How to Write an Attention-Grabbing Podcast Episode Title

This is Grow the Show, and in this quick hit episode, I'm going to answer a question that I was just asked in the Grow the Show Facebook group. The question comes from Randall G, Shoutout Randall, and Randall asked, what is the best method to get eye catching clickable podcast titles? And this is a great question, because a lot of people don't realize that your podcast title is one of the biggest factors on how many downloads you get. Why is that? Because your podcast episode title is what convinces listeners to press play on an episode. And when they press play, you get a download. And so oftentimes listeners will have an incredibly amazing episode of their podcast, and it gets low download numbers because their title is not effective. 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. Riverside is not only great because it has unbelievably high recording quality regardless of your or your guest's 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. And so I'm going to answer Randall's question here and share with you really quickly a framework that I have borrowed from the copywriting industry, which has made our podcast titles here at Grow the Show way more effective at getting listeners to be compelled to listen to the episode. And so that framework is called the for use. And again, this is borrowed from copywriting. I believe this framework was originally created by Michael Masterson. And essentially what it means is when you write a title for your podcast episode, regardless of whether your show is entertainment based or outcome based. So whether you're an online coach or somebody whose show aims to help people do something or if your show is for entertainment purposes only in both cases, you want your podcast title to check the four boxes of the for use. And those four boxes are that your podcast title makes your episode seem unique, ultra-specific, urgent and useful. And yes, even if your show is for entertainment purposes, it still needs to be useful. And so let's step through each of those unique. Number one, you want to make your podcast episodes seem unique. It seems that your podcast episode is something that the listener has already seen or heard. They're not going to be interested in it. So you need to make it clear to them why this episode is going to be unique. Number two, ultra-specific. And this is the one that is slept on the most by podcasters. A lot of podcasters will try to paint their episodes as all-encompassing, right? So we're going to talk about a wide variety of topics, literally all these different things from life to business to sports to music. And here's the thing, nobody wants that. And so just like you need to be specific with your target audience and just like you need to be specific with the premise of your show, you also have to be specific with your podcast titles as in what specifically is the focus of this episode. What are we going to talk about? So number one is unique. Number two is make the episode seem ultra-specific. Number three, make it seem urgent. So you want to have some sense of urgency and timeliness to the podcast episode, whether that is urgent to the moment, right, where it's talking about like current events or something, you know, some hot topic, or it might be urgent to the listener's life. You're going to want to listen to this today and here's why. And then finally, useful. The more useful your podcast episode appears to your target listener, the more likely they are going to press play. And again, that is also applicable to you entertainment podcasters out there. So rather than dismissing this feedback as, oh, I'm not a business podcaster. This won't work for me. Think about how can it work for you. So like I said, the best titles are unique, ultra-specific, urgent, and useful. And the worst titles convey the opposite in an episode. So the worst titles are not unique and the topic is common, overplayed, or commonly discussed before. The worst episode titles are vague. Listeners aren't really sure specifically what you're going to talk about or you paint the topic with a really, really wide brush. Really ineffective titles also are not urgent. There's no reason for the listener to listen today. They can listen next week and it'll be just as valuable. And the worst podcast titles are quite useless. There's nothing that this episode is going to do for this listener and when the listener asks, what's in it for me? The answer is nothing. So Randall, hopefully that helps you to develop more eye-catching, clickable podcast titles because that skill is something that it is worth building because it will literally directly increase your download number. So once again, make your podcast episode titles unique, ultra-specific, urgent, and useful, and you will get more downloads. My name is Kevin Schmidland. I am your podcast growth coach and I will see you in the next episode of Grow the Show.