Speaker 0: Why and how to use podcast chapters.
Thank you for joining me for The Audacity to Podcast.
I'm Daniel J. Lewis.
I have an exciting announcement, which I'll share later in this
episode. Here's a sneak peek.
Podchapters.com is now open for you.
Podcast chapters allow your listening audience to get extra
context during your podcast or more easily take action and jump
to spots in your episodes.
So are chapters right for your podcast?
I know there might be some immediate negative feelings about
supporting something that could allow your audience to skip parts
of your episodes.
But please give me a chance to convince you why chapters can do
more, but that even allowing skipping is actually a good thing.
But let's start at the beginning.
If you'd like to follow along in the notes for this episode, they
are tap or swipe away.
Look at the chapters too, or go to the audacity to
podcast.com/chapters. Number 1, what are podcast chapters?
A podcast chapter is a marker placed at a time within an episode.
There are currently 3 technological standards for making podcast
chapters.
Embedded chapters stored inside the m p 3 or other media file,
often called m p 3 chapters or legacy chapters.
These have been supported by many popular podcast apps for many
years. This is not a new thing.
The other standard is podcasting 2 cloud chapters stored as JSON.
That's a special JavaScript format inside a separate metadata
file linked from the RSS feed.
Most podcasting 2 apps support cloud chapters, and even Apple
Podcasts will be supporting podcasting 2 Cloud Chapters.
And then the third format is PodLove simple chapters stored as
XML inside the podcast RSS feed.
Oddly, Spotify chose to support this nearly dead standard instead
of the other more popular standards.
I don't know why Spotify did that, but Spotify does weird things.
So I guess it makes sense that they would make the weird decision
here.
All 3 chapter standards support the same core functionality of
what a chapter can do.
That is display a title, optionally display an image, and
optionally link to a URL.
Those 3 things are the core functionality of a podcast chapter.
Podcasting 2 point o's cloud chapters also add the ability to
include a location and to hide a chapter from the table of
contents so that it can't be jumped to and won't display in a
chapter list.
I'll tell you more about what chapters can be later in this
episode, as well as what I hope they can be in the future, not
just what they can be in podcasting 2, but what might be coming
in the future.
But for now, keep in mind that chapters are basically titles or
headlines and optional images and or optional links.
And this information is placed at certain times in the episode,
so podcast apps will display that chapter's information when the
playback reaches that point and until the chapter changes.
So if you have a title for 1 chapter, that remains the title for
that section until the next chapter is reached.
Same thing with images or links.
Those will display until the next chapter displays.
You can do some little trickery where maybe you keep the same
title, but you change the links or you change the images.
So it will look like it's the same chapter, but then there would
be multiple chapters in the outline unless you do something like
the Podcasting 2 hiding it from the table of contents.
But we'll get into some more of that stuff and how to do that
later in this episode.
Moving on to number 2, I want to answer this objection that
chapters allow audiences to skip content. Yes.
It's true that putting chapters in your episodes will allow your
audience to skip content they don't want.
They might skip points in your episode.
They might skip whole segments of your episode, or they might
skip ads, but this all depends on how you use your chapters.
But even if they are skipping around, that's not necessarily a
bad thing. Imagine this.
Imagine you were looking for information and you found an article
with 5 points in the article.
You quickly realize the information you want is in the fourth
point.
But instead of letting you quickly scroll to get that information
you need, the article forces you to view each point before the 1
you want.
Not only that, but the article forces you to read every word
until that point that you want. Frustrating. Right?
I'd probably give up and leave.
Look for the answers somewhere else.
That's what your audience might do.
Thankfully, that's not how most websites and browsers work.
And that's not how your podcast episodes should work either.
But let's be honest, that's kind of the way that we're making our
audience engage with our episodes, at least sometimes. Yes.
People might skip to what they want from your episode.
But don't you want them to get what they want?
And don't you want them to get what they want from you instead of
being frustrated and looking elsewhere?
If you follow me and The Audacity to Podcast for a while, you
might recognize that this is the same argument I make for
providing thorough show notes or episode notes for each episode.
Yes.
It means your audience might jump to a section to get what they
want.
They might not consume all of the content because they're just
after certain information, but wouldn't you so much rather be the
1 providing them that content that they want and allowing them to
get it quickly so that they can get it from you and appreciate
you for that, then forcing them to consume it in a particular
way.
