94. 3 Podcast Cover Art Mistakes to Avoid | Podcasting Tips for Thumbnails

Is your cover art attracting new listeners to your podcast? It should be! In this episode, I cover 3 cover art mistakes to avoid so that your podcasting thumbnail can work for you. Most podcasters are making at least one of these mistakes...tune in to find out if you're one of them, plus how to optimize your cover art! 

Mentioned in this episode:

Episode 86 - 7 Podcast Naming Mistakes to Avoid | Podcasting Tips for Titles, Launches, and Rebranding

This episode was produced by me, The Podcast Teacher! Contact me at Hello@ThePodcastTeacher.com.

Take the quiz to find out what you need to focus on for podcast growth: www.ThePodcastTeacher.com/quiz

Transcript

Hey. Hey. And welcome back.

I'm sure you've heard the phrase, don't judge a book by its cover. Right? Well, after fifteen years of working in various library environments, I can tell you that people most certainly do judge books by their covers, and that makes sense. If we weren't going to judge books by their covers, they wouldn't have covers in the first place. Authors and publishers know that the cover of a book is an extremely important asset and that a good cover attracts the right reader. When it comes to your podcast, the thumbnail image that appears in the podcast player called your podcast cover is just like a book's cover, and it is key to attracting the right listeners. Your cover art needs to look professional. It should not look like your 1998 self designed Myspace page. This is a podcast expense worth hiring a graphic designer for if this is not in your skill set.

Seriously, hire a graphic designer before you even hire a podcast editor. It is that important. I will kind of caveat that by saying that not all graphic designers know the best practices for podcast covers. So be sure to keep listening to this episode and then work together to create an amazing cover. In case you're not yet convinced about how important your cover art is, let's imagine that your ideal listener types a keyword into their podcast player search bar and your show comes up in the results. Your ideal listener quickly scans the options trying to decide which show looks like it will meet their need, and therefore, which one they want to click on. Your cover art is so important in this decision. It needs to convey what your show is about in a matter of seconds through text and images so that they click on yours.

With me now? Alright. Great. Now let's get into the mistakes that you should avoid. Podcast cover art mistake number one is prioritizing your photo. While some podcast gurus advise against putting your photo on the cover, I do recommend it in most situations. If the purpose of your podcast is to build a relationship with your listeners and then have them eventually become clients or customers, I believe that the relationship develops faster and can go deeper when the listener knows what you look like. It's hard to feel as if you know, like, and trust someone when you can't picture them. Additionally, for most people that I work with, their ideal listener is someone similar to them.

If they are a coach for fifty five plus women, then they are a 55 plus woman. We are naturally drawn to people who either are a reflection of us or represent who we want to be. A photo on the cover helps to make this connection. So while I do recommend putting your photo on the cover, it should not be the main focus. Making it the priority is a mistake. Instead, prioritize the text on your podcast's cover and then supplement with your photo. Remember that the job of your podcast cover is to get someone to click on it from their list of search results. It needs to stand out and be immediately clear what the podcast is about and who it's for.

This is primarily going to be accomplished through your title, which should be front and center on your cover. Scroll back to episode 86 to hear about podcast naming mistakes to avoid, but for this episode, I'm assuming that you have already come up with a slam dunk title. So you want to start by putting that title on the cover and then fit your picture in as an addition. Your photo is supplementary to the text. Okay. Before we talk about mistake number two, I wanna make sure that you've heard about my new quiz that helps you identify what you need to work on in order to grow your podcast. Your cover is so important for attracting new listeners, but there are other things to optimize as well. If you are getting less than 1,000 downloads a month and are not sure why your podcast isn't growing, head to the podcastteacher.com/quiz.

Take the sixty second quiz, learn what you need to focus on for growth, and receive some action steps to implement right away. Moving on to podcast cover art mistake number two, hard to read text. While you may be designing your cover art in Canva or reviewing a draft from your designer and looking at a giant and easily readable version of it on your screen, remember that most people are going to be seeing your cover art in their podcast player where it appears super tiny. As I just pointed out in mistake number one, the text is the priority on your cover art, and it needs to be easy to read. Use a plain, boring, and easily readable font. No cursive, handwriting, etc. And, make the text as large as possible. Seriously.

Make it bigger than you think it needs to be. Make it as big as you possibly can. I don't think I've ever looked at someone's cover art and said that the text is too big, but I've said that it's too small a billion times. Also, make sure to choose a color that's easy to read on top of your background. Dark colors work well on top of a light background, and light colors work well on a dark background. When it comes to a color scheme, you may want to stick with colors that you already use in your existing branding, but you may also want to take a look at shows that will appear with yours in the search results and try and do something different. For example, if most podcasts in your space incorporate blue, maybe you stay away from blue and you incorporate bright pink to make your cover grab attention. Assuming that you have a juicy keyword in your title, which you should, again, episode 86, if you need help with your title.

Assuming that you have that juicy keyword in your title, consider changing the color of that one word or placing a highlight box around it to really make it pop. You want that keyword to grab the listener's eye as they are scanning the search results. One last note about text, the title of your podcast is the important text. If you have a situation where you need to put the subtitle on your cover too for topic and audience clarity, that also needs to be easily readable. While your name and or your business name can be on the cover, they don't have to be. They are not really important unless you and your brand are highly recognizable. If you choose to include them, they should be the smallest out of any of the text. Alright.

That brings us to podcast cover art mistake number three, using the wrong imagery. If I see a picture of a microphone or headphones on a one more podcast cover, I might scream. Okay. Not really. I'm exaggerating. I understand why people do that, but it's my mission to shout from the rooftops that these images should not be on your cover, unless your podcast is about podcasting. Then it's okay because it matches your content, and that's why there's a microphone on my cover. But when we're looking at podcast covers, we're most likely already in our podcast player.

We don't need that imagery to tell us that this content is in podcast format. We know that already. What we do need is imagery that represents the actual content if possible. Some topics are easier to visually represent than others. But for example, if you have a podcast about surfing, I highly recommend that there's a picture of a surfboard somewhere on the cover. Maybe that's you standing with your surfboard in your photo, or maybe it's a clip art style surfboard that you add. Regardless, if it's possible to imply what the content of the podcast is through images, that's going to make your cover even stronger and increase the chances that your show gets picked from the results. So so so so many people have microphones, headphones, and other irrelevant imagery on their covers.

Make sure you avoid this so that your cover stands out. Alright. Let's wrap up with one bonus mistake, and that's not following the technical requirements. Your cover must be 3,000 by 3,000 pixels, square, 512 kilobytes or smaller, and be uploaded to your podcast host as a JPEG or PNG file. If your cover art is not showing up properly, nine times out of ten, one of these technical things is wrong. So there you have it. Avoid making your photo a priority, hard to read text, irrelevant imagery, and incorrect text specs, and your cover will do the work to attract listeners to your podcast. Until next time, happy podcasting.