Helpful Information for Audio Fiction Creators

Packaging Your Fiction Podcast To Maximize Your Listeners’ Experience

August 28, 2024

Ten straightforward changes to make to your fiction podcast right now to give the best listening experience to your future listeners.

There are many reasons I love listening to “compete” fiction podcasts. But chief among these is the convenience factor. Because I’ve waited to start listening to episodes until the creator has reached a season finale or completed the entire season, I’m not waiting on them! (Yes, I recognize many people love listening along as episodes are posted. Y’all keep on keepin’ on. Podcasting is big enough for both of us!)

Unfortunately, that convenience factor is often hindered by the presentation of the complete series or season in podcast listening apps and directories. I lay a lot of the blame at the feet of podcast hosting companies who should, I feel, do a better job of catering to the specific needs of fiction podcasters and take a more active role in ensuring creators get things right.

But we don’t live in that world (yet?). We do, however, live in a world where I’ve helped close to a thousand different creators package their fiction podcasts in a way that maximizes the listener experience.

And, after all, every fiction podcaster wants to give their listeners an amazing experience with their show, right?

With that, I make the following ten recommendations on ways every fiction podcaster—staunchly independent or as part of a big production house or network—can improve the listener experience. I encourage you to open up your show’s dashboard in your hosting company and look at your implementation for each of these all-too-overlooked aspects of packaging for fiction podcasts

1. Is your title the right title?

Let’s start with arguably one of your fiction podcast's more important parts—if not the most important part—the title. This is rather straightforward to many fiction podcasters but a bit of a head-scratcher to others, particularly those with multiple seasons, anthologies, and podcasts that contain more than a single story.

When you set the title of your podcast in your podcast hosting company’s dashboard, you have a singular goal: Ensure your show is findable and unambiguous.

Both of those things. Findable, as in when someone searches on this name, will my show come up? And unambiguous, as in if multiple shows display, is mine obviously mine?

As an example of how not to do that, check out this search query for “coaches corner” on the Podnews search engine, which is a good representation of the results in-app search engines deliver. Twenty-two shows with that exact name, dozens more with those words in their titles, and then another set of results once the apostrophe is added. Which one is the right one?

Now search for your show. Or better yet, tell someone the name of your show and ask them to search while you peek over their shoulder. Do the results of that search look like what you expected? What do you need to do differently to your title to get the result you wanted? Add “The Audiodrama” to the title? A few shows do that. Maybe the title of your show isn’t the name of the story you’re currently podcasting. Podcast listening app search engines are exceedingly rudimentary, so be sure to name your podcast the same way you talk about your podcast and the stories you tell.

2. Is your artwork right for your show?

Potential listeners can and do judge a fiction podcast by its cover. And if the cover image for your murder mystery thriller looks like your 8-year-old made it out of macaroni at summer camp… you get the idea.

I’m not an artist, so I’m unqualified to tell you how to design your show’s artwork. All I can do is try to press upon you the need for the artwork to match the show and set the proper expectation, style, and tone. It’s a job that really does require some design chops, so I tend to work with designers rather than hacking something together on my own.

I am, however, qualified to tell you the technical specs your artwork must adhere to. Your final show-level image should be perfectly square, ideally 3000x3000 pixels (but not smaller than 1400x1400), in either JPG or PNG format, and less than 500 KB in total file size. If it’s not, then some directories will reject your show. Not kidding.

3. Is your show’s description actually descriptive?

Generally speaking, creators are bad a writing “summaries” of their work. “If I could say it in a couple of paragraphs, I wouldn’t have needed to write the whole novel,” I’ve had novelist friends say to me. And I understand the sentiment.

Perhaps a formula may help. Sure, there’s the risk it’ll be formulaic, but you can probably smooth that out before you update the box in your podcast hosting company’s dashboard. Try this:

Start with a sentence that familiarizes prospects with the show they will hear. The first sentence of the description of Afflicted is a great example: “Lovecraft Country meets True Blood in this new series from award-winning producers Tonia Ransom and Jen Zink.” I wish the creators did more than this with their description, but I gotta give ‘em credit for a solid opening.
After that, write a 2–3 paragraph synopsis that hits the important bits of your show. No, sorry, your characters' names are NOT the important part. Not usually, at least. Don’t give away everything but spend some time setting the scene. Is the story from a certain era? Is it an interesting mashup of different genres? Is there a location/geography component? Are the creators from historically marginalized groups? Try to think of unique aspects of your story that are different from things you’ve heard before.
Give credit where credit is due! If you did everything, from script writing to performing to engineering and beyond, all by your little lonesome, congrats! Today, however, many fiction podcasts are a team effort, complete with showrunners, a cast of actors, sound designers, marketing people, and much more. And all of them deserve credit in the description of the show. You can even type out URLs for everyone if you like.
Let people know how they can get in touch with you. I can’t tell you how frustrating it is when I find a great show that I want to feature in The End but cannot reach the creator. Podcast hosting companies are taking email addresses out of RSS feeds, autogenerated websites don’t have contact forms, and people are disabling direct contact methods for their social channels. My advice? Get a show-specific email address and forward it to your inbox. Put the show-specific email as the last item in your show’s description.

Do those four things. But don’t worry about this going long. Write as much as you need. 500–1000 characters isn’t unusual in a solid show description, especially for fiction podcasts.

