From Cringe To Click-Worthy: The Podcast Graphics Makeover

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community at Podcasters United and podcast industry experts Tom Hazard and Tracy Hazard as they debunk all that outdated and bad advice you've been getting from the podcast gurus and find out what actually works.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.

Welcome to Feed you'd brand. I'm Tom Hazard along with my co host Tracy Hazard, and today we're going to talk about from cringe to click worthy, the podcast graphics makeover. Graphics are something quite honestly, I meet with a lot of existing podcasters every day and I'll tell you, the majority of them do not create a unique graphic for every episode. And I think that's a big missed opportunity.

Yeah. So let's define that right now. Tom, we're not talking about your cover art as your podcast. Some people call that the graphic, the COVID art. It's your icon, your podcast icon.

Fair point. Definitions and language are important here to make sure what I think it means, it means to you. And you know, this is sort of the.

I don't think it means what you think it means.

Right. For you Princess Bride fans, you'll get a kick out of that, but we gotta make sure we're talking about the same thing, so. Good point, Tracy. I forgot about that. We're not talking about your main show icon. That is what it is. We have other episodes to talk about, making that the best it can be. We're not going to talk about today.

Show graphics versus episode graphics. We're talking today about the episode specific things. So think about these as the things you would share about your specific episode, not your show as a whole. It's the things you use. And there are multiple places in which you use these episode graphics. So you do use them in the podcast feed, so there is a spot for them. A lot of podcasters do not take advantage of that. And that we're going to talk about that. That's what you were talking about, Right. So the episode graphics can go into your podcast feed itself. There is your website, right? And think about every blog. Every time you use it, you've got graphics, either a big panoramic up at the top or header image, if you want to call it that, and maybe a featured image or a square or a thumbnail that you might call it, but that's on your website. You might use two different sizes and two different types. You also have YouTube. And YouTube has its own thumbnail, which is kind of like the still image that is on the video before you hit play. It's usually only seen in your channel. Keep that in mind. Or when somebody's searching for a bunch of videos, if your video's playing, you'll never see the thumbnail. It just instantly starts playing and the thumbnail is gone. So that's also somewhere. And then the last thing is in social. Like, so any graphics that you might want to use in social that are episode specific and not show specific.

And there are various different requirements, formats or recommendations depending on the social platforms you are posting in or engaged in.

We're really only going to touch briefly on the social side of it because it's a whole can of worms that we're really not completely talking about. We'll talk about a couple of rules.

For that, but fair point that it you can go down a rabbit hole and the needs of your graphic, different formats and sizes can explode. But I do think it's important for people to understand it's not necessarily a one size fits all situation where one graphic is going to work everywhere. And I'm also not saying you need to engage in every social platform. Tracy and I have always been advocates of. Have one or two that you really engage in and concentrate on those and.

Maybe reshare into the other ones. The same stuff, right? Like it's not original if you want to be everywh. So yeah. So predominantly we're going to talk about podcast feed, your website and YouTube today with a little touch on social. So that's kind of the idea. The reality is, is that the title of our episode From Cringe to Click Worthy. I mean, we're really talking about how do we make it more click worthy today? Because some of the things that we do, especially those of you who've been a podcaster for a long time, you get really set in your ways and the stuff that you do is outdated, technically outsized. I'm going to say, like, it's sometimes the wrong size, the wrong resolution and it looks bad and it's just a sign that you haven't kept up with what they're looking for.

And you know what, I'm going to raise my hand here and say that we have also fallen victim to this, not only for our own shows, as standards change in certain ways in the industry, whether it's in the podcast or things change on YouTube or things change, you know, on social. Even what worked 10 years ago, heck, what worked two or three years ago may not be working well today. So we have even in the service we provide to our customers or we create a lot of these graphics, we have to change what we do from time to time and what we recommend to our customers from time to time, because it just changes.

That's right. And what we're seeing right now is a lot more of a YouTube influence on podcasting. And so I do want to be clear on that. We're seeing that happen across the board.

