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The Audacity to Podcast® - tips and how to start and grow profit in podcasting
425. When Clever Titles Are Okay for Podcasts and Episodes
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Is it ever okay to have clever titles for your podcast or episodes? Thank you for joining me for the Audacity to Podcast. I'm Daniel J. Lewis. In podcasting, you've probably heard this advice to come up with a title that is so descriptive, so clear, that if you were to share that title with someone who knew nothing about your show, they could accurately guess what your show is about simply from the title alone. And that is good advice, but it's a guideline, not a law. In fact, this goes back to one of my favorite quotations from the movie Pirates of the Caribbean. Or Caribbean, whichever way you want to pronounce it. Your pirates hang the code and hang the rules. They're more like guidelines anyway. And yes, this is more like a guideline. It is not a rule that you absolutely must obey. This. In fact, if you look at pretty much any list of podcasts out there, whether that's a top podcast, some kind of chart, somewhere in a podcast app, some kind of featured or curated list, even if grab your vomit bag. Dave Jackson if you look in new and noteworthy, you will find podcasts of varying degrees of success with what we would call clever titles or cute titles, unique titles, something that does not directly describe what the podcast is about. If you'd like to follow along in the notes for this episode, they are a simple tap or swipe away. Look at the chapters or go to the audacitytopodcast.com clevertitles so when is it okay to have clever titles for your podcast or episodes Number one, when clever podcast titles have clarifying subtitles. This is actually okay to do inside of Apple Podcast and other podcast apps, where you have a title that might be something clever, unique, something that maybe only hardcore fans of that thing that you're talking about would understand that title when they see it, and maybe even know what the show is about from that, even if it's not the kind of title they're searching for. But you still want people to be able to easily find your show by searching for the thing that you're talking about, and it is okay to include that thing as a clarifying subtitle to your title. This is not the opportunity to put in a tagline. I would say a tagline is more the kind of promise of what your podcast gives. Like for the Audacity to podcast, the tagline is giving you the guts and teaching you the tools to start and grow your own podcast for passion and profit. That's the tagline. That is not the subtitle. The subtitle might Be something that describes or expands on or clarifies the actual title. Like a podcast about podcasting. That's the subtitle. And we can use clarifying subtitles as part of the titles of our podcast. When we can't have a descriptive title. Maybe having the absolute descriptive title would risk infringing on someone's trademark, like the Microsoft Podcast. Microsoft's not going to be happy about that. So don't call your podcast the Microsoft Podcast, maybe not even the Microsoft Fan Podcast. But that doesn't mean you can't use the word Microsoft as a clarifying part of your subtitle. An example of this from my own experience in podcasting was my TV show Fan podcast about the TV show Once Upon a Time. Our actual name for the podcast was Once. Yeah, that one word was the name of our podcast, the official name of it. But the title in Podcast Apps appeared as once Unofficial Once Upon a Time Podcast. And that word unofficial was demanded for me to be put in there by a very friendly conversation I had with a Disney lawyer. And I do say friendly in serious tones. I'm not being sarcastic there. The lawyer did say, we do not want you to stop podcasting about our show. We just want to make sure that it's not confused. So people don't think that your podcast is affiliated with us. Because I stuck my foot in my mouth in a way when I had a conversation with someone from the Disney team and. And that resulted in them checking out my artwork and saying, oh, you stole our artwork to use for your podcast. And I didn't. I designed it myself. But I designed it so good and so much like their own artwork that they thought I stole it from them. So that's when they then said, well, we've got a trademark issue here then, not a copyright issue. You have designed your podcast to look too much like the official stuff. So it looks like yours is an official podcast. We just need you to make it obvious that it's not official. So they were okay with my using Once Upon a Time in subtitles on the website, all of this stuff. They just want it to be clear that it was unofficial. I've run into other trademark issues like that with my own podcasts or podcasters that I've worked with, where I've seen things like that, where you risk infringing on someone's trademark. And infringing on someone's trademark, by the way, doesn't just mean using the exact same words in the exact same order. It could be when the words are changed just enough to cause some potential confusion. And so that's why many people will try to come up with those unique or clever podcast titles, because they want something that fits what they're talking about, but they also don't want to risk infringing on a trademark. That's where the clarifying subtitles come in. And this isn't about keyword stuffing. That's what taglines often do, is they have all of those keywords in there in clever ways. So your subtitle is not entrepreneurship, business, passive income, money making, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. No, just a clarifying thing. Something that just makes your title a little