Ep 157: Be Intentional(ish) When Choosing Your Podcast Title & Topic
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The power of a podcast extends well beyond plugging in the mic. So if you're ready to learn how it can help you build a big business, then I'm your best friend. Hi, I'm Joanne Bull and I am obsessed with all things podcasting and creating an unapologetically big revenue business with it. From podcast guesting to podcast hosting and everything in between, we're going to dive into it all and show you step by step.

by Awesome Step, how using a podcast can and will grow your business. So grab a glass of wine and pop your headphones on because girlfriend happy hour has begun here on The B Word. I absolutely love new podcasters. In fact, one of the most exciting moments that I generally hear them say is, oh my God, Joanne, I'm going to start a podcast. I already have the title picked out.

Don't worry, tons of people skip straight to naming their podcast with no clue what it really means in the world of podcasting. I may or may not have been one of those people. I came up with the title, The B Word, because my last name was Bolt.

really just didn't have a good, solid, gelled out concept of how it applied to the actual podcast. I don't want you to make that mistake, although I do love the title of my podcast. And so we're going to dive all into the titles and topics right now. You ready? Okay. One of the first questions I would ask you, if we were sitting down with a

Big glass of wine would be, what is the name of your podcast? And what do you talk about? What do you teach people on your podcast? If you don't have that answer in mind, then you don't have your title ready to go because your title should immediately pull me in. Give me the hook and tell me maybe a little hint of what I'm going to hear when I listen in.

So before we continue, I want to give you a little pep talk and some reassurance.

Do not overcomplicate this step. I don't want you to sit in obsession over what the perfect title is going to be. Most podcasters actually change their title and or their topic at some point in their podcasting journey. So let that be a lesson that you can as well. The details are important, but don't get caught up in them. Okay. Okay.

Before we get too far into the title conversation, I do want to get a little bit into the legality here. I am not an attorney. You cannot use this as legal advice. But if I were an attorney or I was giving legal advice, here's what I would say.

do check trademarks. Okay, this is just from your friend sitting down and telling you not legalese, do check the trademarks. You can go online to the United Trademark website and you can quickly look up what your proposed title is. Or quite frankly, you can probably pick up any podcast player of your choice, scroll through and see if you can find your title already in play.

If it is, if it's either being used or if it's trademarked, I might shy away from that title because here's the thing that I've discovered along the way. Most podcasters, when their podcast becomes a big piece of their business, they will trademark it. We've trademarked the B word. So you can't go use it now because we've got a patent on that.

I went through the process with an actual trademark attorney that I do recommend. Legalpreneur is in the notes below. You can just click on it and get to them. And if you are a member of the podcast, her network, you actually get a discount through our network with legalpreneur. But this is one of the few times in your business that I would say, go ahead and invest the money. If your title's not already being used and it is not trademarked, do a thorough trademark

And then start the process. Trademarking isn't quick. In fact, it took us over a year to get the B word trademarked. But what you don't want to do

is get a year, a year and a half into podcasting, have never checked to see if anyone else was using your title or if they trademarked it and get hit with a lawsuit or being told to take it down and re-register and start over. Your listeners will come with you on the journey if you change the name, but if you love your name and you've really branded that podcast and you've done all that marketing,

only to find out you weren't really allowed to in the first place because it actually belonged to someone else, then you kind of wasted time and it can deflate your whole energy. So before you get into it, while it is okay to change the name of your podcast, if you end up just not liking it, if you love what you want to name your podcast, go search the trademarks, go get a trademark attorney, go through the legal process and make this a business, not a hobby.

All right, let's land the plane on this title conversation. Here's my other recommendation. No more than three to five words. Think about the cover art that we're going to create in the next lesson. It's like the billboard for your podcast. And if it is the billboard for your podcast, you want your title to be three to five words that can be large on the billboard. Because if someone was zooming down the interstate at 100 miles per hour, you want them to be able to quickly see and determine, do they slow down and take a look or

or do they just keep going? And if your podcast name is too long to fit on the cover art, they're probably going to just skip by it. It's a visual thing as well as being able to remember. And if the name is too long, they won't be able to remember it either. So keep it short, keep it sweet and stay away from the cutesy stuff.

