Writing For Your Podcast with Shannon Kirk – Episode 75

[MUSIC IN – GHOSTHOOD FEATURING SARA AZRIEL “LET’S GO” BEGINS]

MARY: On the last episode, number 74, I talked a lot about what I learned from radio school for writing for the ear that really works for podcasting today. And to follow up with that idea, I thought I’d bring on my go to writing person for a lot of my podcasting work, Shannon Kirk.

We started working together almost a year ago now, in the late spring, of 2023, when I needed to expand my podcast production and consulting company’s work to include more writing. You know, from my own show that you’re listening to right now and also a lot of my clients episodes too. Of course, she writes the episode descriptions, comes up with the titles, makes sure that our show notes, blogs, and newsletters are all engaging to read, and double checks all the SEO power for organic growth. 

And the key thing when I hired Shannon, when I was looking for that writer, was that Shannon knew how to write for the voice. And this is what I always call writing for the ear. So many writers are great at say, like the academic side of writing. Um, they know great punctuation, they have their way with words. You know, I kind of like that last episode. I was talking about my high school friend, and she was kind of like the walking dictionary. I wasn’t looking for that type of writer because when it comes to podcasts, we tend to break a lot of rules in writing. So, I needed someone who could run with different podcast hosts voices.

In this episode, you’ll get a peek behind the scenes of our thought process for writing and how Shannon breaks down each step when she writes for podcasts. Shannon has always been an avid reader and writer, and after feeling uncertain about where to go with her liberal arts education, she completed a Journalism degree in Halifax in Canada. Though she didn’t ultimately pursue Journalism, that program opened her eyes up to all the ways she might make a living as a lover of words, and that spun off in a roundabout way into content management, where she got to fine tune her editing and strategy skills. 

Today, she works for herself as an editor and writer, collaborating with clients who have an eye on social change and the greater good, like me. So we make a really great team. The opportunity for her to work on podcasts with me, a medium that she has really enjoyed for years, was honestly a highlight of her career trajectory, she says so, learning so much, all while honing her ability to write in different voices about a wide range of topics. And yeah, I’ve been loving her work since we’ve been working together.

So today we’re talking writing for podcasting with my writer, Shannon Kirk on episode 75 of The Podcaster’s Guide to a Visible Voice.

<< WOMAN SINGS: So so so so let’s go >> 

MARY: Shannon, thank you so much for joining me. This is going to be fun because we hang out a few times here and there, since we live in the same city and we work together, but now we get to dive deep into our process and our work. So thanks for joining me.

SHANNON: Thanks for having me. It’s, uh, interesting to be on this side of the keyboard, or microphone.

MARY: Yes, exactly. Microphone and keyboard, I guess, for you, with all the writing that you do. So, just to give the listener an overview of how like, you and I work on podcast episodes. So I or one of the editors will edit the show first, whether it be a fully completed episode with the intro and outro intact, or it could be a draft version where it’s just the meat of the interview and there’s no intro and outro. Because, Shannon, you will write all the beautiful things you write, and then the host will take those pieces and use those words for their intro and outro and to tease the episode and stuff.

So, Shannon, you’ve gotten the audio. Now let’s picture that we finish editing it, pass it on to you. You’ve got it. And let’s just say for this particular client, you’ve got to write the title. The show notes blog newsletter. It feels for, like a podcaster, pretty overwhelming. There’s a lot to do here. So what do you do first to prep and get started?

SHANNON: Honestly, I dive right into listening to the episode. Sometimes there’s notes provided. Sometimes there’s a bit of an outline that I assume the host has used to create the episode around. And I glance at that if it’s there. But I find what works for me best is to just dive in and hear what they have to say. That’s what gets the mental juices flowing.

MARY: Yeah, I mean, I would recommend that too. To, um, clients who write their own stuff is okay, you’ve done the interview, but you were on the host side of things, so it’s nice to listen to it from a listener perspective, and then, you know, I’m sure, what kind of notes do you take?

SHANNON: Yeah, I can imagine it’d be really different and, uh, very difficult in some ways to write your own. There’s probably an advantage for me, coming from the outside of it. I take copious notes. I’ve always been one of those people who just highlights the whole textbook, which ultimately is the less helpful…

MARY: Yeah. Is that effective?

