173 | Mastering Podcast Chapters: Keep Listeners Hooked with This Simple Trick

[00:00:00] Is your podcast losing listeners? The secret to keeping them hooked is in your episode structure. I've got one simple trick to fix it. Find out on this episode.

[00:00:17] Sound matters. Be heard. Welcome to the podcast where you get exclusive behind the scenes tips to make your own show sound truly spectacular. This is

[00:00:29] Podtastic Audio.

[00:00:32] Hey, what's happening? How are you doing today? Thank you so much for being here. I am Chris. And yeah, this is Podtastic Audio. The show which I have designed and created to help you, yes, you, and a little wonderful podcast of yours too, make an amazing show for your audience. And today I'm telling you the reasons why I'm going to be here.

[00:00:59] Why you need to make that show amazing for your audience and why they should care and a simple trick to get them to listen to your episode. We all want people to listen to our podcast. And one easy way to get them to be entertained and to actually listen to your show for longer periods is to have some kind of timestamps or chapters embedded within your podcast.

[00:01:26] Podcast. Or maybe even, yes, your YouTube video. Now, I did not know anything about how to create these timestamps for my podcast. In fact, on the Chris and Christine show podcast, we definitely could have used some timestamps or chapters in our very, very lengthy episodes because some of our episodes had multiple topics and multiple points.

[00:01:53] Definitely if we had a guest interview. The way I created the episodes was that Christine and I would come on, talk about the stuff that we wanted to talk about.

[00:02:02] And the first sometimes 20 minutes worth of the episode will be just us talking about our things.

[00:02:09] And then I would insert the guest interview we had with that guest of the week.

[00:02:14] And then the tail end would be the things coming off that guest interview.

[00:02:18] Basically, it was like a wrap-up discussion of what we talked about within the interview at the very end.

[00:02:24] Maybe any housekeeping stuff we had to wrap up at the end.

[00:02:27] Our website, call to action.

[00:02:29] That usual stuff happens at the end.

[00:02:31] But there were so many different spots within the episode that the listener could see it and say,

[00:02:37] I want to listen to them talk about this or that or skip to the interview or skip to this other part, whatever it may be,

[00:02:45] especially with an episode that's nearly two hours long.

[00:02:49] But hey, you can make your podcast however you want to do it.

[00:02:54] You are the captain of your podcast ship.

[00:02:56] If you do not want to insert any kind of timestamps or chapters because you do not know how to do it, don't you worry.

[00:03:03] Today, I'm going to tell you exactly what they are and how you can add them to any show,

[00:03:09] whether it's a YouTube show or a podcast show with any kind of software,

[00:03:15] with any kind of platform, with any media host you have.

[00:03:19] It does not matter.

[00:03:20] And I'm going to tell you how to do this for free.

[00:03:23] So you're probably thinking, hey, Chris, what the hell is a timestamp or a chapter in a podcast?

[00:03:31] Well, a timestamp is pretty self-explanatory.

[00:03:35] It is a stamp of time where something within the episode happens.

[00:03:41] It could be anything you want.

[00:03:43] It can be the time the guest comes on.

[00:03:46] It could be the time you promote this one product.

[00:03:49] It can be the time you change subjects.

[00:03:52] Because I know that a lot of podcasts will bounce around with multiple different topics.

[00:03:58] It'll be like the one core thing about the episode, but they'll go off tangents.

[00:04:03] They'll talk about different things.

[00:04:05] And sometimes you don't want to cut that stuff out because it was so funny or so good,

[00:04:10] even though it was not on topic with the episode.

[00:04:13] That would be a fantastic place to put a timestamp.

[00:04:17] Now, I know that some content creators, whether it's a YouTuber or a podcaster,

[00:04:22] they may get slightly offended if they put timestamps within their episode and they know

[00:04:29] that the listener is just skipping around.

[00:04:33] They're just jumping from this chapter point to that chapter point that they're not consuming

[00:04:37] the entire show end to end.