4. Is your website linked in your podcast feed?

If you have a separate website for your show, maybe on Squarespace or WordPress, be sure that website is added to your podcast hosting company's dashboard. Most podcast hosting companies will auto-generate a website for you. And if you don’t have a website, this is fine. But if you do, you want the website you built for your podcast to be associated with your podcast’s RSS feed, not the default one your hosting company creates. Find that field. Enter your custom website URL. And if your hosting company doesn’t allow this… switch hosting companies. It’s quite straightforward.

5. Is your “show type” correct?

Most fiction podcasts are designed to be listened to the same way fiction books are designed to be read and fiction television shows are designed to be watched: from the beginning. As it turns you, that’s a peculiar thing in podcasting, as the vast majority of podcasts are designed to be listened to more like magazines and newspapers are read: from the most recent episode.

Luckily for you, the fiction podcaster (and us, the fiction listeners), there’s a simple “fix”. All you have to log into your hosting dashboard and make sure your show type is set to “serial” and not “episodic.” Yes, you must do this, or your show’s feed will be set to episodic by default. But you are not default. You are a fiction podcaster!

Most podcast hosting companies make this easy. Some have hidden the setting, so you may have to send in a help request. Unfortunately, Anchor, now Spotify for Podcasters, does not let you change this setting. So don’t use Anchor for your serialized, listen-from-episode-one fiction podcast. Sorry.

When your show is properly marked as “serial,” apps like Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, Audible, and more change how the show is displayed, giving new listeners your very first episode (or the very first episode of your last season, which is a little maddening but we’re moving in the right direction) rather than displaying your most recent—or the last episode if it’s finished—first.

No one wants to listen to your story backward. Don’t force your listeners to go into their app settings and fiddle around to get yours looking right. Change this setting. It’s dead simple. Unless you’re on Spotify for Podcasters/Anchor. Then… move.

6. Is there a trailer to preview your show?

Trailer episodes are fantastic for fiction podcasts. Every show should have one. And a new one should be created each season.

But… if your trailer still says something like “Coming this fall…” or “New episodes release every Tuesday,” that’s less helpful. It made great sense to make that trailer before you released an episode. It even made sense while you were releasing episodes every week. But now you’re not. The show (or one or more seasons) is fully available. Your trailer should say that.

Does that mean you need to make a new one? Well… yes. Keep the trailer (or trailers, if you have multiple seasons) relevant to listeners right now, not what was happening years ago when you started.

Also, mark the episode as a trailer. Not a full episode. And certainly not a bonus. Again, your podcast hosting company should make this easy. If not… switch!

7. Are your episodes properly numbered?

Your podcast hosting company should allow you to “tag” each episode with a season number and an episode number, a pair of fields perfect for fiction podcasters! Yet far too many fiction creators don’t use them. Bah!

Use them! But use them smartly. Every “story” episode should be numbered. Most “non-story” episodes should not. Yes, it’s possible—likely, even—for a fiction podcast to have numbered and non-numbered episodes. Consider a show that has a trailer episode, five episodes of actual story content, then a short episode when they went on break for the summer, then a “we’re coming back next week” episode, then the next five episodes of the story to complete the season, then a trailer for the 2nd season. And maybe a promo episode (an episode drop) for another podcast. That’s 15 episodes, but only 10 of them should be numbered. Like so:

Trailer (S1, no episode number, type = trailer)
Story pt 1 (S1/E1, type = full)
Story pt 2 (S1/E2, type = full)
Story pt 3 (S1/E3, type = full)
Story pt 4 (S1/E4, type = full)
Story pt 5 (S1/E5, type = full)
On break special announcement (S1, no episode number, type = bonus)
Coming back next week special announcement (S1, no episode number, type = bonus)
Story pt 6 (S1/E6, type = full)
Story pt 7 (S1/E7, type = full)
Story pt 8 (S1/E8, type = full)
Story pt 9 (S1/E9, type = full)
Story pt 10 (S1/E10, type = full)
Promo for another show (no season, no episode, type = bonus)
Trailer for Season 1 (S2, no episode number, type = trailer)

There are lots of permutations to this, so do whatever you need to do. Just do it with intent.

8. Are your episode descriptions actually descriptive?

Writing a synopsis for the whole show is hard enough for a fiction podcaster, but doing that for each and every episode is… well, let’s just say I don’t have to struggle with how much to share without spoiling.

Regardless of that, there are a couple of things you should add to your episode descriptions that go beyond plot. Two things, really:

Credit to the people who worked on/appeared in this particular episode.
Information that “tethers” the episode back to you show. It’s possible a fan might share your episode directly from their listening app with a friend, losing the context of all the other episodes. A bit of boilerplate at the bottom of each episode, complete with a link back to the website or way for listeners to get more info, can help mitigate this problem.

9. Is your season finale/series final episode clearly marked?

The great thing about most fiction podcasts is that there is an ending, or possibly many endings, in sight. But right now, listeners don’t have a good way to determine if a season finale or the series completion for your show has been reached. Those last episodes look like any other, and many listeners (I’m one!) won’t start a show unless we know an endpoint has been reached.

So in place of a tagging system (we’re working on it!), it’s up to you, the creator, to clearly let current and would-be listeners know that you’ve reached a season finally or the series completion. And you’ll do that in two ways:

Use something like “Season 2 finale” in the title of your final episode.
Add something like “TWO SEASONS COMPLETE, AND THE THIRD STARTING IN OCT 2025” in the show's description, right at the very top. And yes, in all caps, Yell that stuff, yo!

That removes any ambiguity.

Pro-tip: Get your Q&A or Season Recap bonus episode posted 24–48 hours after your season finale is posted with info on when you’ll be coming back with new episodes. And clearly mark that one, too!