And I would like to just chime in on that and say that we embrace that. We are not saying that's a bad thing. YouTube is visual and not everybody does videos. Many of you are listening to this as a podcast and not watching the video. That's great. I love podcasting. I love listening when I'm driving and at other times when I need my hands and eyes doing different things. Right. And YouTube has embraced podcasting, doubled down on it. We think that's a good thing for all podcasters who are engaged in video and now even YouTube music, now being a destination for actual podcasts that don't have video. We see this is all good. So I don't want you to think that in any way we're thinking that YouTube having certain requirements and doing things differently is necessarily a bad thing. It's just another way distribute your content. Some people prefer to watch it there rather than listen. And that's great.

But I want to point out that influence of viewability has really brought to the forefront something that Tom and I tapped into a really long time ago. And we did it because we're designers first. Like Tom and I both have art degrees. So we were visual people first. And so it was natural for us to navigate our way and take advantage of the visual tools when they were there, where a lot of podcasters are so audio centric that they discount any visual tool. And what we do have to remember is that people don't hear the show first. Their first impression of your show is visual. It's the show art. It's the episode art. It's the thing they're going to click on to decide if they're going to listen. So our first impact opportunity is a visual one. And if we over brand that and make it the same thing every single time, this is what Tom and I learned really early on. In fact, it's the basis of everything that we do in potatoes in our company was based on this idea that it shouldn't look the same exact way every time. It's too redundant.

And when you Think about that. It makes perfect sense. And, and I see this all the time. Like I said, Tracy, with especially newer podcasters, especially do it yourself podcasters, because they get a lot. They're doing just editing their audio and their video and getting it up. It's a lot of work. And do they, after they get all that done, do they really want to wait till they create a new graphic to then publish their episode? A lot of times the answer is no. And I understand that. I do have empathy for the need there. Okay. And the reality of it. But we're just wanting to share what's really in your best interest. And I meet with so many podcasters very often, they do not have any unique artwork for every episode. And what that does when you're scrolling through in your podcast listening app or through a feed on your website, or it may even be in your social media feed where you post something for every episode. If that graphic is absolutely the same every time, there is no visual variety, there is nothing that's going to catch anyone's attention other than, oh, I've seen it before. Keep scrolling, keep scrolling, keep scrolling. You're asking the listener in the podcast app to decide what they want to listen to based on reading that title first. And people's brains, just in case you didn't know, process and interpret images much faster than they read the words interpret them. And we're talking split second seconds here. We're not talking huge amounts of time, but still the image is going to catch their eye first and lead them to like, ooh, what's that? Let me click and listen. That's the big takeaway here, right?

And so over time, things have changed. It used to be very stylistically branded, like everything needed to look like my show, right? And then it was very vanity, like your picture was on everything or your guest picture was on everything. And so we're shifting into a impact for what the topic is, what I want to listen to. And that's a very YouTube influence. So if we see what's going on in YouTube thumbnails, it's very common and that they've shifted out the over branding styling of everything in their channel looking exactly the same. It's now getting to be every single image and thumbnail is usually, if you can do it because it's faster, cheaper, easier is to take a screenshot from your video. But if your video has no dynamic, it's just your face all the time because you're just speaking on zoom, right, like we are now, then there's nothing really exciting and interesting. Except for a weird expression that I might be making or some pointing hands or something like that. Right. So there's nothing that demonstrates what that topic is about. So what we're seeing a lot more is a visual dropped in to the thumbnail that is a visual impact of the main topic. And then very often we do see maybe some activating words like three words or so that might say, like it might be click worthy episode arc.

It's four words, Tracy.

Well, click worthy stash.

Oh, all right. No, no, no. I only said that because I do think you have to approach that issue. How many words? Yeah, three to five is a little subjective. Three to five maximum. I think it's pretty hard sometimes a one word episode title usually doesn't make sense. Two words might not be enough. Three to five is probably the sweet spot.

