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The Audacity to Podcast® - tips and how to start and grow profit in podcasting
427. Three Ways to Combine Episode Numbers with Numbers in Titles
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Imagine episode numbers are important for your podcast, and you also use numbers in the beginning of your episode titles. How do you make those two things work together? I've got three ways to share with you. Thank you for joining me for the Audacity to Podcast. I'm Daniel J. Lewis. I've talked about episode numbers in multiple past episodes, like when to use episode numbers that was in episode 420, when to avoid using episode numbers that was in episode 421, how to include episode numbers in your titles that was episode 359. And those all built on my original thoughts from 12 years ago in episode 179 when I talked about Are episode numbers really necessary? If you want the links to all of those episodes, you can either look them up very easily inside your podcast app with the episode numbers or go to the audacitytopodcast.com combine numbers to get those links or tap on the chapter link right now so you can jump to the notes for this episode to get those links to those past episodes. But this very episode is an example of the problem that you might face. And this has been a scenario that's been on my mind since I've been re evaluating my thoughts on episode numbers. If you go back and listen to especially episodes 420 and421, which are my latest thoughts on when you should and shouldn't use episode numbers in there, I pointed out that I realized episode numbers are the best way for someone to be able to find a past episode or any other episode of your podcast without leaving their podcast app. And some podcast apps display those episode numbers in special ways using the special tags. Or maybe they have some kind of intelligence doing that. And by the way, Overcast does that now too. Maybe it did when I originally released that episode, but now for sure it doesn't. And I noticed that it does display episode numbers separately from the episode titles. But the scenario that's been frustrating me is this. And this very episode is an example of this scenario. And that is when you legitimately need episode numbers for any of those reasons or maybe some other legitimate reason that I've mentioned in my past episodes. You definitely need your episode numbers, but you also want a great episode title that starts with a number. That was the scenario that I've mentioned in the past episodes where you might want to not use episode numbers if you frequently do something like that. But what if you only sometimes do something like that? For example, imagine episode titles like Five Steps to Success or 20 Tips to Improve your Technique of course making that specific to your niche. Those start with numbers. And those types of titles can be really good titles. Because everyone wants to know, oh, I only know five of these things. I want to know all 20 of these things. Or I can only think of three steps to do this. I want to know what you consider are the five steps. Using numbers in titles are really good. They're shareable, they communicate well, they let people know what they can expect, and they perform really well in social networks and all kinds of places. So there is this conflict now where if you need to use episode numbers like you're referring back to past episodes by their episode number and you want to use one of these great titles that starts with a number, you run into this problem then where the episode number comes right before the number in your title. So if you're on episode 103, then these two example titles that I mentioned would end up looking like 103.5 steps to success or 103.20 tips to improve your technique. And I think then all of that nice power that you get with a good title that starts with a number starts to break down when. When that number looks complicated. And it looks complicated when you have an episode number right in front of it. And then it starts getting confusing. Like is it 20 tips or is it 120 tips? Is it 5 steps to success or is it a hundred and a half steps to success? You see how that can start to get confusing. And also I think then not just from the confusing aspect of it, but the glance ability of the title starts to be kind of weird too because you see more numbers than than there are actual things that you're sharing. And I think that starts to break down the benefit you get by using numbers in your titles like that. So I've thought about this and I came up with three ways that you could do this. And this is going to totally sound link baity to say this, but. And the third way is going to be really impactful and what I think is the way that you should do it. So here we go. If you want to follow along in the notes there, simple tap or swipe away. Look at the chapters or go to the audacitytopodcast.com/combine numbers number one, add a leading word. I shared this in the previous episodes about episode numbers where take these examples of 5 steps to success or 20 tips to improve your technique. You could add a word in the beginning of that title so it doesn't start with a number anymore. Then you end up with the episode number, then that word, then the number in the title. So, for example, instead of saying simply five steps to success, you could say the five steps to success, then the word the is between your episode number and the number in the title. And again, this is all assuming that you need episode numbers. And if you need episode numbers, then they should be displayed prominently. Or that example of 20 tips to improve your technique, it could be best 20 tips to improve your technique, or you could get more descriptive with the adjective that you use. Like fastest 20 tips, cheapest 20 tips, easiest 20 tips, something like that where you're adding an extra word before the number in the title that can sometimes help you, even just refining the content. So you might think 20 tips to improve your technique, you might start thinking, actually, I could come up with 400 tips to improve your technique. Well, break it down. How about what are the the fastest tips, the easiest tips, the simplest tips, the cheapest tips, then that can help you to refine your content. But even then, sometimes you might really think, I'd really so much rather to say 20 easy tips to improve your technique or 20 cheap tips, 20 fast tips. And I get that. I think that even sounds better. And it goes back to having that number in the beginning of the title often makes the title better than putting it somewhere in the middle of the title. So then that goes on to number two method that you could use to overcome this problem and combine these numbers in the title. Spell the number that's in the title, not the episode number, but whatever that number is in your title. So instead of the numeral five steps to success, you would spell it out F I V E Steps to success. So it would read five steps to success. And that sounds good, it looks okay, but it's not as impactful as having the actual number there. And the whole point of using a numeral instead of spelling out the words for the number is so that it's very glanceable and it's very quick to understand what that number is. In fact, if you're going to spell numbers, that really only works through 20. And the reason I say through 20 is because 1 through 20 are single word numbers. