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 1 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 audacity to
podcast.com/clevertitles.
So when is it okay to have clever titles for your podcast or
episodes?
Number 1, 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 1 word was the name of our podcast, the official name of it.
But the title in podcast apps appeared as Once hyphen 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 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 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
podcast 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 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 hyphen 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 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 1 term.
And that's the thing I think you should think about is what is
that 1 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 1 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 1, when clever podcast titles have clarifying
subtitles.
Number 2, 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 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 wanna 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, I can't think of 1 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 they press play.
And that's 1 of those times that I think clever episode titles
are good. Not so much for informational or educational podcast.
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 podcast.
Number 3, 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 Podcast, 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 1. No.
It's not that 1 either. It's not that 1. It's this 1.
Or it's the 1 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 1 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 Downcast, 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 PodChapters.
Check it out over at 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 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, well, 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 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 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 4, when clever titled podcasts have amazing marketing
behind them.
There are plenty of highly successful podcasts out there that do
not have descriptive titles.
In fact, at the time of recording this, I'm going to read to you
some of the top podcasts in Apple Podcast as of 03/22/2026.
Number 1, The Daily. What's that about? I mean, you might guess.
Maybe Daily News? Okay. Then you might be right.
Number 2, 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'd have no idea
what that podcast is about. Pod Save America.
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 7, Love Trapped. I guess that's a dating podcast.
Number 8, Mick Unplugged. What Mick? Mick Jagger? Mickey Mouse?
Mickey Rooney? Mick at night?
I I have no idea what Mick unplugged is or who Mick even is.
Number 9, trace of suspicion. Number 10, up first. 11, 20 20.
Is that a vision podcast? Number 12, morbid.
Number 13, Good Hain 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 You 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, 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 Serial.
If you were to go out there and say, hey.
I'm thinking of starting a podcast called Serial.
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 cornflakes, honey nut 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. 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, 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're like, this is 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 tongue. 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 4 cases when I think it's okay to have clever
titles for your podcast or episodes.
Number 1, when clever podcast titles have clarifying subtitles.
Number 2, when clever episode titles are for entertainment based
podcast.
Number 3, when uniqueness is more important than podcast SEO.
And number 4, when clever title 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 1 of these clever
kinds of titles, you might not have to rename it.
Maybe simply add a subtitle.
Or if you 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'd 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.
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 theaudacitytopodcast.com and creator of
podchapters.com. Thanks for listening.