The Secrets Of Successful Podcast Branding Revealed

Get off the marketing roller coaster and get on the automated fast track to digitally market your brand everywhere. Now join podcast producer Tom Hazard and Inc. Columnist Tracy Hazard as they share easy content building formulas and smart cut secrets proven to fuel hundreds of blogs, podcasts and brands with bingeable original content. Join the conversation on how to get your message out to the world. Be original, be heard, Promote with power and purpose. Feed your brand.

Hey everyone, this is Tom and Tracy. Welcome back to the feed you'd brand podcast. And today we want to talk about a really important subject, especially to consider when you're at sort of the early stages of considering how you're going to get your message out to the world.

Yeah, it's a branding conversation. We want to have high level branding conversations with you. And so there's an argument by which brand you make everything your company brand. Like people do this all the time. And there is a case for that. If your brand is you.

Sure.

Okay. If you are the brand, if you're Les Brown or you're Tony Robbins or you're Michael Jordan. Michael Jordan, right. The brand's you at the end of the day, right? It's always about you. That's very different than if you have a company and you have a personality brand somewhere. So it might be a book or, or your podcast or a video cast or whatever that is. That show that it is. Right. Whatever that show is, has its own personality and its own brand. So here we are, we're brand casting you as a company. Yet feed your brand is our podcast name.

Right.

And there's a really good reason for that, number one, because it gives us ability to be absolutely non sales. That's not what we're about here. We're about content. We're about delivering you useful information. We're about giving you something. If it were associated with our company brand 100%, you'd be thinking, oh, they're gonna sell me something. Oh, they're gonna sell me something. I'm waiting for them to sell me something. Right. And we don't want that perception here because that's not what we're about here, right? So we want to separate that. That's number one. This is our way to give back to you and content deliver. So if that's what your book is about, if that's what your podcast or your video cast or any of those things that you're doing, that show is about, that. The other thing is that we want to have broadness ability to our show. So I want to be able to talk about more than what my company might offer. So you want to have an ability to have a broader topic because you can reach more people through that broader topic than you can if you keep it narrow to only what you sell or only what your business is about.

Yeah. And you know, this is probably one of the first questions that I get asked. I don't know if it's been your experience, Tracy, when you're speaking from the stage about brandcasting you. And last week or two weeks ago, my last talk, I definitely this question came up where people were like, well, can my podcast name just be my company name? It's like the number one question we get asked, so we thought it was important to talk about.

Right. Or I want it to be consistent in my branding, because that's what my branding expert tells me. We get that all the time. And I'm going to say in this particular case, we have seen it be not in your best interest. And it does not do as well if your podcast name matches your company name or if there is a clear distinction between the company brand and your podcast brand and or videocast brand or whatever that might be. But when we see that they are less effective, I agree. They draw less audience.

Let's talk about one of the reasons why. Yep. One of the things that I'm sure all of you are intending to do is push your messages out on social media. So if you create a Facebook like page, that's your company name that's going to appear very corporate. And I think less people are likely to like it or click on it or check it out. Unless they already know, hey, I really want to get that content. But when people are coming across it in other areas, across social media, if you have a cool show name about a provocative topic like feed your brand, feed your brand doesn't sound like a company name. It sounds like, oh, feed my. I need to feed my brand. I want to find out what that's about rather than, you know, brand casting you, which may not be the worst company name that you could have as a podcast name, but it's definitely. It's different. Or if you're like Coca Cola out there and you're going to put out a podcast, you wouldn't want to or a video cast, you wouldn't want to say the Coca Cola podcast, you probably would have some other name, but buy Coca Cola maybe as a sub like brand.

There are very few exceptions to that. And you have to be extremely famous in order or extremely have high brand recognition for it to be valuable.

So maybe Coca Cola is not the best example of that.

The Freakonomics podcast, one of my favorite podcasts to list to. I absolutely love it. But Freakonomics was best selling book, best selling radio show before that. So I mean best listened radio show like, I mean they are, that's what it's about. You're tapping into that. But they never once in the whole process were a corporation selling you something, right? They're selling books, they're selling information, they're sharing information. So you knew what you were getting and you were already into it. But their name recognition was so high that you can't lose it. So I think people overestimate. Most businesses overestimate. They think that they're more popular than they are. They think that they're a bigger brand than they actually are. And that's not the case. You may be that in a very small niche, but you're not that on itunes or on YouTube.

