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Should you include seasons in your episode titles?

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Thank you for joining me for The Audacity to Podcast.

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I'm Daniel J. Lewis.

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If your podcast uses seasons, you have multiple options for how to display them.

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Here's some guidance to help you decide what's right for you, your podcast, and

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your audience.

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But don't worry, if you listened to my previous episode about episode numbers in your episode

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titles, this is not as complicated as that. But I do highly recommend you listen to that

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previous episode because seasons do share many similarities with episode numbers. So

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please go back to that previous episode. I have a link to it in the show notes for this

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episode. That previous episode will give you the extra context upon which this episode

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will build. But we can be thankful that seasons are not as complicated as episode numbers.

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To get the links that I mention in this episode, as well as to see some of the screenshots

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that I've included, tap or swipe inside of your app or go to theaudacitytopodcast.com/seasonsintitles

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First, this does beg the question, do you even need seasons?

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I made another episode back in 2015 called "Should You Podcast in Seasons?"

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I have a link to that in the notes for this episode.

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I think that episode, even as old as it is, does answer this question in great detail,

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and maybe even in exhausting detail. Boy I was verbose in that episode. So listen if

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you have the time to, and definitely do go back and listen to it because it does help

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answer that question of should you have seasons, and what's good for seasons, what might not

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be good for seasons, and some multiple things for you to consider. But here's a concise

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and slightly updated summary of my thoughts about seasons. Similar to whether you should

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use episode numbers, again, definitely listen to the previous episode about that, I challenge

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you to question whether seasons will matter to your audience, especially if they are listening

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a year from now. I recommend you use seasons only when each season follows a particular

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theme or arc. For example, each season of the podcast Serial told a completely different

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story. Each season, and sometimes half season, of serial TV shows has a separate story arc.

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And I've heard other podcasts follow different formats in different seasons, like a season

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all about tools, or a top ten season, a client stories season, or separate seasons for beginners,

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intermediate, and advanced people. These are great reasons to use seasons and indicate

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those seasons. So put another way, the audience can easily associate a theme or arc with these

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kinds of seasons because the seasons actually make sense and serve an obvious purpose.

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But if you're thinking of using seasons merely for your schedule, then I don't think

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you should use seasons. If you need a planned hiatus, then simply announce it and take the

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planned hiatus. There's no need to use seasons if you only need a break. Yes, in your mind

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you could think of it as "this is the season that I'm going to podcast, this is the season

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I'm going to take a break," but that doesn't actually matter to your audience. Your current

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and future audience likely won't care about these kinds of seasons that are based on your

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schedule and they won't even make sense to your future audience. If your audience will

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not notice any big content changes progressing immediately from one season to the next, then

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And the seasons are probably not necessary.

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If I'm listening to your podcast a year from now and I hear, "Alright everyone, that's

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the end of season one.

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Join us again in a few months for season two."

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And then I listen to season two immediately after that, the first episode of season two

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immediately after the last episode of season one, and there's no major difference?

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Then that whole thing about seasons was just a waste.

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Wasted time, wasted content, wasted instructions.

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You could have just ended when you did, I'm not even going to call it season one, but

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you could have just stopped podcasting when you did, put out a short little announcement

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episode saying, "We're going on hiatus.

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We'll be back at such-such date and we might make a few changes when we come back."

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Then you come back, you delete that little hiatus episode, and you're back.

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And then when someone listens to your podcast a year from now, they'll hear the end of

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that one episode, then the beginning of the next episode with just a few changes.

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They don't need to know that they're different seasons and that seasons don't even make sense

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in that case.

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But you need to decide what's right for your podcast and your audience.

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So with the assumption that your show does need seasons, but it probably doesn't, but

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if it does, let's consider how to best display them with your episodes.

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Again, follow along with the show notes, a tap or swipe away inside of your app, or go

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to theaudacitytopodcast.com/seasonsintitles, especially for this section because I have

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a few screenshots that I'll talk about.