10. Have you cleaned up your feed?

All fiction podcasts take a long time to produce, but not all fiction podcasters wait until the hard work is done to start posting episodes. That can lead to all sorts of “extra” bits in feeds, from coming soon announcements for the next episode to multiple feed drops for other shows to behind-the-scenes episodes to other things that made sense at the time… but now it’s a year later. Someone listening brand new probably doesn’t need to sit through all that stuff.

So once you’ve posted a finale/the final episode, go back and delete the stuff that no longer needs to be there. In the example above, there’s no need to keep the episodes that announced the season break or the coming back soon event. That’s just clutter for new listeners.

Think of this as cleaning up after yourself. Delete what doesn’t need to be there now. Re-name (or re-number) to keep each episode consistent. Remember—listening now that the show/season is complete should be a much different experience than when you were releasing live. So clean this place up a bit. Company is coming over

So there you have it. 10 things you can do right now to help better package your fiction podcast for new listeners.

I’ve a few more thoughts and ideas noodling around in my brain, so you may see a few more articles like this from me that are written to help make the best experience for listeners like me.

Cheers!

E.

How To Optimize Podbean for Your Fiction Podcast

August 28, 2024

Everything you need to know about optimizing your Podbean account so your fiction podcast shines to the world!

Podbean is a popular choice for a podcast hosting company among fiction podcasters. A quick scan of our database on The End shows that a little more than 8% of the shows we’ve listed use Podbean as their hosting provider. A lot of that has to do with pricing—Podbean has a limited free tier and an “unlimited” plan for only $9 per month. And the people I’ve met at Podbean (hi, Roni!) are super nice!

But does Podbean make a good place for fiction podcasters to call home? It can be, but due to the quirks of fiction podcasting vs “normal” podcasts, some tweaks need to be made to optimize Podbean for fiction podcasters.

In the subsequent sections of this article, I’ll break down how to optimize your Podbean account on a page-by-page, field-by-field level. I'll use the exact name of the fields and even include a cropped screen shot of each to help make things as clear as possible. But please note that I’ll only offer advice/opinions/directions for the fields that need optimization. If I don’t have anything to say about a field, that doesn’t mean the field isn’t important. It probably is! It’s just not something that needs to be optimized. With that, let’s get started!

Settings > General

Once you’re logged into your Podbean account, select Settings > General from the right navigation bar. We’re going to optimize just six fields on this page: Podcast Title, Brief Description, Podcast Category, Podcast Website, Author / Owner, and Podcast Type.

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Podcast Title

This is the title of your fiction podcast, obviously. Some creators like to add “Audio drama” and stuff like that, but I say do that only if you need it. And remember, you don’t need to add “podcast” (probably) to the name of your show.

Brief Description

This is the full description of your show. It should not be “brief,” no matter what Podbean says. But also, it shouldn’t be 50K characters long, which they also say. [sigh]

The words entered here are used both for the description that appears on your Podbean-generated website as well as the description that is distributed to various podcast listening platforms and directories. Is it important? Yes. Very. And it’s probably something you should revisit on a regular basis as your show grows.

You have up to 4,000 characters to work with when you write your description. I included some tips on crafting a great fiction podcast description in this article. It’s item #3.

Podcast Category

You can choose up to three different categories/subcategories for your fiction podcast. My strong recommendation: Unless you have a very good reason not to, your first category should be Fiction or Fiction > [Comedy, Drama, or Science Fiction]. Don’t get me started on how dumb it is to limit fiction podcasts to just those three subcategories. It aggravates me too, but we work with what we have.

Let your other two other categories be what they need to be, based on the contents of your fiction podcast. I’ve seen fiction podcasters also categorize their shows as Arts > Performing Arts, Arts > Books, Comedy > [subcategories], History, Leisure, Kids & Family, and many others. Whatever makes sense for the story(ies) you’re telling in your fiction podcast.

But there’s more to do after that on this page. Click the More Options link below to expand some hidden fields that are pretty important.

Behold! More fields to optimize.

Podcast Website

This field is somewhat misleading, and it duplicates the name of another field. [sigh] You likely do not want to change this field, especially if your show has already been submitted to podcast directories and apps. As noted on the screen, changing this field will change the URL of your show’s RSS feed, and that’s exceedingly bad. So don’t touch this. But don’t freak out in a moment when you see that same name used for a different field.

Author / Owner

The contents of this field are displayed prominently along with your show’s title and artwork in most directories and apps, so make sure it says what you want it to say! Repeating the name of your show here is rather pointless. Using the name of an aspirational production company won’t give you personally any branding. But you can enter something like Creator Name | Other Creatorname | Network/Studio in that field if you want to give more than one person/entity some initial credit.

Podcast Type

This is the big one. The one that is all too often missed by fiction podcasters. Chances are, you want to select Serial, not the default choice of Episodic. Episodic describes podcasts with formats like interviews, current events or news, or weekly gab-fests. With those shows—they make up the largest share of podcasts—it’s fine for a brand-new person to listen to the most recent episode.

But most fiction podcasts—yes, there are exceptions—presenting the most recent episode to a new listener makes for a bad listener experience. When you read a fictional story or start a new fictional series on TV, you start at the beginning, not the end. And certainly not at whatever the current episode is, right?

This is the tag that gives fiction podcasters like you some control over how your episodes are presented to your listeners. Serial. That’s the right answer for fiction podcasts that publish episodes that really should be listened to in a particular order.

Make your changes, then click the big blue Update Options button, and we can move on to the next bit. Yeah, we’re just getting started!