Right. So thinking about if you're an SEO person, if you're a search engine optimized person or you're thinking web first, like you come from that blogging world, this is your focus keyword, but impactfully activated. So in other words, like you might want the binge worthy. Right. It's telling you what you want to do with it. Right. How you want it to be. It's a state of being. So that could be one or it could be creating.

Right.

You're using a word that is an action. So you want to use some of those kinds of words in there. So it might be a little. Because focus keywords tend to be a lot of nouns, like just to explain that. Because that's what people type in, what's what they're looking for. So you want to make sure you have an activator or an energy around what you've done with those words. That's the only difference to how you might use it on a thumbnail. Three to five words. Because we don't want a lot of words to view in a small square when it's sometimes square or a tiny little video panorama. Right. It's like it's small in that landscape view still. So we want to do it that way. And then some kind of visual background, whether that reinforces it. If it's about making money, there should be tons of money in the background. It should be all gold, like just visually impact. So that when they read that title, that tells them the positive outcome you're going for or the negative scary that you're afraid of. So it could go either direction.

But again, they're going to notice that image before they read your short title. And Tracy, maybe this is a good time to really make sure in these graphics we're talking about an impactful few words short title. This very often is not going to be your complete podcast episode title and your complete blog post or YouTube episode title. Right?

Right. It might be like a few words picked from the headline that you've created from the long tail and you still need that there. Do not change your episode titles. Please keep them as long as you can, as long as possible for YouTube, the podcast space that you have there and your website. So the sweet spot is around 70 characters right now. That is the sweet spot that we've been going. It kind of fits on all. If you keep it under just slightly under 70 characters.

And it really is in alignment with SEO and being found, your episode being found in search. So what we're talking about today are graphics and a little bit different approach for some of those graphics for the episode. But that doesn't. I didn't want everyone to think we're advocating three to five word episode titles in their entirety because the podcast apps are still search engines. Your website is going to come up, your blogs are going to come up in Google search engines and YouTube is a search engine. So those longer tail titles and Google owns YouTube. Right.

So let's keep that in mind. Right. They all work under the same algorithms.

But those longer length titles are very important for that. But in the graphics, they get so small you can't see them. They get in the way of the impact and things have changed. Right, Tracy? They just aren't working and also are not recommended on certain contexts. Right.

For the past five years, we have put long titles on every single one of our episodes. Art. Now, there is always an impactful visual image behind it, but we've always put the long titles on there. Very often, if we even put guest names on there. We're gonna talk about that in a minute. We put show little like tiny little ingredient brand of the show itself. We don't always do that anymore. So there's a lot of those things that we've removed. The main thing to get across is the impactful image is the most powerful, most important thing that you need to have. The second thing is the focused keywords or topic that this show. What am I going to get when I click this show? What am I going to get out of it? And that's what's going to make them click. And that's what we really want. Your show is ghost. It is a hidden gem until somebody clicks and listens to it or Watches it. So our only goal with this episode art is to make them click. That is it. It is not to give them everything. It is not do our brand. It is not to build authority for ourselves. It is solely to get them to click. Because if they don't listen to it, they don't get enough of us. And if they don't get enough enough, they're not gonna go to our website, they're not gonna buy anything, they're not gonna do all of those other things we want them to do.

Really good point, Tracy. And it's interesting one. And the context is different and in the different platforms, and there are a few different obviously sized rules, among other things that are nuances to this, but the fundamentals are there. And it's really also true of what I tell people about their show cover art too. It has one job, and it is within the listening apps. And it is after your show comes up in a search, your show's there, among others. Its entire job is to get people to click, to learn more, to try it. Its only job. And it's very narrow. And that's why it kind of sidebar drives me nuts when everybody puts podcast at the end of their show name on their cover art. Because people are seeing it in a podcast listening app. They know it's a podcast. Why do you have to say it's a podcast?

Okay, yeah, let's come to my next rule. No EP numbers. No ep, no E colon. Don't put any of that on the thumbnails. Please stop doing it. No one cares about your library when they just find you. Leave that to the numbers within the catalog. Right? They're already there when I'm looking through. Or they're in numerical order. Right. They're already there in the podcast app. So I do not need you to put numbers on the thumbnail. It is not important.

