The Extreme Importance Of Podcast Show Descriptions To Skyrocket Listeners

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community at Podcasters United and podcast industry experts Tom Hazard and Tracy Hazard as they debunk all that outdated and bad advice you've been getting from the podcast gurus and find out what actually works.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 finish feed your brand with smart cut tactics proven to cast your original voice to the world.

Hey, everyone. Welcome to Feed you'd brand. I'm Tom Hazard with my co host and better half, Tracy Hazard, and today we are going to talk with you about the extreme importance of podcast show descriptions. And Tracy, I have to say I think this is a very much underappreciated topic, don't you think?

I think that it. I don't want to say underappreciated because I'm not sure undervalued is probably the most.

Maybe that's a better way to put it.

Yeah. Because this is the thing is that there are some critical factors in your show setup, the way that your show was set up from the beginning that you don't realize how essential to the whole discoverability process is. And this is really where there are two things that you really need to grow a show. You need to be discovered and then you need to increase listeners or increase your exposure. Right. Like as you go on your continued promotion. But if your discovery is being held back because you didn't do something right, technically, then there's about nothing you could do but spend a whole lot more money and a whole lot more promotion. You're working twice as hard. And show descriptions are the one thing that really make a difference. And let's talk about why that is, Tom. Like, technically there are only. I think it's four things. And I count me for three things, but four technically, because you do have the copyright line. But I did that. They do search, but maybe.

Yeah, yeah. So this is like the lowest hanging fruit. When I talk to an existing podcaster who really either set up their own show and didn't realize it or used a producer that was unaware or someone to help them launch their show. There are three primary things. And you may be right. The copyright line probably figures into it a little bit also, Tracy, but really three fields to figure into the search algorithm for your listening app. Okay, so this means.

And that's all listening apps. Let's be really clear on. And I haven't found one single one that works differently yet.

I agree with that, Tracy. And really it makes sense when you think about it because all the listening apps, all they can do is look at all the information in the podcast RSS feed. So the primary fields is one way to think about it. Data points is another way to think about it that each listening app uses in their search algorithm. And this is just any Joe or Jane Q. Public user, right? Listener goes into their listening app and they want to listen to a podcast about entrepreneurship or they want to listen to a podcast about investing or something, they're going to search in that app on what's in it for them, what they're looking for, topics, subjects, phrases. And they're just doing it from their brain. What do I want to listen to? I want to listen to this. And they type it in. That's what the search we're talking about.

And so I want to say right now that we're talking about having your show discovered, not your episodes. That's a different conversation and a different podcast episode that we'll record at some point in the future. But for right now, we're talking about just finding a new show. Right? So someone's going in and looking and finding a new show. And I want to clarify that if they're looking specifically for your show, they will type that in as well, or they will type your name in as well. Right. So that's more of a direct match, and you're more likely to show up under those conditions if you've done it right. And so often we find out that this isn't done right when it's done by a radio station or a network.

That's true, Tracy. But let me. And I want to sort of add or. Plus, what you were saying there is that if somebody is searching on your name or your podcast name, you already won the awareness battle. They know who you are, and they're going to find you. That's easy. And in fact, it really takes away.

That's easy if you technically did it right, though, and I said it wrong so often. So let's talk about the three fields. The three fields are they call it the author name, the host name. It's different in every.

Usually it's author.

It's usually authored by the systems. That's the listening app. Right. So your hosting company, like ours is Potatoes might use a different term. We use author here, too.

So they might call it the host name or something. Right. But in the itunes tag vernacular, it's author field.

Right. So the author field, that should actually be your name. And too often a network or Iheart or a radio station puts their name there so now you've already lost your primary field for them to find you when they're looking for your name for your show.

And I'm going to out one company that does this all the time and I have no problem doing it because they're so old school and they're, I am a hundred percent certain they are underserving their customers. And the podcast community is blog talk radio. Blog talk radio, they put their name in the author field, it's a blog talk radio show and they will try to sell you if you're their customer on the idea that they have a big name and people look for blog talk radio shows and then for they're going to find you, but the problem is they're replacing your own name. So when people know you and they're switching in your name, you're not going.

To come up, they're not doing their job of promoting you and you're paying them. So I find a huge problem with companies that do that if you're paying them right? If they're like I Heart is sponsoring all of those shows, iheart is the one who's responsible for them or Wonder or any of those. So they don't necessarily have to think about it. Now. They don't always make that mistake. They actually do because they want the famous star that they paid a lot of money for who's hosting the show to show up. So they do know better. For some shows they do do that.