They get frustrated, and then they turn away and go somewhere
else. I'd so much rather they get the information from me.
I would so much rather you get the information from me.
Maybe you've skipped around the chapters in some of my previous
episode. That's fine with me.
It's not like I'm telling a story here that you absolutely must
consume in a particular order, although I present the information
in a particular order that I hope you consume it completely
chronologically within that episode, I try not to assume that is
how you do it.
Even if you have ads in your podcast, this is the other thing
that people bring up is, oh, people are gonna skip my sponsors if
I have chapters.
Well, using chapters doesn't mean your ads become skippable.
It's all in the style of how you make your chapters, and I'll
talk more about the style in a moment.
But think of it this way, you don't have to create a chapter for
the sponsored spots. Yes.
You could create a chapter for that, and then it certainly has
its benefits there, but you could have the sponsor inside of a
chapter.
So if people skip that chapter, they're also skipping content.
It's really about your approach or your style for the chapters
that you make.
I'll talk more about that style in a little bit in this episode.
Number 3, the most helpful benefit of chapters, context.
In their simplest form of only titles, podcast chapters can
provide your audience with an easy outline of your episode's
content.
It's similar to handouts you might get for a speech, a lesson, or
a sermon. You can see the outline so you can follow along.
Plus, it's often very convenient to have the extra context for
that section simply by seeing the section's heading.
So people might get distracted and might forget exactly what
you're talking about, but a quick glance at their podcast app,
and they can see, oh, yeah. This is the section that we're on.
We're on point number 3 or point number 4. I can't remember.
Oh, I can see from the chapter, we're on point number 4.
Something like that that they can do very quickly and be able to
follow along.
And being able to follow along like that means your content is
more memorable and even more actionable if it becomes more
memorable.
As you're listening to this episode in your Podcast app, you
probably see the chapters, and you're probably seeing each of my
headings as chapters in your Podcast app.
So you would see that this section is titled 3, the most helpful
benefit of chapters, context.
That's the title of this section in my notes, and that's the
title of this chapter too.
So you can very quickly see just from glancing at that alone, a
quick reminder that I'm talking about context.
It's also very similar to how many books, especially non fiction,
have chapter titles and sometimes even section titles at the top
or bottom of each page. It helps you follow along.
It helps you remember the context as you're reading or as you're
consuming that content.
Providing that context helps your audience follow along and
better understand your content, and even remember it better.
Those are all great things. Right? That's what chapters can do.
And that's only from the chapter title.
You could also include a picture in your chapter, allowing your
audience to quickly see what you're talking about without their
having to visit a separate website or without your having to make
a video podcast.
In fact, they might not have to even unlock their smartphones to
see the chapter title and image.
They could just glance at it or their heads up display or
anything that they're using with their modern technology.
Even in their cars, they could just glance over at the podcast
app and maybe even see the image right there without having to
touch anything. That's thanks to chapters.
I did use titles, images, and links in my previous episode,
Podcasting During or After Tragedy.
I referenced 2 different movies in points 3 and 5 of that
episode.
And for those chapters, I included the section heading as the
chapter title and an image from the movie's relevant scene, and
even a link to that specific movie clip on YouTube.
For some of my audience then, they could simply glance at that
image and immediately remember that scene from that movie, and
remember the emotions that they felt or what was said in that
movie, or they could tap on that link from the chapter and then
see that.
At some point, maybe in the future, they could maybe just press
play on the chapter, and it would play that video right there in
their podcast app.
But that that's even bigger than what I have envisioned for super
chapters, which I'll get into a few points down in this.
But they could also then click or tap on that link and take
action on that chapter. So that leads into my next point.
Number 4, the most convenient benefit of chapters, actionability.
And, yes, actionability is a real word according to Merriam
Webster's dictionary.
When you give a chapter a title and image, you're helping your
audience with the information you're sharing.
But when you add a link, you're making the information
actionable.
From my testing, every podcast app that supports chapters also
allows them to have images and links.
It's possible there's some app out there that doesn't do it this
way, but in my testing, certainly among the popular apps, they
all support those 3 core features, the title, the image, and the
link.
How the link displays does vary a little bit in the apps, but
most apps turn the chapter title into a hyperlink with that URL
that you included.