SHANNON: …theoretically, but it’s not effective at all in terms of the highlighting. Um, I take a lot of notes when I’m listening to the podcast episodes. I find that that’s better, honestly, kind of from a practical standpoint, because I would rather take too many notes in this case, because it’s not a matter of flipping a couple of pages back to follow up on something. It’s a matter if I didn’t take a note, and I vaguely remember what someone said, it’s trying to find it in the episode, right? 

MARY: Right.

SHANNON: Which is always going to take a long time. So for me, it works to, uh, take a lot of notes, but what I’m also trying not to do is create a transcript, because if I was going to create a transcript, I may as well just use the transcript. So, I guess I’ve actually been practicing, as I’ve been doing more and more of these, not taking as many notes, still taking enough, probably taking more than enough, but trying to be conscious of if the host or guest is reiterating a point, which is a totally excellent thing to do in the podcast, but isn’t something that I need to take double notes for. And also, uh, kind of trying to plot out what I might write about as I’m taking those notes.

MARY: With those notes, because you don’t want to write a transcript out, obviously, because we also have somebody else who writes out the transcript. So like, you don’t need to do that. You need to focus on the creative aspect of the writing. So the notes that you’re taking, is it just like bullet points, or is it like the highlighting, you know, since we don’t have a physical highlighter in this sense?

SHANNON: Yeah. So I’m a big bullet point fan. Like, I kind of said, I don’t want to take full paragraph or full sentence notes in terms of full sentences that the host or the guest actually said. The one case, the one exception where I am going to be taking exact notes based on exactly what the person is saying is the really excellent things. That sounds terrible. They say tons of excellent things, but there are always those snippets that are just so them or so impeccably phrased that I’m like, I’m not going to quote the host in the blog post because it’s their blog post, but there are certain things and certain ways that certain things are said that I want to repeat exactly in the blog post.

MARY: Yeah. Then you can also mark that as, oh, that is a possible clip that I can also use to pull from as the audio clip to use as like an audiogram or a marketing piece. Those are really handy as well, while you’re listening. So yeah.

SHANNON: So I should start timestamping my notes? Is that what you’re saying?

MARY: You don’t have to, but I think for a podcast host doing their own work, that would be really handy to start timestamping some of those. Not all the notes, obviously, but like, for those spots so that you can go back and, um, type it out word for word if you need to.

SHANNON: Absolutely. And I think that that’s actually probably a good example of where it would be a little bit more difficult writing your own versus me being someone coming in from the outside, because I think you probably hit that struggle of either you feel like maybe this is just me, but I feel like I’d listen to something I said or read something I wrote and think, this is all so so, or I read something I wrote and I think, gosh, this is just this gold. This is solid gold. There’s nothing I would cut. So, at least I’m coming in with that maybe a little bit more middle ground mindset, because, yeah, I can see it being difficult knowing what to parse as the host. Writing your own notes.

MARY: Yeah, I found that really difficult as well so, you know, like, I used to do all my own stuff, and then I was like, wait, I’ve got Shannon. Shannon can do all my writing. Um, but it is the same, right? You’re listening back. And for me, when you do this show notes portion or the writing for the blog or what have you, you do have to come at this from a listener perspective, because then you can start like, critiquing every little, single bit of what you’ve said, how you’ve said something, and it will just take you down a totally different tangent. But if you come from this from a listener perspective, so, like, someone who, like you, right? Like, you’re just listening to this, as a listener, you weren’t in the creation of the episode. 

And so that gives, I think, the host more freedom to think about this in terms of what will my listener get out of it? And then also, yeah, you’re right, because sometimes I’ll go back and be like, did I really say that? That was amazing. I actually said that. When did I say that? And I have to go back and listen to them. Like, I did say that. That is awesome, because you’re just saying things, right? You’re just off the cuff sometimes. So we talked a little bit about repurposing here. Like I was saying at the beginning, for example, you were writing the title, the show notes, blog, newsletter. A lot of those things are going to be repurposed because you’re not writing 100% from scratch. So what’s your take on repurposing?

