Show notes

What show notes are

Show notes are the written page published alongside a podcast or video episode. They tell a person who has not pressed play what the episode is about, who is in it and whether it is worth their time, and they let someone who has listened find the point, the name or the link they remember without scrubbing through an hour of audio.

They are not a transcript, which is the full text, and not the two-line blurb in a podcast app, which is episode titles and descriptions and is written to a different length for a different screen. Show notes are the page on your own website, and they are the only part of an episode that can be read.

Who this is for

A business that publishes episodes, on audio or video, and has been leaving the page under each one empty, or pasting the guest's biography and a list of links. That is most business podcasts. The recording is often good and the page beneath it does nothing, so the episode reaches the people who already subscribe and nobody else. Show notes also suit a series of recorded webinars or a video channel that needs a page per recording.

They are not for a show that has not started. If you are deciding whether to launch one, that is podcast strategy, and the honest answer is often to wait. And if the episode has no page of its own and never will, the app description is all you need.

What goes in them

Every set of show notes is written from the edited transcript, not from memory of the episode, so the timestamps and quotes are exact. A standard page has six parts, in this order.

1. The summary. Three to five sentences saying what question the episode answers and what the listener will be able to do afterwards. Written for the person deciding whether to listen.
2. The guest. Who they are and why they were asked, in two or three sentences of plain prose rather than a pasted biography.
3. The subjects, with timestamps. Each change of topic as a short line with the minute and second it starts. Usually eight to fourteen lines for an hour.
4. The main points. The four to seven things worth remembering, each a sentence or two in the speaker's terms. This is the part that gets quoted and shared.
5. Everything mentioned. Books, tools, people, previous episodes and pages named in the conversation, each with a link if one exists and a word on why it came up.
6. The next step. One thing the listener can do: the related episode, the page on your site, or the contact form. One, not a menu.

Where the episode has a strong quotable line, it is set apart as a pull quote near the top. Where the episode answers a question your buyers ask before they spend, the notes say so plainly and link to the page that answers it in full.

What you get

The show notes. One page per episode, four hundred to seven hundred words, delivered in an editable document and as formatted text that pastes into your website or podcast host without reworking.

The app description. The short version, one hundred to two hundred words, for the podcast directories, so both are written from the same understanding of the episode.

Three post drafts. Short posts drawn from the main points, for the host and the guest to share on the day the episode goes out.

A template. After the first batch, a one-page template of the structure above, so that if you ever bring the work in-house the pages stay consistent.

A worked example

An illustration, not a client. A commercial insurance brokerage runs a fortnightly show for small manufacturers. Eighteen episodes are live. Each episode page carries the guest's biography, copied from their website, and the sentence "Listen now." The host cannot say which episode covered equipment breakdown cover, and neither can a visitor.

Show notes are written for the eighteen back episodes from edited transcripts, then for each new one. The equipment breakdown episode now has a page that says what it covers, lists nine subjects with timestamps, sets out five points a plant manager should check in their current policy, and links to the brokerage's page on that cover. The brokers send that page to prospects instead of the audio link. The eighteen pages between them describe the show's whole subject, which the site had never done, and a new visitor can tell within a minute whether the show is for them.

How it runs

1. A half-hour call. The show, the audience, how many episodes exist and how often new ones appear. No charge.
2. A fixed price in writing. Per episode, for the backlog and for each new episode, agreed before anything starts.
3. The transcript. Each episode is transcribed and edited first. If you already have checked transcripts, they are used and the price is lower.
4. The writing. Two to three working days per episode once the transcript exists. A backlog is delivered in batches of four to six.
5. Your review. One round of changes per batch. Anything the host would not say is changed.
6. Delivery. Notes, app description and post drafts for each episode, in one folder, with the template after the first batch.

What it costs

Show notes are quoted as a fixed price per episode in CAD after the half-hour call. The price depends on the episode length, whether a checked transcript already exists, and whether it is a one-off backlog or a standing arrangement for every new episode. The standing arrangement is priced per episode and stated in writing so the monthly cost is known in advance. The pricing page explains how fixed pricing works.

What happens next

Show notes are the smallest useful thing that can be made from an episode. The next size up is content repurposing, where the same transcript yields an article, a post series and a newsletter section. Episodes that people keep asking about are worth rewriting as a full article. And if the show is going to keep running, the posts and emails that get each episode heard are podcast promotion copy, usually written in the same batch.