Exploring The Impact Of Podcast Chapters On Viewer And Listener Consumption

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Hey, everyone. Welcome to feed you'd brand. I'm Tracy Hazzard along with my co host Tom Hazard, and we are talking podcast chapters today. Our podcast chapters worth it. Now, let's define chapters. Chapters in a book, which I know really well, Tom, are a totally different thing than video chapters and podcast chapters. Their purpose is completely different, but I think its intention is the same. It's to section off things so it's easier to go back and find things. You know, I don't think it works so well in a fiction book, for instance. Podcast chapters are just a way to section where you are so you know where you are when you're reading through it. And I actually think that's really similar. A book chapter in a fiction book is a lot more similar to podcast chapters. But chapters in an educational book or a nonfiction book is an excuse to jump around.

That's so, so true, Tracy. And chapters in podcasting is a fairly new thing. And that function is not available in all the listening apps. I want to make that pretty clear up front because. And we're going to talk about chapters in the context of podcasts and in the context of YouTube videos. And I think we should probably touch on blogs too, Tracy, that are related to podcasts.

Absolutely.

But just to understand the history of chapters in the podcast ecosystem, it's in its infancy, it is very, very new, and it's, I think, less than a year old, if it's a year old at all, maybe. And there are not all the listening apps embrace it or will use the chapters. Really. Apple is the primary listening app that does use or allows you to mark chapters for your podcast audio.

I find it really shocking, actually, that Apple would do that because Apple has always had a focus on listen through.

I agree, Tracy. And in fact, of any of the podcast listening apps, they are the only one that gives the podcaster a feedback loop on that listen through playthrough, meaning what percentage of each episode are people listening to on average? And it averages out the data. It'll, you know, you can, if you have access to your Apple podcast connect, you can go in and see an average of your entire show and all episodes. But you can look at each episode and say, hey, did people listen to 25% of this episode? 80%, 95%. I've even seen episodes listened to 120%. You might think, well, how is that possible? Well, it's because people went back and listened to part of the episode again. But that's rare.

And that's where chapters come in, right? Like where you would maybe jump to the part to replay it for somebody or replay it for yourself so that you could learn through what that is. That's where I see it as very useful. But chapters in and of themselves. And let's go video to understand this, video chapters are a way to skip to something that I want to just see this section of it. Like on a how to video, I want to see the section on how I actually do this part of it, right? So it's very important in that kind of course model, the educational side of videos. But there's usually a demo, and that's why you're going back to that place to see it. Because you need to see the screen share and you need to see the part that you want to redo, right? That you want to understand. So it's really important. And so YouTube putting in podcasts made a lot of sense. Because in that venue, what would happen is that playthrough is one aspect of video, right? How many play hours, play minutes do you get? Is a part of your algorithm and making money in YouTube. The problem is that it's also set for how many views, right? So you have the two things going together. How many views do you get and how much play minutes do you get? And so they had to find a way to encourage people to do more than just view the video and then stop out after a minute, which is very common in YouTube videos. It's very common for no one to play more than a minute of a video. Like, that's the highest percentage of people, only watch a minute. So how do you get them to jump through and how do you get that? Chapters was a way to encourage people to go to the section. So if they saw something in the first minute, that intrigued them and then they saw, oh, I can jump to it. It's at 30 minutes in, right? Jump to that point and just watch that section, There's a good chance that they might watch it because they watched it out of context, they might go back and watch more. So it actually worked as a positive in video to get playthrough to occur. What we've discovered is the opposite happens in podcasting. If you create jump through points and people used to do it because they would tell you where the minutes were in the podcast episode, they would put it right in the show notes.

You're referring to the timestamps of the sections.

The timestamps, exactly. So if they put timestamps in their episode description or in their show notes, what we discovered was they always had a lower playthrough rate, that their percentage of playthrough was significantly lower than than if they didn't put that in. So that's what we've discovered over time, having done over 1500 shows and tens of thousands. I mean, I think what we're over 50,000 episodes that we've produced for people and what we see is the ones that put those timestamps in allow chaptering and jump through. Even in the old system. Right. And not in this new system of Apple allowing it to be put in place, they had lower playthrough rates than other shows. So it's not a benefit for podcasters is what we had understood for over a decade.