[00:04:41] Well, there's a good chance, especially on YouTube, if you watch your YouTube analytics,

[00:04:45] you know this all too well that nobody, and I mean nobody, sticks around from the very beginning

[00:04:52] all the way to the very end.

[00:04:54] They're skipping around within the video or worse, they're jumping off your video to watch

[00:05:01] some other video they saw in the column to the right or down below.

[00:05:05] And yeah, that does kind of suck because you put your heart, your soul, your energy,

[00:05:11] your time creating and recording this entire podcast episode just to find out that they

[00:05:19] only consumed maybe like a few moments of it, skipped around to the good parts.

[00:05:24] That kind of sucks because yeah, like I said, you put everything into it.

[00:05:28] But from a consumer side, a listener side, there's plenty of shows that I wish would put timestamps

[00:05:37] into their episodes and you know who you are if you're listening to this right now.

[00:05:41] Because there are certain highlighted moments within the episode that I really came to the

[00:05:47] episode for.

[00:05:48] For example, if your show says that this episode is talking about how to make a treehouse and

[00:05:57] then the part about the treehouse building is like one segment of the show, but you have

[00:06:03] a two hour podcast episode and I don't know where within that two hours you're talking

[00:06:09] about how to build a treehouse.

[00:06:10] I want to skip to the part about how you built the treehouse.

[00:06:15] And if you have that timestamped, then I can see in my podcast app within the show notes,

[00:06:21] I can see, oh, at minute, you know, 30 minutes, 25 seconds.

[00:06:26] This is where you started talking about building a treehouse and how to do it.

[00:06:30] And that only benefits the listener.

[00:06:34] And when you create your podcast, you want to make sure that your listener to your show

[00:06:39] sticks around.

[00:06:41] You give them a reason to press play.

[00:06:44] And one thing that we all have the same amount of, it's not money, it's time.

[00:06:51] We all have 24 hours in the day.

[00:06:54] And some of us, maybe due to not working or we don't have anything going on or whatever,

[00:07:02] some of us may have more free time than others.

[00:07:07] Not all of us do.

[00:07:09] And so because of that, when you're trying to consume multiple different podcasts and multiple

[00:07:15] different YouTube videos within that 24 hour window, because you're really busy, you've got,

[00:07:21] you know, school or kids or all kinds of different things or work, who knows what else.

[00:07:26] You don't have time to sit there and listen to 80 hours of podcasts within the 24 hour day.

[00:07:34] Now, one solution could be you could play the episodes at 2X or 3X.

[00:07:40] Is that even a thing?

[00:07:41] I don't know.

[00:07:41] I like to listen to podcasts at 1X in their natural format, like as if I'm listening to

[00:07:48] regular radio, probably because all the years of listening to regular radio that I grew up with.

[00:07:53] So to play an episode at anything higher than 1X for me anyways, just sounds weird and unnatural.

[00:08:02] And I want to make sure that the episodes sound as natural as possible.

[00:08:05] So the next best thing is to have appropriate chapter markers set up for that episode.

[00:08:12] So your listeners have options to either listen all the way through or find the best part that

[00:08:19] they want to go to.

[00:08:20] So I know I teased some of these benefits, but I have six core benefits for creating timestamps

[00:08:27] or chapters, however you look at it, for your podcast and especially for your YouTube channel

[00:08:34] with your video.

[00:08:35] Now, the very first thing, the very first benefit that really helps the listeners or viewers out

[00:08:41] is the, in fact, you do get better engagement.

[00:08:46] This actually will help the listener find the sections that they care about, improving overall

[00:08:52] engagement because they're actually looking through and finding the sections that mean

[00:08:56] the most to them.

[00:08:57] So if you think about it, if you're playing an episode and it's just playing in the background

[00:09:03] as like just general noise in the background, just general soundtrack while you're doing

[00:09:08] something, not really paying attention.

[00:09:10] It's just there in the background.

[00:09:12] But if you had a timestamp and you are focused on the exact thing they were talking about in

[00:09:18] that episode, you want to find that moment in that episode.