Settings > Feed

Now, let’s optimize your RSS feed settings. No, you will not have to look at your RSS feed, I promise. (Though, honestly, it’s pretty simple to read once you understand the structure. But that’s not important right now. Focus, Evo!) We have six more fields to optimize here: Apple Podcasts Summary, Podcast Website, Episode Link, Episode Number Limit, Episode Artwork Tag, and URL prefix.

Access these by selecting Settings > Feed from the left navigation bar.

Screenshot: Settings > Feed — Back to the left nav!

Apple Podcasts Summary

I’m somewhat surprised Podbean still includes this, as it populates an RSS feed tag that has been deprecated by Apple Podcasts. But because you probably abhor empty boxes as much as I do, copy and paste in the Brief Description you used in the Settings > General section above.

Everything else we need to optimize on this page is collapsed under Advanced Feed Settings. Click those words to expand it.

Hey! Now we’re getting somewhere! Let’s start at the top:

Podcast Website

OK, now this field is the actual field for your podcast’s website. Specifically, this is where you enter the URL of your website so it’s included in (and distributed with) your RSS feed. Many of today’s listening apps and podcast directories will place a clickable link with “show website” or something like that, encouraging listeners to click and get to your site.

If you have your own website—i.e. MyAmazingAudioFiction.show—enter the full address in this field, starting with https:// (or, less ideally, http://) to make a fully formed URL.

If you do not have a dedicated and separate website/page for your show, then I recommend letting Podbean generate a website for you. In which case, you’ll leave this as it currently is. (Though, really, you need your own domain name, at least. That’s my very strong opinion.)

Episode Link

More confusing choices, yay! Let me break down these two choices for you.

If you have your own fully functioning website and you create episode-specific pages on that website, then you’ll want to choose Custom Episode Link from the dropdown. That will allow you to enter the specific URL to the episode-specific page you made on your website for that episode when you publish a new episode on Podbean. We’ll get there soon enough. This just sets that up so that you can "attach" the specific URL of your website to the episode. We'll get there!

If you do not create episode-specific pages on your own fully functioning website, leave this as Podbean Episode Link.

Episode Number Limit

Here’s another setting from the early days of podcasting that needs to go away. Look, you probably do not want to limit the number of episodes people can listen to, right? Set this to an insanely high number, like 999. Or more, if they let you.

Episode Artwork Tag

If you make custom artwork for each of your episodes, change this to Use iTunes Image Tag, and then use them. We’ll get there. If you do not make custom artwork for each of your episodes, leave this as Not Set.

URL prefix

This isn’t really about optimizing, but I’m a huge fan of what OP3.dev is doing to “normalize” stats. My advice? Add https://op3.dev/e/ to this field.

We’re done with this section. Hit the big blue Update Options button (again), and let’s move on.

Episodes > Episode List

OK! We’ve done all the optimization at the “channel” level for your show and are set up to do further optimization at the episode level. Select Episodes > Episode List from the left nav bar.

We have nine fields to optimize on this page: Title, Description, Season NO., Episode NO., Episode Type, Summary, Author, Episode-Level Artwork, and Link in Feed.

Before making any changes to any specific episode, take a moment to look at the list of episodes you see on this page. You’ll see the 20 most recent episodes and can page forward, which you’ll probably want to do eventually. But for now, just look at the Title column for these episodes, and ask yourself some questions:

Do the story episodes look like they are all part of the same story?
If you have episode drops or promos for other shows, do those episodes look different from your “normal” episodes?
Does the trailer episode(s) clearly look like a trailer?
Do your season finale episodes clearly look like season finales?

The title of your episode is important, but it’s also important that everything looks like it belongs and is in the right place. If one looks odd to you, I can promise you it looks odd to potential listeners. Don’t do that.

Let’s click on an episode to go more into detail on how to optimize episode listings on Podbean.

Title

There are many schools of thought on how episode titles should be written, but I belong to the “most important things first” clan. That’s probably not the episode number. That’s probably not the title of your podcast. What’s important is what the content if that episode actually is. That could be as simple as Chapter 1. Or it might be The Plot To Steal Xmas or whatever nifty title you’d write if the episode were a blog post or article.

If you have extra things you want to add to your title, like Season 2 finale or Part 3 of 4, add those to the end of the title, as they are (probably) not the most important things.

Description

Each episode can—and should—have its own description. These are often called show notes in podcasting parlance, though I hate the term and prefer episode details, as that’s more representative of what this text should be. But I’ve been lobbying for that change since 2004, and I’ve gotten nowhere. Regardless, see item #8 in my previously mentioned article on some good ideas of what information you should put in this field for each of your episodes.

When you have that text in those fields the way you want it, click More Episode Settings at the bottom. Why they hide this incredibly important stuff is beyond me.

Lo and behold! More fields. And some that work exceptionally well for fiction podcasters who optimize them.

Season NO.

If you selected Serial as your Podcast Type, then Season YES, I say! Which means you’ll most likely want to use season numbers. Modern listening apps like Apple Podcasts and others use the Season tag to group episodes of a season together. So… use it. Only use non-negative, non-zero integers (e.g. 1, 2, 3…).

Episode NO.

Just to keep the joke going—Episode YES! Episode numbers work in conjunction with Season numbers. This field also only takes non-negative, non-zero integers, and they are used to determine the order in which episodes of a particular season should be displayed.

It is very possible that some of your episodes will not have an Episode number. You’ll see why next. Also, it’s best practice (though not a requirement) to restart your episode numbering with each new Season. For example, your first Season may have Episode numbers 1–10, and your second Season might also have Episode numbers 1–10. That’s fine, because the Episode number works in conjunction with the Season number.

