Essential Tips You Need to Remember When Writing the Best Podcast Titles

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Hi and welcome to Feed you'd Brand. This is Tom and Tracy. Today we're going to take a deep dive into a subject that a lot of podcasters wonder about, and that's really about their podcast titles. We're going to talk about how to really write the best ones. Some of our thoughts on best practices for that.

That's right. You know, this is a hard thing. I can tell you that it's agonizing for me to title my ink articles. Every time I go to do it, I write like three, four, they suggest, oh, write 10 of them and then choose the best. And I could never do that because it's hard enough to come up with one or two. And you want it to be clickable. You don't want it to be clickbait because that's disingenuous and people will unsubscribe to you a lot faster if you do things like that, mislead them. But you want it to be something that intrigues people. And also you have a lot of issues because there's a lot of technical issues around titles as well. There's SEO power, search engine optimization that happens from the one that's on the website. There's truncation or shortening that happens when you look at it on apps or you look at it in the itunes library, where sometimes you only see the first two to three words. So you have to have a balance here.

And let's talk about something that we really don't recommend right off the bat. Okay. I think that might help. And that is we see a lot of people put an abbreviation of their podcast name, episode number, whatever, and then the actual title. And we really don't recommend doing that. First of all, in a list of a podcast player or on itunes or stitcher or anywhere. It is almost always truncated your title. And so all you're going to see is, you know, let's say we've seen some people do like their podcast is abbreviated by three initials instead of the whole name.

And we did this in the beginning. It's not like we used to do it used to say WTFF number whatever and so.

And so you have this whole list of just that same thing over and over again, which really isn't gonna attract. People aren't gonna respond to the number of the episode as easily as the title being really descriptive of what it is.

Yeah, I mean, it seems like really good in the early days, but again, if you were looking at the itunes library, for instance of it, the numbers are all there. So. So, like everyone, it says number one and then a list. Now when you get to hundreds of episodes, it drops down and your list is, you know.

Well, that's the thing. When you get over 300 episodes, the number on itunes of the actual listing of the episode will not match the episode number. And actually this.

And that confuses people, so it's just better to take it off.

Yeah. And the other thing that often happens, this is a very common thing that happens with podcasters, and it happened with a new customer of ours who transferred to our production services is they asked me the question, why in the podcast player does it say episode, you know, 47 when it's actually episode 46? All of my episodes are off by one. And this is a common problem with a lot of podcasters, especially newcomers to podcasting, is that they did their first episode, their introductory episode, and didn't call it episode one. They either didn't give it an episode number or they, you know.

Yeah, 00, 0 is common.

People do that. 00, which inherently, right from day one, throws off your episode numbers from the count on any player. And so we really don't recommend doing that. We recommend regardless of what the introductory episode is, that's EP episode one, not episode zero. And that way, at least for a while, your episode count and the count in players will be the same. Just sort of a little side tip there.

Yeah, it's taking up space. And that's really was like a title is valuable space. And so we don't want to mess with it and use words that are unnecessary, use characters like this that are unnecessary.

Right. And so although some of our clients really do want the identity of the show abbreviation and the episode number in the title, and if they do, if they insist on that, we recommend it's at the end, have your show title, your descriptive title with your keywords up front, and then the name of your show or the abbreviation of it and any reference to the episode number at the end.

That's right. So anyway, let's talk about title differences. So it is actually. Okay, I'm going to shock you out there because so many people would Say, oh, no, this is a no, no. But it is okay to have a different title on itunes than you have on your blog post.

I think that's true. It's acceptable, right?

It's acceptable. And I actually encourage it because podcast players or iTunes libraries, Stitcher, it doesn't matter which one you're using. The truncation is so strong that you really need some. You're activating words right up front. Or if it's an interview with someone of high value. Now, here's the thing is, I also disagree with those who always put their interview subject first. Sometimes they're not as big a draw as you think they are, and you're wasting space, because if I knew that this, you know, Jane Smith was a, you know, SEO expert, maybe I'd want to click on it. So you should say SEO expert, Jane Smith talks about whatever. Or, you know, your title might be something like that. But SEO expert might be all that shows in the little Stitcher description or the little itunes description. And that's what you want. It's like, oh, well, I'm interested in SEO expert. Oh, I've heard of Jane Smith before. Okay, great. So, like, that's it. But if you just put Jane Smith, I don't know which Jane Smith that is. I don't know, is it someone? And so that's where. When you don't have someone at the level of like, oh, my gosh, I, you know, I just interviewed Elon Musk. Elon Musk, Yeah. You know, or somebody who rises to that level, especially because lots of people, you're in your industry and you think all these people are famous, but they're not to someone who's new and learning. And that's what a lot of podcast listening is about, someone who's getting educated in the process. So leading with them is not necessarily the biggest draw.