And actually, Tracy, I just learned from our SEO expert yesterday, before recording this, that, you know, one of our customers insisted on putting their episode numbers in front in the beginning of their titles of all their episode blog posts and also in the podcast apps, but on their website in particular, that's killing their SEO. Google can't separate the number from the good phrases, the words that are in there, and it's hurting them.

Yeah, it is absolutely a no, no everywhere. And whether you want to believe us or not, Tom and I have done over 700 episodes of one show. We've done over a thousand episodes of all of our shows. I think we're on 1400 or something between all the shows right now, something like that. And I can tell you that the numbers are a nightmare. They will become a nightmare for you. You will have to change numbers, you will have to redo things, it will stress you out, it will drag you down. In SEO, everything about numbering is just a waste of time. And Apple tells you not to do it.

Yeah, Apple frowns upon it. And they have different reasons why they don't want you to do that, but there's still good reasons.

Yeah. And so just stop doing it. I know that some of you are numbers people and you love it, but definitely don't put it on this thumbnail because what happens when you change the number, when you delete an episode? Now you gotta go back and change your graphics. No, just don't do it. It's not worth it. It has no value to the person we want to click. No value to them. So we need to create that model of clickability. The episode art is a square. And so the way that our few little words that we're putting on those, those activators, those click bait words. And we don't want them to be bait and deceptive. Right. We want them to be like really what they're getting when they get the show. Please.

That's so true. Actually, I was just reading a social media post about, from a listener perspective, the things that annoy them most about podcasts that they listen to. One of them was exactly that. Clickbait titles that got them to start to listen that really have nothing to do with what the subject is. That's one of the top ones.

Yes. And it will be the reason that they give you a bad review and they stop listening. They unsubscribe. So if your goal is to get subscribers, just don't bother. It's not worth it. The value of it. You want to be friendly to the binge worthy listeners that you want to attract. That's it. So when we go through these graphics, we want to make sure that the impact image is behind it. But it's not as important as those words right there because it's so small. It's probably going to be like three quarters of an inch, half an inch big. Sometimes in some of the apps it's really small when you're looking at on your mobile phone, maybe an inch big on a desktop. So we're really not talking about a lot of space. So whatever image we choose behind it, abstract is better. Getting that in, definitely stop using images of people on those type of episode art. It's just not worth it there's just not enough space for it.

All right, I think that's something we need to a little more discussion about that.

I just want to just address this. So then if you've got the thumbnail on YouTube, you've got more space, right? So you've got a panoramic landscape style image because that's the format of your videos, right? Not in the shorts. The short doesn't have a thumbnail. Just the real full length video has a thumbnail. And so it's a panoramic landscape view. So you've got a little more space to work in. You could do a slight adjustment to it. I would still use the same style background image or impact image you chose for your little square for the podcast art. But in this particular case, you could start to add guests in or people in or do a little something else if it's relevant to the episode or if they're famous enough that because of them, I'm going to click View. And that's the difference here, is that I don't want putting images of people who are not recognizable by their face. If I have to put their name and title below them in order for you to know who they are in my industry niche or in the general population, then it's not worth putting their image on your graphic. Not on this graphic, not on the thumbnails, not on the episode art. Because only someone who I want to listen to from my industry that I could recognize by face would be worth putting on. Because then I know there's a reason to listen to that episode. But if it's just some random author, that's not worth it for you to take up the space of something that needs to be valuably impactful. Plus their name and title is all in the title and information that is to the bottom of the graphic. So it's duplicate. And that's what we want you to remember here is that these new image rules are because the apps had gotten better at displaying the information that used to be hidden. So it used to be that you really got like one or two words of the episode title. You got like nothing, basically. And so the graphic had to do all the heavy lifting to get the episode title through, till somebody was looking at your entire scroll, until your entire catalog listing, right? So they would see hardly anything at all. So now they see that, they see the title. The same thing on YouTube. On YouTube, the whole bottom is the title's there across the video bottom. It's also there when you click on it and you Go into the video page. You've got the whole title and description. Everything's there for them to see. So if you put it on the thumbnail, it's redundant and repetitive. And why do something repetitive? I'm wasting, like billboard space that I could be using to use Fran asaro, our favorite YouTube expert, Billboard Space. That's billboard space to attract me to come to this episode. I don't need to repeat it because it's already there.