SHANNON: The biggest thing that comes to mind for me with repurposing is something that I wanted to tack on when you were talking about the blog specifically, is that with the blog you have the option. It can be a summary of the episode, but it could also be kind of a standalone piece. There’s a potential there if I, or if the podcast host wants to turn it into something that could potentially be read in addition to listening to the podcast, not just instead of, or to double check something that you heard, right?

MARY: Right.

SHANNON: And that’s the big difference that I’ve noticed when I’m thinking of repurposing it for the show notes is that the blog doesn’t necessarily hit on everything, but for the show notes, which you do want to be, a little summary essentially of what they’re going to hear, followed by those wonderful bullet points that really drive home why you want to listen. I can’t always use the blog to make those show notes. I go back to my notes for those, because there might be something that I didn’t cover in the blog for whatever reason, time constraints, length constraints, just feeling like it worked way better in audio than it could ever work in writing. Well, especially for that reason. It’s something that absolutely needs to be in those show note bullet points.

MARY: Name an example of when it was way better in audio than it can be in writing. 

SHANNON: Oh gosh. The big thing that I tend to leave to the audio portion of this entire experience is the personal anecdotes, as long as they aren’t required for explanation of what the host is getting at. So there’s so many wonderful deep dives into the emotional, the deeply personal things that prompted the host or the guest to speak about whatever they’re speaking about. And I find that I tend to leave those to the episode. I mean, I admittedly do it a little bit because as much as I am writing, ghost writing, essentially, I am not them. And I don’t want to presume that even though I think I’ve got their voice down pretty well, I can put the emotion, I guess, behind it. So, yeah, I like to leave those parts to the audio specifically, but if they are covering a big portion of it, that’s definitely something that I’m going to want to include in a show note bullet.

MARY: And because the two platforms are very different, I always say that podcasting is so great because it’s such an intimate medium where you can share your stories, you can be a bit more vulnerable, and that totally just proves what I was saying where the blog post, it’s harder to come across with some of those emotional points when you’re just using the written word.

SHANNON: Yeah. And it’s not to say that the blog post can’t be impactful in its own way, but there’s definitely this added layer, like you say, of emotion when you’re hearing the voice, especially when someone is telling their own story.

MARY: Yeah, exactly. Okay. So then how do you approach how you differentiate between writing for each thing? Say like, do you start with the show notes and then blog post and then newsletter? And then like what, what’s that? I guess a hierarchy, kind of like, because you don’t want to just copy and paste everything, right? Like, that’s not going to be effective. So how do you approach writing for each different thing without having to like, write fresh things each and every time for each platform?

SHANNON: Yeah. So I do start with the blog. I’m still on the fence about whether that’s necessarily the best approach or the approach that I would recommend everybody do. And I would have to think about whether it would be different if you were writing your own blog post versus me writing it.

Like, if that’s a differentiator there, too. I find that writing the blog post is what I leaned into first, just because it’s the bulk of it, literally, words wise, not necessarily work wise even, but it’s the most words, it kind of gives me the most to play with. And it also lets me really figure out my thoughts about how I want to frame what has been said in the episode.

I think if I tried to do the show notes first, and actually, because there are some clients where I do only do the show notes, I do kind of have to switch the way that I think about it right from the start for this exact reason, because I find that the blog really helps me focus on what’s important and what needs to be said. And I might not again, say all of that in the blog because of what constraints, or like, we just talked about the emotion, but I’m hyper aware because I’m considering those things whether I write about them or not. And so then they’ve all been considered by the time I get to the show notes.

MARY: I like what you were saying about how you frame the blog post. So then I was wondering, well, then, how do you frame the blog post? Because as someone who doesn’t love writing, I’m all about speaking. And I know like, many podcasters, when they start, they essentially just copy the show notes, paste it onto a blog post, throw in the embed code, for the player, and they’re done for the day. Like, that’s their blog post. But what we’re talking about here is an actual full, written out blog post of the episode. So how do you frame blog posts that would be effective?

SHANNON: So this definitely plays into learning to actively listen right from the start. I definitely, when I started this project with you or these projects, I was thinking, okay, so listening will be like the quick, easy part. It’ll literally just be whatever amount of time the episode is. I listen to it, I make my notes, and then it’s like into the meat.