If your podcast title is acronyms or something that someone outside of your industry wouldn't understand, super cute, rhymy, that kind of thing. And it forces you to actually explain to your ideal listener what that podcast is about. It's probably the wrong title, my friend. In fact, rule of thumb, if you have to explain it, it is the wrong title, period. Just move on and pick something else. Now, personal brand.

or your brand? That's the other question I get a lot when we talk about titles for podcasts. Can I name it after me or does it need to be the company? Podcasting is the wild, wild west of marketing medians. Let's just be honest here. There's really no good rule of thumb for how you want to do that. It's really your personal preference for how you're going to use your podcast. Here's some things I want you to consider though.

If you already have a big brand name, say you're an influencer or you're a book author or you've got a TV show. If you're a big name person and you are putting a podcast alongside your brand to walk hand in hand with your brand, go ahead and name it after yourself. Take a look at the podcast, The Jasmine Star Show.

Jasmine Starr is a big influencer. She is her own brand. And so she named her podcast after herself. If you are using your podcast as a big piece of the marketing part of your business, you may want to consider the podcast after the business.

The Boss Babe podcast with Natalie Ellis is a great example of this. Natalie Ellis is quite the influencer herself, but everything she pushes is her company, Boss Babe. So her podcast is naturally called Boss Babe. Now, remember when I told you it's the Wild Wild West and there's really no like set rule of how to do this. Here's my biggest example.

Jenna Kutcher, who has a big personal brand of her own. You can go online. You can take a bunch of courses from her. You probably have listened to her podcast, The Gold Digger.

The goal digger has neither her name or her brand or her company in it. What it does is convey to you that she teaches you about big goals, digging in, doing the work and achieving those goals. So really, however you want to title it, it's okay. You do you and it's totally fine.

All right, let's move on to the topic of your show. This may seem obvious to you, but when you consider the topic, I want you to pull back out that ideal avatar worksheet that we always reference and put it front and center on your workspace. And here's why. Now is the time to find that sweet spot between your micro niche and your overall broad appealing, your umbrella that you want your audience to know about.

This is what your listener wants to understand when they find your podcast. This is what you talk about so that they go, oh my gosh, this answers my question. This solves my problem. This is what I've been looking for.

Think of the broad appeal as the umbrella that everything else goes under. And I'll give you an example. My podcast, The B Word, we are under the umbrella of marketing. Now, I could do a million things with marketing. I could do digital marketing, podcast marketing, print marketing, all like TV marketing. There is a million, million different ways of marketing. Instead, I have micro-niched down into using your podcast as the main marketing tool for your business.

That actually gives me the spokes of the umbrella, which are all my content pillars that I talk routinely about podcast building, brand building, list building, all the things that go into using your podcast as your main marketing tool. We go into content pillars in a later lesson. So don't let that fry your brain right now. Just remember that your overall topic is your umbrella.

With your niche and the little things you talk about, the content pillars are your spokes of your umbrella. The biggest takeaway I want you to get is this. Smaller is actually better.

The old adage, when you speak to everyone, you speak to no one, really is true in podcasting. Do not try to create the world that everyone needs to listen to. Don't be afraid to micro-niche. Go ahead and get those micro-niche content pillars, the spokes of your umbrella, defined and ready to go. When you become the expert on what you're talking about, trust me, everyone else will find you anyway.

So don't worry about speaking to everyone. Speak to the one. You just finished another episode of the B-Word Podcast. Cheers to you. If I were with you, I would literally pop a big old bottle of Prosecco and pour you a glass. Since I'm not, why don't you do the next best thing and share this episode with one of your besties? Because we all know you've got that one girlfriend that needs to hear it. Thanks, friend.

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