So one thing I just want everyone to understand, there are important graphics to be created to feature your guest and to feature you that are useful on your website and social media and other places. All we're saying is the episode graphic itself, the thumbnails on YouTube, the episode art that publishes in the listening apps, this is not the place to do it. And the ones for your blogs too, on your website?

Well, the ones for the blogs are a hybrid model, and so here's why. Okay, so let's talk about the website for a minute. There are two kinds of website images you might possibly use. One is a header image. Again, a panoramic landscape view image that might be at the top of the blog. So think about that. It's at the very top of it a lot of times. And this is the new trend. This is what works better, is not to put any words at all. So just use the background image, maybe a little ingredient that has your show brand in it. Think of it like a watermark. You might do that and just do that for the top of it and use the style of a blog post, where the blog post template itself puts the title of the episode right across.

That image for you, or it's above it or below it. The title for the blog post is in the blog post and it's displayed the vast majority of the time. So there's no need to put it again on this image.

Right. So you're just using the visual image in this panoramic view on the square that might be your featured image. So if you had a blog role page, you might want to use the same one that you're using for the episode art. But very often just keep that in mind. You have to create a second one anyway, because the episode art size and the featured image size on a website are slightly off in resolution and quality and size. So it's a little bit. You have an opportunity to do a different one if you want.

Yeah, most of the time this is true. We have encountered some websites where they actually are using the same size, proportion, image in both places. And if that's the case. That makes it a little easier for you. Most of the time they're not.

Yeah. So most of the time, typically I just recommend use the thumbnail that you're going to use in your podcast and just save it in a different resolution.

Right.

Like just save it differently and that's it. It saves you a lot of time and energy. But using those impactful keywords. Right. Can help in that visual of just making sure that they actually read the blog title and read all of that. And so it can be really useful just as that same attractor in a blog role. Because if you use the same image every single time, I will think I've seen it and read it and already clicked that blog before. It is not going to attract me in. So keeping that unique is very important. And this is something that we've been doing for almost seven years straight. We have always had unique on our website as opposed to just the podcast, because the podcast feed didn't always allow us to do it in the early days.

Yeah, actually that's changed. And I know we had a listener of the podcast a couple months ago right in when I made a statement that Apple Podcasts wasn't using unique episode art for every episode. And that used to be the case even up until sometime in 2023, but that has changed. Apple Podcasts finally. And I remember talking to one of the executives at Apple saying, why don't you guys do this? He's like, I know, we really. We should, we should. It finally happened and it kind was kind of sneaky. I didn't even see an announcement about it. But anyway, it's happening. So now pretty much every podcast listening app will display a unique episode art when you publish one with your episode.

Right. So these things are a part of, honestly, the SEO, because you're tagging also those images. That means that they show up when they do an image search. There's a lot of things that you need to do when you put these in your website that really power that blog for you. And breaking up a blog with images is a really valuable thing because I don't know about you, but our talking here is like 3,000 to 6,000 words. That's a lot of words to read. So you need to break them up with images. So there are opportunities to put things like social media graphics, quote graphics, pictures of your guests, like featured box for your guests and all that. But here's what I want to say going back to the comment that we made about using guest images, if the purpose of Your website is to create industry authority, which means that you need to be seen side by side with people that have higher authority in your industry. Your guests that you invite on your show. You may want a strategy of having those header images with an impactful background and a picture of your guest and you. That may be a strategy you want to employ in your website because you need your website to be not just an SEO builder, but an authority builder. That is the only exception to the rules that I'm talking about. It doesn't work on YouTube the same way. It definitely doesn't work in the podcast app the same way. Unless, like I said before, they're highly recognizable in your industry and someone that you really want to highlight as shown. So you can imagine if you've got your whole podcast feed and of episodes on Apple and they're all looking at all your episode art, and there's always something that's got an impactful image or a activating title, and then all of a sudden you happen to have, you know, a major player in your industry on your show, or you got a coup and you interviewed Taylor Swift, and all of a sudden, Taylor Swift's picture is in your episode art, and it breaks up the episode art like that. So if you are not using that guest image every single time, but you're using it when you have a coup, when you have the most amazing guest possible, the top guest in your industry, and you're using it occasionally, now's the time to deviate from your episode art and use that person's picture. Right now you've really done something powerful. Now if you're introducing celebrities all the time or they're always in, there is a strategy for definitely using those in your episode arc.

