Are you using chapters in your podcast?

Chapters are an underutilised feature of podcasting, but one that may help navigation and sharing of your content.

In a recent blog post, the podcast hosting platform Whooshkaa points out that chapters are now more readily supported by Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts, Overcast and others, making them very useful for podcast creators.

Just like chapters in a printed or audio book, podcast chapters contain a title that is displayed in the playout window of a podcast app. They allow listeners to jump back and forth to accurately skip or re-listen to their favourite parts of the podcast.

Chapters are clickable points, usually embedded in the show notes, that let you locate a predetermined point in the episode. They are either added in the production stage by bookmarking the audio and adding metadata shownotes, or added at the upload stage through your hosting platform (see Whooshkaa’s interface below)

While many listeners like to follow the linear path devised by the podcast producer, there is growing evidence that some like to jump around.

Using chapters takes the guess work out of moving around, rather than the listeners just using the skip forward/back 30 seconds function that is available in most podcast players. This is especially useful in long podcast episodes.

The Whooshkaa blog post says “there is value in chapters providing a ‘visual map’ of your episode – at a glance, listeners can get an overview of your episode structure.”
 

Whooshkaa CEO Rob Loewenthal has told radioinfo:

“While podcast chapters have been around for a while, most podcast apps didn’t support them and those that did buried them eg. Apple Podcasts only showed them to subscribed listeners. This has recently changed with a number of popular podcast players adding support and Apple now displaying them for all listeners.

“This is part of a concerted effort from podcast apps to enrich the listening experience, for example Apple Podcasts recently added host and guest profiles and photos to episode pages.”

 

 
 
 

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