it anywhere. He could say the successful business thinker, but he doesn't. Instead he's got this sort of business suit. It's a woman and he's a man. So there's like this slight contrast to that, which is really great. And it's just kind of expressing that more professional side without it being straightforward and saying that in the title so that maybe you'll join it even if you're not a professional yet. And so that I think is a great invitation into the show. It's powerful, it looks really great, small, it's impactful and it's really straightforward. Another one that I really like that's so impactful and visually great is I'm not joking with Dr. Peter McGraw. And the interesting thing is he's interviewing comedians. He's not a comedian, but he's interviewing them. And so he's got this really great show. It's really interesting. And actually what we did here with this cover art is that that Cartoo image was, you know, stock art, but we made it look more like him. So it has a self referential view, which is really interesting because when you get to know him or you see him on a video, or you go to his website, you're like, oh, it does look kind of like him. And so now you're on the inside of the joke. So it's still working with the theme of the show and it's still working with everything that he wanted to convey. And it's pop art ness that we created here helps to create this sense of it's not as serious a show as you want it, you know, as you might think it would be otherwise. This is a great corporate one. This is a great way to take a corporate show and turn it into something amazing. So this is a law firm out of Chicago and they have a show called Divorce Matters. And what they really wanted to do was present them as people, right? They're not attorneys. This is a really hostile time period in people's lives. They're very stressed and they wanted to say, look, we know that the decisions we make here and how we handle divorce has a cascading effect on the rest of your life, has a cascading effect on your children and on your family and how things happen. So we want to really make sure that we're sensitive to that. So they could have put, you know, a gavel and.

Done all that stuff that makes it look more law like, and instead they chose to make it more personal. And I think that that's great. And having the heart there and having the male and female, it really helps to draw in and get across what you're really getting on the show. And that is that you're getting a perspective of how you can do divorce, how you can divorce in a way at which it's more human. And that's what they were trying to do. And if they went out there with just their corporate name and all of that, it would have done the exact opposite. So this is a really good way to get that across. Plus, this really stands out against all of the other law firms who are putting out podcasts. This one I really love. Get your head on straight. Dr. Liz Hafer. That's actually her image. We cartooned it. So it's a great way to use your image, but you're using it in a way that like with the tilt and you know that this is all about that. She's also a chiropractor, which is the inside joke as you get farther into it. And so it's witty, it fits her personality. It is actually her at the end of the day. And people get to know that and they're like, oh, that's you. But it's not straightforward sticking your face on the COVID art in that kind of way. And so it's a really great way to do this. I love this one. It's one of my favorites. Very impactful from a distance.

The Secret Life of Weddings. This is also another one. I interviewed them on center of Influence. This is actually them. So they've structured a stock art style photo shoot with themselves to put them in here. And in this case, look, the name of the show doesn't have it on them, have their name on it. That's great. The Secret Life of Weddings. What they're doing is they're dishing about weddings, right? And so they're in there using that. But it is really all about them. At the end of the day, they're the ones that are dishing about all this stuff that happens once a photographer and I don't remember what the other one does, but they really are are all about their chit chat. That's what the show is about. So not putting themselves into it wouldn't totally make sense here because it is what you're getting with the show. You're getting them. And so fans respond to that. But putting it in this more creative way really helps. It really helps to identify that. And you're not really sure when you're selecting through the shows that's them. They might be Some stock actresses, right. You don't know. So anyway, that's a great way to still work yourself in and be witty about it. Take back time. This is one of my absolute favorite cover arts we've ever done. I love how straightforward it is. Penny Zenker is an inarguable expert. She's amazing at what she's a productivity expert, best selling author, speaker. She's incredible. I love her speeches, I love to attend her workshops. She's amazing. She has great productivity tips. She's to the point and this expresses that Take back time. It's really straightforward, it's really active, right. And it's really about at the end of the day I'm gonna be able to take back time. And so, you know, it really does everything and its imagery of the clock behind it dials all of that in. So I presented a bunch of these cover art ideas for you just to get a sense of the qualities of what makes it really makes a really good visual impact. But there are also technical things that you know. So if you're going to do it yourself, you absolutely must make sure that, that you are giving your designer, your people on Fiverr or wherever you're going. The specs. Now this is the latest specs, the COVID art. Tech specs change from time to time and we find very often people come to us with COVID art and they followed one of the courses out there and their cover art is exactly the reason why itunes will not list them, will not approve them, that they're getting rejected. And it's usually the COVID art that's the number one reason we find missing information is the other. But 3000 by 3072dpi, RGB color space, JPEG or PNG. These are it. Itunes sets the standard for all of the rest of the directories. When itunes changes it, everybody else does as well. So keep that in mind that this has to be updated. You have to stay on top of this. One of our podcasters was set up like four years ago. He launched himself before he met Wes. He came over to us later, he calls us in a panic. He'd been on the new and noteworthy page or he'd been on the top business investing podcasts for a really long time, had a great show, it would been like in the top 10 consistently for quite some time. And all of a sudden his show was gone. It was completely delisted and he was so upset and he didn't know what happened, what's going on. And it took a week for us back and forth with itunes to get to the bottom of the fact that it was just simply his cover art. The other thing is that he was so afraid, like, I fixed this, but now am I gonna have to start back at the beginning and am I gonna lose my spot? Luckily, we were able to negotiate make sure itunes realized that this was just an error. There's nothing wrong with the show and we fixed the COVID art. But he hadn't been looking at the emails that itunes had been sending him warning him of this change. He didn't think it applied to him. So if you are not tech savvy, if you are not capable of doing that, please make sure to contact us. Let us check this out for you. Let us make sure that that's okay. I'm going to give you some information on how to be in touch with us later as we go through this. But make sure that you do because this is powerful. This is the one thing that can get your shoji listed really quickly. So do this right. It.