So, yes, this means there's the potential that the hyperlink
doesn't always feel actionable depending on how you title your
sections and title your chapters, and then that being
hyperlinked.
But I do have some hopes and a proposal for Podcasting 2 super
chapters to make this better in the future, but more on that
further in this episode.
If you want your audience to take any action or be able to
quickly access information, linking to it from a chapter makes
that action extremely convenient because the listener doesn't
have to go to your website.
They don't have to try scrolling through your episode notes
inside their podcast app.
They don't have to try to remember a URL that you speak.
Even though I try to make my URLs more memorable, like the
audacity to podcast.com/chapters for this, that is still
something you have to remember.
But if you're using your chapters to link to certain things or
provide certain actions, your audience doesn't have to remember
those URLs because they are right there for them to tap right
when you're talking about it.
Not somewhere else in your episode, but right there.
When you're talking about that link, the link is there for them
to click.
And they can usually then tap on that chapter while it's playing
and be taken to that destination.
And they're taking action then without leaving the podcast app.
I mean, that they can take that initial action of visiting the
link.
Then whatever that link does after they tap on it, that might
take them out of the podcast app, but getting them to that first
step is so much more seamless when you're using chapters.
And what that link can do is pretty cool too.
You're probably familiar with a URL.
That is the thing that's
httpscolon//theaudacitytopodcast.com/chapters. That's a URL.
But chapters don't have to link to only web pages.
They could be a special link called a mail to link that triggers
an email, and that can be simply a blank email to a specific
email address, but you can even prefill certain information in
that email.
So imagine having your chapter link to your email address, pre
populating the subject line with the name of that episode or with
whatever subject line is helpful to you.
So then when someone taps on that link in their podcast app, it
is opening their email app, starting a new email message to your
email address with the subject already entered in.
That's pretty cool. Right? That's just with a mail to link.
They could also be links to your phone number so that if someone
taps on that from their smartphone, it immediately then calls or
it might pop up a little prompt saying, do you want to call this
phone number?
They just tap on the button to call, and then they're calling
your voicemail number.
Or it could also be a click to text kind of link that has a
special SMS code in it so that when people tap on that, it
instantly opens up a text message that they could send to you.
Think of this like Buzzsprout's fan mail feature that's powered
through SMS texting. You could link to that from a chapter.
And you can link to other kinds of actions that can be triggered
from a URL pattern like this.
It could be to special resources inside of other apps, maybe even
something inside the current podcast app.
There are so many potential things that you could do.
Just imagine some of these potentials with different kinds of
links.
When you're talking about a favorite resource, you could add your
affiliate link to the chapter so your audience can quickly buy it
by clicking on the link from your chapter.
Or when you're thanking your audience for their support, you
could link the chapter to your support or value page so others
can quickly give their own support too.
Or when you're doing a baked in advertisement for a sponsor, you
could link that chapter to the advertiser's site to make that
call to action more convenient.
Or for any call to action, maybe you're selling your own stuff or
you're promoting an upcoming event that you're doing, you could
link to that in the chapter so that people could tap on that link
that's presented right then and take action on that link.
Or when you're asking for feedback, you could link that chapter
to your feedback page or even directly to your email address or
SMS number, like for the Buzzsprout fan mail feature or other
things like that.
Or you could link it to if you use the feedback feature on
Podgagement, you could link to that.
So right there, people can very quickly tap on that to write a
message to you or record a message to you through the feedback
page that Podgagement offers.
Each of these can be more actionable by linking to them from the
chapter at the time when it's most relevant.
And your audience doesn't have to remember special links or URLs
or even remember your brand.
They can simply tap the link right then.
They don't have to jump around in your notes to find the link.
It's right there, right then. And you can say that.
You can say, if you've got the chapter displaying right now, tap
on that link or go to, and make sure that you do support those
fallback options.
Don't assume that everyone in your audience can see the chapters
or can take action on the chapters.
So it's still a good idea to provide that fallback.
Just like I will say, and will continue to say in my episodes in
the future, the URL for that episode instead of only relying on
what's in the notes.
Although I've been experimenting a little bit with what happens
if I only rely on the notes. But you can support that feedback.
So if you're telling people for theaudacitytopodcast.com slash
give back, which is the page where you can give back to The
Audacity to Podcast, cleverly named URL. Right?
If you value the podcast, you can give back to it whatever amount
you see fit through that page.