Yeah. And that I think is one of the big takeaways from this episode. We are of the opinion, Tracy and I and our company, for all of our customers, we do not recommend for the podcast audio that you actually do put in chapter markings, specifically with timestamps, whether you do it the old way or the new way, which is with some podcast hosting platforms, let you put them in so they're well integrated with Apple. But again, that doesn't work on all listening apps the same way. You do that for a couple of clear reasons and Tracy really got to it.

But let's be really clear. For podcasts, we don't recommend it.

Right.

We do Recommend it for YouTube videos for just the reason that I was just stating that it actually does increase your playthrough minutes because it gets somebody who's not accustomed to actually watching an entire video to jump around and then maybe go back and watch more.

But there are also some other reasons having to do with our human brains and how we consume content in the visual versus the auditory. But before I get too far into that, I do want to finish. Regarding the chapters, we are in favor in podcasting to have some important highlighted aspects of the episode. What are some of the key points? What are some of the key takeaways or what's in it for me for listening to this episode? Having some of the things that might also be chapter headings, titles Information. In this episode, you will learn or hear whatever you know, your way of saying that is are good things because it lets people who are going to read the description know what's in it for them, what they're going to get. But giving them the opportunity, whether it's just the timestamp written there, and so they have a roadmap, oh, I can Skip ahead to 17 minutes and 31 seconds to where this one is. We do not recommend at all. And in audio and podcasting in particular, the two big reasons, one, us podcasters are putting together a show most of the time that's very intentional. We have something we're trying to communicate with our listener, and we don't want them to skip ahead and listen to things out of full context of the entire episode. That's the number one reason we don't recommend it. And number two, with audio, it is harder for our brains to absorb and catch up and jump into the middle of an episode and really understand what's going on and to absorb it well. And it's very different from video on YouTube. And I agree with you, Tracy. Your example on YouTube of a how to video, going through steps, of how to do something, jumping ahead to the thing you need and you don't need the stuff at the beginning, that's very basic, makes perfect sense. But there's another aspect, because with video, you have the visual context and the audio context. When you jump ahead to a chapter, our brains interpret visual things much faster than the things we hear and the things that we read.

So I liken this to the fact that I get carsick, Tom. Okay, I get carsick if I'm not looking at the road. I need to sit in the front seat. I need to see the road in front of me. I need to see what's passing beside me. I need to see that if you're listening and you don't have that context, your brain gets muddled and confused and I get nauseous. Right? That's how it works. And so when we're hearing something and we're. It's out of place and we're missing things, we don't have a sense. For some reason, our brain doesn't think, oh, I can rewind and get this. And it doesn't work like that very often. Now it may be like they jump in and they go, oh, wow, okay, this is valuable. And then they jump back at the beginning. That can happen. I'm not saying it doesn't, but it was just a checkpoint to see if it was valuable. They were thinking that already when they jumped ahead that they were going to listen to the whole thing. And so that's the only time that it does work. Most of the time when we jump in, we've missed something and our brains are very confused by the advice that we're getting and we don't understand why we're confused, but it is because we jumped. And so that's why it doesn't work. A confused mind doesn't buy, as one of our good friends and podcasters, John Livesay, always says. And a confused mind doesn't consume is what we've discovered year over year over year and episode over episode. It doesn't happen and you're going to lose listeners and download complete listens. Right. Play through if you put that in. So what Tom's saying is, so just think about it this way. If you're producing your show on video, make the chapters and we'll talk in a few minutes about what makes good chapters and what doesn't. We'll get into that. If you are producing a blog, make chapters. Okay, we'll talk about that in a minute. So make chapters. So you've got them and you've got the sections, but instead of using the apple markings or instead of using timestamps, just make them bullet points in your episode description. That's what Tom and I are recommending you use them. You just use them in a non directional way to push people into listening to the whole thing, which is really what a true podcast listener wants to do. It's what's best for them. It's guiding them through your episode. It's giving them the complete intentional, immersive experience you wanted from your podcast. That's why we recommend doing it that way. And we do not recommend doing timestamps or apple markings.

And I do think there are different kinds of podcasts and different kind of podcast episodes where this is more important and somewhere it's less important. So some of you listening to this are probably going to write in or comment on social media. I disagree. My show does this and it makes perfect sense. There are going to be exceptions where it really is helpful. But for the most part, for independent podcasters, we want people to listen to our entire podcast episode. It's in our best interest if they do that and it's really in theirs to get everything in the full context. People that have subscribed to you and come back listening every time they want to hear you and they want to hear everything you want to share with them. So let's not invite them to skip around.

