December 2019 - PodValley

The most famous saying you have probably heard is to not judge a book by its cover. The sad thing is, most people will pick up a book because of it’s cool and attractive cover. This is what your cover art is for your podcast, it is the cover of the book.

Another way of thinking about this is when driving down the highway. You will see hundreds of billboards but you only remember a few. Why is that? The ones you remember are mostly the ones with fewer words, more visuals and appeal to it. Now think about this, don’t you want people to remember your podcast even when they just see it scrolling down a list? Of course, you do!

Cover art is very important when it comes to your podcast. From the book and highway example, you can see how big of a role it plays in when people are searching for your content. Think about buying music at a store back in the day. Even if you never heard about the album or the artist, you would pick it up because it looked interesting to you. This is the same with your podcast. When they are searching for a podcast and your’s pops up on the list, your cover art is what will attract them to give it a listen.

Now that you understand why a cover art is so important, let’s look at how you should create one.

The biggest mistake most podcasters make is trying to create their own cover art. Now if you are a graphic design expert, this will not be a problem for you. But if you took a Photoshop class in high school or college, please don’t think that you can create then next Mona Lisa. MS Paint skills will not create that cover art that will attract people to your podcast, so you should hire an expert to create one.

PRO TIP: Use fiverr.com to find a graphic designer for $5. People there will create a professional cover that will not cost you an arm or a leg.

Now, just because you are hiring a professional to do the work doesn’t mean you shouldn’t know how it should be done.

1.1/4 Text

The less Text you have on your cover art, the better. Many popular podcast only including initials of the name of the podcast or even just a custom logo.

If you have too much text, it might turn some people off just trying to figure out what the cover art is saying rather than listening to your podcast. You don’t want this to happen.

2. Originality

So many times people try to copy one another. This is not good. If every single book in the world looked the same from the outside, would you read more than one book? Probably not, right? So don’t get copy artwork from another podcast and just change the works and image.

Another big no-no is copying some random images from Google and pretending that it is a good cover art. DON’T DO THIS.

December 2019 - PodValley

The Perfect Cover Art