8 Ways to Improve Your Podcast Description
Listen to the full episode here:Your podcast description usually isn't someone's first impression of your show and it often doesn't affect your SEO, but the description doesgive you the vital opportunity to convince a potential audience to try your podcast.
Here are some ways you can improve your podcast description.
1. Remove unnecessary or redundant details from your podcast description
The title goes in the title, the author goes in the author, and the description goes in the description. When you mix these things together, it creates redundancy and might waste valuable space.
Avoid phrases like:
• “This is a podcast hosted by [your name]”—Your name is already in the author field and displayed prominently with your podcast!
• “[Podcast title] is about …”—This is redundant because your podcast description inherently says what your podcast is about.
• “Looking for a podcast about …?”—People often aren't asking these questions, and this tends to focus on features more than benefits (more on that in #3).
Watch out for information in your podcast description that really isn't necessary to convince someone to hear or watch your podcast, like your contact information or what day you publish episodes.
2. Focus your podcast description on “why” and “WIIFM”
In most places, podcast descriptions don't actually affect your podcast SEO. But even if they did, the most important thing is still to answer two basic questions:
• “Why should I get this podcast?”—Try emphasizing either the “I” or the “this” in that question!
• “What's in it for me?” (WIIFM)—In other words, how will your audienceget PROFIT (popularity, relationships, opportunities, fun, income, or tangibles) from your podcast?
Whenever someone has clicked through to something they're considering—a podcast, a product, a movie, or really anything else—the core information they're seeking is whythey should choose that thing, maybe even in comparison to alternatives.
I highly recommend you read Start with Whyby Simon Sinek .
You don't have to use the words “why” or “because” in your description, but I do suggest you imagine someone asking you, “Why should I get your podcast?” and then what follows after “Because …” is a good starting point for your description.
3. Replace features with benefits for a more compelling podcast description
A “feature” is a simple fact about your podcast, like “we talk about [topics].” The first way to improve this is to extend the sentence with “so that ….” Then, shift that benefit to the spotlight.
Here are a couple of examples:
• “We talk about cake-baking” ➜ “Learn how to bake better cakes”
• “This podcast shares marketing techniques” ➜ “Grow your audience”
• “Get communication tips” ➜ “I help you communicate better”
You can loop back through this process to make your benefits even better! Try adding a “so that” either directly or through some rewriting to focus on the outcome you want your audience to get. For example, instead of saying, “Learn how to grow your business,” you could add, “so that you don't have to worry about your bottom line.”
Then consider shifting that new benefit to the spotlight as well! “You'll stop worrying about your bottom line by implementing our techniques to grow your business.”
It can be a healthy exercise to loop through this multiple times, adding “so that” to your marketing over and over until you arrive at something that connects much better. For example, “I talk about movies so thatyou'll know what the best movies are so thatyou won't waste time and money on bad movies so thatyou'll have fun so thatyou can share the experience with your friends so thatyou can build deeper relationships around mutual interests so thatyou can live a more fulfilling life so that….” This doesn't mean you have to use everything after a “so that,” but it can help you make something far more enticing than a simple feature. Taking this same (slightly exaggerated) example, your podcast about movies could be described as “Live a more fulfilling life with deeper relationships by learning more about the movies you and your friends love.”
4. Try common marketing approaches when describing your podcast
Because your podcast description ismarketing a kind of “product” (your podcast) that your audience needs to “buy” (by following it), you can try different marketing frameworks to write a better, more compelling, and more relatable podcast description.
Here are three popular marketing frameworks:
AIDA (attention ➜ interest ➜ desire ➜ action) describes the four stages someone goes through before making a decision (like following your podcast or buying something). Following this framework, your podcast description can first catch someone's attention, get them interested in what you offer, trigger a desire for your podcast, and then give them the action to take.
PAS (pain/problem ➜ agitate ➜ solution) takes a slightly different approach, focusing first on t