Latest / Randy Unscripted / Why I'm Using PodChapters - NaPodPoMo 2025 #10

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Why I'm Using PodChapters - NaPodPoMo 2025 #10 · Randy Unscripted

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  Randy Black: It's my favorite podcast.
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  Randy
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  Black.
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  Randy Black. Randy Black. Randy Black. Randy Black. Randy Black. Randy Black. Randy Black. He's a troublemaker. Hello, everyone. Welcome back to Randy Unscripted.
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  I'm Randy Black, and this is episode 10 of my
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  napod promo series where I'm recording daily episodes
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  throughout the month on a variety of topics from technology and education to personal reflections and tools I use in my work.
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  If you're following along, thank you for tuning in. And if you're just joining, you can catch up on the other episodes on my website or wherever you get your podcasts.
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  Today, I wanna talk about a tool that has completely changed the way I structure my episodes
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  and my workflow,
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  and that's pod chapters.
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  This tool was created by Daniel J. Lewis, a podcaster hall of fame member and the voice behind the audacity to podcast.
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  Podchapters
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  is a browser based tool that makes creating chapter markers and transcripts for your podcast fast,
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  precise,
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  and really easy to manage.
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  So what exactly does pod chapters do?
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  Well, in short,
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  it helps you break your episodes into chapters,
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  generate transcripts, and even turn your episode outlines into fully time stamped chapters.
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  You can import your audio, provide a transcript,
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  or have a tool create one for you, and it will help you generate chapters with AI assistance.
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  To give you some perspective,
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  back in the early days of podcasting,
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  creating chapter markers was almost unheard of.
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  Most listeners
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  just had to scroll through long episodes
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  blindly
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  and hoping to land on a segment they wanted to hear.
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  Today, though, expectations are a lot different.
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  Listeners are starting to expect structure,
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  to expect navigation,
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  and to have the ability to to jump straight to the content that matters most to them.
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  Pod chapters supports exporting chapters in multiple formats.
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  So m p three chapters for traditional podcast apps, podcasting two point o cloud chapters, pod love chapters,
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  and even YouTube time stamps for repurposed video content.
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  You can add links, images, and extra meta metadata for
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  each chapter that you create, making your show notes,
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  making the playback in the players more interactive and more useful for your audience.
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  Before pod chapters,
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  I know I know I had to manually place in time stamps, cross check each segment, double checking that everything lined up with the show notes and the m p three file timing, and it was tedious.
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  It was error prone.
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  It was a horrible process.
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  But now the tool does all the heavy lifting,
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  allowing me to focus on the content creation
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  rather than the back end administrative work.
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  Let me tell you how pod chapters has impacted my workflow personally.
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  For some time, creating chapter markers is one of those
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  really time consuming parts of the of producing an episode.
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  You know, for example, episodes of one of my other shows, shooting it straight, are nearly an hour long of discussion.
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  And if I wanted to add chapters,
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  I had to manually mark each segment, record the time code, then add it via the web interface on my media host that I was using or in the chapter builder in PodPress.
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  And it took a decent chunk of time just to finalize the chapters.
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  With pod chapters,
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  I can either use an AI generated chapters or turn on
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  or turn in my, my preplanned outline
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  and use that to fully make time stamped episodes in a fraction of the time.
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  Here's how I typically use it.
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  I upload my episode audio in m p three format.
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  I either provide the outline or I provide the transcript.
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  Usually, I provide a transcript.
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  Or sometimes, you know, when I'm feeling like I don't wanna transcript this myself using
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  MacWhisperer, that's my tool of choice, I let Daniel's AI transcribe it for me.
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  And then pod chapters suggest chapter markers based on my preference.
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  From there, I can adjust the titles, I can shift the time stamps, and I can add links to resources that I mentioned throughout the episode.
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  For my episodes, which which cover all kinds of different topics in my different shows,
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  pod chapters makes it easy to create accurate chapter markers very quickly.
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  It doesn't matter what the content is. I can take an episode from the raw audio
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  to a fully structured set of chapters without having to manually listen through and calculate time stamps.
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  That's powerful.
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  On top of that, pod chapters includes presets that will automatically fill in I d three tag information for your episodes. With just a couple clicks, most of the metadata
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  is populated for you correctly.
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  There's also a snippets tool that lets you insert dynamic information into your metadata very easily. For example,
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  Daniel has some already created for you.
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  Those, snippets are in brackets. So bracket bracket year, bracket close bracket close bracket automatically inputs the current year.
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  Same thing with bracket bracket copy close bracket close bracket. That inserts the copyright symbol wherever you need it.
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  Features like these save me a significant amount of time in my postproduction,
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  and they let me focus more on refining the content itself rather than on the administrative tasks.
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  While pod chapters makes my life easier,
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  it also makes the listening experience better for the audience.
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  Chapters allow your audience to jump directly to the segments they care about. For instance, if someone is only interested
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  in the napod promo update segment that someone produces, so they've got their content, but they're also talking about what else they're doing and what's coming up. They can skip straight to that without having to hunt through
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  twenty,
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  thirty, forty, fifty minutes of audio to find it.
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  Accessibility and engagement also are improved.
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  Listeners who are multitasking, have hearing challenges, or are studying your content can navigate more efficiently.
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  From an engagement perspective,
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  chapters keep people listening longer and make your episodes feel more professional and polished.
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  An important update for podcasters, although Apple Podcasts
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  in a new in an update coming very soon, now supports chapters either through the podcast chapters tag, podcasting two point o tag, or by generating chapters automatically based on the transcripts on their servers.
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  This means that properly formatted chapters can now be reliably displayed on Apple Podcasts, the largest podcast consumption app, giving your audience a better experience whether they're listening on an iPhone, an iPad, or a Mac.
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  For podcasters,
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  that's
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  a big deal.
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  It means your chapters are more likely to be used, seen,
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  and appreciated across one of the largest podcast platforms.
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  Even if you only add a few chapters per episode,
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  it significantly
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  increases listener satisfaction.
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  And from a branding standpoint, it communicates consistency
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  and attention to detail,
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  traits that make your podcast stand out in a crowded field.
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  So that's a look at how I've been using pod chapters as part of my napod promo challenge.
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  Every episode I've produced this month has chapters.
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  Find a podcast app that supports it or wait for the Apple podcast update that's gonna include it, and you can see those chapters.
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  It's made producing my episodes faster.
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  It's made it cleaner, and it's made it more consistent.
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  And more importantly, it improves the listener experience in ways I didn't fully anticipate
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  when I first started using it.
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  Thanks for tuning in to episode 10 of my Napod promo series.
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  If you've enjoyed the episode, don't forget to check out the rest of the series and subscribe so you won't miss any of the daily recordings this month. Until next time, keep learning,
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  stay curious,
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  and I'll catch you on the next episode of Randy unscripted. Go podcasting.