So, I can speak that URL in the podcast, which is still good to
do because then people can hear that if they need that option,
but I can also link to that in the chapter.
And I've been doing that in my chapters recently when I've been
thanking the people who have given some value back to The
Audacity to Podcast.
I'm able to add that link in those chapters so that someone else
could see that and tap on that and think, I wanna give some value
too, and they can do that right through that special link.
Number 5, how to chapter your podcast episodes.
Let's break chaptering into 2 steps, style and actually adding
the chapters. First, pick your chapter in style.
I generally suggest that the easiest and best way to decide what
chapters to make is by looking at how your content is naturally
divided.
If your content has any kind of outline already, as most of my
episodes do, those are your chapters right there.
And if your content has multiple segments, different stories that
even if it's news or comedy or scene changes or certain major
themes in the episode, those are also ideal places to have new
chapters.
When I did this TV show fan podcast about the TV show Once Upon a
Time, we would divide our conversation into talking about certain
scenes that happened in the episode.
Sometimes we might jump around a little bit, but we were
basically talking about those core scenes or even sometimes
talking about certain themes of the episode.
Each 1 of those could have been a chapter, but I wasn't doing
chapters back then.
There will be times you'll have to consider how deep your chapter
should go.
For example, we are right now in a second level of headings, you
look at the notes for this episode.
But I've chosen to give both this subheading and the next
subheading their own chapters so that it's easier for you to
follow along if you're looking at the chapters inside your
podcast app, and you can see my basic outline.
So even though the chapter that came right before this 1 was only
a few seconds long, still, it allows you to see that basic
outline.
You might also run into a case where you have a single section,
but you want to share multiple images or multiple links.
Until super chapters are accepted in Podcasting 2, and I'll talk
more about those in a moment, The best thing you can do is link
to a single page with those multiple links or link to the
relevant section of a page with URL targets.
For example, adding a hashtag and then the section title to our
URL, usually after the last slash or after the last part of the
URL, but before any question marks or ampersands.
Doing that can link to a section of that page that uses the title
attribute for that link or heading.
That's a little technical, I know.
When you're adding your heading, see if there's a way for you to
give that heading a special HTML title to it.
That's very easy to do with hyperlinks, but you can also do it
with other HTML elements.
You can do this in WordPress and in some other editors.
And then you can try it.
Try visiting the URL for that page with that pound sign or hash
sign, and then whatever that title is that you gave it.
Stick to lowercase, no spaces, only use hyphens or underscores,
maybe even not those.
It doesn't really have to make sense what you use, but just make
sure it's consistent so you know how to link to it.
You could link your chapters that way as well.
And I've done this before in some of my past episodes as a little
experiment.
I wanted to see how the podcast apps would handle it where I
linked each chapter to that section in the full notes.
You could do that.
You could even use an AI or more accurately called an LLM, a
large language model, but some kind of AI powered tool to suggest
the chapters for you.
There are some shortcomings to this, and I'll talk more about
that in a moment.
But it is something that you could use, and that could certainly
save you a lot of time.
So those are the ways that you could consider your style for the
chapters or what you might turn into a chapter.
The second thing is to then add the chapters with the right
tools.
There are multiple tools to add chapters to podcast episodes.
Some hosting providers such as Blueberry, Captivate, Buzzsprout,
rss.com, and some others offer those built in tools to add your
chapters.
There are also some installable apps that can add chapters to
your m p 3 files, like Forecast for Mac OS, podcast chapters for
Mac OS, and Hindenburg for Windows and Mac OS.
And some I d 3 editors can add chapters too, but maybe not the
full features of it.
Like, even PA Software's I d 3 editor app can add chapters.
It's very clunky to do, and you can't add images to those
chapters. So it's not the best way. It works. Yeah.
But it's not the best way.
The hosting providers also offer AI powered chapter suggestions
where the system looks at your episode transcript and tries to
suggest chapters for you, sometimes even placing those chapters
automatically in your episode for you.
But in my experience, the results are often too granular,
resulting in too many chapters.
Like, sometimes even dividing the chapters within your paragraph
of what you're talking about, and then you've got 2 chapters.
Like, 1 sentence for 1 chapter and another sentence for another
chapter. That's just too much.
And such systems often ignore the outline you actually have and
are actually speaking in your episode.