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So first, use the season RSS tags.

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Both the Apple iTunes namespace and the Podcasting 2.0 podcast namespace offer RSS tags for indicating

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seasons, just like they do for indicating episode numbers.

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For Apple Podcasts, the season tag is iTunes colon season, which allows only a non-zero

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number.

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For Podcasting 2.0, the tag is podcast colon season.

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But of course, like everything else with Podcasting 2.0, the Podcasting 2.0 season tag offers

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more by letting you give each season a name instead of only a number.

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So the first season could be labeled "Getting Started", the second season could be "Growing",

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the third season could be improving. That's what's really cool about these Podcasting

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2.0 tags is that they offer more than the iTunes tags that we've used for many years.

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And the Podcasting 2.0 tags will eventually replace the iTunes tags. I really hope someday

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all podcast apps switch over to the podcast namespace tags. But nonetheless, and in the

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meantime, use both tags as well as you can until all of these apps support the Podcasting

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2.0 standard. When you use these season tags, modern podcast apps can more intelligently

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display the season information in appropriate contexts and possibly group your episodes

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by season. It can even cause an entire season to download for new followers and start playing

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at the beginning of that latest season instead of the latest episode when you combine your

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seasons with the serial podcast type.

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Apple started offering the season tag with the release of iOS 11 back in 2017. That's

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also when they released the episode numbers, the podcast type, and a lot of these other

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new things that they started doing. Pocket Cast supported it very quickly too.

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Both Apple Podcasts and Pocket Cast provide good examples of how the seasons might be

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displayed. First, neither app, and probably no other podcast app out there, will put the

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season number in the episode title like Apple Podcasts sometimes does with episode numbers,

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which I talked about in the previous episode.

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If your podcast type is episodic or it's not indicated, which then defaults to episodic

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and most of the podcasts out there are episodic.

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So if you have an episodic type podcast, Apple Podcasts does not display the season number

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in the episode listing or the episode player, but only in the meta information when you

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open an episode. I have a screenshot of this in the notes. And when you look at this in

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Apple Podcasts, like I pulled an episode from our Once Upon a Time podcast, when you're

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looking at a single episode, when you've opened it, you'll see the meta information at the

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very top, which is when you're using a season, it's the date of this episode, then the season

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number, episode number, and then the length of the episode. Then below that in the bigger

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text is the name of the episode and then below that the title of the podcast. That's how

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Apple Podcasts displays it when you're not using the serial podcast type and you're using

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instead the episodic podcast type, which is the default if you haven't defined a podcast

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type.

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But if your podcast type is serial, Apple Podcasts then groups episodes by season and

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it lets you filter by season or all episodes and it shows the season number in the meta

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information both when opening an episode and when playing that episode.

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So it does show in the player.

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I have a screenshot of this also in the show notes where I looked at, again, the Rabbits

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podcast that I mentioned in the previous episode.

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It's a serial podcast type.

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It has seasons and it has episode numbers.

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And when you look at it, you can see that all of the episodes for one season are grouped

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together and you will see that latest season by default when you visit that podcast.

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But you can also switch to viewing a different season or all episodes or unplayed episodes

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or downloaded episodes.

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But that season number displays only as a section heading that you can then click or

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tap on to filter by different seasons.

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Even if you go to the old episodes listing, it lets you filter based on the different

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seasons and it displays that season number only in that section heading.

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It does not display it for each individual episode.

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Which makes total sense in this case because it's redundant if you have episode after episode

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repeating the same thing.

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You don't need to see season 2, season 2, season 2, season 2, season 2, season 2 that's

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repeated across multiple episodes.

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You just need all of that season grouped together.

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That's how Apple Podcasts does it.

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Pocket Casts, however, does not seem to display episodic or serial podcast types any differently.

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And remember, that episode grouping under seasons is now only with the serial podcast

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type but not episodic podcasts.

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In PocketCasts, the season number is shown with other episode meta information in the

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episode listing, but apparently not anywhere else inside the app.