And you probably will have a much, much greater success getting a larger audience for your video cast or your podcast and your content in general, pushing it on social media. If you had a different name and some people, they just get so with their blinders on about their company brand that they think, well, that's it. Right. And they can't see outside of it and pass it. And how having a adjacent brand or an ingredient brand that has a different focus can actually enhance and grow a bigger audience for their company.

I want to clarify that. It's not a different focus, it's a broader focus. Okay, okay. It's a little, it's a broadening focus because the use of podcasts and video casts, you want to cast a wide net on people who might be interested in you and give them a chance to taste you. Right. And so you want to cast that as broad as possible so that you can maybe reach more people. Right. So this is the real thing. This is a search engine at the end of the day. True YouTube, iTunes, Google, even the Amazon Alexa, which is what comes through when you post your podcast up on tune in. Right. They are all ways of searching, but people don't search for your exact name unless you're so well known that you're a name brand.

Right.

They're not looking for you that way. They're looking for their problem Alexa. Please list podcasts about social media marketing. Right. That's the way you ask for them.

Right.

That's what you're going to type in if you're typing it into itunes. Social media marketing, you're not looking for the Exact name of a podcast, unless you met me or you met the person whose podcast it is and then you type their name in and it's going to show up because it's my name. Right. I'm the host of it.

Right.

So it's going to show up anyway through one of those things. So it's a very, very top level SEO and you have to think about that. So it's search engine optimization. Whether your search engine is itunes or your search engine is Google.

Right. And let's talk about just SEO. I don't want to take a huge deep dive into SEO today, but just so you understand, there's the old school SEO, which is like optimizing your website, like in total, so that it shows up higher on searches just for whatever your website's about or the name of your website. And that's not really what we're talking about. We're just talking about keyword phrases in general that are going to lead to or be associated with your podcast name or the things that you talk about on your podcast frequently associated with you.

Right, right. Ways for people to find you. And you want to be optimized in every area of your platform, which is what we're going to talk about in our next episode, but in every area of your platform, and that means your web, your social, and however you deliver your content, whether it's video or a pod or live streaming or however you're delivering webinars, it doesn't really matter how you're delivering that content, but however you do that, that all needs to be optimized to come through that in order to track the right audience, because that's a better match. And so we want to match those things up because if they're searching for those things, they want to be finding you.

Right. And you got to think about how people are searching for what they want to know about. They're just going to whatever search tool that they most commonly use or they're thinking is going to give them the best result and they're entering in the terms that matter to them.

So one of the key things though is that when you're doing that, you want to make the name not self serving of your show. Right. So that's really where when you match it to your company brand, it sounds self serving. Right. It sounds like it's complete a promo for you and you want to be attracting to your brand. Absolutely. And it doesn't mean that you're not promoting your brand within that or in the sponsorship or in the outro. As we sometimes call it on our show. But so you do that. You're associating the two things together, but the name itself and the show identity, it's attracting.

Yeah, it is. And it needs to be. I think it needs to be enticing. It needs to build anticipation and make people who just find the podcast. Because some people are going to find your podcast by searching on itunes or Stitcher or Google Channels or Google, and they're going to find this podcast show. And if it's obviously corporate or the name of a company that doesn't build a lot of anticipation necessarily, they're highly.

Likely to skip it over.

Right.

And not even try it. And that's a huge mistake for your brand.

Yeah. You want to have a name that really provokes some curiosity or as I said, anticipation and makes people want to know more.

Right. So Popular Mechanics, Popular Mechanics Podcast. Their podcast name isn't Popular Mechanics. They're a big brand.

They're a really good.

They're a highly recognized brand, and yet they chose not to make their podcast. Popular Mechanics Podcast. What is it, Tom?

It's kind of fun, it's funny, but it's also a little bit, I don't know, it's tongue in cheek, arrogant. It's the most useful podcast ever. But if you think about Popular Mechanics, where they're teaching you how to do things, it's a sort of a DIY magazine, really. Do it yourself. That it actually the most useful podcast ever. It kind of makes sense with who they are.