Taylor Swift. Really? You chose Taylor Swift?

You know what? I actually really want to interview. I want to interview Taylor Swift's mom.

I could see that.

Right. But who would know what she looks like?

I do. I've seen her.

Oh, well, good for you. We have big fan daughters.

Yeah. It's because our kids are huge Taylor Swift fans. But, you know, in some of the photos, stories online, or some of the video documentary stuff, she and her dad are in some of them. So I probably would recognize. And what does that say about me? Holy mackerel.

But saying that I'm, you know, making sure that you have the space that, like, we talked to Taylor Swift's mom, like, that would be something that you'd want to emphasize. You want to make sure that they realize that that's who you're talking to. And that's what it is. Because if I just looked at an image, I wouldn't know her from anyone. Right. And I might not recognize her. I might not realize it out of context. Right.

On that one, I agree. That's probably someone. When you use her headshot, when you have permission to, obviously, because you interviewed her, I would probably put her name under there. And that in Prince is Taylor Swift's mom.

Right. Like, or a picture of her and Taylor Swift. Right, A picture of her and her daughter.

Right, right, right. Well, if you're doing that, you don't need to qualify it because it's Taylor Swift that will track people. But that's an extreme example. I mean, they're definitely. I mean, that's like Oprah. That's like the president, United States, that stuff like that. But there are probably. And it's hard to find an example because, well, I guess in our industry, maybe somebody like Pat Flynn might be very well recognized. Right. Where you could show his picture and not have to put his name there.

Well, so if you go to podcastersunada.org and you go to the Binge Factor episode where I interviewed Pat Flynn, it is one of my deviations. So I always create header images, and I almost never use my guest in the header image, but there is a picture. It still has an impactful. Like, I created the image. So, like, we did an overlay of two things where we melded them together. One was a stock image of him that he provided, and then one where this image of, like a digital business was emerging out from behind him. And so we merged it together into that graphic because we wanted. We knew he was visually recognizable in our industry, but by deviating from it, and for the first time, because very typically, if I show people, I show the back of their head and not the front of them so that you don't associate a person who's not my guest if it's, you know, in the episode art. And so we do that very often. So when you all of a sudden now have someone flipped around, facing forward, looking at you, it does capture your attention because you're not doing it every single time. So this is a deviation when it becomes important. Right. So if you really want to emphasize these heavy hitters in your industry, that's a great way to do it, is to keep it limited and special. And you could, on the flip side of it, charge for those, too, if they're, you know, if they're not, you could always charge for that and make somebody who wanted to be a heavy hitter, a mix amongst that. So it could be a money maker for you. You never know. So anyway, let's talk back and just recap real quickly. YouTube thumbnails, panoramics, big impactful images, few words on them, very few words. In fact, there's a big trend right now to using no words at all. Just to keep that in mind. So if it's easier for you to just use an image back there that emphasizes the visual of what you're talking about, that's okay too. There's a lot of trend to that, but usually they're very active and visually representative images of what the episode's about. So unless you're going to work that hard at creating those images or doing them, then don't do that. Use a few words, keywords, same thing on the website. We want to use a panoramic, no words. We want to use the title that comes with the theme or the title right below it or title there. Because most of us are using a header image, the title, and then the YouTube thumbnail. So we are getting that thumbnail information somewhere on it. So we definitely don't want to use it as a redundant element in our blog. And then of course, we have our episode graphic and that's creating that difference. So that episode art, which is a square, which we can also use as a featured image. So the last thing is some of the images that we use, right, Those graphics, we call them ego bait here, where we're using an episode graphic with our guest on it. We use quote graphics where we use pictures of our guests or pictures of ourselves and the quotes that we say, lots of those things can be utilized within your blog. They can be used and should be utilized on social media to promote the episode. Create collabs with our guests, get them to promote the show, things like that. So that's where those graphics belong. Those graphics are still necessary and important. They do not change any of those things that you're doing there. The only thing that I'm going to encourage everyone to do is if you've been spending a lot of time, space and time, creating a lot of over branded templates, stop doing it. You don't need frames around everything. You don't need everything over colored. You don't need podcast icons that show you that it's a podcast on the episode heart, please stop doing that. You don't need the show brand on the episode art. It's not necessary if it's already within your show. There's a lot of repetitiveness that we're getting from our channels, our websites and our brands that are already out there, that does not need to be repeated on these graphics every time.