I agree with you, Tracy. Now, sometimes I think, you know, there are definite exceptions to that. Like we said Elon Musk or Kevin Harrington or, you know, somebody who's a TV celebrity also, I think, is an exception. But there's also another way. Sometimes some of our clients are interviewing CEOs of very big companies. And if you were interviewing the CEO of Coca Cola or something, then their name might not be very well known, but Coca Cola sure is. So you could say Coca Cola CEO of whatever, or. And their name after that, potentially. But you want to put the most recognizable part up front.

Right. So on our show, we like to do with or mix it into the other places, because the guest that we're going to have is going to be featured prominently in our leading paragraph, in the very first paragraph or the description. So if somebody wants more information, they'll be able to easily get that and so they can see more about that person. But in our particular industry, it's such a niche industry and people are learning new about it. Unless it's a major company player, we really rarely mention their name up front. And so it's just one of the ways that we like to make sure that we're going into topic first problem first because that's what people are searching for and that's where they're coming from. But it's also on the blog post side what Google is powering. So one of the things I want you to think about is think about it like TV show titles or you know, Netflix listings, whatever it is that you look at it like that's exactly what you want. You want short episode names in the itunes library, in the podcast player libraries because they are very short. That's all that shows on the scroll. If they want to read more, they can read a longer title, they can read the leading paragraph, they can, you know, the description. And so you want to make sure that that is as compelling as possible. You skip words like we get this all the time. In today's episode, Tom and Tracy talk about like these are things that people put into their titles.

Well, or their descriptions for sure.

Or their descriptions for sure. Yeah, these are mistakes that you don't need to make. This is wasted character space. Right. Think of it like a tweet. You're getting to the point quickly. Right? Your titles need to get to the major point quickly. You know, SEO learnings, keyword titles, you know, whatever that might be. And so really getting through to the. Either the benefit of the problem, whatever is the biggest draw to this episode. Thinking about that should definitely be in your player title. So in your podcast player title. And you can do those separate. I mean our team knows to do that for our clients if they choose to or if they have trouble. Because if the title is too long and it happens with a long set of, you know, it just can be a really long title. There's no other way around it. And so they know to find a way to shorten it by taking out the words like the. And. And. And just a few extra things like that. Just so that the title of a podcast of a podcast reads better when you're in the player. But when you go into then the blog post side of things, the power of it has to be an SEO, and that doesn't necessarily matter as much on the podcast player side. People search genres and topics on a podcast player. They don't search keyword phrases well.

Plus, the reality is the search engines in every podcast player and every podcast distribution channel are different and are not a part of Google, right?

And they're searching more than the title. When they serve up a podcast episode, they're searching that whole description. So they're going serve it up if it's in your description anyway, so you don't have to worry about. And I think about it more as, like, compelling title and podcast player that excites someone and goes, oh, I should listen to that. Enough to stop someone and get them to listen. On the blog post side, it's got to stop Google. It's got to get Google excited about your site. It's less about the person, more about what Google is going to serve up for you on the blog post side. So your title needs to be packed with your keyword phrases or packed with the words that are going to be the problem, the answers, whatever it is that's drawing in. And that it needs to, of course, match what your blog post and what your podcast is about. It shouldn't be misleading. Again, but you want to pack that in. But again, we're talking about writing editorial titles, right? This is something that they learn at journalism school, right? Copywriters learn as well. And it's an art and it's a skill. You can do both, right? Some people are really good at just catchy titles that sound so good that you just want to know more about them. And others are really good at just informational titles, right? It's really giving you the powerful information you need and getting you there's. I found that the wittier they are, the worse they do. And it's unfortunate, like, the more, you know, sometimes you want to do a play on words or something like that, and it just doesn't work out as well as it does because Google doesn't serve it up. Google doesn't have a sense of humor. They don't get it. It doesn't get it.

So I agree, Google doesn't get humor.

But on a podcast player, someone clicking through, they might get that wittiness and that humor. And so there's a place for it there. And so that's kind of how we look at it, is like the podcast title is more of like Human draw, and the blog post title is Machine Learning Draw.