Let's push them into doing what's in their best interest. So here's a really good example of this. So we had, I had a client say, I've got a one minute recap. I've got like this one minute tip of the day and it's at the end of my show or it's sort of like at 3/4 of the way through or something. And so they've got this one minute special which is also a YouTube short and it's also a TikTok video. So they said I want people to skip to that. And I was like, why do you want people to skip to it? So they can consume one minute of your show, jump out, get nothing else of benefit for it. Why don't you instead put it here is like if you just want this one minute tip, click and link and subscribe to my YouTube shorts. Click and subscribe to my TikTok. Put that in your episode description instead of putting the marking of allowing them to skip to it in your podcast episode. Now you're encouraging people who want to consume the one minute thing to go to the place where it's natural to consume it.

But I also think that a fantastic strategy for a lot of podcasters when you have a recurring segment that provides some kind of a reward, some kind of special message information, a payoff for the listeners, putting that 3/4 of the way through to toward the end, it's going to get people to listen to everything just to get to the payoff. And if you mix up where it is, sometimes it's at the very end, sometimes it's three quarters of the way through. Doesn't have to be in that one same spot every time. And that way they're encouraged to really listen to the whole thing so they don't miss it.

That's my binge factor strategy right there. Right? So whenever I do a review of somebody's show and I'm doing an interview with them, I always did what is your binge factor? I've psychoanalyzed your show and I've come up with why binge listeners are listening to your show. And I will tell them that. But I never ever in the entire history of more than 300 episodes ever done it at the same place. It always happens at the natural place in the conversation. And if I failed to cover it, I will cover it in my clothes. But that's rare too. Never ever do it. People are waiting for it, but I don't give it to them until it's the right time to give it to them. And that is why I have high listen through rate, Very, very high listen through rate on that show.

So now let's go back to video for a moment and then we can go on to blog as well. So video has become much more common now for podcasters to put out full videos of their episodes. And not all podcasters do it. Of our podcasters that politize that we support with done for you production, about 3/4 of them do. And that percentage keeps increasing every year. I expect it will continue to increase. Most podcasters are starting their shows with video from the start. There are some that don't like the tech of video, and those are usually the people that don't start with it and go audio only because it's definitely easier and they have to worry about their hair and makeup or what they're wearing or the background and things like that. But most are doing it. So with video, again, the visual medium is a little different. Having those chapters can be very helpful. But I also want our listeners to understand that for the most part, everyone has a preference of what type of media they prefer to consume first. Real podcast listeners prefer audio first, either because of how they can consume it, maybe when they're driving or they're exercising or going for a walk. And they don't need to be staring at something, they're just listening. And there are people who prefer video and would rather watch something and need that visual element. So I want everyone to understand just because you put chapters in, you know, where we're recommending for a lot of shows. And again, there are exceptions that putting chapters in YouTube makes sense that those people consuming that way are not your podcast listeners anyway. So it's not like the podcast audio listeners are really missing anything or losing anything. They really are wanting to listen to the whole thing for the most part and skipping rounds, not what they're after.

And I do want to put a caveat in here. If you are monetizing your show on YouTube or in podcasting through programmatic front end advertising, go ahead and put chapters in.