[00:09:22] If you scan through it and you find it, you are more tuned into that episode, which causes better

[00:09:27] engagement of that episode.

[00:09:28] It's a win-win for you, the creator and the listener.

[00:09:32] The second benefit is that it is great for long episodes.

[00:09:37] Now, I've said this before.

[00:09:38] If your episode is very, very long, the listeners and viewers, they can skip to the parts that they

[00:09:44] want to see or listen to, which makes longer episodes for the listener super easy to digest.

[00:09:51] They don't have to listen for the entire thing, especially if you're talking about like cat

[00:09:58] food recipes on a show about boats.

[00:10:01] Having timestamps allows you to somewhat go off topic, not a ton, just a little bit.

[00:10:07] This way, the listener or watcher on YouTube can actually see that the part that

[00:10:14] they really want to listen to or watch is on chapter this or this time marker.

[00:10:19] And they can skip right to that, especially with a super long episode.

[00:10:24] And I really wish that on the Chris Christine show, I knew how to do this because this would

[00:10:29] come in handy because our episodes, a lot of them got really long.

[00:10:34] Towards the end, I think every episode was at least an hour and a half long.

[00:10:38] And some people are probably blowing their minds like, oh my goodness, an hour and a half

[00:10:42] episode.

[00:10:43] I know listening to that can be a real struggle.

[00:10:46] And I'm sorry if you did.

[00:10:48] And I wish, I really wish I would have added in those timestamps.

[00:10:53] And the third benefit for adding timestamps into your episode is that it actually enhances

[00:10:59] re-listenability.

[00:11:01] What does that mean?

[00:11:02] It means that if you said something really good in your podcast episode, or maybe even

[00:11:08] a guest said something quite amazing within your episode, you have that moment timestamped

[00:11:14] within that episode so that a listener that heard that does not have to scrub through your

[00:11:20] entire episode to find that one spot.

[00:11:23] Like, what were they talking about?

[00:11:24] I knew they were talking about this one thing here.

[00:11:26] I just can't find it.

[00:11:27] The episode's two hours long.

[00:11:28] I'm not going to re-listen to the whole thing to find it, but I know it's in here somewhere.

[00:11:32] I don't know where it is.

[00:11:34] But if you had the timestamp for that moment, they easily can find it, click one button,

[00:11:40] and they're listening to it again, which makes it easier for them to re-listen to your episode.

[00:11:46] Hey, listen once, listen twice.

[00:11:48] Feel free to listen to this episode as much as you want.

[00:11:51] Okay, the fourth benefit for adding timestamps or chapters into your content, whether it's

[00:11:56] YouTube or podcasting, doesn't matter, is that you will actually appeal to a wider audience.

[00:12:04] Now, I've said this before.

[00:12:06] You want to make sure that your podcast is specific to whoever your podcast is for.

[00:12:13] If your podcast is for kids that play golf, then you better make it for kids that play golf,

[00:12:18] or working moms, or single dads, or whatever it may be.

[00:12:24] But this does allow you to actually branch out a little wider and talk about different things

[00:12:31] within your podcast episode.

[00:12:34] I know on the Chris Gerstein Show, we talk a wide variety of different things within a single episode.

[00:12:39] We'll talk about our stuff.

[00:12:41] We'll talk about the guest stuff.

[00:12:42] We'll talk about some other stuff.

[00:12:43] This way, when we do a show like that, and the show is a little longer, if you have timestamps

[00:12:49] in there, some people are more interested in one type of topic or one segment of your

[00:12:55] show.

[00:12:56] It's funny to think about how, as content creators, we want everybody to listen to everything

[00:13:02] we make.

[00:13:02] We just assume that when you press play in our podcast, that you press play from minute one

[00:13:09] and all the way to the very end, you listen to the entire thing.

[00:13:13] And like I said, if you're on YouTube and you watch your analytics on YouTube, you know

[00:13:19] that's not always the case.

[00:13:20] People do skip around or jump off.

[00:13:23] But if you add timestamps, you can appeal to more than just that one person.

