11 Tips for Sharing URLs in Your Podcast

11 Tips for Sharing URLs in Your Podcast

Released Wednesday, 24th April 2024
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11 Tips for Sharing URLs in Your Podcast

11 Tips for Sharing URLs in Your Podcast

11 Tips for Sharing URLs in Your Podcast

11 Tips for Sharing URLs in Your Podcast

Wednesday, 24th April 2024
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0:00

11 tips for sharing URLs in your podcast.

0:10

Thank you for joining me for The Audacity to Podcast.

0:13

I'm Daniel J. Lewis. There comes a point in every podcast when it's necessary to say a URL.

0:19

If for nothing else, at least your podcast's own home on the internet and you should have

0:25

a domain for your podcast.

0:27

Beyond your podcast website, you might also want to share affiliate links, resources,

0:32

episode notes, past episodes, sponsors, and more.

0:35

So here are 11 tips for how to share URLs effectively in your podcast.

0:41

If you'd like to follow along with the notes for this episode and get several of the links

0:45

that I mention in this episode, then get to the notes a simple tap or swipe away inside

0:49

of your podcast app or go to theaudacitytopodcast.com/sharingurls.

0:56

Please note that I do mention several products in this episode and in the notes and I link

1:01

to them and several of them I have affiliate relationships with and so those are affiliate links.

1:07

I earn something if you purchase through those links and only if you purchase through my links.

1:12

But nonetheless, I recommend things I truly believe in regardless of earnings.

1:16

That disclosure out of the way, let's jump into this.

1:18

Number one, speak as few URLs as possible per episode.

1:24

Every URL is essentially a call to action. That could be where to follow you on social

1:30

networks, the episode's webpage, your support page, where to send feedback, and much more.

1:35

And calls to action are most effective when there are very few of them, but they are reinforced

1:40

multiple times. This is why you'll hear most ads give the call to action, like visiting

1:46

a website, at least three times. It's part of the marketing lie. Think someone gets fired

1:52

if they don't mention it three times. They say it again and again and again at least

1:57

three times. That's a good practice for your podcast too. But with all of the URLs

2:02

you might want to share, you'll start overwhelming your audience and making each URL less memorable.

2:09

For this reason, I recommend that you say as few URLs as possible, maybe only one, and

2:15

that's what you say and speak in your podcast, not what you actually link to from your site,

2:21

what you're saying in your audio or video podcast.

2:25

But don't make it the same URL across all your episodes.

2:29

For example, if I kept telling you to get the links for this episode at theaudacitytopodcast.com,

2:35

that works best only when this is my latest episode.

2:38

But the more episodes I publish, the more episodes get shifted down my website's front

2:43

page and eventually get pushed off that front page.

2:47

So if you're looking for the notes for this episode and all I've done is told you get

2:51

the notes at theaudacitytopodcast.com and it's years later, you have no idea where to get

2:56

the notes. Except somewhere on theaudacitytopodcast.com.

3:00

That doesn't work. Thus, I recommend having a unique URL for each episode that will always take your audience

3:08

to the correct information, whether they listen immediately or 5 years later.

3:13

This is easy to do on WordPress with my favorite plugin, PrettyLynx Pro, or you might have

3:18

something else that allows you to create a friendly, speakable URL, a single URL for

3:24

that episode and then that episode's webpage can point to everything else that you need

3:30

to link to. That's number one.

3:32

Tip number two, defer to your chapters or episode notes.

3:35

If you follow tip number one, then your single URL should be your episode webpage, as I started

3:42

to touch on. There, on that webpage, you can include all the things you want your audience to get or

3:47

4C, that could be images, videos, links, buttons, and more. Make sure this stuff, at least the

3:53

links, appear in your episode notes within the podcast apps too. Because many publishing

3:58

tools and podcast apps follow different standards, there's no one right way to do this. Well,

4:04

there is actually, but not all the podcasts support that one right way. So the best thing

4:10

to do would be to ask the maker of your publishing tool, whether that's your website publishing

4:15

system, your podcast hosting provider, whatever is making your RSS feed, ask the people who

4:20

make that how to ensure your links in your episode notes show in your top podcast apps.