Yeah. And one good example that Tracy, I think is YouTube shorts. Okay. Short videos. And whether they're used on YouTube or on social like TikTok or Instagram or anything like that, we have a lot of customers that we create these shorts for that have significant framed templates to brand these videos and they want it done that way. And that was done a lot more in the past and I think there was a purpose to it. But we definitely have seen a trend to YouTube shorts getting a lot more views and a lot more traction when those short like vertical oriented images are not over branded, like we said, a watermark type of image, of logo, if anything, but that they're gonna get more interest and play and attention playing them all the way through and not skipping over to the next one if it's not overly templated. And that's relatively new development, just so everyone's aware.

Yeah, but it is tapping into the social algorithms in general. Things that are over branded right now feel less authentic. They feel overly corporate, overly stylized and not genuine. And so that's why it's gone away. But additionally, there is a lot of extra work that goes onto them. So it means you're not using the native tools within YouTube shorts, within Instagram, within TikTok, and they know it and that's why they frown upon it as well. So it's an indicator for them. So your video's just not going to get as good a play. Your Instagram story is not going to get as good a play with there's, with the over styling and all of that and it's a lot more work. So stop doing. The last thing I want to say, Tom, is one more thing about AI. Okay. AI images. Go ahead, use them. It worst right now it's going to be marked as AI. But how many people are curious to see something that's utilizing AI in it? And if it's only the graphic image, the thumbnail that has AI and it gets marked that way it's not harming you. There is no downgrading an algorithm for using AI content. They're merely marking it to be transparent.

Really?

Yeah, exactly. So go ahead and use it to your advantage because then it goes, wow, look how cool it is. They're using AI. I want to see what it looks like. You might get more clicks because of it. So don't use that as a reason not to use an AI generated image. And for us right now I think it's valuable. I think it's worth trying it and I've gotten some great results using the Adobe tools and Adobe Express and the AI tool there. I've gotten great results in Shutterstock. Canva has their own AI. It's hit and miss sometimes, but it's getting good.

This is really a subject for another episode in the future. But just so everyone's aware, getting to the right image you want not always that easy. It would take a lot of trial and error, a lot of practice learning how to generate, create the prompts that are going to get what you want. It's not always so easy, but the big advantage is you don't ever have any copyright issues with ad generated images. So that's a big advantage. But anyway, that is kind of a tangent and a good topic to take a deeper dive in a future episode, especially as we these tools continue to mature.

But I just want you to be aware is that sometimes like the creation of those images or finding those images is daunting to you. Feel free to use the tools. They're working really well.

Yeah, I agree. Wow Tracy, that was a lot packed into that episode. Very useful and important stuff and I hope you all got a lot of value out of it. Remember, there are going to be links to everything that we mentioned and talked about, as well as reference articles and other episodes and resources we have that were mentioned in the blog post for this episode@podcasters united.com well thanks everyone.

We'll be back next time with another episode right here on Feed.

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