How to write podcast show notes from the recording

Show notes are the part of podcasting that gets done last and worst, usually at the point where you have listened to the episode three times and cannot face a fourth. Working from a transcript means you can search the episode instead of scrubbing through it.

Short answer: Transcribe the episode, then build the notes from the text. The transcript gives you the chapter marks, the quotable lines and the names of anything mentioned, which is most of what show notes are.

What show notes need to contain

Start with a short description, times for the sections, and links to the people and works mentioned. Add a transcript if your host supports one. In full, five things:

• A description, two or three sentences on what this episode is about.
• Timestamps for the sections, so people can skip to what they came for.
• Names and links for every guest, book, tool or study mentioned.
• A few quotable lines, which is what gets shared.
• The transcript itself, increasingly expected and the reason a lot of episodes get found at all.

Working from the transcript

1. Transcribe the finished episode. Import the exported audio into AI Transcribe. An hour-long episode takes a few minutes.
2. The transcript arrives with timestamps and the speakers separated, so host and guest are already distinct. Rename Speaker A and Speaker B to real names before you go further.
3. Ask for a summary to draft the description. Treat it as a first pass: check it against the episode, and put your own voice back in.
4. Ask for the key points. Then find each one in the timestamped transcript to get the time for it, which is what turns a list of points into chapters.
5. Scan for the quotable lines. Searching the text for the thing you half remember someone saying takes seconds.

The part worth doing by hand

Every mentioned name, title and link. An AI summary will happily reproduce a book title it misheard, and a wrong link in show notes is worse than no link. Search the transcript for the moment, listen to those ten seconds, then write it down.

This is also the reason to keep the transcript rather than throw it away once the notes are written. When a listener emails asking what that study was, the answer is searchable.

Publishing the transcript

Many podcast hosts accept a transcript file, and Apple Podcasts can generate its own for episodes that do not supply one. Supplying your own means you control the spelling of names and can correct what the automatic version gets wrong.

Check what your host supports through its RSS feed. Apple Podcasts takes SRT or VTT, and VTT is the one that can carry speaker names, so prefer it when that matters. For a show notes page, plain text or Markdown is easier.

Common questions

How long should show notes be? Long enough to contain the five things above. A description, chapters and links beats a thousand words of summary nobody reads.

Should I edit the transcript before publishing it? Lightly. Fix names and obvious mistakes. Do not smooth out the speech, because a transcript that does not match the audio is worse than a rough one.

Does this work for an interview with three or more people? Yes. Speakers are separated into turns however many there are, though the more overlapping speech there is, the more renaming you will do.

What about episodes I recorded months ago? Import them the same way. Transcription for podcasters covers working through a back catalogue.