And then of course, there's the featured image which is, you know, the title, at least with every one that we publish, is on the featured image visually. But, you know, in all of these things, the featured image, the title, the description, you really got to think about how people are going to engage them or notice them. And it's different in every situation. I mean, think about it. On itunes, on your computer, there's a scroll of all these names you're scrolling through, looking at all these titles, and you want to jump off of that, you know, screen you want, you know, as people are scrolling through, oh, whoa, that. What's that? Oh, I want to look at that. And it's not going to be visual there. It's definitely more of the word. Same thing. In a podcast player, Google is going to index just the words and doesn't care about the image so much. I mean, there are tags and other stuff that'll index, but Google doesn't care what the visual is. But people who are looking at a feed on social media, on LinkedIn or Facebook or something are going to scroll through. And this is where that image is so critical. So it jumps off the page. Ooh, what's that? That caught my visual eye.

And in this case, we also recommend doing that podcast player title. So the shorter title is better. Because if you have this, like, think about it like a book title, right? It's seen, really, when you search on Amazon for a book, it's the main title or the big words that show that subtitle that might be more descriptive, you can't read in the thumbnail. And it's the same thing thinking about it in the feed. So always shorten your title. Keep the shorter title, if possible, in the visual image. And that way what happens is, is now you've got this written title that Google's responding visual is matching the podcast player. So if they heard it on the podcast player, they know they're in the right place because those titles match. And you always put your episode number in the corner because they may look for that as well.

Sure.

And so, you know, those are the ways that we kind of match it up. But let's talk about good titling, good copywriting. Okay? So a good title has a compelling draw, Right. It's drawing you in with either presenting a problem or presenting potential solutions. Out of all of the articles I've written, the ones that have done the best are the ones that say the the one thing you should do. The three ways to the most common this. Like, these are the kinds of words that people respond to. Right. And so if you put those in the title that you're going to put in your podcast player, they would look like you had 20 million episodes about the three ways. Right? You know, and it's like. And you would across all of it. So these are the things you do throw out of that podcast title. But you do want them in to the blog post title because someone wants to know that they're going to have an actionable solution, actionable analysis of a problem. They want something that is going to give them something to make it worth their while to read that blog post. And that's where those types of words really help. The other thing is I throw out, I'm going to call them throwaway words. Words that are overused, hyped, over hyped words like leadership, unless they're a part of your keyword phrase and you're flanking them with something else that makes them unique, like sustainable leadership. That's a topic probably didn't come up that often, right? I haven't heard those two words together super often. That would intrigue me. But just always having something about leadership because your business happens to be called, you know, leadership growth or whatever, that's a mistake. Those words about leadership are going to come through in that blog post again and again. Something you're always mentioning about being a leader because it's what your drive is, right? So putting those things and thinking you need to cram them into every single title is a mistake. And so taking the take of what is the most unique and original thing that relates to that word, relates to your core topic, relates to your core business. Those are the things you want to hit in your keywords. Those are the things that you want to make sure and put in overuse. Things like, oh, I mean, I get it all the time. Disruptive. Like I write about disruptive technology and I rarely actually put them in the title. Sometimes I do. I did this past week because I was writing about X reality. So I didn't put virtual reality in my title. I put but X reality. So disruptive X reality, that's kind of a new phrase. So I've lumped that word that might be overused with something new that they may not have heard before. So they have a sense, oh, it's about disruptiveness, which I'm interested in, or disruptive technology, but I don't know what this X reality thing is. So then it can serve you well. So thinking about the words that you're choosing and are these like the most original versions of the word? And if not, qualify Them add a qualifier.

You know, you can really tell you're the writer among the two of us, Tracy, and you've dealt with this a whole lot. Because I gotta tell you, sometimes I'll think of a title and I'll think, wow, yeah, that sounds good. And you'll tell me, oh, that's a terrible title. You know, it's a tough thing. Some people are better at it than others. It's not my area of, you know, specialty or not my forte. But that's why we've hired a copywriter on our staff to help. Because some of our clients give us titles. They know exactly what they want it to be, and they're very happy with it. And certainly we're happy to, you know, follow that lead. But other times they're like, I have no idea what the best title is. Can you guys figure. Figure that out? And so we actually do. And we have a team that's charged with doing exactly that. Researching, figuring out what the best title is and thinking about the keyword value of that. And I think you're right, Tracy. Leadership is a great example, because I think, especially in business, it is, I would say, an often used word. But there is always a way to get a little more creative. And if you combine that with the right word before or after it now, you're gonna get something unique. And so that's really the trick.