And what I’ve learned is that, that doesn’t work at all if I just passively listen. Like, I couldn’t walk to the store listening to the episode and then come back and write the blog post. It’s very, very active listening. Like, it’s actually as much work as writing the blog post because it’s very, very active thinking. I’m kind of fleshing out the blog post in my head.

So I do have templates for every single client, and that has helped a lot. I would definitely say that anyone who’s creating blog posts or even show notes for their own podcast have a template that they refer back to just with what they want.

And obviously, if it’s their own, they can tweak it as they go. But I plug in things to each template or to a template when I’ve made my notes. So I know that I want to cover. I think I’ve pretty much got it to three main things. I mean, three is a magic number… 

MARY: Yes

SHANNON: …in a million ways, for a million reasons, we know. So, uh, three seems to be a good way to go. So whether that’s, there’s an intro in there as well, of course. But then whether that’s a general idea of what prompted the episode is a good first point, usually followed by the specifics, followed by the actionable tip is kind of like a basic go to format I would use for a blog post.

MARY: Yeah. Because we want someone who’s listening or reading the blog post to take some sort of action. So there’s always going to be a call to action of some sort, whether that’s go listen to the full episode, or I have a program that you can learn more about this, click here, sort of thing. Yeah. Having those templates are really, really, handy, especially for us where we’ve got so many clients and they all want something slightly different. So those templates would be great for just organizational sake when you’re doing your own show.

SHANNON: Absolutely, yeah. And so to fill them in what I have started doing, I find I do this more with podcasts that I am just doing the show notes for, but I do practice it a little bit with ones I’m writing a blog post for, which is in addition to taking the notes, I’m bolding things that I want to be show note bullets, or that I think would make an excellent headline or an excellent section. And also I found, from a very practical standpoint, bolding or underlining anything that will require a link insertion, whether that’s a mention of a previous episode or a mention of a book that they read or a specific person they’re referring to. And all of those really help me when I come and I sit down in front of this template and I start building it out.

MARY: I love it. I think a lot of the time when I was doing stuff on my own, it was just all in my head. And then every now and then, I forgot something. I was like, oh, right. So if I had a template, that would have helped me a lot, but now I just have you, so I love it.

SHANNON: Yeah, totally. I mean, the template only goes so far too, especially when we’re talking about show notes. Like, you really do need to, upon relistening or listening to that episode, think about the most salient things. And then the next step is figuring out how to deliver those bullets in a way that keeps the or that makes the listener really want to listen. Because we’ve definitely gone back and forth about that before, where it’s be like discover, and then I just give away the farm. Oh, wait, you know, it’s better actually to be like, discover how to do this, or find out why it’s important to do this, or learn the three secrets around this. And those are great ways to hook a reader. It’s kind of like audio SEO.

MARY: Yeah, exactly. I always like to call it like the teaser. You know, if someone were to read this, would they go, oh, I do want to learn about that, or, ooh, that does seem really relevant and important. I need to know more. I’m going to click play. So those headers and those bullet points are really the ignition for someone to go, I’m going to hit that play button right now. But then, okay, now that we’ve gotten sort of like the framework, when people think about writing, they’re always thinking about, oh, that’s not like the proper way to write things. Or in my world, it really is about theater of the mind. So how you say something is how I am going to write it, because that’s what I learned in radio school, that’s something that I talked about in my last episode, in episode number 74, is that writing for the ear is very, very different than writing for like, a blog post or a thesis or, I don’t know, your proper grammar writing. Right? Um, I think you’ve called it, like, dialogue-esque writing. So how do you switch from people who are, like, grammatical, you know, proper English to more less formal, but still effective writing?

SHANNON: It’s an interesting thing to think about coming from, like, you come from the audio side, and I very much come from the writing side, that I always think about it as yeah, dialogue-esque writing, which I’ve called it at some point, but really, you’re very rarely unless you’re writing, I guess, a script for a play. You’re probably not going to put those, um, you probably won’t even use something like ellipses unless you’re really, really making point, even if it is literally a dialogue between two people that you are writing. So, there definitely is a difference. And I don’t think that you need to lose that feeling of dialogue, of, I’m going to say speakerly writing, which I’m not sure I actually like that, but we’ll go with that. You don’t need to lose that by removing the pieces that you might put in for a script to be read on radio, you don’t have to have those to keep a dialogue-esque flow within the writing. So while I’m embracing the voice of a certain client, I’m not putting in ellipses and ums and you know, the word giggle with asterisks around it or something like that. Pause for laughter, right?