4:28

So if Spotify and Apple are top in your downloads, then you want to make sure that those links

4:33

appear in those apps. And then those people can give you the right guidance for your situation

4:39

on their publishing tool. But the most universal case is, unfortunately, that a full, ugly

4:47

URL will work more often than an HTML hyperlink. The full, ugly URL would be "https://theaudacitytopodcast.com"

4:59

instead of the hyperlink, which you probably won't type this code into your notes, but

5:05

whatever kind of system you're using if it lets you bold text and make bullet points and hyperlinks,

5:10

it will put this HTML code in there that is HTML stuff. It's an ATAG, an href equals quotation

5:17

mark, the URL, the quotation mark, some text that's being hyperlinked, and it's HTML code.

5:23

If you really want to see what I'm talking about, you can look at the notes for this episode at

5:26

theaudacitytopodcast.com/sharingurls or get to that a tap or swipe away inside of your app.

5:34

Check out how Knickknack News does this for a great example of actionable episode notes.

5:40

It's also, by the way, a really fun podcast I highly recommend.

5:43

I've got the link to them in the notes for this episode.

5:46

Their notes are actually not effective for SEO on their website or in the podcast apps,

5:52

but podcast apps don't really search descriptions anyway.

5:55

But their episode notes are excellent for engagement inside the podcast apps.

6:02

Not so much on the website, but in the podcast apps.

6:05

It's great. The hosts of that fun show, Alex and Anthony, often share things you will want to see or

6:11

read for yourself. Could be a picture of a bear, or reading about an ice cream flavor, or watching a video,

6:18

or anything like that that's interesting along the lines of what stories they're

6:22

talking about for that episode. And they do that in very simple and actionable ways in their notes.

6:28

I've copied an example from one of their episodes in the notes for this episode, but

6:33

just to give you a brief overview, they have two headlines for this main section that I've copied.

6:38

There's "Anthony's Stories This Week" and "Alex's Stories This Week" and under

6:43

Anthony's stories, it's a simple list with one or two keywords that describe the story,

6:49

like "ketchup" and then there's a link to businesswire.com and then there's "ice

6:55

cream" and a link to mensjournal.com.

6:57

for Anthony's stories with what links he found. And then for Alex's stories, for

7:02

what she is sharing, she has Beard with a link to UPI.com and Zelda with a link to TheVerge.com.

7:10

And these links aren't only to those top domains, but they are to the specific pages

7:14

for these stories. You can check that out in the notes for this episode. And those are

7:19

the ugly URLs they're sharing, but that does work. As ugly as it is to see a full URL,

7:26

It works more often than other methods do.

7:29

And it's highly actionable. If you're listening along to their podcast, then these simple notes will make total sense

7:36

to you and the notes don't get in the way of what you want.

7:41

While you're listening to Anthony talk about ketchup, you can look right there in the notes

7:45

and you see there's the link for the ketchup story.

7:48

You don't have to see the full headline. You don't need paragraphs as text.

7:52

You just want the link to the story that he's talking about.

7:55

Now depending on how you're communicating around the URLs you want to share, you might

8:01

also want to consider using chapters.

8:03

Both legacy chapters embedded in MP3 files and podcasting 2.0 chapters in a separate

8:09

episode metadata file, and that's in JSON format if you're interested in that technical stuff.

8:14

Both of these formats support adding a single URL per chapter.

8:20

In knickknack news, Alex and Anthony spend several minutes on each story so each story

8:25

would be perfect as a single chapter per story.

8:29

And then they could add the relevant URL to each chapter.

8:33

But this gets complicated when you have multiple URLs within a single context.

8:39

For example, if I share a list of my favorite podcast hosting providers, which are currently

8:43

Captivate, Buzzsprout, and Blueberry, I can't add multiple URLs to the same chapter.

8:49

least not yet. So this is where you would want to defer that list of links to your episode

8:54

notes because it wouldn't be reasonable to have a chapter for each of those links when

8:59

I just blazed through those and then you'd see those chapters go by so quickly it might

9:04

be difficult for you to actually go back to the chapters and get the link that I mentioned.

9:09

And it would be a mess for me to manage as well to put those into individual chapters

9:15

for each URL that I mention, because you can't put multiple URLs in a single chapter.

9:21

However, I'm pushing hard for Podcasting 2.0 to turn our current podcast chapters into

9:28

super chapters. That's a term coined by Dovi Das from RSSBlue.com.

