71: Should You Change Your Podcast's Name?

All right, this one might be a little tough because today I'm going to share with you something that you might not want to hear and that is this. You might want to consider changing the name of your podcast. If you don't know who I am, my name is Kevin Schmidland, I am the host and founder behind Grow the Show, a seven-figure company whose mission is to make growing and monetizing a podcast hilariously easy. Today, I want to talk to you about why your podcast name might be the reason why your show isn't growing. This episode of Grow the Show is sponsored by Riverside.fm, the leading platform to record studio quality podcasts. More than 70,000 other podcasters use Riverside, including myself, GuyRaz, GaryVee, Spotify, and even the New York Times. It is not only great because it has unbelievably high recording quality regardless of your guests' internet quality, but it also gives you separate audio and video tracks for each person speaking. It's high tech, but easy to use. Unlike Zoom, you don't have to have anything installed on your computer and your guests don't either. And did I mention that the audio quality is way better? If you're recording your interviews remotely, get off of Zoom now and hop into Riverside for your next interview. Your listeners will thank you. Head over to Riverside.fm and use code Grow that's GROW to get 60 free minutes of recording and 15% off a membership plan. The link is in the show notes. Over the past four years of growing and monetizing podcasts, I've been lucky enough to have conversations with literally thousands of podcasters. And those conversations almost always start with me saying, what is your show? And people answered that question with the title. And I'm able to judge that based on how much that person has to explain to me what the show is after they say the title. Now when we are creating our podcast for the first time and we are naming it, most of us are extremely inexperienced in the art of naming a podcast. And so what a lot of us do is we try to be super creative behind the name of the show and like get really cute with the phrasing or make up words or turn the phrase a little bit, have double and triple entendres, or we name the show after ourselves because we want the show to grow our own personal brand. There's nothing wrong with that, but what I have discovered is that the shows that grow the fastest are the ones whose names are the most self-explanatory. Now, I'm not saying that if your show is named after you, like the your name show that I can't grow or that if your show does have some sort of, you know, cute or complex name or turn a phrase or a made up name or the name of your company, I'm not saying that your show can't grow if that's the case, what I am saying though is that if your show's name is extremely self-explanatory where you don't even need a podcast description because it's just contained in the name, you're going to have a much easier time growing the show. Take my show, grow the show. You know what it is. It helps you grow the show. You could argue I could make it grow your podcast, but that doesn't rhyme. And this one does the trick. I've also had the privilege of chatting with podcasters who have gotten 10,000, 100,000, sometimes 500,000 downloads and above who really haven't put much thought into podcast growth at all, which is frustrating me because so many of us have put tons of thought into podcast growth and don't have it. But there are tons of folks I know who are like, oh, it was kind of easy for me. I don't know. My show is just growing. And it's really frustrating because I'm like, oh, you don't even know how lucky that is. But it's actually not lucky. The reason why their show is growing so well is because their show's name is self-explanatory. The name is just something basic. It's something that people might search for in the podcast apps and come across. And it's something that when your listeners are talking about the show to other people, your listeners don't have to struggle to explain to their friends what the show is. They just say the name and maybe a 10-word description and that's it. And the other person is like, oh, cool. That sounds awesome. But again, if your show is named after you and your listener wants to spread the word about your show, then they're going to say, oh, you should listen to the Joe Schmoen podcast. Really? Who's Joe Schmoe? Oh, it's this person who does this thing and the show has all these interviews. And now you're relying on your listener to be able to sell and pitch your podcast. When in my experience, it's hard enough for the podcaster to succinctly pitch their podcast. If you're relying on your listeners to do it, it's probably not going to work. They're probably not going to do a great job of selling you and your show. But again, if your podcast title is self-explanatory, it's easy. It's not cute. It doesn't require too much thought. Then it's just going to put so much less friction on the spreading of your word. And so if you are someone whose podcast is a crazy name and you have to explain what it means or explain what it is or explain who you are, then my message to you today is a painful one. But my message to you is consider changing the name of your show to something that is more basic, more self-explanatory, less flashy and watch your current podcast growth strategies start to work better without you having to change anything other than the name of your show. Again, you don't have to do it. I know a lot of people, the identity of their podcast is behind the name. And yes, if you look at the top 100 charts, there are tons of shows whose names are self-explanatory. So I'm not saying that this is the only way to grow your podcast. I am just saying that it's something worth considering. So that is it for this piece. I hope this week's episode brings you the most downloads you ever gotten in an episode of your show. And if you want to wrap about this, if you want to chat about whether you should or you shouldn't change your podcast name, join us in the free Grow the Show Facebook group. We've got more than 3,000 podcasters in there and we'll be able to weigh in and let you know if your name is self-explanatory enough or if you can get away with leaving it as is. I hope to see you there.