Right. And it expresses a personality. Right. Which is different from the magazine itself. So having that be that, that's a great way to attract in an audience who might not have read the magazine enough. Right. Popular Mechanics is a little. Also kind of. Because Mechanics, it's a little old world. Like, it's a little like maybe not your generation, if you're a millennial. Right. But the most useful podcast ever, that's pretty fun. And I might give it a try and then by giving it a try, be a new fan of Popular Mechanics magazine. So from that perspective, this is where we're talking about a wider net on your brand. And it's perfect for that.

And I think it was a brilliant marketing move for them to create a podcast when they were an old medium of a magazine. Print magazines have been diminishing in circulation and in availability really, with, of course, all kinds of online media now. So to now have a way to reach out to millennials, new generations with their information, with their message was quite smart.

Exactly. So that's how we want you to think about it is that it's a show in and of itself. It's an attraction. It's its own thing. And so for those of you who are authors out there, right. You would never title in a very, very rare case of doing an autobiography. Okay? But even in that case, very few people entitle their pyrography with their own brand name. Right? You don't do that. You give your book title, an enticing title in and of itself to attract someone on the shelf or on your Amazon listing on your Kindle. Right?

Right.

However you're searching for books. Right. So that's really what you should be thinking about, your video cast and your podcast, too. So they should have that kind of enticement where it's about the topic that you're teaching, or it's about the area that you're an expert in, or it's around the problems that you're solving. And when you think about those things, then you come up with a brilliantly funny name. And we'll have a whole separate episode on naming things because that's like a whole. Like that's a whole can of worms.

Yeah, we don't want to go down that rabbit hole today.

Short and sweet. That's all I'm going to say right now. Short and sweet, not long titles. There's plenty of room to put long titles in your descriptions and other areas. But the podcast name itself. Oh, Tom, skewing that now, you.

You're foreshadowing something else that I think is painful. When we get to descriptions, that's another whole episode. Because while you can do anything you want, I think there are some best practices to consider there and not make it a resume that I think all speakers, authors, thought leaders want it to be a resume.

Right, Right. Yeah, we'll definitely have to have an episode about that. And so for a lot of you who are our clients out there brandcasting, new clients and everything, I mean, these are things that we try to advise you on, but sometimes you don't listen the first time around and when things happen.

But at the end of the day, it's your show and you can do what you want.

Right? And so this sort of company brand versus podcast or videocast brand is a problem that we encounter that a lot of times people don't want to listen. But I can tell you from our experience and with all of the ones that we've helped produce over the years that it has been, it is more likely that if you have a Unique show name, you will do better than those who don't. You'll have better organic traffic, you'll have faster growth, you'll get more traction. And so invariably, those that didn't listen from the get go change their mind. And that's why we're putting this out there, so that you are listening to that. Because if you're feeling still at the end, you're not getting the conversion, the traffic, the organic growth you thought you should have. This might be one of the many factors, and that's our goal with our show here on Future Brand, is to help you through those things that you didn't understand. You had too many decisions to make in the very beginning when you were setting this all up and getting going. And now there's some things that maybe you want to rework.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more, Tracy. I think that what people end up finding sometimes the hard way is that when they do have a platform name, a podcast name, a video cast name, that is different, that is more, you know, it can be fun and catchy, you know, but it's more topical in sort of your genre, more about in general who you're about and what you're talking about, but not your primary brand name, that it ends up actually enhancing and marketing your brand better than if you just used your company name. Like you said, you build an audience quicker, you build a following faster, and it's still, it could be an ingredient of the name, you know, by so and so a company, right, or with you, the author as the host or whatever, you know, you can be in there as an ingredient, but it's not the main part of it. And you will actually benefit from it better than if you just had that consistency. To me, consistency is orderly, it's simpler, but it's really not always the best way to go.

That's right. A little bit of personality goes a long, long way in this genre of being a video or a podcast host. And so we really want to make sure that you get that across and add that personality edge to your brand, add that topical genre edge to your brand so that people find you and try you, right? They don't discount you. And so that's our goal here. So you can find blog posts from this podcast as well as links and images from the things that we've talked about today@brandcastingyou.com or@feedyourbrand.co and you can also find us on social media. Edyourbrand.

Well, thanks for listening, everybody. We'll be back with another episode next week. This has been Tom and Tracy on feed.

You'd brand.

Sam.