9:33

Super chapters would allow you to use a single chapter to display rich content, including

9:39

but not limited to things like a gallery of images, a block of text, a numbered or unnumbered

9:45

list, videos, or even multiple links for a single chapter. Essentially, you could put

9:51

whatever you normally put in your episode notes also in your chapters, but then your

9:56

audience is getting that only one chapter at a time, or they're seeing something that's

10:00

far more actionable. So instead of paragraphs of text around a single link, they see only

10:06

that single link with maybe a brief headline, an explanation, or something like that.

10:12

Then I could make a single chapter for my favorite podcast hosting providers and that

10:17

one chapter can link to the multiple options and there would be the three different links

10:22

for those three different hosting providers.

10:24

However, even if this is adopted within the Podcasting 2.0 standard, I urge you to maintain

10:30

backwards compatibility. That's where your episode webpage comes in.

10:34

If you're worried about your audience getting lost in a long episode webpage, there's a

10:38

cool thing you can do. You could actually link your chapters to specific sections of your page by adding an anchor

10:47

or ID to each heading in your notes.

10:51

And then link each chapter to that anchor in the URL.

10:55

And that would simply be with a hash or a pound sign at the very end of the URL and

11:00

then whenever that anchor is.

11:03

So for example, for this episode it's https://theaudacitytopodcast.com/sharingurls#2 and

11:14

that links to this actual section that I'm talking about right now in my notes.

11:19

And in fact, for this episode, and maybe only this episode, maybe I'll do this again in

11:24

the future, we'll see. For this episode though, every one of these chapters will take you to that specific section

11:33

of my notes on my website.

11:36

If you click on the chapter link for that section.

11:40

That's something that you could do that takes people directly to that relevant section on

11:44

your site. You have to look at whatever publishing tool you're using though to see how easy it is

11:50

to add that. Inside of WordPress, I can simply click on the heading and then there's in the little

11:56

block editor section because I like the Gutenberg editor and I think you should too.

12:01

But in the block section, there's an advanced drop down and there is a spot where I can

12:05

enter text for an HTML anchor.

12:09

And it says enter a word or two without spaces to make a unique web address just for this block.

12:14

I can do that with headings or images or paragraphs or lists or anything like that.

12:18

I'm doing it with just my headings. it out inside of your app and see what you think about it and see if it actually works

12:23

inside of your app. I think it will.

12:25

So try it. You could do that kind of thing then so each chapter is linking to a section in your notes

12:32

where then that section has your multiple URLs that you've mentioned.

12:37

So that's number two, really long one, I promise they're not all this long, and that's

12:41

defer to your chapters or episode notes.

12:45

Number 3. Never say "https://" or "www.". It's not the 90s anymore. It's been literally

12:55

decades since anyone needed to type "http://" or "https://" in their browser. Also, most

13:05

websites don't actually use "www." at all in their domain anymore. Or if they do, like

13:13

YouTube still does, you can usually still get to the correct place without typing the

13:19

www dot. Which, by the way, has to be the worst abbreviation ever because saying www

13:29

is actually more syllables than what it's an abbreviation for. World Wide Web. Might

13:35

as well just say World Wide Web dot whatever the domain is dot com or anything like that.

13:40

You don't have to do that, most of the time, but you must test this first.

13:45

I have run into a couple of badly configured sites that needed the www dot because they

13:52

weren't even forwarding their domain without the www dot.

13:56

So if you typed the domain without it, the website wouldn't work.

14:01

But that's a very, very rare case.

14:04

And I haven't used www for any of my domains in many, many years. Decades.

14:11

And if I hear you say www.theaudacitytopodcast.com, well I won't come after you.

14:18

But don't be surprised if poetic justice comes after you by making your neighbor mow

14:23

his yard right when you want to record your podcast.

14:26

Just don't say www. And please, definitely don't say https://.

14:33

Unless you have to be explicitly clear because you talk code in your podcast.

14:38

Like when I've mentioned it in here, it's because I am being clear of this is what the

14:42

code says. But if you're telling people to visit a website, you don't have to say https://www.

14:49

And that will save you so much more time.

14:52

Number four. Simplify your URLs.

14:56

If you do speak a URL in your podcast, make it as simple as possible.

15:01

I remember a commercial many years ago, I think maybe from the late 90s or early 2000s

15:07

from Epson, you know, one of the biggest printer manufacturers who should know better than this.