All right, so the second field is the title field, meaning the show title field, the name of your show. So obviously that figures into the search. But again, to me, this is again, a not a very important field in terms of discoverability. I mean, yes, you need to have your show title in that field. And but if, again, if people know the title of your show, they're going to find it. You've already raised awareness with that person. They're just going and searching on your show. So that's easy.

And so I just want to clarify now, if you are constrained by blog talk radio or any of those companies that are stealing your authority in the author name field, you need to insist on putting your name in the title. This goes against everything that Tom and I teach here at Feed your Brand and it's not good practice. It's too much vanity and too much ego and doesn't really play as well. However, because your search is sort of messed up by the fact that they're stealing the author field for you, you need to have that, your name in the title. So it should Be whatever the show name is with and your name as the host. You should make them do that if you're in that situation. If you're not, don't do it. It's redundant and you're wasting character space.

Right, okay, so like we mentioned, three key fields figure into the search bar and the search algorithm in your listening app. The most important one, honestly, the real critical one, can't emphasize this point enough, and it is so often overlooked, is the description field, the description of your show. Can't tell you how many podcasters I come across who've been podcasting for many, many years. We have a new customer at Poditized who's been podcasting for 14 years. He had no idea of this. And I'm sure when he started, it was a different day and things have worked differently. And that's fine.

But in all fairness, that's true, Tom, because when we started a decade ago, like, it was, it was only 400 characters. So it was very different back then.

It was different. But there's a reason why Tracy and I each start a new podcast every year so that we know what's working today and we're not just talking about what worked a decade ago. And I think this is a good wake up call even to seasoned and incredibly experienced podcasters. You gotta make sure you're aware of things that have changed so you don't miss out on a big opportunity. And that is what the show description represents, a huge opportunity for every podcaster. And if you have a one or two sentence description or anything relatively small, like a paragraph or two, listen up because we're about to blow your mind. Okay, Right.

So this is 4,000 characters. 4,000 characters. That's a lot of space. Like, I mean, I can Talk for about 10 minutes and fill 4,000 characters. It's a lot of words. So this is really critically important that you are utilizing the maximum amount. You are optimizing your ability to be discovered. That's why this is such an extremely critical path item for show discoverability.

It is, and I want a point of emphasis here. Especially those of you that are driving, please drive carefully and don't, like, get distracted and start sliding into someone else's lane, whatever. But seriously, your podcast description, it's 4000 characters. So not words I don't want you to fear. Oh, my gosh, that's a chapter of a book. No, no, no characters. Okay?

Including spaces.

Including spaces. Right. And those of you that are hosted on anchor, sorry, you're out of luck. For some reason, Anchor and there's a couple other hosting platforms that are limiting Your description to 650 characters. In our opinion, those platforms are also doing you a disservice because they're not allowing you to use all the characters available to you. Any modern podcast host should be allowing you 4,000 characters because that is what the ecosystem of podcasting allows. And let's face it, this limitation is governed by Apple. Apple opened it up to 4,000 characters a few years ago. And you should be using all of them because this gives you the best opportunity for your show to come up in more searches, when people are searching again on what's in it for them, what they're looking for in their podcast listening app. Now, do I believe any person's actually going to read through that full 4,000 character description? No, I am quite confident no one ever will. Except you, proofreading your own as you've written it, or one that's been written for you. You're probably the only person that's ever going to read it. But that doesn't matter. It's not for you. The first couple sentences, maybe the first paragraph, is all anybody will ever read. And that should be well written to let people know what it's about, build anticipation and just get them to click and try it. That's all you want that to do. The rest of it is all SEO search engine optimization within the podcast listening apps, so that when anybody types in any phrase in that search bar that's in alignment with what you want your show to be found for, that phrase should be in that description. And I know, Tracy, you're a writer and you're going to cringe when I'm going to say this. And all good writers do. This description beyond that first paragraph can be complete word salad. It does not have to make sense. Oh, I'm saying it can be. Tracy, you can say whether it should be in a moment.

Yeah, yeah, no, but I'm just going to say. But let's talk two things. Don't have hashtag no and like cram your words. So I just want to be careful when he says word, Sally, he's talking about actual physical words.

Oh, words and phrases, words and phrases. And I mean, we've gotten good at this, at politize, at writing something that's you can actually read. It's sentence structure and paragraph structure. It's there, but people read it and they say, well, you're saying the same thing a couple different ways. You've already said it. You're being redundant. I'm like, yes, we are saying it a few different ways because guess what? People search on it lots of different ways. And if you don't match what they search, you're not coming up in the results. So there's a lot of science to this, and like Tracy said, it's about discoverability. If you want to be found by more people that are looking for your kind of content, that are wanting to listen to your topics, your subject matter, you need to play the bot game here and write a description that is going to cast a wider net for you to be found.