bit more clear. When your title is not obvious what your show is about, you can add that subtitle to clarify what it is about. And when I say subtitle, I do mean putting that in the title, like what we did with once Unofficial Once Upon a Time Podcast. So that unofficial Once Upon a Time podcast was the subtitle included in that title field. And Apple is okay with that. Apple is not okay with your keyword stuffing in there. Like if we started putting in theories and character names and all of that stuff. And you see some people try to do this until they hit a particular chart or a ranking or some kind of algorithm, and then they get kicked out of Apple. And that's happened to me, and I let that happen to me because I wanted to experience and I wanted to see when that trigger point was. I did a whole episode about that previously in the past, and you can hear that full story in episode 334. And I've got the link to that in the notes for this episode as well as the chapter right now. So go back and listen to that to learn more about what happened, why it happened, and some advice and lessons from that. But when you have a clever podcast title, that's not necessarily a bad thing, because you can add that clarifying subtitle. So that not only clarifies what the podcast is about, but that does also make the podcast findable for that one term. And that's the thing I think you should think about, is what is that one single most important term that people would not think to search for your podcast title, but they would search for this particular term. If you're doing a podcast about a TV show, a movie, a video game, a book series, a product, anything like that, that proper noun is most likely that term for you, that one single term. And you could probably use that inside a subtitle, not the official title of your podcast, but a clarifying subtitle Please talk to a lawyer if you're concerned about this and you should be concerned. So please talk to a lawyer. For sure. I'm not going to tell you what you can be allowed to do, but I will tell you things that you're not allowed to do. And that is stuff like using that trademark term as your actual title. Like the Once Upon a Time podcast, the Microsoft podcast, the ipod podcast. That kind of stuff will get you in legal trouble. Do avoid that. So that's number one, when clever podcast titles have clarifying subtitles. Number two, when clever episode titles are for entertainment based podcasts, you might see this sometimes where the title of the podcast is very clear what the podcast is about. Or maybe they have a clarifying subtitle. So it does make it obvious what the podcast as a whole is about. But then you start looking at the individual episodes and you see these cute or clever titles that, that sometimes might not even make sense. And I think that is okay, especially when it's an entertainment based podcast because those titles for your audience can often make them laugh just by seeing that title. Or they see that title and they think, oh, that looks like that'll be a really good episode. I want to listen to that. Or that's a funny phrase to use for a title. Or what in the world? How did that come about as the episode title? I want to listen to it because it's a weird title. So see, these weird or clever titles can be a way to, in a sense, strengthen that commitment from your existing audience to tie them deeper into the episode. And once they listen to the episode, there's that moment. And I love this little line from the series on YouTube where this guy, Ryan George does this series, where it's the pitch meetings for different movies. But there's a line that he sometimes says where it's, that's the name of the movie. And similarly for your audience, they might be listening to your episode and they hear that spot and then they're like, oh, that's the name of the episode. That can be fun for your audience. Yeah, it doesn't appeal to people who aren't your audience. No one's going to be searching for that clever thing inside a podcast app and certainly wouldn't expect to find your episode. The more clever your title is, the less likely it will be found because people just won't be searching for that. But I don't think we should always be so focused on the search engine optimization of our titles. Sometimes I think we should just focus on the audience that we have and go ahead and let it be a clever episode title. When you're an entertainment based podcast, you're trying to entertain people in some way because then the title is part of that package. The title is entertaining. Imagine if you had a comedy podcast and the title was simply a vanilla description of what was talked about in the episode in some way. Like the episode where we talk about childhood stories. That's not very fun sounding. In fact, that's not all that compelling if it's a comedy podcast. I see that and I think, okay, that's what that episode is about. It doesn't really spark intrigue and curiosity in me. But if it was a clever title, and I can't think of one at the moment, but many of these clever titles come about during the conversation in the podcast. That whole that's the name of the episode thing. Then when you use that, that can be compelling to your existing audience and engaging them and giving them a little chuckle even before you they press play. And that's one of those times that I think clever episode titles are good. Not so much for informational or educational podcasts, like for the Audacity to podcast. I try as much as possible to have very clear, descriptive titles of my episodes because being an informational and educational podcast, I rely a lot on search engine optimization. And I try to title my episodes in ways that are things that people are actually searching for