15:13

The only thing I remember about their commercial was because I, as a teenager, recognized how

15:19

bad their call to action was.

15:21

I think the URL they spoke was www.ebson.com/what-if-you-could.

15:35

And yes, they actually spoke it that way, saying "dash" for every "dash".

15:43

What dash, if dash, you dash, could.

15:45

I just want to turn it into something that I just keep adding to it.

15:48

dash if dash you dash could make dash a dash better dash you are dash l dash.

15:55

You can just start inserting dashes all over the place. Don't do that. Please.

15:59

Even if you have to combine multiple words in order to speak something in your podcast,

16:05

try to avoid having to say dashes. Just don't make it so complicated. Simplify it.

16:10

I highly recommend that any URL you speak should reinforce your brand. So make it a slash keyword

16:17

URL on your own domain. Consider the speakable URL for this very episode, theaudacitytopodcast.com/sharing-urls.

16:29

It's not sharing dash URLs, it's just sharing URLs. Now when you visit that, that's simply

16:34

a redirect that takes you to a full URL that does have all of those dashes and a lot more

16:40

words in the URL. That's fine. That's for SEO and that's the way that my publishing

16:45

system makes those URLs, but I've made a shortened URL that's friendly, it's speakable,

16:52

it's more memorable. This also goes for external resources too.

16:56

Instead of sending people to something like Patreon.com/whatever your slug is for your

17:01

podcast, send them to a /Patreon 307 or 302 temporary redirect on your own domain.

17:09

Or even better, remove that third-party brand name completely.

17:14

I've done an episode about not saying brand names in your podcast, and make it a generic

17:18

URL, like /support or something meaningful to your audience, like /hero/whatever it is

17:25

that's special to your audience.

17:27

This not only reinforces your brand, but it also makes your calls to action future-proof

17:33

because you can redirect the URL whenever you want, especially if it's a temporary

17:37

redirect, and to wherever you want, even to a completely different brand. Like, what if

17:44

you wanted to stop using Patreon and switch to a membership on your own website? Then

17:50

your audience doesn't need the brand Patreon and it's not accurate anymore. So if you

17:55

kept sending them to patreon.com/somethingorother, then that's going to be a broken link. Or

18:00

if you send them to your own website/patreon, well you're not using Patreon anymore. Send

18:05

them to something that's more generic and that reinforces your brand.

18:09

To listen to that previous episode I did about not using brand names in your podcast, get

18:14

the link in the episode notes at theaudacitypodcast.com/sharingurls.

18:20

Number five, make friendly URLs that make sense.

18:24

Whether you're sending your audience to your own episode webpage, an affiliate product,

18:28

or somewhere else, ensure the URL makes sense for that thing.

18:33

brand names if possible, or wherever practical.

18:36

And this is part of why I stopped using episode number URLs for my own podcast a long time ago.

18:42

Firstly, I realized that my episode numbers didn't actually matter when I was doing

18:48

an episode about whether episode numbers matter.

18:52

Listen to that episode, the link is in the notes for this episode.

18:55

And secondly, even I, the creator of my own podcast, was having a hard time remembering

19:01

which numbers went with which episodes. So it was safer to assume that you and the rest

19:08

of my audience would have an even harder time remembering what number went with what episode.

19:14

Now I create a redirecting short URL for each episode to match the content of that episode

19:22

by making those URLs keyword focused. Like how this episode's URL is theaudacitytopodcast.com/sharing

19:30

"sharing URLs". And if you look at the image that goes along with this episode, you'll

19:34

see that sharing URLs is part of the big text on that image too. That's the other thing

19:40

I do is I try to make those URLs match or be similar to that big text so it's all reinforcing

19:47

the same text instead of /391, which is the pointless number of this episode by the way.

19:54

This is easy to do, again, with PrettyLinks Pro, a plugin that I love for WordPress. You

19:59

You can make as many temporary and permanent redirects as you want, and all using your

20:02

own WordPress-powered website. Even many third-party website providers that work with podcasting, like Podpage or some

20:09

of the websites you get through podcast hosting providers like Captivate, will let you create

20:13

your own redirects in their system.

20:16

But what I really like about PrettyLinks Pro, and specifically the paid version, the Pro

20:20

version, is that I can create the PrettyLink right in my post editor or page editor.

20:26

So that link goes live when I publish, reducing how many things I need to do away from the

20:32

post or page editor. That's number five.