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So if you look at the list of episodes for a podcast, either in your library or in the

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catalog, through PocketCasts, you'll see above the title, the season number, the episode

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number, a bullet, and then the date of that episode.

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Then below that in bigger, bolder text is the title of the episode, and then below that

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is the length of the episode in the faded text just like the other meta information.

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And that seems to be the only place I could find the season number displaying inside of

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Pocket Casts. Not even if you open the episode and scroll to the bottom would you even see

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the season number in Pocket Casts like you can see in Apple Podcasts in some cases. Podcasting

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2.0 apps usually support the podcast season tag and display the season name if present.

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Because some apps might group episodes under their seasons, like Apple Podcasts does for

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serial podcast types.

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And other apps might merely show the season with other meta information in the episode

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listing like pocket casts.

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But I don't think that this is all that big of a deal that there's this inconsistency.

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Because seasons are not as important to your audience as episode numbers might be.

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And as I mentioned in the last episode, even episode numbers might not be all that important.

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So seasons are even less important than that, at least to see what season number it is.

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Being able to listen to the correct season and stay in that correct season is important

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and that's what these apps are trying to do.

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But as you can tell, this is much simpler and less prominent than episode numbers.

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There's none of this stuff like "Oh if you do this then the episode number displays here,

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but if you do that it displays there, if you view it this way it displays there."

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No, it's pretty much in all of these places the season just displays either helping to

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group the episodes or as some small meta information for the individual episodes. But it's not

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displaying inside the title. It's not wasting space like that. It's merely an extra indicator.

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A tiny extra bit of information.

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Moving on then. Use your webpage field and groups if available. You might have your podcast

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website from your podcast hosting provider like Captivate or WordPress with a great WordPress

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theme for podcasters like second line themes, or a third party tool like a pod page or a

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podcast page.

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And again, I will have a future episode about how to choose from these different options.

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Each of these website management methods might offer a season field that, like the RSS tag,

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allows the website to display the season number in better places.

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But unlike episode numbers, since the season information is not very important to individual

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episodes, any kind of display will probably be only in the episode meta information along

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with the date, the number of comments, and that kind of stuff, and maybe with separate

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collections for each season, depending on your content management system, or CMS.

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Even if your CMS doesn't support podcast seasons, you can easily group episodes of

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a season together by giving them the same tag or category.

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Then your website probably allows you to make a page, an episode list, a widget, a player,

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or something like that that contains only that season's episodes.

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And that's based on the shared tag or category.

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Just like you could make a collection of episodes based on any other tag or category of any

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time with your archive of episodes.

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But this would be specifically for your seasons.

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And what you actually call that tag or category might not matter because your website might

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let you give it a different label or put a header above wherever that episode list is.

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So your tag might be S1 and that's how you tag all of the episodes from season 1 and

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then you just make a little widget or a box and you give it the title of "Listen to

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Season 1" or whatever seems appropriate in your case.

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Next, how should you include seasons in your titles?

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Seasons are simpler than episode numbers, and I couldn't find any content management

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system or podcast app that automatically puts the season number inside the episode titles.

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So should you?

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While I think your audience probably does not need episode numbers, I think they need

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season numbers even less than that.

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So for this reason, I suggest not including seasons in your titles, with a couple of exceptions.

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Do include the season in the title if your episode is about a season, like Season 2 trailer,

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or behind the scenes of Season 3, or Season 1 bloopers.

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If your podcast is about other content that has seasons, like a TV after show podcast,

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you might want to include the TV show's season and episode numbers in the titles,

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But not the podcast's own season and episode numbers, which could be different from the

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TV show or whatever that thing is that you're talking about. For example, my retired podcast

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about the Once Upon a Time TV show would have two or three episodes per week, while the

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TV show would have only one episode per week. This is because we would usually have an initial

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reactions episode the night of the TV episode, then a full discussion episode about halfway

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between TV episodes and sometimes even a spoilers episode shortly after that full discussion.