Episode type

Most of your episodes will be tagged as Full and get a sequential number in the Episode NO. field. In fact, that’s a good rule—if an episode of your show is NOT to be missed, mark it as Full and give the correct Episode number so it displays in the proper order.

Got an episode drop or a special announcement episode in your feed that isn’t part of the story? Then it is most likely a Bonus episode. Bonus episodes are just that—extra content that a new listener doesn’t have to listen to enjoy the continuing arc of your story. Some apps, like Apple Podcasts, will segregate most (but not all) Bonus episodes to the bottom of a season or series. Keep in mind that caught-up listeners—those who eagerly download and listen to your latest episode as soon as it comes out—will hear your Bonus episodes as you add them. The segregation I spoke of is really for people who are “behind” listening, if you will. Or bingers (like me). So you don’t need to worry that your Bonus episode won’t be heard by your most rabid fans. It will be! But for people who come in a month (or years) later, those Bonus episodes won’t be speedbumps in their (our) listening.

Bonus episodes can be numbered, but only if the Bonus episode is a Bonus episode for a specific Full episode. For example, let’s say that you had a guest actor on an episode, and you decided to do an interview with them. If you think it’s important for your listeners—current and future—to hear that conversation, give that Bonus episode the same Season and Episode number as the Full episode the actor appeared in. That will cause your Bonus episode to show up after the Full episode, at least in the modern apps that respect those tags.

Trailer is the other type, and it’s most often used like trailers are used in the movies, but can also be used to denote “sample” content. When you tag an episode as a Trailer, modern apps will elevate that episode to be the first thing a brand-new listener hears—sometimes even before they decide to follow or subscribe. And, if you use multiple seasons and you make a new trailer for each season, you’ll want to add the Season number to your Trailer episodes as well.

Like Bonus episodes, Trailer episodes can be numbered, but that’s unusual. I’ve seen some audio fiction creators put out Trailer episodes for a delayed-but-soon-to-be-released episode as a sort of teaser. The same rule applies: use the same Episode number as the Full episode that Trailer is about. (Pro tip: Episodes like that are only meaningful for people who are waiting on the next episode. Once it publishes, I think you should delete the numbered Trailer episode.)

Summary

Another deprecated tag from the ye olde days. Leave it blank.

Author

This should auto-fill with whatever you have entered at the “channel” level. You probably will never change it for a particular episode, but you might. Episode drops are one example. Go for it!

Episode-level Artwork

If you look to the right side of the page, you’ll probably see your show artwork. Remember when we told Podbean whether or not we had episode-specific custom artwork? This is where you load it. Follow the sizing guidelines on the page, and try to keep the “weight” to under 500 KB.

Link in RSS Feed

If you have a custom website and you make episode-specific pages with things like your extended episode details, transcript, cast and crew credits, fan art, or other nifty things specific to each episode, this is the spot where you connect the URL of that page on your website to your RSS feed, so that listeners are taken to your website and not Podbean’s when they click on “more information about this episode,” or whatever they app calls the link.

This also gives you a nifty SEO boost, as you’ll have a bunch of links from Podbean pointing to your website. Nice, huh?

That’s all the important stuff on the Episode list page. Click Update if you made changes, and then do this all over again. Yes, for every single episode. Sorry.

Distribution > Podcast Apps

You’re probably tempted to click Podcast Website next, but hold that thought! We need a few more things in place before we get there. We’ll start by clicking Distribution > Podcast Apps.

The apps that display on this page are the apps that will be presented to website visitors to your generated podcast website… but only if you fill them out. Which ones should you fill out? All of them, of course. Why not? People listen on lots of different platforms. Why not be everywhere? It only takes a moment to submit a show. Do it. All of them. And, while you're at it, here's a bunch more you should also submit your show to. You’re welcome.

If you have a custom website and don’t use Podbean’s auto-generated page, you can safely skip this.

OK, now you can click Distribution > Podcast Website on your left nav bar. I know you’ve been dying to.

Distribution > Podcast Website

Look for the green oval with Actions in it and click it to expand it:

If you have your own domain name or website, select Own Domain. Follow those instructions and ignore everything else I write in this section. It ain’t for you!

If you’re using Podbean’s automatically generated website, select Pages, and I’ll walk you through a few things.

Podbean, like a lot of other podcast hosting services, will allow you to create additional pages on your generated website. I strongly suggest you at least add a “Contact Us” page where you list out your show’s email address and other ways people can contact you. I’d also add an “About Us” page that details who’s involved in the production. Just you? Cool. Drop in your pic and bio. Got a full cast? Showcase them. Want to give credit to your engineer, your social media person, your casting agent, or your mom? This is the place to do that. It’s a blank screen, but you’ll figure it out. You’re creative, right?

When that’s done, you can then click on Customize. Now, I’m not a designer, so feel free to do things here that look right to you.

The one thing I want you to do is this: While you’re editing your page, scroll down to the episode list. Now scroll down past that list. Click the blue + circle and add a Title section. And in that, write up all the things that are “missing”. Like social properties you frequent. Like your show’s email address. Like your Patreon/BMAC/Ko-fi link. Those things.

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That’s it! You have now fully optimized your fiction podcast's Podbean account. Nicely done! It'll take a few hours (or days, sometimes) for your changes to be fully distributed. You should see changes to your website immediately, obviously. And, depending on how drastic your changes were, you may hear from some users about repeat downloads, which means you'll see a temporary spike in downloads. That will soon settle down. You did good work!