Because that encourages somebody to play a minute and then jump ahead, right? And so it doesn't matter. That is why YouTube put these in. This is why. It's because it's going to make them more money. Because if somebody is like who has no patience to actually watch an entire video but wants something specific, that is showing up, and I'm going to explain this in a minute, showing up because of some keywords and then they can skip straight to that part. They're more likely to stop at that video and use it. And that means that an ad will play and then they will skip to the part that they need. So it means YouTube is making money. It also means the video channel is making money. Right? So that's where we want it. Our monetization is solely tied to advertising and we are only on that kind of model. Then we need more views and we do not care about our playthrough. We only care about the fact that that ad is played and we get money from it. Right? So that's where you want it. Now, if you're doing a bad job of the chaptering, though, they're not showing up in the search engine, your competitors are likely winning that battle. And that's where chaptering makes sense, is that we have to think through what the value to the chapter is. So there's two values to a chapter. One is SEO value, search engine optimization value. Because if the search engine isn't finding it somewhere within a video that is an actual tag, it's a place that the search engine can search through to find it. I suspect that right at this point in time, it may not be happening on Apple, but it could be in the future. So it may be a search engine optimized opportunity, but we don't see it yet today. And that's okay. It may be coming, but that's why we keep an eye on it. If you are doing a good job of that search engine optimized, what we call like in blogging, a subhead, it's still searchable for the search engine to come find it, they'll serve up your video as an option. That means that you're going to be found by somebody who's looking for that piece of information, even though it was buried within your video. And it means they can jump easily to it, they can get it now, they can decide to subscribe to you, maybe they'll come back. At minimum, they watched an ad and they got some value from it. But what I see too often is that your video editors, your video software that you're using is doing a crap job of chaptering. They will pick one word, they will pick somebody's name, they will pick the product name, they will just drop something in that doesn't tell anybody the value. And so remember I said there were two things of value search engine optimization, but there needs to be the payoff to the viewer. What am I going to get if I jump to this section? Am I going to get an answer to my question is this where the question is addressed? Very often we actually put the question as our subchapter heading for our blogs. Why not be doing that? As this is the section where I'm going to answer that question right here in the podcast video as well. That makes sense to people.

Yeah. And if this isn't obvious already, your chapter headings themselves, the words that are in that are very important. And the SEO aspect is improved with longer chapters, not the 1, 2 word, 3 word chapter headings. Like Tracy was saying, though shorter subheads and titles can be catchy on social media where people have a very short attention span. But from an SEO perspective, longer tail phrases are going to be better for you. The other thing, Tracy, as, as you were talking there, I'm realizing, and I want to share with our listeners here, that some of these things are in conflict with each other. Okay? Having the chapters, not having the chapters and running ads and monetization, especially from YouTube videos, are very much in conflict with each other. Longer videos in YouTube that are monetized with ads have more ad breaks in them. The more people watch a video, YouTube will put more ad breaks in and the video will make more money. YouTube will make more money. So getting people to watch your entire long form video, you know, you make more money if they do and they.

Watch those ads, but also, Tom, if they jump around. You and I both know this because it frustrates you to no end when you're watching a TV show, a streaming show, right? If you try to jump to the section after an ad break, it plays that ad.

Yeah, it jumps back to play the ad and then moves you forward to the new one.

Right. So chaptering in YouTube and other places like that are for that purpose to play more ads. And so that's why it is there. It is to encourage ad playing without watching the entire thing.

But here's again, the flip side of this. I mean, so you're in YouTube, you're encouraged to have longer videos, especially when it's monetized. And YouTube will make more money and maybe you'll make more money too. Okay? But when you have shorter form content, podcast episodes, the shorter they are, let's say you have 15, 20 minute episodes. I've seen people in YouTube videos put in six chapters in a 15 minute YouTube video. Are you kidding me? I mean, it really breaks it down too much and can be counterproductive. So, you know, I do recommend being cautious and not just throwing in a whole bunch of chapters so it looks like you have A lot of different important things to share with people. Just honestly, some shows I don't think chapters are very helpful for, but more so in video always than in audio. Obviously. That's our big point today. Yeah.

And this goes back to my fiction model. Right. This is the mindset we have. By calling them chapters, we screwed up how we handle them because they are not truly chapters. That's why we do the one and two words. Because if you've ever flipped through a book, the chapters are always like fun names. Right? Like to get you to like, keep going to the next chapter. That's what it is. It's just to draw you into the next chapter. It's not about skipping around. That's not how chaptering works on video. That's not how it works. It's skipping around is how chaptering works in the media world, not in the book world. So if we do follow a naming model that fits fiction, we're doing a disservice to our skipping around and making more money model. So we have to think about which one we're playing in. The other idea of it is our blogs. Right. And if in our blogs they have an SEO purpose and they are much needed, they're actually required for you to get good points for your blog is to have subheadings that have SEO built into them. And they should be keywords that are playing off of the main keyword or the main concept. But what it's really also doing is it's helping people navigate something that's very long. Because if I have a blog that is based on what I say, we call them verbal SEO blogs, verbal search engine optimized blogs. That's what we call them in the potatoes world, in our world. And if I speak for 30 minutes, it might be 3,000 to 5,000 words, depending on how fast I speak. And for me, it's definitely five.

You're closer to 5,000.

