When it comes to understanding the importance of show notes for your podcast, it’s best to think of them as a crucial part of your podcasting workflow. Creating show notes for your episode is just as important as publishing the episode itself. They provide great SEO value for your podcast website, and they give listeners the extra details on both the episode and your guest.
Despite their crucial role, many podcasters struggle with creating consistent show notes due to lack of time or because they simply don’t know what to include in the show notes themselves. Unfortunately, the lack of show notes can often stop a podcaster from really maximizing the opportunity to reach more listeners. However, podcasters that do overcome these challenges and create good show notes, benefit in so many different ways.
Summarize Your Episodes
Your podcast show notes act as a great summary and introduction to your show. They can welcome in new listeners, and give them a better idea of the topics that are covered. The show notes can provide a quick and easily digestible format for newcomers to scan through without having to commit to listening to a whole episode right off the bat.
This way they can either to persuade someone to listen or remind a previous listener about exactly what was covered. In a manner, the summaries can help your listeners keep track of the show over time, keeping up with the topics as a great review. Overall, the summary makes the content more accessible and hits all the main points to draw your listeners into the great content within.
Repurpose Great Content
Once you have your show notes written, it can be a great resource to repurpose the content from your episodes. Each introduction and summary section can be used as the podcast description in iTunes, making your work easier and more efficient. Publishing podcast episodes regularly can make it hard to find the time to blog. Luckily, the show notes content can also act as a great outline for a future article for your podcast blog or website, to dive deeper into a specific topic.
The show notes can also double as a newsletter to send out to your listeners as a reminder to listen to the episode or as a resource for important links mentioned in the show. Another great use for the show notes is that they make the content a lot easier to share; for both listeners and your guest. Sending your guest a copy of the show notes can help them to have access to the information and share it out with their audience as well.
SEO & Content Promotion
If you’ve heard it once, you’ll hear it again; written content has a lot more SEO benefits than audio content. Having your show notes published alongside the audio podcast will enable your content to be searchable and improve your ranking in Google. Just like with writing a blog post, you can add keywords to your podcast show notes to improve the content’s SEO value.
Use your SEO-optimized podcast title as your post’s headline and, as mentioned before, the description becomes your intro content. Essentially, the show notes become smaller, bite-sized pieces of content which allow for an easier promotion, like sharing on social media platforms and sending it on to your listeners. When your content is more searchable and easier to promote it opens up the doors for you to attract new listeners.
Expand on Details
Every episode of your podcast contains a tonne of information, including links, guest contact information, and more. When you are listening to an episode, it is easy for listeners to miss important details. Having the show notes right alongside the episode allows your listeners to go back and review the key points and any information they may have missed.
This also gives you the opportunity to dive into greater detail, providing extra information about guest or even additional resources that are a complementary addition to the episode itself. This also opens up the conversation for your listeners to jump in and explore the topic in further detail, and for you to gather more information to again, repurpose the original podcast episode content can create something even more valuable for your audience.
Create A Valuable Resource
Often times, when you have a podcast that is focused on a particular niche your audience will tend to have similar questions time and again. Instead of constantly having to answer these same questions, you can direct your listeners to old episodes or even places where you may have linked important resources. Essentially, your podcast show notes will become the hub for all things discussed on your podcast, including those crucial links that your listeners are looking for.
Often times, podcasters as their guest the same string of questions like what their favorite app, tool, or book is to recommend. As the podcast host, you have the chance to naturally bring up your favorite resources in the conversation and then link to them in your show notes. This is a great way to gather even more incredible resources in one place. Eventually, this can be turned into a valuable resource that you can bundle into a package to offer to new listeners who join the show.
