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The Audacity to Podcast® - tips and how to start and grow profit in podcasting
421. When to AVOID Podcast Episode Numbers
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Here's when to not use Episode Numbers with your Podcast. Thank you for joining me for the Audacity to podcast. I'm Daniel J. Lewis, following up from my previous episode number 420 about when to use episode numbers with your podcast, Here are five times and places to not use episode numbers before you listen to this episode, please please make sure that you've already listened to my previous episode number 420, because that lays a lot of the foundation that I'll be building on for this episode. So in the previous episode I told you when to use episode numbers. This one is when to not use them. And you can follow along in the notes for this episode. A simple tap or swipe away or look at the chapters for this episode and here we go. Number one don't use episode numbers when they would not matter to your audience. This should be the obvious thing. When episode numbers do matter to your audience, do use episode numbers and use those episode numbers prominently because they matter to your audience. That's so much of what I covered in my previous episode where I talked about using episode numbers for serial podcasts. If frequently referencing other episodes for file and folder organization, and when you can't come up with a better episode URL, go back and listen to episode 420 for more information about each of those. But if your episode numbers don't actually matter to your audience, so your podcast is not a serial podcast, it's not intended to be consumed in a particular order, or you're not frequently referencing other episodes, then you probably don't need episode numbers because your audience probably doesn't need them in those cases. So then don't use them. Or if you do use them, if you really, really want to use episode numbers in your titles when your audience doesn't actually need them, then use those episode numbers at the end of your titles. But if your audience does need them, use them front loaded in your titles. But for most podcasts out there, I think episode numbers really don't matter to the audience. So if they don't matter, they shouldn't matter to you either. Don't use them in your titles. Number two Avoid episode numbers when they conflict with your episode titles or else reword your titles. Consider this if you start a lot of your episodes with a number, and whenever you're using a number inside your episode titles, I do recommend you use the numeral instead of spelling out the number. Like use the number 5 instead of F I v e because the number is a lot easier to see and numbers in titles can Be very good things like five best cream sodas or 10 steps to success or three ways to bake a Cake. Those can be really good titles. It's one of the really effective ways to title blog posts, articles, podcast episodes, YouTube videos, and much, much more. So that is a good format to follow. But if you use episode numbers and you're displaying them prominently in your titles, because those episode numbers matter to your audience, and that's the only time you should be displaying them prominently in your episode titles, then you run into a conflict because then you've got two numbers right next to each other that mean completely different things. So take that example of five best cream sodas and. And maybe it's episode 20. So then it looks like it says 20.5 best cream sodas. So is this a half episode? Are you talking about 20 and a half best cream sodas, or is it something else? A title like that makes your audience have to think and read it again. And that's not a good thing to make your audience have to reread the title multiple times in order to understand what the title is actually saying. When you're faced with a situation like that, and especially if you're doing that kind of title many times, then you might not want to use episode numbers after all, or consider rewording your title. So instead of five Best Cream Sodas, you could take that word best and move that to the beginning of the title. So instead of five Best Cream Sodas, it's Best five Cream Sodas or Top five Cream Sodas. That's a way that you can put a word in front of the number that's in your title. Then when you add the episode number in front of that, it will be easier to see. So then it would be 20 period space best 5 cream sodas instead of 20.5 best cream sodas. It makes the title a lot more clear, easier to understand, and yet it's still a good title. But you should avoid putting those numbers next to each other when they start to conflict and maybe confuse your audience. Audience. Even if you do different things like using the word episode, which I don't recommend in your episode titles, or if you use a pound sign or a hyphen or a colon or any of those punctuations to try and separate the episode number from the rest of the title, I still think you're going to run into visual confusion and conflict when you're combining multiple numbers in the same small space. So avoid those episode numbers when they might conflict with your episode titles or Else, reword your titles. Number three. Don't use the episode's own number within that episode. This takes some strategy and some careful planning, but then again, also it saves you from having to overthink certain things. Because when you're inside the episode speaking the episode, if you say that episode's own number, then you've locked that episode to that episode number. What happens if you're prerecording several episodes in advance and then you decide you want to reorder the episodes? Well, you've already spoken the episode number within those episodes, so now it's going to be strange if those episodes are not in that order that you've spoken the number in the episodes or the text that's in the metadata and the title of the episode starts to conflict with what's in the episode itself, further confusing your audience. If they see the title says episode 100, but they hear you saying welcome to episode 105, then they'll be confused. And it might be a little bit embarrassing for you because then your audience thinks, ew, they didn't plan this very well. Or maybe they made a mistake when they recorded this or titled their episode. Is this really episode 105? Or is this episode 100? I don't know anymore. See, again, you're making your audience have to think about it when they shouldn't have to, or you're outright confusing your audience. So if you can, don't say the episode zone number within the episode. This is one of the reasons why I recommend using something else other than the episode number for the URL of that episode. Like I covered this in my previous episode number 420, where I said come up with something else. But if you really can't come up with a better URL, go ahead and