20:35

Number six, say slash, not forward slash or backslash.

20:42

And you can call this a pet peeve if you want, but it's simply slash, not forward slash.

20:48

Forward slash is actually redundant, like pin number, ATM machine, and please RSVP.

20:54

And it's definitely not a backslash.

20:57

That's completely wrong. Just saying forward slash is redundant, backslash is incorrect.

21:03

Just say slash. People are familiar enough with what a slash is.

21:07

It's been around for a long time.

21:10

Number seven. Slow down and speak clearly.

21:15

Even though URLs don't have spaces, that doesn't mean you should speak like they don't have spaces.

21:21

It can be okay for you to say your own URL a little bit faster, not intentionally faster,

21:27

but just at a natural pace when it exactly matches your brand that you've already said

21:32

several times, and here's the key, within the context of your podcast.

21:38

For example, the website for The Audacity to Podcast is, duh, theaudacitytopodcast.com.

21:44

Brilliant, right?

21:47

And I'm saying that in my own podcast where you've already heard me say that domain several

21:52

times and you've heard me say The Audacity to Podcast several times.

21:56

You can look at your podcast app right now and probably somewhere on the screen it says

22:00

The Audacity to Podcast.

22:03

So my branding is really strong there.

22:05

The branding is strong with this one.

22:07

So I don't have to worry so much about saying that URL slowly.

22:12

But what comes after the slash, that's where I might need to be more intentional in this context.

22:19

So it's theaudacitytropodcast.com/sharingurls.

22:24

So see there I slowed down when I said sharing URLs.

22:29

But when speaking any different URL, and especially if you're in a different context, speaking

22:35

your own URL in front of a new audience or in a different context, make sure you say

22:40

Say it slowly and clearly enough so they can know what you said.

22:44

In other places I don't say theaudacitytopodcast.com, I say theaudacitytopodcast.com.

22:51

A little bit slower, emphasizing the branding a little bit more.

22:55

Also that context helps them know what word I mean when I say "to".

23:00

A little more on that in just a moment.

23:02

Check your podcast transcripts too. They can be a good indicator of whether you're clearly speaking the URL and saying it slowly

23:09

enough. And also, by the way, check your transcripts for any URLs that you mention so that you

23:14

can fix any of them that were transcribed incorrectly. Now, that doesn't always mean

23:19

if the transcript is wrong that you set it wrong. It's just a good indicator, potentially.

23:25

Number eight. Clarify or avoid ambiguity. There's a chance that you'll run into some

23:31

confusion with some URLs you might speak. For example, does the domain have the preposition

23:37

4, F-O-R, the spelled number F-O-U-R, the numeral 4, just the digit that is, or something

23:46

crazy like the Roman numeral 4, which would be I-V. An interesting corporate example of

23:53

this as a failure is Fifth Third Bank. Ironically for a bank, the secure URL, if you actually

24:01

typed it this way, "https://" which many browsers now just assume it's "https"

24:09

and then type the words "5th3rdbank.com".

24:14

That doesn't actually work, at least at the time of this recording.

24:18

But if you typed in "http://" without the "s", so the non-secure version, "/5th3rd"

24:26

spelled out dot com and if you type in https colon slash slash www dot fifth third spelled

24:33

out words there dot com those do work. However the actual website and the redirection destination for

24:40

those urls that actually do work is https colon slash slash www dot 53 dot com. Okay yeah I know

24:50

it's actually fifth third dot com but you look at it and it's 53. We all know it's 53. What's the

24:56

the website for Fifth Third Bank, it's 53.com. But I hope no one types the ordinal versions

25:04

of the numbers like 5TH3RD.com because that's a completely different website. And right

25:13

there on the front page it says "Online since 2000". I kind of wonder how long has

25:18

Fifth Third Bank been online? But I digress.

25:22

There are three different ways I think that you could avoid sending people to the wrong URL.

25:27

First, consider clarifying any ambiguity, such as by spelling it when the context doesn't

25:34

make it obvious. For example, I hear Clinton say this all the time in his podcast, "ComedyForecast.com,

25:41

that's the number 4." Sometimes the context makes it obvious, though, which way you mean.

25:45

But like in the case of Comedy Forecast, is that the number 4?

25:49

Is that F-O-R? Is that F-O-U-R?