MARY: Right.

SHANNON: But it is definitely still very possible to depict the voice of the person who is speaking. And that goes, for me, writing for that person or for someone writing their own notes without putting in those pieces, like those filler words, for example, that are so important to audio, but honestly, would be jarring and possibly confusing if they were in text.

MARY: Yeah, I think like, all that stuff that you talked about is more for a transcript. But say, if you’re writing out the episode description, how do we write it? So when we’re looking at it to edit, it’s not just going to be looking for grammatical things. Say, if we have that first draft, how do we edit so that it’s more for voice?

SHANNON: The biggest thing that comes to mind for me for that, is to not remove the you-isms of the speaking. And I guess there’s kind of a line you need to find between the you-isms that are, for me it’s a lot of pauses, a lot of saying, like, um, maybe some ums, nervous giggles. So there’s those things that can be taken out, but there’s also me-isms that I would want to leave in, such as, liking to use particular vocabulary, say, or if I say totally or awesome as an adjective, a lot, as opposed to fantastic or wonderful.

And it may come naturally when you’re trying to write for your own podcast. Or it could be really hard because you could call all of it into question. But I think the trick is really to not change those. And that’s really an editor. You said editing, and that’s really what it is. Like, I had a fellow editor say the other day that when you’re writing something that has a lot of notes from the client or this, like, it has a literal podcast that I am writing from, it really is editing, almost, not even writing, because you are taking what’s already there and you’re turning it into something else.

MARY: Uh right, I never even thought of it that way.

SHANNON: Yeah, I hadn’t either. And I thought that was a very cool way to look at it. So I asked him if he was just an editor or also a writer, and this was his answer. And it really applies to the podcast because, yeah, you are editing. So you need to limit yourself in making those assumptions that you know better. So it’s always a struggle in editing, right? To correct what is grammatically wrong or what is not understandable in the way that it’s written versus what you would just say differently.

So I think even when you’re writing your own show notes or your own blog post, there’s so much opportunity to question everything that you said, but some of it is just the way you would say it. So those are the things that are important to leave in to get that dialogue-esque sense, that sense that it is you who is talking, even though it’s writing.

MARY: Yeah, exactly. I mean, I know you do this with our clients. Like, each of our clients has a very specific voice, meaning they have those, um, isms, right? So, uh, one client’s always like, let’s dig in. What’s my gold nugget? Right? She always says, gold nugget. And so when I see that in your writing, for whether it’s her blog post or her newsletter, I’m like, oh, that is so that host, that is what they say. And so, that is such a key point, is that, you know, if it’s what you say, then you should really leave that in there.

SHANNON: Exactly. Those are also really fun to spin off of. So you could, you know, talk about mining because they use the term gold nugget.

MARY: I know, I know, so good.

SHANNON: I have a lot of fun with those.

MARY: So good when I read those, because we’re in our own offices. Right. So when I get that from you, and I’m like a little giggle.

SHANNON: Aha, that’s good. That’s what I’m going for. I hope that the hosts are feeling the same way or feeling heard.

MARY: Yeah, exactly right. That is me. That is my voice is what we’re aiming for when we do this work. Okay, so what about like, when we’re not in the mood to write? Maybe whatever we’re writing down is like, uh this is not right. This is not me. I don’t normally talk like this. What is going on here? Or maybe I just have no ideas on how to reword whatever I had just said on the podcast. And because in the, say, show notes, in the description of the, uh, episode, we want to distill it all down to just like a couple of sentences, right? So how do you get from a long podcast episode, from 30 minutes, an hour, how do you distill that down to those few short sentences?