or questions that people have actually asked or would be curious about the answers to those questions, or curious about the information that's presented because they get an idea of what the episode is about from the title. I avoid those clever titles in this show. In other shows I've gone with the clever titles. And that can be fine for especially entertainment based podcasts. Number three, when it's okay to have clever titles for your podcast or episodes, when uniqueness is more important than podcast SEO. This goes back to the idea of, let's say you're doing a podcast about a TV show. We'll use for this example Stranger Things, since that's a more recent show. I'm sure there are lots of podcasts out there called Stranger Things Podcast. And then if, and I don't recommend that you tell people to search for your podcast inside Apple Podcasts, but let's just say you did that or someone did, because often people will do that, they search for Stranger Things Podcast and then you have to start to say, oh no, it's not that one. No, it's not that one either. It's not that one. It's this one or it's the one with the blue cover art. Well, what happens when another Stranger Things podcast comes along with blue cover art? Then you have to be more explicit about which one it is. And that's where, yes, there is the podcast SEO aspect of that, including Stranger Things in the title, but you could put that in the subtitle of it and use that in the title field, but it's treated like a subtitle. So here is where you might want uniqueness instead. Like maybe you call it Hawkins Radio or the Rift or the Upside Down Podcast, something like that. See, those are terms that people who watch the show would see that and understand. Oh yeah, that's a podcast about Stranger Things. I understand what that's about. They're not going to search for that when they're thinking, I want a Stranger Things podcast. And that's why you can put that Stranger Things in your subtitle. But the title itself, the official title, doesn't have to be totally focused on SEO. It can be unique. And there are many times when it should be unique because there are so many other podcasts out there using the same terms. If you have a podcast about Stranger Things and you tell people listen to the Upside Down Cast, well, that's a lot more searchable. And it's far more likely that if someone were to search for that in their podcast app, which many people will just search their podcast app for your podcast when you tell them about it instead of visiting the website. Although QR codes and nfc, little things where you tap your phone to this device and it opens up a page, that can be really good too. So people then don't have to search they or even type in a URL. But that aside, when you have that unique name and they search for that instead of just Stranger Things, then they are far more likely to arrive on your podcast. And when you have that unique name, something that's distinctive, you could also trademark that, like I've done for the Audacity to podcast and podgagement. And my latest trademark that I'm happy was finally registered fully with the US Patent and Trademark Office is Pod Chapters. Check it out over@podchapters.com for you to add transcripts and chapters to your podcast that will engage with your audience and even help your audience take action on the things that matter most to you, whether that's advertisers, sponsors, affiliate opportunities, even just sending feedback to you or seeing pictures for your audio podcast. There are a lot of ways that Chapters enhance the engagement of your individual episodes for. For your audience. So go over to podchapters. Com. And that little ad aside, podchapters is my latest trademark, and it is a unique thing, and I love it that way. And it is distinctive. That's how it could be trademarked like that. If it was just simply podcast chapters, I don't think that could be trademarked because it's too generic. And if you have a very generic name for your podcast, yes, that might be better for podcast SEO, but then you might not be able to trademark it. And then also you're very likely competing with other people who use the same kind of generic term. Unless you're in a really small niche where it's unlikely other people are launching podcasts. But you sometimes want to focus on the uniqueness more than podcast SEO. But the big way to help with your podcast SEO when you want that unique or clever title for the podcast is, is by simply using a subtitle. And in such cases, I would recommend still putting that unique title first. Okay, a little side tangent rant here. Opposite of the way that many people do it at conferences where they give it some kind of unique title for the conference session. And then under that is the subtitle which actually describes what the session is about. Why do people do that? Why can't we just flip it around so that the session title is descriptive? And. And then you can put the cute stuff in the subtitle. But on the podcast side, I think you can put the cute and clever stuff first because you're putting the descriptive stuff in there more for the SEO aspect of it. And I think that can be okay when uniqueness is more important than podcast SEO. And number four, when clever titled podcasts have amazing marketing behind them, there are plenty of highly successful podcasts out there that do not have descriptive titles. And in fact, at the time of recording this, I'm going to read to you some of the top podcasts in Apple podcasts as of March 22, 2026. Number one, the Daily. What's that about? I mean, you might guess maybe daily news. Okay, then you might be right. Number two, the Joe Rogan Experience. If you don't know who Joe Rogan is or you haven't heard any of the news over the last several years, then you would have no idea what that podcast is about. Pod Save America. Mm, I. Something about maybe America, maybe American politics, maybe Crime Junkie. That one's kind of obvious. Dateline NBC, the Secret World of Ronald Dahl. I have no idea who that is. So therefore I have no idea what that podcast is about. Number seven, Love Trapped. I guess that's a dating podcast. Number eight, Mick Unplugged. What? Mick McJagger. Mickey Mouse, Mickey Rooney. Mick at Night. I have no idea what Mick Unplugged is or who Mick even is. Number nine, trace of suspicion. Number 10. Up first 11. 