25:51

Or is it maybe F-O-R-E like forecast a weather forecast. It's comedy the number 4 cast.com.

25:59

That's the number 4. Maybe he has the trademark on that by now.

26:03

You could also create fallbacks to handle other versions. Like yes, I have the audacity

26:08

number 2 podcast.com. Or avoid the ambiguity altogether such as avoiding any single digit

26:16

numbers or ambiguously spelled words like g-r-a-y and g-r-e-y for grey. And this might

26:23

come down to knowing what some of those other spellings are which might not be completely

26:28

obvious because sometimes it's a British English vs. American English kind of thing, or sometimes

26:33

it's just a misunderstanding of which way it's spelled. Like "lead" is it l-e-d or

26:40

or LED. You need to make sure that you solve that ambiguity problem you might have.

26:47

Number 9. Be careful with top level domains that aren't .com. A top level domain or

26:52

TLD is the .com part of the domain. You probably also know .org, .net, .edu, and .gov. But

27:00

there are hundreds of other TLDs. Some of them are full words, like .photography. While

27:06

it can be fun to have one of those modern TLDs, they might be expensive, some of them

27:12

really are, and they might be confusing to non-savvy internet users who probably assume

27:18

a dot com for everything and also probably enter all their URLs into the Google search

27:23

field. Consider your audience in that case. Is your audience tech savvy? Then it's probably

27:29

okay to have a really cool top level domain like dot show or dot whatever. Consider the

27:35

podcast That Story Show, for example. They have both ThatStoryShow.com, which they've

27:41

used for many years, and more recently ThatStory.show. The host, James Kennison, now speaks the .show

27:49

domain more often than the original .com domain, but he still has and uses the longer .com

27:57

version as that backup. The more creative you get, the more it will cost you in both

28:02

the domain itself and likely how many alternatives you might have to grab to ensure anyone who

28:09

mishears you still gets to the right website and it doesn't get stolen and used for malicious

28:14

purposes which can happen. And you might not have any defense against that unless you actually

28:20

trademark your podcast name and that's part of your domain and then you could potentially

28:27

go after some of those malicious websites if they're infringing on your trademark.

28:31

But if you don't have a registered trademark, and if you don't grab those domains, then

28:35

you're at the mercy of some of the trolls on the internet.

28:39

Number 10. Beware case sensitivity.

28:42

Case sensitivity is still weird on the internet.

28:45

It really depends on the server configuration running the website.

28:49

A little flashback here.

28:51

When I started my first website, I think around the year 2000, maybe even 1999, I can't

28:58

remember exactly. Actually, I think even before then.

29:01

Because I remember having my first webpage was "Angel Fire Geocities" or something

29:06

like that. But when I started my first official website, I specifically wanted a Windows server instead

29:14

of a Linux server because I didn't want to mess with capitalization issues that I

29:19

knew that Linux servers could have.

29:21

Oh my youthful mind and completely oblivious to how some stuff works and should work.

29:27

Domains and subdomains are case insensitive.

29:31

So you can capitalize TheAudacitytoPodcast.com however you want and it's still handled

29:37

the same way. You can even all caps it.

29:39

You can all caps the dot com part.

29:41

Anything like that. It's all handled the same way.

29:44

But anything after the domain could be case sensitive in that URL.

29:49

For example, capitalization actually matters with bitly links.

29:54

Like bit.ly/a is a different link from bit.ly/a.

30:03

And it matters on some other website servers and hosting configurations too.

30:07

You might just have to check it to see which way does it work.

30:11

And actually when I launched podgagement, I didn't realize that some people had saved

30:18

slugs like followthepodcast.com/audacity. I didn't realize that some of them had some

30:24

interesting capitalizations in there and the system was not configured to handle all the

30:30

different capitalizations that could have been in there. I had it set so they couldn't

30:34

make weird capitalizations, but if they already had one from the old My Podcast Reviews days,

30:40

that wasn't quite handled correctly. I've fixed that since then, but you have to be

30:44

aware of that kind of thing. Just assume anything that comes after the domain is case sensitive.

30:50

It might not be, but assume it is. So test whatever you do, test it. And if it is case sensitive,

30:58

then please don't tell your audience that. Don't tell them specifically to capitalize the URL.