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20. Those are all one word numbers. Everything above that, except for the steps of 10, like 30, 40, 50, 60, and so on. But everything above that starts getting more complicated because then you're using multiple words, 21, 22, especially if you get into the hundreds, then it's 120 hyphen 2 when you could just do it in three characters and have the numerals 1, 22 so 122 instead of spelling it all out. So spelling the number doesn't always work, but it can work in certain contexts where maybe you don't have a whole lot of control over how things display. Then consider writing the words for the number, especially if it's an easy number 20 or below instead of using the numeral. It's not as good as a numeral, but I think if it's between that and having two numbers that conflict with each other, where you've got the two numerals, the episode number and the number in your title, I think spelling out the number for the title then works better then number three. This is the one that I recommend. Title your episode differently in your RSS feed. You might not have realized this, but depending on the publishing tool that you use, there are multiple titles being applied to the same episode. Most of the time we think of that title as being the same in all of those places. Or you may not even realize that there are multiple places where your title could appear. Let's take an extreme example of this that gives ultimate context Power and control My publishing workflow with WordPress. I use WordPress plus the PowerPress plugin from Blubrry to create my RSS feed. I also use all in one SEO to give me some extra control over the search engine optimization of my website. I also use Social Warfare to give me more control over the social data on my website. Now some of that is available inside of all in one SEO or even Yoast. SEO can do the SEO stuff and some of the social stuff too, but I have separate plugins doing this. So here are the potential titles I could do. There is the post title inside of WordPress. There is an episode title field inside of PowerPoint. There is the Apple podcast title field inside of PowerPress. There is the SEO title inside of the SEO plugin and the social title inside of the social plugin. Or that could be inside of the SEO plugin too. So that's five potential titles right there for the exact same content. And those titles can display in different places. And here's the key. Many publishing tools do allow you to control at least your Apple Podcast title or itunes title separately from your normal title. Or if you're publishing your podcast RSS feed completely separately from your website. And you can control what displays on your website without it affecting your RSS feed. Like if you're using PodPage or your own WordPress site, but you're generating your RSS feed with something else, like from your podcast hosting provider, then you have that control to do something differently inside your RSS feed versus what's displayed on your website. So here's what you can think about in all of those places. Outside of the podcast app, an episode number is not necessary. Or if you feel it is necessary, it should not be the first thing inside of that, because that's very valuable real estate for your episode titles. Outside of the podcast apps. If you need an episode number, put it near the end for what displays on your website. An episode number does not need to display in what gets shared out to social media. It doesn't need to display in what's shown in search engine results for websites like on DuckDuckGo or Google or Bing or any of those engines. The episode number doesn't matter in those contexts at all, because no one's going to search for something, see your episode, and think that they want to click on it because it's episode 500. That doesn't really work that way. It's wasting valuable real estate where you could put in more impactful keywords there, or at least show more of the title, because some of the titles get truncated when they get too long and your episode number might be causing it to get long. So in those places, an episode number is completely unnecessary. It's probably even unnecessary on your website because you can give people a direct link to your episode from the chapters from your notes inside the podcast app by speaking the URL by sharing it out on social networks. So I don't think people really need to search your website for an episode number, but there are ways around that nonetheless. The point is that you don't need to display the episode number, certainly not prominently on your website. So then if you don't need to display the episode number, that number in your title can be a normal numeral and it can be at the beginning of your title. So it can be that five steps to success or 20 tips, and it can display that way and look great on your site separately from your RSS feed. Then here's what you do inside your RSS feed. You combine these couple of tips that I mentioned or pick one of these previous tips to use in your RSS feed, depending on the level of control that you have. So if you have the ability to have only one title inside your RSS feed and you can't modify any of the other titles, then I suggest either using a leading word to separate your episode number from the number in your title or spell that number. This is what will then display only inside the podcast apps. Yes, you miss out on some of that nice recognition of what the episode will be about if you are spelling the number or adding a leading word. But I don't think that you'll be sacrificing that too much. Because in the places where we want the title to really capture