Like, my episodes, I'm usually speaking my outline, but many of
these AI tools don't detect the outline that I am literally
speaking into my episode.
The installable apps sometimes offer more manual control,
sometimes letting you place a marker in the audio waveform while
listening to the episode.
Like, that's what you can do with the Podcast chapters app for
Mac OS or Hindenburg.
And sometimes the apps like Forecast offer only a timestamp field
where you manually enter in the minutes and seconds.
And many of these apps let you enter only minutes, seconds, or
hours too if your episodes are that long.
But you can't do millisecond precision.
So sometimes your chapter might be placed in the middle of a
word, and you have to figure out, okay, which word am I going to
cut off?
Will I cut off where I'm saying number, or will I cut off
whatever word I said before I said number 1?
You have to make those kinds of decisions when you only get
second level precision like that.
You can only place it at a 0 second level.
As you can tell, each of these methods have their shortcomings,
potentially time sucking deal breakers even.
And that's why I finally decided to create something better.
So I'm thrilled to announce to you the public launch and
availability of PodChapters.
After using, I think, every popular podcast chapter adding tool
out there, I'm quite certain PodChapters is the fastest, easiest,
and smartest way to chapter your podcast. Yes. I created it.
So, of course, I'm biased.
But I created it because I was frustrated using all of these
other tools.
If you want, you can manually place your chapters in the audio
waveform through PodChapters.
And in fact, there is a very inexpensive plan that lets you do
that. You can place chapters very manually.
Still, it's a much better way to do it than the other apps
because you can simply drag the chapters around if you didn't get
it placed at just the right spot.
You can zoom in on the waveform and place the chapter exactly
where you want with millisecond precision so you're not cutting
off any of the words.
So, yes, you can do that stuff manually and so much better in
PodChapters than any of the other options out there.
But where PodChapters really excels is when you use the AI
powered features.
And the first time that I got PodChapters to do this magic for
me, I got goosebumps.
Really, I actually did that time that I pressed the button and I
saw it do its magic, and it did it so well. I got goosebumps.
And you know what I did after that? I pressed the button again.
And then I deleted the chapters, and I pressed the button again
over and over because I was just enjoying the magic of it so
much.
I don't recommend that you do that if you sign up for PodChapters
because you might just see the same thing over and over, and
that's just costing credits.
But you can use PodChapters to do that kind of magic for you.
And you can either provide your own transcript.
We can call it b y o t, bring your own transcript, and then that
can save you on the AI credits.
Or you can use PodChapters to transcribe your podcast for you.
And I think PodChapters has some really nice features in it to
make those transcripts.
Like, yes, it can do the speaker detection, but it can do some
other really cool stuff, like allowing you to enter in a list of,
we could call them proper nouns that you frequently say in your
podcast so that the transcript is correct with those things.
For example, I always enter The Audacity to Podcast.
My name, Daniel J.
Lewis, PodChapters, Podgagement, Podcasting 2, that's in my
special preset that I apply now to every episode. Yes.
You can save preset so you don't have to retype all of this
stuff.
So every episode that I create gets that and maybe a couple of
other things in there as some key terms.
Those are the proper nouns that I want to make sure it
capitalizes them properly and it transcribes them properly.
You can add those in.
And then per episode, you can add more on top of that.
So maybe someone's name that you mentioned in that episode.
And this is so that the transcript will more accurately
transcribe those things.
You can also add in some basic find and replace stuff.
Like, I see even the best transcription tools sometimes split the
word the from the audacity to podcast.com.
Sometimes it's with the the, sometimes it's without the the, or
there's a space there.
Sometimes it puts the number 2 in the middle instead of t o.
So I have certain find and replace operations in there, and you
can change the order of them too so that it will always properly
transcribe those things.
And I don't have to look through the transcript and edit those
things later because I know it can do that.
Another thing that frequently the transcripts get wrong is when I
say the give back URL, sometimes it will be slash give space back
instead of slash give back, like 1 word after the slash.
So I can just put that in the find and replace to say whenever
you see slash give space back, replace it with slash give back
with no space in it.
That find and replace, you can put in there so when it
transcribes it for you, you get a more accurate transcript.
So when you've got that transcript, whether you provide it or you
have PodChapters generated for you, then the AI can suggest the
chapters for you and even then automatically place them.
If you don't like the chapters, you can edit them.
You can drag them around however you want.