[00:13:28] You can appeal to more people because each person that listens to your show has options.

[00:13:35] They have choices.

[00:13:36] They can listen to this segment or that segment, to the guest or not the guest.

[00:13:42] Okay, moving on to number five, and this is for you big YouTubers out there.

[00:13:46] If you want to see the YouTube SEO benefits, then you got to add in those timestamps into

[00:13:53] your episode.

[00:13:55] Chapters will help your video with optimization, making it easier to find specific content within

[00:14:02] the video.

[00:14:03] Because when you watch a YouTube video and you're like scrubbing along the bottom, like

[00:14:08] scrub bar there with a little video thing and all that, instead of having to scrub along

[00:14:13] and find the spots you want to watch, would it be cool if there was a side column that

[00:14:20] had all those spots already highlighted and pulled out?

[00:14:23] So that if you're watching a video and let's just say it's a video about some new microphone

[00:14:30] that just came out and the YouTuber is unboxing the microphone, going over all the quirks and

[00:14:36] things it can do.

[00:14:37] And then he's plugging it into the console and he's plugging it into like, say, a Rodecaster.

[00:14:43] But maybe you don't have a Rodecaster.

[00:14:44] You want to see them plug it into a computer, just USB and skip the console part.

[00:14:51] You want to see that part.

[00:14:52] Maybe you can skip over the unboxing, skip over the Rodecaster console part and go right

[00:15:00] to the part where they plug it into your computer because that's what you have.

[00:15:04] You don't have to worry about the other stuff.

[00:15:06] And that's the benefit of adding these timestamps into your YouTube video.

[00:15:10] And the final benefit for adding timestamps into your podcast production is that it's much

[00:15:18] easier than you think.

[00:15:20] If I can do this, then you can do this.

[00:15:24] Okay, so timestamps are great.

[00:15:25] I get it, Chris.

[00:15:26] But where do you actually see the timestamp?

[00:15:29] That's a good question.

[00:15:30] Let me answer that for you right now.

[00:15:31] If you are on Apple Podcasts, well, let's talk about Spotify here because Spotify has

[00:15:37] a great timestamps.

[00:15:39] Actually, they call it chapters section for every episode, especially if you add them into

[00:15:44] it.

[00:15:44] And on Apple Podcasts, if you have it set up within your media host, it will actually create

[00:15:54] them within Apple Podcasts.

[00:15:56] But there's a workaround.

[00:15:57] Let me tell you about that one.

[00:15:59] Because my media host does not have a chapters section within the media host, I have to do

[00:16:07] it more of a, let's just say, generic way, which will probably work for almost any host.

[00:16:15] Any podcast you have, no matter where it's hosted at, should work exactly the same way.

[00:16:21] Now, when you see my podcast within Apple Podcasts and you scroll down to the show notes towards

[00:16:26] the bottom, you'll see these chapter and timestamps section.

[00:16:31] In fact, I label it timestamps and chapters for this reason.

[00:16:35] And you'll see a time code with a four-digit time code.

[00:16:39] You got two digits for the hour and minute with a colon and two digits for the seconds.

[00:16:46] Now, this is very, very important when you create your timestamps to do it in this format.

[00:16:51] That way, the apps, whether it's Apple or Spotify, whichever app you use, there is a breakdown

[00:16:58] of when something is supposed to happen in the time code that they know this is a chapter

[00:17:04] that we can go to within this episode.

[00:17:07] So that's basically what you do.

[00:17:09] If you scroll down to the bottom in the show notes, that is where I keep all of my timestamps

[00:17:14] in order from beginning to end.

[00:17:17] Very easy, easy to find.

[00:17:19] I always keep them within the show notes of the episode.

[00:17:22] And every single podcast, no matter where you host your podcast, has a section for show notes

[00:17:29] or show description, however you want to use it.

[00:17:32] But not all podcast player apps will actually do the embedded chapters for the episode.

[00:17:40] So that's why having them within the show notes is so valuable.

