240 | I Analyzed 5,463 Podcasts And Found 4 Hidden Growth Secrets

I analyzed 5,463 podcasts episodes across 25 of the top podcasts on YouTube, including Diurvis CEO, Huberman Lab, Tim Ferris, Mel Robbins, and more. These channels together have over 30 million subscribers and have gotten combined over 10 billion views. I wanted to see if I could find some patterns that could help us grow and monetize our podcasts and what I found shocked me. The difference between an episode that gets seven views and an episode that gets 19 million views, well, it comes down to four specific patterns in your episode titles. And if you're trying to grow your podcasts on YouTube or even anywhere else, you need to hear this. The worst performing titles in my analysis got as low as seven views. The best over 19 million and the only difference were following these four rules. This is Grow the Show, the podcast that grows your podcast. I'm Kev Michael, and today I'm breaking down the podcast titling rules that you can steal so you can grow and monetize your podcast. All right, let's start with rule one. Now, the most common mistake killing podcast growth on YouTube is cramming too much into your title, episode numbers, show names, multiple topics, hashtags. It's like trying to tell your entire life story in the first handshake. And here's what the data shows. Every winning title makes one specific promise. So rule number one is only make one promise in your title. Take Huberman Lab, for example, a 2.6 hour deep dive conversation covering everything from mindset to physical training to psychology is titled simply how to build immense inner strength. One promise, one transformation, 19.6 million views. Now, look at what most podcasters do, something like this, hashtag 298 colon, releasing control, celebrating your successes and tossing your to do list. That episode got 10 views, 10. And this data is consistent across all 25 channels analyzed from those averaging 500 views per episode to those averaging over 2 million views. Titles without episode numbers performed 62 to 715 percent better across individual channels and channels of all sizes seen nearly double the views when they drop the episode numbers. Your title is prime real estate. Don't waste it on information that nobody cares about. Okay, so rule number one is easy to fix rule number two. You might not like, but you need to know it. And this one after I saw it, I could not unsee it. So in our analysis of over 5,000 titles, negative framing consistently outperformed positive by over 2x. So first of all, negative titles appeared more often words like mistake appeared twice as often as words like tips did in our data set nearly double, but they also perform better. Compare this episode that has positive framing the discipline experts successful people all have this. This one got 1.2 million views. Compare that to this one that has negative framing, Harvard professor revealing the seven big lies about exercise. That one got 12.3 million views. Same channel, same quality content. The negative framing got 10x more views. Here's a few other examples. Body language expert. Stop using this. It's making people dislike you 10.7 million views. Jordan Peterson, stop lying to yourself. 5.1 million views. The childhood lie that's ruining all of our lives. 4.2 million views. In our data set, negative frames titles averaged 445,000 views, while positive frames titles averaged just 185,000 views across all of these channels. That's a 2.4x better performance with negative framing. Here's why this works. Our brains are wired to pay more attention to threats than opportunities. It's survival psychology, and when you frame your episode around what people should stop doing, what mistakes they're making, or what's going wrong, you tap into that primal trigger. You may not like that, and you may want to stay positive, but it's important for you to know this. Now, so that's rule 2. Use negative when you can. Now, this next rule is where podcasters completely miss an opportunity. But first, here's something that you need to hear. Nobody cares about your guest's name unless that guest is Taylor Swift. Look at how two different channels titled episodes with the same guest, Alex Hermosi. Channel A used to title 41 harsh truths nobody wants to admit. Dash, Alex Hermosi. This episode got 974,000 views. Channel B did not use Alex's name in the title. That channel said, the man that makes millionaires how to turn a thousand dollars into a hundred million dollars. That one got almost 4.5 million views. Same guest. The credential focused title got 4.6x more views. This ranged true throughout my analysis. Look at how some of these outlier videos included credentials in the title instead of guest names. So leading neuroscientists got 16.3 million views. Harvard professor 12.3 million former FBI agent 2.9 million ex-Google officer 11.4 million. The divorce expert 8.8 million. The money expert 6.1 million. In diary of a CEO's channel alone, titles starting with credentials average 2.96 million views. While titles starting with names 2.06 million views. That's a 43.5% better performance. In absolute terms, it translates to a million extra views. This works because the credential creates instant authority and curiosity. It tells viewers why they should care about that person's perspective. But if you include the guest's name, you're relying on people already knowing who that person is and