Special thanks to Willow Grace, creator of The Willow Haven Catalogue, for granting me access to her Podbean account, letting me poke around, and being the first one to implement optimization techniques!

If you’re a fiction podcast creator and you found value in this post, don’t keep it to yourself! I wrote it so that all fiction podcasters who use Podbean as their hosting platform can present their show and episodes in the best way possible. Share it with your fellow creators.

I've also written a "how to" guide like this for Buzzsprout, and I’m working on other guides for other popular hosting platforms, so stay tuned and I’ll probably get to your hosting provider very soon. You can always email me and lobby me to get to yours quicker. If you sign up to become an Individual Supporter or Supporting Creative Shop, I’ll bump you to the head of the line!

If you work for a hosting company, I’d love to chat with you about making it easier for fiction podcasters to use your platform. They have some pretty specific needs that, as you can see, can get a little obfuscated. I’m happy to consult with you on better serving those needs.

And if this is your first time experiencing me and The End; welcome! My focus is on helping listeners find more fiction podcasts they can enjoy on their schedule. Please subscribe to the weekly newsletter so you always know what fiction podcasts have reached the end of a season, have a new season coming soon, or have reached the conclusion of the entire series. It’s what we do around here!

- Evo

How To Optimize RedCircle For Your Fiction Podcast

August 28, 2024

Everything you need to know about optimizing your RedCircle account so your fiction podcast shines to the world!

RedCircle is arguably one of the better free podcast hosting choices for a fiction podcaster. A quick scan of our database on The End shows that about 4% of the shows we’ve listed use RedCircle as their hosting provider. There are, as you might imagine, some limits on what you can do with their free tier.

But does RedCircle make a good place for fiction podcasters to call home? It can be, but due to the quirks of fiction podcasting vs “normal” podcasts, some tweaks need to be made to optimize RedCircle for fiction podcasters. And some of those tweaks will require a more advanced tier to activate.

In the subsequent sections of this article, I’ll break down how to optimize your RedCircle account on a page-by-page, field-by-field level. I'll use the exact name of the fields and even include a cropped screenshot of each to help make things as clear as possible. But please note that I’ll only offer advice/opinions/directions for the fields that need optimization. If I don’t have anything to say about a field, that doesn’t mean the field isn’t important. It probably is! It’s just not something that needs to be optimized. With that, let’s get started!

All Podcasts > [Your Podcast Title]

Start this process by logging into your RedCircle account. Once you are in, you’ll see a good overview of your podcast on this page, with several grey boxes of options. But the place we want to start is hidden in the ellipsis on the upper right-hand corner of your page:

Click that, and then choose Podcast Settings from the drop down menu:

Now we’re getting somewhere. There are ten tags we’ll optimize on this page: NAME, DESCRIPTION, PRIMARY CATEGORY, SECONDARY CATEGORIES (OPTIONAL), CONTACT EMAIL, AUTHOR NAME, SUBTITLE, APPLE SUMMARY, EPISODIC VS. SERIAL, and EXTERNAL LINK.

NAME

This is the title of your fiction podcast, obviously. Some creators like to add “Audio drama” and stuff like that, but I say do that only if you need it. And remember, you don’t need to add “podcast” (probably) to the name of your show.

DESCRIPTION

The words entered here are used both for the description that appears on your RedCircle-generated website as well as the description that is distributed to various podcast listening platforms and directories. Note: podcast listening apps and directories search through the show description text when returning search results. Is it important? Yes. Very. And it’s probably something you should revisit on a regular basis as your show grows.

You have up to 4,000 characters to work with when you write your description. I included some tips on crafting a great fiction podcast description in this article. It’s item #3.

PRIMARY CATEGORY

My strong recommendation: Unless you have a very good reason not to, the entry in this field should be Fiction or Fiction > [Comedy, Drama, or Science Fiction]. Don’t get me started on how dumb it is to limit fiction podcasts to just those three subcategories. It aggravates me too, but as Sigourney Weaver’s character told us in Cabin In The Woods, we work with what we have.

SECONDARY CATEGORIES (OPTIONAL)

You can choose up to two more categories/subcategories for your fiction podcast. Choose whatever makes sense based on the contents of your fiction podcast. I’ve seen fiction podcasters also categorize their shows as Arts > Performing Arts, Arts > Books, Comedy > [subcategories], History, Leisure, Kids & Family, and many others. Whatever makes sense for the story(ies) you’re telling in your fiction podcast.

CONTACT EMAIL

Make sure the email address here is one you don’t mind giving out and is one you check. Regularly. My advice: create a show-specific email address, something like “myamazingfictionpodcast@gmail.com,” and forward that inbox so that all mail to it routes to your personal email address. Now you won’t miss any important updates, and no one has your personal email address. Sweet!

AUTHOR NAME

The contents of this field are displayed prominently along with your show’s title and artwork in most directories and apps, so make sure it says what you want it to say! Repeating the name of your show here is rather pointless and, at the risk of repeating myself, repetitive. Using only the name of a production company won’t give you or other creators any branding. But you can enter something like Creator Name | Other Creator Name | Network/Studio in that field if you want to give more than one person/entity some credit.

There’s more to do in this section, but our next group of tags is hidden behind the Advanced Settings link. Click it.

Hey! Look! More fields to tweak.

SUBTITLE & APPLE SUMMARY

Let’s deal with both of these together. Whatever you have in here—delete it. These tags have both been deprecated, so they serve no purpose. Delete them. You’re welcome.