[00:17:46] Because show notes, although they may be formatted differently from one podcast app to another,

[00:17:52] the number of the timestamp and the actual description of whatever you said the timestamp was

[00:17:58] is going to be in every single podcast app.

[00:18:02] It may not look pretty in all of them, but at least at a minimum, you're going to have minute,

[00:18:08] nine minute and 33 seconds.

[00:18:10] We talked about this, whether the actual button is there to click on it and jump there,

[00:18:16] whether it's there or not, the listener can still scrub to that nine minute, 33 second spot

[00:18:23] on their phone and jump to their favorite spot because it's right there.

[00:18:27] But if you are hosting your podcast on one of those super cool podcast media hosts that actually

[00:18:33] gets it and makes it super easy for you to create your podcast, like say Buzzsprout, for example,

[00:18:40] they have created a very simple all in one platform to manually add in timestamps or chapters

[00:18:49] within your episode file.

[00:18:51] Now you can do both, put it in the show description and you can put it within their cool chapter markers,

[00:18:57] which makes it amazing for apps like Apple.

[00:19:00] I did it for my clients.

[00:19:02] They host their show on Buzzsprout and I manually put in every chapter mark in both places.

[00:19:08] When I played it back on my iPhone in Apple CarPlay, it actually displayed the chapter that was playing

[00:19:16] within the episode.

[00:19:17] So that's something to consider.

[00:19:19] If your media host actually gives you that option, jump on it.

[00:19:23] If they don't, don't worry.

[00:19:25] We can do it the other way by actually inserting them within the actual description of the episode.

[00:19:32] But if YouTube is more your flavor and you want to stick to YouTube and only live on YouTube,

[00:19:38] fine, whatever.

[00:19:39] You can do your show however you want to do it.

[00:19:41] But YouTube makes it very, very easy to add in chapters into your episode.

[00:19:46] All you got to do is when you go down to the show description or video description section,

[00:19:51] you type in a time code.

[00:19:54] And the time code is that four-digit number.

[00:19:57] It's going to be the, like starting it off with, say, an example of 00 colon 00 start of the episode.

[00:20:05] And then the next thing might be 02 colon 30 main topic.

[00:20:13] That would be minute two, 30 seconds main topic.

[00:20:16] And then so on and so forth.

[00:20:19] Now you can do that and YouTube will actually put those in to their video.

[00:20:24] So you scrub along the bottom and the little scrub bar of the video, you will see the little markers that say this chapter is this.

[00:20:33] This is where the timestamp is.

[00:20:35] And it makes it very easy when you're consuming a really long video and you only want to hear the good parts.

[00:20:42] Well, at least the good parts to you, the listener or viewer of that video.

[00:20:46] Okay, so now you know where to put the actual timestamps within your episode description.

[00:20:52] But how do you actually come up with the timestamps?

[00:20:56] Well, there's a really easy way to do it.

[00:20:58] One simple method is you can actually maybe while recording, you can keep an eye on your recording software's timer and note down when each section starts.

[00:21:10] This takes a little more coordination than most of us have, because if we're jumping into a conversation with somebody and we're going topic to topic and subject to subject, we're talking about different things and having a good old time.

[00:21:21] It's a big ball.

[00:21:22] Yeah, great.

[00:21:23] Do you think you're going to have time to actually like stop the conversation and jot down the timestamp that you see being recorded on your software?

[00:21:31] Maybe, maybe not.

[00:21:32] Or rather than actually writing it down, what if you like said out loud within your show, now we're at timestamp five minutes, 45 seconds or whatever it may be.

[00:21:43] And that way you can edit that part out during your post-production and you'll figure out how to do it.

[00:21:48] You know how it goes.

[00:21:49] But maybe do it that way.

[00:21:51] That way you know when you are creating these timestamps and writing them down that you know where they are at.

[00:21:57] And a real simple way to do this is to actually just listen back to your finished episode and jot down notes when things change subject.

[00:22:09] That's like the simplest way you can physically do it.

[00:22:12] That's probably the way I would recommend doing it.