Now, yes, other tools can do this too, but I have tweaked the AI
a whole lot to get great results with all my tests, Even to the
point that it does recognize when I speak my outline, it will
recognize that as chapters and suggest those as the chapters.
And from the beta testers who have been using PodChapters now for
a couple of weeks, many of them have said, yeah, these chapters
are fantastic.
So much better than what I've gotten from other tools.
So you can then edit those chapters, delete any of them that you
want, move them around if you want. It's really easy to use.
And something no 1 else offers, but that I have suggested and
requested from multiple other people for years.
So I've had this idea for years to build this, but no one's done
it. So PodChapters is the first tool to do this.
And that is I I love this.
I even call it an amazing ability to take the outline you provide
and automatically turn it into chapters for you with amazing
precision.
For example, since I always know what I want my chapters to be,
that is the outline for my episode, I simply paste that outline
into PodChapters and click a button for it to place my chapters,
and it does it.
And it saves me all kind of time and frustration of looking where
is this chapter supposed to go. I don't have to worry about that.
I tell it, these are what the chapters are supposed to be, and
then it goes and places them for me.
And, yes, sometimes it's slightly off, like a second or a half a
second.
And that's where I can just click to jump to that chapter, and
very quickly just drag it ever so slightly, whichever direction I
need it to be.
And it's very fast and easy to be able to listen back to those
chapters to make sure that they're placed correctly.
For real, this, what I'm about to share with you, is the workflow
that I or my assistant, Steve Moody, would have to do for every
episode, and it's mostly replaced now with PodChapters.
It would start with after the episode was edited, and it was
finished and ready to be published, almost ready, but the episode
itself had been edited.
So I had the final m p 3 file that's has all the audio in it,
Then we would run that through Mac Whisper Pro to transcribe it,
and sometimes doing it with 1 or 2 different styles of
transcripts.
Then we would use I d 3 editor to add the basic I d 3 tags in
that pulling from a template.
Then we would add chapters with the Podcast Chapters app, which
is Mac OS only.
And that took a lot of time because we had to look for where to
place the chapters.
And I'll be honest, using Podcast Chapters is often very
stressful because of certain weird things about the ways it works
that might just be a personal thing, but were definitely
frustrating.
So then after the chapters were placed, then we would export the
transcript and the podcasting 2 chapters as those files, and
they'd have to go somewhere.
So I would upload them to a content distribution network or a
CDN.
And then finally, I could add the hyperlink to the transcript in
the Podcasting 2 chapters inside of PowerPress, which is what I'm
using for creating my RSS feed right now.
So all of those steps are now, except for the last 1 of adding
the URLs, all of those can be done with 1 tool, PodChapters.
And, yes, that means that PodChapters can even host your
transcript file and your Podcasting 2 chapters for you.
You don't need a separate CDN.
You don't have to upload those files.
PodChapters will just give you the URL, and you can paste that
into your system if you need a URL for that.
Or if you want to upload the chapters and the transcript into
your own system, you can do that.
Or if you're saving the chapters into the m p 3 file, which
PodChapters will do for you, many of the podcast hosting
providers can read the chapters from the m p 3 file.
So even though there is some overlap, still, you can use 1 tool
to create the chapters, and then your hosting provider can
populate those other areas that you need.
PodChapters really does everything you need to add engaging
chapters to your podcast potentially in as little as 30 seconds,
and that is real life testing.
I've tested several of my episodes to see how quickly could I go
from not even a transcript, just the m p 3 file to a transcribed
and correctly chaptered file.
And I've sometimes gotten it as low as 20 seconds.
But 30 seconds, you know, a little bit of a buffer there,
especially depending on how big the episode is.
But that is from real world testing.
If you have longer episodes or more chapters, yes, it potentially
takes longer.
But still, most of this is automated, and it's in 1 tool.
I made PodChapters first for myself.
And if you can't tell, I am so excited about this tool.
And as I made this for myself, I then realized how much time and
frustration it could save you, especially if you're on Windows or
Linux where there are very few options for making podcast
chapters.
PodChapters runs in the browser, so it works on any modern
device. Yes. It even works on an iPhone.
Though, I know, at least at this time, I still need to optimize
the interface a little bit more for small screen devices, but it
does function on an iPhone.
So that means it would obviously function on an iPad too on a
bigger screen like that.
