Do you remember what you wrote in your podcast description? If the answer is no, you need to listen to this episode.
All right, quick and dirty, as we wrap up November, I want to talk about your podcast description because tomorrow on The Podcast Newsroom—I say tomorrow, this episode releases November 30th. The following day, December 1st, the three things episode, the monthly episode for The Podcast Newsroom is released. On that podcast episode, we’re going to talk about three things you need to pay attention to: review, audit, change, tweak, however you want to language that, and one of them is this podcast description. If this episode is helpful for you, make sure you have access to that episode by tuning in to The Podcast Newsroom by getting access to it at uncommonlymore.com/newsroom. It’s totally free. All you have to do is drop your email address in so that I can drop you the link to get the private exclusive feed. With that said,
Let’s talk about podcast descriptions.
This is going to be a quick and dirty one because I want you to take whatever time you would usually take to listen to the show, 15, 20 minutes and go in, and look at your podcast description because if you clicked on this episode because you were like, “Oh, I don’t know how often should I?” it means it’s probably been too long because your podcast description is actually a really, really, really important piece of your discoverability puzzle. The thing that we’re going to talk a lot more about next year is SEO in your podcast. Search engines are a critical part of discoverability when we talk about podcasts because every podcast platform—Amazon Music, Google Podcasts, I don’t even know if that’s still called that but I think it’s all in Google Play now, anyways, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Pandora, yeah, you can get podcasts on Pandora. You can get this podcast on Pandora, maybe, are you the one person that listens to this podcast on Pandora? Because there is one or two that I get—anyways, all of those are search engines. They’re Google, babe. They’re Google. We are doing ourselves a huge disservice if we’re not paying attention to that description because that description is keyword, love, babe. It is a search engine, goodness, keyword, real estate we want to make sure we’re using.
Unfortunately, the approach for most early podcasters, raising my hand while I say this out loud, is focused a bit more on cute, clever, and enticing. I get why. I think when we talk about copy, we’re often told that it either needs to be cute, clever, and enticing or SEO optimized. In reality, it needs to be able to both get in front of people and be attractive to them. You gotta have both parts. We often find that early podcasters lean heavily into the cute part or the clever part and less so into the, “How are my ideal customers talking about what I want to tell them in this show?” That’s what I want you to go through your podcast description with that perspective because you want to make sure you are getting discovered when they go in to ask the questions they’re asking. Are they looking for a business podcast? Are they looking for a relationship podcast? Are they looking for a design podcast? Are they looking for, “How do I get a better logo?” Start thinking about those.
Now, this podcast description is important but I want you to take the lessons that you get from working through that podcast description stuff and I want you to apply it to your episode descriptions too. For a lot of our clients, we include their time-stamped show notes into the actual podcast feed because now, we’ve been able to help guide a listener through whatever points they want to hear but also, we’ve lovingly and aesthetically shoved a bunch of keyboards in there. This description is not just for your overall show, but be paying attention to these same factors with your episode descriptions, with your episode show notes.
Use that real estate. It is valuable.
When you’re talking about your podcast description, I want you to focus on keywords that are going to help them identify, in general, what your show is about and who your show is for. If they’re searching for business podcasts for female entrepreneurs or mom advice for stay-at-home moms—or does anyone search mom advice? I’m trying to think, in the 13 years I’ve been a mom, how many times I’ve searched for mom advice. Very few—come up with better keywords than that, obviously, but be really clear about what your show is for and who your show is for. That’s what I want you to focus on. I think it’s really valuable to be checking in on your description once a year. This doesn’t need to be something that eats up all your attention all the time but as we’ve been this month going through our Q1 calls with our production clients, this is something we’ve talked about, we’ve touched on, “Hey, is there anything here that needs to be cleaned up?” This is something I’ll be doing in December. If you go look at the description right now, you may see a different one come the end of December because on my to-do list, as I wrap up my year, every year are some housekeeping things. That’s looking at my cover art. That’s thinking through my format. That’s looking at my description.
We’re going to talk more about that on The Podcast Newsroom in December’s episode, so again, make sure you’re able to tune into that but these housekeeping things need to be something you touch in on. If you’ve had your show, 6 months, 12 months, 18 months, 24 months and you’ve not touched it since launch, do it today. Go do it today. We’re going to make this one super short, we’re going to wrap us up here but I want you to go look at your podcast description. I want you to look at the clarity around what your show is for and who your show is for. Be using some of the terms that you use when you go and talk about your show on other podcasts. If you talk about things that are specific to your show, make sure that those things are somewhere in there so that if someone is searching something you’re known for or something you say on stage or in interviews a lot, they are more likely to find your show. Use your language but more importantly, use the language that they will use to find you. It’s really important.
By the by, this is a really great way to use those one hour consult strategy calls that we have up on the website. If you go to uncommonlymore.com, there’s an option for strategy sessions. This is a great way to use those sessions because we can work through this together. We can actually sit down and unpack what it is now, unpack what you need it to be, and rewrite those descriptions, review cover art. Do those things on those calls. It’s a great way to use those strategy calls. If you have any interest in doing that before we wrap up the year and I have any availability left, book one. Otherwise, get one on your calendar for January so that we can talk through this for you and your show. I hope you have a fantastic rest of your week. I will talk to you again—I’ll talk to you on The Podcast Newsroom tomorrow because of course, you’re signed up—but also I’ll talk to you here next week. Talk soon.