someone the most are in other contexts like social media and website SEO, not necessarily in the podcast apps. Because usually what seems to happen inside a podcast app is, is someone will decide to follow a podcast based on the overall podcast, not specific individual episodes. And using numbers in your titles, whether you're spelling it or you are using the numerals, it's not going to affect your SEO. Because most likely someone isn't searching for five steps to success. They might just be searching for steps to success. They don't care what the actual number is. They don't know what the number is. They're searching without a number. So how you spell or write that number doesn't matter as much for search inside of the apps. It's more of a easy recognition kind of thing. But if your tool gives you the ability to set a different title in different ways for the same episode, then you can leverage this in better ways. So here's the ideal scenario here, where the tool will let you set an Apple podcast title, or sometimes still called an itunes title, separately from the normal episode title. The normal episode title can have your episode number in that title field written the way that you prefer. And I recommend that just be the numeral a period, a space, and then your episode title and you can modify the title as it appears in Apple podcasts separately from that. And that Apple podcast title should not have the episode number in it because that's where you should be using the episode number field instead of entering that in the title for Apple podcasts. So what you do then is in the normal title field, where you have to include the episode number in the title. That's where you spell the number in the title or you add a leading word. So pick technique number one or number two. You don't have to do both. So you could say the five steps to success, or you could say fastest five steps to success, something like that. Adding a leading word or you spell it F, I, V, E. Steps to success. Point is that when you have to display your title with the episode number right there in the same field, you do one of these other techniques. So you're not having Two numerals right next to each other. Then in your Apple Podcast title or itunes title, if it's still called that in the user interface, that's where you use the numeral in your title because you're not going to put an episode number in that field. Instead you are populating the episode number in a specific episode number field that then gets displayed differently inside of the apps like Overcast or Apple Podcasts or Pocket Cast will display that number on a separate line from your title. So then you don't have to worry about an episode number being right next to the number that's in your title. So it won't look like what, 100.5. You'll just see the number 5 steps to success or 20 tips when you have that kind of control. And please check with your hosting provider or whatever tool you're using to publish your RSS feed and ask them for this kind of ability to be able to customize these things separately. Even if you don't use it all the time, it gives you this extra control. And when you have that control, then you can optimize the experience with for these different outlets. So what gets shared out on social media has the numeral no episode number on it. And then the podcast app will have something that will optimize the display inside of it, because you've optimized that in your RSS feed. So if you have that level of control, then you can choose how you want things to display in those cases where it might seem confusing. And this might not be something you have to do for every episode to to have that extra control over the separate title fields. Because maybe not every episode that you publish starts with a number, but for those episodes that do, here is the way that you can fix it. And this is what I'm going to be doing with the Audacity to Podcast feed. Because there are several episodes in the past that start with numbers. Five ways to do this, 10 things here, 20 this, 30 that, whatever. But I now also use episode numbers again because I want to be able to reference those past episodes and make it easy for you to jump to those past episodes without leaving your podcast app. So this is the way to do it. I'll be combining these techniques depending on the titles themselves. Depending on how I feel a certain title communicates best inside a podcast app. I might number one add a leading word or number two spell the number in the title. But what I will definitely be doing is number three, titling my episodes differently in my RSS feed compared to how they display on the website, share out to social media and all of that. I hope this has been helpful to you and if you've been in the same place, I wouldn't be surprised if you never even thought about this because these are the kinds of things that I tend to think about is start trying to problem solve certain anticipated problems or things that I run into and that I see. And that's why I wanted to share this with you and I hope that this has been helpful. You can share this episode out, comment on the notes through your podcast app, go to the audacitytopodcast.com combine numbers and you can also get the links to the things I've mentioned there at the website so you can jump back to those past episodes if you want to, or find them simply by their episode numbers inside of your podcast app. Before I go, a quick couple of special thanks to some people that I don't know who they are because this information came in anonymously, but that is 81 satoshis streamed from someone using True Fans. Whoever you are, thank you very much for that. And 2,950 satoshis streamed from someone using Fountain. Whoever you were, thank you very much for that. If you find value in the Audacity to podcast and you appreciate what I share with you, and it's been valuable for your own podcast and your own podcasting journey, would you consider what that's worth to you and consider giving back? You can do that through your Podcasting 2.0 app, streaming Satoshis or sending a booster gram. Or you can send an actual cash amount, not actual dollar bills. Although I do have a P.O. box if you want to visit the website, you can look at my PO Box address, but you can also send payments through the audacitytopodcast.com giveback. Now that I've given you some of the guts and taught you some of the tools, it's time for you to go start and grow your own podcast for passion and and profit. I'm Daniel JJ. Lewis from Theodacity2podcast.com thanks for listening.