SHANNON: So my approach, after a few and really, really sweating over the show notes, and I feel like maybe taking as long on them as I did on the blog post and realizing this is, it’s all right here, why am I making such a mountain out of this molehill? Is to take my introduction and my conclusion, and I literally copy and paste those into the show notes section of my document, and I work with those.

This is both helpful because that’s usually where the summarizing would be, especially considering you’re going to do those bullet points that are going to get into the little bit more nitty gritty side. But also, it has interestingly helped me before realize that I need to rework my introduction in the blog post or rework my conclusion, because I throw it in my show notes and I take a look at it, and I go, I feel like this still is not the crux of this episode.

Then I have to go, wait a minute. If it’s not the crux of the episode, then that’s a problem with the intro to the blog as well. But that’s where I usually start, is I take the intro and the conclusion, and I work with those to create the show notes description.

MARY: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that makes sense. I like that because, yeah, sometimes, you know, people have writer’s block. They think, what was the whole thing? I don’t know. I know. I just listened to it and I have notes. But how do I sum this up? So I love that idea of, you’re not going to sum up the whole thing because you’ve already done a bit of that. You’re just going to sum up the intro and the outro, the conclusion, but then you still have to come up with something for the title at this point. How do you spark ideas for that?

SHANNON: Titles have always been something that I struggle with. When I was considering going into newspaper, that was one of the big things in school that I was like, I can’t do newspaper. Everything’s on a deadline. And, I mean, I’m stuck on the title for 45%, 75% of the time that I’m supposed to have this. A keyword is always where to start. Our clients, they almost always have a pretty darn good, if not excellent, working title thought out. Or maybe that’s yours. I don’t know who to give that credit to, but I’m definitely always playing off of that. But there should always be a keyword. I think if you struggle to find one to three keywords that describe your episode, then your episode probably isn’t as focused as it maybe needs to be. I’ll let you decide that, though.

MARY: Uh, yeah.

SHANNON: Identifying one to three keywords that describe your episode is definitely the place to start for a title, because at the end of the day, it is SEO. I mean, you want it to be engaging, you want it to be catchy. You want it to be quote, unquote clicky without being…

MARY: Clickbaity.

SHANNON: …exactly, although clickbait is sometimes lying, so I hesitate to use that term. But, um, yeah, so you want it to accurately and interestingly depict what they’re about to listen to.

MARY: So are you going more for SEO here versus something catchy and fun? Right. Because I think maybe that’s what people are worried about when they’re like, I’m not really creative. This doesn’t sound good.

SHANNON: A simple title is okay a lot of the time. So if your title is how to get over your fear of public speaking, it’s telling them what to expect.

MARY: Yeah, totally.

SHANNON: It’s indicating exactly what they’re going to learn. I think that that is completely fine. I also definitely know that people might read that and think that’s really boring. And I think the boring part is where maybe your own spin, your own flair, that dialogue-esqueness, again comes into it. Because I think from an SEO perspective, something like how to. I don’t remember what I just said. How to get better at public speaking is excellent. It’s concise, it has your keyword.

MARY: It’s what somebody is going to plunk into Google.

SHANNON: Exactly. And that’s basically how I always describe SEO in general, is think about what someone’s going to be searching, but there’s definitely a lot of space for having more fun with it. I know titles can get really long, especially if you’re going to be including the name of the person you’re speaking to or something like that. And I don’t think that that’s necessarily a bad thing. Obviously, depending on where they’re going to show up or which platform, there’s probably best practices for that.

For podcasts specifically. I guess I’m assuming that the title of your blog is going to be the same as the title of your podcast, and I assume that there’s some space for that not being the case too, being able to name your blog something that isn’t exactly what your podcast episode is.

But yeah, I would say short and sweet and to the point is totally acceptable. Having more fun with it is potentially going to engage more people. There’s no question about that.

MARY: Yeah, I always go with SEO more than anything else. And for like podcasting wise, I always recommend to clients if they have a guest, put the guest name at the end, because a lot of apps truncate the title, so you only see the first bit of it. And most guests that you bring on aren’t well known enough that you know, they want to see that name right off the top. They want to know what you were saying. The keywords, your keywords should be right off the bat. Unless your guest is world renowned and famous, then yeah, you might want to put them right off the top of the beginning of the title.