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Or sometimes we just tack the spoilers onto the end of the full discussion episodes.

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So by the time the whole TV series ended, we'd published more than 350 episodes and

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our episode numbers would not align at all with the TV shows. But we did align our seasons

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and would indicate the TV show's season and episode number we were talking about within

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our episode titles since some people might actually search for content about the TV show

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by its season and episode numbers. And that's a good reason to include it in your title

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is if people are actually searching for that content based on that thing. And for this

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reason most podcasts probably don't need the season numbers or episode numbers in their

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titles because if you're not talking about something that already has its own seasons

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and episode numbers like a TV show, then your audience probably won't care about the season

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and episode numbers.

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And that's it.

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That's as complicated as it gets.

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These same guidelines for whether to include a season in your episode title can probably

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apply to all the other contexts and that full list of six places where you could have separate

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titles that I mentioned in the previous episode. And that list is number one, the RSS items future

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podcast title tag. Number two, the RSS items iTunes title tag. Number three, the RSS items title tag.

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Number four, the web pages HTML meta titles for social networks. Number five, the HTML title tag,

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which is for the tab bar, bookmarks, search engines, and such. And number six, the post title

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or heading, which is usually the H1 tag in HTML, and that's what shows most prominently on the

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web page. Whatever you do decide for your episode titles, whether to include seasons in it, which

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most likely you don't need to except for these few exceptions I've mentioned, you could probably

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apply that for all of those other places. You don't have to worry about, "I'm going to write

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it this way in this context, or that way in this place," and all of that. If you need the season

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in one of these titles, you'll most likely need it in all of them. Unlike with episode

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numbers where you want it in some of these and not in others. And if you include seasons

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in your titles, please don't make the season and episode number the only things in your

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titles. Just like you shouldn't make your episodes be called Episode 1. And that be

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it. So don't make it Season 1, Episode 5. Please don't make it like that. You can do

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better. Give your episodes unique and interesting and compelling titles that are descriptive

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of the content within those episodes.

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Then moving on, put seasons on all episodes, if possible. If you start using seasons, consider

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editing even all your old episodes so they contain the relevant season information. If

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you have some episodes with seasons and some without, Apple Podcasts will group all the

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non-season episodes into "unknown season". They used to do that for any podcast with

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seasons, but it seems that they've now limited that behavior to only podcasts with the serial

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podcast type. And remember that seasons will likely affect groupings too, on your website

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and in some of the players. So if your website has separate lists for episodes from each

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season, any episode marked for season 1 will be listed in season 1, no matter when it was

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published. This is the same way that Apple Podcasts works with serial type podcasts where

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they do group the episodes by season. If you publish an episode for season 1, it will then

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be grouped in season 1 even if you publish that episode while you're working on season

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7. In the visual listing and for your listening audience, it will be grouped with season 1.

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Now if they're currently listening to season 7 and you put out a season 1 bonus episode

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for example, of whatever type of bonus that is, then they'll probably hear that special

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episode that you released, even though it's for season one and they're currently in season

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seven, assume they're going to hear it when you published it or it's going to download

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when you published it.

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But that might not always be the case, but you can probably safely assume they'll hear

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your episodes as they're being published.

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That is your current audience.

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Your future audience though would hear that episode in Apple Podcasts at least if you

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have a serial podcast.

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Your future audience would hear that episode in season one, but most other podcast apps

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simply play based on when the episode was published.

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So it goes by chronological publish date, not season groupings.

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Now how to write the seasons.

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If you're going to include seasons in your titles or refer to episodes by their season

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and episode number, I think there are only two popular conventions for it.

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Number one, uppercase S, season number, space, uppercase E, episode number, and that's

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without leading zeros for either of those.

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So it would be like S2 space E7, S2 E7 with a space between them.

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This is how Apple Podcasts and Pocket Casts will abbreviate season and episode numbers.