So you can start chaptering your podcast the smart way now at
podchapters.com. Sign up over there.
I would love to have you using PodChapters.
I know I spent a lot of time talking about PodChapters.
That's my little ad for this. Sign up for PodChapters.
But it really is something that I want you to use because I want
you to not have that pain of using all of these different apps or
getting frustrated with the chapters that the AI suggest for you.
And I'd love your feedback on it too.
If you have a case where you feel like the chapters it gave you
weren't quite what you wanted, certainly, can edit that, but let
me know. And let me know what you were hoping it would give you.
Or if you give it your own outline, then it does its magic really
well. I really want you to try PodChapters.
If you couldn't tell, I am super excited about it.
But back to content.
Number 6, Podcasting 2 Cloud Chapters are already better.
At its core, Podcasting 2 Cloud Chapters do the same things as
legacy chapters.
That is a title, an optional image, and an optional link.
The 2 chapters do also add the ability to include a location and
hide the chapter from the table of contents, but those are very
specific use cases.
Beyond that, simply by moving the chapters out of the RSS feed
and especially out of the m p 3 files where legacy chapters live,
simply moving it out there to host it on the cloud, that's why
they're called cloud chapters, enables some really cool things.
And some of those things I'll be supporting in the future with
PodChapters.
For example, you could replace a chapter image to reflect more
urgency as some deadline approaches.
So if you've got a conference coming up or some product you're
selling or anything like that, you could have an image that
promotes that.
And then as it gets closer, you could change that image to say
how many spots are left for that thing or even make it a sort of
countdown where you say 5 days left, 4 days left, 3 days left, 2
days left, and then you replace the image after the event with
saying, sorry, please check back next time.
You could replace the URL destination of a chapter, and you could
edit anything about those chapters, completely changing what the
chapters are, all by editing the tiny episode metadata file, or
sometimes called a chapters file, without editing the m p 3.
And the huge benefit of that is that means you don't have to
reupload the m p 3 file, and your audience doesn't have to
redownload it because your audience in a modern podcasting 2 app
will have access to those new chapters without having to
redownload your episode or for you to reupload the episode
because the chapters are managed separately in the cloud.
That's why they're called CloudChapters.
But I think chapters can do more than that.
So that's why, number 7, Podcasting 2 could bring super chapters.
If you couldn't tell, chapters are 1 of my favorite features of
Podcasting 2, and so I've proposed some ways that Podcasting 2
chapters could be so much better than the legacy functionality
they still basically are.
That is title, optional image, and optional link.
The 2 biggest things I've proposed are galleries and text blocks.
Consider a podcaster who wants to share a bunch of images from a
relevant trip.
She could tell her audience to visit her website to view all the
images, or she could painstakingly make a chapter for each image.
But doing that forces the audience to see the images at the pace
of the chapters, which would likely require interrupting the
podcast multiple times as the audience might want to spend more
time to look at an image, maybe less time on other images.
That's where a gallery chapter could come in.
A single chapter could contain all the images from that trip.
There would be just the 1 chapter as the host is talking about
her trip, but the audience could swipe through the gallery of
images at their own pace while listening and without leaving the
podcast app.
Text block chapters would allow a chapter to have more text than
only a title.
It could contain, for example, bullet points, a quotation, or
multiple links instead of only 1 link.
I've got some links in the notes for this episode at the
audacitytopodcast.com/chapters for some other episodes where I
have talked more in-depth about specifically Podcasting 2
chapters and super chapters.
So I'd love for you to check them out, including the podcast I co
host with Dave Jackson, the future of podcasting.
And please definitely check out PodChapters.
Special thanks to Steve Wilkinson who sent 1 2 3 4 Satoshis
saying thanks for all you do in podcasting.
Well, thank you, Steve, for that kind support.
And if you value the Audacity Podcast, the help and the
inspiration and information, maybe even a little bit of
entertainment that I provide here and there, and you want to give
some of that value back, whatever you feel it's worth to you, you
can do so at theaudacitytopodcast.com slash give back or through
your modern podcasting 2 app.
And the other thing that you could do is simply tell other people
about The Audacity to Podcast or especially about my brand new
product, PodChapters at podchapters.com, and thank you for
signing up to use PodChapters.
And 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 with chapters for passion and profit. I'm Daniel J.
Lewis from theaudacitytopodcast.com. Thanks for listening.