EPISODIC VS. SERIAL

This is the big one. The one that is all too often missed by fiction podcasters. Chances are, you want Serial as your feed type, not Episodic. Episodic describes podcasts with formats like interviews, current events or news, or weekly gab-fests. With those shows—they make up the largest share of podcasts—it’s fine for a brand-new person to listen to the most recent episode.

But most fiction podcasts—yes, there are exceptions—presenting the most recent episode to a new listener makes for a bad listener experience. When you read a fictional story or start a new fictional series on TV, you start at the beginning, not the end. And certainly not at whatever the current episode is, right?

Changing your feed type to Serial gives fiction podcasters like you some control over how your episodes are presented to your listeners. Serial. That’s the right answer for fiction podcasts that publish episodes that really should be listened to in a particular order.

EXTERNAL LINK

This field is poorly named and doesn’t quite function the way it should out of the box. But we can get it there.

In most hosting platforms, this is where you enter the URL of your show’s website so it’s included in (and distributed with) the RSS feed. Many of today’s listening apps and podcast directories will place a clickable link with “show website” or something like that, encouraging listeners to click and get to your site.

If you have your own website—i.e. MyAmazingAudioFiction.show—enter the full address in this field, starting with https:// (or, less ideally, http://) to make a fully formed URL.

But there’s an extra step to get this working in RedCircle! In order to get the external link to actually update in your RSS feed, you have to email contact@redcircle.com and ask them to pretty please, with sugar on top, update your RSS feed to include this new external link in your RSS feed. If you don’t do that, then the link in your RSS feed won’t be to your custom website, but to the generated webpage RedCircle makes for all of their customers. Which you don’t want if you have your own custom website. It won’t take them long to make the change, I’ve been assured.

If you do not have a dedicated and separate website/page for your show, then I recommend letting RedCircle generate a website for you. In which case, you’ll leave this as it currently is. (Though, really, you need your own domain name, at least. That’s my very strong opinion.)

OK! That’s it for this section. Hit the red Save button, and let’s move on.

Episodes

The rest of the work we’re going to do to get your RedCircle account up to snuff is all in the Episode section. Click that big grey box, and let’s dive in.

You should now see a list of your previously published episodes in reverse chronological order. Before making any changes to any specific episode, take a moment to look at the list of episodes you see on this page. Specifically, I want you to focus just on the Titles of your episodes, and ask yourself some questions:

Do the story episodes look like they are all part of the same story?
If you see episode drops or promos, do they look different from your “normal” episodes?
Does the trailer episode(s) clearly look like a trailer?
Are any bonus episodes clearly tagged and named so they look like bonus episodes?
Do your season finales clearly look like season finales?

The text used for the title of your episodes are important, but it’s also important that every episode looks like it belongs, is in the right place/order, and is properly tagged. If an episode looks odd to you in this view, I can promise you it looks odd to potential listeners when it hits their listening app. And you don’t want that.

We’ll make changes to your Titles (and more) one by one, so start by clicking the ellipsis to the right of any episode and then choosing the Edit Episode option

We have eight fields to optimize on this page: TITLE, DESCRIPTION, EPISODE ARTWORK, SUBTITLE, EXTERNAL WEBSITE, EPISODE NUMBER, SEASON, and EPISODE TYPE.

TITLE

There are many schools of thought on how episode titles should be written, but I belong to the “most important things first” clan. That’s probably not the episode number. That’s probably not the title of your podcast. What’s important is what the content if that episode actually is. That could be as simple as Chapter 1. Or it might be The Plot To Steal Xmas or whatever nifty title you’d write if the episode were a blog post or article.

If you have extra things you want to add to your title, like Season 2 finale or Part 3 of 4, add those to the end of the title, as they are (probably) not the most important things.

DESCRIPTION

Each episode can—and should—have its own description. These are often called show notes in podcasting parlance, though I hate the term and prefer episode details, as that’s more representative of what this text should be. But I’ve been lobbying for that change since 2004, and I’ve gotten nowhere. Regardless, see item #8 in my previously mentioned article on some good ideas of what information you should put in this field for each of your episodes.

EPISODE ARTWORK

If you make custom artwork for each of your episodes, this is where you upload them for each episode. By default, your show-level artwork displays. It’s up to you to decide if you want to do it or not. Some of the most podcast apps are showing them, however. I like it.

If you decide to create them, follow the sizing guidelines on the page, and try to keep the “weight” to under 500 KB.

Huh. That was easy. No, wait! There are more things we need to look at, and they’re once again hidden behind a More Options link:

That’s more like it!

SUBTITLE

Remember how I suggested you wipe out the SUBTITLE field in the prior section? Surprise! I’m suggesting you wipe this one out as well. It’s just not used anywhere.

EXTERNAL WEBSITE

Another poorly named field. I’d be a lot happier if this were EPISODE WEBPAGE. But hey, choosing beggars and all.

If you have a custom website and you make episode-specific pages with things like your extended episode details, transcript, cast and crew credits, fan art, or other nifty things specific to each episode, this is the spot where you connect the URL of that page on your website to your RSS feed, so that listeners are taken to your website and not RedCircle’s when they click on “more information about this episode,” or whatever they app calls the link.

This also gives you a nifty SEO boost, as you’ll have a bunch of links from RedCircle pointing to your website. Nice, huh?

APPLE SUMMARY

Deprecated and worthless. Delete anything you have in here. Or keep it in. Whatever. It’s not doing anything.