SHANNON: Absolutely. I mean, like you said, if it gets truncated, if they are looking for the guest, they’re going to be searching for the guest. So they’re going to find it even if it’s cut off. So yes, definitely centering those keywords or front loading those keywords is the way to go.

MARY: You know, sometimes we look for inspiration. Like if it could be like titles, it could be how the overall sound of the show is, doesn’t matter. Whenever we look for inspiration, we always look at other shows and listen to them.

For the writing side, though, you know, it still boggles my mind sometimes that some shows barely have any show notes. And for me, show notes is really important because for my world, I like to have show notes being the description of the episode, bullet points of important takeaways, links for things that you mentioned. You know, these are all things that we had talked about but I know not everybody follows that sort of a format.

But I love them because I know it’s useful for a, SEO for those podcast listening apps, but also because as a listener myself, I go to these show notes and I wonder maybe like, oh, what was that book that they talked about? Or oh, they mentioned this amazing tool. What was that again? It’s all there on my phone, and I can go back and reference it on my listening app because they’ve put the show notes on their show description in the episode and it’s there.

And I know not everybody uses the show notes, but I think it makes for a really nice companion as a great listening experience for the listener. And so that’s my little soapbox of what I can’t believe a lot of people don’t even bother putting their show notes. I mean, that’s just a copy and paste onto the listening app, onto your distribution page. Um, so what have you seen in the podcasting writing landscape that makes you go like uh and cringe?

SHANNON: So I’m going to be honest, I don’t read the show notes a lot of the time, but I will say that specifically the resources that you mentioned, including the links to things that were talked about on the episode, that I think I agree is so important. And there has been a few times where I’ve listened and I’ve gone, oh, right, okay, they talked about that one book. The person’s name or the book title was fairly generic. So I need some more info. Where’s that link? And it’s not there. Even if they have resources, they’ve for some reason skipped that one or skipped a few. And that boggles my mind as well. So it’s just like, it would be so easy to just have that one in there. And if it’s stuck in my mind, you obviously talked about it, so where is it? 

The other thing would be titles, because like I said, those descriptions themselves, I think, go a long way to me finding the podcasts I want when I search. But I don’t look at them specifically. But what I do, I scroll through their list of episodes because there’s one I wanted to re listen to or one that I wanted to recommend or share to a friend.

And sometimes I can’t find it because it goes back to those keywords again. Because those keywords, the things that make it stick out in my mind, aren’t in the title or aren’t in the part of the title that isn’t cut off.

So that is something that frustrates me when I’m, well, the goal of any podcaster of course, is to be talked about and shared and relistened to. So that just kind of puts an extra stress on how important that making the point that you wanted to make early on in that title is so important.

MARY: And I feel like it’s also one of those points where it’s you know, like you don’t judge a book by its cover, but in this case, I judge a lot about the episode I’m going to hit play on based on the title. Because if the title doesn’t interest me, I mean, it doesn’t even have to grab me. It doesn’t have to be like attention seeking, but if it doesn’t have those keywords that I’m looking for, then I’m not going to even bother hitting play on it.

SHANNON: And that’s very true. I do that, too. If it’s a new podcast that I haven’t listened to many episodes of yet, and they have a huge backlog.

MARY: Yeah. And then you’re just going to scroll through and be like, oh, this one looks interesting because of the title, and then you hit play, right?

SHANNON: Exactly. And everyone’s going to have different know. If it’s like a science podcast, obviously everyone isn’t going to want to listen to the one on molluscs, but if you can snag as many people as you can, then that’s ideal.

MARY: I do want to listen to the one on molluscs. We’re going to have to have a sidebar about that. [LAUGHTER]

Shannon, it’s been fun to hang out with you yet again. So, as you know, because you listen to my podcast and help write my show notes and stuff, the one question I always close off with all of my guests, what are you excited about podcasting right now?

SHANNON: I think the thing that excites me the most, and this is relatively vague, but it’s just the vast range of topics that are and that can be, that have the potential to be covered in the podcasting realm. I have been made aware of so many things that I would never have known about and so many topics that I would never have thought I was interested in, like the science, for example, or the economy, just by the sheer number of unbelievably talented podcast creators that are out there just creating what’s important to them. So that’s only going to continue to expand, and I’m so excited for it.