[00:22:14] Because if you edit your episode and you're calling out the different timestamps and you chop them out and you're doing editing and things like that, well, then those timestamps don't do you any good because your whole timeline is off.

[00:22:26] So just something to consider if you are keeping track of these timestamps in real time.

[00:22:32] The main reason for this episode today was that another podcaster was mentioning something about doing really long episodes, like what's the perfect length of an episode?

[00:22:44] And they've done really long episodes.

[00:22:45] We're talking two, three, maybe even four hours long.

[00:22:48] And I said, I hope that you have some kind of timestamps within an episode.

[00:22:53] And I think they kind of threw them off.

[00:22:55] Like, what do you mean timestamps?

[00:22:57] What are you talking about?

[00:22:58] And then it got me thinking, well, maybe people don't know how to make timestamps or they see the benefits of having a timestamp within their episode.

[00:23:07] And then I had to reflect on my own podcast way before.

[00:23:11] And I didn't know that either.

[00:23:13] I didn't know how to make a timestamp.

[00:23:15] I didn't know it was beneficial to the listener.

[00:23:17] I had no idea because I thought that I want my listeners to listen all the way through it to the very end.

[00:23:23] From minute one to the very end, they're going to be listening all the way through.

[00:23:27] And the reality is, that's not always the case.

[00:23:31] And we think that if we put these timestamps in there, they're going to skip around and skip over what we think is the good part.

[00:23:37] But don't forget that this episode you created is for your audience.

[00:23:42] It's for your listener.

[00:23:44] It's for them to enjoy.

[00:23:46] And what they want to watch or listen to, let them decide.

[00:23:50] But hey, I really wish I knew about this earlier.

[00:23:55] And I would have put it in my podcast way back then.

[00:23:59] Now, if you have a really, really short podcast episode, say, sub five minute range, you can do timestamps.

[00:24:08] Is it really necessary?

[00:24:09] I personally don't think so.

[00:24:11] I think if your podcast or YouTube video gets up somewhere around the maybe 15, 20 minute range.

[00:24:21] And especially if you're talking about a variety of different things, then yeah, definitely put timestamps into your episode.

[00:24:30] And this whole thing got me thinking that if there's a podcast that does not put timestamps into their episode, I will kind of put that one on the back end of my playlist.

[00:24:44] The ones that have the timestamps that I know I can jump through and see the parts that I really want to listen to and I can skip to those parts.

[00:24:52] I actually start to listen to those ones first.

[00:24:55] It's kind of weird phenomenon.

[00:24:57] Probably because when I was traveling a lot and I was going from the airport to the airplane to wherever and I had like a small window of time to listen to something.

[00:25:07] So I would like look at the episode and see this episode had timestamps.

[00:25:12] Oh, this part, this part, this part.

[00:25:14] I can kind of skip around within the episode, especially a longer episode.

[00:25:18] It really helped me out.

[00:25:20] I can get through more content or especially the content that really interested me.

[00:25:25] If the episode I'm looking at is two hours long and it says it's one thing, I don't know where in that two hours they're talking about that one thing.

[00:25:34] Maybe they're talking about 10 different things.

[00:25:36] I don't know.

[00:25:37] I can scroll through the show notes and maybe they might have something like on today's episode, we talked about this and this and this and this and this.

[00:25:44] Great.

[00:25:45] Great.

[00:25:45] But I only want to listen to this one part here or maybe this one section here or maybe just maybe I want to listen to this one section of your show while I'm doing this one task, whether it's on a flight or a bike ride or whatever.

[00:25:59] And I'll listen to the other stuff later.

[00:26:02] Hey, I hope that you got some value and saw the benefits of creating timestamps and chapters for your episode.

[00:26:12] Benefits to you, the creator, and benefits to your audience.

[00:26:15] Hey, if you want to reach out to me, you can find me on all the social places.

[00:26:18] All the information is right on my website, which is podcasticaudio.com.

[00:26:24] And I will see you on the next one.

[00:26:26] And until then, happy podcasting.