How to decide on a name for your podcast
When it comes to starting a podcast, one of the most important decisions you'll make is choosing a catchy and effective podcast name. But how do you go about selecting the perfect name for your podcast? In my experience, there are a few different strategies that you can use when picking your podcast name. If you put the work in at the beginning to pick a name that suits your target, you’ll find who you’re looking for.
Using Your Name as the Show Title
If you have a recognisable name or are already a personal brand, naming your show after yourself can be a great choice. It allows you to leverage your existing reputation and makes it easier for people to find your podcast. For example, "The Joe Rogan Experience" and "The Huberman Lab" are both successful shows that use the host's name in the title. However, this approach is best suited for those who are already known figures because search volume on their names is high.
Targeting Your Audience
If you're not a well-known figure and want to focus more on the content of your podcast, choosing a title that targets your audience's search preferences can be a smart move. For instance, "Online Marketing Made Easy with Amy Porterfield" speaks directly to people searching for online marketing tips. By incorporating relevant keywords and adding a descriptive layer, you can attract the right audience to your show.
Balancing Creativity and Searchability
While using a more obscure or creative title may seem appealing, it may not perform well in search results. For example, "Goal Digger" by Jenna Kutcher is a catchy show name but may not be a term potential listeners would search for. To overcome this, make sure to optimise your podcast description with targeted keywords. Additionally, you can use episode titles and show notes to include more fun and creative elements.
Leveraging YouTube Search
If you're planning to promote your podcast on YouTube, it's important to consider search optimisation on this platform as well. Since YouTube is the second largest search engine, adding relevant keywords in your podcast description and episode titles will help boost discoverability and attract a wider audience.
Choosing the right title for your podcast is a crucial step in attracting your target audience. Whether you decide to go with your name, target specific keywords, or balance more obscure or creative names with searchability, remember to optimise other elements like episode titles and descriptions. By following these tips, you'll have a much better chance of creating a podcast that stands out and will be easy to find.
Transcript:
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[00:00:00] Brianna: What is a good title for your podcast? number one. If you have a recognizable name, if you are already a personal brand or you're trying to build your personal brand, then naming your show your name, like the Brianna and Saldo show that's fine.
[00:00:27] You can do that. You can play with ending of it, like podcast or show or experience or whatever. Joe Rogan would be a good example of that. The name of his show is The Joe Rogan Experience, or let's say Andrew Huberman and his show, It's called The Huberman Lab. Now that's kind of cool for a different reason because it still, it has lab in there and then it kind of plays into the fact that it's science based tools and so we've got lab in there and it feels like That's, that's a cool way to end it.
[00:00:56] That isn't just show or experience or podcast. But the key there is to know that if you're trying to build your personal brand, or you have a personal brand already using your name, no probs. If you feel like people will be typing your name in a lot, like they would anyway, and Google searches, then that's awesome.
[00:01:15] If you are less of a known figure. And you actually don't want to potentially be the face as much, or you're trying to let people know of your existence, then don't call your show your name, because you're not known yet.
[00:01:29] And a lot of the time, what wins from a podcast title perspective Is to make it kind of boring. So, yeah, it might be a bit of a snooze fest as a title, but it's targeting the person searching for that thing.
[00:01:44] if we used Amy Porterfield as the example here, the name of her show is Online Marketing Made Easy with Amy Porterfield. online marketing is something that lots of people would search for and then the fact that it goes that layer [00:02:00] deeper. So it's online marketing, but then it goes layer deeper.
[00:02:03] It says made easy, right, is then targeting that person. Like, I don't have a lot of time. I want to understand it. I want it to be easy. I'm new to the space. See how the title of that podcast hits everything. And then Amy Porterfield is secondary. It's like, yeah, she's still there, she's still in the title.
[00:02:23] Because she's kind of, well, she is a known figure. But she wants it to be less about her and more about the actual search function. So think about that for yourself when you're titling your show. What would someone be searching for that you feel like hits your target? Like, what you're actually going to be talking about for your show.
[00:02:43] podcast names that are a little bit more obscure don't tend to go as well from a search point of view. You have to do a little bit more work into those to establish them as like the brand name Gold Digger by Jenna Kutcher. Again, she's quite well known. It's not really about her. Like, as in, she doesn't want it to be the Jenna Kutcher show.
[00:03:03] She wants it to be Gold Digger, and that's a fun play on words there, but it's not something that someone's going to search for, right? They're not going to search. Goal Digger, but what you can do to get around that if you aren't established as a, as a name is you can go then into the podcast description in the back end of your podcast host and make sure that you're targeting keywords in the description.
[00:03:26] For the show. That means that there's less emphasis on what the name of the show is. It can be a little bit more fun, it can be a little bit more playful, because what you've got in your actual podcast description still hits what you need it to hit. And then further to that, when you go into the actual, like if you're really trying to get search keyword heavy, but you don't want to name your show something more boring, then you can go that layer deeper again and actually make sure that the show notes that you're writing and the episode titles that you're writing, which episode [00:04:00] titles are very important, you want to make sure that they So they can hit who you are trying to target if you want the name of your show to be a little bit more fun.
[00:04:12] Same thing goes, and I would argue more broader, when people are searching on YouTube, because YouTube is the second largest search function in the world, you want to make sure that you're hitting those targets. If not in your podcast name, they're definitely in the description for the episodes so that you are hitting what you need to hit there in order to achieve that.
[00:04:35] So think about playing with those ideas. Okay. It doesn't have to be your name. Although if you're wanting to build your personal brand, then it can be a good idea to have it be your name. if it's going to be a fun name, then you need to make sure you're supporting it with really structured keyworded episode titles and podcast description.
[00:04:52] And if you want to do a double, triple whammy on that, then have the actual name of your show be a bit more boring. That then someone understands straight away what they're getting once they find that show like the Amy Porterfield example. They know what they're getting because it's very clear what it is based on the title of that podcast.
[00:05:15] Thank you so much for following us on this journey and I will chat to you next week.