MARY: Oh, yeah, I know, me too. It’s like there’s so many things that we can learn right at our fingertips now that you know, we all have devices attached to our hip. So, yeah, um, I’m going to learn about molluscs next, I think. [LAUGHTER]

SHANNON: I highly recommend it. Okay.

MARY: Thanks again, Shannon.

[MUSIC IN]

SHANNON: Thank you so much. It’s great.

MARY: Um, molluscs. Okay. Yes. If you’re geeky like Shannon and I, then definitely check out Ologies with Ali Ward. She said this was probably the episode that she was referring to, and it was recommended to me as well from, uh, my graphic designer, Emily Johnston. She was talking about Ologies. I don’t know if she was talking about the mollusk episode specifically, but Ologies. For sure with Ali Ward. And this episode is actually about snails and slugs, and it was from 2018. So we’re going to put that one in the show notes because I know some of you are geeky, just like us, so you get to listen to that one, too, if you have not yet. And you know what? Even for me, who, side note, I had a long fear of slugs, which is a long story for another day. But yet this episode really captivated me. I love her use of audio, too. Such an amazing topic. Ologies with Ali Ward. Definitely check that one out. 

To wrap up from the episode, we talked a bit about titles, so I used to write them before I had Shannon. Come on. Before I recorded the intro and outro. And I felt like that creative spark was delaying the production of the episode, making things very last minute because I kept delaying recording the intro, outro because I didn’t have a title yet because I needed to record the title in my into. But did I? Did I really need to do that?

So now with Shannon in the mix, I don’t bother knowing what the title is first before recording my intro because it really doesn’t matter. You have your keywords, you have the theme of the episode, so you go with that in your intro, the written title. Like she says, it’s really more for SEO. So, that’s great for the reader and for, like, Google searches. But for the audio side of things, you don’t have to say your title and include it in your intro. It’s nice to have. Definitely, if you do have it, then put that in your work process. But for me, I think it was just like the thing that was keeping me from producing an episode. The title of all things was holding me back. 

So now when you listen to my episodes, you actually don’t hear the title. And if you’re a longtime listener, did you actually notice the difference when I changed things up in the intro? Let me know if you actually heard the difference or not with the title. And do you actually miss hearing the title? My bet is that no, you don’t miss hearing the title because I still talk about the keywords, right?

And I still mention the episode number because that does come in handy when listeners still know what they’re listening to based on your theme or guest name. And the episode number is there for handy reference. And also, a great reminder from Shannon about active listening. This is what I mean when I say you’ll listen back to your show, to the episode, and to listen to it from a listener perspective, not critical of your own voice and how you sound. But what was said? How was that question asked? Was there flow with the story that you mapped out beforehand with your show prep? What was the enticing bit of the whole episode? Where do you want to make a note for show notes? What points do you want to include in your intro and outro?

Active listening is really important to growing your show and the constant work it takes to create something you’re proud of. So yeah, like for this episode, for my outro, I wanted to talk about molluscs, titles and active listening. So those are the three things I’m going to put it here and that’s how I come up with my outro. So just another little insight into why it’s great to listen back to your episode for that active listening piece, it helps you create your show. 

So if you’re looking for more support with your podcast, whether that’s podcast strategy and how you are doing with your workflow right now, or it be tackling the writing side or editing and managing your show, let’s have a chat to see how we can collaborate. You can drop me an email visiblevoicepodcast@gmail.com and we’ll get started from there.

So on the next episode, we’re going to go from podcasts to audiobooks, the next big thing in the audio industry, and how audiobooks can teach us a thing or two about podcasting. So tune in.

[MUSIC IN // OUTRO – SHOW CLOSE]

<< Ghosthood Featuring Sara Azriel “Let’s Go” BEGINS >>

MARY: Thank you so much for listening to the podcaster’s guide to a Visible Voice. If you enjoyed this episode, I’d love it if you share it with a podcasting friend. And to reveal more voicing and podcasting tips, click on over to VisibleVoicePodcast.com. Until next time.

<< WOMAN SINGS: Let’s go >>

[MUSIC ENDS]