20, 20. Is that a vision? Podcast number 12, morbid. Number 13. Good Hang with Amy Poehler. 14. 48 Hours. 15. Bridge of Lies. 16. The Tucker Carlson Show. Someone's name. If you don't know who that is, you might not have any idea what the show is about. Even if you do know who that is, you might not know what the show is about these days. 17. Mel Robbins Podcast. 18. Real AF, 19. Stuff youf Should Know, and 20. The Sean Ryan Show. Now, a lot of those podcasts, you would have no idea what they're about just from the title alone. Especially if you didn't know who those people were and what they regularly talk about. In fact, even like Joe Rogan with the Joe Rogan Experience, his show does not have a clearly defined topic. It has an approach. It has a style. That is the niche. Joe Rogan is the niche. But you could never say it's a podcast about this specific topic or for this specific audience because it's not. It's not clearly defined like that. But a lot of these shows, and the reason that they are so high in the charts, at least right now, is because of marketing. Think of the podcast cereal. If you were to go out there and say, hey, I'm thinking of starting a podcast called Cereal, what do you think that podcast is about? I would guess if you did this years ago, before the podcast actually came out, I would guess most people would say, I don't know, maybe it's like Corn Flakes, Honeymoon, Cheerios, Apple Jacks, Chex. That kind of cereal. No, it wasn't. It was spelled completely differently. But that bad title was made up for by good marketing. You could make the case that maybe the show would have had even more success than it already did if they had a better title. Like maybe calling it Serial Crime Investigations or something like that. I don't know. But yeah, it's possible it could have had more success. We just can't know because we don't have a parallel universe where we can do split testing and see which title would actually have brought about more success. And we can't really know if the title is holding them back again, because we don't have a parallel universe. And I talked about this more in episode 373. Go back and listen to that if you haven't. Where I addressed that myth of it's not hurting their podcast and the thinking around that and how that's really invalid thinking. But that aside, the reason these podcasts are successful are I think in big part because of what they've done outside of the podcast itself. The amazing marketing behind it. And you can have this with all kinds of products. I remember when Apple changed the name of their laptop computers from PowerBook to MacBook. And that was so hard for many people to say back then and they were like, this is ridiculous. Apple changed it because they wanted the word Mac inside of it. It was the only Mac computer that did not have the word Mac in it. Like they had Mac Pro, they had the imac, the Mac, but then there was PowerBook, so they changed it to MacBook and now it just rolls off our ton. Or think about iPad. When that first came out, people made fun of the names. And if you're not sure why they made fun of the names because you think it's just a common vernacular these days to say iPad, well, think feminine products. And that's why people made fun of the name back then. But now we just say iPad because there was so much marketing behind it so that now people don't think about it so much. So when can you have a clever title podcast and not have to worry about stuff like the SEO and what people might think the show is about from just the title alone? Well, you can make up for that with great marketing. So these are the four cases when I think it's okay to have clever titles for your podcast or episodes. Number one, when clever podcast titles have clarifying subtitles. Number two, when clever episode titles are for entertainment based podcasts. Number three, when uniqueness is more important than podcast SEO. And number four, when clever titled podcasts have amazing marketing. So if you're in the case where you have a podcast idea or even a podcast that's already running and it's using one of these clever kinds of titles, you might not have to rename it, maybe simply add a subtitle, or if you've got lots of money, just throw some marketing at it and that might work for you too. If you'd like to share this episode or comment on it, please go to the audacitytopodcast.com clevertitles or use the sharing feature inside of your podcast app. And I would be very grateful for that. I'd also be very grateful if you would figure out what this podcast is worth to you, and consider putting a number on that and sending that back as some kind of value you whether that's in satoshis or you want to send actual dollars, you can do that through the audacitytopodcast.com giveback and consider giving back whatever value it is to you. The audacitytopodcast.com giveback. And now that I've given you some of the guts to maybe keep your clever title and taught you some of the tools, it's time for you to go start and grow your own podcast for passion and profit. I'm Daniel J. Lewis from the audacitytopodcast.com and creator of podchapters.com thanks for listening.