Yes. So let's say 5,000. Just because it's an easy place, if I didn't break them up with subheadings. 5000 Words is a lot for people to navigate through. So I definitely want to break it up into where I'm covering some key concepts or hitting some of the keywords that we're covering that are based on the concept, the main SEO, the main keyword of my blog. I want to hit those places to help them navigate through it and make sure that they realize that there's not just chitchat, there's a lot of value throughout my blog. And that's How I do it. So we have a basic. Is that you don't want to go more than a thousand words without a subhead. That's absolutely the case. Right. You definitely probably want to do less than that.

In fact, we recommend breaking it down a bit less than that for sure.

So think about it. If I had a blog that was 5000 words, I pretty much want somewhere between 8 and 10 sub chapter headings, subheadings, if you want to think of it in the blog terms. Right. Which means I have 8 to 10 spots for my video as well. So we always think of it in terms of like where is the natural breaks in the blog? Then let's utilize those back into the video because it makes sense. Sense as the same type of break points because they'll be covering key concepts or key questions that were asked at that point in time. And like I said, very common. We use questions as subheads because it plays really well in Google. And who owns YouTube? Google. So we're getting into the same model of things that are working throughout the system and then we might put those in as the bullet points in our episode description. Not the timestamps, not the chapter markings, but the bullet points of the things. Things we're going to cover surrounding that.

Main concept in the podcast episode description. Which Tracy didn't mention that. Yeah, in the audio portion for sure. So that is really important. And for those of you that may be listening to this feature brand episode as your very first one, you're thinking, hey, we're talking about podcasts. Why are you guys talking about blogs? Well, there's a lot to learn about that. If you search through our catalog of episodes about blogs for podcasts, for Blessio blogs, you are going to get the greatest value out of every episode. When you create an episode landing page, a blog for each episode that is based on what was said in it. And the SEO value is tremendously important and very valuable for any podcast as long as you have a website.

Long term.

Long term it is the marathon of podcasting, whereas publishing the audio and the video is the sprint and so is sharing it on social media. But long term value comes from the blog. And in again this important thing with the chapters and breaking them up in the blog. Google is needing bloggers, those that put that any kind of written content on their website to help Google understand the story they are telling, what they're communicating in those subheadings. Those chapter headings, titles, if you will, are a big part of of telling, helping Google understand what the story is and ranking that post for dozens and dozens of phrases, people are searching on a Google every day.

And for the same matter, it needs to do that in video as well, because it cannot tell what you're saying in that video. It can't tell what's important. It's just a bunch of words to it. It's massively unimportant in the scope of things until you give it context. And that's what those chapters are for in your video. And when you give it context, it also helps it learn how to associate more ads to that content that are appropriate, which will up. If you are in an ad monetization model in YouTube, it will up your YouTube ad dollars because it will give it more things that are much more clearly relevant to the various parts of the content that you're giving it. So now you're going to make more money off of YouTube in podcasting. Not going to happen because all your ads run on the front and nothing else happens. You get zero value past the ad if they don't listen through. And that's why Tom and I are pointing out that utilizing podcast chapters here is not in your best interest as a podcaster.

And not only because of that, Tracy, but if you haven't experimented with this and discovered for yourself, you know, I encourage you to go try it. The podcast app search functions are really pretty lousy. The search algorithms and the search bars and every listening app, they're not very good. They're searching in the titles and descriptions of the shows and the episodes pretty much exclusively. And they're not really using these other SEO opportunities that truly exist. So until they do, I'm not going to be a fan of it. I may change my opinion on that at some point in the years to come. We'll see what happens. But right now it's not in your best interest as a podcaster, in our opinion, to engage in chapter official chapter markings and podcasting. But probably is may very well be in YouTube. And absolutely 100% is, I can say with real certainty there in your episode blogs.

Right? And so this way, if you're creating them in episode blogs, use them in your video. And if you're utilizing them in your episode description, just put them as bullet points so that you have a flow through and you're getting value from something that you're doing already. We hate it. I hate it when you getting zero value from more work. I've seen a lot of people, a lot of gurus in the podcast industry, or faux gurus, but people who think they know what they're talking about, who's like, oh, I'm utilizing these chapters and this is happening, and this is happening. We should go all in on these things. But it's creating more work for you with very little and maybe negative returns. And that's what we're telling you is over time, we've seen negative returns because it downs your playthrough. And the whole point of you doing podcasting, the kind of people who come and listen to our show here, come to our live streams and come to us at Potatize, they come to us because you're business podcasting. You're trying to get your message out to the world. So anything that is making it so that your message is truncated doesn't make sense. It is not in your best interest to do that. It's in somebody else's best interest to do that.