use the episode number. But if you speak that episode number in the episode, even if you're saying like for this episode, I do know that this will be episode 421, but what if I didn't and I said you can get the notes@the audacitytopodcast.com421, then I've locked this episode to that number, even if nowhere else in the episode do I say the number and it can get confusing when the URL that you're speaking doesn't match the actual episode number that you have used in the metadata for the episode. So don't use your episode numbers in those cases and don't use it in any way that you are speaking in the episode, because that locks you to that episode number. And this can come up too. Even if you don't expect to change the order of your episodes. What if you suddenly decide, oh, there's some late breaking information and I need to squeeze that in? Then do you start thinking about like should it be a half number episode, like 20.5 or one of those weird things? Or should you call it a bonus episode or a special episode? It starts to get weird because you've locked yourself into certain episode numbers. But if you didn't speak the episode numbers within those episodes, simply rename the files, change the metadata information about the episodes and publish them when they're supposed to be published. And your audience won't know that you had squeeze in or reorder your episodes or anything like that because you never spoke those numbers for that episode within its own audio. But it's fine to speak the episode numbers for other episodes. Like I've said multiple times, go back and listen to episode 420 because that episode is already published, so its episode number is not going to change. Therefore I can refer to it with absolute knowledge that it will always be numbered as 420 and you can go back to it at any point in the future and find episode 420 and it will be the same episode because it's a past episode, but for this current episode. What if I wanted to sneak something else in? What if I was prerecording this and change the order? That's why you should not use episode numbers within that episode's own audio number. 4. Don't use the episode numbers in the website, social or SEO titles. The website Think of it this way. When you're on the website looking at an episode, if you want to jump to another episode, from there you simply click the link. You don't have to go searching for episode number whatever, you just simply click the link. And if your audience wants to get the notes from your episode that you're currently giving your audience, they shouldn't have to go searching for an episode number because whatever URL you've spoken in the episode should take them straight to that episode on your website. And make sure, by the way, if you ever change website platforms or domains or anything like that, make sure any URL you've spoken, that is your own URL. Make sure that always works for forever and ever. As long as your podcast is online, make sure any of your own URLs that you've spoken still continue to work. That way your audience can jump straight to that webpage for your episode, and from there they can click on anything else. They should not have to search your website for whatever episode they're currently listening to to get the notes for that episode. It should be really easy to get those notes. And a side note, a special way that you can make this easier also that's compatible with many podcast apps, is to ensure that whatever is creating your podcast RSS feed that you set the permalink for that episode to be that episode's webpage. That way, in some podcast apps like Podcast, even Apple Podcasts, you can click on a link or tap on the link that says episode webpage and it takes you to that web page, even if you've never spoken the URL for that web page within the episode. But I do recommend that you speak it, because if someone's listening a year from now, how are they going to find that episode? Or if you've given them an episode number, then you are forcing them to try to search through your site. And if your numbers are not obvious on your website, then it's becoming difficult. But if you put the numbers on your website, then people who view your website see those episode numbers and they don't need to. It's that weird kind of circular thing. I know it sounds kind of circular. It just clutters things on your website when you really don't need those episode numbers. And especially on social networks, probably no one cares on social networks when you're publishing your new episode that it's number 67 or I mean, these days, yeah, six, seven. Someone would probably care about that, but they probably don't really care what the number actually is. They just want a title. They want some compelling information for why they should listen to this episode and the episode number is not compelling information. And definitely, even if you want to put your episode number in the title that displays on the webpage, when someone is on your site, like the post title in WordPress, definitely do not let that episode number go out into your SEO title. This is sometimes an additional title field that you have control over. Like in WordPress, you might use the all in One SEO plugin, which is what I recommend, or you might use the Yoast SEO plugin or some other plugin that gives you more control over the search engine optimization, that's what SEO stands for of your website. And one of the ways it does this is giving you more control over the SEO title. That is the title that displays when your page shows up in search results. It's also usually the default title that gets shared out onto social networks. So that's why I said the social title Some other tools will let you set specific titles for social networks. Like Social Warfare is a plugin that I've used for years on my WordPress websites, and it allows me to set what the Open Graph title is. And that's the title that would embed in places like X and LinkedIn and Facebook and some other social networks. When that episode URL is shared out, then it would automatically embed this little preview of the page. And that social title should not have an episode number in it because when the episode is shared out onto social networks or it shows up in search engine results, the number does not matter at all. It's totally wasting space there. I know some people will say that episode numbers waste space inside podcast apps, and I got some good feedback on my previous episode where even some people were saying initially I was thinking, no, never display the episode number because it's just wasting space. But then they heard some of the reasoning behind that and why I've changed my own mind. And some of my listeners have said, yeah, that actually changed my mind too. And that does make sense. Still don't like to see it, but that does make sense what you're saying and that does seem like a good use for