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I've seen variations like without the space, with lowercase letters, and with leading zeros,

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I recommend the capitalized and spaced version like you see in Apple Podcasts and PocketCasts.

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It's very clean, it's very standard, it's very easy to read too.

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There's not as much guessing about what does that number mean versus that number.

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Which kind of leads me into number two, which is the less popular but kind of leads to some

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guessing is where you write "sees a number" a lowercase x or the multiplication sign,

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which looks slightly differently from a lowercase x, than the episode number and possibly with

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one or two leading zeros for clarity. Like 2x07. WordPress, by the way, will probably

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automatically change the letter x in this format to the multiplication sign. Which kind

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of looks a little nicer too, makes it look a little bit more sophisticated. But this

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is the less popular method and especially if you don't have a leading zero, then it

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could be a little confusing to see. I think people generally assume the first number is

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the season number, but if you just see 1x3, is it season 3 episode 1 or is it season 1

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episode 3? There might be that possible confusion and it just doesn't look as good or produce

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as consistent results. And besides, the more prominent way that I mentioned S2E7 like that

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is much more common in the apps. I think it communicates very clearly. Either of these

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would be in places where you refer to only a single episode. Maybe in the title, maybe

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when you're referring back to an episode. But don't follow this format for whole season

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content like "Season 1 Trailer" write that as "Season 1 Trailer", "Season 1 Bloopers"

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or whatever that is. Don't write "S1 Trailer" or "S1 Bloopers". That's just not as clear

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in my opinion. Whether you write season one or first season is up to you. Season one seems

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to be easier to read, but first season, where you're spelling it completely out, F-I-R-S-T

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season, is more formal and it's how I see most TV shows write it, like the complete

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first season, the complete second season, and so on. I think this might simply be a

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matter of what sounds or looks best in its context. But when in an episode title, such

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as for a trailer, I think season in the number one format is better because it's shorter and

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the number is clear. If you put in there "first season trailer" then are you saying it's a trailer

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for the first season or it's the first of several trailers for this season? So is second season

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trailer, the second trailer for the same season as the first season trailer, or is it for

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a second season? Do you see how that can lead to some confusion in that kind of context

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and writing style? That's where if you just write "season 1 trailer" "oh, that's

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very obvious." So with this in mind, are seasons worth it? We certainly don't face

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the same complications with season numbers and season names in Podcasting 2.0 as we faced

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with episode numbers that I covered in the previous episode. You're also probably even

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less likely to need seasons unless they make sense to your audience beyond merely a schedule.

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So the technical "cost" we could call it of using seasons is much less than episode

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numbers. And their usefulness is less too, except for serial type podcasts. To figure

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out whether seasons are worth it and how you should include them in your titles and meta

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information should really come down to what makes the most sense for your audience. And

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actually enhances their experience. If using seasons and season numbers in your titles,

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however you work that out, if it doesn't enhance your audience's experience, then it's probably

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not worth the effort, as small as it might be, for that additional effort to have seasons

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and season numbers. But it's up to you and what's best for your audience and what makes

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sense for your audience. I think there are a lot of podcasters out there doing some things

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that just really don't make sense. Episode numbers, season numbers are just some of those

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things and I really want to help you do what makes sense, what helps you engage with your

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audience better and helps your podcast just stand out as being better and showing that

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you are pursuing excellence. Whether your podcast is for a hobby, for a profession,

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whether you're getting paid, or you're doing it just for the love of it, whether you're

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a beginner, whether you're advanced, or any of this to make your podcast better.

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If you found these two episodes helpful, the episode about episode numbers in your titles

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and the episode about seasons in your titles, if you found these helpful, please share these

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episodes with other podcasters.

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You can share this episode by going to theaudacitytopodcast.com/seasonsintitles.

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Now that I've given you some of the guts and taught you some of the tools, it's time for

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you to go start and grow your own podcast for passion and profit.

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I'm Daniel J. Lewis from TheAudacityToPodcast.com and @TheDanielJLewis on Twitter.

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Thanks for listening.

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