Now, one other thing, a little tip to share for all you podcasters. There is an increasing number of AI tools that are being offered to podcasters to generate chapter headings. And some of them are really not very good in our experience in creating them. Do you have something to say about that, Tracy?

Some of them are so bad that I can tell exactly what tool you use to create it. It's a sign that you are not human, that you are not using human tools. And I'm telling you right now, your podcast listeners are smart. They listen to a lot of shows and they know when there's something happening again and again and again.

And please understand this, if you're a new listener to feed your brand. We are not anti AI in any way. We actually are very bullish on AI and are using it in many aspects of our business and our podcast production. But many of the tools that are out there that are trying to make it easy, that are like, you know, oh, hey, let's add this AI feature and that AI feature so that we can appear like we're on the forefront and people use us instead of another tool. I mean, there are a lot of. We just see a lot of these tools that are very formulaic, very one note, finding the same types or providing the same types of chapter headings, episode to episode, show to show. And that's why Tracy saying she can tell what tool they're using because they're really not doing a good job of pulling out the most appropriate, not taking the deep dive into the content and able to pull out the best quality chapter headings.

So here's my tip to you on this. So early on, we learned this a decade ago, if I told my team I wanted 10 chapter headings in or subheadings in my blog and a 5,000 word blog, they would go in and exactly at 500 words figure out, would just write something, they'd break it up. 500 words, 500 words, 500 words. That is exactly what some of the AI tools are out there doing. They're chunking it because it's cheaper and faster and easier for them to go. I'll take the first 500 words and I'll give you a heading. And then I'll take the next 500 words and I'll give you a heading. And they're doing it in the exact same timestamps in every single episode and show. You just don't realize it because they're like a minute or so many seconds off because of the word number. But it's actually the same spot. It just has to do with the number of words. That's where it's disguising it for you. This next thing that it's doing is it's arbitrarily picking the sectioning not based on what is important to your listener, to your viewer. It's picking it based on however many sections it wants to stick in there. So it comes up with very unimportant generic things that it says and then many others are not giving any instructions about it being search engine optimized for the title and topic of your show. And that's where you get these 1, 2, 3 words. That's where I see it happening with the editing tools. The editing tools are doing it as a time limit. They're picking time spots and then they don't know what to say about the amount of time that passed. So like they just like, they're like, I don't know, there was nothing important said there. So like, I'll pick something generic and it drops in a generic phrase or word. It's not great.

I completely agree, Tracy. And for me, the real important thing is the AI is not looking at and considering the context and relevance of all the chapters with each other over the course of the whole episode. Right. And so there are a lot of things missing in Tracy. To me, I was thinking about this, you know, in the last day or so because I knew this is what we're going to be talking about today. And I have sort of an analogy and how tech has done some things to us as consumers of media over the years that has really changed how we consume media. And I want to talk about music and albums here for a minute. We used to go, you know, on a long drive, you and me, six, seven hours from New York City up to Buffalo or something, and we would listen to a bunch of albums in the car, CDs, wayback tapes, whatever. And making a mixtape of a lot of different things on a playlist and something was hard. It wasn't easy to do, and you didn't do it very often, but you listened to an album mostly, and artists created albums. That was an intentional musical journey from one song to the next to the next. And there was a story in an arc that went through it most of the time. And for a couple of decades, people weren't listening to albums that way. They were listening to songs. And you started with Napster and you start with itunes and you buy a song, not an album. And yeah, a song is a story and a journey within itself, but there's a larger context that was lost, especially with albums done in the early years. And then what's happened in the last, I think, eight years.

Well, and you added shuffle to that technology, right? So it was like shuffles it randomly, right?