When we're talking about optimized descriptions and optimized search. Right, that's what this is, search engine optimization. It's not search engine like we know Google, but Google has a podcast app, so it is happening within Google as well. But it's not just that we're talking about only the parameters of the listening app is what it's searching for. And that's why those are those three fields that we discussed before the show. Name, the author name, and this description field so that the most opportunity you have is to update this description field. So where I cringe and where I stop the line at. My advice to you for Word Salad is that it is too easy for someone to say, I'm just going to be a digital marketing God and I am going to go in and put keyword after keyword after keyword and just like have it make no sense. But I'm going to put a thousand keywords in the space. Well, not a thousand, but about 400 you'll put in. And so about 400 into your 4,000 characters. Here's the problem with that. If you went to an Amazon listing for a book, for a product and you saw that happen, what are you going to do as a viewer? You're not going to buy because you think and know that they're manipulating you. So this is why I say still make them sentences. Doesn't have to be the best English ever. It doesn't have to be the most amazing writing. It's not an article, but you just make it be realistic in terms of how it's reading so it actually looks like a description and doesn't set off a bunch of red flags that someone says, I'm not going to click and listen to the show. They are full of it. All they want to do is sell me something because of what they see there. And that's another reason why I say don't do the hashtagging, because that's not how somebody types it. Into it. They're not comfortable with hashtag searching. They know it doesn't work in the podcast app, so they don't do it there. They know it works in Instagram, they know it works in Twitter, they know where it works, but it doesn't work in the podcast app. So a real podcast listener won't type those things in. So you're not helping yourself. You're actually hurting yourself by utilizing these techniques. So thinking about that, that's the only reason I say is keyword crammed. But try to make them into sentences and try to make them make a little bit of sense. So Tom and I are going to link to the blog post for this episode. Our exercise description we have our clients go through in order to the best episode description by doing what you do best as a podcaster. Speak your way to it, transcribe it, rewrite it, adjust it a little bit, and then drop that right in 4,000 characters and you are done. You can literally do this in 30 to 45 minutes. Like it shouldn't take you any longer than that to do it. Record it, transcribe it, update it, and get it into your podcast show description on whatever player. The only exception, as Tom pointed out, is Anchorage. And what was the other one that you did?

There's a couple other obscure ones. I don't have a complete list, but I know Stitcher is a top of my. No, no, Stitcher is a listening app that was talking about hosting platforms. That anchor as a hosting platform limits your podcast listing, your Description listing to 650 characters. Why? I don't know. I bet after they listen to this episode, they're probably going to update it and expand it. Because they should.

But they should if they listen to us. But anyway, the point is, I checked. Spotify doesn't have that problem. So in other words, anchor users are being restricted when Spotify, who owns them, doesn't have the restriction because my full 4000 character description is completely showing up on Spotify. So they're limiting their own users from being able to utilize the app that they are owned by. Like that's crazy. So real huge disservice.

It really illuminates the difference between two different companies. Just because one bought the other doesn't.

Mean that they communicate.

They really are paying attention to all these details. But anyway, it is what it is. It is.

We will have that whole exercise linked to this because it's a whole nother podcast episode. So just want to make sure. But also, if you're listening to us right now, and you're not driving, go ahead and go to click the icon for the show feed your brand. If you click the big icon, it'll take you to the show page on whatever app you're on. Typically that usually does that. Or it'll say feed your brand and you can click on the show name and that show name will take you to the show page of within your listening app and you can hit read more or expand or whatever your app says. And you can take a look at our show description right now and see what that looks like. There are hot links in most of them that show up on almost all the apps. There are some apps that don't allow that dynamic links, don't cram your thing full of dynamic links, but let yourself put in your website and a couple of other things, maybe your LinkedIn or other places where you want them to connect with you that put them right in that expanded part of the show description so that they can use that even though the apps don't really allow those additional contact information pieces. So it gives you the ability to do that within there so you can have some calls to action. So check ours out right while you're listening right now and see what that looks like and then go check out yours and see what yours looks like.

Whenever I do a podcast audit, this is the number one thing that is like a jaw dropping moment for a lot of people because they just had no idea. It's like I took a podcasting course. No one ever told me about this. No one told me this was important. Most people, they just want to get their audio out there on the apps. And so, oh, these are required fields. I have to put something in each field. Literally, I see one sentence description sometimes and sometimes even worse than that. Guess what? They're not going to be found by very many people organically looking for content. They're going to be only having people listen who they've connected with on social media and maybe raised awareness that way and they search on their show and find it. But most of us are looking to increase our listeners, aren't we? With people who don't know us, we're trying to be found by more of our ideal listeners. If we already know them, then, well, good for you, I guess. You've already got the biggest list on earth and you don't need to do this. But the rest of us, I think we need this.

