How to Write a Great Podcast Description: 12 Tips

If you want to grow your podcast show and audience, you need to write an amazing description for your podcast. A podcast description gives a brief summary of your podcast to your listeners. In other words, it explains the topic of your episode and what a listener should expect to hear when they start playing your show. If you manage to create an interesting description, you can easily attract new listeners.

Most podcasting apps have a character restriction for a podcast description. There is no correct or incorrect answer for how long your show description should be, but many industry experts recommend reducing your description to a couple of sentences.

So, you need a description that can grab your listener’s attention. You do not have to dive into minor details. You’ll only have a few seconds to capture the interest of podcast listeners, so keep it short, sweet, and clear when crafting the description for your show.

Why A Good Podcast Description Is Important

One study that was conducted to reveal the listening habits of 780 podcast consumers showed that they judge potential new podcasts based on certain factors, including podcast descriptions. They marked this factor 7.8 out of 10 in terms of importance. This says a lot about why you need to have a good description.

Many people will admit that movie description can be an important factor when it comes to picking a movie. The same goes for a podcast description, as it enables your potential listeners to know what to anticipate from your podcast before they tune in. Even if you are making video podcasts, make sure to have a clear description that briefly summarizes your podcast episode.

But what makes a good podcast description? 

It should preferably be short, catchy, and straight to the point. If you have no idea about how a proper meta description should be, consider looking at podcast description examples of famous podcast shows. When writing a description for your podcast, you should try to achieve the following three goals:

• Explain your podcast in a detailed way

Try not to use confusing words to ensure that potential listeners understand what to anticipate from your show. Use simple words for writing a detailed description. In this way, it will be much easier for people to comprehend your podcast’s topic as soon as they read your podcast summary.  

• Optimize your description for search

It would be great to make a list of keywords the potential listeners might use to find your podcasts. Brainstorm and write down a few keywords related to your podcast subject. In this way, you can write accurate summaries with target keywords that will appear in searches. 

• Be clear

Include detailed information about your show in as few words as possible in your show description to capture a person’s attention. Stay away from complex words and phrases. Get to the point quickly!

12 Actionable Tips for Writing a Great Podcast Description

1. What Goes In?

If you are a podcaster who has just started making podcasts and wonders how to write a podcast description, it would be great to read other descriptions of podcasts to understand what goes in. Reading other peoples’ podcast descriptions will help you to have some basic idea of how to write your own brief summary for your podcast shows. 

2. Who is Your Podcast For?

When it comes to writing descriptions, you should think about who your target audience is. Create a description that targets your listeners. Once you’ve defined your target listenership, write a description that resonates with them. Speak directly to your listeners and tell them why they should consider listening to your show. 

3. What Will Listeners Get From Your Podcasts?

The next crucial thing to consider is what value your podcasts give to your audience. People who tune in want to gain something in return. Are you planning to educate them? Do you want to help them with solving a problem? Or maybe, you want to motivate, inspire, and encourage your listener? Or, perhaps, you want to provide your listeners with entertaining content and make them laugh. 

Regardless of what you are trying to achieve with your podcasts, make sure to tell your listeners. 

4. What Should Listeners Expect to Hear?

Even though your goal should be to make your descriptions as clear and short as it is possible, you should make sure they allow your audience to know what to anticipate from your podcast show. A good podcast summary should inform your show fans what your show is about, why they should listen to it, and when it will go live. 

Also, try to explain in a few words what distinguishes your podcast from hundreds of all others. In this way, your audience will have a better understanding of what your podcast show is about.

5. Introduce Yourself

A short introduction about you in your description is an amazing way for your listeners to connect with you and build trust in you and your show. It also allows podcast creators to build credibility and establish strong relationships with their listeners.

So, it would be great to introduce yourself and other co-hosts who appear on your show. Especially if other co-hosts are famous, it would be nice to mention their names as well. In this way, many people will feel encouraged to tune in and listen to your show. 

6. Add More Details

Besides, you can add extra information to your listeners. For instance, you can include your social media pages or websites. In this way, your audience will be able to follow you on different channels and learn more about you.

7. Use the Right Keywords

It is vital to conduct proper keyword research to find the right keywords and include them in your description. This will enable the potential audience to find the content they are searching for. Therefore, it is recommended to think strategically about what your listeners will want to listen to and include that in your descriptions to optimize it for search. 

Make sure to use different tools for doing keyword research. Among those tools are Ahrefs, Moz, and Semrush. 

8. Use Questions

When you start your podcast description with questions, you have a high chance of piquing your audience’s interest. It is catchy and can surely grab your listener’s attention. You can answer these questions without revealing too much information. The goal should be to make your audience tune in and learn more about the question you asked them. Use your creativity as much as it is possible. 

For instance, if your podcast is about skin care for problematic skin, you could ask a question like “Are you struggling with acne and cannot live with them anymore?” and give a subtle answer like “Then, tune in to learn about five actionable ways to get rid of them and have a nice skin.” You ask a question but do not give them the exact answers. Instead, you motivate them to listen to your upcoming show to find out more about acne treatment.

9. Include a CTA

Indeed, you need to use a strong call to action in your podcast description. It is a short sentence or phrase persuading your listeners to press play on your podcast. 

It could be as simple as “Check out our latest show to find out more on X topic,” for instance. Or, you can write, “Subscribe to our newsletter to receive updates.”

Whatever you decide to write for your CTA, make sure it is concise, short, on-point, and persuasive at the same time. After all, you want people to take some action.

10. Make it Short

While there are no specific rules on how long an ideal podcast description should be, it would be great to write 300 to 600 words-long descriptions. Indeed, describing your podcast is crucial for your podcast show, but all that matters is your content. That’s why you do not have to include every single detail in your description. Instead, focus on making it short but concise at the same time.

Using wordy sentences and complex words might cause confusion among your listeners. Eventually, they will lose interest. 

11. Avoid Clickbait

You should not attract listeners with content that your episode does not have, no matter how great your descriptions are. It will harm your reputation as a podcaster and discourage people from listening to your show.

So avoid writing deceptive information that does not match reality. Exaggeration should be avoided at all costs too. 

12. Stay Consistent

Your podcast show’s name and content must be consistent. You cannot have a serious tone while describing a funny podcast. It may confuse listeners as they had other expectations from your show.

Summary

So, as you can see, a brief description of your podcast can make a big difference. It is important when it comes to making first impressions and informing potential listeners why they should listen to your podcasts.

It is vital to pay more attention to your descriptions. Look for the best keywords to make your podcasts more discoverable, and keep the character restriction in mind when creating descriptions. 

We hope this guide helped you understand how to write a podcast description that is compelling and catchy enough.

Thanks for taking the time to read, and good luck!