wanting to hear what they have to say. And the problem with that is when you see a name you don't know, that name might as well be Joe Schmoe. And it's not even neutral. It's actually a detractor. People would rather hear nothing than to hear a stranger's opinion. And I know you might be thinking, yeah, yeah, but everybody knows my guest. I'm telling you, I have worked directly on over 500 podcasts. Every host thinks that everybody knows who their guests are. But most people don't. And if you're not sure, ask your grandma if she's heard of your guest. And if she hasn't heard of them, you're not allowed to put their name in the title. So rule three is instead of names, use credentials in the episode title. But the final rule might be actually the most powerful of them all. And rule number four is use numbers. Vague titles die. Numbers drive clicks. Look at these actual titles from our analysis. Titles like how to improve your business got on average 200 views. Titles with numbers did better. How to make $10,000 a month as a writer would get 262,000 views. Titles with multiple numbers did even better. From zero dollars to millions in two years did 6.1 million views. The pattern is clear. Adding numbers multiplies your views. 39% of all successful titles contained in our study had specific numbers. That is not a coincidence. And dollar amounts dominated. So things like how to 200,000 dollars into 100 million got 4.4 million views. This $28 habit is keeping you poor got 4.3 million views. The exact formula for turning $100 into 100 K per month got 3.9 million specific time frames with numbers crushed as well. So 24 hours with Mr. Beast got 10.8 million views. Give me 15 minutes and I'll make you dangerously confident got 3.3 million views. How to start a business in 48 hours did 323,000 views which was an outlier for that channel. Channels of all sizes benefit from numbers. Some saw over a thousand x difference between titles without numbers and those with them. And the reason this works is because if you say here's how to make money. My brain has to do work. How much money? How long will it take? Will this work for me? But when you say here's how to make your first $10,000 month in 90 days. I instantly know what you're promising. I don't have to do any math. The numbers make the decision to click automatic numbers create certainty certainty create clicks clicks create views views create subscribers and subscribers create thriving podcast businesses. All right, so these four title patterns were hiding in plain sight across 5,463 podcast episodes that together got almost 10 billion views. And if you want your podcast to grow on YouTube faster, you need to implement these four rules in your titles. But I want to make it easier for you. When I did this analysis, I was also able to identify 50 podcast episode title templates that were consistently used across the 25 top podcasts I analyzed. And I can see which types of titles got tons of views and which ones totally flatlined. Now, because I am your podcast growth coach, I went ahead and I put those titles and some key things to remember inside a handy title swipe file. That way, instead of you having to remember all the rules that you learned today and constantly brainstorm titles from scratch, you can just copy what works. And of course, it's totally free. So if you want to get those 50 podcast title templates that come from 25 or the top podcasts on YouTube and start growing your podcast views as soon as next week, click the link in the description or go to grow the show.com slash titles and access the title templates today. Look, the difference between you growing your podcast and building a business around it and quitting your podcast silently and hoping nobody notices is not your content quality. It's not your guests. It's not your production value. It's your titles. Oh, and your thumbnails too. But we can't cover that today. So if you want to learn more about how to do those right, be sure to subscribe and let me know in the comments. All right. This is Grow the Show. I'm Kev Michael, your podcast growth coach. And I'll see you in the next one. If you're a podcaster trying to grow on YouTube and you're still spending hours editing or you're working with a team that just cleans up the audio and calls it a day, you need to check out podcast boutique. They've been my go to production team for over five years. And now they've built something that's tailor-made for YouTube first podcasters. It's called record and forget and it's exactly what it sounds like. You record your episode, send them the raw files and they take it from there. High quality audio and video editing, titles, thumbnails, descriptions, show notes, uploads, clips, everything. But here's what makes them different. They don't just polish the content. They help you script your content, cut the fluff out, shorten your episodes and increase viewer retention. They help you script your content, trim the fat, shorten your episodes and increase viewer retention, which is the number one factor in YouTube growth right now. And because they're in lockstep with me, anytime I uncover a tactic that helps podcasts grow and monetize, especially on YouTube, they implement it for their other clients too. So if you're still DIYing post production or you're not seeing results from your current team, go to podcastboutique.com and tell them that I send you. Alright, I'll see you next time.