it. Well, you're concerned about wasting characters inside the podcast app, but that number is very helpful if you inside a podcast app, but it's not helpful on your website, on social networks, or in search engine results. And so make sure your episode number does not display in those places. And then number five, don't use episode numbers in the itunes title tag. This is a very specific tag inside your RSS feed and you can learn more about how to properly display episode numbers with your titles and take advantage of the proper RSS tags. In my previous episode number 359, it's linked in the chapter right now. Or you can look at the notes for this episode to find the link to episode 359 or just scroll back and find episode 359. But if you use the iTunes title tag and you have separate control over that from your normal title as it appears in your RSS feed, and that's the way it should be that those two titles are different from each other. Do not put the episode number in there. Even if episode numbers are important to your podcast, they should never be in the itunes title tag. Apple has been very clear about that. The whole point of that tag is to give a clean title that does not have the name of your podcast, it does not have the episode number it does not have the season number, it does not have any other metadata in it, it has only the title. And There's a separate iTunes episode tag, and that's where the episode number should go. But your normal title tag, that's just title in the RSS feed can have an episode number in it. And you should be using a publishing tool that lets you populate these two differently or does it for you automatically. And unfortunately, some of the podcast publishing tools from providers that I highly respect and normally recommend, sometimes they don't do this the smart way. They'll either give you multiple title fields to fill out with without really explaining why you would want one or the other, or they are copying the exact same title from one field to the other. Therefore, you're either breaking the rules by putting an episode number in the itunes title field, or you're missing out on backwards and cross compatibility by not having an episode number in the normal title field. And that's if the episode number is important to your audience. If it is, it needs to be in that normal title tag, but it should not be in the itunes title tag. That is only for the title. The normal title tag can be fine to include an episode number in it and even season number and some of the other stuff that sometimes people put in their titles. But the itunes colon title tag should be only the title, no episodes in it. Go back to my episode 359 to learn a lot more detail about how to display episode numbers and some different ideas of ways you can display some episode numbers in your podcast episodes. Just keep in mind that my recommendation for when and when to not use episode numbers has changed since that episode, and that's what this episode and my previous episode are all about. When to use episode numbers and when to not use episode numbers. A little bit of follow up from my previous episode. I mentioned the feedback that I got from some people who were initially in disagreement with my recommendations, but then started to come around as they started to think about how they use podcast apps and that whole idea of keeping the audience inside the podcast app and not making them have to leave the app to get the episode that they want. I think that's the big selling point here of using episode numbers is keeping your audience in the podcast app, but I discovered some frustrations along the way with this. Not only the frustration of how some podcast publishing tools don't properly handle the separate titles, so they either force you to break Apple's rules or they force you to not have episode numbers in all of the podcast apps. That don't support the itunes episode tag, which is specifically for episode numbers. And by the way, that's most of the podcast apps that don't support that field. On top of that, overcast appears, and I don't have complete final confirmation of this yet, and this could change in the future, but overcast appears to actually remove the episode numbers from the title, even though I don't think the overcast app is using the itunes title tag for its episode titles. And it's certainly, at least not right now, using the episode number tag to display episode numbers. So in overcast, if you want episode numbers to display, you'll have to type them in a different kind of way, because overcast is an opinionated app. That means that the developer, Marco, has some definite opinions of how the app should function and what the experience should be. And one of his opinions, or it seems at least this is his opinion, the episode numbers are never relevant and therefore they should never be shown. And it appears then that overcast is removing those episode numbers. It could be that it's using the itunes title field, but then it's not using the itunes episode field to display the episode numbers. So either way, at least at the time of this recording, the overcast version that I have does not display the episode numbers at all, no matter where you put those episode numbers. Before I go, special thanks. Huge special thanks to Stevie Taylor, who sent $30. He's the host of the gig life podcast. And he said, hey, Daniel, thank you for all you do, sir. Well, thank you, Stevie, for sending that very kind support to the audacity to podcast. And that's Stevie saying that he values the audacity to podcast. $30. That's fantastic. Thank you so much for that generosity. And also $20 from Randy Black, host of shooting it straight podcast. And he said a small amount of support for a friend and podcasting legend who gives so much to the space with little given back in turn. Keep up the good work, Daniel. Thank you so much, Randy. That really means a lot to me. And 696 satoshis streamed from Brian Insmener, the podcast producer at toptieraudio.com, where you can hire him to produce your podcast for you. I've got the links for all three of these gentlemen's websites in the notes for this episode. And if you value the audacity to podcast like these other gentlemen have, maybe more than that, maybe less than that, it's really up to you. What is the audacity to podcast worth to you? Would you consider giving some of that value back. You can do that through the audacitytopodcast.com giveback. And now that I've given you some of the guts to use or not to use podcast episode numbers, I'm sure that's probably what Shakespeare would have said if he was a podcast consultant. And I've taught you something some of the tools. It's time for you to go start and grow your own podcast for passion and profit. I'm Daniel j. Lewis from theodacitytopodcast.com Send me your podcasting questions@podcast feedback.com Audacity and thanks for listening.