If you're controlled by a network or radio, network, radio show, any of those things, I want you to go right now and push them to fix this, write your new one. Tell them you insist on it. So often I see only information, not even about the podcast show itself. I see only information about the radio station put into the very first paragraph of it. It doesn't even tell them what the show's about. So you may really be. So often the radio people are not actually ever seeing what they look like in podcast app themselves. They've never looked at that. And they've only looked at the radio page of where they are. And that is updated in a different way. So really, go check this out. It is essential that you look at your own show description, know what it looks like.

Can I have a pet peeve moment here, Tracy?

Of course. As if you haven't already, though.

I know I feel a little bit like this episode. I'm ranting a little. And it's just because I'm so passionate about it and I really hate it when I come across a podcast where someone has been taken advantage of. And it is true. And I don't mind stereotyping them. I mean, I completely admit I'm doing that right now with Internet radio networks and things like that. But when they always tend to promote themselves at the expense of the podcaster or the podcast host, and in the descriptions, they'll do it too. They'll have more information about their network in there than they were really about your show and why anyone would want to listen to it. And it just.

It breaks my heart.

It really hurts me. Yeah.

So now that we've illuminated this to you, I want you all to check out other things too, because this has a cascading effect. Make sure you're using your maximum caricature count on all your social profiles. LinkedIn has 3,000. There are, I think, 450 now in other places that used to maybe only have like 150. So I think Twitter expanded theirs a couple of years ago. I think it was only 250 over there now. But still there's ways to expand it. This is something you should audit and check on a yearly basis in your social channels, making sure you're maximizing the search engine optimization of anything. Because Discoverability is an algorithm. It is not human beings. It is always a bot in everything we do on the Internet today. And we need to play the game. And if we don't know the rules and we aren't staying up to date on the rules changing, then the only way we can do is set our own audit timing and process. So it's something that I do regularly at the End of each year, and I'll notice it. I'll be like, oh, they expanded this. I can expand my LinkedIn profile. I can expand my Twitter feed. Like, whatever it is that is essential to your business, this is something you should be checking at all times. Because if I'm out there searching and I can't find find you because you didn't do this simple little thing like expanding this, what a shame. You're missing out on business. You're missing out on connections, and I hate to see that. So put this in your portfolio of tips of things that you utilize every single year to update and audit for yourself. And then also, please don't get discouraged. That's the last thing I want to leave everyone. Don't get discouraged. If you ended up with 150 characters and you've been doing this for five years, changing it today will have an instant effect.

Yeah, it's not carved in stone here, folks. Right. I mean, we can pivot and update our podcast listings. All of us can do that. Absolutely. So, yeah, it's unfortunate. It's been what it's been if it isn't optimized, but let's fix it and make it better tomorrow. Absolutely can be done. And you know, Tracy, just one parting thing I guess I want to share is that it always surprises me how many podcasters aren't aware of their details of their podcast listing. They just never look at it, maybe have never looked at it, staffed it out, had someone else do it for them and just hoped that they knew what they were doing. And then also furthermore, who don't listen to their own episodes. And I'm not saying you have to listen to everyone. No, but I'm not. I'm not saying you have to listen to everyone. You don't need to be your own listener. You said it when you recorded it for information purposes or entertainment purposes or whatever you're recording about. You don't need to. But listening once in a while and spot checking and making sure it is what you expect it to be, you may be surprised what you hear. So it's always a good idea to do that. It's representing you, right? It is.

It's an outward representation of you. And you should do double check system. And we have a place in which when we syndicate someone here at Productize, we are always having a person manually check how it looks on the app because sometimes things can get cut off. Some you think you did 4,000 characters, but it was maybe a little too close or something. Took up a little extra space than you expected when it actually formatted and went into the feed into the app. But my favorite thing about podcasting is that our feeds are flexible. Like they're updatable. They can keep current with us. And the fact that we can do that with our content is so powerful. So keep updated, keep doing this. Over time, it's going to make a huge difference, so in your discoverability and in your ability to stay relevant to the audiences that are coming up and looking for you today.

All right, Tracy, I think that's where we should leave it or I'm going to continue ranting and I don't want to do that to our listeners. So thank you so much for listening. I hope you got some value out of this. There's a lot of similar great content within the Feed your brand podcast, and you can find all those by going to poditize.com to the feed you'd brand page. Find all our episodes there. Certainly the blog post for this episode where Tracy mentioned she's going to have a link if you want to learn about our process for creating an optimized podcast description. And I guess that's all I have to say, you know, thanks so much everyone. We'll see you next time. For another great episode, it's been Tom.

And Tracy Hazzard on feed you'd brand.

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