EPISODE NUMBER

While I wish they listed SEASON first, but see my prior referenced Sigourney Weaver quote.

EPISODE NUMBERs work in conjunction with Season numbers. This field also only takes non-negative, non-zero integers, and they are used to determine the order in which episodes of a particular season should be displayed.

It is very possible that some of your episodes will not have an Episode number. You’ll see why soon enough. Also, it’s best practice (though not a requirement) to restart your episode numbering with each new Season. For example, your first Season may have Episode numbers 1–10, and your second Season might also have Episode numbers 1–10. That’s fine, because the Episode number combines with the Season number (e.g.S2E1, so there won’t be any duplicates.

SEASON

If you changed a setting earlier from Episodic to Serial, then you’ll most likely want to use season numbers. Modern listening apps like Apple Podcasts and others use the Season tag to group episodes of a season together. So… use it. Only use non-negative, non-zero integers (e.g. 1, 2, 3…).

And now you see why I wanted to see SEASON listed before EPISODE NUMBER. But I’ll live.

EPISODE TYPE

Most of your episodes will be tagged as Full and get a sequential number in the EPISODE NUMBER field. In fact, that’s a good rule—if an episode of your show is NOT to be missed, mark it as Full and give the correct Episode number so it displays in the proper order.

Got an episode drop or a special announcement episode in your feed that isn’t part of the story? Then it is most likely a Bonus episode. Bonus episodes are just that—extra content that a new listener doesn’t have to listen to enjoy the continuing arc of your story. Some apps, like Apple Podcasts, will segregate most (but not all) Bonus episodes to the bottom of a season or series. Keep in mind that caught-up listeners—those who eagerly download and listen to your latest episode as soon as it comes out—will hear your Bonus episodes as you add them. The segregation I spoke of is really for people who are “behind” listening, if you will. Or bingers (like me). So you don’t need to worry that your Bonus episode won’t be heard by your most rabid fans. It will be! But for people who come in a month (or years) later, those Bonus episodes won’t be speedbumps in their (our) listening.

Bonus episodes can be numbered, but only if the Bonus episode is a Bonus episode for a specific Full episode. For example, let’s say that you had a guest actor on an episode, and you decided to do an interview with them. If you think it’s important for your listeners—current and future—to hear that conversation, give that Bonus episode the same Season and Episode number as the Full episode the actor appeared in. That will cause your Bonus episode to show up after the Full episode, at least in the modern apps that respect those tags.

Trailer is the other type, and it’s most often used like trailers are used in the movies, but can also be used to denote “sample” content. When you tag an episode as a Trailer, modern apps will elevate that episode to be the first thing a brand-new listener hears—sometimes even before they decide to follow or subscribe. And, if you use multiple seasons and you make a new trailer for each season, you’ll want to add the Season number to your Trailer episodes as well.

One key point about Trailers: None of them should be required listening. Once a person is following your show in a podcast app, the trailer episodes will not (or at least should not) play during binge-listening sessions.

Like Bonus episodes, Trailer episodes can be numbered, but that’s unusual. I’ve seen some audio fiction creators put out Trailer episodes for a delayed-but-soon-to-be-released episode as a sort of teaser. The same rule applies: use the same Episode number as the Full episode that Trailer is about. (Pro tip: Episodes like that are only meaningful for people who are waiting on the next episode. Once it publishes, I think you should delete the numbered Trailer episode.)

When you have all of that done, hit the big red Update button if you made any changes, and then do this all over again. Yes, for every single episode. Sorry.

Next, we’ll check to see how far and wide your fiction podcast has been distributed.

Distribution

Click the big grey box with the same name:

Your goal here is to see DISTRIBUTION CONFIRMED on all of these choices. If you don’t, you’re missing potential listeners. These are the apps that will be displayed on your generated podcast website… but only if you fill them out. Which ones should you fill out? All of them, of course. Why not? People listen on lots of different platforms. Why not be everywhere?

And, while you're at it, here are a bunch more locations you should also submit your show to. Full coverage everywhere and anywhere someone listens to podcasts is what you want. This is how you do it.

That’s it! You have now fully optimized your fiction podcast's RedCircle account. Nicely done! It'll take a few hours (or days, sometimes) for your changes to be fully distributed. You should see changes to your website immediately, obviously. And, depending on how drastic your changes were, you may hear from some users about repeat downloads, which means you'll see a temporary spike in downloads. That will soon settle down. You did good work!

Special thanks to W. Keith Tims, creator of The Book of Constellations, for granting me access to his RedCircle account, letting me poke around, and being the first one to implement optimization techniques!

If you’re a fiction podcast creator and you found value in this post, don’t keep it to yourself! I wrote it so that all fiction podcasters who use RedCircle as their hosting platform can present their show and episodes in the best way possible. Share it with your fellow creators.

I’m working on other guides for other popular hosting platforms, so stay tuned, and I’ll probably get to your hosting provider very soon. You can always email me and lobby me to get to yours quicker. If you sign up to become an Individual Supporter or Supporting Creative Shop, I’ll bump you to the head of the line!

If you work for a hosting company, I’d love to chat with you about making it easier for fiction podcasters to use your platform. They have some pretty specific needs that, as you can see, can get a little obfuscated. I’m happy to consult with you on better serving those needs.

And if this is your first time experiencing me and The End; welcome! My focus is on helping listeners find more fiction podcasts they can enjoy on their schedule. Please subscribe to the weekly newsletter so you always know what fiction podcasts have reached the end of a season, have a new season coming soon, or have reached the conclusion of the entire series. It’s what we do around here!

- Evo