31:04

Just send them to a URL that's not case sensitive because you don't want to have to get into those

31:09

specific instructions like that. Keep it simple. And then number 11, always test your URLs before

31:18

you share them. Make sure it actually works and it works in the way that your audience will hear it

31:24

and that they will type it in. Type it with the www dot and without it. Make sure your redirects

31:30

are functioning and if your friendly URLs aren't activated until you publish your episode, like all

31:36

all of my own slash keyword format URLs work from PrettyLinks Pro for my podcast episodes,

31:42

make sure to test that link after you publish your episodes. I don't know if it's a particular

31:47

aspect of my publishing workflow or what, but sometimes an episode of the Audacity podcast

31:52

goes out and that slash keyword URL does not work initially. So I have to go in after the

32:00

episode automatically publishes at its particular time and I go in and quickly make that link

32:05

work. I don't quite know what it is that causes that, whether it's a workflow thing, or maybe

32:10

I forgot to type something in, or maybe it's something else related to maybe a plugin conflict.

32:16

I don't completely know, and it happens rarely enough that I don't really diagnose to fix

32:21

the problem completely. I just test every time. And you should test every time too.

32:27

Whatever URL, especially URLs that you speak in your podcast, make sure that they work.

32:34

And the more important they are, the more you want to periodically go back and check

32:39

to make sure that they still work.

32:41

So in review, go to theaudacitytopodcast.com/sharingurls to get all the links that I mentioned, plenty

32:48

of links, and the notes for this episode and see some of the examples.

32:51

And these 11 tips that I've shared are, number one, speak as few URLs as possible per episode.

32:57

Number two, defer to your chapters or episode notes.

33:02

Number 3, never say https:// or www. Number 4, simplify your URLs.

33:10

Number 5, make friendly URLs that make sense.

33:14

Number 6, say slash, not forward slash or backslash.

33:18

Number 7, slow down and speak clearly.

33:21

Number 8, clarify or avoid ambiguity.

33:24

Number 9, be careful with top level domains that aren't .com.

33:28

Number 10, beware case sensitivity.

33:31

And number 11, always test your URLs before you share them.

33:35

If you've appreciated this episode, this has helped you or you think it might help someone

33:39

else, I would love it if you would share this episode out with someone else.

33:42

Go to theaudacitytopodcast.com/sharingurls to share this episode out or maybe it's a simple

33:50

tap inside of your app. Quick visit to the community corner.

33:53

Thanks for the 5 star review on the episode that I did previously, 11 Warnings About Using

33:58

AI in Content Creation. That 5 star review is from Rich Bennett using GoodPods and he said thanks for another informative

34:06

episode Daniel. Well thank you for that kind review Rich.

34:09

Check out the notes by the way and I've got an image in there of the review.

34:13

It's a really neat image. That is not something that I manually took a screenshot of anything and copied and pasted that.

34:22

that I downloaded straight from my own app, Podgagement.com, where now you can make images

34:28

of your individual ratings and reviews, well the non-anonymous ratings and reviews.

34:32

You can make those easily with Podgagement.

34:34

You can also make other cool images to embed on your website that show off your social

34:38

proof and much more. It's the image maker tool that's brand new inside of Podgagement.

34:43

I love it. Really excited about what that opens up for the future.

34:46

You can check out an example of that in the notes for this episode.

34:49

And try it yourself over at Podgagement.com.

34:53

Also thanks for the 1000 sats from Dwev who, as you might remember, I kind of questioned

34:58

is it Dweev, is it Dwev, is it something else?

35:02

But it is Dwev. And he said, "Yep, you're pronouncing it perfectly."

35:05

Thanks Daniel. And also thank you for the streaming satoshis from Brian Insmeiner, Dave Jackson, Dwev,

35:11

and newcomer Gardas for past episodes streaming those satoshis to me.

35:15

If you value The Audacity to Podcast, would you consider ascribing a number to that value

35:21

and sending that back to the podcast? Either through fiat currency, there's a PayPal link, there is the option to send value

35:28

back through streaming satoshis or a boostergram if you're in a modern podcasting 2.0 app,

35:33

or just purchase my products if you want to support what I do.

35:36

It's all at theaudacitytopodcast.com/sharingurls.

35:42

Now that I've given you some of the guts and taught you some of the tools,

35:45

it's time for you to go start and grow your own podcast

35:49

for passion and profit. I'm Daniel J. Lewis from theaudacityyoutubepodcast.com.

35:54

Thanks for listening.

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