Shuffle, play all out of context. And then, yeah, you know, it'd be funny. You'd get. Often you'd get songs like that are meant to be listened one after the other, or it's almost a medley, a segue from one to another on an album, and you hear them out of order and it's like, well, that's weird. It feels weird, out of place. But what's happened more recently, and we know this because we have some kids that are now teenagers and getting a lot more into music. And what's come back, vinyl records, playing vinyl records, even CDs have been coming back. It's sort of the old tech is becoming new again, and people are listening to albums again, and people like Taylor Swift are putting out albums that are incredibly popular and people are buying them in vinyl and listening to them in that whole journey. I think when we think about chapters and podcasts and videos, and I know we're not all musical artists, I'm not saying we are, but we are creative people putting out our unique message to the world. And when you listen to chapters or pieces of it out of context, it may not have the impact we all want it to have. And that, I guess that's a big reason why, especially in the podcast audio, we're not fans of this and think it's counterproductive and not really helping achieve the outcome. We all want to get, most of us independent podcasters anyway, from our podcasts and so that's one way to sort of think about it that might be helpful.

And that was my point before about you being a business podcaster. You are trying to create an impactful message, but each of your episodes are journey are a part of that journey as well. Right. We're telling a story here about us, about our company, about how it is to work with us and the things that are happening. And when you jump out of context, you get the little short piece you're missing that you're missing that model of build up to you trusting me enough to hire me to do business with you. That's also missing in this model of allowing people to jump around. They got their answer, but they didn't get any authority trust in you. So we don't want to allow them to do it. It's not in our best interest and it's not in the purpose of us podcasting. It might be in the purpose of us doing videos, it might be video shorts, it might be the purpose of our TikTok or Instagram, but it's not the purpose of our podcast. And this is where we look at the tools and we say, are they doing something of value? So I just want to jump right back one more time before we go about the AI tools because we just bashed a bunch of tools that are out there.

Well, we didn't call them out by name.

No, we didn't. But I think we're going to get write ins that are going to say, well, what do you recommend? And here's what I recommend.

Okay.

Okay. Your YouTube video is the most valuable part of that. That we said that chapters are important for your blog is the most valuable portion of that. I will use nothing else but Gemini, Google's Gemini to generate chapter headings. That's it. That is the only thing. We, in fact, we were just talking about the high cost of being of doing that with our team. Because the tool that you use is not the chat tool, that is Gemini. It is the integrated Google Doc tool which you have to pay separately for. And we have actually put it on our entire copy team. We've given them each their own license in their own seat because that's how valuable it is and it creates better opportunities to do that. Now there are some tools that are happening in YouTube themselves. I think Tubebuddy does a fairly good job of things. Although I have not tested their chaptering compared to ours, I haven't done a comparison to it. I would say if you've got that tool, use it because it's bound to be better. It's very attuned to Google's algorithm already. So I would definitely. Anything that is integrated into YouTube or integrated into Google is going to have the right pieces of information that it needs to create something of value to you, something that's done completely outside, like Adobe Premiere or descript or any of those outside editing tools. Don't have the data and information that it needs. It only knows what it's being given right at that moment in time. So that's my tool recommendation for all of you on that. And I know I'm gonna get nasty emails. I mean, I already do get a lot of nasty LinkedIn chat messages from people, because I am a Gemini advocate. But I'm a Gemini advocate because it's working.

Yeah, it's because of long, hard experience. And I know people might think, well, Gemini hasn't been out all that long. Well, you know what? It's getting to be quite a while now.

Well, and they hate Google. Like, Google's like the evil empire. Right. You know, just like they used to hate Microsoft.

At the end of the day, we are not picking favorites in here just because of loyalty or anything. We're testing things and using them and experiencing them. And part of this because we're also developing what we are building into our own platform. So in the future, you know, you'd be able to do these things and do it well and better than any others is our vision within potatoes. But for right now, yeah, you're right, Tracy. Gemini, clearly, far and away, is the winner in our experience. And just doing this, it wins because.

It'S fast and it's accurate, and it gives me effective results that have the goal of what I want to accomplish out in the world. Right. Getting people to find me, getting my message out to the world. Right. Those are the things that it does. And so think about that. Anytime some of these new things come out. I hear a lot of the guru podcasters that have been there, done it once. They have one show. They've only done it once they've done it on their show. They're like, oh, I'm integrating this because it's easy to talk about, but it's not easy to do with ineffective results. And you will never find out if they kept doing it. They won't tell you that because they want you to consume their video, they want you to consume their blog, they want you to consume their course on how to do it. Tom and I will change our mind. We are consistent and constant about podcasting like, that's it. But we are not consistent and constant for something that doesn't work anymore. We're going to take in new input of information and we're going to give you the latest. And when we find something new, something that's changed about it, we will tell you why we changed our mind.