Yeah, so I struggle with. Because I write a column in the innovate section, like, they like us to work innovation in. So I'm always struggling with that. And so what I've started to do more often is put the uniqueness there and use the subtitle. And so now in the case of your blog post, you can do it where you have the main title and you have a subtitle above your graphic. So you have the option to do that above the header that you might use as a graphic. Or you can put the graphic and then put it right below the header. You have the option to do. And maybe it makes sense and you can mess with it per blog post. It could be different every time. If that subtitle is so powerful, it really needs to qualify the title. Push it up. That's a great way to do it. Now I'm going to go with the pickiness of titles. Now, when you title something, every single word in there, including in the. And every time you use them, you need to have a capital. This is the rules. This is not really.

Because I've often wondered.

Titles are not a sentence. Okay, this is not good. Journalism.

It's a headline.

It's a headline, right? So it doesn't have to be a proper sentence. You don't have to make it into a proper sentence. It's a longer phrase, but it has an action. It always has a noun and an action somewhere. A noun and a verb, Right. You've got to have that happening in there. And you should have good adjectives, right, that really make them exciting. Right? Excite them. And so it should be doing that, compel them. But the subtitle, we very often, and most publications do this, treat it like a sentence. So the first word, not the subtitle, doesn't have capitals. Every other word as well, or every word and then ended a period. You can't do that. But it should be a normal sentence that you're doing, you know, three things you're not doing in your blog posts today. And then the sentence below might be what you didn't know about SEO is hurting you.

So the second one would be a sentence and proper grammar and punctuation, but the title would be all caps. It's a headline, it's marketing. It doesn't matter if it's not proper grammar.

Right? And now sometimes, let's talk about this. You can sometimes do colons and then a second part of it, or do a question and then have a phrase after it. So I do do that sometimes in the title, you know, afraid to take the leap question mark? Try this, you know, or try these three techniques, or try these three fear blockers or fear busters. Try these three fear busters. How about that? So, you know, you might try something like this. You can do that. But keep in mind that also in it, ampersand, question marks, periods, dashes, colons, all of those things freak Google out a little bit. So if you can avoid them in your title, do and use them in that subtitle instead.

And you certainly, when it comes to Google, you absolutely have to leave those kind of characters out of the permalink of the blog post, you know, in terms of the web URL and, you know, so it can't be there anyway. And that's something to consider.

Absolutely. So thinking about all of this, and I don't want you to be scared off by the idea, oh, my gosh, I'm agonizing over my titles. Don't agonize over them. I mean, just put them out there. But thinking about it and looking from the outside in, does it make sense? Right? Is this something that's going to attract the right people and into it or is this all in your, like, industry head? And does it have too many industry terms that are not well known? Or is that okay because you have the industry terms? I throw ar, VR, 3dp, and all those things into them all the time because they're okay. Because we are already talking within our industry. That's the people we attract. Advanced listeners. Right. So those are okay, too. So be thinking about it, making sure that you're filtering that through. Is this making sense for what someone would type into Google who's either a novice or in my industry or looking for what I have to sell or what I have to talk about? And that's really the whole point of them. And then don't be afraid to mix them up. Like, you know, try some things, try different titles. I highly recommend you go through and find your favorite columnist, your favorite blog about whatever subject you're in, maybe even your competitors, and check out what they're doing. There's a method to so many of them that you'll see that they have a pattern. Follow their pattern. Try it that way. See, don't copy the titles by any means because that will hurt you more than it will help you. But follow the pattern of their titles. If they say three ways, you try three things. You know, if they use the number five all the time, try five for a change. Right. And so, you know, going through and following and seeing what's going on there really will help you the most. So, anyway, I know this is sort of a nitpicky little dive in, but these things are the things that make you clickable, make you listenable, and so we want to give you as much power and as much opportunity for success in that as possible. So we hope this was an interesting episode for you.

Yeah, absolutely. We're just trying to help you get the greatest return on the time and money you're investing in creating your podcast and your digital content. So this is a big part of it, actually.

Yeah. We spend a lot of time educating and training our team to make sure that they have these good practices and that they learn this. And when we train them, this is something else that we do is I monitor them for the first month or two and check all that they do, and then actually go like an editor with a red line pencil, you know, red line through it and show them how it could be better so that they learn quickly how to make it a better sentence next time. How to make it a better phrase. How to make it a better title.

Yeah, absolutely. Wonderful. Well, hey, if you have any questions about that or any comments. Feel free to reach out to us anywhere on social media. Edyourbrand and of course you can go to the blog post@brandcastingyou.com and also leave a comment there.

So thanks again for listening. This has been Tracy and Tom on feed.

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