Yeah, and I remain open minded about the future of chapters in podcasting. Now, we have pretty strong opinion about it, and you've heard that today, but I remain open minded that things may change. You know, why? All this technology we're all using is changing so fast every day. And if we're unwilling to experiment, to try and to adapt to what's new and what may work better tomorrow, we're just going to lose. So we're not interested in losing, we're interested in winning as podcasters and people in business. And so you have to remain open minded and willing to adopt a new strategy as it becomes better and appropriate.

But that's why we don't jump on the bandwagon. So it's been a year since Apple introduced those chapters, and in a year we've tried it, we've tried to figure out if it works. We've watched shows that do it and shows that don't, and it just doesn't work. It doesn't do what you want it to do. So it's a lot of work to do that. Like, it's a lot of effort for no return. In fact, what we saw is negative return. And that's the point that we're making. We're going to sit back and be conservative about when we're going to tell you about it. We are not going to jump on the bandwagon and go like, oh, cool, new features. It must be valuable. That doesn't mean, though, that we're not watching Apple, because tomorrow they could be putting in a ad strategy that would make you money on your podcast that would make that valuable. But they don't have it today. So this may be like a piece of something on our long term strategy that we don't know about. That's why we're watching it. But today I don't see the value.

I actually still remain shocked that Apple hasn't done more to monetize what they're doing in podcasting.

We've been saying that for five years.

I know, and podcasting at Apple is really like, I'm going to probably get emails and comments about this too, but it's kind of like, you know, the redheaded stepchild of which I was once, by the way. So don't yell at me too much.

And we have a son in law.

Who is one, but a stepchild in many ways. Because Apple internally we have heard complains that, well, podcasts don't make Apple any money. Even though they invented the darn space, it doesn't make them any money and they're having to spend resources on it. Well, fortunately they're one of the richest companies and most profitable companies in the world, so they can afford it. So I don't feel too bad for them. But if they really cared to monetize these podcasts, they sure could, the way Spotify does.

But here's the thing, Tom, here's the thing that we're all missing on this is that podcasting makes things sticky. Does they make people stay on platform for longer? They make them listen through. Because that's the mode of podcast listeners is to consume it and listen to it and binge on it and do more consumption model. And that at the end of the day is a winning strategy for anyone with memberships. Because if you're not going to give up and cancel your paid membership for something, if you're consuming it, if you're using it on a daily basis, it's just not going to be something you unsubscribe from. So that is something that's critically important. You're not gonna get rid of your iPhone when you've got all those apps in there and you've got all this stuff in it. Anything that makes it sticky is why they're not gonna get rid of it anytime soon.

And that may be the big issue for Apple. You're right, because you know they're keeping people using iPhones. Right?

But that's why podcast chapters surprised me, because it's an unsticky model of business, right? It's jumping. So until they reveal what their secret is to why they started added this feature and spent money on putting it in, it can't just be to compete with YouTube. It doesn't make sense to me.

It feels like something that the tech coders did because they could. They thought it was a good idea. And this is sort of the idea of creating updates and enhancements to a software program for the sake of creating updates and enhancements and having the next whatever 0.234 version to put out.

So you're saying that Apple podcast engineers put it in to justify their job. Oh, now we're really going to get emails.

And then you know what? We are Apple fans, so don't get that wrong. But I see things like this happening in the tech world, things that get developed and it's like things that features that were added to cars just to have a new bell or whistle that aren't on cars anymore. And there are lots of them in the history of automobiles over 120 years or so. So, I mean, I, I just.

So maybe I'm giving Apple too much credit to think that something was really intentional.

Look, we don't know and that's the mystery. We have to wait and see. There's more to come on that.

But we are paying attention. That's the point that I was making before. We are paying attention. We are waiting and seeing. We will come back to this issue if something changes in it. But for right now, what we're saying, a year into podcast chapters, they are not worth it. Don't do it. Don't bother, don't waste your time. However, do it in YouTube and do.

It in blog 100%.

And if you're gonna do it anyway, because you've got that data, put it in your episode description as a bullet point. Let people see where you think the.

Important things are, but let them listen to the whole thing to get it.

That's right. Well, we will be back next week. We've got a packed. We've just got packed topics coming up. So so many things that you're going to enjoy. So make sure you subscribe to the show, make sure you come back to this again and again and join us live sometime. We'd love to have you.

Thanks for listening, everybody. It's been Tom and Tracy Hazzard on feed.

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